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Your father used to take you with him to show you off in the business. You got behind-the-scenes looks at all of the popular sitcoms he was in and he taught you all of the tricks of the trade. You love comedy, you really do, but something about accounting had an easy answer that you could work through. At the end of a file and with some creative juggling could make a whole figure of difference. The element of the audience wasn’t something you had to worry about. When you told the great John Crocker that you were going to take a business degree when you graduated high school, he looked at you as though you had three heads. He didn’t talk to you so much about showbiz after that.
Dave Strider appears in your life the year you graduate. Your father tells you about scripts and a new style of comedy and how he’d found the man of the future living on the street and you don’t think too much about it. Until he eggs the house.
Dave Strider is dressed in a light jacket with a high collar, cheap sunglasses and torn sneakers. He has light blonde hair and tosses an egg, catching it and nodding at you with a quiet “hey”, before whipping his arm back, and forward. The egg shatters against the second-floor bathroom window frame, oozing down to make a mess that will surely be hard to clean.
“Can I help you?” You ask him.
“Nope,” Dave replies, and aims another egg over the kitchen window on the first floor. Carton under his arm, he paces to scope other optimal locations. You didn’t realize there was a science to such tomfoolery.
Your father just laughs about it later, as he sprays the house down with a hose.
“Dave had a hard life,” he tells you. “It’s fine, just leave him be.”
They have a strange relationship. You cross your arms and stand in the doorway while your father scratches his head over the broken passengers’ side window of his Buick. Dave also arrives one day having borrowed the Corvette, drenched from head to toe, and the interior growing puddles all over. While you try to form the words to demand an explanation he flicks a cigarette to your feet and trudges off with his hands in his pockets.
“I know you’re fond of him,” you tell your father after dinner, over dishes, “but he seems a bit dangerous to me. A delinquent.”
“He’s just troubled,” he says, and puts his broad hand on your shoulder. “Don’t worry so much.”
You call him later on anyway and tell him he should be more respectful to your property. He just laughs at you and hangs up. You decide he is a problem.
You ask your father about him when you go out for lunch and he strokes his mustache over his tea, loaded with cream and sugar. He tells you about how Dave was living on the street without a bank account or a social security number. How Dave hid his comedic potential behind shades and pursed lips until it lashed out in insults and jabs, or ensconced in layers of meaning on paper and in life. “I think you would enjoy his irony,” he tells you, and you shake your head. Equations are for solving and you’ll always be a fan of slapstick before anything else.
“You don’t think he’s just using you for your success?” You dare to ask.
Your father just laughs at you. “He never asked for my help,” he replies. “He might actually hate me for it.”
You’re not sure if you should let off of him for that, or hold it against him for being ungrateful. You try your best to mimic your father and adopt the former, but, at times, you waver.
It’s spring and damp and you’re studying for exams when you hear Dave pull into the driveway. You watch him from your window as he yanks a plastic bag onto his lap. When he wraps his hands over what are definitely cans of spray paint you take off down the stairs, no time to retrieve a hat, swearing to do away with his hoolliganery for good. You meet him in the driveway and tell him to “put the paint down, please”, and his fist comes at you so fast you have no time to react. You recoil from the force of him punching you in the mouth, but before he hits you again you hook around and clip him in the jaw. His faint grunt rewards you with a sick sense of satisfaction. He punches you in the ribs and you remember enough from a handful of karate classes that you grab his wrist and bend his elbow and drop him face-first into your lawn.
“Let him up,” you hear your father approaching behind you, so you do. Dave climbs to his feet with his jaw locked and his face flushed and a little crease in his forehead. From someone whose expression is usually blank as a slate it’s very telling. He rolls his shoulders and your father picks up his keys and tells him to get in the car. He hesitates and looks at you. You think he’s going to make a dive at your throat but instead he turns with a faint sigh and you watch him go until the car door closes behind him.
“What did I say about leaving him alone?” Your father asks you, a slight twinge of disappointment in his voice. That sound makes you want to retreat to your room with your tail between your legs.
“He was going to paint the house,” you try to say in protest, but your words aren’t as aggressive as you would like. “With Lord knows what.”
“So?” He asks, and you feel like an idiot. “It’s a game we play, boy. It’s not hurting anyone.” You drop your chin to your chest and you feel like you’re five again, being scolded for sticking your fingers in the icing of an immaculate cake. Your father sighs and it pitches to the bottom of your stomach like a rock. “It’s just stuff.” He says. “Things can be replaced.”
No one can make you feel horrible like he can. Your father sighs again and flips through they key ring for the right one. “He just needs somebody.” He adds. “Go on in and get your studying done and think about this. I never want this behavior from you again.”
That night he doesn’t come back.
