Confessions. Lectures. Semantics. Corrections. She is far quicker to correct my vocabulary than my Galaxy Smart-phone is. I am used to it. What a dad prepares himself for, when they get to a certain stage in life, is the usual nonsense; the usual heartbreak processed as self-projections - frothed forth as strops and mangled into weird twisted one-sided arguments and rants. Then there can be the softer side, heart to hearts, softy confessions, the sharing of ideas, notions, criticisms; a plethora of things. My kid is much like myself. She talks too much, and never seems to have to backtrack or apologise. And these moments happen to occur so often, that I expect nothing more than Matilda’s life-view to be screen projected onto me. Yet, there are certain tones your child will not take, unless they’re about to impart some sledgehammer conversation ender, and then it opens a can of worms, and it reverts back to a conversation/argument starter. As a parent you ready yourself for that moment. That divine moment when she wants, The Talk.
I have a one-hundred-page long-ass list consisting of things that I am anxious for her to let slip from her mouth. And I am… heh, so (not) prepared for many a thing or eventuality she may ask my permission for; (as if, have you read my other books?)
Many a thing that has already happened, that suddenly gets voiced far too late in life, but we as parents have to let it slide. We need to isolate it. And kill it. It might come about in some odd confessional or statement, and though you’ve been waiting years for this confrontation, or lets be kinder, you have waited years for this heated screaming match concerning the time she smashed three mirrors three days in a row and just acted as if it was some benign being making itself known – at the end of the day, or that moment of reflection, you know you will reassure your kid it is all water under the bridge.
Yet, my mind, is manic and hyper. There have been at least fifty times where I expected The Talk. to occur, and all she did was lecture, educate and bemoan my co-existing in My Fucking House.
And each of those times I expected at least something beyond the pale of reason. Like an admittance of being a stick-in-the-mud. That she likes girls. That she is joining some cult in East Anglia. The worst would have been that she is leaving the country with a man in his forties going by the name Mindy McClurkin, and has six-kids with six different exes, and doesn’t want to be known as a he/she/they/them, but wishes to be ackwloedged as a Xe, to join the space-race in Texas. Living as nomads and peeing in cups or all over each other. Oh god, the places my mind wanders with these hypotheticals. That or she wasn’t just a lesbian, but joining a tribe of feminist lesbian yakuza members, come together to hunt down the male population - forewarning me that, when she finally returns, “Hey Dad, it may not be a good idea for you to stay in one place,” as her and her yakuza-brethren arm themselves to the nines (rolled-up pamphlets? Switch blades? Paint in balloons or condom wrappings?) - setting out in the world, geared up, vengeful, yet wilful, soulful like those geezer-birds from Mad Max: Fury Road - extremely feminist in their mission; to end all toxic-masculinity and the men that carry this gene. Rufus (my pug) even crosses his legs when I vocalise this to my wife. And that little bastard has already lost his nuts.
All of the above is a potentiality, for sure. I wouldn’t have an issue with her being gay, as I would be happy for her, because the gay community is all she goes on about, that and feminism, so if she did decide to bat for the same team, maybe she’d stop lecturing everyone on lesbians and gays and trans-rights?
In your dreams Marc-y-boi. I get enough of that on the bus to work/or the brief time I spent on FB - a thing I vowed never to do, until, well, my daughter hung out with a potential gay-yakuza clan member, who I got a weird vibe from.
That and I overheard this young lady having a shady conversation with someone over her phone, and then before I could be any nosy-er, she was off - zooming off on her skates, like a dirtier version of Harley-Quinn from Birds of Prey - leaving skid marks only Vin Diesel can do in those Fast & Furious movies - to meet this person to make an exchange. So, I hastened to make a FB profile. And within seconds I had weird sex-bots DMing and adding me. Does this mean I have been going onto dodgy sites? No. yes. Maybe. Okay, yes Pornhub, it’s an addiction.
