Father

My father's absence, perhaps, has affected me as acutely as the presence of some other fathers affects their children. Not in a good way.
Through the alcohol-burned hole he left in his wake crawled an assortment of characters who might not otherwise have gotten such passage. They were opportunists of a predatory nature, no doubt trying to satisfy some cravings of their own.
They are at fault, but it was at least partially my father's absence that made me vulnerable to such approaches. The passive-aggressive priest, the overly tactile teacher. I was receptive because, as I can see in retrospect, I was searching for a father figure. A cliche but nevertheless true. And they observed few boundaries.
Such vulnerability brings home the point that we live in a world in which the predators will prey and has shaped my perceptions. So, father leaves, teacher/priest step in and interaction indelibly influences kid's perception of human nature. In other words, the world is full of fuck-wads trying to satiate whatever it is that nourishes them.
Now, maybe they're just too stupid or lack the introspection necessary to recognize that what they were doing was inappropriate. When priest ignored me or took my friends on outings from which I was excluded, that hurt. And I didn't know why he was doing it. Was it because I quit the fucking altar boys? Sorry. Adults shouldn't be trying to satisfy some kind of emotional deficiency through relationships with children not their own. And no adult should be trying to mold a child into someone for their benefit, as opposed to the child's, except for rearing a productive member of society. Priest wanted to be a father, as evidenced by his subsequent desistance from the priesthood. He got married, sired progeny and then divorced. Unless he had an epiphany, surely he has fucked up his biological children.
Teacher should not be taking grammar-school kids to movies and on trips to Washington and Gettysburg. Those were educational, in ways some people might not suspect. These men sought validation from children, but I think the impact was less corrosive on the children who had fathers, probably because the perpetrators knew the fathers wouldn't tolerate certain behavior. We're supposed to believe that teachers and priests have our best interests at heart. I think that myth has been discredited.
Beyond them, there were my mother's boyfriends. Had she still been married, she may not have had boyfriends or, presumably, wouldn't have brought them around. Tony is the first one I remember. He hit me more than once. One time was on the butt, I think, but another time, while I was in the back seat of the car (not wearing a seat belt and leaning over the bench seat), he hit me in the face and caught me in the eye. I wish I could hit him now, but he's old or dead, so I suspect it wouldn't be especially gratifying .
I might be reinventing history with the chronological order, but I think Joe was next. And I pale in comparison to others when it comes to historical reinvention. Joe was a nice enough guy. Union man. Auto union. Helped me out when I had to prepare for a school debate in which I would be advocating for Jimmy Carter to be elected. Joe's proclamation that Mr. Carter was "for labor" is the one nugget I remember from that conversation. He also showed me how to test the life left in an automotive battery.
Russ was in there somewhere. Nice guy, also. Played the piano. Sent Christmas cards even when he didn't come around anymore. Then there was Dave. A steelworker. Told me if I went to the exclusive high school to which I was accepted, I'd be able to "write my own ticket." Not quite true. He told my mother they were going to get married, and she said they weren't. They didn't.
I liked George. Auto-insurance guy. We shared fishing as a common interest. He bought me a fishing book that I still have. He wrote a nice note inside. Once we went fishing down the shore, and we were driving on the beach, and my mother asked him why insurance was so expensive. "Because there are 26,000 niggers riding around without insurance," was his reply, meaning that those who paid the car insurance essentially subsidized those who didn't. At least I think that's what he meant.
She went out with Dr. Fasullo (don't know if I'm spelling that right) a few times. He pursued her, but she demurred. Probably had money--he was a medical doctor. Wasn't horrid-looking. Spoke with what I guess was an Italian accent. He was widowed or divorced. I don't know if this is apocryphal, but he apparently was driving home one night and saw the flashing lights from a police car or ambulance stopped at the scene of an accident. He stopped and went over to help out, and the victim was his own son, who had been struck by a car while riding his bicycle. The kid was 13, I think, and he either died on the spot or later as a result of his injuries. Probably nothing worse than that.
Soc was last, as far as I know. He used to own a small plane to which he still had access, and he and I flew. He told me how to bank the plane out over the ocean, and I stepped on the left petal as if it were a clutch, trying to depress it abruptly. If you ever find yourself trying to turn a plane around, don't do that. He righted the ship, so to speak, or we would have had to use that plane as a ship when we landed in the fucking ocean. My mother told me Soc's son moved him down to Florida last year, took his money, put him in a room and didn't allow him to have any contact with the outside world. Then Soc died, she said. Don't know if any of it is true.
Except for Tony, I think, they all had blue balls unless they were having sex with someone else. My mother told me she would end it with Soc if he tried to "put the moves" on her.
This rotating cast of characters didn't exactly foster stability or quell my insecurity. Father out, boyfriends in.
I got to know these guys relatively superficially. I remember being disappointed having nobody with whom to attend some kind of school-related father-son activity. He took me to a movie, I think, to compensate. It was one of the few things we ever did together. He told me in the car that he would always be my father, no matter what happened. I was 6 then, and it may have been the last time I saw him. He died when I was 12.
My father's absence also caused some role confusion; my mother doing what a father should have been; my oldest brother assuming some of those responsibilities and then relinquishing them, leaving me to wonder what I had done to cause his pullback; eventually my workload around the home mirrored that of a husband. These experiences helped build the foundation upon which my abandonment fears rested.
Another aspect of the turn of events is that I didn't really know my father. What I do know about him has gone through other people's filters. Here is what seems indisputable: He was an alcoholic who drank himself to death at age 49; he left his wife and five children. These actions raise some questions. How could he have skipped out on the kids? Perhaps it was the alcoholism that made him relinquish all responsibility for us. I've had doctors tell me that alcoholism is a disease, and here's how the dictionary defines disease: a disordered or incorrectly functioning organ, part, structure, or system of the body resulting from the effect of genetic or developmental errors, infection, poisons, nutritional deficiency or imbalance, toxicity, or unfavorable environmental factors; illness; sickness; ailment.
This makes me wonder what the incorrectly functioning parts are that incubate alcoholism. I agree that there's a genetic predisposition to drink more (and more) after having taken the first drink. But is there a malfunction that makes a person take that first drink? Maybe I'm missing the point; perhaps alcoholism is a latent disease that you manage by abstaining.
So, for the sake of argument, I'll say it's a disease, and my father had it, and so do at least some of his kids. Can I then fault him for abandoning his children, considering he had a disease? There seem to be few other diseases that prompt that kind of behavior. Cancer is a disease, the manifestation of which appears to be vastly different from alcoholism. But my father's disease was particularly severe, so much so that he's dead as a result. My mother probably refused to use birth control, because of the Catholic thing, and he was probably like, "What the fuck? Five kids? Get me a drink."
Anyway, a pivotal difference between alcohol and, say, cancer is that cancer patients appear to have less control over their convalescence. With alcohol, if you stop drinking, you can reverse the effects of the disease unless you've gone so far overboard that it's too late. The alcoholism helps to explain his departure but doesn't excuse it. Did he not love his kids? Was the alcoholism too overwhelming? I can't fathom leaving your kids no matter what other issues there are. But everybody is different, and I don't have the answers. I won't get them, since he's gone. Maybe if he had been able to provide some of the answers personally, I wouldn't have found myself fruitlessly groping. I wouldn't have been as vulnerable. My mother discouraged me from going to his funeral, but she later denied having done so. When I was able, I tracked down his grave. Standing there among the markers, and his being modest, chilled by the wind, was part of the process through which I was seeking answers,. They didn't come, and the confusion didn't surrender its grip.