NATURE VS NURTURE

Today would have been my father's 83rd birthday, so in commemoration of the day that he entered this world I thought I would share a bit about him--of course in my own inappropriate and somewhat offbeat way.  So if inappropriate father/son stories disturb you, I suggest you stop reading now and move on.

Although my relationship with my father was mostly a nightmare, our last nine months together was precious and fulfilling.

For reasons I cannot remember, in 1995, G, my lover invested some effort in pushing me to make contact with my father.  I hadn't spoken to the beast in several years and for very good reason.

But even after I detailed a lifetime of abuse, G insisted that it was important for me to do this.  Was G psychic?  Had he been secretly contacted by one of my sisters and encouraged to influence me?  I never really pursued that.

In any case, I caved and contacted the monster, only to discover that he had just been diagnosed with cancer and had but a few months to live.

Our last encounter some year's earlier had been a grand opera over money.  Shortly after I came out and divorced my wife, my parents came up with the very creative idea that I should compensate them financially for not having delivered on their expectations: grandchildren, etc.  They also wanted a refund for the wedding expenses and the various gifts they had bestowed on their married son and soon to be ex-daughter-in-law.

This lawsuit dragged on for two years and as it became clear that they were going to lose, my father came up with a new tactic: harassment and extortion.

He began faxing hate mail and threats to my office.  The hate mail focused on the claim that I had AIDS and would die alone and rejected by life and the world.  The threats concerned payments of large sums of money in exchange for movies and photographs of my childhood, my collection of paintings from high school and college and boxes of toys and memorabilia from my childhood.

Since these faxes were all going through the company mail room, my relationship with my father became something of a legend in certain circles and a main topic of company gossip.  When asked about it by the more courageous employees, I would mostly shrug my shoulders and just walk away.  Occasionally, I would remark that at least my father hass never been boring.

I did not respond to any of these threats and little by little as he imposed deadlines and I missed them, he actually burned almost everything. 

So some years later when G encouraged a "reconciliation," I was a tad reluctant to jump back into the snake pit.

But for a variety of reasons, some good, some illogical, some deluded and some sentimental I took the plunge.

Terminal cancer had certainly mellowed my father and turned him into a remarkably interesting and charming man.  Of course, for the first time in his adult life he was actually sober--something I had never seen--and for the first time in my life I was able to talk to my father without a bottle of Scotch in the way.

We had nine months, give or take a few brief periods of coma.

Mostly, I promised not to share many of the things he told me about his life.  I became his confidant and his confessor.  For the first time in our lives we actually came to know each other and to understand many things about each other.  I did not walk away from this experience loving my father or even forgiving him, but I did gain understanding, relief and a fair amount of resolution--and that was a great gift.

Each year on his birthday I try to remember different aspects of his life and how they contribute to who and what I am.

During those final nine months, one of the most remarkable subjects we discussed was his sex life.  As his son this should have been off limits and seen as hugely inappropriate, but considering our past and the circumstances, it flowed quite naturally.  And I was glad of it. I learned so much about myself--more than most men ever have the good fortune to learn about themselves.  And one of the things I learned was that kinky sex is a family tradition.

Is it in the genes or is it seeded by some subtle behavioral family dynamic?  One of the major reasons my father "strayed" as often as he did was my mother's lack of interest in my father's pursuit of the unusual.  In fact, for many years, he blamed me for this.  According to him, prior to my birth, my mother was a pistol but after I was born she ceased to be his playmate and totally became my mother.  He hated me for that.  As a young man, his new son had robbed him of his wild sex life, at least domestically.  Having spent the war in India, he claimed to have learned many tricks, positions and sexual combinations that he shared with my mother until she became pregnant avec moi.  So my parent's brief foray into the world of the Kama Sutra, group sex, bi-sexuality and kink lasted from 1946 until early 1948; I was born on October 22, 1948.

So starting in 1949, my father started outsourcing his needs and desires, flexing his imaginative libido well into his late 60s.

And for nine months, he downloaded as much about this as he could remember. 

So here's the big nature vs. nurture question.  As I listened to my father's tales of fantasies fulfilled, I was repeatedly shocked and confused and sometimes embarrassed by the simple fact that many of his antics were identical to my own. 

Nature? Nurture?  Spooky, for sure.

How is that a father and son who have never discussed sex share very similar and very specific sexual fantasies?  Of course, you're wondering how many fathers and sons ever even discuss this enough to learn such a thing.

Well, we did and I learned.  I also learned some new tricks.

Since it's my dad's birthday today, I'll share his all time favorite game with you.  It's my way of saying Happy Birthday.

When my mother was pregnant with me, my father found his first girlfriend, a sales clerk from the Jonas Department Store on 14th Street, just a short walk from my parent's apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.  He had met her when he was buying a birthday present for my mother.

My father would meet the girl during her lunch break, take her into an employee bathroom, tie her arms behind her back with her stockings and then perch her on the edge of the small bathroom sink.  He would then fill the sink with the hottest water possible while he was fucking her.  Her arms tied behind her back and unable to balance herself, she would jerk in response to the pain, faster and faster up and down as she struggled to keep her naked buttocks out of the burning hot water.  Each time she made contact with the hot water, she would spasm and pound into my father.  The thrill was heightened by the fact that the toilet was off the employee locker room and if she made too much noise they would be discovered and she would be fired.

At the age of 72, only weeks away from death, wired and tubed, cancer having spread throughout his major organs and lymph system, my father told me that the memory of that fuck still made him horny.

As I said, it was a fascinating and most unusual nine month-long father-son relationship.

Happy Birthday, Dad, wherever you are.

Comments

[Patrick]

Fascinating, wow.

[Matthew Rettenmund]

Fascinating and the "wow" to me is that it's generated no comments while other sites get hundreds of comments for posting silly bits of "info" about Nicole Richie. The story is really compelling and makes you think about how we all presume older people were never young, and parents could never have been as venal as we are. I can't imagine getting back in touch in the first place, but looks like you're glad you did, and so am I for having read your story.