Not the first, not the last

I came home and played Build A Lunch with stuff from the fridge, complete with stratification of reduced calorie cheddar before nuking the food five minutes on medium. Then I polished off a fondly remembered coconut doughnut which is now doing its sugary job of giving me a carbohydrate rush. It was a substantially solid but tender cake dipped in icing and shaken through a flurry of shredded, sweetened coconut, so much that the outside layer broke with satisfying resistance. The center of the doughnut where the hole would be, was coated and packed with icing and coconut that remained moist, forming a creamy, glistening blast of melded cake and sugar. I do not have any regrets, yet.

Rationalization and logic can whelp puppies till the cows come home, and yet when the realness of a situation arrives, it hurts like abandonment. No one owes anyone anything, parents do what they will with property and assets, grow up already. My father was glad to see me as always, and I am mostly glad for the relationship we have, in spite of inappropriate conversation he occasionally tries to bring up. Sexual stuff. Anything and everything.

Last week it was Viagra, week before, how he can't have sex. Week before that, how he can't have sex, weeks before, how on tv he saw they could make a penis out of a clitoris. You know what a clitoris is, dontcha? Today he stared at me and said, "You look goood," allowing the word 'good' to slither along to a room in his brain where he replays worlds of women and men as separate entities to fight with fists and leering.

I am able to leave the room these days without him yelling about facing truth, hiding from facts, or chasing me to my room. The subjects change quickly, and I divert him with questions at the other end of the spectrum. The rest of the time, he's my father, and I can only imagine the demons he lives with in his head.

He has gotten papers together and put them in a white kitchen trash bag with a note on it for my brother. Intoning that he has seen the "black angel of death", he asked that I go through the papers for any necessary forms needed for his Veteran's admission. Sure. The family has been hearing of the "black angel of death" since he was in his fifties, and the man is eighty-three for god's sake. "I'm going soon, I can feel it..." like we would be sorry and flutter around his pathology. Back then, I wouldn't have missed him for a heartbeat.

So I wasn't too surprised at the hand-written note taped onto the bag addressed to my brother, stating everything was left to him. Well, really, I hadn't spoken to Dad for eight years because I was done with the whole alcoholic mess, you can read some of my poetry therapy for updates. What hurt was the sentence that if it was necessary to leave me anything, that I was to get one dollar. Why bother with a dollar, if not to rub in my worthlessness as a person? It did sting. As a girl, he told me I would be a whore, a parasitic leech on some man's leg. Is this the culmination?

I will get over it, for heaven's sake. What creeps me out is the impact living with him has had on my life, and how I see little way out of this great distrust of men. Let me change that, of hetero men. Gay men are swell. Yet even this is an illusion, as I assign gays with halos first before acknowledging them as male beings just as loaded with testosteroni. Ah me. People are people, not bad, not good, just people.

I am now going to switch on my favorite gay musician/dj/composer for though his is a persona sent over the cyberwaves, it jollies me up. Hope to get something positive done that indicates I am of worth somewhere to someone, that I am a girl on the go.

The sleet was coming down as Mercy Flight coptered over the apartments, bringing in healing, a rescue, a person needing emergency attending. Wait for me.

Good night.