/var/log/geek

Yesterday, I mentioned my tie to my father. This (in some instances) means two different people, in my world. I'm not speaking in a spiritual, metaphysical manner. I mean it literally: one being the biological, the other being the one who has dealt with my bullshit for over twenty years. One who willfully donated his genetic material for my creation, the other who brought me up as though he had done the donation. I think you get the idea. I wasn't with my biological father for very long. Things in our lives caused us to drift apart in opposing directions (he wanted to leave the state and I wanted to live with my mother). I was eight years old and he was a dick. Can you blame me? It would take me many years to forgive him for some of the things he had done to me as a small child, and I don't think I have forgiven him completely.

One thing I can thank him for is my taste in music. Thanks to him, I am a fan of Black Sabbath and some other heavier bands from the late sixties and early seventies. I am pretty vehemently opposed to Country music, which my mom is fond of telling me that I get from him. I can remember sitting in our garage listening to KZAP, out of Sacramento, and watching his work on his International Scout or his Chevrolet pickup. If I can thank him for anything besides my existence, I can thank him for that portion of my musical taste.

I have other tastes in music that I remember him not being into. Depeche Mode was a band that he distasted. In fact, he called it "fag music." He really disliked it, and I think that I may have enjoyed irritating him with my musical taste. It's kind of like getting an early start to my teen years at the age of five.

Other things that I remember him having issue with were my love for modern technology and a thirst for the written word. He hated that I could sit for hours and read the same set of books over and over again. I could also sit for hours and type away at my small computer toy (I can't remember for the life of me which one it was). I think that all of this was quite alien to him. Sports were another bone of contention. I fucking hated baseball. I honestly don't think that hate is a strong enough word for my feelings towards that sport. It is lame and fucking boring to play. The best part of it all was I had ADD, and I wasn't diagnosed with it until much later. My parents (in their infinite wisdom) decided to enroll me in a fucking T-ball team, at the age of six, with fucking ADD, and hating the fucking sport. Oh, yeah. I went really far. Right field and last at bat was all there ever was for little Raymond. Pure fucking genius, parents. I can't put that on my mother, really. She only wanted to get me out and help me to make more friends than those that lived in my neighborhood. But, lets be honest, it was fucking Knights Landing, California. I already knew everyone on that T-ball team. I wasn't gaining anything socially, and I wasn't making any new friends.

Fast-forward a couple of years, one destroyed marriage and Chevrolet Cavalier later, we ended up in Woodland, California. It isn't a large city by any means, but it was leaps and bounds in size compared to KL.

One of life's oddities that I often think about is the fact that he stuck around with court and visitation for less than a year before he disappeared. Less than a year, that's a pretty good sized fraction of an eight year old's lifespan. I often wish that I could have been in my little sister's shoes. She was four years old during this tumultuous time. She vaguely remembers anything of all of this. For more than eighty percent of her childhood, she had our papa. He's basically all she knows. I wish I had that form of innocence.

I can't really complain, though. For the time I had wish my biological father, I wouldn't trade anything. I wouldn't really be the person I am. It may not have been a fucking bed of roses, but in all reality, it was abusive and uncomfortable, but not pure hell.

The past is a mother fucker. I have been thinking about my life, growing up, a lot lately. I think that it is more than likely tied to my impending fatherhood. My little girl will be coming in about a month, people. The less odd part that I have been daydreaming about is my tie to my father. There will be more on that later. Some other things have been considerably less normal thought patterns, for me.

In some of my more normal thought patterns, I have been remembering odd instances of my upbringing. Things such as growing up in a one-horse town (who's horse was shot a hundred years prior), and the existence therein. Knight's Landing, California is a very small (possibly eight or nine hundred people) community in northern Yolo County. It's size and history are really quite meaningless in this short story.

One of my memories bring me back to somewhere around nineteen eighty-six or seven. I believe it was one of those "El Nino years." We got an ass load of rain that winter, so much so that the Sacramento River flooded it's banks just east of the draw bridge at County Road 102. I vaguely remember (I was five or six years old) riding in my mom's car to Woodland California to stay with my grandmother. This is just a minuscule flicker that I get on occasion. The part that gets me is, though I can't remember my childhood, I know the event happened. I just question whether or not my memory of the event is correct.

Throughout my later childhood, I always craved my father's pride. I was always mechanically-inclined. I was notorious for disassembling and reassembling toys and (household appliances) to figure out their inner workings. My father's chosen profession was an automotive mechanic. While growing up, it seemed as though "following in his footsteps" was the only way to gain his favor. The junior high school that I attended had no true automotive department to speak of. The Wood shop had a one week small engines section, but I could rebuild two-stroke weed-eaters, lawn mowers, and other small engines in my sleep. The only other real option I had was in the agriculture department, I would just hav to broaden my horizons. Tractors and pump motors weren't really what I was looking for as a profession.

My biggest project in that class was a nineteen thirty-nine Allis-Chalmers tractor. It was a complete fucking rebuild. It included cleaning off decades of neglect, rust, and dirt build up, scrubbing the drivetrain for weeks, prepping this fucking thing for primer and eventual paint. In reality that was nothing. That was the little bitch shit that I probably could have delegated to one of the underlings that I had accumulated at the time. The bitch of it all was the engine. It was locked, and not in some bullshit vapor lock, or even a rusted-to-shit cylinder way that my prize 383 Chrysler was (I'll get to that later). This was a mule dick sort of lock, that really would have been easier to recycle.

In so many ways, I wish I would have put more of my limited concentration resources into that project. Instead, like so many other things, I got drunk, stoned, and fucked it off. In hindsight, my entire high school carrer ended up that way. Thinking back on it, though, I don't believe the drugs and alcohol had that much effect on it. If anything, sometimes the drugs assisted in my work.

A quote I heard years ago (and it rings true) is that if you use LSD once, it changes your life, every other time is purely recreational. There is a lot of truth in that. The one that makes less sense is the old wive's tale that if you take LSD more than 70 times (or whatever number) you are legally insane. Though I believe that if you "burn yourself out" that there is some kind of irreversible damage that can be done, if the number really is seventy, I have been locked in a padded cell long ago. I left all of that behind me long ago, and I honestly don't believe I have any irreparable damage done to my mind or psyche. The only things that might be completely fucked are my lungs and liver. And, maybe my kidneys, as well.

As for anything else I may have promised in writing this short story, I will undoubtedly get to another time.