Dear racist parents

Yes, my fellow parents, at least those of you who happen to be a slight bit racist and I will throw in the insecure fathers out there who are in the process of raising drunken whores with your insane control issues, a little advice, stop it.

Stop being racists. Please. As for the control of your young daughters, I know, it is a fine line we men must walk, wanting to protect our sweet and innocent daughters from teenage boys, those same dangerous and hormonally imbalanced teenage boys that, well, we were once.

I'll get back to the racists in a minute, but let me focus on fathers. I spent a few days this past winter with a wonderfully complex lawyer and we kind of bonded. We were in a far off hotel on business, and during the day we would spend it slowly, painfully slowly, going over the testimony of an elderly man who may or may not have, at one time or another, confronted a pile of Asbestos dust. Oh my is right. One evening we spent having dinner and sharing a bottle of wine. He is the father of two young girls, I am the father of two teenage girls. When I told him that, his eyes lit up and he said something like "that must be tough."

It's not, but I knew what he meant, because we men, we talk in grunts and shrugs and a knowledge that has been passed down from caves. What he meant was, teenage girls in full bloom of impending sexuality are both appealing and appalling. For the average teenage boy, a beautiful girl (and I am blessed with two) can be the most combustable force in the universe. For a father, seeing his baby in a mini-mini skirt, slinking out of the house, saying, "I'll be back later" can mean only one thing, where did I put that shot gun.

As reformed teenage boys, men know what is always on the mind of teenage boys and that is having sex with teenage girls. Some fathers talk about guns and threats and other things, especially with teenage boys in the room, because that is part of our job. The problem is, sometimes that works and the boys follow the rules and sometimes that does not, and the father becomes a grandfather.

Real story; I had a rebuilt British racing green MGB when I was 17. It was the most beautiful sports car I had ever seen, I spent countless hours polishing it, cleaning it, fiddling with the engine so it purred just right. Then one day, I met this incredibly beautiful girl, who went to another high school, who did not know I was sort of a goofball, so she thought I might be smart or something and she agreed to go out. I would pick her up at 7 that night. I knocked on the door, she opened it and introduced me to her dad. He told her she should finish fixing her hair and he had me sit down. I sat on a couch, he sat on an overstuffed chair and went back to drinking a beer and reading the paper. Every now and then he would peer over the top of the paper to look at me. At one point the paper got folded up and this man, a pretty large intimidating man, leaned over to my general direction and asked how I met his daughter. I explained that we had met earlier that day. "You expect to get into her pants?"

So, I grew up kind of naive. I'll be honest, because I am hardly naive anymore it is not so hard to admit that at that time, I was terribly naive. At first, I thought he was asking if I had any plans to actually wear a pair of his daughters pants, which made absolutely no sense to me at all. No, I said, I had no plans whatsoever to get into her pants.

"Let me be clear, you lay one hand on my daughter tonight, and I mean, you touch her for any reason, I will gut you like a trout and your body will be in pieces from her to Santa Barbara."

I think I threw up a little bit in my mouth and my date, right then, walked into the room, looking beautiful and sexy and she said, let's go. Needless to say, much to her amusement, no matter what she did in her teenage girl attempts to let me know that seduction would be appreciated, I did nothing. You have to understand that I wanted to do everything, even the things that I did not even know were possible, but her father made it clear, you touch, you die. So instead, my goal was a touchless date, but not one that would leave her upset so she would go back and tell daddy I was a cad. I dropped her at home and never saw her again.

Insecure fathers have been giving speeches like the one I received for a long time, sometimes men clean guns when young men come to take a girl on a date, or sometimes they lift weights. My lawyer friend said he thought he might have a convoluted contract for them to sign and it really hit me. What are we doing? Isn't this process supposed to be wonderful? Isn't the bloom of dating and nacent sexuality supposed to be a hard enough time on those going through it? The idea that those fathers with their guns and threats feel some sort of dominion over their daughters is not just disgusting, it's depressing.

