Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography Read Online Free Page A

fact, to me, they are merely predictable.
    There is no hoarier cliché than a child’s psyche rocked by divorce. And for much of my life I have not only resisted this notion, but have had a sort of vague disdain for anyone who pinned their adolescent or adult challenges on their parents’ broken lives. To do so is to substitute another’s life mistake for your own. And so later in life as I came to face my own shortcomings, I rarely considered the effect of a lost father on a four-year-old boy. That understanding would only come later, as I confronted my alcoholism and, more clearly, when I had two sons of my own. Anything painful surrounding my parents’ breakup I sealed off and buried, left unexplored and undisturbed, like nuclear waste.
    My mother was unprepared for my reaction to her unvarnished, truthful answer. At the mention of “divorce,” my body felt as if I had been shot, shot full of terrible stomachache and a swirling, spinning-out-of-control desolation. I began to cry. Clerks and customers passed us by, oblivious, before my mom hustled me outside as I began to deteriorate. “Do you know what divorce is?” she stammered. I remember thinking, you idiot, what do you take me for … a kid ?! “Of course I do!” I snapped. “I watch Divorce Court !”
    By the time we reached our navy-blue station wagon I was inconsolable. All I wanted was my dad. In the onrushing, awful vision of life without him, I was confused and scared. When would I see him again? Would I ever see him again? If so, for how long and under what circumstances? I told my mother I wanted to see him, now !
    It must have been a weekend because the first places we looked for him were the tennis courts. I can take you today on a tour of all Dayton’s various tennis facilities; this terrible pilgrimage is so etched in my mind. And as I sat desperately looking out the window, hoping to see him on a court, in passing cars, or on the street, I thought to myself bitterly, that’s what I get for asking the question. And with that I began to plot how to avoid any similar pain for the rest of my life. To avoid being emotionally bushwhacked on any level whatsoever. And somewhere in my unconscious, I vowed to never ask a question if there was any possibility of a painful or even uncomfortable answer, to disassociate from conflict. I began a life of avoidance of potential disharmony at all costs. Unknowingly, I set out down a road that cost me dearly.
    I never did find my father that day.

CHAPTER 3
    “I want to french you.”
    “You … you want to what me?”
    “French you! I want to french you!”
    I’m sitting underneath a stage platform, in the dark, with a cute girl dressed in a Jitterbug costume. We are rehearsing a community-theater rendition of The Wizard of Oz . I’m about ten years old, she is thirteen.
    “What do you mean ‘french’ me?”
    “It’s kind of a kiss. Don’t you know that?”
    I nod earnestly, but I have no idea what she’s talking about. I do know that she’s older and makes a very pretty Jitterbug. But “frenching” is not in my vocabulary, and I’m petrified of what is clearly about to go down.
    “Um, I think American is better,” I say. But Julie the Jitterbug has had enough of my dithering and she promptly proceeds to stick her tongue down my throat. Ho-ly shit! I think, almost gagging. What is she doing ? She’s wiggling it around in my mouth and I’m horrified and intrigued all at once. I’ve never had a kiss of any consequence and now I’m getting a mouth probe here in the darkness of the Dayton Community Theater.
    If I hadn’t fully grasped the sexy, subversive allure of the theater until then, this little vixen, smelling of perfume and greasepaint, has put me immediately on the path of greater understanding. After a moment I gain my sea legs.
    “You’re cute,” she says, finally taking a break.
    I take that to mean that our rendezvous is over. I mumble some excuse and climb out from under the