Chapter 17

Father was capable of very strong misogyny, and yet he frequently declared himself to be a feminist.  He encouraged my interest in science, but the Legos were for my brothers.  He encouraged my interest in astrophysics, declaring that more women were needed in the sciences, but he also told me that no man would ever be interested in me if I did not shave my legs.  He said on many, many occasions that he envied women the ability to bear children, but also said that no woman should ever cut her hair short because it was unattractive.  Really, it is no wonder that Mother was so neurotic about her makeup and hair.  He actively exacerbated insecurities she already had before she ever met him.

When I was in high school, my boyfriend’s parents gave us season tickets to the Summer Repertory Theater at Santa Rosa Junior College, which consisted of five or six shows.  I had never been to the theater before, so Father felt he needed to give me advice ahead of the first play we would be seeing.  He did not tell me about how will call worked, or concessions, or how to find our seats.  No.  He made a big deal out of telling me that if a man found himself sitting beside a pretty girl, he was likely to pull his penis out of his pants during the show.  If the man next to me did that, I should make a scene rather than ignoring it.

So, I went to my very first experience seeing a play, genuinely concerned that I might witness lewd behavior from a fellow attendee.  I expected more people to talk about it if it were a prevalent problem, but Father was so insistent about it, I could not help but worry.  Unsurprisingly, it did not happen, and never has happened at any production I have ever attended in my entire life.  I am sure it could happen, but the odds of it happening at any particular show are undoubtedly miniscule, which begs the question of what Father might have seen or done that would cause him to give me such a strong warning.  Either that, or he was hoping to discourage me from ever going to a theater show without admitting to that motivation.

Father was also painfully nonconfrontational.  He would say or do just about anything to avoid a direct confrontation.  If he knew his viewpoint was not going to be immediately acceptable, he would either manipulate the conversation to his advantage, or he would say whatever he anticipated the other person would be most receptive to, even if it was a bald-faced lie.  This made most of his abuses and manipulations subtle and individually excusable, such that I could ignore the reality of his behavior throughout my childhood by focusing on single events instead of looking at the bigger patterns.

The most glaring example I have of Father’s aversion to confrontation is my parent’s proposal story, which, like his refusal to use a condom, has been known to me my entire life.  When Father and Mother had been dating for a few months, Father mentioned in a hypothetical way that he would someday like to get married.  Mother took this as a marriage proposal and said yes.  He did not tell her until after they were married that he had not meant to propose, but he also did not want to hurt her feelings by correcting her.  Father literally went through with marriage over a misunderstanding, because he was too nonconfrontational to admit it.

And Mother thought it was cute!  When I was little, she would tell that story to anyone who would listen, thinking she had the most unique and adorable engagement story ever!  Personally, I think it is absolutely horrible to begin a hopefully lifelong commitment based on a misunderstanding and overall lack of communication, but it was an accurate reflection of how they lived their lives in general.

It was not until I was an adult that I started putting up boundaries with my parents and other people around me.  Father may have been nonconfrontational, but he hated it when people put up boundaries.  Boundaries of almost any kind severely interfered with his normal modes of manipulation.  It was one of his many hypocrisies.  He was adamant that you should always stand up for yourself, like his imagined scenario at the theater, but took it very poorly when anyone stood up to him, as he insisted there was no reason anyone should need to.  When I stopped accepting Father’s gaslighting and other manipulations, in true misogynist fashion he suggested I needed psyche medication, that it might be “that time of the month”, and to watch what I ate to avoid irrational mood swings.

