My father

I do not know if I have written on this subject before.  It has been popping in and out of my head lately.  I love the guy.  Well, mostly.  Sometimes, I hate him.  But we'll get to that later.

My father is a general contractor--he builds stuff.  He is presently somewhere in his late-forties, and he married my mother when he was in his twenties.  They met in college.  He was striving to become an engineer; she an educator.  Only one is now what he/she tried to be.  He could not complete his degree program and switched his major; she (eventually) became the director of a preschool and then a teacher of teachers.  In summary, he did not quite live up to his college goal.

He is always doubting himself when it is not something that he knows--he knows building and sports.  When it comes to writing, spelling, using any new technology, he is an intimidated puppy.  He shields himself by hiding behind his lack of early school-training prowess, dyslexia, and his unhelpful parents.  If he is not winning, he hides behind his spotty ignorance and occasional stupidity, and he will try to be the martyr.  He will take on as much weight as he can, and when he fails, it is because everyone else gave him too great of a burden.  Perhaps that is his biggest flaw.  I guess he would be termed as lacking confidence and self-destructive.

He can be a kind individual.  He socializes and can talk to people for hours.  But he is also partly where I got my loner-ish qualities from.  Think back to how he wants to be a martyr.  He is large of girth and stuck in many of his ways.  He likes to be funny, and he is the best person I know at putting words in people's mouths.  He is known to quote people on things they've never said.  But he means well.

He is flawed in a number of ways though.  Certain members of my family are flawed in certain ways (what a universal statement: people are flawed).  My brothers are bigots: they are racist against pretty much every race but their own (the white folks down south), they hate gay people, and they call themselves Christians.  What a horrible combination.  My mother is not too bad in the tolerance section of life, though I'm pretty sure she said that she would hate for one of her children to be gay.  : / Poo.  And finally, the man about whom this post is written. 

My father is racist because two of his sons are racist and the other has given up on making his family politically correct.  All the failed attempts condition a man to realize that some people are just not worth the effort.  My father hates gay people and has said that he would either disown or kill his son if he had a gay one (I believe the latter threat was an exaggeration and a boast).  He, too, is a Christian--a Methodist.  Perhaps hypocrisy has trained me to hate the idea of Christianity as practiced by so many bigots and hypocrites.

My relationship with my father is one of ambivalence and secrecy.  He is proud of me and yet disappointed--he would be almost hateful of me if only he knew about my sexuality.  I love him and yet at once hate him--hate the ideals he stands for, the prejudices he holds, the fact that those prejudices can exist in a good man.  I've cried because of the fact that he hates me for my existence, regardless of my qualities.  It's irrational. 

Of course, since I am not out of the closet and our relationship in that aspect IS one of secrecy, I cannot say for sure his actions.  Perhaps he has lived in this need-to-be-PC world long enough to forgive me of my "inequities".  Maybe his words are all just idle and subject to peer and familial pressure.  I would like to think that he would still love me if he discovered I was gay.  But I find that situation doubtful.  If I was to tell my family, I honestly believe that I would not be allowed to live in this house anymore.  And damn them, too, if that is how it would turn out.  But it is quite possible that that would ruin much of my life--ruin what happiness there is left in it. 

So, silence is golden.  I will live my lie for a few more years and find solace in the fact that I am the martyr that my dad has taught me to be.