Ever been around someone who changes when they’re around you? Like their whole damn personality lights up, flips a switch, and suddenly you’re not just hanging out—you’re dancing on the edge of something rare. Like a goddamn flamenco on a dive bar dance floor. One elbow nudge, a lean to the right, and boom—two bodies locked into the rhythm like a drunk ballet choreographed by muscle memory and tequila.
My organic father—yeah, the real one, not the stepdad stand-in—was like that. But only when he was free. Free from her. Free from the prison of ‘Yes, dear.’
When he was away from his wife, he transformed. He’d sit down with a beer and let his shoulders drop like sandbags off a barge. Half a pint in, and he’d open up. Conversation flowed—funny, rich, unapologetically curious. You could talk about Jesus, politics, money, war, and end it all laughing over a rare steak and a second dry martini. He became a man again, not some neutered version keeping pace with the leash in his hand.
He’d flirt with the waitress—not creepy, not desperate—just enough to make her blush, and I’d always toss in a one-liner that pushed it over the edge. Red face, nervous laugh, and back to our beer. We had a rhythm. Matched in flavor, in hunger. Oysters, wings, IPAs by the six-pack—me and him against the calories and the clock.
One day, proud as hell, he stood up from our patio table at Casey’s in Morres Arizona, headed toward the fountain bathroom behind the little gate. The sensor kicked on, water trickled down like a Zen garden, and he let it fly like a man marking his territory. Came back grinning like a bastard, half-stumbling, all man. One of those moments that lives in your bloodstream.
We camped together. Built fires. Cooked over open flames. Drove thirty hours to nowhere in Baja Mexico just to say we did. Fly fished where we didn’t see another soul. Shared sunrises with Mexican coffee on top of a casita, the marine air heavy with silence and understanding. He was happiest with a cold beer and no one breathing down his neck.
Still selfish. Always a bit selfish. But that dulled when the bottle cracked and the sun went down.
We chased sunsets and stories. Laughed till our ribs hurt. We went pheasant hunting in Kansas where the guy telling racist jokes had us doubled over—not because we agreed, but because it was raw, unfiltered, and human. We needed that. No scripts. No eyes watching.
One time, after picking me up from the airport, we hit a bar and the British waitress knew him by name. Watched him flirt like it was rehearsed. I didn’t interrupt. This was his place. His secret. His box marked ‘Don’t Touch’ written in Sharpie. A place where he could breathe.
Ninety percent of the time, he was under thumb. Living by script.
Yes, dear. No, dear. Yes, dear.
My half-sibling said it plain: “When you’re around, he’s different. Funnier. More himself.”
Little sis was right—dead right. None of his kids ever saw the whole man. They only got the scraps, maybe ten percent of who he really was. The other ninety was buried under decades of performance, fear, routine, and silent compliance. He became a master of the act—thirty-five years of “yes dear,” polite nods at family dinners, and quiet nights pretending not to notice how dead the bedroom had become. Passionless. Loveless. Trained like a dog not to run, even though the gate had always been open. Like a horse that could trample the fence but didn’t.
Maybe it was loyalty. Maybe guilt. Maybe just the slow rot of being expected to be something for everyone except himself. He stayed caged, holding out for those scraps of affection—some tired hope that maybe tonight she’d reach over and remind him he was still a man. But it never came. And all the while, the real him was locked away, surfacing only when he was free—when no one was watching.
That’s when he was alive. Sharp. Witty. Curious. A man with opinions and humor and heat.
A man who could hold a room. He deserved to be that man more often.
We all did.
