Why I'm An Asshole
There's a futility to niceness. A realization I'd come to at an early age. I always watched my parents intently as a child. Their's a dynamic that would leave a lasting impression. Though my Father's indifference toward my doting Mother didn't so much shape the man I am today. More so, it shaped the man I allow the world to see.
It's still vivid, the scene of them I often recall. An entire childhood's worth of observation boiled down to one in particular. Funny, the things our child selves file away to be perused later by wiser eyes.
As always, my Father blared the Sinatra when he came home from work. Stein in hand, he'd drink glumly his Bud while reading the Examiner at the kitchen table. The disappointment in what he'd become written in the defeated hunch of a man whose life was a cruel joke. Genghis...the mail clerk. His Wife's joyous contentment as she milled about him and their children was an affront to the man he fancied he'd become, once upon a time. The words of Tyler Durden were never more poignant. Alas, some men aren't meant for the two and a half children and white picket fence. And hell to pay if this their fate.
But it was never this for my sisters and I. Never hell. Despite his ornery disposition, he was a good Father. It was more a walking on eggshells. Don't poke the bear written in whisper and tiptoe. Was my Mother who'd taken the brunt. A cruel fate to adore one who does not you. He tolerated her. Love replaced too easily in the storybook that should have been her life. The philandering Husband instead for her troubles. "Boys ask, men take," my Father once said to me, though now I can't recall the context.
So it was that I watched them and wondered. The question becoming certainty through the years. My Mother the saint, my Father the scoundrel. The dynamic a mystery only insomuch as its ubiquity. I'd long ago stopped asking what it is draws good women to bad men. Content instead to accept this that simply is.
As I write this there are very few certainties in my life. One is that I've my Mother in me. A kindness that, unchecked, would not bode well. Another is that I admire my Father. Not so much for what he is. Besides, he's gone soft in his middle-age. Grandchildren and such. Two of whom are my little girls. God and his sense of humor. No, it's an admiration borne of selfishness. Nice guys finish last is no mere saying. Is a truth that's evidenced in all I've seen since childhood. A truth that didn't so much kill a gentle heart, but make it that much harder to get to.