possibly the most uncomfortablefamily event

possibly the most uncomfortable

family event ever, I just missed it, thank you god and all the demons in niflheim for saving me from this heinous event. Except I sort of wish I could have witnessed the incredible unbelievable awfulness. L. just called me from RI from some bar in the middle of nowhere to report. Our 90 yr old gp, apparently no one wanted to sit at his table for his birthday dinner. This "party" makes my dad in law's 70th look like a joyous 7up commercial. L. sat at some back table in desperation but apparently our g-ma made her come up to the front table and sit there with our parents and some other random assholes. Meanwhile g-ma slips off to sit at that same back table - how can it be? L. feeling like everyone eyeing her giant tattoos and sneaks out to go drink an awful lot in the bar area of the restaurant. Heh. Our aunt's 4th husband... "he had his arm around me and he put his hand on my boob. ON MY BOOB." L. keeps repeating half-drunkenly on the phone. "ON MY RIGHT BOOB." He had been talking about how he likes to dress sharp and she said "oh you are a dandy, then?" and he replied in a "duh" nosepicking way, "What's a dandy?" heh well he sounds like a good mate for our idiot aunt who probably still says "wheelbarrel". L. described everyone there. Big claudia who lived down the street and used to talk to us about her miserable divorce and how to drink while taking valium as she applied way too much eyeliner before going out to this bar apparently she killed herself last year. No one would talk to our GP. Gm made a lame toast during the first 30 seconds where she listed everyone there and thanked them but left out L. but people yelled out her name until our GM included her. Three more drinks were lined up in front of the noble and valiant L. as she gratefully listened to our dad natter on in a comforting way about bank procedure, computing in the 70s, and other such stuff in the boringest way possible that he adopts, sort of Bueller, bueller, professor style, but it has the effect that after a long bad night of acid with too much speed in it, it feels really, really good to brush your teeth and think slowly, "Here I am brushing my teeth, it is completely normal and boring, how good it feels to just brush my teeth just like I do every day and will do again for the rest of my life, thank god this trip is stopping". Apparently our mom was going completely pyscho in her attempt to deal with the situation.

Why did they even plan the event for chrissakes?

our poor cousin i can not even imagine the bizarritude of her mind at this point. apparently the all went back to the house and some mystery guy just whooshed in in the middle of the night and picked her up. Oh the scandal!

I just can't even convey it, the desperate last stand of putting on a front of normality and family togetherness. I know when he dies that they will not tell me because they all afraid I will stand up or run in and run up the aisle like that guy in the Graduate stopping the wedding except in this case a funeral, as if I would make some kind of melodramatic speech of denuciation. I don't think so, all my ammo was gone back in 1991 they can all blow me. first after the police cars came and the phone calls flew across the continent they made up a big cover story that my aunt's 2nd husband (2nd of 4, remember her?) had sicced the police on them as part of some custody battle over my cousin. My parents flew out there and then they also flew out to see me and sort of un-disowned me in an emotional scene. In which my mom took my favorite stuffed animal back home with her and sewed him a new covering. I kid you not. They were relieved to have something to blame my fucked up ness on. But then it turned out later to turn into a big thing where everything was geared around the law of no confrontation or even contact, because it Could Make My Grandmother Have a Stroke and he's an old man, he's OLD, he's going to DIE, - do you Want Him To Die In Prison? (Yes, actually, I do, thanks for asking!) Less than a year later my mom casually mentions S. going back there for the summer! I freak and say that I'll call the cops again if they do and clearly everyting they said about believing me and protecting us all is a giant lie. Much pressure brought to bear on me, I refuse to recant.

Then I got this pathetic phone call out of the blue from my Gma where she begged me, yes begged me as in saying the words, "I'm begging you", to "let" them take care of my cousin, they were not actually too old to do it. So I freak out and make some calls and it turns out that our OTHER aunt, the plastic surgery getting one, this cunt bitch sister of my mother's, made up a whole new cover story where I am the one who called CPS and the cops, because I thought they were too old to take care of L. and S. properly.

Okay, what the fuck? who would believe this? No one! But thanks Auntie plastic surgery for making it so my gm believes that I hate her and that I'm a bitch. I guess that is way better than her hating her own husband or possibly her own self.

Keep in mind this is all 12 years ago and I was all of 21 maybe 22 years old. Years of therapy and "incest survivor groups" later.... you know come to think of it, any money I have sponged off my parents in the interval for debt and dental work, let's just write that off as if it had gone to pay for the fucking therapy.

If I had a dollar for every time my mom has said the words to me "and since you have RUINED MY FAMILY" i would be able to pay her money back anyway with interest.

And yes I have many times said "I can't believe you just said that... AGAIN... _I_ didn't ruin your family, he did, and it's also my family by the way." "What's that my daughter? I don't speak your crazy moon language!"

I always want to protect my mom because she has the emotional toughness of a ... of something not very emotionally tough that goes nuts under pressure. She can blow me too and so can everyone else who can't deal with reality and so can my lying sack of shit grandmother. I was also informed that I was not to discuss any of "it" with the other side of the family or anyone else because it woudl be so shameful and embarrassing for everyone.

