Sh*t My Dad Says

You Never Stop Worrying About Your Children

By my junior year of college, I had moved out of my parents’ house and into a three-bedroom house in Pacific Beach, San Diego, which I shared with my best friend, Dan, and a girl we were friends with. Even though my new place was only ten minutes away from my parents’, it might as well have been in Sweden for all my dad cared. There was no way he was going to visit.

“I don’t want to know what goes on in that house,” he said when I finally asked him if he wanted to come check it out.

“Dad, there’s nothing bad going on in the house.”

“No. You’re not understanding me. I don’t care what goes on in that house. It’s called apathy. Look it up.”

I was living on my own, but I still headed home once a week to do my laundry, raid the fridge, and take advantage of anything else I possibly could while I was there.

“You just barge in and take whatever you want, whenever you want it. It’s like you’re the goddamned SS and I’m living in fucking Nazi Germany,” my dad said after coming in from the backyard, where he was watering his roses one afternoon, to find me in the kitchen eating the bagel with cream cheese he had prepared for himself just moments earlier.

Even though he wouldn’t admit it, I always knew my dad was happy to see me when I came home. I’d usually head over at night, when he was home from work, and we’d have a nice chat about things that were going on in each other’s lives. It was the first time I had ever felt like I had an adult relationship with my dad. We were growing closer and becoming friends. I realized that we’d really broken down some barriers one evening in late June when he asked me to help him with a project in his garden that Friday.

“Friday, come over at four. Don’t be late, I don’t want to be fucking with this after dark. I’ll buy you dinner afterwards,” he offered.

Since he’d purchased the house in 1972, my dad’s garden had taken over almost every spare inch of our yards, front and back, and he’d planted not only flowers but tomatoes, lettuce, even corn. He loved his garden and spent most of his free time taking meticulous care of it. He was also very particular about who touched it. That Friday he was going to put up some fencing to grow tomatoes, a difficult job for one guy. He normally did the tough jobs on his own anyway. One time many years earlier I had tried to help him on a similar project and while bending the wire fence to wrap it into a cylinder, my hand had slipped and accidentally released the metal, which whipped around and stabbed my dad in the leg.

“GODDAMN IT FUCK!” he had screamed in pain, before turning to me and adding, “GO! AWAY!”

So when my dad asked me to help out on his garden that coming Friday, the request meant a lot to me. He didn’t need my help—he wanted it.

On Thursday, the night before I was supposed to help him out, I was studying with a girl named Stacy from my communications class. We were taking a summer school course because each of us had dropped a class during the school year. I had been in a few classes with Stacy before and had developed a major crush on her. I had never asked her out or even hinted at my feelings, mostly because she had a boyfriend, but even if she hadn’t, I doubt I would have gotten up the courage to make a move. She was blond, with large breasts, which I had pictured in my head numerous times during a variety of different fantasies I played out while masturbating. As we sat studying on a futon in her bedroom, she turned to me and said, “I’ve got to tell you something. Peter and I broke up.”

This was exactly how 96 percent of all my masturbatory fantasies of her started.

“I can’t study right now. I can’t concentrate. I want to do something fun. You want to do something fun?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, trying to act cool.

“Some of my friends and I are going down to Rosarito tonight for the Fourth. We rented a hotel room. You should come.”

She could have said, “Some of my friends are going to shove bottle rockets in our asses and then light them and shoot them at a police station—you should come,” and I would have said yes.

I told her I needed fifteen minutes to pack my stuff and strutted as calmly as I could out of her house. Then I dashed through the dark to my car, where, with beads of sweat forming at my temples I pressed my foot all the way down on the accelerator. Unfortunately the top speed of my 1986 Oldsmobile Brougham was around fifty-seven miles an hour, so it took me longer than I hoped to get home. I nervously tossed a few shirts, a pair of swim trunks, and every single condom I could find—which was about thirty—in my backpack. I drove back to Stacy’s house and she, her three best girlfriends, who had arrived in my absence, and I hopped in her friend’s Chevy Blazer and took off for Mexico.

A small Mexican beach town right next to Tijuana, Rosarito is a lot like the bleachers in Fenway Park during a Yankees–Red Sox game: crowded, dirty, and filled with thousands of loud, drunk Americans who haphazardly throw their garbage on the ground. Yet somehow it’s still kind of charming. Rosarito’s biggest draws are that the drinking age is eighteen, and everything is dirt cheap. The five of us spent the ride down the Pacific Coast Highway drinking Tecates and talking excitedly about how drunk we were going to get as soon as we arrived in Mexico.

