"Protect the dick!"
The Authority are battling some crazy warmonger old man and that made me think about a thing I've been planning to do to an old man! For some time now, I've been toying with writing a letter to my dad which wasn't actually a letter to my dad but an expression of the tsunami of feelings he left me with after leaving when I was two, and his subsequent incursions into my life, and eventual weight of the bags I'd been packing for so many years. This is what I have so far, although it's not very letter-like:
— — — — —
Father,
I wonder if you truly understand that you're eventually going to die without ever speaking with me again. Last time I saw you was in 2019 when your nieces (my cousins) were in town and I drove them up to see you. I stood in the living room, behind the furniture, behind the people, skulking, seething maybe, possibly just bored, definitely petting the dog. I'd stopped wanting to visit some months before this. But it was a last chance. A test, if you will, to see if maybe a glimmer of the man who told me at an early age that if our country ever brought the draft back, he'd drive me to Canada personally. The person who dragged us out of Every Which Way But Loose because too many men got punched by too many monkeys. The man who existed before he became consumed with watching post-9/11 war footage, expressing his fascination with this modern media experience of war, goggle-eyed at the tube, filled with too much excitement to express any condemnation. At this family get together, you said the thing you always say, the thing that makes me wonder what media you listen to, what reality you perceive: "We can't even make jokes anymore." I should have asked you what you meant. What kind of jokes can't you make? I say jokes all the time on the Internet. What do you fear will happen if you tell your jokes? Why are your jokes so dangerous, so damaging? Do you understand their power yet deny it at the same time? But then I remembered as he told a joke: he still tells jokes. Nobody has stopped him from telling jokes. What could he possibly mean then? If you can't joke, why then did you say, "They installed yet a third disabled ramp at the nearby plaza. I guess that one's for the trans." You laughed at your own words then so I assume that was a joke.
You say you want to be able to say whatever you want but they won't let you. And yet you always say whatever you want. But I think what you really want is for nobody to actually hear you. You want a time when people were too intimidated to say to you, "That's not funny." You want a time when people wouldn't stop being your friend because you loved telling jokes in poor taste, jokes that hurt people around you that you didn't know you were hurting, jokes that perpetuated systemic bias and racism. Because they never said anything. Maybe they even politely chuckled while hiding their true feelings about you. But now they have started to say things and your response isn't to examine why you find certain things funny that others do not. Your response is simply, "We can't even make jokes anymore."
I remember being out with you and your fourth wife, eating breakfast. Your fourth wife was complaining about what my niece (your granddaughter) was watching on television, iCarly or Hannah Montana. "Nothing on that show is realistic," she said. I retorted (joked, even, some might say), "Just like that news channel you watch." She looked at me as if I had slapped her. As if I had taken my balls out and slid them slowly across her scrambled eggs. As if I had screamed in her face something terrible inside her head that nobody was supposed to know, reveling in a secret exposed. She looked at me as if I wasn't supposed to make that joke. But I made it. Because I'm not worried about exposing to others what I believe. What jokes are you not telling because people might look at you as if you've slapped them in the face? Why don't you elaborate?
There's a kind of person who declares, "People shouldn't stop being friends with others over political opinions." But you know who says that, right? People with terrible and disgusting political opinions. "Don't judge me on my politics," they will say, as if knowing their politics damn them. "Judge me on the person I show you I am," they say on the witness stand, defending their right to have a relationship with you. As if their politics can somehow be divorced from how they see and treat other people. You grew up in the '60s. So you know. You know better than even I know: everything is political. Every fucking thing. So how am I supposed to judge you free from the America you vote for?
You consistently told me that you loved me. But you showed me that you didn't by defending terrible ideas, by being angry at things that didn't have any impact on your life, by regurgitating Fox News stories about local places that weren't local to you. It's like people were deciding things that you didn't approve of, decisions made to make their communities better, and you were angry they could do that without your stupid fucking opinion, opinions like "They shouldn't have to make cakes for gay people," or "The Washington Redskins isn't a racist name at all. My Indian friend agrees with me." You showed me you didn't love me, you hardly knew me, by supporting ideas that destroyed any government safety nets for people like me who have never been able to fit into society, who can't network, who can barely hold a job, who don't dream a status quo dream of bank accounts and bootstraps.
