AUTOBIO DEVELOPS... (Patreon)

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(My mother) never established a personality; she went with the flow. Her sister and other relatives confirm that my mother was a shrinking violet. Morality or lack of it, prudery, politics. And used her weakness as her defense, exaggerated it for others to see. She manipulated with her flaccidity. She got what she needed by making others feeling sorry for her. Mother and Father were both manipulators, each with their own methods and gains. This is probably part of what made them click.

My father was a veteran. It seemed like he was one of the least photographed human beings I knew; I saw just one picture of him leaning against a barracks-like wall.

It seems his father had been another manipulator. Grandpa acted the happy old man with me, almost like a stereotyped farmer. He gave me the nickname “Sunnybrook” after an egg carton graphic I had apparently gone wild about. He'd play the fiddle badly and every once in a while during the cacophony called out “HUMPERDINK!” because he knew I always laughed with glee at the name. My father hated his guts.

Grandfather was oblivious. One time, he said to Mom, “You look like Lena Horne." After a pause, he continued: "Lena Horne wasn't all that pretty.” Apparently my father had been treated cruelly by him, and on his repeated drunken binges my father howled "I hate my father!! I HATE MY FATHER!!!" My father never got over his father issues; in fact he adopted them for himself. When I was on the other end of them, he couldn't bring himself to confront the roots of his bullying. When I had asked him why he was so mean to me, why he didn't want to be a better father than his own, he wailed “I don't know.”

But my dad stayed in touch with his dad, as good families do. The charade of “Family” was a tortured obligation. Walking through a relative's door was all forced smiles, whether there had been nothing but pain and rancor on the threshold or not . My mother's Hyde-like switch especially disgusted me, because she performed it so well.

What was he like? One night, probably liquored up a bit, he faced me at the dinner table and said, “You don't know me.” I was 12 at the time. I never got much further than that. He was a pioneering computer man at Control Data. There was a framed picture showing him in a white coat, dwarfed in a hall of technology that would probably fit in your hand today. He was one of a minority of African Americans in the field. I never visited his workplace in Manhattan. From his complaints, I gather he was an exec; what level, I don't know. He gave me his door plaque when they moved his office space. He was a grudging provider. Had few friends, and the ones he had, he'd deride behind their backs. I was in the back seat when Ma picked him up at the train station. She told him a fireman friend of theirs died in action, and he laughed. An uncle won the award of 'Chef of The Week' in a trade paper and he laughed. When Ethel Waters died, he howled “There'll be Waters in Hell tonight!” I swear, I don't remember him admiring anyone. He was cryptic, always vaguely insulting. This was just his way. He kept a copy of MEIN KAMPF in the bedside drawer. This, I believe, was his manual. Raging smoker, raging alcoholic. Always picked up his bottle of Old Crow on Friday to get raging drunk for the weekend. At the root of it, why he could give no one any credit, was because he hated himself. Like Ma, very insecure. Neither had egos. They had facades. That's the way I knew my father.

He bought me the stopwatch I still use for animation.