Tag Archives: absent father

The First Time I Met My Father, a very, very short story.

The first time I saw him, I was not dazzled. He was too tall and wiry, and he had too much red hair, flying off his head like an unmown hayfield. His eyes were too chilly, a piercing blue that made me feel like an insect on a pin. He was brimful of himself, but at the same time tried to project a false humility. When he found out I was trying out for cheerleading, he tried to talk me out of it. He’d only met me for the first time and hadn’t even met my friends, but somehow he’d already found them incomplete, just because they weren’t political radicals. “Why do you want to be a cheerleader?” he asked, chewing on the straw of his soda while he squinted.

“Because it’s fun,” I said. I shook my head, throwing my bangs back out of my eyes to glare at him. “Because it’s good exercise.”

“Do you know that the players will feel like it’s their right to sleep with you?” he asked.

“I’m not sleeping with anybody,” I said.

“I hope not.”

“You think anybody’s going to be able to talk me into something I don’t want to do?”

“Maybe.”

The arrogance he displayed made me want to slap him, punch him, kick him, or at least knock a couple teeth out.