“I’m gonna get so fucking wasted,” Stacy’s friend in the passenger seat said. “Justin, are you going to get fucking wasted, or are you gonna be a fag?” she asked, turning to me.

I wasn’t sure how she decided those were the only two paths to go down this weekend, but I clearly saw the direction she was hoping I would lean toward.

“I’m getting fucking wasted!” I screamed, trying to match her intensity.

Apparently I did, because everyone cheered, and then Stacy grabbed my crotch. It was a pretty unsexy move—and sort of hurt—but any interaction my crotch had with Stacy’s hand was welcome.

A couple hours later, we pulled up to our hotel in Rosarito and checked into our dingy room, which contained only one bed, a bathroom, and three different paintings of a large-breasted Mexican woman being carried off by a Spanish conquistador. We immediately started taking shots of tequila from the bottle we had purchased at the hotel’s gift shop. I went into the bathroom and put one condom in my sock and one in my baseball hat, just in case Stacy and I didn’t make it back to the hotel room. I threw some water on my face, patted my hair into place, and brushed my teeth.

When I came out of the bathroom, all three of Stacy’s friends were crowded around her, and she was curled up in a ball on the floor, crying hysterically.

“I miss Peter! I can’t believe we’re fucking broken up!” Stacy sobbed as her friends tried to calm her down.

Then Stacy got up, ran past me to the bathroom, and vomited in the toilet. For the next day and a half, Stacy sat in the hotel room with her friends, bawling and rehashing every detail of the breakup. A couple times I went out to a bar by myself, stood around for an hour, talked to no one, then went back to our room, which still reeked of vomit.

On Saturday afternoon, we piled into the Blazer and drove silently back up the coast to the U.S.–Mexico border. Stacy sat next to me the entire time, sleeping. As we crossed the border, I turned my cell phone back on, since I hadn’t had reception in Mexico. It began buzzing to indicate that I had new messages. As I punched in my voice mail access code, it dawned on me that I had forgotten to help my dad with the garden.

“You have four new messages,” the robotic voice declared. I was half expecting it to add, “You are so fucked.”

The first message played. “Son, it’s Dad, I need you to pick up something from the Home Depot before you come over. Call me back.”

“Next message,” the robotic voice mail alerted me as I began to feel nauseous.

“Son, where the fuck are you? I said to be over at four, right? It’s four-ten. Call me.”

The next message contained just a few moments of silence, and then the sound of hanging up. I felt a little relieved. Maybe he was over it by now.

“Next message, received today at three-thirty P.M,” said the robot.

“WHAT IN THE FUCK IS GOING ON? I stopped by your place and your roommate said you’re in Mexico! Are you in fucking Mexico?! CALL ME!”

I started sweating and couldn’t keep my legs still, which was unfortunate, seeing as we were just about to drive through the border patrol inspection. The officer waved us through even though I’m pretty sure I looked like I was sitting on about two thousand pounds of cocaine and hiding a half dozen illegal aliens in our trunk.

Once we were across the border, Stacy’s friend pulled over at the first exit.

“I am totally fiending for some Jack in the Box,” she said.

“No. I need to go home right now,” I snapped, my voice ascending to a note I hope no woman ever hears out of my mouth again.

“Whoa, chill out. We’re just gonna grab some Jumbo Jacks—God.”

In my head, I was fantasizing about jumping into the front seat, drop-kicking her out of the car, slamming the door, and stepping on the gas. Instead I just sat in the dining area of the Jack in the Box while the four girls leisurely enjoyed their hamburgers. I called Dan to see how much damage was done.

“Your dad looked all pissed off. I told him you were in Mexico,” Dan said.

“You told him I was in Mexico?! Why did you tell him I was in Mexico?!” I screamed.

“Because you were in Mexico.”

I hung up the phone. Shortly after, Stacy and her friends moseyed back to the car. We continued our drive up the coast and, upon reaching San Diego, headed to Stacy’s apartment, where my car was parked. I grabbed my travel bag out of the back of the Blazer and briskly walked toward my car.

“Um, okay—bye?” Stacy said snidely.

“Yeah, yeah, bye—sorry,” I replied, jumping into my car and slamming the door.