Contrary to Father’s assertions, boundaries are never unnecessary, no matter who you are, or what kind of a relationship you have.  We all have things that we enjoy, things we hate, and things that make us uncomfortable or unhappy, or are triggering.  Boundaries are about expecting the people you allow in your life to respect you and try not to make you miserable.  It is healthy and it should be normal to expect other people to avoid knowingly hurting you, and they should want to know you well enough to be able to do that.  I want to know my friends’ boundaries so I can know how best to respect them, and I expect them to want to know mine so they can respect me.  This includes things as simple as respecting that your friend cannot stand the sound of someone chewing on gum, so you do not chew gum around them.  This includes things as complex as respecting a friend who confides in you that they have PTSD from physical abuse, and it is triggering if people move too fast or raise their voice around them, or that they might go into a panic if startled, even by a well-intentioned thing like a surprise party.

When you are raised with healthy respect and taught healthy relationship dynamics growing up, mutual understanding of boundaries happens naturally, without ever having to explicitly call it that.  That is just what you do when you engage with another human being in a mutually respectful way.  Those of us who are raised in ways that specifically deny respect and boundaries must take the confusing and difficult steps to consciously sort out what having boundaries means, what we need from others in order to be respected, and how to communicate those needs to others in a healthy way.  No one wants to be given a long analytical list of boundaries when they first meet, but it can be incredibly difficult and anxiety-inducing to take the simple step of calmly informing a friend when they do something that bothers you, so they have the opportunity to respect you by no longer doing it around you.  After all, they cannot respect your boundaries if they do not know those boundaries exist.

With Father, my boundaries included requiring him to respect my autonomy, that I was an independent person who was not going to agree with him every time he opened his mouth, and I was capable of deciding for myself what I wanted my life to look like.  I needed him to respect my choices, my priorities, and my needs, even when he disagreed with them.  He could not stand that, because his primary boundary was needing everyone in his life to bow to and agree with his desires and opinions, always.

Our boundaries were fundamentally incompatible, not that I understood that detail at the time.  When boundaries are fundamentally incompatible, a healthy and happy relationship is simply not possible.

I did not go through a typical teen rebellious faze.  I was a fully grown adult when I began exploring the goth and punk subcultures, and dressing in ways that made me stand out instead of disappearing.  It was a conscious, considered decision, and it was empowering.  Wearing things like heavy boots gave me a sense of strength and power, even when I had little experience besides hiding from the world.  Being bold suited me in a way I would not have expected when I was awkwardly hiding in the back of the library in junior high.  Sure, I was still awkward, but it helped give me the courage to do the things I wanted to do anyway.  Having a bold appearance broke the ice for me.

I highly recommend to anyone that you own a good pair of stomp boots, and wear them when you are feeling weak or insecure.  It immediately changes the way you stand and move.  There is no denying that your feet are firmly planted, and you are facing the world with a solid foundation.  Both you and the world will see and feel it.

Father certainly saw it, and he did not like it one little bit.  All the years of telling me to be my own person, to be strong and assertive, to go for goals even if women were typically discouraged, all of it, was hollow and meaningless, and always had been.  He had always said those things, and I had wanted to believe him, even if the rest of his behavior and words constantly tore me down, but it was just more lies and deceit.

Father was also racist, but in that way of white male privilege where he believed he was not racist, or at least could indignantly deny that his words or behavior were racist.  I have no way of knowing whether the racism was intentional, but regardless, he engaged in unapologetically racist statements and behavior on a frequent basis.

Father was extremely fond of declaring that he “didn’t see color” and wore that sentiment like a badge of pride.  The problem is, as humans we cannot help but notice differences and similarities, so “not seeing color” is a bald-faced lie.  Everyone sees color, and we all have culturally ingrained racist responses which we need to unpack and change in order to be better people.  By denying color, he was not only denying the diversity and lived experiences of people of color, but he was also actively allowing himself to ignore his own prejudices and racist habits.  He could make that declaration and absolve himself of any work, internal or external.  He could traipse merrily on, engaging in all the racism he wanted to, while denying his racism and waving “I don’t see color” like a Get Out of Jail Free card.

