Back Desk

I’m angry, and not just some simple conniption or distemper. The fibers winding down to my core are braided with fury. The irascible roots of my existence are exasperated beyond the point of vexation, into unknown realms of ire, outrage and enmity. I’m mad, bro.

But why? That’s the first question anyone would ask. That’s the first question I asked myself, and for a long time I tried to give myself an answer that fit: my parent’s died (fuck cancer), my dream died (fuck the USAF), my family died (fuck baby mommas), my faith died (fuck Disney…I mean, for real, fuck-deez-nuts-Disney for giving faithless children these unrealistic expectations about life, but I digress…), my country died (fuck Donald Trump), my career died (fuck The Man), my relationship(s) died (fuck me).

And for a long time, I would try to bury my anger beneath the appeasing dirt of any or all of the aforementioned answers… because that’s what you do in polite society. You hide your anger. You appease it secretly and in acceptable ways that don’t draw too much attention such as the overindulgence of pleasures, the soft cutting of skin in discreet locations (no, I’ve never done that), or the cathartic ostentation of your choosing relevant to your personality type (i.e. Facebook rants, serial dating, being a Karen, etc).

I hate my job. Nothing novel there. Lots of people do. And if you’re thinking right now, “Well, why don’t you do something else?” Then I am mentally walking over to you and bitch-slapping you in the face. By the way, a bitch-slap is ALWAYS with the backhand. If you use your palm, you’re just slapping a bitch, not bitch-slapping. Denote the difference, but again, I digress… I’m not going to get into the semantics of my job-hate because, surprisingly, I’m not angry about it. Whilst it grates at my personality daily, it has also considerably broadened my perspective on the human condition. And my friends, the condition. is. poor.

‘Tis unfortunate for my rocky pursuit of happiness, yet fortuitous to my wit that I should fall into my present position as I’m embarking on those middle-age years when wisdom first dawns. I’ve always been a tolerant person but not without my prejudices. I may disprove of many lifestyle choices, but I tolerate an individual’s behavior so long as they stay in their lane. I’ve even casually conversed with people of questionable beliefs, temporarily withholding judgment, and often found them to be quite intriguing. Hell, my own brother practices a plethora of behaviors that occupy my prejudices but I love him all the same. Would I accept him as integral to my life were he not my brother? Doubtful, but that is the difference between tolerance and acceptance. You tolerate behavior, but you accept people. It’s easy to confuse tolerance with acceptance because if we correlate them as the same then we don’t have to own our prejudices. We treat prejudice as a bad thing. It’s not. It’s only a word. What matters is your association with that word. Prejudice is merely a way of distinguishing between something you don’t want to be, and whom you think you are. I am prejudice against meth-heads because I don’t want to be a meth-head. It doesn’t mean I hate all meth-heads. In truth, I only hate one meth-head and that’s because he hurt someone I love and judged me prematurely, not because he is a meth-head.

I am angry because I see prejudice twisted out of its neutral form into fear and loathing; then running rampantly, unchecked, unchallenged, and unacknowledged–in the world, in people, in a person, and most infuriatingly, in myself. I used to ask why. Now I ask, why not? I should be angry because I am not the things that I don’t want to be, yet I am and have been treated as such by “polite society”. The answers that used to fuel my rage have settled into components of my twisted prejudice. I can’t even look back on my life without acrimony or umbrage. How does one weave hope for a bright future from a cantankerous past? We are ruled by our prejudices, each and every one of us. If you’re thinking right now, “Well, I’m not.” Please see my backhand. We plan and live our lives according to all the things that we don’t want to feel or be, and then go hard in the opposite direction. I am angry because, when I reflect on my experiences, I feel powerless and unseen in a shallow society that abhors acceptance, embraces ignorance, calls it tolerance, merges all lanes, and blindly drives in reverse towards the pursuit of individual happiness.

When I was a kid, I always struggled with defining what I wanted to be or do in life. All I knew in my heart was that I wanted to make a difference, a positive and significant difference, in the world if I could, or in one life if I could not. That was the passion that fueled everything for me: my writing, my relationships, my goals. Now, that limitless passion has turned into anger. Unmitigated indignation. Discomforting antagonism. Infinite annoyance. Stifling displeasure… I’m mad, bro.

