The Happiest Day of my Life

Hello, my name is Damon, I was born nineteen years ago and the happiest day of my life was when my father died.

The guy wasn’t an asshole. It would have been easier that way, mind you, because then I wouldn’t have to write this text and explain. If he had been the most tremendous douche on earth, then the only way you’d have heard of his death would have been in the form of a joke made by a drunk coworker, late at night, in this bar you spend way too much time in. “Remember that shmuck”, he’d have said, “asshole we went to high school with, the one who lives two blocks down”, “The guy who beats up his dogs or the guy who drives a Dacia Duster?”, “That’s the same guy”, “Yeah, so what?”, “Something really cool happened to him… He fucking died the fucking fucker!”, “No way! We need to celebrate, next round’s on me!” And, I mean, that would be awesome, because one, my dad’s death would participate in maintaining a high alcohol level in your system, it would accomplish something beautiful, and two, I wouldn’t be sitting in front of this darn computer right now, or maybe I would, but I’d be playing Among Us with strangers whose mums I would pretend to desire vigorously instead of writing this fucking dissertation.

My father wasn’t a fucking son of a bitch, of course. That would probably have made things too simple for me, growing up to become a functioning member of society.

He was way worse than that.

When he died, he had a beard, a moustache like a bicycle handlebar, grey hair on his temples and cherry angiomas all across his body, and I mean fucking everywhere on his pale, desolated skin. A few years before that, he basically looked like the image Siri would display when you’d ask it to show you a taciturn accountant, corduroy blazers with elbow patches and all. I liked that a lot about him, because it was fairly easy for me to despise what he stood for and make promises to myself such as “I’ll never be as dull and boring as the old man, I’ll never wear short sleeve shirts, I’ll never enjoy sipping on a whisky while staring into the void because my job has crushed me, I mean come on”. Those are healthy sign of disdain, things kids need to grow up and develop properly, and I felt I was more than gifted in this respect. Then last week we were sorting the photo albums with mum, anything to keep her mind and hands busy else her mind could suddenly run amok and order her hands to pierce through her face’s skin, and we stumbled upon pics of him when he was roughly my age. There he was, young and strong, his gaze darkened by the mysterious shadow of what looked like a cow-boy hat, his chest partially revealed by a negligently buttoned flannel shirt, a spray of freckles harmoniously spread out across it — or maybe those were angiomas already, only they looked cute instead of gross. Motherfucker would have made Adam Driver look like a ball of hair pulled out of the shower drain. “He had such eyes”, mum uttered, “a perfect blue, all the girls wanted him but he chose me”; and that’s true, my sisters have those eyes too, sparkling and piercing, but me, oh no, of course not, mine are the blandest, most boring brown because fuck me I guess. Then mum started snorting.

That goddamn hunk of a twat, dad. He could have just grown old and be slowly crushed by life like most people are, it would have set a valuable example for me. Who am I now supposed to turn to for guidance?

I mean, I’m a teenager, so what do I know about life, and why would I give a shit, sure. But still. Couple years ago I went to a party at a girl’s place, it was great, I had put a black shirt (with sleeves!) and rubbed my armpits with a perfume sample I had stolen inside a magazine in the orthodontist’s waiting room, all this in the hopes of picking up a girl for myself, you never know, even a knobhead like me might get laid at some point. The only stuff I ended up picking up was a bottle of tequila, still better than gonorrhea I’ll give you that, especially as it was the first time I was doing booze, I was surprised then charmed then drunk as a Moldovan police commissioner. Next thing I knew I was meandering on the dance floor, bellowing the words to a song I didn’t know 2 hours earlier, then taking a leak in the garden, the girl had a very big dog, a huge dog really, that we had locked outside for us to be chill but I had completely forgotten about it, turns out hounds don’t fancy being peed on, not everyone’s a bored senior executive I guess. Don’t fret though, the monster dog didn’t chump on my wiener, and I wasn’t gutted by the steering column of my friend’s car when he drove me back home because we didn’t hit a semi, which is quite odd given how fuckfaced we were, I’ll tell you what, the day after I could have sworn the car was grey whereas it is, in fact, burgundy red.

