#I WAS MEAT RIDING YOU FIR YEARS JUST FOR YOU TO PULL THIS SHIT

[thelesbiansuperjesus]

chat, how do we feel about me becoming a dungeon meshi fan blog instead?

[loveandotherletters-blog]

Dear Boyfriend

Dear Boyfriend,

The first thing I remember you telling me about your father was that you used to go to the park with him every Sunday afternoon to catch turtles. An odd memory, perhaps, but you told it in a way that conveyed lots of sunshine and laughter.

Since then, I’ve learned a lot more about Nolan. He is unreliable, an alcoholic who spends his days drinking Miller Lite and calling family members to ask for money, always alleging that he needs to fix his car or pay his rent. He frequents the hospital; when he runs out of money for beer he is forced to stop drinking and goes through life-threatening alcohol withdrawals. The most recent of these episodes was last year when you were in town for your paternal grandfather’s funeral. Nolan promised to quit drinking after he missed the death of his own father, but that had lasted for at most a couple of months. He goes weeks and months without returning your calls, and from 2,000 miles away you worry that he’s dead.

The first time I went with you to visit Nolan, the small, tan buildings of the apartment complex reminded me of the apartment that my own dad rented for a few years after the divorce. It was a big downgrade for him; he had just moved out of the huge house that he and my mother had built together in our town’s wealthiest neighborhood. I think his least favorite part of the apartment was that Christmas trees were forbidden. My dad loved to drive two hours to Amish country each winter and tromp through snowy fields of blue spruce, douglas fir, and white pine trees. We would pick the tree we thought was most stately, watch my dad cut it down, and catch a wagon ride back to the parking lot with our new tree. We listened to Queen and the Rolling Stones on the way home and spent the evening drinking cocoa and stringing lights and sparkling ornaments across our tree’s branches. While we lived in the tan apartment, we had to forego this tradition. Instead, my dad decorated a small potted tree with shimmering silver icicles and miniature glitter-coated ornaments. I think Dad harbored some embarrassment about that potted plant, but to me it gave the apartment warmth on the inside despite its dismal exterior. Your dad was thin, with scraggly, greasy grey hair. Though he's only in his early sixties he kept a walker next to his seat on the couch. While we were there he kept reaching out and clasping his hands on the walker's handles, trying and failing to stand up as though to prove to you that he could. He gave a forced, awkward laugh each time he fell back onto the couch, which was covered with a towel stained with what honestly looked like shit. I thought of last Christmas Eve, when you treated him to waffles and got to clean vomit out of his beard in the restaurant restroom in return.

There was a rocking chair in the corner with four or five huge stuffed teddy bears, one big enough to take up the entire chair. I assumed somebody had bought them for him, because how the fuck else does a grown man end up with five supersized teddy bears? You asked Nolan where he got them, and he was surprised. "I don't remember where I got them," he said. "Somebody gave them to you?" you asked with a smile (the smile that unfailingly reminds me that I am deeply in love with you). "Bought 'em," said Nolan. "But I don't remember where." I have had sadness in my life, a perfectly adequate amount of sadness. But I cannot imagine how heartbroken I would be if he were my father.

I busied myself by putting away the food we had brought - bread, ham, bananas, canned soup. I didn’t have much to say to this man. To me, you were gracing him with your presence. You could have been enjoying the holidays with your sister and the man who raised you both - the man you actually called "Dad." Instead, you rented a car and drove two hours to this crummy apartment in the middle of nowhere to see your biological father who sat before us claiming he hadn't been drinking. True, perhaps: his hands were shaking so badly  that he couldn't even pick up his remote to turn the television down. But the empty cans of Miller Lite that littered the kitchen floor suggested that Nolan’s newfound sobriety was not voluntary. Despite all this, you sat seemingly at ease on a dining chair that you pulled from the kitchen into the living room, smiling at Nolan and asking him how things were going. Sometimes his responses made sense and sometimes we smiled as though we understood what he was trying to say even though we didn't. You pretended like the long pauses in conversation didn't matter. You showed him how to turn his phone's ringer on and set up a voicemail account so he would know when you called him. As you did all this, there was a kindness in your voice that I don't think I could have mustered in the same situation. I realized with amazement that it was genuine. You hated Nolan a little bit, sometimes: for being an alcoholic, for letting another man do most of the things that a father does for his son. For never answering his phone and making you worry that when you opened his door you would find him unconscious or worse. But even with all that, you loved him. He had done nothing to redeem himself, yet you were kind to him.

I told you later that I was impressed by how you treated Nolan. You were kind and generous even though he hasn’t been there for you in years, or maybe ever, really. You told me you were used to dealing with disappointment. I still think you’re a better person than I’ll ever be. I had already fallen in love with you three years earlier, as soon as we both stepped out into a rainy Atlanta evening and proclaimed that it smelled like spring. From there we had fortified our love with hikes to Alpine lakes and lazy weekends spent drinking too much coffee during the day and eating too much pizza at night and dancing together for the first time and cooking smoky spicy soups together on Sunday evenings. Before we visited Nolan, I would have thought that I already loved you as much as I could possibly love you. But you smiled and said his teddy bears were nice. You added lunch meat and white bread to his refrigerator even though if things went the same way as they usually did he would be so drunk he would forget to eat in a day or two. He doesn't deserve you. I don't know that he ever did. You want him to be sober and presentable and able to attend his own son's wedding, and we both know he's not going to give you that. But when you're with him you don't make him feel like you're thinking about his shortcomings. You remind him of the days when you used to catch turtles.

Love, Your Girlfriend