Don't tell me I didn't know the Man

Cold Hard Facts From A Daughter:

Mom caught him with her best friend/my babysitter [Lynn - divorce number two]. He tries to divorce mom with the circle trick and she takes the house in West U in the divorce. [you know the trick -- Mick Jagger tried it on Jerry Hall -- you walk a circle around your partner while saying, "I divorce thee". No childhood stories relating to seeing him at this time and for a while to come. We moved up north when I was a little over two with my mom's second husband. Talk about a foreigner in a foreign land. [They didn't even know what Okra was!]

Next memory is a visit he made to Connecticut when I was about 3 [?]. I can't remember if Lynn or Paula with him, but I think it was Lynn. I vaguely remember photographs of me beside him with him wearing a cowboy hat with a woman with light but long brown hair and a long face. He had a jacket with fake fur on the trim. He was working in New York so he blew into town for a day I think.

Not so many memories from this period in my life because up North was the land of abuse. Witnessing my mom's worst beating - a telephone to the face with me dangling on that stepfather's leg to protect her, only to be shoved under a cabinet by him - really fucked me up as a kid. Yes that means before the age of four, I already had my first lesson in spousal abuse first hand. I watched the ambulance take my mom away from the neighbor's living room with Hawaii five oh on the TV, before his parents picked me up and drove me away in a station wagon. [Notice all the details. That part is vivid.] I learned right then that men really couldn't be trusted just because they claimed to love you as a wife.

After we return to Houston, I have segmented memories of spending more time with him. I remember the drive to the Commune in Taylor. My father's parents drove my mom and myself. We sang camp songs in the car. I had no idea it was a surprise attack. They were dumping me off for a few weeks because he wouldn't make the effort. Thank God all the residents were amazing family people. I have a series of memories from their brief period that I treasure more then many others.

- Matching pink halter-top and mini skirt outfits to match the Hart girls with yellow flowers and white trim. We sang "Ode to Billy Joe" in the living room for every-one's entertainment one night. I still smile when I hear that song.

- The open second floor where I think the Osbornes lived. Drapers blowing in the window. A style I carry in my designs today because the beauty is so ingrained in my memory.

- Making bread with Uncle Dick. Eating grits with him too. The wrap around porch and watching yeast rise.

- The jukebox out back in the multi car wooden beaten down garage that only seemed to play Bye Bye Miss America Pie

Do I remember the TV show? No. Do I think it's bad ass that my dad was involved with the first public access television in Texas? Hell yeah.

I also remember getting The Little Prince from him and Paula in 1978. I only know the date because I carried that book with me until the fire. It was my treasure. It taught me how to love. In addition I have many various memories and images of the years with Paula. Thinking of it's famous theme of 'it's only with the heart that one can see' is what gives me the strength to write these facts in the wake of his death. My heart is seeing rightly.

Paula taught me
-that a woman could look really cool driving a classic truck
-that a woman could do just as much physical shit as a man if she wanted to
-Swimming is the best exercise at the lowest impact for the whole body
-If you want to sing/perform, get up on stage and make it happen
-Basic feminism
-and much more, as she was a part of my times with Dad for a long time even after they split because of friendships

We spoke for the first time in over twenty years recently. It was like sliding into home base. I never stopped loving her. I just knew she didn't need to be married to Dad anymore. She had chances to grow and improve her life so much more without him. I understood. I always understood when someone left him. [Although it is the main reason I believe nothing lasts forever!]

I just realized something my personal chronology of my father's life [and my interaction there in] is catalogued by the women in his life at the time. It dawned on me that is because the times he was truly available to be a father to me where when the women wanted to know and love me. Not him -- them. Sick, huh?

The next one I remember is Yodi. Yodi was very young when she fell under dad's spell. They had several periods of true love over assorted periods in their lives. She is one of the kindest and most gentle women I have been blessed to have been loved by because of him. She has been in and out of my life through location and similar social networking but never intruded. She would just look at me with a fondness in her eyes. I know now why -- he'd told her awful things at the breakup that made her fear I would be sickened by her. He was such a liar! And a hypocrite!! We've been talking in email a lot during these unsettling days, and I can't put into words how beautiful it is.

But he made her crazy. Seriously. There was a story involving the next girlfriend's dogs, poison and horridness. It all makes sense in reflection. Dad seemed to forget to mention he had someone in Austin! He always had his backdoor covered with the one coming in...It's very fucked up when I looked at it with all my poly and D/s understanding. These poor ladies didn't have much of a chance with his skills. It's soooooooo sad to me.

During this time was when I remember Dad living with Micael Priest. There was a collection of Krump and Vamperella comic books in the back room. I read alllllllll of them. At this time I was about eight or nine. Talk about a good way to pervert a little girl. Later I would find his Centurian magazines and learn about Pony Girls while in High School.

The one coming in at that time was my sister's mother, Judy. Judy was great too. She took great care of me, when I was just entering what the family refers to as my 'difficult' teen years. She had no idea the man was the type who would take his twelve year old to a meeting at a nudist colony off Manor Road. She learned and escaped with my sister. Smart Lady!
Seems she learned whatever lesson he tried to give by blackening her eye at Christmas before my sister was born. Yes, that asshole beat her. She wore her shame in front of the whole family. I knew the truth. He was just like my first stepDad from that moment on.