That said, I do have two dateable daughters. Sometimes I have not met a date at all. Sometimes I have met them and retreated to my studio. Or hosted pizza night. I never did put up the solid dangerous dad persona to try and control the young mans hormonal urges. I always thought that was stupid. I always understood that the young boys hormonal urges are often met with the young girls same urges, which is why sometimes, parents become grandparents long before high school graduation. That did not happen with me, but it has little to do with how clean my gun was when a boy came to take my daughter to a movie.

That is not the crux of this post. Over the last couple of months I have been lucky enough to watch as my oldest daughter prepares to leave for college and every now and then, she would invite a friend over, or friends over, and they would watch television, or hang out outside, or do whatever it is they were doing. See, I trust my daughters, so I stay clear of too much interaction. Then the black boys showed up.

Oh, I could call them African American young men, because they are, but they also happen to be black, and for the sake of me writing this, black is what I will write. Lucky for me in my life I have dated a United Nations of racial types and configurations. I could go down the list, but for a while, I could name countries only by the name of former dates, not by country name. Uganda? Oh you mean Ziggy. Poland? Shartruska. The list is long, impressive and the names are filled with memories and smiles.

Anyway, I met these two young men, they were sitting on my couch, we shook hands, they seemed nice enough. They hung for a while, then everyone disappeared, then the next night they were back and it has been like that for a month or so. I like having them around. They are nice to my dead lesbian dog, and she seems to enjoy their attention. Then I heard how cool I am, because when white parents usually meet them, an order goes out that the daughter can no longer see, date, hang out with "those" guys anymore. I did, I heard that. I think my jaw dropped to the floor. Welcome back to 1950's America.

OK, I did date a United Nations of people, and many of them were different shades than I. After a life of such a palette, it would be the utmost in hypocrisy for me to all of a sudden base distaste on people hanging in my house solely on skin color. Second, these guys are respectful and friendly. Sure, they listen to music I don't like, but every genration pulls that card out of their hat, so I am not going to lose my mind over that one. They seem to groove on my daughter and she likes hanging with them, another plus. So, what am I supposed to find wrong with this picture? Baggy shorts? Really, and this is the point of this all. My fellow parents, stop it.

Stop worrying about your teenage baby doing the exact same things you did. Unless you lived a solitary life in a convent, chances are you snuck out, smoked out, went dancing, did the things your parents forbid you to do, and lived to not tell them about it.

My role model as a father was this brilliant New York Jew. All he wanted from his girls, one of whom I happened to be madly in love with, was honesty. So when the girl I was dating got high on acid, she told her dad. When she was not going to make it home for the weekend because there was some sort of orgy in the works, she told her dad. When her sister came out as a lesbian, she told her dad. See, her dad loved his girls and wanted what was best for them, but he also wanted to know what was really going on in their lives, not the sugar coated version so many people feed their families for fear of judgement or worse. So he got it and without casting a stone, he would offer advice, acid bad, orgies scary (use protection) dyking it up, fine, just get your work done. He remains my father role model.

When his daughter brought home a fierce looking black man as a date one night, Mr. Role Model did not flinch, he did not get a gun and begin to clean it, he sat at the table, shook the mans hand and spoke to him as his equal. Asked about the plan for the night, what sort of car he drove, that sort of thing. No implied threat, nothing. Now, my role model friend was a strong and smart man, so maybe the undercurrent of the conversation was, you do have a car, you do have a job, you are responsible and you will be careful with my daughter - but nothing was said flat out, no threat, nothing.

Which brings me back to the young black teens in my living room. The story they tell is that white parents shun them after meeting solely based on their blackness. The story I told them was I will hold off judging them until I see a little more of who they are underneath their blackness, then we can go from there. I did mention, do not take my cool attitude as permissiveness, I am a dangerous snake when it comes to protecting my daughters and if I must uncoil to attack and protect them, you will not want to be within striking distance. So far, they like me, I like them, even though they are black and I am not. For the other parents judging kids solely on skin color or baggy shorts, run to the store today and buy a god damned mirror because the problem is not who your daughter is introducing you to.