james-dream-diary-entry-4254678

I’m out with some friends who I haven’t spoken to in years. It’s your average night out for young people: bitching about the day’s workload and relationship troubles (or a lack thereof) over an increasing amount of empty shot glasses. As the night goes on, I realize why I haven’t kept in touch after all this time; these are not my people. What I once considered a close group of brothers are now barely reformed frat boys covered in garish tattoos, heads removed of any original thought whatsoever and bragging to everybody in earshot about their terrible garbage band that bastardizes the proud genre of punk rock. I feel like the only grown-up babysitting a room full of troubled, unloved children. I hate these people.

I’m waiting for this night to end when someone decides to ask me how my father’s doing. Like them, I haven’t had any contact with him since I was nineteen. I’m a grown man now, I don’t need to live in fear of him anymore. I tell my old friends this, and rather than drop the subject like any respectable human being would, they poke and prod at the subject like it was a dead cat on the side of the road. I refuse to answer any more questions, and responding with silence. Finally, of their girlfriends asks me, in the most irritating shrill voice I’ve ever heard, “What did he ever do that was so fuckin’ bad anyway? Aren’t you supposed to ‘Honor thy Mother and thy Father’ or some shit?” I lean forward, right in her face, and yell at her, using the absolute most sarcastic tone to my voice as possible.

“OKAY, HERE’S WHAT’S UP: MY ‘DADDY’ WAS A WORTHLESS FUCKING DRUNK WHO USED TO BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF ME UNTIL I WAS EIGHTEEN!”

I lean back. She starts crying. I want to go home now.

I’m driving back to my place with a friend of mine. We stop to say “hello” to some skater kids, who will not stop going on about a new skateboarding video game. I shrug my shoulders and tell them that I’m looking forward to Team Fortress 2 more (even though that game has been out for years). My heart’s just not in it. Not wanting to be deterred, the kids give me a blank DVD-R with “TF2″ written on the front with a black sharpie. We continue on home. Upon arrival, I remembered something: I forgot to lock the door! I tell my friend that I have to keep my front door locked at all times, as my father likes to just waltz on in and leech off of me in lieu of getting a job. This is all much harder when he’s had enough to drink, which is all the time. I open the door and, sure enough, he’s passed out on my couch. Just like the old days. I tell my friend to be very quiet, and we head downstairs.

“Hey James.”
“Yeah?”
“What happened the last time we had to get you out of here? He seemed pretty pissed!”
“I had to wait a Goddamn hour and a half for his fucking drunk ass to pass out. After he woke up, we kicked him out.”

We can hear him waking up and heading down the stairs. We just keep quiet, and somehow he doesn’t seem to notice us. Like a bear in the woods, I suppose. The two of us watch as he enters my bedroom and then, with slow and exaggerated movements, begins throwing various collectibles of mine against the wall.