At the World Arm Wrestling Championships, Drew Dempster was the heavy favorite over Danny "Baby Arm" McCoyMy dad is a complex man. He's not the human equivalent of a David Lynch movie, but he is complex nevertheless. I guess he's complex in the same way that a seven (7)-year-old probably thinks Monopoly is complex. All those cards and rainbow monies. Over the course of my life my dad has done and said things that would annoy, anger, bother, humiliate, amuse, shock and scare me. Growing up I was in constant fear of his temper, which could swell up at the slightest inconvenience. But there were also moments of surprising hilarity and genuine affection. I guess life was sort of a trail mix of emotions for him. I wasn't sure which side of my dad I would see from one day to the next. One of the earliest memories I have of my father being mad at me was when I wasn't even in school yet, maybe four, and I had run away from my babysitter's house and into the woods past her backyard. I had gotten into some poison ivy, and came back to my watcher's house scratched and itchy. When my dad came to pick me up, my babysitter told him what had happened. I distinctly remember my dad looking down at me and saying, "I can't wait to get home." Once home, I was promptly sent into my bedroom which I shared with my older brother, Dale. The threat of physical abuse was so palpable I started bawling as Dale changed out of his school uniform. "You shouldn't have done it, Eric," my brother said with an air of smugness that he still reeks of to this day. My dad eventually came in, sent my brother out, and bent me over his knee. I lay bare-assed as he began to rein down upon my supple flesh a torrent of sharp slaps that turned my butt cheeks a deep, red color. Now, over the years I had become accustomed to getting spanked, and had developed a technique to lessen the punishment. First, I clenched my cheeks as tight as I could to deaden the sting. Second, I usually flailed about and slid from my father's knees like a fish out of water, hoping desperately that he would consider the punishment properly received. Ten times out of ten, though, he merely pulled me back up across his knees and started the process over again. If this is my first memory of punishment, then it is also the catalyst that birthed my great fear of my dad growing up. But his punishments were not always abusive. Well, not in the hitting way. For instance, one day my brother and I were playing in the living room. I was probably five and Dale was seven. We were watching The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! on TV, and decided to act out the show ourselves. The problem was that we both wanted to be Mario. For the next moment are argument consisted of "I'm Mario!" "No! I'm Mario" Until finally my older brother suggested an alternative. "You're Koopa!" He shouted at me. I was standing on the couch, looking down on him when he hurled this nefarious accusation at me. My honest reply to him was "You're a dumb fuck!" Now, as much as my old man loves saying the word 'fuck' I'm actually surprised I didn't say it more often, but the truth was I didn't even know what the word was, only that my mom and dad could say it, but not me. Well, my mom was in the bathroom dying curling her hair, when all of a sudden I heard her shout "WHAT!" She came storming out of the bathroom, eyes blazing with fury. I was terrified. My brother and I were sent to our room, as punishment would be meted out by Father. For this indiscretion, my dad took both Dale and I into the kitchen and grabbed a bar of soap from the sink and shoved it into each of our mouths. Now, it wasn't just letting the soap rest on our tongue. My dad scraped the soap across our teeth like a fucking cheese grater. My gums were bleeding by the end of it, and my mouth was filled with large chunks of Ivory soap stuck in every nook and cranny of my teeth. It sucked. Now, because Dale and I were subjected to this type of punishment throughout of lives, and because we were both little bastards who deserved it, we each relished any time my dad made an ass out of himself, and this continues to this day. One time when my family was staying in a motel, my dad had bought Burger King for everyone. As my mom was eating her sandwich a large tomato slipped from the bun and landed on the floor. "Ewww..." the kids said. My mom picked it up, bits of hair and dirt stuck to it now, and placed it on a napkin on the nightstand. Well, Dad was in the bathroom during this, and when he came out, all he saw was a free, unwanted, perfectly good tomato lying on a napkin. So he just bent over, picked it up, and popped it in his mouth. Immediately, we all tried to stifle our laughter for fear of Dad's retribution, but alas, Mom could not hold it in any longer. With tears running down her cheeks, she admitted, "That fell onto the floor! It had shit all over it!" We all busted out laughing, as Steve-O had been had. Another minor victory over my dad's tyrannical reign came in 2002 when my family was vacationing in Washington DC. We were attempting to board the subway, but in order to get through the turnstile, one had to take his ticket, insert it into the front of a metal box that controlled the arms of the turnstile, and then take the ticket when it popped out of the top of the box. Doing this would enable the metal arms to move and the person could get through. No one in my family had a problem with this concept, except Dad. When the metal box took in his ticket, he thought it had disappeared from the face of the goddamned earth! We watched with bemused laughter as he futilely tried to force the metal arms to move. He began to violently shake the contraption, until finally a small Indian man who worked at the subway yelled, "Tade da teekit! Sir, you must tade your teekit!" "What fuckin ticket!" my dad offered. Now, everyone could see the ticket sticking noticeably out of the top of the box, but my dad continued his assault on the machine, until finally the Indian man had to come over and tade the teekit himself. Then, on the subway, my brother and sister noticed two elderly Asian women looking at my dad and talking to each other in whispered smiles. Turns out they were staring at my dad's crotch, because when he went to the bathroom that morning, he