The Glitch

**This story does contain some profanity.**

I am not looking for advice. I am not looking for you to fix this. I just need you to listen, please. Please do not ruminate, searching for a solution, a “have you tried?” remedy as irritating as when I misplace something and I make the mistake of telling you. “Where was the last place you had it?”

Please don’t give me your platitudes, your “there is a plan” or “give time time,” or “he’ll come around.” And please, please don’t tell me you’ll “keep me in your prayers.”

If, at the end of this share, you feel compelled to say something, keep it simple. “That sucks” works. Everyone should practice the simple bi-syllabic response. Or, “that stinks” if the teller is a profanity Nazi. I am not a profanity Nazi. I love profanity. Throw fucking in the middle of it for spice, and stress it. That would be marvelously empathetic.

You know of my life in the bottle, and you know of my “coming to.” That has everything and nothing to do with the loss I have experienced. Suffice it to say: the decision I made on that fateful morning — what is it now, eight years ago? — was not sober thinking, even after what was then nearly seven years of “sobriety.” The term, in my vernacular, does not merely equate with not drinking. Sobriety is clear and lucid thinking. By that definition, there are teetotalers who are not sober. My behavior on that morning was evidence that I had merely abstained from alcohol for seven years, nothing more. Abstinence and sobriety are not synonymous terms.

From the moment he first saw light, Sam had been a pain in the ass. A real shite, that one. Ever-so-smart, at times precociously so, but “too big for his britches,” Sam was a mischievous, sly back-talker who was a regular in Time Out, either in the corner of the classroom or his bedroom upstairs. Consequences did not faze him. His grandmother suggested we start a legal defense fund, stat.

There was a time I threatened the belt: I led him to his room, took the belt from his closet, and told him to drop his drawers.

“Okay, get it over with,” was his exasperated response, like I was keeping him from something pressing. He pulled down his pants and assumed “the position” as though this were a regular occurrence. This is not how I thought this would go.

“Oh, pull your damn pants up.” I then sat him on the bed and gave him another talking to.

His twin brother, Jack, provided perspective. Admittedly —and I am ashamed now to admit this, drinking being my only justifier —I gave Jack the same preliminary after he’d done something unremarkable (Jack got the gold-star stickers and ice-cream Fridays), just to see, you know, if this variation of corporal punishment had any merit.

Jack peed at the sight of the belt. I sat him on the bed, and gave him a hug.

Everyone had their coping mechanisms for Sam’s tizzies: Jack found refuge beneath the kitchen sink, snuggled in with the rubber gloves and stiff sponges and sundry cleaning products; Andrew, their older brother, went to his room and tuned out to Nirvana; their mom played Boggle.

And I drank.

You would too if you had to endure such a cataclysmic ordeal.

It was the second year of my newfound life of “sobriety,” Sam was eleven, when I hatched a plan. I was proud of this plan. My first sober plan. When I told my (by this time, ex-) wife of this plan, she was eager. At wits’ end with Sam (for she’d been flying solo as a parent for the past few years as I reinvented myself, and for several years prior to that as I forayed through my alcoholic hell), she was ready to try anything. They all were.

I told her that “the next time Sam has one of his episodes, call me and I’ll be right over.” The phone rang twenty minutes later, and I hopped to. I finally felt needed; time to practice responsibility.

“That’s it, bud. Your time is up. Let’s go.” I was now driving again.

“Where are we going?”

“Jail.”

I had a friend on speaker who was perping as my jailer. He knew to expect my call.

“Fife,” he answered importantly.

“Barney, we’re in the car now and heading your way.”

“You on speaker?”

“Yessir.”

“Sam, are you listening?”

“Yessir.” Sam was scared. Really scared. His voice was meek and trembling.

“Sam, I’ve got you in a cell with Bubba. I’ve told Bubba he’d be having a young guest for the night and I instructed him to keep his hands to himself, but Bubba’s not one to listen to authority and gets a bit ornery so we’ll see. I just advise that you not look him in the eyes, that you keep your mouth shut and keep your ass to the wall for the twenty-four hours you’re in there. You understand?”

Sam couldn’t take it. He faceplanted into his open palms and cried. It was one of those gasping-for-air cries, like he was being asphyxiated. My heart sank but I had to be strong. I had to see this thing through like a responsible adult.

“Sam, I am doing your father a tremendous favor because he is a good man and I owe him big time for all he has done to help me.” (I had asked Greg “Barney Fife” Kovaks to build me up a bit.) “When you arrive, you’ll follow typical procedures which will include a cavity search.” Greg was having a really good time with this role.

