How to damage your child in one easy step.

My family was never one of those “pet families.” You know the type. Folks who name their animals with handles normally reserved for humans. The kind of families who will mercilessly let their dog or cat rot to pieces rather than having it dispatched in a more human way simply because “He’s a part of the family.”

Not that we didn’t like animals, it just seemed that we handled them in a far different manner than other families we knew. We seemed to have a revolving door of cats coming in and out of our house. We never actually went out and bought one or picked one up out a box marked “free kittens.”

“He adopted us,” my father would say.

Looking back on it now, I’m fairly certain that at some point in his life my father was jilted by an unfaithful family pet. He would keep these adoptive cats at emotional arms length by simply referring to them as “Cat.” Once when I was bout 12, we were adopted by a black cat with long vampire like fangs. I declared that we would name him Bella as I had just come off a Universal monster movie jag. It wasn’t long before Bella was just another “cat.”

As much as my father seemed to pretend that he had no connection to these animals I would come out into the back yard and find him conversing with another in a long line of “cats.”

“Where the fuck have you been Cat?”, He would ask as if it were a woman who had come home at 4:00 in the morning stinking of cologne.

After a days absence he would ignore Cat as if he was teaching the animal some sort of lesson for his or her transgressions. However, it wouldn’t be long before he was stooping to rub his putty knife behind the cat’s ears.

Perhaps it was his attitude a sort of self fulfilling prophecy but often the cats WOULD leave him for someone else. Once a cute and well-mannered black and grey cat disappeared for a few days. After some time she came waltzing into the back yard and my father played the same old game first yelling at her then turning his back as if his heart had been torn out. After the initial pain had subsided, he bent down to show his cheating bitch some affection. It was at this point that he could be heard screaming from the back yard, “What the fuck is this!? Where did you get this shit!?

Much to his horror the cat had been adorned with a collar presenting his name as Whiskers and ever worse…. A bell. She had been fucking around behind his back and actually had the nerve to show up wearing a gift from the adulterous piece of shit who had stolen her away. As far as I know that was the last time her ever opened his heart to a cat again.

Considering the fact that my father believed that house pets were nothing more than animals who could fend and provide for themselves it came as no surprise that he was almost never willing to spend any money on them. And he wonders why they always left him? Consequently our cats were never spayed or neutered and even worse he would often insist that he was perfectly capable of putting an injured or sick animal out of its misery. It would be this twisted belief that would often lead to interesting and horrifying situations.

When I was about 12 we had a male cat who was nothing short of apeshit. While in the house he would tear around the living room in circles moving at incredibly dangerous speeds. Behind the couch, under the TV, around the rocking chair. Round and round for hours at a time.

“Maybe we should have him neutered,” my mother would suggest as the cat tore over her yet again tearing a chunk out of her arm in the process.

“Bullshit,” my dad would volley “That’s a fucking waste of time. He’ll calm down when he gets older.”

Because they we’re free to come and go as they pleased this cat would often take off into the neighborhood with his swollen balls and invariably come back bearing the evidence of a tussle with another male cat or sometimes a small dog. Small chunks out of an ear or a couple of scrapes across the back but never anything life threatening. Fortunately for him, it was never anything that required veterinary attention. One evening as we sat watching Twin Peaks, my parents patiently listening as I laid out all the evidence which pointed directly to Laura Palmer’s true killer, we heard a sound which was not unlike an infant being drowned in pudding and gravel. It quickly became apparent that ‘Cat’ had gotten in a fight with something large and angry. A creature with no shortage of teeth or claws had handed ‘Cat’ his ass and it was almost certainly beyond being reattached.

There were copious amounts of blood flowing from a number of gaping crimson wounds. A missing ear, flaps of skin tenuously hanging from bits of sinew like ornament from a Christmas tree. It was the first time I had seen any gore of this caliber that wasn’t projected on a movie screen. I was all at once nauseated and fascinated. From the safety of my bed I listened to the cat scream all night long. Once morning had come my mother insisted that the cat be put out of its obvious misery. She pleaded in vain for the cat to be taken to a “proper facility” where they were “equipped to handle this sort of thing.” However, my dad would have nothing of it.

“fuck that! They’ll just charge me some sort of bullshit service fee. I can handle this myself.”

It was at this point that he hoped in the truck and took off for the hardware store to “equip himself to handle this sort of thing.” I had visions of hacksaws and blowtorches’ long-handled sledgehammers smashing cantaloupes. Unfortunately the reality of his plan would prove to be far more horrifying. Upon returning my dad carried two canisters of aluminum phosphide which in later years I came to know as nerve gas. My father explained to me in a matter of fact tone that this was the kind of stuff that golf courses used to control the gopher populations and was the most humane and painless method available for the dispatching of mangled cats in the home. Being a painter my father always had a large surplus of plastic five gallon buckets and was instructed to retrieve one from the shed.

“Paint can. Gas chambers,” it seems a natural progression to me. Considering that the next ten to fifteen minutes was one of those childhood defining moments which you desperately try to forget but always manage to remember I now envision it from a third person perspective as if I were watching a film about the kind of things you should under no circumstances expose your child to. In a few swift movements the gas canister was ignited and thrown into the bucket, quickly followed by the cat a plywood lid and a large. The promised quick and humane death was long and horrific we both stood paralyzed watching the bucket quake and rattle as the cat aware of its imminent demise threw its self about the confines of the bucket screaming as only a creature can when it knows its death is at hand.

After what seemed like an eternity the bucket grew silent and stopped moving at which point I allowed myself to exhale.

“Fuck!” my dad proclaimed. “That was a whole hell of a lot easier than I thought. Saved myself 15 bucks too.”

He looked down at me.

“Let’s dig a hole.”