That doesn’t mean the evening was deprived of any drama, because I crawled back inside my house only to bump into my dad crashed in front of a late night wildlife documentary or some shit. We usually never talk ever, well not anymore obviously but even before, I don’t know what got into my head that day, I was so scared he would realize I was stuffed I thought “I have to act normal”, and somehow the normal that came to my mind was to sit down on the second couch, a couple meters away from him, I mean seriously?, and to say “Hey did you know some dogs are really, really huge?”. He looked at me, I get the chills even today just reminiscing, he must have known the state I was in, there is no way I didn’t stink of sweat and spilled rum and fear and I kind of braced for the furry. But he just went “Well some dogs are big indeed”, then got back to learning about how the heart of a shrimp is located in its head or whatever. The elaborate bum left me hanging there, sitting straight as a Jesus nailed on his cross, except my palms were on my knees and my bowels were drumming in my hears. I spent, like, 10 minutes wondering whether I’d be able to compensate the merry-go-round that I knew would start spinning as soon as I’d stand up again. As miracles go, I was, so I rose from the dead and walked towards the stairs as naturally as I could, must have looked like a toddler with polio, and when I set foot on the first step he said “Damon”. I said “What”. He said “I…”, then he said nothing for a long time, he looked like he was concentrating very hard to remember, then he shook his head, as if waking up from some kind of hypnosis, and he said “Good night”. I said “Sure”. I thought sneaky bastard but I didn’t say it, at least I think I didn’t, instead I went to my room, closed the door and puked in the washbasin, I threw up a thick grey purée and thought this is going to clog the whole thing, that will be the end of me, I can’t let it happen, it has to go, suddenly I wasn’t intoxicated anymore. Ok maybe I was because I pulled the skylight open and started shoveling the gross pudding on the roof. It was summer, it didn’t rain for days, the thing cooked in the sun, the stench was borderline unbearable, some of it’s probably still there, I should check. But the jumbo twit never noticed. Or maybe he didn’t care?

I see you flinching, don’t deny it you are, “It’s not that bad” you think, and I guess it might be should my dad have been normal, but if he ever had been before, and that is debatable, at that point the rot had already started to spread. How do I know, you ask? Well first of all, of course, I have a heck of an advantage on you: I know the rest of the story, I fucking know how it ends, you don’t, would a little trust really be too much to ask? And also, I know the beginning of it.

I know my dad grew up a fucking altar boy, with a father and a mother so pious they probably never shagged, they conceived him and his seven brothers with a horse insemination pipette or something, I mean grandpa and grandma have eaten so much communion bread in their lifetime that they were probably shitting holy egg rolls at some point. So my dad had values. He had self-control. He had a sense of responsibility. Nobody grows up in a family like that then chills in front of the TV at night and borderline high-fives their teenage boy when the brat gets home tanked up, only to ultimately… wish him good night? That’s when I knew something was way off. The situation should have been awkward, instead it had been weird, and that was fucking terrifying to me because I knew it was a sign things were backwards. And I was, woe is me, right.

I can feel you need more proof. Let me take you back 2 years prior to that. I’m 14, you know, my back looks like the purple side of the moon, my face like a motocross track, and my foreskin is the highest producing cream cheese factory this side of the ocean. Not that I don’t take care of my dick, mind you, I do, on a daily basis at least, the women’s underwear section of my mum’s mail order catalog could testify to that if you were brave enough to try and take the pages apart. It’s a shame jerking off doesn’t count as personal hygiene because I’ve become a master at it. I’m a fucking artist, my dong is my brush and the whole world’s a canvass for my monochromes in white. I’ve tried a lot of things: one hand, two hands, under the shower, in the bath (if you’re wondering, it looks like a jellyfish’s taking off from your urethra, and honestly it’s a lot of fun), stuffed toilet paper roll, I even gave a go at blowing myself but I’m not flexible enough yet. It’s interesting to note, by the way, that I’m a FEARLESS wanker. Like any good teenager, I’m terrified by almost everything: girls, school, pervs, not having cell reception and being awake on a Sunday morning — but not touching myself. And I think the main reason for that is, nobody taught me how to do it, I just did it; at some point, when I was around 11 or 12, I locked myself in the bathroom, sat in the empty tub, grabbed my noodle and started shaking it like a meat maracas, with zero idea what I was doing, until it suddenly felt really good. It was pure impulse followed by pure bliss, that had never happened to me before and it hasn’t ever since. Somehow, that day, I naturally found out about pleasuring myself, and that may seem normal but also incredibly unlikely when you think of it. Then again, what a great gift. Should it have been taught, should I have had to sit in a dusty classroom and face a balding fat middle-aged guy named Mike who would have pulled his jeans down and told two dozens of us “Now gentlemen I want you to watch very carefully as I show you how to properly give Long Dong Silver a rub”, I would have dreaded handjobs like I dread the rest of my existence. But no, I loved jacking off, and so of course very soon I felt compelled to jack off everywhere.