Sam was a smart eleven and knew a cavity search did not equate with dental hygiene. “NO! No. Dad, please. No. I’ll change. I’ll be good, I promise.” The pleas were more a caterwauling. It was unbearable, but fortunately there was no Fife and there was no jail, at least not for Sam. Not that day, at any rate.

I pulled up to the Sheriff’s Office. All I knew was that it was attached to the jail. My plan was to go to the counter and quietly ask the (I presumed) officer on duty to play along, to just have a small conversation with me where I would learn that the prison was on lockdown because of a riot which found two teenage inmates mortally shanked. (I was now on improv mode.) We proceeded up the steps; when Sam saw me open the door into the dimly lit foyer, he knew my charade was real. He grabbed my hand and pulled me back. He was crying genuine tears from the horrified place that I had never seen in him before, in anyone, for that matter, like he needed a benzo shot to still the seizure.

I didn’t have to carry out the plan. I could be the good guy here. I could go to Sam and sit by his side, I could put my arm around his little sagging shoulders and I could firmly yet compassionately tell him I love him, though things have to change. Look me in the eyes and tell me you understand, because the next time…

I could call Barney Fife and cancel the whole deal, right then, tell him we’d talked it through and that Sam was ready to begin afresh.

I did all of this, and though Sam’s behavior at his mom’s gradually receded to the old ways as the sting of near-incarceration wore off, he did begin to gravitate towards me. Perhaps we needed that male bonding? A father and son visiting the jail together, a near-miss with the law because Dad was a hero who saved the day and a very long eyes-diverted, ass-to-the-wall and lips-sealed evening with Bubba the Ornery?

Whatever the case, Sam began wanting to spend more time with me, watching the Bills lose at Buffalo Wild Wings and going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings (really!), and fishing and taking trail walks and throwing the football around on the nearby field. My little townhouse had nothing to offer a child except his own bedroom and streaming television: no basketball net, no backyard, no boys his age; nothing he could just leave and do by himself. In the evenings I had to work a second job waiting tables after a full week day teaching high school English forty-five minutes away to oblige my $1200-$1400 (depending upon medical) child support. Sam didn’t seem to care that staying with me meant more “latchkey” and creative independence, so long as he could be with me, the prodigal dad who was now Sam’s best friend.

“Best friends, right?” he’d ask, taking my hand as we crossed the grocery store parking lot.

“Sam,” I asked once, “you’re now in 7th grade. Think your friends might laugh if they saw you holding hands with your dad?”

“I don’t care what they think.”

In hindsight, that interaction is what stands out the most. That, and Sam crawling onto my lap and crying when he didn’t make the basketball team. Yes, crawling: Sam was a slow developer; his 8th grade year, he was only 5’4” and I cautioned —tough love here— that he not get his hopes up. Yes, he was scrappy, a terrific ball handler and range shooter, but he was short.

And his father had no important connections anymore with this school district that had fired him seven years prior for multiple DUIs.

“I should have listened to you,” Sam lamented.

“Sam, your day will come. I promise, by the middle of high school you’ll be taller than me and dunking over everybody.” I tousled his hair and kissed the top of his head. “I love you, best friend.”

“I love you too, Dad.”

It wasn’t until Sam officially moved in with me —coping mechanisms at home weren’t working anymore: Jack had outgrown the cabinet, Andrew was “smelling teen spirit” and fighting back, and their mom had run out of original words to sort— that our relationship began to devolve. My own coping mechanism having been alcohol, I was now responsible for soberly navigating Sam without a flight plan. Five years without a drink and I very soon discovered I was not at all equipped for this task.

Sam was now in high school and puberty was kicking ass; I was growing lonely for female companionship and had begun dating. This was the perfect storm. Suddenly, and this is not hyperbole, everything I said was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard; eye-rolls, tongue-clicking, audible sighs and mumbled curses accompanied the teen swagger of ambivalence and annoyance.

Contrary to his mom’s house, I had rules: shoes off at the door, bookbag in the room, dishes washed after you dirty them; flush the toilet, make your bed, take a shower every evening using soap until it lathers and a washcloth; hang up your towel, put your clothes in the hamper, on a hanger, or in a drawer. I am not a neat “freak,” but I am tidy, and my townhouse was not large enough for clutter.

Not only did sneakers stay on, but the treads scuffed away at and peeled off the couch’s synthetic suede. “Sam, what the (expletive), man?” the curse symbolic of my eroding coping mechanism. “Look at the couch.”