She is the one who was smart enough to recognize as I got sicker that I shouldn't be an influence around my sister, Nico. I thanked her for that when we went to the Threadgill's thing for dad. I know it was best. She did try to make it better with time and invites, but I dropped the ball because I was too self involved at the time becoming a parent at a young age while sorting through drug addiction and alcoholism.

Let's talk about those two horrible character defects. Here's a fact some people won't be comfortable with. My dad taught me to do drugs. All kinds. He taught me to roll my own joints because he got sick of doing it for me while I was in High School, the same year he sent me on a flight back to Houston with an ounce of skunk weed in my purse! I remember being in Jan Beeman's house one year and he had a huge baking dish full of pot on his lap, while I sat beside him lining up the coke. She made a joke about it being the perfect family portrait. No shit. That same trip he let her drug dealing son take me to dinner when he was in his late 20's and I was about 17. I honestly felt traded. It was a horrible date. He tried to get me drunk on Sake. I still hate that shit.

I was also my dad's clubbing buddy when things with Judy ended. He had always taken me with him to bars where we met with many of his clients. I grew up playing video games at Antoine's with people like guitar god Charlie Sexton when we were both 13. I partied with major ticket musicians my whole life! I knew how to hustle a free drink before I was twelve. Many of the bars on 6th street in the mid80's thought it was fine to just let me in because they knew me through him and didn't realize I was totally underage. His friends began hitting on me more and more with every passing year. He never stopped any of them - ever - but instead laughed at the whole situation. As an adult I realized at some point he stopped introducing me as Michelle his daughter to just "This is Michelle", so I don't know what I thought he would do.

I had my first mushroom trip with David Lee. He took me to a Dire Straits concert. Wanted to impress me by introducing me to the band, but I told him they were just a bunch of old men and I didn't care. He took me back to Dad's place up the street from Threadgill's north and fed me 'Shrooms. He watched me draw and made some uncomfortable comment about me being a female version of my Dad with a look in his eyes that read - get him out of here. Another time someone fed those to me was a New Year's eve with the next 'stepmother' - Trudy.

I was a grown woman by this relationship. I had already buried a child. I was seriously lost in addiction and alcoholism. We went to the Continental in Austin. We ran into the guy who used to play with Charlie who once told me, "You're just like your Aunt Heidi. You're going to grow up to be nothing more then a worthless groupie!" at the door. I introduced him to my very good looking hubby and said, "Guess you were wrong, huh?" [BTW I wasn't a groupie - I was a muse. Muses get to go to dinner!] When we got home that night the room was spinning. My step-Mom came in and said, "Open your mouth" and I did. Dry grind-ed-ness went down my throat removing all moisture from it. I gagged and swallowed, "What was that? came from my whirling fogged mind -- MUSHROOMS! Have you ever wanted to puke more? Who the hell bonds with their new family over mind altering chemicals???

While Trudy was around for a while and did some really crazy shit, I didn't know her really that well. We'd had some instances where she told and showed me strange shit -- like her vaginal wedding ring. She thought she'd tell me the truth about my father, his sexual preferences [kink] and proclivity to cheat....AS IF THIS WAS A BIG SHOCKER TO ME!! [Hellllo have you read this history?]

So during and after her, I kept my distance. I moved on to straightening out my life. I divorced the kids dad. My dad offered me a chance to move to Austin and work for him at GoGo. I told him that I just got clean and that moving to Austin would be too high a risk for me and my kids. I knew I'd hook back up with musician's and do way too many drugs to be an affective mom. I returned to college, got my degree and moved forward.

He didn't come to my student shows, not even when I got my scholarship for my art and was the featured artist. He wasn't around when my kid died except the one visit where he showed up with someone underage as his girlfriend and asked to borrow my ID to get her into a bar. He wasn't here for the birth of either of the other two. They barely know him.

There were moments he showed up to visit. But not for years. Not during the Johanna period. Not during Jan. A tiny bit with Ana - maybe twice. I never knew these ladies, so sorry no personal history here. He was pretty absent until Gloria.

Since she was older, with a relationship to children of her own, he seemed to want to develop one with me and mine. I saw more of him and began to forgive. We started to make sedentary plans for the future involving living together for the first time on the Acorn. I was finally going to have my turn, or so I thought.

Now I feel that may have been another smoke screen. Reflecting on how diligently he was striving to get Gloria out there without her complying, I understand now that may have been impossible. For Gloria he did what he had never done. For her he was the slave. He paid for everything. He stopped making his free meals at Threadgill's the main stay of his diet and took her out. He laid on the Rockstar and she fell for it. Too bad she didn't know it was another of his millions of lies. It'll all be clearer to her when she stops being so delusional about the man.

After talking to each of the ones I had an attachment to, I see they all do see him for who he was in the end. A man who loved women to the point that he hated them and drove them out of their minds. A man who was blessed with two daughters while wishing for a son, but who never took the time to know his grandson and granddaughter. A man who tried to be what people wanted by putting up an act. A man who would tell you whatever was needed to perpetuate his myth. [Who by the way is and is not the same father my sister had a relationship with.]

So if someone tells me that I don't know my dad or that I am not here for the right reasons they can go fuck themselves. I knew the truth about my dad from the start. Don't tell me I don't know the man. I probably know the real him better then everyone else. After all, I learned a lot at his knee the few moments he was kind enough to bring me into his presence. too bad more of it could have been healthier stuff....aside from his sage advice that Organic really means grown in shit.