I don’t have a therapist. Lord knows I need one. We could probably bill a whole year’s worth of sessions around the contents of this blog alone, and that’s just the stuff that I’m comfortable sharing with Dr Internet. Publicly talking to myself in cyberspace is probably one of the least efficient and/or effective ways to manage mental health but it’s the only coverage offered by my $Free.99 insurance plan. Fuck yo couch, America! 

I can’t describe the heartache and disappointment I feel at my daughter’s decision to leave. I can compartmentalize and compact the anger and the betrayal. I can empathize (to the best of my ability) for my Kid’s pain and suffering. I can even forgive her complete rejection of my presence from her life in the same way I must forgive myself for failing to connect with her as a father. But I can’t do anything with this heartache and disappointment except find a way to live with it. I love that little idiot child of mine in all her brokenhearted, stubborn glory. So what choice do I have but to somehow find a way to accept things and move on, for her sake… That way, if she ever opens that door again, she will find a loving father and not a broken old man. 

So I took the advice of my homie Reynold. He has a daughter who is a few years older than my Kid and he went through an eerily similar situation with her when she was a teenager. He suggested tough love: don’t chase or beg, don’t combat or indulge her antagonistic behavior, just go about my business and let her do things her way. At first, that was a hard pass. It seemed like exactly what she wanted which made me feel like I’d be giving in to the whims of a child. Not to mention, it’d only be tough on me and my love. She couldn’t care less–she’s a teenager! But after about a week (or two) of incomparable melancholy, I became disgusted with myself. Depression is not a good look on me, and while at times my pain can be beautiful and tragic like Shakespearean theater, it’s mostly just intense and intimidating (even to me). So holding onto the belief that I am a good man, harboring no shame at trying my best, accepting that we [The Kid & I] were never given a fair shake and things went inconceivably awry, and admitting that sometimes love means letting go, I’ll make a Reynold’s wrap of this big ball of shit circumstances, et voila–a silver lining! 

Home nudity. Been doing a lot of that. God I missed wang-hanging around the home! Not only is it comfortable and liberating but it’s saving me pennies on laundry costs! Also, The internet. So helpful. With all the extra bandwidth from a home sans teen, now my streaming platforms only buffer when it’s AT&T fucking up! I was never big on binge watching TV before this Kiddemic but it’s a skill that I’m learning to love without all the anxiety in my free-time from trying to be the perfect father. Which reminds me… anxiety-free masturbation. So clutch. 🙏🏾

Oh, VideoGameGods, I need a girlfriend! I suppose I don’t have the excuse of being a single father, which was always a weak argument but no one would dare dispute it on account of its nobility. The truth is, I’m afraid to date. Even if the whole process were not exhausting, which it most definitely is (the older you get), I know that my ego is too fragile at present to endure the disappointment of casual dating. Nevertheless. I remodeled the whole apartment in a style that would afford me the privacy and possibility for dating. The Kid’s quarters are now a badass studio-style dorm room. If it weren’t so depressing, I would actually like to hang out in there. Maybe I’ll throw a Bachelor Party… Wait, that’s already a thing. And it’d just be confusing to throw a Party-As-A-Bachelor Party… confusing… AND AWESOME!!!!

Now where can I find some attendees. What do you call them? Oh yea, friends! Honestly, that could take some time. Perhaps we should just Field of Dreams it. I mean, it worked in college…

I’d never wailed before August 19, 2020. I suppose I never really considered it but after the mountains of pain, loss, regret, betrayal and heartbreak in my past, I just kind of assumed that I’d covered all the bases on crying. Wrong again. 

Arriving home from work on Wednesday night to find my daughter’s room cleared out… You know how you see people on tv who are in some desperate situation and then something terrible happens and they just stand there in shock while the building is falling around them and you just wanna yell at them “Snap the fuck out of it!” That’s how I felt standing in my daughter’s closet staring at the eight empty hangers that remained. Shock is like an out of body experience. Even as I remember it now, I see myself in the third person stumbling dumbly from the empty closet to my bedside in the living room where my knees gave out at the command to lie down and instead I found myself kneeling on the carpet squeezing myself in a hopeless embrace and wailing without tears at the top of my lungs. I doubled over, screaming questions I can’t remember, and while I could breathe fine, the hot breath of my sobs made me feel like I was suffocating so my body would shoot up and yell at the ceiling. Surprisingly, my manners still hold sway in deep agony because something would shame me for being disruptive to my neighbors (probably a result of my hospitality profession) and I would bring my cries back to the floor until suffocating again. And so I cried. 

