As a parent you should never play favorites, that is key. It’s not true, but it is key. I recently wrote how Becky#7 was my all time favorite daughter for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that she moved out at age 16.
By far my least favorite child would be Roscoe, but he is everyones least favorite everything. He lies, he cheats, he steals and he kicks really hard. He is the meanest 7 year old I have ever met, I hate him and he hates me and right now we are both in counseling because I can’t stand being around him and he has promised to kill me fist chance he gets. That’s exactly what he told the police when I called them a couple of weeks ago, right to the officer, “first chance I get, gonna kill that son of a bitch” is what the officer wrote down in the official report.
Roscoe is certainly my least favorite son. Then again, when you have 17 children, some of them are just not going to be very nice. Barcelona Becky has been a handful from day one. First, I should explain her name. Her mother was a promiscuous flight attendant working international routes in the 90’s. While we were married, she had three children by four different fathers, you do the math. While I had been hog swangled into raising these miscreants as if they were my very own, for the most part, it has been painfully obvious that none of them are even faintly related to me in either temperament, personality or musical aptitude.
Barcelona Becky is more plotting terrorist than loving daughter. She was a sweet girl of 4 the first time she hit me with a gardening implement. At 7 she almost killed me with a well placed wine glass, a can of bug spray and a 16th century dagger. By the time she was 10 she had managed to shackle me to a moving lawnmower add a burning tank of gasoline strapped to my leg and somehow convince the neighbors dog to “fetch” me. As a teenager she would return from girls school in Switzerland intent on my death. We would spend weeks avoiding one another, until I would find myself driving her to the airport, and she would grab the steering wheel, pulling us into oncoming traffic, or worse. She was, to say the least, a handful, but always fun to be around, which is why I always have enjoyed her company, at least from a safe distance.
Barcelona Becky spent the Hasidic Holidays with us last weekend. She lit the candles and cooked the stale meats as is the tradition, although I am pretty sure it is a stinky tradition that she is making up as she goes along, because I Googled both Hasidic Holidays and stinky meat tradition and nothing at all came up. I was going to confront her, but in the past, confronting Barcelona Becky has only led to pain and hospitalization.
Rule number one with my daughter Barcelona Becky, never, under any circumstance, eat anything she has cooked. I have become an expert at avoiding even getting anything close to my mouth, for fear that the poison she is using could be inhaled as well as ingested. At the point where we are all seated at the dining table, and just as we are about to take our first bite, I will point out something on the ceiling, or a bird outside the window, just as I was about to take that first bite, and I will flick the bite onto the floor, where our latest dog will happily gobble it up. Generally at that point, I sit back and watch. Nine times out of ten, within about 60 seconds, the dog wobbles to the center of the dining room, foams at the mouth for a few minutes and then, dramatically, dies.
Right about then Barcelona Becky usually clears the table and we all go to our respective rooms. Hasidic Holidays are indeed a strange ceremony. Truth be told, the way we celebrate the Hasidic Holidays is not all bad, because once a year we do end up getting a new dog, which is kind of nice.
For whatever reason my therapist has recommended that I start going to bars and dance clubs that cater mostly to transvestites. I bring this up because Barcelona Becky was reading my super private journal during her Hasidic Holiday tradition of “invasion of privacy time,” which has usually meant damaging her brothers and sisters sense of decency in past years, but this year, it was my ultra-secret diary that became part of a macabre show and tell.
Instead of bringing me shame, as was her ultimate goal I am sure, I invited Barcelona Becky to a club downtown that has become popular with the transvestite crowd. She agreed and I knew that this would be a turning point in out father/daughter relationship. You never know going into some sort of major event how it might change you, but when you are stepping into an unknown and unplanned scene, you do know it will affect you, just not exactly how.
Many years ago my young daughter Salamander Egghead and I were in New York City and there was a show at the Museum of Modern Art. A collection of original art from Berlin, all created after World War 2. As we walked thru the various galleries you could see how the battles and the conflicts had worn on the peoples souls, how it had affected the artists and how even in their inspired art they were still filled with shame and personal disgust, it was disturbing and sad. My daughter and I were unprepared for the emotional turmoil the show would put us through and as we walked out of the museum we were both in tears, holding hands, feeling the power that heartfelt art can bring down upon you if you have an open heart and a willing eye.
Saturday night Barcelona Becky and I drove the Club Wanker and parked in a far off lot. We walked together, me dressed mostly in dark blue because I am going thru my dark blue period, while Barcelona Becky was dressed in garish bright pink polka dots against a bright green background. If we were not going to a club that was welcoming to transvestites I was not sure I would be excited to be seen in public with my own daughter. She reached out and grabbed my hand as we crossed the road to the entrance of the club. She had not held my hand since I walked her to the bus in second grade.
I paid the doorman 20 dollars and we were inside. Part of my therapy is just to be near men dressed as women. There is something inside my head that does not understand this culture. My therapist, Dr. Benzo Meesvian, believes (wrongly, ironically enough) that when people are afraid of something, they should force themselves to do it. When I told Dr. Meesvian that I was afraid of transvestites, he immediately ordered me to go to a “tranny bar.” There I was, standing with Barcelona Becky in the largest gathering of men dressed as women in the Northeast. I took a deep breath. The music was loud, the perfume disgusting. I looked around, a lot of men who looked like men dressed as women, and I leaned into Barcelona Becky and I said, “I have to go.”
We were out of there as if someone had lit a fire in my ass.
Later at a diner I could not tell her why I was so ill at ease. She said this, “why do you think you have to be at ease with everyone?”
“I don’t.”
“But you went to that bar. You went because some quack therapist said you should confront your fears.”
“I don’t fear transvestites.”
“They make you uncomfortable.”
“Or something.”
“Do you want to wear a dress dad?”
“If I wanted to wear a dress, I would.”
“Yeah, I know. Maybe trannies just freak you out.”
“OK, So?”
“So what. We are allowed to be freaked out over whatever we want.”
“I should share this with Dr. Meesvian.”
“Yeah, yeah, you should share that with your quack doctor, that and a punch in his stupid fucking face.”
That right there, that moment, that brilliance is the reason Barcelona Becky is my favorite daughter. That and she paid for dinner.
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