You chew on the back of your pencil as the sun sets and the night goes longer and the house stays silent. Equations are strewn out across your desk, memorized. You heat up leftovers for dinner and drink tea in the evening and when you finally turn in for the night your father isn’t there. It’s not terribly unusual - he takes a lot of trips to make appearances - but that he’s in the company of Dave Strider worries you. You have vivid mental pictures of him performing elaborate feats of self-harm, and your father taking him to the hospital. You wonder for the well-being of your father in the presence of someone like that.
The next day he comes back in the evening and cooks up a roast. He talks loudly about the weather and some jokes he came up with that you might appreciate. You think he might be nervous, so you let it go. It’s hard and you’re curious, but you let it go.
Dave knows your animosity and seems to enjoy poking you with the proverbial stick. You try your best to keep a straight face when he shows up for the holidays. When you moved to go to school, your father came with you eventually, settling into his hometown suburb in Washington. Dave took off to Houston to pursue his career and you realized your father was settling in for retirement. You were happy to have Dave out of your hair, but he seemed to reappear whenever it counted.
He had never spent time at the old house, but he settles in easily to the smaller home in suburbia, digging through cupboards and putting his feet on the couch with his shoes still on. At least he dresses better, frequently sporting collared shirts and ironed slacks, hands eternally jammed into pockets. He paces constantly, restless and bored until he passes out on the couch, shades askew until your father wakes him up with a shout and a particularly noisy scattering of cards for 52-pick-up. From the kitchen you hear Dave yell something in protest and your father’s throaty laughter and you think that if it was you who had done that to Dave he might have skewered you with the poker next to the fireplace.
You have dinner, just the three of you, and you realize that Dave never really knows what to say. He has no idea how to just shut up and appreciate something. He makes jabs about the outdated style of the salt and pepper shakers and how god damn domestic the whole thing is and he tells you how you should be cooking in a frilly apron and he calls you Pops and your father gets him with a pie in the face. Dave freezes with his shoulders up, tense, while your Dad chokes on his laughter. Dave’s revenge comes as he throws his hands around your father’s neck, announces it’s time for a kiss, and tries to worm his way past the arms of the great John Crocker, who keeps him away.
“You love pies so fucking much,” says Dave, “I’m coated and just asking for a little affection here before you come in your pants.” He probably can’t even see through his shades smeared with cream but you could see the quirk of his lip suppressing a grin while your father howls. You’d think they were thirteen.
You take your dishes and see yourself out.
You brought some paperwork with you, some reading material to get a head start on over the break. So you set yourself up in the room that’s designated for you that you have no attachment to and pour over terms. Unfamiliar laughter curls up the stairs, the kind that crawls from your diaphragm, deep and whole and genuine. Your dad’s laughter follows after and you pause and worry at the corner of your page. Maybe Dave just needs a father, and he was being there for him. Maybe he just needed a friend to tolerate his unruly behavior.
Later on you choose to venture downstairs for some cider and you wish you hadn’t. You glance down to see your father laid out on the floor in front of the fireplace, Dave straddling his waist. The blonde is bent, curled over with one hand running up your father’s shirt. Your father’s hands are on his hips and they’re kissing deeply. You stare a little longer than you can handle before you pad silently to the bathroom and retch until your ribs ache.
You’d never doubt your father but Dave is a few years younger than you. That’s just not right. But you want your father to be happy and Dave seems to be happy and you just really wish they hadn’t put you in this position. You slide back into your room and every noise, every creak in the house tries to tell you about the terrible things taking place.
Dad knows better. He would only engage in relations with perfectly consenting individuals, you tell yourself. But when you’re certain you hear a snatch of voice from the stairwell your stomach seems to fall right out of you. Some people enjoy the company of young people, and some people enjoy the company of men but one of those men is your father.
You recall the time when you fought with Dave and your father didn’t come back. Has it been since then? How long has it been? Footsteps climbing the stairs pound through your skull and you cringe, alone.
The next morning you’re not sure if you’re relieved to see Dave sleeping on the couch in front of the fireplace. His shades have slid down his nose showing you his blonde eyelashes.
You don’t say anything.
For a few more days he eats your food and pranks your father and he remarks on the precise firmness of your rear. He appears out of nowhere to snatch apples and eggs and whatever he needs for his warfare, only to skip out again. In a couple of days he flies back to Texas and you get one more day of your father’s company to yourself, and you don’t say anything. He mutters out loud how he wishes you and Dave would get along better.
Dave attends every Christmas but one, most birthdays, some Thanksgivings, and the private funeral. He arrives in a suit, the usual shades, and a fair lady on his arm that looks like she could be his sister save for her freckled tan. He looks at the baby in your arms and says “I never knew you had a lady in your life. She must be a keeper to put up with your tight assed bullshit.”
He’s wound tight. His jaw is squared and his shoulders are stiff when he walks. His elbows are locked. You realize you’ve known him for a long time.
“I could say the same for you,” you reply.