To be fair, I had received a call a few hours earlier from her mother stating “[the kid and I] talked and she’s going to move back in with me.” I’m sure she thought that was a courtesy and not a kidnapping. I spent the last three hours of my shift desperate to get home in the vain hope that she was bluffing. She wasn’t. 

There’s nothing worse than the feeling of being powerless. Having your world ripped apart in the blink of an eye and being unable to do anything about it but nod and say “okay”, that is a feeling of which I am all too familiar. There is no healing from that. There is no forgetting. There is no replacement for the hopes and dreams that you spent years building up. 

I haven’t eaten anything in more than 48 hours (unless you count the Trolli gummi worms that were the last thing my daughter gave me). Been napping a lot. Doing a lot of wallowing but trying to avoid the self-pity. I’ve been cycling through the first three stages of grief like a broken clock but the anger is subsiding. 

My daughter is 16. She’s naive and highly-sensitive, but she is also and almost a woman. Which means I have to respect the decisions she makes as a woman. It’s easy for me to blame her mother. She’s manipulative and she’s kidnapped my daughter three times in the past, so number four is no surprise but honestly, I’m so over being mad at that woman. The most hurtful part of this loss is that my daughter made the decision this time. I’m not mad at her for it because what teenager hasn’t wanted to run away from home at some point? In most cases, there’s just nowhere for you to go that wouldn’t ship you right back. So I suppose the Kid was just taking advantage of the dysfunction in our “family” but I’m still hurt that she felt like that was her best option. Now she’s not talking to me, claiming she needs space. I still have no clue why she left. No idea where her head is at or what her heart is feeling. The sobering truth that I haven’t wanted to admit to myself is this:

Maybe she didn’t run away from home… she ran back home. 

And I have no idea where that leaves me… now I have to go to work and somehow coexist in a world that has no meaning to me. 

Love is a mystery to me. Some might say (though never to my face) it is a defect of my birth as a high-functioning sociopath. I might say it is the disillusionment with romance wrought by inflicting Walt Disney on a child’s tender, sleeve-sitting heart. Whatever the reason, I had to abandon my misunderstanding of love in order to forgive my most natural attractions for loving others. With my robotic personality, however, I could not function without some parameters by which to compute my behavioral patterns.

For this I turned to the Apostle Paul. Although I am not a biblical man, his second letter to the Corinthians checked all the appropriate boxes to explain why so many humans behaved irrationally towards their chosen partners. It was an exhausting list that seemed to box souls into a boundless battle for selfless reconciliation. Love is patient. Love is kind… It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It holds no records of wrongs… It always protects, always trusts, always hopes… All these things seemed foolish to me when applied towards character traits such as dishonesty, manipulation, aggression, narcissism, and a slew of other skills that would make for a great spy or an even better entanglement. Nevertheless, I needed a widely accepted framework and even my atheist friends called their bizarre compromises “love” same as everyone else so… point for Paul.

[Enter: The Kid] Love is still a mystery to me. Whoever says “Oh, I didn’t understand love until I met my children” is full of shit. I didn’t understand love before and I understand it even less now. I’m not a woman so, granted, I can not speak from personal experience but I am 99.99% sure that giving birth is not fucking nirvana. No one suddenly reaches enlightenment when they become a parent; however, I can say from personal experience that the very first time I held my daughter, I felt a force erupt inside me that was deeper and stronger than the feeling of 1,000 butterflies in my stomach. I can’t say what it was, but I know it wasn’t the secrets of the universe. My theory is that the freak-out moment that most women get when they realize they’re pregnant creates an emotional bomb that they then spend xx amount of weeks filling with hormonal energy from all the anxiety, confusion, anger, frustration, curiosity and excitement of creating a life. The unborn baby is then primed with a DNA detonator triggered by the sperm donor. When the child touches its father for the first time, all that energy is immediately transferred in an explosion of paternal instincts. It’s simple science, folks. You think I spent all that time in after-school conferences with Ms Behrens because I was a disciplinary concern? No, clearly it was because she recognized my acute understanding of human biology. But I digress…

