You spend your whole life trying to build something, and then one day, your own kid comes along and tries to burn it all down with a few, simple, stupid words.
“You know, Dad,” one of them says to me, “you changed. Mom’s still Mom, but you… you changed.”
And you just stand there, the words hanging in the air like a bad smell, and you think, What the fuck does that even mean?
Mom’s still Mom. So she hasn’t changed. She’s still playing the part, the long-suffering matriarch, the saint in the kitchen. She’s still got the mask on, so she gets to keep the title. But I changed. So now I’m no longer “Dad”? Is that the deal? Is the illusion that a young man needs, a person who just acts like a “Mom,” who says all the right, boring, life-denying things? A woman who slowly, surely reminds you of all the things you’re not allowed to do?
And what the hell is a “Dad” supposed to be? I am a dad. The fact that I paid the bills, the fact that you came from my own goddamn loins, the fact that I protected you, provided for you, made sure you were born with a silver fucking spoon in your mouth… what the hell do you mean I’m not a dad?
“Well, it’s not like you’re not a dad, but… you’re just different.”
Different how? Because I drink? Because I have fun? Because I tell a story that isn’t about the quarterly earnings report? Am I supposed to just sit here and play board games and count the days until I have grandchildren to poison with my own quiet desperation? Am I supposed to manipulate you into moving back to Bend, Oregon, so I can see my “precious babies”?
What the fuck do you know about who I was before the divorce, and who I am now? Because the man I am now is the same goddamn man I was when I got married. The only difference is, I’m not obsessed with the business anymore. I’m not climbing their phony corporate ladder. I’m still in the top ten percent. I’m still a boss. I’m still a manager. But yeah, I’m “different.”
It’s the lack of respect. It’s the illusion. You’re supposed to be something, and then you’re supposed to act like that something, to enforce the illusion on everyone around you, to create a hierarchy. A woman who doesn’t provide a goddamn thing, who’s as dumb as a doornail, whose whole family is a train wreck, she gets to be “Mom” because she plays the part. Because she’s not out there having sex, because she’s never had anal, because she’s not crazy and fun and alive. She’s just sitting there in her fifties, rotting from the inside out, and that’s supposed to impress you.
She’s not a dad, so she gets a pass. But me? I’m supposed to let my hair go gray, let my body dry out, sit here and tell you all the things I think you want to hear, just to avoid a conflict. And then, when you’re not looking, I’m supposed to go out there and be the man, take care of things, pay the bills. But if I want to have a party, if I want to tell a story from my own colorful, fucked-up life, then suddenly, I’m not a dad anymore.
Fuck you. What the fuck.
You know, if I had ever said shit like that to my own father, Jim Orsillo, a man who literally lost everything in the divorce, whose life was a living hell because of my mother… if I had gone to him and said, “You’ve changed,” because now he was single and smoked cigars and went to Dodger games and had stories about getting in fights and sleeping on a boat… he would have slapped my fucking head across the room.
He would have said, “You know what? Then don’t take my car. Don’t take my weekends. Don’t take my money. You want to go lie down with that horrible, goddamn person and honor her on Mother’s Day? Fine. Then don’t bother with me anymore.”
I am disappointed. I am disappointed in others, even my own kids. And it disgusts me sometimes, to see how much this one has grown to be just like their mother.
And that is not a compliment.
Author’s Note
So you’ve just read that. The story about the son and the father, and the quiet, ugly little war that happens over a dinner table. You might think it’s just another story about a man bitching about his kids, about the generation gap. It’s not.
That story is about the quiet horror of the illusion.
We’re all handed a script the day we’re born. A part to play. And for a woman, the part of “Mom” is a lifetime contract. All she has to do is not burn the house down, and she gets to keep the title. She can be a drunk, a liar, a miserable cunt, but as long as she maintains the basic shape of the role, she’s “Mom.” The illusion holds.
But for a man, the part of “Dad” is a performance review, held every single goddamn day. And the judges are your own children. You pay the bills, you build the house, you protect them, you bleed for them. But the second you step off the stage, the second you stop playing the part of the stoic, sexless, passionless provider and show them the real, ugly, beautiful, fucked-up man underneath, they look at you like you’re a stranger.
“You changed,” he says.
What he means is, “You stopped playing the part I was comfortable with.”
That story isn’t about me being angry that my kid doesn’t see me for who I am. It’s about the quiet, creeping disgust of realizing that he doesn’t want to. He wants the illusion. He wants the comfortable, predictable, and completely phony stage play. He wants the dad from the goddamn sitcom, not the man who has to live in the real world.
And the real gut punch, the part that leaves a man staring at the bottom of a bottle at three in the morning, is the realization that he’s not just judging you. He’s becoming her. He’s learning her language, her quiet manipulations, her way of seeing the world through a lens of disappointment and unmet expectations.
That’s the real tragedy of it all. You spend twenty years trying to raise a man, and you end up with a goddamn echo of the woman who almost destroyed you. And you have to sit there, with a polite, stupid smile on your face, and pretend that’s not the biggest, ugliest, and most heartbreaking failure of your entire goddamn life.