I stalked her - not the sex-bots - the potential lesbian yakuza member, online. It was a new friendship so Matilda and her were in that weird, let’s take photos of us wherever we go and whatever we are doing; they even posed next to a fucking bin, of all things, all because it had an inverted sex-icon on it. At least it wasn’t the carcass of some guy they felt gave off toxic gas-lighting vibes.
Then, Matilda found out, by being nosy (much like her old man) and had a go at me about it. I shared with her my hypothesis and she just blurted out, “She sells second-hand tickets to people desperate to get into a gig, on the night of said gig, gawd Dad!” and that shut me up…but still, a criminal is a criminal. Also, FB is rough, so I deleted it. The one I hadn’t truly ever braced myself for, the big one, the one we all know will become a reality, was that she was leaving home. No, not with a Xe, nor going to Texas to flash her boobs at Elon Musk. Or to meet her Yakuza Lesbian Fem-Nazi tribe, going Tank-Girl on the fucking world. She was leaving for Uni. This wasn’t something that was on the cards, not for Matilda. For love nor money, I swear she had only started college? I know my love and parenting is sometimes absurdist and unreal, maybe a bit heavy, but this is my one and only kid.
I love her. I admire her. Everything she is, is some increment of what came before. So many of my mother’s traits are in her. What she is though, just with a far more heightened stance on topical issues, is a female version of her grandfather. Since my Father’s passing, this has become apparent. Her intellect. Her wit. Her overbearing tenacious spirit are not traits she got from me, but from her real Dad, who I know is out there somewhere. (I better not let my wifey read this, she will absolutely, not kill me, as death would be too quick, she would torture me, having put into question her monogamy and class of character.) No, she got them from spending time with an amazing Mother, and an amazing Grandfather. My Dad and Matilda had their own language. Sometimes, language wasn’t needed. When her boyfriend broke up with her last year she came rushing home, and my parents had been over to visit, and she ran into his arms. He was the only one who could calm her, soothe her, and make her laugh all at the same time. My Dad was always good at intuiting when something was wrong, or if something was about to happen. He once told me, when I was aged about twelve to not bother going to school, and I was more than happy to stay at home and watch him fix up a few cars that had been parked either half a mile away from his garage or had pulled up hectically onto our front garden - left for my Dad to fix whilst running his green. Mum said no. As in, N. O - spells, “you do as I say Marky and put your shoes on.” She had that look, that said, “No, do not do it, do not encourage him.”
Because I didn’t ever mind missing school, I mean what kid did? But my old man looked at my Mum, in that certain way, one I had seen years after this isolated event, and she looked back at him, trying to out intensify his stare, and he said, “I do not think it is a wise idea. I got…you know, that…feeling,” and as soon as her cogs turned, and she pieced it together she threw her hands up, frustrated that she was even entertaining this weird sixth sense, let alone going along with it. I didn’t go in. And you know what? Good thing I didn’t. That day, a bunch of kids got burnt by an explosion in one of our classes, - one getting severe third-degree burns. Some little tyke thought it funny to mess with somebody’s chemistry set or whatever – I think the kid that set it off was the one badly burnt - silly twat, and guess what period it was? My period to be in that class, on that end table, where the incident occurred.
Turns out a few days later the same thing happened again, in that exact class, and not to the same kid. And guess what, again my Dad let me stay at home, reading my comics and admiring my Father’s skill with engines and car parts. This time the explosion was so big it blew out the classrooms windows that looked out onto the courtyard where most kids lined up to drink from the fountain.
This time, a lot more were hurt, and again, it was my science class.
The reason was later explained in great detail at an assembly, and consequent lessons and higher heads from the local Education Departments came in, looking for someone to blame; I cannot recall the cause as I was sitting there, smug, unharmed, surrounded by a bunch of mates who looked like they were all going to the same fancy dress party, themed around the Egyptians, all dressed as The Mummy.
Max my mate had the advantage, his kept oozing pus and blood, and looked more like something from a Lucio Fulci movie. My Dad was good like that.
Before Matilda entered the room, I kind of wished Dad was there, to be there to take on the news that, my bird was flying the coop. And he’d have consoled me. Just by being there it would have gone down better. My Father was a far better Father than I know I can ever be.
