Week 12: Taking risks

I loved my father once.

My father was an alcoholic, through and through. He’d call himself a “social drinker” and he’d head off to an executive luncheon and never make it home. Well, He did when the police brought him in their private blue and white cab. They never did fine him, prosecute him or jail him. I guess the business suit distinguished him from the real alchies puking their guts out in the gutter. My father got to puke in the privacy on his home, in the porcelain throne, or maybe the closet when he forgot where he was.

My father was a womanizer through and through. He called it harmless. I guess it was harmless, if you think no-one is looking. Ask my mother, she thought it hurt. Especially when he spent the month with his “sexretary” (yep, he gave her a desk plaque that said that), while my mother was in Philadelphia with me having open heart surgery. You could even ask us kids when he’d use us as toy props to lure in an overworked waitress.

My father was a cheat through and through. He called it harmless, if he got away with it. Ask his business partner who left the company just before it floundered from my fathers extravagant personal expenses. Ask the IRS who attached his debts to my mother’s paycheck. Ask us kids who never got the child support he should have provided.

I loved my father once, children do that.