Dammit! Too Late!

I am convinced more than ever that My Fucking Father loves to play mind games. Still manipulative, still passive-aggressive, still too damn stubborn to put his toys away and be a grown-up for goddamn once.

Because of his machinations I try and only ask Mother for things when he's not around. I do that especially when it comes to money and employment, two sources of high tension between us. I just can't talk about around him without him going all batshit crazy. However, sometimes I have to talk, so I wait until he's out of earshot.

For example, tonight. I needed the pay stub from my last bi-weekly check. Mother takes care of cashing the check, and she gives me my wages in straight cash, homie. But in asking for the stub (not the money, mind you, just the stub), I know that My Fucking Father would start to ask his goddamn questions about, "When are you going to find a job?" and "Why don't you go back to school?" And I have to start defending myself and yelling just to get him off my back.

Compounding this is that I needed the stub tonight because I needed to send it tonight. I know there weren't many opportunities to ask Mother one-on-one for it, but after dinner My Fucking Father went outside to the driveway to do something. This was my chance! I darted out of my bedroom to the kitchen, where Mother was whipping up smoothies for us.

"Do you have the pay stub?"

What followed, as typical of Mother in retrospect even though I didn't think she would, was ask a litany of questions. Apparently, asking her for something reminds her of questions she's wanted to ask for some time. Like she wanted permission to ask them. But she did -- "Why is the amount of the check different? How much are you giving Grandmother? Do you need the money right now?" Innocuous questions under a different situation. But by extending the conversation well beyond its needed length, My Fucking Father had the time to come back in. When he saw that Mother was talking about money and employment, he leaned back on his old, stupid question when he wanted to ambush me, "Why don't you find a job?"

Fuck you, Father. And goddammit, Mom, all I wanted was for you to say yes and then slip me the pay stub surreptitiously and without stirring up the curiorisities of Father. Now he has to lay into me again, and our relationship is back in the shitter. I stayed out later than I planned because of that fucking son-of-a-bitch.

You wanna know how paranoid I am? Every time I come home late at night I open up their car door to make sure they're not taking away any of my stuff, whether it be papers or magazines. Tonight the minivan door was locked. I thought about it going into the house -- thought about the fight My Fucking Father started, thought how much of a brat he probably is tonight, thought that he really is taking some of my shit away, and thought that I had to be as immature as he is because he is essentially stealing my stuff.

So I decided that, to make absolutely sure he isn't, I would unlock the doors, take my parents' keys, open the door and look inside. I was going to make up an excuse of going into my own trunk and throwing something into their van to dump, but really, I didn't have an excuse and I don't really give a shit if they're mad that I went back outside and opened up their door. By the way, none of my stuff is in there.

Man, why is My Fucking Father such a nag? He's like a woman. He should have been born a woman; that way, Mother could have married a real man, and I would be a real man instead of a frightened, emotionally stunted and unstable man-child. Like My Fucking Father.