Paternal instincts are weird. If instincts are a survival guide, then it could be considered self-love in its purest form. But if that’s the case, why the hell does my existence suddenly depend on keeping this aimless sponge of a creature alive long enough to supplant me? The logic is flawed, but the effect is real. Paternal instincts exist against all reason, same as love, but I recognize the two as separate identities within the self. Some people have no parental instincts. Perhaps the mother did not experience enough self-loathing in her pregnancy to trigger an explosion of emotional energy transference after birth. Perhaps the parent has a hedonistic heart and is unable to deny his or her baser instincts. Or perhaps they embrace a more Darwinian parental philosophy, which, cards on the table, seems entirely appealing to me more often than I will ever admit. Fortunately for my spawn, my paternal instincts are to protect, inspire and encourage. Unfortunately for her, I don’t know how to do that and love her at the same time.

I know what you’re thinking. What the fuck, Q? Did you really just say that? Um, yes, what of it? I still love my kid, of course, but that experience often irritates the intentions of my paternal instincts. For example, you might say I am overprotective simply because I want to know exactly what my child is doing and with whom at all times. If I don’t know, then I am overcome with anxiety and apprehension until I can set eyes on her again. Now the parameters by which I am supposed to love say that it is okay for her to have freedom, and secrets, and privacy, and independence–my trust, basically. So I allow her these unearned graces, but I don’t like it, and according to the parameters by which I am supposed to love, that is also okay. My paternal instincts seek to pull her closer to myself, wanting to share my hobbies with her and vice-versa, so as to mutually inspire and encourage each other. But the Kid finds my hobbies to be arduous, time-consuming tasks, either too dull or too mentally-exhausting to ever be enjoyable. And I find her hobbies to be far too whimsical and chaotic to invest such large swathes of my time. Love says I should try anyway, and I do, and I fail, which Love says shouldn’t happen, but it does…not…compute.

So yea, like I said, I don’t know how to love this Kid and follow my paternal instincts at the same time. I must make a split-second decision on which path to follow at every junction of interaction. This method tends to work out in her favor 8 times out of 10 because I diverge down the Lane of Love. Flawed though the framework might be, it’s better than the game of pinball that is paternal instinct. Where do these balls even come from? Why do I feel like they’re attacking me? Where do they go once the game is over? Why does this stupid thing never go where the hell you want it to go? How come two seconds into the game you abandon all plans and frantically attempt to hit the ball on a hopeless prayer that it can bounce anywhere it wants just please, please, please don’t end up in the gutter?!

..Now I’ve ruined pinball for myself. And Love is still a mystery to me. This is not what I intended when I woke up to write this morning.

Lately I’ve been waking up every morning bored with life. I then live my days, blazed and confused, until I fall asleep bitter with boredom. Now I should be grateful given that excitement–for me–usually comes in the form of strife, stress or disappointment. Furthermore, I recognize that these unprecedented times are not just a plague on the physical health of our species, but also poisonous to the social contracts and constructs that provide us with peace of mind and a sense of personal utility. Nevertheless, I know my boredom is my own creation and when it explodes in a blaze of glorious pandemonium; that, too, will be my doing.

When I’m at work, if I had the time (or were disinclined to do my job like practically every one I come across in life), I could write paragraphs and parables about the antics and shenanigans–shenantics??–that go one every day. But by the time I make it home to my lazy-boy and lethargic daughter, my selective memory has already started phasing out the bad parts, leaving me with nothing but a bad feeling and nothing to say. You wouldn’t know it from reading anything I post, but I don’t like to broadcast my angry-blackmanness. The cynicism that drives my sociopathic detachment from the human species is, believe it or not, somewhat of a curiosity that rages against what I consider to be my good nature.

That being said, I decided that I need some sort of rating system for my days in lieu of journaling about the absurd tedium of hospitality. Suffice it to say that if I’m not out of patience by “lunch” (because I don’t actually get one of those) then it’s a pretty successful day. If I make it through a shift without being threatened, insulted or ignored, then you should probably wake me from my fantasy because I fell asleep. I only gave myself 30 minutes for catharsis and I’m already three minutes over so I guess we’ll have to think of a rating system tomorrow.

