The title is a quote from a Nirvana song, but it's also a decent preface for this blog. If your reading this because you are curious about the "incident" at the Fake Problems show (which was awesome BTW, they are now in my top 5 best live bands of all time list that I have in my brain), I'll get to that later in this piece, because in a strange way, it's related.
Most people have bench mark times in their life,times and events that change them profoundly. Mine would be the day I married Brett; the day I found out I was going to be a dad, the day Noah was born, 9/11/2001, the day Gwendolyn was born, the day I knew I was going to graduate with my degree, the day I passed the NCLEX and became an RN.........but the most significant event before that was May 28th, 1994. Around this time every year since then, I start wondering about my dad, I didn't even realize it until Brett asked me what was making me think about him so much. That day was a like being awake in a nightmare.
The night of 5/28/94 my twin brother Adam and I were babysitting our little brother Scott and little sister Kelley while my parents went out to an office party. Things had been very tense that spring, my parents' marriage was on the rocks, they had had a violent fight earlier that month, and there was definitely a feeling of anxiety constantly in the house. Big fights were not that abnormal, truthfully my dad had always had a terrible temper and been verbally and physically abusive, but that spring things were definitely different. So anyway.....around 11pm or so my parents got home, Adam and I went out to go meet them, and we could hear arguing from the garage. They opened the door from the garage to the laundry room that connected to the kitchen, came out into the kitchen, I could smell the heavy smell of alcohol on my dad. My mom came up to give me a hug with her big warm smile, turned towards my dad, and he punched her in the face. Adam and I went running to our room, terrified, we were only 13, and in an instant, our whole world fell apart. I remember lying in our bunk beds, silent, so scared that I felt like I was floating out of my body, listening to screaming and cursing, the sound of things smashing, the sound of my 6 foot 2 dad hitting my 5 foot 2 mom. I remember feeling ashamed of how scared I was, I remember wanting to kill him. Around 2 am he pulled me out of my room, screaming at me to "get that cunt" out of her room. The living room and kitchen were torn apart, pictures were smashed, and there was blood on the wall. I don't remember what I said to my mom, but I do remember telling my dad I wasn't going to try to get mom out of the room, and kicked at me and I ran back to my room, wondering why the police weren't coming. They showed up a little after 3 am.The rest is a blur. But I do remember thinking that this was going to be the end of what I thought our life was supposed to be. At the time we were living in an expensive house in a gated community, my dad was/is a hotel executive; by the end of that year my dad had declared bankruptcy, we got hosed financially, mom and the 4 of us had moved into a condo with 2 rooms and a den that the 3 of us boys slept in.We had went from upper middle class relative comfort to poverty, depression, and government peanut butter and cheese(let me tell you, you don't forget the day government cheese and other charity food shows up at your door).My intelligent,funny,sweet ex-hippie mom had turned into a broken mess(at least for a time), I don't blame her,if I were her, I would have to. All the things I thought my life was going to be were gone.1994 was also the year that I really discovered punk rock. Music had always been a refuge from the abuse and angst at home (my mom tried to shelter us, but my dad's temper was horrific and monstrous, she did the best she could), but Punk Rock became more than music, it was my stability, giver of core values, and center of personal determination and strength. Punk bands sang about the world around them, the plight of the weak, social and political injustice, and belief in yourself. In punk rock, I found an underground community of kids that were coming from fucked up backgrounds like me. Kids that were smart but angry, but smart enough to know to channel their anger, angst, sadness into art that was productive and progressive.We were forgotten kids that wanted to be heard.The anger/angst/sadness of growing up in an abusive environment made me more sensitive to the plight of others and more empathetic to the hurt others felt. It influenced my choice of personal culture, sense of right and wrong, stances and beliefs that would become a part of who I am. Punk Rock and the activism attached to it were my first conduit to try and make a change in a world that I knew all too well was cold and callus. That later was channeled into a career I almost stumbled into, nursing. I wanted a career where I could make a living and support my family, but also one in which the work I did was important and could change the world in a positive way. I wanted to help people escape their own pain and suffering.
So, the thoughts of my dad, the where's and why's, are somewhat amplified recently.