zipped is shirt into his pants, so it was sticking out of his zipper. These small victories, in which the world kicked my dad in the nuts every so often, were moments I cherished and they got me through my childhood. As I grew older, though, my father opened up more, and let me into his strange id. I grew to love his morbid and perverse sense of humor once I began to understand it. My dad loves to say things that he thinks are funny. He is his own audience, so he doesn't care who is around to hear it or how inappropriate it might me. In the summer of 1997, my family was down in Fort Worth, TX visiting my mom's brother. My uncle had a pool in his back yard, and I went outside early one day with my dad and my uncle. As the old men drank and bullshitted, it fell on me to blow up the rafts for the pool. At 12 I had the lung capacity of a seventy (70)-year-old smoker, so I rather humbly told my dad that I couldn't blow up the raft. My dad snatched the raft from my hands and pinched the air nozzle in between his thumb and index finger. "All you do, Eric," he said to me, "is bite low and blow. Just like I tell your mother." Now, was it right for my dad to discuss his fellatio instructions to my mother with me? I would argue that no, it wasn't right. Not to mention that this little joke was also told to my mom's older brother. But Steve-O didn't give a shit. Funny is funny, and now that I'm older, it was a pretty fucking hilarious thing to say. One summer my family went camping, and one evening my dad and I went to showers. When we were done, we wadded our dirty clothes into a ball and carried them under our arms back to our campsite. While en route, we heard a soft female voice coming from behind us. "Um, sir?" We stopped and turned around. It was a mother and her little girl sitting on a picnic table. She was pointing to the ground. "I think you dropped something," she said cautiously. My dad had indeed dropped something. A sweaty pair of dirty tighty-whiteys. Rather than be embarrassed about it-as I was-my dad simply walked back, picked them up, and told the woman, "These'll scare your kids." There was also a time while driving over the Council Bluffs viaduct, my dad managed to get behind a piece of shit Le baron, with its wheels positioned a foot out from the body of the car. The licence plate on the car read BEANER. When my dad passed the car he yelled at the Hispanic gentleman in the Le baron, "Thanks for warning us, asshole!" When my dad converted to Catholicism in his early fifties, my family thought that his first-time confession, fifty-some years of bad deeds, would take hours. But Steve-O got us there. His first reconciliation as a Catholic lasted about two minutes. "You don't have anything else to confess?" The priest pressed. "I'm really a good guy," my dad replied. But growing up it wasn't always spankings and soap and dick and fart jokes and sexual remarks about my mom that have left me with a searing oedipal complex. My dad did have a tender side. Like when my mom had to work and couldn't take her little kids to Sesame Street Live, Dad brought her home flowers. Hell, Steve-O even once put his own fucking kidney up on the auction block! He was shit-faced, but he meant it. And he was fiercely loyal to his kids. We all know how I sucked at organized sports, and one game in particular comes to mind. I would have been in fifth grade, and my team was playing in a Southwest Iowa baseball tournament. I had been sitting on the bench the entire game, and my team was getting crushed. The final inning was upon us, there was no hope of a comeback, and it was the last game of the tournament. I hadn't even stepped onto the field. My dad approached the coach and asked, "Why don't you let these other kids play a bit?" The couch (who had a notoriously hot temper) exploded on my dad. "You want to couch, Steve!? You want too? Then get in here and do it!" "Christ, Kurt," my dad said. "It's only a game." When I got older, and eventually outgrew my dad, I also got braver. Once. Only once have I stood up to my dad, nearly coming to blows. One day while I was in high school I was standing in the dinning room of our house getting yelled at by my mom. Now, my mom is maybe 5'1", probably 100 pounds. But she has a voice that can only be described as banshee-esque, especially when she is yelling. Well, she was screaming at me this day, and was very close to my ear...so much that it hurt. I pulled away from her and shouted, "Your hurtin my fuckin ear!" And as I said this I punched her in the upper arm. Now, I had meant to pull my punch at the last minute, but as I lack all forms of physical coordination, the punch landed and bruised my mom's arm. When my dad got home, I knew what was coming. He cussed and smacked me all the way down the stairs, kicked me in the ass, and shoved me around until we got to my room. Finally, he hit me hard enough that I fell into my bed. Almost instantly, I shot back up, puffed up my chest, and glared down at him. "What are you gonna do, tough guy?" My dad asked, completely unimpressed by my attempt at machismo. I immediately sat back down and didn't say another word. And that is how it has been for the past twenty years, though his hold on me has loosened with time. All in all, I had a fine childhood, and I deserved all the good and bad I got. Do I hold a grudge? Nope. Because each tirade about money that I have to endure now, I know that the world is just waiting to hand my dad another dirty tomato. And, I have decided, that even though the old man is sixty now, once, just once before he dies (hell, it might even be on his deathbed) I am going to haul off and punch him in the face as hard as I fucking can, as payback for years of bullshit. Then, I'm going to run away as fast as I fucking can.
The Moore You Know: I have decided I can no longer drink orange juice with pulp. One day I was having a glass, and as I felt the texture of it in my mouth I thought, "This must be what sperm tastes like." I have no context for that thought, and nothing to back it up. I just think that if I had to guess, orange juice with pulp is about as close as you're going to come to matching semen. So, you know...no more for me. Hot dogs I'm still good with.
© Eric Moore - 2010
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