He didn't pay too much attention to me when I was a child. He didn't have
much use for the silly words that came out of my mouth, or the carefully
sculpted play-doh faces with stark white eyebrows and over-sized noses. He didn't
care too much for those... but he put them all on his mantle, on his
refrigerator, on his desk at the office, and told everyone who saw them that I
was his son, his beloved... begotten... estranged.
He was a little jealous. I mean, I started life so meagerly, so disparate
than he. I was something that he didn't understand - or even want - he was the
eternal. Nothing was really foreseen or predicted. I was the happy accident that
he had designed for himself... I got to be the one to wear the suit. I hadn't
known that he set me up for failure before I even took the first breath.
Sometimes I wish I hadn't found out about it.
It was so much easier for him to rant and rave, to be angry and vengeful,
before I came along. He didn't have to worry about consequences, the pain or the
tears - because it was all justified in his mind. Everyone worked for him
anyway, why try to make a difference in how they lived? But after he understood
what I was all about I think he was a little upset that I thought of it first.
But I knew what it was like to live here. I'd been born, lived, fell... I lived
through the scrapes and cuts, I'd lived the childish fantasies and play
scenarios, I suffered the broken bones and fistfights, I had the
stolen kisses, and passionate crushes, little hurts and betrayals. I knew lost
love. I made it this far and had sanity... divinity intact
because I was part of that little flesh suit. I forgot that it was borrowed; I'd claimed it as mine because I was real.
So, I'm not sure what he expected. I mean, I was certain of the outcome. I
knew that, of all things, people couldn't stand perfection and innocent love. I
mean, I tried to be bad, but I just couldn't give into the temptation. It was
too difficult, there was too much at stake. I was trapped inside the flesh
and couldn't bear the thought of losing touch with it. I was the human, I wasn't
the divine at all... not like Him. Not like Dad. I forgot how to be God.
Perfection wasn't acceptable.
Because people could be mean. I would walk down the street and they would
point and say "Look! There's God!" and then laugh. It was difficult and
sometimes made worse because I understood why they hated me. It was no mystery.
Sometimes I wanted to cry until I bled. At those times I would try to get in
to see dad. He was always busy.
Sometimes a son just needs some support from his father, or a hug...
sometimes I just wanted to be held for a little while and told: "This too shall
pass..." But it was always the same. Mother was there for the comfort and Dad...
Dad looked at me, turned me around and pointed to the door saying: "Go show them
what you're made of - you're my son. Go, be a man."
So, I was a man. Funny that it made him so angry.
But no one got it. They just didn't want to hear what I had to say, they were
too busy selling faith, telling lies, and making rules, living like they had
someplace else to go. They didn't see that it was all right here and nothing
mattered if the now wasn't good. They didn't get that I wanted to make a
difference right then.
Sometimes I wonder if, in the end, if I made a difference at all- I started
to think that maybe I was talking to the wrong person.
They were too busy taking what they wanted, ignoring meaning for selection,
selling fear and control in place of love. I thought I could be in there somewhere...
couldn't I? When it came down to the wire, could even my father change? Would I always be left thinking: Was it worth it, being a man?
Dad never said much on the topic. As usual He was distant. When the shit
started to come down he looked down from his 100th story office complex, through
his stained glass windows, and tried to ignore what I wanted to show him. I
don't think he wanted to forgive anything.
Sometimes, I don't think
he did. But I had to show him who I was... what I meant. He had to understand
why. I was so scared, but I had to show him how to be a Man.
It was up to me- what else would it all mean? What I was willing to do for what I
believed? Dad wouldn't agree with it... how could he? He didn't understand
death; he didn't understand life - he experienced neither. He only knew
the idea- the concept. He was intellect and reason and contracts and
covenants and creativity and destruction. How long had he impassively watched everyone live and love, suffer and die without any idea of what it meant? He had no idea... Dad was fucking clueless.
So I realized what I had to do - I somehow had to make him understand - and to see me. I had to
make him grieve. I had to turn myself around and show him what I
was made of... to show him that I was a man. That was why I
was here, wasn't it? Because he never understood what it meant to love, or die,
or grieve, or live. His happiness was something that sat high in his head. I had
to teach him to feel it in his heart. He had to create one - and lose it.
As the shitstorm began I thrust myself, as a mote in his eye, to show him
that maybe there was something of value in my life and death. After all, without
it, he really didn't have to give a fuck about anything... his revelations would
be simply like reading aloud the last page in a book- interesting but meaningless
in a vast, empty universe. It would all be a joke, wouldn't it (as if it isn't
already sometimes)? I hoped he understood it - that it wasn't just me. I hoped that
maybe there was something beyond the sting of death and grief that I gave him - and that I got.
Sometimes I wonder if Dad ever figured it out. I wonder if he
really cared. I wonder, when he finally turned his back on me, if he even cried... the
greatest gift that I could possibly give my father was the pain of grief and
death - because it was real, just like me.
In the end, he needed to understand what it meant to live on the
rock, to come down from his skyscraper mansion, and his perfection, to come
down and get his feet dirty and his hands bloody and his mind muddled and
clouded with life and smell and taste and kisses... to simply walk in the
flesh and know life and fear and... to feel.
I wanted to show
him those around him. I wanted to show him... everything... everything that I saw.
He needed to
understand that he could look in any face and think in absolute awe: "Look. There's God."