A confession for Father’s Day.
“No!” she said firmly, “I’m not calling him.”
“OK,” I said, not putting up any argument to her decision.
“I mean, he didn’t bother to call on my birthday,” she went on, “or to even ask how I’m doing when I called him for his birthday.” She paused, and I could see her lower lip was trembling and she was allowing her mind to feel all that pain again, the way one presses on a bruise just to be reminded of how much it hurts. “So, fuck him! Maybe it will give him some much needed silent time to self-reflect about what an asshole he is.”
To be fair, she really had only touched on the tip of this iceberg of harm, neglect, and self-absorption. All her life he had been a palpably present absentee father. By that, I mean, he was there in body, but his mind was eons away alone on a raft floating in a sea of vodka. And in the past few years — the years she had been with me — his very active passivity had ramped up in ways that had caused serious damage to just about everyone around him. Like Jonah, sleeping in the hold of the ship while his choices caused the ship’s crew to risk life and limb in a tempest, Lo’s father was a whirlwind of destruction cycling around a ghost of the shell of a broken man.
And now it was Father’s Day and unfortunately Hallmark doesn’t make cards that say, “You didn’t try. You didn’t give a shit. I tried. I keep on trying. You lie and you keep on lying and I’m sick of it and so you can go to hell. Happy Father’s Day. Better luck next year.” So Lo didn’t get him a card. She didn’t go to visit. And she sure as shit wasn’t going to call him. Yet, that decision put her into her own personal torment with the guilt of imagining her father alone on Father’s Day.
I held her for a while as she cried her eyes out. Perverse as it may be — I can’t help it — I find her crying and holding me arousing. She felt my barometer rising and she held me tighter. Tears were dripping down her cheek onto my shirt. Her hand slid down under my pants and grasped my shaft, holding it firmly. We began to kiss and our bodies danced horizontally of their own accord as our minds were locked on each other’s thoughts.
I entered her as she whispered in my ear, “I love you, Daddy.”
“Who do you love?”
“I love you, Daddy.”
“Say it again.”
“I love you, Daddy.”
She repeated it again and again, each time with a slightly different inflection as her hips rose and fell and pulsated and clenched.
My hand was behind her head, cupping her. I grabbed a tuft of hair. She reached up to my hand and tugged on it. She brought it to her cheek and held it there a moment. Then she pulled it back and forced it toward her face. I knew what she wanted. I gave it to her. Once. Again, harder. A third time, even harder.
Then she said, “Make it hurt, Daddy. Take away the pain.”
I opened my hand and threw it down with a whap.
“Again!” she pleaded.
This time I used my left hand against her right cheek.
“Yes. Make it hurt.”
I continued with ever greater force and intensity until she was screaming, squirting, shaking, and then quietly breathing in a mind-state beyond consciousness.
I caressed her cheeks softly. I stroked her hair. I held her until she muttered, “I love you… Daddy,” one last time.
