Perhaps it’s a sad
commentary on my own character that I so effortlessly passed between
lives. It was nothing for me to make the
switch. It happened in the time it took
to pass through a car door. When I
climbed into my dad’s car every other Friday night, I instantly became this
model Christian child. What probably helped
was listening to two hours of Christian rock on the trip to Milwaukee.
I know to some Christian rock is a contradiction in terms. I was actually huge fan of it. Even when I was home in Chicago, playing Nintendo and jerking off to
the lingerie section of the J.C. Penny catalog I listened to gospel pop. One particular favorite was an artist named
Steve Taylor. He was a former Denver youth pastor
turned new wave / rock guy. Taylor was this lanky,
nerdy looking cat in a white suit and thin tie with spiky blonde hair. He looked like the love child of Billy Idol
and Ichabod Crane. A Christian artist
but he wrote songs like I Want to be a
Clone and Sin for Season that
challenged the accepted behaviors and hypocrisies of the Evangelical community.
And I have clear memories of an interview of
Taylor telling Pat
Boone his biggest influence was The Clash.
It’s no wonder I quickly found myself a fan.
Sunday afternoons were depressing for
me. We’d go to church, eat lunch, and
then load up into Dad’s car to head back to Illinois.
I would generally just try to fall asleep and not think about it. As I’ve said, despite any estrangement as an
adult (we’ll get there) I loved my Dad.
I loved every moment we spent together.
And as I’ll probably have to say numerous times throughout this tome, I
still do.
Inevitably we’d get to my mom’s house and
sadly I’d lean forward and give the old man a kiss and tell him I loved
him. I was usually suppressing tears
when I did. He never got out of the car,
unless it was when he had a two-door and had to push the seat forward. My mom and dad were divorced in 1980. If you were in a room with the both of them
right now, you’d think they split up five minutes ago. The wounds are somehow still fresh, 30 years
later. The bitterness, anger, and hurt
are still palpable. It’s tragic. And as an aside to any parents out there considering
divorce, consider this. How you handle
yourselves in those proceedings and for years after will profoundly affect your
children. Don’t kid yourselves. Divorce
will hurt your children. Hurt them irreparably. Hurt them permanently. No matter what you do or say, nothing will
change that. But you can still decide if
that hurt is a scrape, a bruise, or a complete fucking massacre.
I learned early on not to stand and watch
him drive away. It upset my mom to see
me upset, but not for the right reasons.
She rarely asked how the weekend went.
And I didn’t offer. In fact, if
we’d been flown to Walt Disney World on Air Force One with the President,
Michael Jackson, and Jesus H. Christ himself, and each gave me a million dollars
to spend, I wouldn’t have told her. I
always downplayed, regardless of what had happened. If I told her I’d had fun, it would just piss
her off, and I’d pay for it emotionally.
In my mother’s defense, she had me during the week and dealt with the
real life shit. Feeding us, clothing us,
taking calls from school when we fucked up.
Especially me. Dad got to take me
to the zoo, the museum, concerts, movies, etc.
And for the most part, he really only had to deal with me. Mom had my brother and me. Two completely different but equally fucked
up kids.
Finally in the summer of 1989 I went to my
dad’s for what was only supposed to be a month, and I never went back. Dad had been asking me to move in with him
and my stepmother for years. When I was
with them I always said sure, but then I got home to mom and buckled. I couldn’t abandon her like that. Even though she was often unhappy and lashed
out at us kids, she was my mom. I loved
her too. I knew how much it would hurt
her if I told her I wanted to leave. So
inevitably I’d say no. This time however,
still on a high of being out with my friends up there, and away from home just
long enough to forget, I didn’t say no.
I didn’t say much of anything.
Dad asked once again, and told me I could go
to the Christian high school with my church friends, including the Pastor’s
daughter Carrie who I was infatuated with.
On top of it he told me I wouldn’t have to face my mom. He would talk to her and take care of
everything. I was 14 years old. This was the perfect solution. Of course I said yes. Not really considering the turmoil it would
cause back home. What I didn’t know was dad
wasn’t going to talk to my mom. Instead
he talked to a lawyer, who in turn talked to the Sherriff, who showed up at my
mother’s house on a Friday night letting her know my dad was suing for custody,
and I wasn’t coming back as scheduled at the end of the summer.
I recall the phone ringing the next day, and
my dad answering it, and within a few short moments I knew who was on the other
end. And I began to quickly put things
together. Finally she wanted to talk to
me. I ranto the bathroom saying I had to
go, just to avoid talking on the phone.
Dad finally made me take it. It
was ugly. I knew I’d caused her an
unforgivable amount of pain, and that sits even now like a rock in my gut. But I was too selfish at the time to consider
it. As a grown man, I now see how that
may have been the single biggest mistake of my life. However that could take up a whole other chapter
and we need to get to the part about how I got to Christian college. Just suffice to say, we’ll get there.
Regardless of how it happened and the pain
it caused, I was finally living with my father.
A dream come true, as far as I knew.
At that moment it was like someone said “You no longer have to visit Six
Flags. You get to live there!”
I officially lived in their little house in Milwaukee where I had my
own waterbed (it was still the 80’s people, waterbeds were dope!) All my coolest toys were there (despite the
fact I was about to start High School.) I
was turning 14 and finally lived with my daddy for the first time since I was
five. It also helped my emotional high that
the aforementioned Pastor’s daughter and I were kind of dating. We had gone to approximately three whole
movies, including Honey, I Shrunk the
Kids and Weekend at Bernie’s, during
the latter of which we held hands. And
I’m fairly certain I’d gotten some (by some
I mean kissed her on the cheek!) In fact
there’d even been some hot tub action.
I’d sat next to her in a hot tube and put my hand right against hers as
it was pressed flat against the bench we sitting on. Deep beneath the bubbles where no one could
see, of course. I believe it was on that
very trip that she looked deep into my eyes when we were alone and said those
words of love, “when we start school, you can’t tell anyone we dated!”
Still, things felt like they were going
great. Sure I’d broken my mother’s
heart, and not too mention abandoned my best childhood friends, but when you’re
14 years old, your vision is narrow and immediate. Those out of sight are very easily placed out
of mind. A lesson that later in life, I’d
learn is just as easy for some adults.
To top it all off, I’d been accepted to Highland Christian High
School. Good old HCHS was the school
that most of the kids in our church went to.
I didn’t know quite what to expect.
Initially I’d had visions of Jake and Elwood being beaten by the Penguin
with a yardstick but I’d been assured by friends that it was nothing like
that. No uniforms, just collars for boys
and skirts for girls. Teachers weren’t
allowed to use corporal punishment. Not
any more anyway. In fact all I’d heard
were amazing stories about cool people and fun times. Oh and there were no race riots as I’d been
led to believe were a daily occurrence at the Milwaukee public schools. What that really meant was the ratio of black
to white students was almost even in a few, as opposed to the 8 black kids at Highland.
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