I could bullshit you and pretend I had a plan but the truth is, not that time. When the movie I was watching took a semi-erotic turn, I didn’t really think twice and started unzipping my fly. My parents were downstairs, having dinner with a handful (👀) of friends, I could hear them talk and shout and burst in laughter, I had negotiated the right to leave the table after the main course, mum was already tipsy enough to allow for it, and I thought they all were having a fun time not caring about me. Also, I wasn’t thinking straight. The week before, I had sneaked in the living room very late on a Sunday, because a friend had told me there often was erotica on channel 6 in that slot, and sure enough there was, and I had done what I had to do, and the visual stimulation from my first time with porn of sorts had had an unexpected effect on me, one that can hardly be described but I’ll try anyway: I had jazzed a miniature Mururoa, a nuclear cloud of cum, a spray so powerful it almost touched the ceiling, so thick and plentiful I had been very, very proud of myself but also slightly worried — had I gone too far and punctured a ball or something? And so I had been, with my boxers in one hand, butt naked, trying to mop all around in order not to leave any trace of my mischief. To great success. Nobody had seen me, and I had gone to bed that night with the soothing feeling I had won my badge of pride as a nut lord. I wanted to experience the amazement again, and frankly, it was only fair.

The movie was Color of Night, and if Jane March had jumped out of the screen to ask me to run away with her I wouldn’t have thought twice. I had my dick in my right fist, and in an experimental mood, I was squeezing rather hard in order to determine whether penis strangulation would enhance or hinder my pleasure. I had just noted a puzzling carmine color when my dad entered the living room.

I was so fucking surprised, so utterly stunned I did not immediately think about packing up. I looked at him, he looked at me, then at my hand, and I swear I could read on his face the several steps of him understanding the situation and trying to react to it in a way that was appropriate. “Oh, my son’s still up.”, “Ah, OK, he’s watching TV, I get that, it’s not that often he gets to hold the remote…”, “Wait a minute, that’s not the remote he’s holding”, “Ok, that’s his dick, this is fucking embarrassing”, “Let’s find something to say in order to de-escalate the situation…”

- “So you’re discovering your body, eh? Good for you!”

See? That’s what I call awkward. That’s my dad. The one I knew. The one who was patronizing but tried very hard to be a cool adult, to show open-mindedness and understanding and love and care. This was a total failure, of course, when I came back to my senses and realized this situation was actually happening I tried to pack up my gears as fast as possible, pinched my scrotum with my zipper, screamed like hell to the point that my mum and her friends raced upstairs, dead worried. I had to retreat to my room staggering sideways like a wounded crab and I believe I didn’t get out of it the day after. It was an absolute nightmare, but at least this was a legit one. A cornerstone of my coming of age as a teenager and his confirmation as a functioning, embarrassed adult. It was agonizing, it wasn’t weird.

I’ll give you weird. It was a couple months ago, he was sitting on that same sofa I keep telling you about, being very quiet, staring into the void, almost as if he wasn’t there — a little like when he was sipping a whisky after work, but on steroids. We had just gotten back form a walk, and I thought he was simply trying to recover. He looked physically exhausted, honestly I understood that, I was wrecked too, even though my depletion was probably more mental. The walk had been around the former sand quarry two blocks away, now a landfill disguised as a pond, I’ll tell you what it’s draining to take a stroll when every step you take makes you despise men a little more for being degenerated pigs, it’s like they’re at war with nature, if they want to fuck their mum so bad they could go with the biological one and not involve the rest of us, also the sky was grey and low and uttering “this would be a perfect place and time for a suicide”. The ground was muddy, and slippery of course, and my dad had almost fallen a couple times. I had had to grab him by the arm and pull with all my strength, and even with that I was barely able to stop him from crumbling to the ground, to stop his puzzled face to disappear in the reeds, maybe he would have been at peace laying there but I doubt it, there are rusty coke cans and used condoms in those bushes I am sure.

So we were back in the living room, trying to get our shit together, and I was thinking, wanking isn’t a proper workout program, I need to start going to the gym if I want to get swell, my goal wasn’t to be able to catch my dad should he fall again but if I’m being honest it was, I pretended it was about being attractive and getting chicks, truth is I was feeling bad because I wasn’t reliable, I wanted to be reliable, I felt I was at a point in my life when I should have become reliable, even if my dad was turning from boring to weirdo. That’s when he started peeing himself.

