When I was in elementary school, my father liked to watch Star Trek which, sorry folks, I fucking hated. I’d groan every time my father walked into the TV room. He’d grab the remote and change the channel to whatever he wanted. You could be watching the most spectacular thing ever and it would be gone with a click. He wouldn’t even say, “Sorry, kid.” You just weren’t there. When it was Star Trek night, I’d go, “O my fucking god, this show is so stupid,” and stomp off. Even at the innocent age of 8, I understood that the show was all about fucking women. I’d stomp off quietly, of course–just slip away. No one would notice I was gone. When I was in middle school, we no longer ate dinner together as a family, but we did watch TV together. But that was because there was only one. How dinner worked was this: my mom made something for my dad, when my dad got home, he’d go to the bedroom, take his suit off, put on a white t-shirt and his blue ratty terry cloth robe with just his undies, then stretch out on the green sectional sofa, and turn on the TV. My mom would bring him his plate of food which he would set on his chest and he’d eat and watch TV while taking occasional sips from his warm can of Pepsi. My mom had usually already eaten so she’d sit on the couch and rub his feet. Me and my sister would go down at some point, look over what my mom made, eat that or grab something else. Eventually, my parents went to marriage counseling which led to family counseling which led to all of us eating dinner together as a family because that’s what real families do which we did for a time but that nearly led to all of us murdering all of the others so we stopped. My dad went back to his sofa and us kids went back to our rooms and my mother went back to rubbing his feet. HAPPY FATHER’S DAY
*Painting by Bari Kumar
