The Infamous Jimmy-D

Two years ago, naw, let’s start further back. 1998, June, there you go. My mother and father were finalizing a divorce. My father was already living in a fifth-wheel in the back yard and my mom was on vacation in Alaska with her parents. Papers signed, my dad slipped further off the deep end (he was already submerged). My mom, conversely, rallied herself to survive the lonely sanity-threatening single apartment she decided to call home. I was stuck in the middle, if there were such a place, and chose to live with my friend Brian on Oak Street.

I saw my dad a lot that first summer, though it was on his terms and his time frame. The visits got more sporadic, less frequent, and less valuable. Upon the completion of my first year at BSU we averaged one visit every three months, a thorn particularly painful in my maturing-man’s side. I was anxious to share new perspectives and dreams fermenting in my young-adult skull.

It used to blow me away when, after three months sans-communication with my father, he would don the attitude that no time had passed. He acted as if my life was on pause and he held the remote control, and reinforced the premise by dominating our few conversations with boasts and proclamations of wealth, women… the moons of artificial happiness on his horizon. I was in college studying engineering, living a good distance from home, racing bikes, breaking hearts and having mine broken. He never asked.

I took that personally. James was so wrapped up in his endeavors that mine meant nothing to him. Straightforward enough, right? Things cracked and I put my foot down. We went two years without seeing one another. He called me once in June of 2004 from the pay phone in Ely County Jail, to ask if I could computerize some sketches he was working on. Sure, ass. Sure.

OK, modern day. Calvin’s spent a few grand in therapy and medication to deduce his complete effect on my life. I decided it was time to see him again. I wanted to see how he would handle things after such an interval apart. In addition, he knew of my troubles with an eating disorder, and I was curious if he’d even acknowledge the subject. I won’t lie; I wanted to see his status: from 1998 to 2000 he aged 15 years (Jame’s Father Time goes by the name Mr. Methamphetamine). At that rate, he should appear 83 by now, give or take five years. If he is to die, I’d like to have some forewarning from his appearance.

I walked into La Fiesta Mexican restaurant, my sister and girlfriend in tow, and immediately spotted him at the bar with a mid-twenties girlfriend. He saw us enter, wiped a fresh sip of blended margarita from his lips, and slid off the barstool towards us. He had been drinking, but wasn’t drunk. Most notably he wasn’t tweaking (tough-guy street talk for meth abuse). Now that I think about it, can you actually get drunk after 40 years of alcoholism? Although I didn’t notice at the time, he neither embraced me nor shook my hand; instead he avoided eye contact with any of us and boasted on his “being early for once”. Nice work.

The dinner went smoothly, the dialogue skimming safely along the glassy surface of a deep, dark pool of issues. His apparent sobriety (from meth) meant there’d be less talk of the police, his bar brawls, or anyone trying to repress his self-proclaimed rock star lifestyle. Just like old times, he didn’t acknowledge missing a beat of my life; I had to forcefully interject to talk about myself, interrupting the otherwise incessant stream of boasts and declarations. Similar to visits in the past, I became quite melancholy; though this time my reasons were different.

During the two-hours of dialogue (monologue?), I felt no animosity at his egocentric disposition, I felt pity. Pity. Pitying my father is the saddest emotion I’ve ever suffered toward him. This man sitting beside me was trying in earnest to avoid reality, fearing that a lull in the conversation would allow one of us to mention a painful detail of our lives.

I realized this, and noted the incredible breadth of topics that he was avoiding. Beyond life’s troubling issues, it hurts my father to hear about our wonderful experiences, too. Heather and Lauren and I remained quiet for the majority of the dinner, much to his relief. To hear of our lives, our passions, would remind him of how much he was missing. He was scared, I could tell, and I pitied him enough to grant him serenity.

That’s amazingly sad. The night concluded on a high note when Lauren and I accompanied him back to the hotel to say goodbye. He called me over to the bed and began flipping through binders detailing numerous architectural-type drawings he’d completed during the jail time. Despite years of chemical abuse, his latent intellectual potential protruded in crisp three-dimensional lines from the sketches. He kept dominating the conversation, hugged me goodbye, and then watched briefly as Lauren and I paced down the hallway out of his sight. Pity.