I honestly do not remember what else was going on in the conversation.  I think maybe we were talking about politics or sociology, but I remember using the word “gangbangers”.  You would have thought I had used the N-word, the way he jumped down my throat calling me a racist.  In the way of Privileged White Men, he refused to listen to anything else I said, but I also refused to acquiesce to his accusations.  By standing firm, I created a situation where he could not avoid conflict, so finally he deflected by looking down at my boots in disgust (black 20-eye Doc Martin’s with black laces), and telling me I was a Nazi, obviously, or I would not be wearing jack boots.

For the sake of clarity, let me break down the racism in our exchange.  When I used the word “gangbanger”, I was referring to individuals who had chosen to be stalwart gang members, regardless of skin color or ethnic background (including white people).  This is a choice.  In some places and times the choices are very limited and pressure tremendous, but it is still a choice.  A person is not born a gangbanger, makes a choice to be one, and can later decide to stop being one, even if getting out can sometimes be very difficult.

Father interpreted the term as racist because he viewed “gangbanger” as inherently including people of certain ethnicities.  In other words, Father believed that people of certain ethnicities were all but guaranteed to be in gangs, and that it was a natural and inescapable part of their condition.  That is a terrible racist stereotype, and so fundamental to his worldview that he treated the term as though it was a racial slur, because to him it was inextricably connected to race.

Most of his racist words and behavior were that level of deniability, what I like to call “casual racism”.  It is the kind of racism that is often dismissed as harmless.  It is microaggressions that are the typical background of American life.  It is the kind that can be ignored by the fake-woke, or anyone who does not want to challenge the behaviors they have engaged in their entire lives.  As the justification goes, he did not intend to be racist, so that made it just fine, and he did not need to change a thing.

He did not mean to be racist… Like he did not mean any of the mean things he ever said or did in his life, unless he actually did mean them and just refuses to ever admit it.  That is one of the problems with living life in a cloud of lies and deceit – once other people realize it, it is impossible for them to ever know if you are telling the truth, even when you are.

Despite many, many years of therapy, Father was viscerally opposed to change or any challenge to how he did things.  His way was the best way, the only valid way, even when he gave lip service to how great it was for other people to do things differently.  Somehow, despite obviously hating himself, he also gave the impression he saw himself as perfection incarnate.

Father also fancied himself a super-genius.

I am not kidding or exaggerating.  One of his favorite things to talk about was how much of a racket Mensa was that they would not let him in, because he was smarter than all of them put together.

According to the US Mensa website (https://www.us.mensa.org/learn/about/mensas-history/): “Mensa is an international society whose only qualification for membership is a score in the top 2 percent of the general population on a standardized intelligence test. The word mensa means ‘table’ in Latin; similarly, mens means ‘mind’ and mensis means ‘month.’  The name ‘Mensa’ is reminiscent of ‘mind, table, month,’ which suggests a monthly meeting of great minds around a table.”

Their only membership requirement is a score in the top 98^th percentile on a standardized IQ test.  That might sound like a high standard, but it is actually 2 people out of 100, or 1 out of 50, so in all likelihood you know a lot of people who would qualify.

Father did not qualify, but he was so certain of his genius that he cried foul about it constantly.  I remember on one particular occasion he had a magazine open to a Mensa-sponsored two-page spread with brain puzzles encouraging people to apply to the society.  Father finally threw it down in frustration, declaring that the entire thing was a setup, and there was no actual solution to any of the puzzles.  He could not see the solution, so that meant no solution existed.  They were just a bunch of pretentious elitists who wanted to ridicule the rest of society.

I liked puzzles, so I took the magazine he had thrown down and said I wanted to give the puzzles a try.  Maybe I could find the solutions to at least a couple of them.  Before I could even look at them, Father snatched the magazine back out of my hand, telling me firmly not to waste my time on fake puzzles with no solutions.  He then made sure to keep it close at hand so I could not sneak a look at the pages.  He let Younger Brother have a go at it, declaring his failure further proof of the trick nature of the puzzles, as Father often lauded Younger Brother for being as intelligent as he was.  He disposed of the magazine when I was not looking.