He blamed the couch, how cheap it was.

Not only did clothes not get put in the hamper but merely put “away,” but his closet began to smell like a locker room. His wet towel would be left on the floor to mildew and the toilet bowl water would turn a yellow film from the piss taken yesterday and his entire bathroom took on the pungent odor of metabolized urea. All of this would have been acceptable, given Sam’s journey through purgatorial puberty, except it was all rebutted with eyerolls, tisks, and guttural, impertinent sighs.

Sam’s mood swings were probably also associated with my own absence: where not-too-long-ago Sam had me to himself, he was now having to share me with whatever Match.com had organized. (I didn’t go to church or bars and I lived in a small hick town. Don’t hate.) Thus given, his recalcitrance might have also been retaliation, but whatever. I wasn’t having it.

“Sam,” I tried patiently, “I’m not having it. Your mother and your brothers are tired of you, and now I am beginning to understand” tisk, eyeroll “and I would really appreciate some (expletive) respect because I am this (expletive) close to losing it with you” sigh, tongue click, eyeroll.

Sam had spent the night at a friend’s house and I had asked him to give me a call when he wanted me to pick him up. It was nearing eleven on Saturday morning and I hadn’t heard anything; I received no response to texts, and my calls went to mail. I drove to Marty’s house, and was informed they had driven Sam to his mom’s house “about two hours ago because Marty has to work.”

His mom’s house? What was happening? I drove to said-house, where no car was in the drive; the side door was locked, so I went to the front door and saw, through the window, Sam lying in typical shoes-on-the-arm-of-the-couch, phone-propped-on-knees position. I banged on the window. “Open this (expletive) door.” I was hot.

I was especially hot because this had happened before, Sam deciding what he was going to do without telling anyone of his intent. I had again wasted hours waiting for Sam to contact me.

Enough with my defense. I needed to be the adult here, but I was not.

Sam opened the door and wordlessly went back to the couch to assume the position behind his phone. I sat on the ottoman and regurgitated the stale laments and scoldings, my voice rising in pitch and my cursing increasing, and Sam sighed behind his phone and eyerolled the ceiling and guttural-growled his discontent with being in my presence until I lost it. I saw red.

I went over to Sam and slapped the phone out of his hand; it somersaulted across the room and hit the far wall, and I pummeled the top of Sam’s head — open palmed and close fisted — a few good raps with several choice words all blended together until I saw the look of abject fear in his eyes, and I was immediately catapulted back to the littler Sam who, in the car as witnessed by Barney Fife and in the jailhouse foyer, had promised he would change.

I stopped the assault. I stood over him, shaking; Sam cowered beneath me, arms up, eyes trying really hard to stay dry. That was the last time our eyes have locked gazes, nearly nine years ago now.

I would be guilty of convenient omission if I said this was the first time I’d ever “laid a harmful hand on my son,” citing (literally) kicking him out of my townhouse the previous winter as not using my hands. I had slammed the door on his naked self — indeed, he was only wearing his boxers, and it was nearing freezing — and waited for him to knock, knowing full-well he would not knock because he was an obstinate little thing. I found Sam walking in the direction of his mom’s house, which was three miles away; I pulled over, and with terrific gusto he finally got into my warming-up car.

That was a glitch, which he forgave, but this was a bit more than a "glitch": this was both the crescendo and denouement of our relationship.

Yes, to all of your questions: yes, I have apologized; yes, I have expressed sincere contrition, owning all of it and not passing blame; and yes, I had done this repeatedly. In the beginning, he would respond after some time with profanity and accusations and how-dare-yous, but a response was a response and at least I was getting that. A pulse. Eventually, though, he tired of the back and forth and blocked me from all means of communication, phone and email and social media.

He did not invite me to his high school graduation but I went anyway, having procured a ticket from one of his teachers with whom I’d kept in contact since my tenure in the district. The look Sam gave me could not have been uglier.

Another Father’s Day, another birthday come and gone. I still check my email periodically, hoping for the olive branch. I ask his brothers how he is doing, but not too often. At least, I try not to. I never wanted them stuck in the middle of this thing. Playing intercom is no fun. And occasionally I will ask their mom to pass on a word or two. She gives me the thumbs-up emoji, and I have learned to just leave it at that.

So for all intents and purposes, in storytelling with friends I really only have two sons. If they know to ask me about Sam, I will tell them what I know. Otherwise, for my own preservation of serenity, it’s become just simpler leaving him out of it.

I really miss my son, and yes:

It stinks, it sucks, it fucking sucks.

It really, really does.