by Virginia Bell.
after Diane Seuss
I met my father again in The Pleasure Chest on North Milwaukee,
in the garden center on Clarke called Gethsemane,
in a nightclub in Spain back when everyone was playing The Police
on repeat, and he said to me, is that you, little
chickadee, he said, like a monk with dementia who has forgotten
the face of Christ. I think he meant I had turned
into an alien, incomprehensible, not the pig-tailed ten-year-old
who followed him around like a puppy. Gin, he said,
isn’t that your name? I mean, he was struggling to remember
anything. It was as if his God had taken away
the car keys. As if God had shoved all the roads back under
the dirt. We couldn’t seem to get anywhere.
Gin, my father said, though he was never a drinker
and we now were at the Lilith Fair, more weed in the air than piss.
Picnic blankets spread with womxn as far as the sky
could fall. He was still tall and doe-eyed, despite greying roots
calling for more hair dye. The few men there turned
to stare. I remember noticing those sudden crushes, as a child
but without alarm. The charm was that given. I’m not sure
he wanted to keep talking to me. To this dead man, another chance
at queer pleasure was presenting itself in my present, despite
my presence (that part felt old, familiar), when in death he had finally
learned not to miss the body, to accept existence as sound-
wave, force of wind, radiation of light, as temperature, barometer,
that is, something the living have to name
to believe in. He was wearing a suit and a wide, 70s tie,
totally out of sync with my now. How, he wanted
to know, could I be an atheist, and a feminist with unshaved
pits and legs. I was like his old dog that needed
a good clipping after a soapy wash under the garden hose.
Ken, he said, reaching out for a handshake as if we had just met.
(And, yes, his name was actually Ken!) Then, it wasn’t
the Fair anymore, we were back in the diner,
which I’ve written about before, and his breath smelled
like cigars though he didn’t smoke. Why can’t fathers be
something other than Fathers? Why can’t daughters?
Just be people. Ken, I tried to say, nice to see you
after all this time. I mean, dude, nice to meet you.