You once told me money is freedom. I responded, "No, time is freedom." Of course you still disagreed. Because to you, money was time. To me, earning money stole time. I understand what you're saying. Sue, if a person were rich, they could be as free as possible. But you didn't see what I was saying. That the demands to get the kind of money to make you free were too much for me, or simply too unethical. I understand it's easy for some people, for a lot of people. So easy that they don't even see or consider or acknowledge that those who don't fit in exist, those who don't find it easy, those who find it incredibly hard, nearly impossible.
Did you ever really know me? How could you? You missed fifteen formative years. Sometime around when Facebook began, you joined up like everybody. Then on Father's Day, a day I've rarely ever acknowledged because why the fuck would I even know when it was, you posted, "Waiting for the phone to ring." So I posted, "I waited fifteen years for the phone to ring." Did you look like I had slapped you in the face? Was that a joke I shouldn't have made? What shame did I unearth that you decided maybe Facebook wasn't for you and silently disappeared from the platform? Was it too easy for people who know you to expose to so many others the flaws you'd rather they not see? You want to be heard from but you don't want people to hear.
I didn't know you were an alcoholic for most of my childhood. The one time I remember shopping for a Father's Day present for you, probably early on before you completely disappeared in the forests and sand dunes of the Oregon coast, my mother suggested I get you a mixed twelve pack of international beers. I suppose that was a joke too. For her. I found it funny once I realized you were an alcoholic. Not funny as in "Ha ha let's get this person with a crippling addiction some shit that'll keep the addiction going." I found it funny in "You left my mother with two young children because you were drunk and selfish and irresponsible and she decided to give you a little 'Fuck off, prick.'"
I suppose part of the reason I wanted to end our friendship (and that's all it ever was. Me getting to know a guy whom I just happened to call Dad) was that I didn't think you deserved it. My mother was there for me and my sister. But being there meant being there for everything, good and bad. We had conflicts, of course. My sister and my mother no longer talk but she moved away and now lives near you and you get to have an adult relationship with her. All because you abandoned her, and my mother stayed. She stayed for the fights and the conflict and the drama. How is that fair? Maybe I'm being punitive and living out a simple desire to punish you for not being there. My mom lost her daughter; my father can lose his son.
You didn't fucking earn my friendship.
Sincerely,
Your Son.
P.S. I've been to a lot of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings with you. I'm glad you found the support you needed. But the clarity of the program didn't help endear me with you. They say it's a disease. It's a disease that you alone can cure, when you're ready, with the support of a community and the help of the program. But that's the thing, isn't it? You get to choose when your life has become so unmanageable that it's time for the cure. And I get to see that you didn't think your life was too unmanageable when you'd lost your relationship with your family. We weren't enough. And I guess that hurts too. Also, what's up with that 9th Step, buddy? It's possible you made amends to me at some point. But is it actually amends if I don't realize that's what's happening? It couldn't have been that week we spent with your sister (my aunt) in Truckee because you were still drinking then (and, when I look back at that time, it feels like maybe you were trying to say goodbye? Were you thinking of suicide then, Dad?). Did you tick "9th Step with Son" off your list because you talked about getting sober with me while riding in your beat up truck and yelling at me to turn off the tape because the helicopter noises from Joel's "Goodbye, Saigon" struck a PTSD chord? Was it the week we spent on Vancouver Island, the weekend Jerry Garcia died while we were out of touch with civilization? It's possible, I guess, which is why I don't let it bother me too much. But you know what the real last straw was? When I barely spoke with you during the pandemic and when your wife finally contacted me around my birthday, she said, "Your father thought you were mad at him so he was giving you his space." What the fuck, Dad? Your son doesn't speak to you for that long and you don't think, "I wonder if my son is hurting? Why haven't I heard from him? Maybe I should check in?" Enh, never mind. Have a good life.