"The world of animation as art and Classic Disney Cartoon characters. Architecture. Open beach and waterfront environments. American history and politics.Religion and our place in the cosmos. "
This is from his linkedIn page that I googled. He actually sounds kind of like a neat person to get to know. There is more about him as a person here, in a paragraph, than I ever even knew about him growing up as his son. Over the last few years, we had started to connect again, I was finding myself able to forgive him. We had meet ups with our familiy's( he is re-married with a son the same age as Noah, round 2 I guess)that were enjoyable; and I was starting to get to know him, and like him, as a person.Then around Xmas 2010 he started to become distant again, when I called him for the holidays, he sounded annoyed and definitely just wanted to get off the phone. In May of last year I called him to let him know that I had graduated, he was drunk (I guess he drinks a bit?), and later forgot about the conversation, telling Adam that I never talked to him. I then later find out that he had lost his job and relocated,to where and to what, no one knew.I didn't call,email, send a letter, anything, just disappeared.I found out a bit later that he and my mom were going to court, she was trying to recoup years of unpaid alimony. I knew he had moved to Missouri to work for a resort, that's it. I thought maybe he just didn't have a way to get a hold of me. Then today I googled his name. His facebook page and linkedin page are the first two things to come up, then some hospitality industry newsletter stuff. I used to search facebook a couple of times a month to see if he was on there, then I just stopped. I spend quite a bit of time on there, I'm not hard to find, I was a word search away, and he has made no effort what so ever to reach out.I'm a father, my wife and children are the most precious thing in the world to me, I would die a thousand deaths for them. To my dad I'm an old memory, an after thought.
threw you the obvious and you flew
with it on your back, a name in your recollection,
thrown down among a million same.
difficult not to feel a little bit disappointed
and passed over
when i've looked right through
to see you naked and oblivious
and
you don't see me.but i threw you the obvious
just to see if there's more behind the eyes
of a fallen angel,
the eyes of a tragedy.
here i am expecting just a little bit
too much from the wounded.
but i see through it all
and see you.
so i threw you the obvious
to see what occurs behind the eyes of a fallen angel,
eyes of a tragedy.
oh well. apparently nothing.
you don't see me.
you don't see me at all.
This song kind of sums up quite a bit for me, I get a little emotional every time I hear it.
So what does this have to do with Saturday's show and the incident? During Fake Problems set, Casey Lee's little mom was up at the front of the stage, watching her son play and have a good time, when this big 6'4 douche starts pushing her to get up front, they start arguing, and every one near is just standing there watching this big dude bully a little itty bitty lady. I jump in to try and calm the guy down,he stinks of alcohol and kept saying "yo, is she fucking serious? She doesn't talk to me like that" I tell him "calm down man, you're huge, and she is this little lady that just wants to watch her son play some music, calm down". He puts his fist up like he was going to hit me, and I pushed it down and said, "no, that's not happening, calm down" and he just goes "what ever man, what ever". I went back to behind the stage to watch FP play, glancing over every now and again, and he definitely is still trying to crowd her space, but nothing else, so I let it be. Not like I'm the only dude able to do anything, but now I now am a part of this in a small way. The set finished, the FP's start an encore song, then I hear a scuffle, look over, and Casey's mom's boyfriend i son the ground with the same dude fighting to get the guy off of him, the guy had aparently started all over again. By that point, I'm pissed, and it's time to get this guy out of the room. A bunch of people pull them apart, he starts again, so I grab him and start marching him to the exit, telling him "you're done, it's over, you're out of here". Half way out the door, he throws himself on the ground, and won't get up.Now I'm furious and starting to feel a little berserk, I call it battle mode, haha. I scream at him, "fuck you, get the fuck up", then I picked him up from under his shoulder and neck and start pulling him toward the door, he starts to grab at me and tries to hit me, so I put him in a strangle and start to close off his carotid arteries to knock him out, he goes limp,but at this point I'm in nutso viking mode, and I pulled my arm around and started crushing his trachea. I WANTED to hurt him at that point. I'm a little ashamed of that now, but this mother fucker came into a venue that is some what sacred to me, a punk rock venue that was our scene's home for almost ten years, ruins a night that was nothing but feel good, and gets violent with a mom 4 times smaller than him. So at that point Kyle Hook stops me and goes " dude, he's turning blue", I stop (because honestly, I was furious, but I didn't want to kill the guy, plus he just got tossed around like a bitch by some one shorter than him, man-handled, choked out, thrown out of the show AND lost his shoes, he later gets arrested, it's most likely one of the worst nights of this losers life), Kyle, John Wheeler and others all start to carry him out from there and throw him out, he later gets arrested and a nice mug shot the next day on the NDN web site.Now, I don't think I'm some sort of tough guy or de facto security guard, bu tI just CAN'T handle watching some one be violent towards a women, especially not this little lady whop reminds me quite a bit of my mom.
So in the end, I guess I should thank my dad for fucking up our lives when we were young enough to help me become a better person, father, and husband than he could ever be. I'll always have an empty spot in me though.One thing is for sure, my son will know that his father cares about him and loves him.
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