Mi Padre

I’m filled with regrets, I’m constantly haunted by my guilt.

I stare at my face in the mirror and I lean my chest in and it hovers painfully over the bathroom sink, when I get tired the faucet digs into my ribs and from time to time water leaks wetting my shirt. I stare at my face looking for imperfections, and I squeeze aimlessly the guilt out of my skin.

It never works.

When I was 12, I was living in Mexico City with my father, my brother, my uncle and his young wife. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment in an old apartment building in what used to be the richest part of town.

We were poor, the poorest we’ve been.

Chema, my dad and I shared a room and we all shared a king size bed, which used to belong to my grandparents, their ashes sat in a bookshelf in front of the bed.

Dark blue covers with small white flowers hung low from the bedframe’s sides, the apartment was covered with a wine color carpet, which was covered in dust and it smelled old, I know this because I would lay on it for hours, with my head hidden under the bed, reading Marques De Sade with a small reading flashlight.

Under the bed was my closet, I didn’t own much but what I owned was under that bed. Eventually my dad found my books and we had to have an awkward talk, he didn’t want to have that talk any more than I wanted to, he looked at his feet, lit a cigarette and said, I don’t think these are appropriate for your age, I saw his bottom lip try to touch the overgrown hairs of his mustache, he looked as if he was pouting.

He stood up and left and I continued reading my books.

When my dad dropped me off at my first hard-core show we took the subway because we couldn’t afford a cab.

We split ways a block away so he wouldn’t embarrass me in front of the older people. He sat in a café and smoked cigarettes while doing crosswords. We had an arrangement, he would pick me up at 11:30 and we would leave, I imagine he sat there letting his guilt and the thoughts of debt creep in, he couldn’t take it anymore and by 10:40 just when I was standing outside the show with the boy I liked, I heard him call my name with anger and a chill ran down my spine. The 18-year-old boy who thought I was 16 said, “Hey is that your dad?” Without a word, I walked to him and I left.

On our way home I was angry, I hated him, he was 50 minutes early and had completely embarrassed me. Back then I didn’t think about how this poor man had sat for hours at a café spending the little money we had on “Americanos”, letting his reality eat away at his flesh.

The next morning I was still furious, I told him I was going to go visit a friend and I left. At 11 am I went to the punk flea market all the way across town, I was young and angry and I didn’t care, massive scars of self flagellation and burnt tissue covered my arms and chest, just a week before I had grabbed a screwdriver put it over the stove till the metal was red and orange and I put it against my chest, I did this 3 times, I would breath in the smell of burnt skin and faint odor of leaked gas, back then I felt nothing, I’m 25 now and I still have 2 keloid scars to remember those days, but now I feel everything.

I hung out with the boy and his friends and I took them around Mexico City. We sat on the floor of one of the boys cousin’s apartment and I watched them get drunk on rum and cokes. My cell phone kept ringing and I kept ignoring it.

I took the last subway train at 12 and I walked myself home.

On the street on a bench I found my dad with a pile of cigarettes and ashes at his feet, he had been there waiting for a long time. He looked at me and I could see his anger, my dad, like myself has anger issues, he dragged me to the room and we began fighting, he asked me why I had lied, he yelled, he threw things around, I spat at his face, he grabbed my things and began breaking them, I called him names, I humiliated him, he humiliated me, he slapped me, my dad had never laid a hand on me and that day, I broke him so much he slapped me, but I didn’t care so I laughed at his face while tears ran down my face and I told him it didn’t hurt and I laughed at him, my laughing made it worst and he slapped me again, but this time I grabbed his hand with both of my hands and I broke his thumb, then I grabbed his seeing glasses and I broke them in half, that's when the worst happened, he didn’t fight back, he didn’t yell, he sat down and cried. That was the only time I’ve seen my dad cry, not when his mother died, not when his dad died, nor when I finally told my family I was raped.

Things were bad, I had broken my dad’s seeing glasses and we couldn’t afford to get him new ones, so now he couldn't see.

The next day, like any fight we’ve ever had, we sat there defeated and we had coffee and we cleaned the dirt from our hands and we talked.
And though we forgave each other, I’ll never forgive myself.