I am irrational, obsessive, compulsive, manic, extremely paranoid, and still very much a man-child, and immature.
“Dad, I am leaving.” Matilda said this assuredly.
She didn’t hesitate. No long pause. That one hit hard, considering my Dad, her Grandfather, had only recently died. I tried not to be a dick about it, but, I was a dick about it.
I was an even bigger dick when the wifey sighed, as that got to me.
That sigh signalled that, Here we go, your Dad is about to blow up and become hysterical…(again!)
I turned so fast on my swivel kitchen-island chair, I always slipped off it and landed at her feet. A place I know the wifey believe I deserved to be. Looking up at her, mouth agape, drool pooling around my head, puppy-eyes asking for forgiveness. She has a secret dominatrix energy about her my wife. I just do not know when that shit will detonate. And when it does, I am game, only I’ll not wipe my ass for a day or two, if I get a sense the dominatrix is a-coming out to play. I don’t want to be pegged. Not again. The last time hurt, and it wasn’t even a sexual experience or game. We had a four-poster bed and after putting it up I rested my ass on the bed knob and…yeah, my anus virginity was taken, there and then.
I hadn’t even gotten myself together, looking between them, before Rufus started barking.
Rufus has recently taken to barking at his own reflection in the backdoor window.
Nowhere else has he spotted his doppelgänger. It always seems to be in the backdoor.
And if you know anything about pugs, like they can’t breathe for themselves properly (it gets so bad I was close to buying a sleep-apnoea machine and adapting it for the poor little fucker) a bark isn’t a bark. It is a mixture between a cry, a pathetic yelp, and a blocked drain gurgling. Not nice gurgling you get from rinsing your mouth out. Like a heavy chain-smokers gurgling. And again, it seems I am the last person to know about these things. My wife tells me that she has told me, but I do not think she does. I think she likes to think she does. Or truthfully, she doesn’t tell me these big things, because I cannot respond like an adult, and act up, like a spoilt morbidly obese American kid who wanted a certain brand and serial-numbered phone for Christmas - you know the one I am talking about. Well, actually there are far too many to list. All little shit-bags with shit-cunt parents. The point is, she is leaving, I am hurt, and scared that the lesbian yakuza thought might be better than my daughter running away from home for one reason alone. To get away from … me.
I have a one-hundred-page long-ass list consisting of things that I am anxious for her to let slip from her mouth. And I am… heh, so (not) prepared for many a thing or eventuality she may ask my permission for; (as if, have you read my other books?)
Many a thing that has already happened, that suddenly gets voiced far too late in life, but we as parents have to let it slide. We need to isolate it. And kill it. It might come about in some odd confessional or statement, and though you’ve been waiting years for this confrontation, or lets be kinder, you have waited years for this heated screaming match concerning the time she smashed three mirrors three days in a row and just acted as if it was some benign being making itself known – at the end of the day, or that moment of reflection, you know you will reassure your kid it is all water under the bridge.
Yet, my mind, is manic and hyper. There have been at least fifty times where I expected The Talk. to occur, and all she did was lecture, educate and bemoan my co-existing in My Fucking House.
And each of those times I expected at least something beyond the pale of reason. Like an admittance of being a stick-in-the-mud. That she likes girls. That she is joining some cult in East Anglia. The worst would have been that she is leaving the country with a man in his forties going by the name Mindy McClurkin, and has six-kids with six different exes, and doesn’t want to be known as a he/she/they/them, but wishes to be ackwloedged as a Xe, to join the space-race in Texas. Living as nomads and peeing in cups or all over each other. Oh god, the places my mind wanders with these hypotheticals. That or she wasn’t just a lesbian, but joining a tribe of feminist lesbian yakuza members, come together to hunt down the male population - forewarning me that, when she finally returns, “Hey Dad, it may not be a good idea for you to stay in one place,” as her and her yakuza-brethren arm themselves to the nines (rolled-up pamphlets? Switch blades? Paint in balloons or condom wrappings?) - setting out in the world, geared up, vengeful, yet wilful, soulful like those geezer-birds from Mad Max: Fury Road - extremely feminist in their mission; to end all toxic-masculinity and the men that carry this gene. Rufus (my pug) even crosses his legs when I vocalise this to my wife. And that little bastard has already lost his nuts.