I’ve always been a heart-sleeving fool and as such, my arrogance had me convinced that I knew the poignant touch of loss. Rollercoaster romances, countless-compartmentalized-occasionally-conjugal-caretakers and endless unrequited obsessions all kept my heart pretty busy with misery… Fuckin’ bitches. (Sorry, Sister. She beat me to believe that you never call a woman that word. I shall self-flagellate later in penance.) There was joy, too, don’t mistake me. Oh boy, was there some joy! I have loved some wonderful women, and many more amazing ones have loved me. Certainly more than I deserve, but no more than I desire. Okay, so maybe Papa was a rolling stone. What of it?! I recognize that I have a vast pool of emotional needs. A romantic flaw made fatal when crossed with the uncompromising personality of a high-functioning sociopath. C’est la vie. If I didn’t love myself so damn much, this ability to self-reflect would really make me hate me. It amazes me daily that those closest to me who have seen these things that impede me can still find reasons to call on me in spite of the very real possibility that I will never change. Hat’s off to you fools. I love you! May you never leave me!

But that’s just it, isn’t it. Everything that has a beginning, has an end. To bring it way back around: I thought I knew the poignant touch of loss from and through romance and love, respectively. Then my parents died, one at a time, and a few years apart. My Granny died a few years before my mom, and that loss was devastating, to be sure, but through a series of unfortunate events, I was blessed to have my final meeting and memory of my Granny be the best and most perfect storybook goodbye in our history. So when I received the news of her passing a few months later, I immediately and already felt like I had closure. Closure is the key to managing loss. It eliminates the emptiness of regret that embodies a loved one’s absence from your life but until you get it, it’s really just a useless stone weighing on your brain. As to what form that stone takes, that is anyone’s guess. In romance you can use it to break the lock on a new door and leave the old one behind, half-cocked off the hinges from kickin the shit out of it. It doesn’t matter cuz you’ll probably come back and torch the bitch anyway if this next house is better. But how do you get closure from a home that you want to curate as a historical monument such as the death of a loved one or the absence of a defining friendship?

One thing I always wanted when my parents were alive is for them to have a relationship with their grandchild, whom they adored and loved in spite of all the chaos from whence she came. In the back of my grief, I hoped that I might be provided some measure of closure after I had formed a new relationship with my daughter. Unfortunately, that transference of emotion only works with romance. As our relationship grows and the love for my daughter deepens, so too does the longing for my parents’ witticisms and “wisdom”. Of course, life goes on and I am well on with my pursuit of happiness as a single, witless, friendless father. I’ve buried my regrets–some alive, but most of them dead. I laugh inside as the enlightenment of fatherhood falls fondly over my childhood memories. I feel my parents’ love all over again through the love I pass on to my daughter. But no matter how hard I love my kid or myself, no matter how far behind my old home becomes, regardless of how many new experiences replace the forgotten memories, there exists a hole in my feelings, a gap in my emotions, a petrified pump on my heart that will never work again. I carry the stone because the only closure I know would be to cast it and I refuse to do that unless I can guarantee at least 12 skips. It’s still too heavy for that. Perhaps with another few years of emotional erosion…

I lost my fire and with it went my inspiration. Literally. I was having a euphoric morning reflection session by the light of my desktop stone fireplace and decided that I wanted to write with it. But of course I dilly-dallied, as Mr Atkins–my old dance teacher–would say, wanting to enjoy the momentary freedom of thought, and by the time I reached for my laptop and was ready to type, I found myself staring at a blank screen with motionless fingers, feeling cold and swallowed whole by darkness. At first I was confused, then I realized the fire had gone out, and with it went my inspiration.

That phenomenon is intriguing, and I am making a mental note to explore it more fully going forward. For now, I must attend to my empire, the Zulu nation. My current video game addiction is Sid Meier’s Civilization VI. I am vigorously playing it on the highly versatile & portable Nintendo Switch, the combination of which cooks up into video game crack. The precision with which this series of games has tackled the minutia of government, agriculture and economics then simplified it into a vibrant showcase of history and human experience while somehow still providing enough depth and expansion to make it believable, challenging and engaging without being redundant even after 4000 years of whining peasants…well, it’s impressive, to say the least.

