Oh my fucking God, I am so pissed off and perplexed by My Fucking Father. Seriously, I cannot see how any other person has a dad as emotionally stunted as this guy is. Well, there probably are, and there are dads who are much worse. But reality is he's mine, I live with him, and I wish he were dead.
I've been playing phone tag with this city inspector for awhile. My Fucking Father has asked me to contact her to arrange a meeting with him because he believes his property is now up to code. Well, today I gave it a shot, and this was the first time I got her on the phone live, no voicemail. I wanted to see if there were any other questions she might have before arranging this meeting. She said she was skeptical that the house was up to code -- specifically, that the house's windows were reglazed already, and well before she was to reinspect the house in May.
Meanwhile I heard the beeps of an incoming call. How in the fuck am I in the middle of two calls at the same time for the second time this month? After hanging up with the inspector, I call back the number, which was my parent's work.
Just by coincidence, it was My Fucking Father. He called to say that he wanted to know if I was leaving the house because there was medicine that was ready for pick-up. Well, as long as I had him on the phone, I told him that I called the city inspector and she was ready and willing to move up the meeting a month to see if the building was ready as he said.
Knowing a person for decades, you can tell when he's about to do something -- particularly, at least in my case, when he's about to get mad. For My Fucking Father, he starts to breath heavily, and just before his outburst, his breaths become even louder and shorter, like he's gasping for air. And he is, because when he starts yelling at me, he says, in Chinese, "Son. ..."
This stupid time he followed up "Son" with some babbling bullshit about not understanding him. Apparently he thought that he told me to set up a meeting with the city inspector so she could go around telling him what exactly needs to be done. But he couldn't tell me calmly that I misunderstood (according to him). No, for him, My Fucking Father, who, by the way, is 66 years old, this was the right time to fly off the handle. He shouldn't have been yelling at me regardless; no purported adult should. But over this? Over ... shit, I could barely understand it myself ... this asshole thinks I told the inspector something different from what he thought he told me? Never mind the understanding part; you flip out over that?
He tops it with his usual passive-aggressive, wounded lion trick: "Never mind, forget it!" he says, giving up because I supposedly failed him and now all is lost. He pulls this drama all the time, even though this is some mundane property code violation inspection. I am so, so angrered by the way he verbally abused me today. But as I get older, and as he gets older, I'm absolutely amazed that he keeps throwing these temper tantrums whenever I tell him something that disappoints or upsets him. He's done that forever, and I keep thinking that he'll just get to fucking tired to do shit like that, but he's not.
And this is the day after I drove through a snowstorm to pick his ass up from the airport. This is the thanks I get? Ungrateful bastard.
As I've gotten older I have talked back to him whenever he does this. Here, as he hung up on me, I told him, "Stop being a little bitch!" But the anger and humiliation I always feel after meltdowns like this still well up inside me, and I feel it even more acutely as I write about this right now. My need for revenge is something I know I got from My Fucking Father. I hate it. But right now I know of no other way I can express my deep disatisfaction with the way he treated me.
But I was at a loss for what I could do to get back at him after My Fucking Father's disrepecting me. All I could do was shovel. I could've just left it, but as I have learned from my old man, passive-aggressiveness means that you do make some benevolent gesture. Besides, I might need to drive out the next couple days and I needed to know what exactly needed shoveling.
Five-and-a-half inches of snow. Goddamn, winter's not done with us yet. And it's the wet snow, the heart attack snow. I tried pushing it from one side of the driveway to the other, but halfway through I got stuck. It was too heavy. That's when I needed to use the snowblower. But after two passes up and down the driveway, it conked out. My Fucking Father bought this thing. I want everybody to know that.
I promised I'd do as much shoveling as I could before coming in for the start of the 5:30 national news or my heart gave out, whichever came first. When it was 5:28 I went inside, but I left the garage door open and the snowblower plugged in, just in case I still had time to clear the driveway before the 'Rents came home and if it miraculously started working, even though I kept trying to restart it. I didn't care if I left the snowblower in this somewhat pathetic repose as I stepped inside. In fact, I was going to clear a little bit of the patio on the way to the propane burner after I sat down and rested. I didn't care if they saw the snowblower just left out. I have a feeling that My Fucking Father would feel disappointment and shame to see that it wasn't working. Shit, I didn't care if the snowblower got stolen while I was inside.
Well, coincidentally enough, they came home while I was inside. "Is the snowblower not working?" Mother said at the front door. "No!" I replied at the back door.
He didn't talk to me at all during dinner. Asshole. He was still his jovial self to Mother, though, as if he didn't remember, or didn't care, that he yelled at me over the phone earlier that afternoon. Asshole. I'll be honest with you, that still hurts me, and that still irks me. I need to let him know how I feel; it's the lesson My Fucking Father taught me most and best of all. But how?
The only thing I could think of, at least today, was to go back outside after dinner and throw a couple piles of snow at the driver's-side door. I've cleared the path from the front door to the car, for the most part, but hopefully My Fucking Father would have to step into snow to get in the minivan and get his heretofore clean shoes dirty.
And how about the city inspector? I want to defy his "Never mind! Forget it!" brattiness and not forget it. But then again, I don't want to be manipulated by any reverse psychology if he truly does want me to arrange a meeting with her. Shit, I don't know what to do. I think I'll sleep on it, but my plan now is this: I'll call up the city inspector tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get her voicemail. I will apologize for the message I left her after My Fucking Father yelled at me, telling her that it was all a mix-up. And then I will say that My Fucking Father wants to take over this message relay. I will leave her his number and tell her that he now wants to talk to her face-to-face, broken English be damned. If he thinks he's the only person who can do things right, he can do this his goddamn self.
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