It was my turn to stare at his crouch and not understand right away what I was witnessing, but I don’t think he realized what went through my mind at that moment, judging by the look on his face, then the absence of look as his eyes turned white because they were trying to have a peek at the back of his skull and his whole body started shaking. I had heard about epilepsy before of course, I knew crises could make you swallow your tongue, and I also knew you should never, ever use your fingers to try to prevent an epileptic from swallowing their tongue, so why on earth did I lunge towards my dad and put half my hand in his mouth while screaming for my mum to get a metal spoon from the kitchen drawer? Look at you with your smartass questions, I have no idea why I did that (note from future me: as I was writing this story I realized I actually have an idea why I might have done that, so I came back here to let you know there’s an explanation down the drain, hope and light at the end of the tunnel for all you care). After a few seconds, I felt my father’s incisors on my index and middle finger, and the adrenaline wasn’t enough to alleviate the pain. He was struggling, maybe to not bite me, maybe because he didn’t want to hurt me, maybe just against himself. And we were on the ground now, I was holding him close against me, closer than we had ever been for a while, I could feel his beard’s hair on his cheeks with my other hand as I pressed on his jaw to try to loosen his grip, also I could feel the warmth of his body, his scent, the very specific stench of his mouth I had learned to love over the years, a mix of tobacco, lazy brushing and being 50, also I could feel his panic and the power of his tensed muscles. I knew that power from when I was a little kid in my pajamas, from when my dad was lying on his back on the bed and lifted me up and put his feet under my stomach and his hands under my shoulders and pushed up to make me fly over him and pretend I was superman. I remembered that like a picture, I could see myself flying over him, a third-person memory. He was so strong back then, and that day I thought I am never going to wank again, he’s going to chomp my fingers clean off, it’s a done deal, who am I to go against my dad, if he wants to swallow his tongue who am I to dare to try to stop him, I don’t even have a proper workout program. Then the crisis faded away, and I barely had a mark on my fingers, and that made me proud because I had saved my father’s tongue, and maybe his life? It was stupid of course but I think I was happy to have done something for him. Something selfless and in a way brave. Something vain and ridiculous in the face of what was to come. Something nonetheless. Then his pee started feeling cold on my leg, and his eyes went back in his sockets, and he looked very confused and very tired and for one split second I wanted to comb his hair back with my hand and to hold him close to me like a little baby, and if you don’t think it’s weird then I don’t know, probably you’re weird, you sick bastard. Then again, you’re not completely wrong.

In the very beginning of the end, when the premises of the illness made him do weird shit like abandon his razor in the fridge and eat like a dog and look like he was constantly overdosing on space cake mum and I thought he was going through a phase. It’s a hell of a depression, yeah that must be it, he’s always been a little bit depressed, as if the life he had wasn’t the life he would have wanted, he must just have jumped the shark, nothing Xanax and psychotherapy can’t fix. But then his hand started moving unbeknownst to him and the scanner showed his brain looked like an oil spill, and we were like fuck, we might have underestimated the course of events. What I didn’t really realize though, even though the signs were all there already, was that we were going to face an implosion, not an explosion. My dad was going to die, sure, but before that, he was going to grow down. His muscles, his ability to move in space, his autonomy, his emotional spectrum, his vocabulary all were going to shrink and devolve — and we were going to have to assist him.

He started looking younger by the day. Not physically of course, physically he started looking more and more like an absolutely dreadful piece of crap. But I first noticed the thing I’m trying to explain when I gave a go at shaving him. He was willing for me to do so, I believe the newly grown hair in the lower part of his neck was irritating. I wasn’t super experienced in the matter though — not that I now am, I still look like I wrestled a porcupine every time I shave — and I cut him several times. But he didn’t yell or scold me, he didn’t discard me as useless or incompetent — instead he just sulked like a five year old. Around the same time, making sentences grew more difficult for him. He had to focus for forever just to remember laughably simple words. I was supportive and encouraging, the look of sheer determination on his face made me want to hold my breath for as long as necessary if only that could help him. It didn’t. The same went with walking — one day he walked to the end of the street and we told him tomorrow we’ll go a bit further, then he walked to the bathroom and we cheered, then he shook like a leaf to walk two steps and we congratulated him, not knowing we were celebrating the last time he’d actually use his legs. A little while later, we had to start feeding him. He thus decided to annoy us, and for a while his favorite game was to spit out the mashed vegetables he didn’t like then smile at us with all his teeth. We laughed too, so he did it again, and again — until he forgot how to. That was before he started spending the bulk of his time in bed, and wearing diapers, and we rubbed his ass with lotion — to fight pressure ulcers not diaper rash, I’ll give you that. I would read him comic books, and sometimes he would laugh at a funny scene, then fall asleep the minute after. We took turns spending the night next to him so that we would be able to soothe him should he wake up terrified. The morphine helped a ton, though. At one point he was mostly asleep. I would talk to him, not really sure whether he could hear what I had to say, and understand what he heard. I would tell him about my day, about the things I had done, the things I could do, the things he once had been doing. I would tell him about the hopes he had for me. Sometimes, he would smile in his sleep.

Then he stopped smiling.

Then he stopped breathing.

And I was so happy for him.