Читать книгу Leaving the OCD Circus - Kirsten Pagacz - Страница 14

My mom was incredibly vulnerable when she met my dad. Just before he came into the picture, she had lost a one-year-old daughter to spinal meningitis and a husband to suicide. She was raising two boys on her own and bringing in a small income, just barely making ends meet. Times were not easy. I think my dad brought in that fresh air she was looking for.

Things were not what they seemed, though. My dad cheated on her, was mentally abusive to her and my brothers, and had begun doing drugs like acid, mescaline, and pot. My mom and dad divorced when I was about two and a half.

After the divorce, my dad lived in a one-bedroom cottage near the Fox River in Illinois. It was not built for year-round living. It was a small summer house that was painted dirty white and had black-framed windows.

This was the 1970s, and my dad's horn-rimmed glasses and plaid shorts had given way to hippie beads and Nehru shirts. My mom has since said that she thought he looked a lot like Michael Douglas.

At the time of my parents' divorce, the court ordered that my dad could come for visits every Thursday. Usually, we would go to the park or a movie, or get something to eat. I also had to stay with my dad every other weekend and for three consecutive weeks during the dead August heat of a Chicago summer. This was my dad's time off from teaching sociology at the local community college.

Due to the constant moisture in the air because the house was near the river, the wooden doors were warped and never closed just right between rooms. The front porch always smelled like mildew and mold from the hundreds of stacked books that were trapped with moisture. Out front to the right and left of the steps, orange tiger lilies would bloom in late spring. They were wild looking and came up with the weeds. I have never grown an affinity for orange tiger lilies.

There was no air-conditioning in the house, just one large beige-and-white box fan that didn't do a good job of cooling the place. It just pushed the warm air around, and I spent a lot of my time sitting in front of it trying to cool myself off. This is when I happily discovered, like many kids do, that if I talked directly into the fan, my voice would sound really funny. Fortunately, this activity created some entertainment and helped me pass the time. I spent a lot of the mornings and early afternoons trying to entertain myself while waiting for my dad to get up after another late night of his doing drugs and more than likely visiting random friends.

For years I stayed hopeful that one of these mornings he would wake up and want to play a game with me. I remember whispering in my dad's ear, “Daddy, Daddy. When are you going to get up?” And he would say, in a quiet mumble with his face in the pillow, “Oh honey, just give me a little longer.” His little longer was always a big longer. It was clear that he just wasn't available. I could feel sadness filling me up like smoke fills a room.

Most people would say that my dad's bedroom was really in his living room, the main space in the center of his house. There were a couple of maroon-colored Chianti bottles on the floor that he used as candle-holders. A rainbow of colorful drips of melted wax stuck to the bottles. When I was bored, sometimes I would pick them off.

This was where my dad and his girlfriend, who was once one of his students, slept on the mattress in the middle of the floor. Her skin was clean and fresh looking, and I thought she was very natural looking and very pretty. Her wavy dark brown hair was long, more than halfway down her back and parted straight down the middle. She was eighteen and looked to me like a high schooler; he was well into his thirties.

After he brought her into our picture, I had to ride in the backseat of his car every time we all went somewhere. At that time, I believed I was his number three. First came his drugs, parties, and music; second was the girlfriend; and then third, me.

On the back of the living room/bedroom wall was a huge photographic mural of an autumn scene filled with brown-, gold-, and orange-leaved trees and a dusty, winding road in the middle. Sometimes I would stare at it and imagine walking right into the wall and down that road. How I wish I could have done exactly that!

My dad frequently walked around his house naked. I think my mom asked him once not to do it with me there, and he said something like, “It's my house, and if I want to walk around naked, that's what I'm going to do. There's nothing about the human body to be ashamed of.” His girlfriend, at least, was modest enough to cover herself with a thin T-shirt that reached her upper thighs. But every time she bent over to get into a cabinet or pick up something, there to greet me was this horrible-looking thing. It looked like a loose pile of rare roast beef and scared the hell out of me. It was her droopy vagina! In my young mind I was afraid I was going to fall into it if I looked at it for more than a split second. When I grew up, would I have one of those, too? The thought petrified me.

Because he was a professor at a community college, my dad had access to the best audio-visual equipment the '70s had to offer, so in his living room he would put on quite a show for what seemed like an endless and steady stream of his drugged-up friends. Some became familiar around the house, but there were always some new faces. A constant stream of drugs and young people mostly with long hair.

My dad used to say he wanted to “lose his mind” on psychedelics.

I would watch as he and everyone else got high. I remember learning how to pass a joint from one person to another while sitting in a communal circle in the living room. I wasn't in it, exactly, but I was a part of it. A silent witness.

I clearly remember hearing the loud screams of the lady on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and being scared half to death. My dad, his girlfriend, and their friends lay on the floor watching a 16 mm film of pulsating geometric shapes projected on the white sheet my dad put up in front of the mural. I guess they were trying to lose their minds. The music was turned up so loud that my ears stung in pain and my head pounded.

Exhausted, I would go into my tiny bedroom and try to fall asleep.

This kind of scene was repeated every weekend.

I would pull the thin, musky sheet over my head and cry myself to sleep. Sometimes when I couldn't take it anymore, I would find him in the carnage and beg him to turn down the music.

He never did. Not once.