I wonder if you truly understand that you're eventually going to die without ever speaking with me again. Last time I saw you was in 2019 when your nieces (my cousins) were in town and I drove them up to see you. I stood in the living room, behind the furniture, behind the people, skulking, seething maybe, possibly just bored, definitely petting the dog. I'd stopped wanting to visit some months before this. But it was a last chance. A test, if you will, to see if maybe a glimmer of the man who told me at an early age that if our country ever brought the draft back, he'd drive me to Canada personally. The person who dragged us out of Every Which Way But Loose because too many men got punched by too many monkeys. The man who existed before he became consumed with watching post-9/11 war footage, expressing his fascination with this modern media experience of war, goggle-eyed at the tube, filled with too much excitement to express any condemnation. At this family get together, you said the thing you always say, the thing that makes me wonder what media you listen to, what reality you perceive: "We can't even make jokes anymore." I should have asked you what you meant. What kind of jokes can't you make? I say jokes all the time on the Internet. What do you fear will happen if you tell your jokes? Why are your jokes so dangerous, so damaging? Do you understand their power yet deny it at the same time? But then I remembered as he told a joke: he still tells jokes. Nobody has stopped him from telling jokes. What could he possibly mean then? If you can't joke, why then did you say, "They installed yet a third disabled ramp at the nearby plaza. I guess that one's for the trans." You laughed at your own words then so I assume that was a joke.
You say you want to be able to say whatever you want but they won't let you. And yet you always say whatever you want. But I think what you really want is for nobody to actually hear you. You want a time when people were too intimidated to say to you, "That's not funny." You want a time when people wouldn't stop being your friend because you loved telling jokes in poor taste, jokes that hurt people around you that you didn't know you were hurting, jokes that perpetuated systemic bias and racism. Because they never said anything. Maybe they even politely chuckled while hiding their true feelings about you. But now they have started to say things and your response isn't to examine why you find certain things funny that others do not. Your response is simply, "We can't even make jokes anymore."
I remember being out with you and your fourth wife, eating breakfast. Your fourth wife was complaining about what my niece (your granddaughter) was watching on television, iCarly or Hannah Montana. "Nothing on that show is realistic," she said. I retorted (joked, even, some might say), "Just like that news channel you watch." She looked at me as if I had slapped her. As if I had taken my balls out and slid them slowly across her scrambled eggs. As if I had screamed in her face something terrible inside her head that nobody was supposed to know, reveling in a secret exposed. She looked at me as if I wasn't supposed to make that joke. But I made it. Because I'm not worried about exposing to others what I believe. What jokes are you not telling because people might look at you as if you've slapped them in the face? Why don't you elaborate?
There's a kind of person who declares, "People shouldn't stop being friends with others over political opinions." But you know who says that, right? People with terrible and disgusting political opinions. "Don't judge me on my politics," they will say, as if knowing their politics damn them. "Judge me on the person I show you I am," they say on the witness stand, defending their right to have a relationship with you. As if their politics can somehow be divorced from how they see and treat other people. You grew up in the '60s. So you know. You know better than even I know: everything is political. Every fucking thing. So how am I supposed to judge you free from the America you vote for?
You consistently told me that you loved me. But you showed me that you didn't by defending terrible ideas, by being angry at things that didn't have any impact on your life, by regurgitating Fox News stories about local places that weren't local to you. It's like people were deciding things that you didn't approve of, decisions made to make their communities better, and you were angry they could do that without your stupid fucking opinion, opinions like "They shouldn't have to make cakes for gay people," or "The Washington Redskins isn't a racist name at all. My Indian friend agrees with me." You showed me you didn't love me, you hardly knew me, by supporting ideas that destroyed any government safety nets for people like me who have never been able to fit into society, who can't network, who can barely hold a job, who don't dream a status quo dream of bank accounts and bootstraps.
You once told me money is freedom. I responded, "No, time is freedom." Of course you still disagreed. Because to you, money was time. To me, earning money stole time. I understand what you're saying. Sue, if a person were rich, they could be as free as possible. But you didn't see what I was saying. That the demands to get the kind of money to make you free were too much for me, or simply too unethical. I understand it's easy for some people, for a lot of people. So easy that they don't even see or consider or acknowledge that those who don't fit in exist, those who don't find it easy, those who find it incredibly hard, nearly impossible.