I have often wondered if his reaction might have been motivated partially by sexism, that his fragile masculinity could not have handled it if his daughter was objectively more capable than him, but he could have handled it coming from Younger Brother.  However, at this point in my life I think it is much more likely he could not handle the thought of anyone being able to do those puzzles if he could not, and he knew that Younger Brother would not be any more capable than he was.  His perception of himself as one of the greatest geniuses on the planet was a lynchpin for what little self-worth I think he had.  He could not handle the possibility of his “superior” intelligence being quantitatively challenged by a pubescent child of any sex.

Father was more than capable of being a quintessential man-baby, not just about the Mensa ad in the magazine.  He was emotionally stunted and incapable of adult conversation on most topics.  He would resort to talking loudly over other people, deflecting the conversation, obfuscating anything the other person said which he did not like, and as a last resort insinuating that the other person needed psychological help for not seeing things his way.  If all that failed and he could not verbally bully his way into “winning” a disagreement, he would claim the moral high ground and declare we should “agree to disagree”, even though he clearly saw himself as solely and completely correct.

As I began to assert myself and draw boundaries, Father became intolerable to be around, and I think he felt the same way about me.  It got to where we could not be around each other without it coming to some sort of an argument, usually about something that did not matter in the slightest.  Actual important conversation topics did not happen, because they were guaranteed to be fruitless exercises in frustration.

After I was grown, I think the only times we talked, briefly, about anything important were a couple different occasions when my interactions with Mother hurt her feelings.  Mother’s feelings would invariably be hurt when I objected to a violation of my boundaries (making it about her), or when I refused to validate one of their lies.  If I was not going to let Mother cross my boundaries, I definitely was not going to let Father do it, so I brushed him off every time.  Guilt trip manipulation was not going to make me step back into the shadow of their abuse, and they just had to deal with that.

It was not hard to see that there was more friction between Father and I than Mother and I, so as the years progressed and Mother worked to “repair” our relationship, Father took a back seat.  We rarely spoke and barely interacted.  When we did see each other, it was safe topics only.  I suppose that shows some sort of growth, letting his own needs go so that Mother had a prayer of a relationship with her child, but it might also have been partially out of a desire to stop my challenges to his fragile ego and the resulting conflicts.  I might not have been able to win with him, but he could not win with me, either, and he hated not winning.

At the end of the day, Father was not a monster.  He was incredibly pathetic.  He was an emotionally stunted, abusive, and manipulative man, but not necessarily out of any desire to be deliberately mean.  Instead, I think it was based on his desire to maintain what little control and value he saw in his life.  He was so miserable with himself that he went out of his way to impose that misery on his family, and did everything he could to ensure we were set up for failure even as he pretended to be supportive.  I think his self-loathing ran so deep that he may have believed he was being supportive while simultaneously undermining everything and everyone around him in the name of “realism”.

Even if it is understandable, that is something I can never forgive him for.  The wounds run too deep, and there are far too many.

On the other hand, when I was in my 30’s I had a boss in all sincerity tell me that there is no point in having a friend if you are not getting something out of them.  He also whole-heartedly equated generosity with stupidity, believing that it was a sign of true intelligence to always take the best personal advantage you can in any situation, regardless of the harm it causes others.  Now, this boss was very different from Father in most ways, but his view on intelligence was cause for thought.  Father would get a very similar smarmy and satisfied grin on his face any time he was getting his way, so I cannot help but wonder if his perception of himself as a person of supreme intelligence hinged at least in part upon his ability to manipulate the people around him and get his way.

It is still pathetic, but much more calculating and self-aware.  I have no way of knowing which is the case, and I never will because the nature of his manipulations precludes the possibility of an honest and straightforward conversation.  Speculating about the true nature of his motivations is just that, speculation.  I must find peace with the lack of an answer, because no matter his internal dialog, my interactions with Father over the course of my life have been overwhelmingly bad, manipulative, and abusive.  His actions are what matter most because his actions are what caused the harm.