So I’m gonna go shoot up because it’s my day off and I have big plans to raze a few cities then conquer a couple more and laugh as Montezuma’s ugly mug begrudges the fall of his empire. Like my boy Caleb said in one of his golden moments of spot-on comedy: it was after we beat up these country boys who tried to jump me for showing up to a beach-themed party (mostly) naked, we were back home talking about how things escalated so quickly, I thanked him for jumping in on my behalf and he just shrugged and said, “don’t start no shit, won’t be no shit.” My soul laughed at that. For every one of my best male white friends, there is a point in our relationship where they stop being a white boy to me and become my brother. It’s not always so dramatic as a front yard brawl-inspired hip-hop quote (shoutout to #YoungBloodZ), but it’s the last wall to true friendship that exists between the social tension of systemic racism. But I digress, I got a grudge needs grudging. May the world always fondly recall the soon to be departed Aztec Empire.

Everything about parenting goes against my nature. I am a selfish, romantic, whimsical, and narcissistic person; and those are just the polite descriptors that I can stand to write about myself. I’m quite certain my sister could give you a slurry of inelegant character assassinations with no hesitation and little provocation. So go, all ye thirsty bitches, and seek her out for more. 

In spite of and, in all actuality, because of those traits, I became a single dad with a beautiful daughter. When they asked me 30, 20, or, sadly, even 10 years ago what I wanted to be when I grew up, Single Dad was never on the list. It wasn’t even in the book. It was an absurd prospect for me, and I think everyone agreed on that point. 

So of course it was surprising to all, myself included, when I relocated to the dirty south for my estranged kid. Shocking still when fate bullied us into a home together in just a few short years. Complete the dad-hat trick with a plague of biblical proportions, et voilà! Q is hustling alone in Houston-mother-fucking-Texas, raising a gorgeous teenage girl whose mental and emotional faculties are eerily similar clones of myself. It’s an absurd reality for me, and I think everyone agrees on that point. 

You can’t tell me that fate doesn’t have a sense of humor. Personally, I consider my life to be the punchline for many of his jokes. He’s got a real twisted sense of humor, that mother fucker, but he’s not evil. He’s certainly not good, nor anywhere in between. Fate is simply how you accept life. I’ve always tried to do the right thing, though not always at the right time. In my life, my relationships, and my career, one right step after the other is the goal. It practically never works out the way I plan but I keep on trekking. Not a daddy day goes by that I don’t shake my head and think, “I am not cut out for this shit.” I ask myself in anguish, “how the hell did we get here—she and I?” Broke, broken and broken-hearted… but together.

And that makes all the rest worth it. Everything about parenting goes against my nature. As a father, everything about teenage girls massages my nerves with a thousand jagged razors. My complete cluelessness as to what I’m doing or how I’m doing it is so humbling and humiliating that I think I’ve actually developed a new way to cry on the inside. In spite of all that, now that I know my daughter, I can’t imagine a life where we are not together. 

So when she posts some seductive pictures on Instagram and my heart drops straight out my ass as I lose my shit, it’s a small comfort to know that I won’t kill her because somewhere in the back of my mind, hiding in a cave of uncertainty, is a loving father wailing in great grief at the loss of his little angel. His cries are faint echoes behind empty, red-blinded eyes. A very small comfort… No, I love her too much to let memory have her (still selfish like that) but pour me a glass of whiskey because daddy’s gonna preach tonight!

And preach I did. I won’t get into details because I don’t need you thirsty bitches all up in my parenting business but if I’m being completely honest, I quite enjoy these teachable moments. I’m so oldhead that I forget about the naïveté of youth. It’s adorable except for the inevitable tragedy of wisdom. I love these talks because they make me remember what it feels like to be careless and free of serious concerns. Hate those looks that she gives me, though. Gotta listen to that small comforting echo. Yes, he sounds like a little bitch but we will get through this… Together. You love this little idiot child, Q. And even though she consciously does shit that she KNOWS will drive you crazy, she loves you, too. And yea, it sucks that your whole body is fueled daily by caffeine, sugar and panic attacks, but all that extra work on the nerves just makes your heart stronger. It’s science, don’t question it. Just suck it up, love her curiously large butt, put one good foot in front of the other, and be proud of the road not taken.

I shall be telling this with a sigh 
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
~Robert Frost