Did you ever really know me? How could you? You missed fifteen formative years. Sometime around when Facebook began, you joined up like everybody. Then on Father's Day, a day I've rarely ever acknowledged because why the fuck would I even know when it was, you posted, "Waiting for the phone to ring." So I posted, "I waited fifteen years for the phone to ring." Did you look like I had slapped you in the face? Was that a joke I shouldn't have made? What shame did I unearth that you decided maybe Facebook wasn't for you and silently disappeared from the platform? Was it too easy for people who know you to expose to so many others the flaws you'd rather they not see? You want to be heard from but you don't want people to hear.
I didn't know you were an alcoholic for most of my childhood. The one time I remember shopping for a Father's Day present for you, probably early on before you completely disappeared in the forests and sand dunes of the Oregon coast, my mother suggested I get you a mixed twelve pack of international beers. I suppose that was a joke too. For her. I found it funny once I realized you were an alcoholic. Not funny as in "Ha ha let's get this person with a crippling addiction some shit that'll keep the addiction going." I found it funny in "You left my mother with two young children because you were drunk and selfish and irresponsible and she decided to give you a little 'Fuck off, prick.'"
I suppose part of the reason I wanted to end our friendship (and that's all it ever was. Me getting to know a guy whom I just happened to call Dad) was that I didn't think you deserved it. My mother was there for me and my sister. But being there meant being there for everything, good and bad. We had conflicts, of course. My sister and my mother no longer talk but she moved away and now lives near you and you get to have an adult relationship with her. All because you abandoned her, and my mother stayed. She stayed for the fights and the conflict and the drama. How is that fair? Maybe I'm being punitive and living out a simple desire to punish you for not being there. My mom lost her daughter; my father can lose his son.
You didn't fucking earn my friendship.
Sincerely,
Your Son.
P.S. I've been to a lot of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings with you. I'm glad you found the support you needed. But the clarity of the program didn't help endear me with you. They say it's a disease. It's a disease that you alone can cure, when you're ready, with the support of a community and the help of the program. But that's the thing, isn't it? You get to choose when your life has become so unmanageable that it's time for the cure. And I get to see that you didn't think your life was too unmanageable when you'd lost your relationship with your family. We weren't enough. And I guess that hurts too. Also, what's up with that 9th Step, buddy? It's possible you made amends to me at some point. But is it actually amends if I don't realize that's what's happening? It couldn't have been that week we spent with your sister (my aunt) in Truckee because you were still drinking then (and, when I look back at that time, it feels like maybe you were trying to say goodbye? Were you thinking of suicide then, Dad?). Did you tick "9th Step with Son" off your list because you talked about getting sober with me while riding in your beat up truck and yelling at me to turn off the tape because the helicopter noises from Joel's "Goodbye, Saigon" struck a PTSD chord? Was it the week we spent on Vancouver Island, the weekend Jerry Garcia died while we were out of touch with civilization? It's possible, I guess, which is why I don't let it bother me too much. But you know what the real last straw was? When I barely spoke with you during the pandemic and when your wife finally contacted me around my birthday, she said, "Your father thought you were mad at him so he was giving you his space." What the fuck, Dad? Your son doesn't speak to you for that long and you don't think, "I wonder if my son is hurting? Why haven't I heard from him? Maybe I should check in?" Enh, never mind. Have a good life.
— — — — —
Of course I'm not sending it to him! That's just for me and every random stranger on the Internet to read!
Swift is barely useful when she kills. Can't imagine what she'd do as a pacifist hero.
Swift shows me exactly what she'd do as a pacifist hero in the panels immediately following her revelation. She hears a couple of hearts beating beneath the rubble that the emergency responders didn't find. I might have a bit of a bias against winged super heroes because I always found Hawkman and Hawkgirl uninteresting and also Hawkman was a gigantic conservative prick. How Ollie, just as useless, never put an arrow in each eye is a testament to Ollie's superpower. His superpower was patience, right? I mean, if all Oliver Queen had was a quiver full of stupid boxing glove arrows, he's even worse than I imagined. No, no. He definitely must have had super patience. It's why he never dropped the arrow for a gun. Those are for the hyperactive kids!
What is Swift doing in that last panel? Is she doing a Jim from The Office?!
Did Bryan Hitch model Swift after Björk? If that's the case then I like Swift much better.