I began the drive over to my parents’ house, trying to figure out what lie I could tell to diffuse the situation. I came to the conclusion that there really was no diffusing this because it had too many volatile elements: I blew off my dad; I disappeared and was unreachable; and—the final straw—I had gone to Mexico. My parents had irrational fears of Mexico and assumed that once you crossed the border, drug runners made you swallow a heroin balloon and then within the hour you were in a bathtub full of ice and they were harvesting your kidneys.

As I pulled up to the house, I spotted my dad’s car in the driveway. I walked up to the front door and opened it. I saw my dad sitting in the living room, staring right at me as if he’d been in that position for the last two days.

“WHERE IN THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN?!” he screamed, getting up from his chair and quickly moving toward me like an overweight panther.

“Listen, hold on,” I said.

And then I launched into an elaborate lie about a school project and a birthday that made no sense before he cut me off.

“Mexico!! You went to fucking Mexico? They’ll gut you like a pig, piss on your corpse, and then say ‘Welcome to Mexico!’” he screamed. “You say you’re going to fucking be somewhere, you fucking be there!” he added.

“I know, I know!” I hollered back in defense.

“No, you don’t know! You don’t know shit! Everyone is worried sick about you. I got your mother freaking out, then everybody else. I called the cops to look for you!”

“You called the cops?” I said.

“Yeah, I called the cops!”

“Well, shouldn’t you call them and tell them you found me?”

My dad paused for a split second.

“They’ll figure it out,” he said, the tone in his voice changing.

I looked at him. He very rarely lied to me, and when he did, it was obvious.

“You didn’t call the cops, did you?” I asked suspiciously.

“I called somebody,” he replied.

“Was that somebody the cops?”

Silence fell over the room.

“No,” he said, a little embarrassed. “But fuck you! I could have called the cops! I should have called them, but I figured you were just being dopey, and I’d have wasted their time!”

I realized I had somewhat disarmed him and should just cut my losses now and try to make things right. So I apologized profusely, explained that I had gotten caught up and completely forgotten about our date, and reaffirmed all the reasons why I was an idiot.

“Okay, okay, I get it, you don’t have to keep listing reasons why you’re a dumb shit,” he said, interrupting my laundry list of self-insults.

He motioned me over to him. I cautiously approached. Then he grabbed me and gave me a big hug.

“You little shit,” he said. “I can’t wait till you have some kid and you got to worry about what happens to him. You never stop worrying about your children. It sucks. You watch what you stick your dick into, because this is your life, this bullshit right here.”

He released me from the hug and grabbed a plastic grocery bag filled with chips.

“Grab that bottle of ketchup, we’re late for the barbecue your uncle is throwing.”

“I was going to meet Dan at the beach, actually,” I said tentatively, hoping he would respect my Fourth of July plans.

“Shut the fuck up and grab the bag. You got some balls.”

“Man, you should have seen your mom tear that RadioShack manager a new asshole. I would venture to say she made a home inside his asshole. That will be the last time RadioShack tries to fuck with your mother.”

“There’s something to be said for sitting around and drinking a beer while you watch your dog try to fuck a punching bag.”

“People are surprised Mark McGwire did steroids? Look at him! He looks like they should have him in a stall on display at the fair with some poor son of a bitch cleaning up his shit.”

“It’s like being on a merry-go-round, except the horse you’re riding fucks you.”

“There seem to be a lot of gay people there…. Oh please, as if that’s what I meant by that. Trust me, none of them would ever want to fuck you anyway. They’re gay, not blind.”

“Have you tried going out to places, talking to people, making an effort?… Bullshit. Talking to someone in a Jiffy Lube waiting room is not making an effort.”

“I don’t want it…. I understand what it does…. Yes, I do. And I don’t give a shit if all of your friends have it. All of your friends have dopey fucking haircuts, too, but you don’t see me running to my barber.”

“I would simmer down a bit if I were you…. Well, for one, the only one who was impressed was the little girl sitting behind you, and for two, they don’t exactly hand out Medals of fucking Honor for eating two Denny’s breakfast plates in one sitting.”

“Have you told them it bothers you?… Are they bigger than you?… Are you afraid of getting your ass kicked?… Ah, okay, I probably should have asked that question first, woulda saved time. Yeah, you’re just gonna have to deal with the noise, son.”