You ask the older woman with the thick glasses and the dark hair to hold Jane for you. She beams at the opportunity and you hand her over, placing your hat on her head for safe keeping. The woman babbles baby talk while the fair one on Dave’s arm rolls her eyes and purses her dark lips. You’re ashamed she might be forced to see this disorder.
Dave loosens his tie with one hand, the other in his pockets, stepping away from the women and into the yard of the funeral home. The air is misty and damp and you’re both wearing suits and he flashsteps around you, showing off his new tricks. People drive away. Some stand around and watch. But as the rain becomes more persistent they mostly disappear. Dave clearly has the upper hand this time. The fair lady and the one who has Jane retreat to the dry safety of the lobby and you take a punch to the throat.
He’s hard to find but you get him a couple times, your fist losing momentum as the rainwater slips it across his jaw. Another hit snaps the handle of his shades and he frowns slightly. He tosses them aside and you see his eyes are red, and he punches your lip into your teeth.
“Good little Daddy’s boy finally showing some balls, huh? Taking the fight for once?” He rasps, and his lips slide up to show his teeth. “I’m sure he’d be so fucking proud of you.”
“Hardly,” you reply. He brushes by you and you try to grab him, but his momentum makes you slip in the grass and he passes. While you climb back to your feet he slaps the back of your head.
“Get up,” he says, and you do. He appears in front of you and tries to knee you in the gut, but you slam your forehead into his and the both of you stumble backwards.
“I know about it,” you say, rubbing at your forehead as he rubs his. Everyone is gone and the rain is loud so you say it. “I knew about you and him. I knew that you were seeing each other.”
Dave grins, all teeth, his front falling to pieces, nose bleeding. “That’s what this is about?” He chuckles. “Because I fucked your pops? That’s sweet. Couldn’t stand the idea of your old man taking it up the ass, could you? So it all comes out over his fucking corpse.” He advances and the two of you lock arms onto each other’s shoulders. He doesn’t want to waste the time wrestling so he hops and kicks his feet into your stomach, and disappears. Mud sullies your suit. You grab your breath and glance around to find him behind you.
“This has nothing to do with me,” you say. He snorts, and flashsteps somewhere else, hands back into his pockets. Most of the illusion is shattered without his glasses.
“Then do you want to hear about how I sucked his cock? His favourite position?” He trips you, coming up from behind and hooking his foot around your ankle. “How I could make him scream like a girl?” Your chin buries in the dirt and he laughs. He appears in front of you as you crawl back to your feet.
“He was really proud of you,” you say and Dave’s face changes. His eyebrows lift slightly. His grin fades. His teeth unclench. Everything seems so clear and his face seems so empty without his shades. You run your sleeve across your cheek. “If he told me that he was interested in you I would have tried to talk sense into him. I never would have approved. I still don’t approve. It had nothing to do with me.”
“Damn right it didn’t,” Dave adds. He isn’t fighting, he just lets his chin fall to his chest and listens.
“As uncomfortable as I am with it, which is very much so, he must have really appreciated you.” You reach out and drop your hand against Dave’s shoulder. He trembles, maybe from the cold. “I’m sure he loved you very much.”
Dave’s bangs drip with rain, hanging in his eyes. Without his shades he has nothing left to hide behind. This would be the time when your father would lean in and embrace you in a hug of love and support, so you do the same for Dave. He’s rigid at first before letting his chin drop against your shoulder. He trembles and shudders and the ghost of a wail forces its way out of his chest before he clutches the fabric at your back. His fingers dig into you and he holds on like he’s in a freefall, pitching through the air with nothing but you to hang onto.
His despair burns your eyes and you rock him slightly. The motion is enough to force sobs to roll out of him and break against your chest like waves. He trembles to resist them, to hold them in, but you press your hand to his hair and tell him it’s okay and they come out anyway. His knees buckle and you follow him down to the dirt. Every motion, every hush, every pat on the back you offer him elicits sobs or a stifled moan. He buries his face in shame into your shoulder, and he pulls you against him and he shudders like he’s never cried in his life. You wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case.
“It’s not fair,” is all this brilliant wordsmith can articulate into your collar, the sound of it coming out of him out of control, loud and all at once. “It’s not fucking fair.”
“I know,” you say, your hand cradling the back of his head.
You see the fair girl standing just outside the door of the funeral home, umbrella open and perfectly dry. She watches you with pale eyes while you both sob and shudder in the rain and mud.
Later on you’ll let Dave go back to his hotel to get a shower and clean up and he’ll flashstep back to Texas with his heart a little heavier. You’ll take Jane to the home which only days before had been inhabited by your father and know it’ll never feel quite right anymore. At least you’ll still have your father by your side, stuffed and mounted in the living room. When Dave finds out he’ll try to kill you. And then he’ll try to buy it. Neither attempts against you are successful.