FARTHEST DAY
Fathers Day. It's always the same isn't it. Hipster-beard aftershave from the younger kids, intervention orders from the older ones, and the usual letter from Justin Bieber begging me to adopt him and teach how to be cool and tough and hilarious.As if. And the predictably hostile silence from the step-kids Rhinestone and Rhinegold. Yes they are twins, not they're not identical but they are very close, and yes they are almost certainly on close personal terms with Satan. That'll teach me to marry a performance artist-lifestyle counselor I met in rehab. She turned our divorce settlement into a show that ran for two weeks at the Fringe Festival.
I got a touching card from my youngest adopted African child Ptolemy who assures me that he thinks so highly of me that he calls me Oloishiru Ingishu, a Masai name which means "He whom the cows love so much they call for him in times of distress". Told him it was a nice thought but I'd used that same line three years ago on Facebook, and I'm still not going to get him a camel and a hundred goats "so he can buy a woman". Nine year olds can be scary. You remember Ptolemy, he's the one who used to have an imaginary drug dealer instead of an imaginary friend. Impressed by the card though. Who'd have thought you could buy a Fathers Day card "To The Best Adoptive Father of African Children About Whom He Was Seriously Reluctant But Got Elbowed Into It By His Publicity-Crazed Wife's Agent & Now Is Reconciled To The Idea". Is this niche marketing or what?
Because let's face it if you look at the rest of the cards you'd have to conclude that most fathers have a serious taste for leather, chess, liquor and motorcycles which presumably they all ride to to bars where men with a taste for leather meet other men with a taste for leather and sit around playing chess and smoking pipes and drinking single malt scotch. Yes kids, Hallmark thinks your father is a gay alcoholic biker. But I digress.
(Which incidentally is the working title for latest installment of my unauthorized autobiography. You may remember the earlier publications "Do My Knees Look Big In This ?" & "Don't Worry Publication Date's Weeks Away Just Put Any Old thing I'll Think Of Something Funny Before Then". I wanted to go with "A Pack of Lies Written By My Publicist" but I was out-voted by my ghost writer, my spin doctor, my agent, and some guy who'd wandered in off the street trying to sell ketamine. I hate democracy.) Where was I ? Ah yes, the exquisite horror that is Fathers Day.
So the family dragged me off to the new and painfully hip Proust's Kitchen for lunch. They don't actually serve food, you just meditate for a couple of hours on meals you've enjoyed in your childhood. In the middle of which we tried for a Skype link to Arpeggio who's recovering from her Twitter addiction at a commune in Nevada where they live only on fruit and vegetables that have died of old age. Got through eventually (apparently there'd been some sort of aura clash) & she wished me a "meaningful Fathers Day" before going on to blame me for giving her a happy childhood and thus ruining her chances of ever being a significant writer.
Finally, to demonstrate their very real love and abiding affection for me, my family spent the rest of the day taking turns to tell me everything I've ever done to piss them off and what steps I might take to improve myself. Because they care and want to help. The whole day was rich, raw, and real and it is my fervent hope that nothing like this ever happens again.
Fathers Day is a sentimentalised, commercialised concept and that's exactly as it should be. Where's my socks. I like socks. Yellow ones are good. And handkerchief sets. I love them. I want them.
PS: Yes I know there should be an apostrophe in Fathers Day but I'm conflicted about where it should go. Here's one I captured { ' }. You put it wherever you like.
I got a touching card from my youngest adopted African child Ptolemy who assures me that he thinks so highly of me that he calls me Oloishiru Ingishu, a Masai name which means "He whom the cows love so much they call for him in times of distress". Told him it was a nice thought but I'd used that same line three years ago on Facebook, and I'm still not going to get him a camel and a hundred goats "so he can buy a woman". Nine year olds can be scary. You remember Ptolemy, he's the one who used to have an imaginary drug dealer instead of an imaginary friend. Impressed by the card though. Who'd have thought you could buy a Fathers Day card "To The Best Adoptive Father of African Children About Whom He Was Seriously Reluctant But Got Elbowed Into It By His Publicity-Crazed Wife's Agent & Now Is Reconciled To The Idea". Is this niche marketing or what?
Because let's face it if you look at the rest of the cards you'd have to conclude that most fathers have a serious taste for leather, chess, liquor and motorcycles which presumably they all ride to to bars where men with a taste for leather meet other men with a taste for leather and sit around playing chess and smoking pipes and drinking single malt scotch. Yes kids, Hallmark thinks your father is a gay alcoholic biker. But I digress.
(Which incidentally is the working title for latest installment of my unauthorized autobiography. You may remember the earlier publications "Do My Knees Look Big In This ?" & "Don't Worry Publication Date's Weeks Away Just Put Any Old thing I'll Think Of Something Funny Before Then". I wanted to go with "A Pack of Lies Written By My Publicist" but I was out-voted by my ghost writer, my spin doctor, my agent, and some guy who'd wandered in off the street trying to sell ketamine. I hate democracy.) Where was I ? Ah yes, the exquisite horror that is Fathers Day.
So the family dragged me off to the new and painfully hip Proust's Kitchen for lunch. They don't actually serve food, you just meditate for a couple of hours on meals you've enjoyed in your childhood. In the middle of which we tried for a Skype link to Arpeggio who's recovering from her Twitter addiction at a commune in Nevada where they live only on fruit and vegetables that have died of old age. Got through eventually (apparently there'd been some sort of aura clash) & she wished me a "meaningful Fathers Day" before going on to blame me for giving her a happy childhood and thus ruining her chances of ever being a significant writer.
Finally, to demonstrate their very real love and abiding affection for me, my family spent the rest of the day taking turns to tell me everything I've ever done to piss them off and what steps I might take to improve myself. Because they care and want to help. The whole day was rich, raw, and real and it is my fervent hope that nothing like this ever happens again.
Fathers Day is a sentimentalised, commercialised concept and that's exactly as it should be. Where's my socks. I like socks. Yellow ones are good. And handkerchief sets. I love them. I want them.
PS: Yes I know there should be an apostrophe in Fathers Day but I'm conflicted about where it should go. Here's one I captured { ' }. You put it wherever you like.
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