After helping out at the disaster sites (half of London and most of Moscow), The Authority begin planning to infiltrate Gamorra Island. It seems when I asked incredulously how they couldn't just use the Carrier's Door technology to get past the forcefield surrounding Gamora Island, I was asking the right question but probably could have toned down my attitude a bit. Of course they knew about that loophole! Jenny just had to make sure the team didn't rush right into Door and get themselves killed by not having a plan. Or get Swift killed by not having a plan. I think everybody else is pretty much invulnerable. Fuck, she might be too. It might be the only real qualification needed to be on this team.
The Engineer figures out, by projecting Gamorra's brand logo onto the Earth with two of the knots covering London and Moscow, that the next attack will be in Los Angeles. Jackson and Christine, the world liaisons for Stormwatch (now The Authority), have a conference call with Kaizen Gomorra to find out what he's up to. His answer is that he's up to a little bit of terrorism for terrorism's sake. Then he laughs like a lunatic.
Jenny's plan is to protect Los Angeles with most of the gang and send Midnighter onto Gamorra Island to pull Kaizen's teeth and discover his plans. But before he goes, he gets in a quick lesson on The Carrier.
After helping out at the disaster sites (half of London and most of Moscow), The Authority begin planning to infiltrate Gamorra Island. It seems when I asked incredulously how they couldn't just use the Carrier's Door technology to get past the forcefield surrounding Gamora Island, I was asking the right question but probably could have toned down my attitude a bit. Of course they knew about that loophole! Jenny just had to make sure the team didn't rush right into Door and get themselves killed by not having a plan. Or get Swift killed by not having a plan. I think everybody else is pretty much invulnerable. Fuck, she might be too. It might be the only real qualification needed to be on this team.
The Engineer figures out, by projecting Gamorra's brand logo onto the Earth with two of the knots covering London and Moscow, that the next attack will be in Los Angeles. Jackson and Christine, the world liaisons for Stormwatch (now The Authority), have a conference call with Kaizen Gomorra to find out what he's up to. His answer is that he's up to a little bit of terrorism for terrorism's sake. Then he laughs like a lunatic.
Jenny's plan is to protect Los Angeles with most of the gang and send Midnighter onto Gamorra Island to pull Kaizen's teeth and discover his plans. But before he goes, he gets in a quick lesson on The Carrier.
The Doctor probably wants to fuck it.
Midnighter fucks up his mission by kicking the first guy he comes to in the face and not knocking his spine out of his body. The guy takes it and is all, "I don't think you're supposed to do that." But it doesn't really matter because as soon as The Authority get to Los Angeles, so do hundreds of Kaizen Gamorra's super terrorists. I guess L.A. is fucked. But so is Kaizen Gamorra because if Midnighter was captured, it was all part of the plan and Kaizen's about to lose not just his teeth but every other body part that's quite easily snapped off.
The Authority #3 Rating: B+. It's no Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth but what is, really? I'm only halfway through my re-read of Lost in the Funhouse and I've wept at least three times. One may have been partially exacerbated by my Aunt's death last night (and my really well done dramatic reading of the story "Title" out loud. You might be thinking, "Wow! You read a story out loud. Way to do something any person over the age of five can do!" But I have a feeling not even 1% of the population could do what I just did on the fly! Dare I say I'm a reading out loud genius? I'm pretty sure I have a certificate for that from when I was five!).
P.S. My Aunt was quite religious so if what she believed was true, and she's suddenly up in Heaven and able to look down on all of her loved ones, then she just saw me masturbate for the first time in her life (unlife?) today! Gross! Stop looking, Melva!
The Authority #3 Rating: B+. It's no Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth but what is, really? I'm only halfway through my re-read of Lost in the Funhouse and I've wept at least three times. One may have been partially exacerbated by my Aunt's death last night (and my really well done dramatic reading of the story "Title" out loud. You might be thinking, "Wow! You read a story out loud. Way to do something any person over the age of five can do!" But I have a feeling not even 1% of the population could do what I just did on the fly! Dare I say I'm a reading out loud genius? I'm pretty sure I have a certificate for that from when I was five!).
P.S. My Aunt was quite religious so if what she believed was true, and she's suddenly up in Heaven and able to look down on all of her loved ones, then she just saw me masturbate for the first time in her life (unlife?) today! Gross! Stop looking, Melva!
I appreciate you sharing all that. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading!
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