All of the above is a potentiality, for sure. I wouldn’t have an issue with her being gay, as I would be happy for her, because the gay community is all she goes on about, that and feminism, so if she did decide to bat for the same team, maybe she’d stop lecturing everyone on lesbians and gays and trans-rights?
In your dreams Marc-y-boi. I get enough of that on the bus to work/or the brief time I spent on FB - a thing I vowed never to do, until, well, my daughter hung out with a potential gay-yakuza clan member, who I got a weird vibe from.
That and I overheard this young lady having a shady conversation with someone over her phone, and then before I could be any nosy-er, she was off - zooming off on her skates, like a dirtier version of Harley-Quinn from Birds of Prey - leaving skid marks only Vin Diesel can do in those Fast & Furious movies - to meet this person to make an exchange. So, I hastened to make a FB profile. And within seconds I had weird sex-bots DMing and adding me. Does this mean I have been going onto dodgy sites? No. yes. Maybe. Okay, yes Pornhub, it’s an addiction.
I stalked her - not the sex-bots - the potential lesbian yakuza member, online. It was a new friendship so Matilda and her were in that weird, let’s take photos of us wherever we go and whatever we are doing; they even posed next to a fucking bin, of all things, all because it had an inverted sex-icon on it. At least it wasn’t the carcass of some guy they felt gave off toxic gas-lighting vibes.
Then, Matilda found out, by being nosy (much like her old man) and had a go at me about it. I shared with her my hypothesis and she just blurted out, “She sells second-hand tickets to people desperate to get into a gig, on the night of said gig, gawd Dad!” and that shut me up…but still, a criminal is a criminal. Also, FB is rough, so I deleted it. The one I hadn’t truly ever braced myself for, the big one, the one we all know will become a reality, was that she was leaving home. No, not with a Xe, nor going to Texas to flash her boobs at Elon Musk. Or to meet her Yakuza Lesbian Fem-Nazi tribe, going Tank-Girl on the fucking world. She was leaving for Uni. This wasn’t something that was on the cards, not for Matilda. For love nor money, I swear she had only started college? I know my love and parenting is sometimes absurdist and unreal, maybe a bit heavy, but this is my one and only kid.
I love her. I admire her. Everything she is, is some increment of what came before. So many of my mother’s traits are in her. What she is though, just with a far more heightened stance on topical issues, is a female version of her grandfather. Since my Father’s passing, this has become apparent. Her intellect. Her wit. Her overbearing tenacious spirit are not traits she got from me, but from her real Dad, who I know is out there somewhere. (I better not let my wifey read this, she will absolutely, not kill me, as death would be too quick, she would torture me, having put into question her monogamy and class of character.) No, she got them from spending time with an amazing Mother, and an amazing Grandfather. My Dad and Matilda had their own language. Sometimes, language wasn’t needed. When her boyfriend broke up with her last year she came rushing home, and my parents had been over to visit, and she ran into his arms. He was the only one who could calm her, soothe her, and make her laugh all at the same time. My Dad was always good at intuiting when something was wrong, or if something was about to happen. He once told me, when I was aged about twelve to not bother going to school, and I was more than happy to stay at home and watch him fix up a few cars that had been parked either half a mile away from his garage or had pulled up hectically onto our front garden - left for my Dad to fix whilst running his green. Mum said no. As in, N. O - spells, “you do as I say Marky and put your shoes on.” She had that look, that said, “No, do not do it, do not encourage him.”