I have never been to a funeral. But there is no way I could make any sort of coherent denuciation. I decided against any sort of confrontation years ago though I thought it might make me feel better just to say something to cut through the gordian knot of the big lie festival. I opted to hope he dies and then I could hang out a little with my grandma. its also not like I dont love him because I have listed out all the bad and good things from him. In many of the good htings my memory is crystal clear but it actually comes out more like: many good things in life are poisoned by his ghost including my own relationship with my kid because as I introduce him to many things I can't help but be saying the same words. He used to love to takeme out to walk around the neighbrhood and I would be up on the low flagstone walls that I loved so much. He would point everything out to me while holding my hand and make me feel everything and touch all the stones and plants and walls and flower petals, wet moss on the trees and the way all the kind of bark were different and notice all the bugs on the flowers. We had a whole sort of routine about how to walk. Now as a parent I wonder how much of this was just everyone else in the house saying "get this kid out of the house for a while so we can make dinner" but still. He would do his whole thing of being genial to everyone and knew everyone's names. One highlight of the journey on the wall was admiring the japanese beetles on some old guy's rosebushes and he would come out and talk to us about the roses and how he was desperately always trying to kill the japanese beetles, which were big and shiny and greenish purple like the head of a mallard and then also a beautiful not-quite-new-penny copper. The big highlight was if we went way down past where we were supposed to go and I would be lifted up very high actually over his head onto these big gate flanking pedestals of some super rich people's house. I can't evenr write this... uh. Anyway it was these big marble lions. They had no eyes in the hollow sockets. i was instructed to feel his teeth, ears, nose, mane, mouth etc. As far as I can remember I never said a word during this process and I must have been 3 or maybe 4. I would feel the face of the fierce white marble lions and was in awe of them like they were gods. They were wonderful but scary. I would feel the teeth and think that it was unlikely but what if they came real and I would feel their hot breath and then their teeth bite down. The lack of eyes was the most scary and horrible thing about them. On the way back he would tell me not to tell anyone we went that far because he would get in trouble. We would get back to an outraged chorus of "where have you been! where did you go? it's been X amount of time! " and he would equivocate and evade in a weaselly way and they would continue yelling at him as if we had been hitching rides to the local bar or shooting smack together in some back alley. why I have to think of him every time my own kid enjoys walking on a wall or feeling a flower petal, I have no clue. I like the detail of my own memory, but I wish some associations would die.

Thanks for teaching me techniques of petty theft and cheating while I was under 7 years old too my dear ancestor. There's some words of his I will not repeat: "Here, put this under your jacket, kid. Then we walk out." At least it was just stealing crap from the drugstore. I know i overanalyze everyting but the cheating at cards, stealing of my food, constant weird invention of threating imaginary creatures and monsters, sudden random showing up at random times by hopping aboard military aircraft and not telling anyone you were visiting, and telling me how life was tough, you have to be tough, everyone is out to take advantage of you and cheat you, so you have to be smart and not book smart but not trusting other people smart, Well, thanks a fucking lot, that was all really helpful to me in life. why could you have not just kept it to this and stayed out of my bed? what the hell? coudl someone in the world please make a small yet realistic blow up doll with nice smooth skin for the frustrated-in-marriage perverts of the world? As I tried to assess his personality all with the question why? in mind, the best I could come up with is that he was a sales guy always selling something and lying, a con man to the core.

am glad he live to be 90 so he can suffer more in the knowledge that he is a fuckwit whose family all hates his guts. he is not fooling anyone.

In her less sane moments my mom starts to cry, like she did one summer in SF when she came for the librarian conference and i had been at the gay pride parade and for some reason we ended up sitting on some random stone steps west of market street like sitting on someone's front steps, with her crying and freaking out and saying "why do I say anything nice about him, he is evil, i hate him so much, he was always spying and sneaking and lying and searching through my drawers..." I can't even remember all she said but she freaked the fuck out in the middle of the street. You can imagine my curiosity to hear what she would say, but I had to calm her down and make her stop. Other times she goes into a long explanation about "he was an angel, a saint, he was absolutely a saint, so kind, and SHE was such a bitch (meaning my gm, her own mom), SHE was unbelievably horrible and he would defend us, he would help us escape HER..."

The problem is, my mom never remembers these conversations. At. All. A few months later I'll refer to something she said and she just won't remember having had the conversation. One of us is crazy.... eh? Wouldn't it be convenient for everyone if it were me not her? They must have been praying for me to kill myself or go into mental hospital so they could all feel normal again, the fucks.

at around 22-24 i used to burst into tears in public when I saw little kids sometimes. they are so small. I thought I was so smart and tough when I was around 7 that i could do anything at all.

hate the rest of my family for their damned lies, lies to me, lies to each other, lies to themselves. the gall of my mom and gm claiming i always slept in my own bed alone. the fucking nerve. they can go to hell with the holocaust revisionists. they made me doubt my own sanity and wish I were dead. i have it in my diary in my moms own handwriting where I slept because she kept my diary back then. "I didnt' write that" Sorry, you did and I slept there every summer until I was 8 and then I put my foot down and said I was sleeping with gma. "How can you hurt gp's feelings like that? How could you? He loves you." my gm would say shaking her head and tch-ing. I would wait in bed watching the numbers change until my GM came in after the 11:00 news and some kitchen bustling. 11:11, 11:12, 12:00, 12:12 were my favorite numbers. I would pretend to be asleep. Her back was warm and comforting. I could take the chill off my feet up on her thick legs. When she snored too much I would kick her and then lie still terrified that she'd wake all the way up and I would feel really ungrateful for kicking on purpose because it was just good to be there. It sucks to be insomniac as a kid, at least as a grown up you can turn on the light.

I guess the good part is I can be a pretty bad parent and still be better than all those losers, compared to them, all i have to do is not beat or molest my kid (or disown him for his sexuality) and I have at least been an improvement

i will add that i outright at somepoint asked my mom to stand behind me by refusing contact with him but she woudl not do it and went into the whole "you have ruined my life and my familys and I think of it every single day" speech. You know, I could just keep writing about this crap for hours. I think I will stop now.. probably am going to appall L. by having written anythingg of the sort.