"My dad's an asshole," Bobby told me. "He's changed, I'll give him that. But I think the only reason for that is that he knows I'd beat the shit out of him if he even thought about doing half the shit he did to my mom, my brother, and me."
"My dad," Bobby said. "Piece of fuckin' work. Did you know when I was younger, that piece a' shit would say 'that's why you don't have any friends' whenever I did something he didn't like? I was in the 4th fuckin' grade. Who the fuck says that to a kid that age? My asshole of a fuckin' father, apparently."
"My mom says that he didn't know any better, that he was only doing that because that's the way his dad raised him. That might be true, but overall I think that's a bunch of bullshit. Anyone in their right mind would know that you don't down and yell at your kids for no reason.
You don't make them feel powerless and humiliated knowing damn well that one of your kids deals with that shit in school. I really do think he did all that shit because he enjoyed it. He didn't feel like he had power over anything else in his life but he did know he had power over his children and chose to take advantage of that power. He chose to through me around, he chose to humiliate me. That's what I'm having trouble coming to terms with," Bobby explains.
"He'd always say to my brother and me, 'I'll fight you straight up like a man,' to deter us from doing something. At the time, he knew there wasn't much we could do, we were just kids. He knew that wrongly intimidating his fucking kids was wrong, but he did that shit anyway.
Now I have visions. Visions of standing in front of him and saying, 'You always said you wanted to fight me like a man well I'm a man now, motherfucker! FIGHT ME, NOW!' He'd probably just stare at me, shocked in the face. I'd beat the everlovin' shit out of him and he knows that."
"If it weren't for my mom and my brother, I would've fought him a long fuckin' time ago. I'd beat the shit out of him, watch him bleed out all over that goddamn floor. I want so bad to make him feel what I felt back then. I want so bad to make him feel scared, humiliated, and powerless.
The only reason I haven't is because of my family. My mom and my brother would hate to see that and I know I'd feel so much guilt afterward. But that feeling of needing to fight him always stay with me, even when I'm at school. To say I don't like my father would be a fucking understatement."
"But here's the thing, my dad would always say 'sorry.' He would always apologize for yelling or throwing me across the room. But then he'd do it again, and again, and again, and again. And it turns out he wasn't sorry.
He only said that shit to shut us up. And it was always my fuckin fault for not respecting him, for not liking him. It would always be my fuckin fault for not wanting a relationship with my father, for not wanting anything to do with him. And now he's shocked because I don't want to have my first drink with him on my 21st. Ain't that some shit?"