Because I didn’t ever mind missing school, I mean what kid did? But my old man looked at my Mum, in that certain way, one I had seen years after this isolated event, and she looked back at him, trying to out intensify his stare, and he said, “I do not think it is a wise idea. I got…you know, that…feeling,” and as soon as her cogs turned, and she pieced it together she threw her hands up, frustrated that she was even entertaining this weird sixth sense, let alone going along with it. I didn’t go in. And you know what? Good thing I didn’t. That day, a bunch of kids got burnt by an explosion in one of our classes, - one getting severe third-degree burns. Some little tyke thought it funny to mess with somebody’s chemistry set or whatever – I think the kid that set it off was the one badly burnt - silly twat, and guess what period it was? My period to be in that class, on that end table, where the incident occurred.
Turns out a few days later the same thing happened again, in that exact class, and not to the same kid. And guess what, again my Dad let me stay at home, reading my comics and admiring my Father’s skill with engines and car parts. This time the explosion was so big it blew out the classrooms windows that looked out onto the courtyard where most kids lined up to drink from the fountain.
This time, a lot more were hurt, and again, it was my science class.
The reason was later explained in great detail at an assembly, and consequent lessons and higher heads from the local Education Departments came in, looking for someone to blame; I cannot recall the cause as I was sitting there, smug, unharmed, surrounded by a bunch of mates who looked like they were all going to the same fancy dress party, themed around the Egyptians, all dressed as The Mummy.
Max my mate had the advantage, his kept oozing pus and blood, and looked more like something from a Lucio Fulci movie. My Dad was good like that.
Before Matilda entered the room, I kind of wished Dad was there, to be there to take on the news that, my bird was flying the coop. And he’d have consoled me. Just by being there it would have gone down better. My Father was a far better Father than I know I can ever be.
I am irrational, obsessive, compulsive, manic, extremely paranoid, and still very much a man-child, and immature.
“Dad, I am leaving.” Matilda said this assuredly.
She didn’t hesitate. No long pause. That one hit hard, considering my Dad, her Grandfather, had only recently died. I tried not to be a dick about it, but, I was a dick about it.
I was an even bigger dick when the wifey sighed, as that got to me.
That sigh signalled that, Here we go, your Dad is about to blow up and become hysterical…(again!)
I turned so fast on my swivel kitchen-island chair, I always slipped off it and landed at her feet. A place I know the wifey believe I deserved to be. Looking up at her, mouth agape, drool pooling around my head, puppy-eyes asking for forgiveness. She has a secret dominatrix energy about her my wife. I just do not know when that shit will detonate. And when it does, I am game, only I’ll not wipe my ass for a day or two, if I get a sense the dominatrix is a-coming out to play. I don’t want to be pegged. Not again. The last time hurt, and it wasn’t even a sexual experience or game. We had a four-poster bed and after putting it up I rested my ass on the bed knob and…yeah, my anus virginity was taken, there and then.
I hadn’t even gotten myself together, looking between them, before Rufus started barking.
Rufus has recently taken to barking at his own reflection in the backdoor window.
Nowhere else has he spotted his doppelgänger. It always seems to be in the backdoor.
And if you know anything about pugs, like they can’t breathe for themselves properly (it gets so bad I was close to buying a sleep-apnoea machine and adapting it for the poor little fucker) a bark isn’t a bark. It is a mixture between a cry, a pathetic yelp, and a blocked drain gurgling. Not nice gurgling you get from rinsing your mouth out. Like a heavy chain-smokers gurgling. And again, it seems I am the last person to know about these things. My wife tells me that she has told me, but I do not think she does. I think she likes to think she does. Or truthfully, she doesn’t tell me these big things, because I cannot respond like an adult, and act up, like a spoilt morbidly obese American kid who wanted a certain brand and serial-numbered phone for Christmas - you know the one I am talking about. Well, actually there are far too many to list. All little shit-bags with shit-cunt parents. The point is, she is leaving, I am hurt, and scared that the lesbian yakuza thought might be better than my daughter running away from home for one reason alone. To get away from … me.
⏭Marcus Meltdown lives in Bolton and is the author of Stop Being a Shit Cunt and If Only I Could Fucking Choke You Out.
