Just Desserts

just desserts come when you least expect it and then they don't always taste as sweet as you first thought. I went to dinner recently with someone from my past. He has been having problems with a stepchild who is all grown up and full of piss and vinegar. I personally have no ill will feelings toward one over the other and barely even know the young lady in question but consider her mother to be one of the world's causes for global warming via her methane production (can you say "MOOOOOO"?). My child knows these people and at one time I was fond of the man and then things had fallen apart to such the disaster of communication we have today.

You see he raised this kid. He has two natural children that the gods saw fit to thrust upon others to raise because they KNEW he was not fit. And being the stubborn little prick he is and always was he insisted he was smarter than them and knew HOW to raise a child and set out to prove the gods wrong. He fell in love/lust/need of this child's mother and in doing so got himself a packaged deal. A bouncing baby girl of about 6 yrs old. Now she's a swarthy 22yrs I think. And she is rebellious and disrespectful and all things you would expect of a teenager who has never been told no and put on a pedestal. All the while his own two natural children received less attention than the evening's beer bottles that lay strewn about on the floor. He taught this girl to drink and wear tattoos long before she was even old enough to purchase them for herself. He taught her what a "haughty" and self-indignant righteous attitude was by his example. He taught her how little he cared for anyone other than himself by hurting her mother repeatedly either emotionally or physically and financially or all. So the next part I'm going to tell you shouldn't come as a shock...

When he moved her mother out and took in another woman while still married to the kid's mom it devastated her. Her mom is disabled and not well (no this isn't my story) but the kid sucked it up. She decided she didn't want to move to another state because all her friends were here and he let her stay with him. He thought it was cool one of "his" kids wanted to "hang out" with him. She lived with him then moved out then moved back in like kids do when trying to get on their own. Only...this last time...she came home drunk one evening and he laid into her verbally, kinda like the way he used to with her mom. And she plowed him. (good for her) And he pushed her. Fight over. Most all was settled and some several minutes later the police were at his house to arrest him. In his pj's he was cuffed and shoved into the back of a cruiser to head to jail. No underwear, no shoes/slippers, no shirt, no sweater....just a pair of Cat In The Hat sleep pants that read something along the lines of "The Things I Can Do!"...*chuckles. The charge was domestic battery. The little bitch called the cops on him and while he was in jail cleaned out his house and left like the thief in the night she was. Needless to say she was never going to be welcome back again, so he tells me but we shall see.

So I bet you're all wondering where is the just desserts? The truth is the guy is a major fuckup with a chip on his shoulder. He is a wife beater and neglectful and seedy and criminal. He expects plenty for nothing and takes credit for shit he has no right to. So, when he was relaying his tale of his trip to the clink I couldn't help but get this warm and funny feeling in the pit of my stomache...you see I know this man. Quite well. And the thought of him sitting in jail in those pants in the middle of a pod of really bad fuckers, all 5'4" & 128lbs (soaking wet) of him, like a twink in those pants advertising what a fruit he is behind closed doors (he loves to be open with me about the things he has done), I couldn't help but crack the fuck up and think to myself..."SELF! This is what makes life worth living!"

It was funny and cute. The look on his face as he told me and my kid this tale was just even more funny because you could see him reliving his fears in his own eyes. He knew hell that day. He knew what it was like to live with "him" and the things that happen as a result. But my laughter was lost soon afterwards and only a wry smile traces along my mouth and lips. You should have seen my kid's face though...the problem is this: I feel sorry for the chump. Not because it happened. It should have happened a long time ago really. I feel sorry because it took so long for him to realize the error of his ways and he seems in a particularly devastating place and at some pivotal moment in his 42yrs of life. He is where I was at when I was 25yrs old. And he put me there.

This is my daughter's father. The man who spent tens of thousands of dollars on his stepchild for karate and all sorts of shit a kid really doesn't need and they really couldn't afford but made every excuse in the book to avoid seeing his own kid and making her LAST in his world. He never has set eyes on his other child from a previous marriage and the only one he can claim to have raised was his step. And she "bit" him...HARD! And I feel sleazy trying to enjoy the irony and the humor of the whole ordeal. Because he is my daughter's father. We went to dinner together. I paid because for once he was broke which he never is. This is the first time I was able to see him as a child and lost and needy and I wondered why I couldn't see all this ahead of time...but then am glad I hadn't because the one good thing he ever did was make me a mother, even if he didn't intend on staying a father (that ill-fated drunken night he called me and told me I had a lovely parting gift that he GAVE me my kid like I always wanted...I hated him for saying that but it was true...only I thought he wanted to be her daddy and my husband and build a life together. Those words still stung...).

Our evening was pleasant as we ate and listened to his story. I was dressed well and he looked like his mommy had left to his granny's house and forgot to leave out and iron his clothes. His daughter sat next to him and I was across the table. That meal was the first he ate in a week because he has always been too proud (of what right?!?!) to ask for help. But I helped him and spent the time with him and yes, even laughed at him. As much as I had despised that man and wanted bad things to happen to him, I now know that I wasn't thinking on what was best for his kid(s). I'm glad they let him go and that no dude tried to make him their unholy bride (chuckles). That knowledge would have hurt Lobo more than you know and I would have had to pick up more pieces as a result of is actions. The truly funny thing is he never hit the child in question. She hit him and for all the slaps and threats I received I think he had it coming. Now my kid has at least one good memory of her father and mother together laughing at his folly and spending an evening together. And...for that I am grateful.~mobe's love to her all and her all to her loves.