Daddy Issues

Thinking bout my daddy makes me ill. He did bad things when I was young so he died in a chair, hair smoking, eyes like jelly. I didn't see it but I seen films and I've a vivid imagination. That's what Uncle Joe said: "You've a vivid imagination. Don't waste it. Don't waste your life." He died days after, peacefully. Mom said he was smiling in his sleep, so he must've died happy. I liked that. Maybe he stayed in the dream.

I grew up in a small town where people pretended to mind their business, while peering over fences and sticking their nose up their neighbours' asses. Everyone gasped when I knocked up Anna. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when that business ended before it started. She was upset. I was just numb. Shit like that does that. To me, anyway. I felt relief, not that it was gone, but that we didn't get a chance to decide to let it live. It must've known, all small and mindless, it must've sensed it, and popped out into death.

School was a chore and classmates were cunts. Teachers were dartboards. I read the books but it might as well been Latin. It was like static; it filled my head with nothing. I loved movies. Loved them. Space movies with heroes and villains. Comedies with slapstick and slippy floors. Westerns---narrow eyes, no name, fast trigger finger. Better than life. Realer. Wished I could jump in, make a mark, live. Often went home and hid in my room. Walls were palettes, my brain was a paintbrush.

The strange man came to me when I was seventeen. I remember he smelled like cigars. His teeth were yellow. "You're just like your daddy," he said. He was shaking his head, looking me up and down like I was some slab of meat. "Need a job?"

I told him to fuck off and pushed past him to the bar. One big blobby hand stopped me. "Think it over. Lotsa money out there. Wanna spend your life takin orders?"

I can't remember his eyes. I don't think I looked at them. I was too scared, or disgusted, or something. I just put the pint glasses on the bar, thought bout the hair on fire, the screams. Fifty quid a night. It was fuckall, but I was ok. I was ok.