Читать книгу Almost 5'4" - Isobella Jade - Страница 8

My alcoholic father never gave a shit about my modeling, which was a good thing because he was one less person to impress. I don’t think he ever wanted to be a father. He told me so a few times when I was a teenager, but it didn’t bother me. The only good thing he ever did for me was to pass on his gift for running.

Back in the mid-1960s he was a long jumper and a track runner. He had been born in Syracuse and raised in a series of foster homes. His mother was also an alcoholic; his dad left when he was two. As a result, he never really wanted to have kids. He has never paid child support; he could barely even support himself. When he showed up at my track meets in high school, my parents wouldn’t sit together. My mother and Lara would be in the stands, and he was always down by the track. Sometimes he showed up a little tipsy but at least he was there, which was all I needed to know. He called me his ‘running rebel.’

His honesty about not wanting to be a father meant that I could tell him anything and not worry about being judged, the complete opposite of the relationship with my mother. For a while this was pretty cool but I soon realized that I was becoming the parent in the relationship, listening to the many problems and tragedies of his ‘death of a salesman’ life.

I think I understood his troubles from an early age. I can remember as a twelve-year-old pouring a six-pack of beer into the sink, watching it slip down the drain so he couldn’t drink it, wishing I could make him stop. I would stay up all night worrying about him and how I could help to fix things. But there was already too much jail time and rehab for this little girl to make a difference. Even so, I really believed that if I ran fast and performed well on the track it would make him proud of me and that maybe, just maybe, he would stop drinking.

My father’s problems meant I didn’t have a constant, stable man in my life. As a result, I craved male attention and I certainly got it, mostly from immature boys who had just discovered their penises.

And so began my sexual curiosity.