Death Before Dating

Invariably throughout ones life you will cross paths with individuals who’s very being could not have been scripted any better than if they had been created lock and stock by the most creative script writers the world has to offer. I have been fortunate enough to intersect with said persons on a regular basis in the course of my life. One such character was Stuart Richardson the Third. It seemed that from childhood Stuart was destined to be of the colorful variety. Perhaps, had he been allowed to keep his birth name which happened to be the decidedly bland Todd he may have been a less interesting character. However, as fate would have it he would have an entirely different destiny. It would happen that in his fifth year just as young Todd Richardson was begin to cultivate a stronger sense of self just as any child would do that death would intervene. Upon the death of Todd’s grandfather Stuart Richardson the First his parents, caught in the rapture of a sudden fit of irreparable sentimentality thought it best to carry on the family name. Rather than waiting until they brought forth a second son, (which they managed to do a few years later in Kyle Richardson) they chose to erase young Todd’s identity and begin anew.

“Your grandfather has died. Secondly you shall hence for be known as Stuart Richardson the Third.”

Granted this is some fairy heavy shit to lay on a five year old, however in the grand scheme of things I am sure that this event had no more damage on Stuarts psyche than any number of parental debacles which we all must endure as humans as a matter of course.

I met Stu in high school. It was at this point in his life when he began to sew the seeds of an interesting and sometimes entertaining internal dichotomy. It would seem that Stu was beginning to have a hard time marrying his fascination of lower class culture and his inarguable upper class up bringing. Perhaps this is why Stu was drawn to me. I could often glimpse a deep and unexplainable longing in his eyes whenever he came to my house and was presented without fail at least one dilapidated car in the driveway which did not run and which no one had the desire to make do so. I would listen as he spoke wistfully about someday renting a house with a car sitting on blocks in a dead and oil soaked front lawn, of filthy shirtless children running about unchecked and being looked down at by the neighbors. However, regardless of his deep infatuation with white trash ethos he still held strong allegiance to his parents who had reworked his identity for him so many years ago. He focused his attention to fine art of mechanichry of which his father hardily encouraged him. I’m sure assuming that it would be something that an adult Stuart would do with his time off from his well paid and secure state job which would offer him vast amounts of expendable income. Unfortunately for Stuart the Second this preoccupation would soon grow to be an obsession and a steadfast part of young Stuies identity.

When Stu wasn’t working on his cars we were going to see punk shows, drinking and smoking ungodly amounts of marijuana. In hindsight I find it incredible that were not arrested on a more regular basis. Even when Stuart wasn’t getting himself into situations which were unequivocally illegal he was finding his way into incidents which were amazing and often downright bizarre. Fortunately for my catalog of life experiences from which to write about I was there on more than a few occasions either watching mouth agape or actively participating.

More often than not while we were in high school the situations Stu found himself in were pertaining to the procurement of women and the hard fought battle to attain intercourse. There was not much within the bounds of minimal good taste that Stu wasn’t willing to do to get laid. Perhaps it the way in which he persistently requested a “Suckjob” or the frequency with which he pushed drinks on his victims in hopes to lubricate the path to intercourse which often left the young lady becoming “too drunk to fuck”. Regardless it would seem that he didn’t start getting enough of what he desperately desired until he stopped trying so desperately to make it happen.

One occasion which I found then to be endlessly amusing took place the night of a high school dance. Stu had managed to secure himself a date as had I so we chose to go together. His excitement was quite simply uncontainable and it radiated around him. Truth be told was quite happy for him and it seemed that his consistent badgering of the farer sex had paid off in a date with a lovely young lady. As we prepared ourselves for the evening I was at some points quite certain that Stu would burst with anticipation. He vigorously applied copious quantities of deodorant from armpit to elbow as he endlessly and nervously rambled on in regards to this young lady’s unequaled beauty and unmistakable desire “to fuck”. Once Stu had dressed himself in the finest threads a thrift store would allow he straightened his bow tie, slammed a couple of beers to sooth his jangled nerves and announced that he was quite ready to pick up his charge for the evening.

It was decided that we would pick up his date first. As I drove us to the girls house Stu continued to make the case that THIS girl was the ONE. Frequently turning to me with a devilish grin to tell me that, “she’s gonna get it!” Frankly I was starting to believe it. We stopped on the street in front her house. Stu grabbed the rear view mirror with a complete lack of grace and pushed around his grease soaked hair. I lit a cigarette and Stu was out the door. He was half way up the walkway before I could even begin to offer some advice on the way to go about greeting his date. After my first cigarette I got out of the car and lit another logically assuming he was inside meeting the girl’s horrified parents. I shivered as I imagined the terror I would undoubtedly feel if I were a father and some young greasy punk reeking of cheap booze and cheaper cigarettes came to take my little girl away from me with the obvious intention of relentlessly violating her.

Just as I began to shake my waking nightmare Stu came walking back down the walkway, alone. It looked as if he had been hit by a truck. In a matter of a few moments his entire demeanor had taken a three-sixty. The girls father, I rationalized had doubtlessly forbidden her to go any where with this primate. I felt a huge wave of sorrow for Stuart and of relief for the young girl which had unknowingly dodged the flesh bullet. As he walked toward me Stu held up a piece of paper. Flabbergasted he looked me in the eye and said, “She killed herself!”

I grabbed the paper from his hands and proceeded to read the poor young girls last words.

“Just my fucking luck” Stu said as he lit a smoke and leaned against the car, “I find one that wants to fuck and she goes and fucking kills herself.”

I looked up from the note and gave him the look I reserve for guys that ask me if I’d like to have sex with a baby.

“What!?”

According to the note it seemed as if the girl just could not go on any longer. It appeared sincere enough but just as I began to ponder the odd concept of leaving a suicide note to your homecoming date I got to the part where she informed Stu that unfortunately, she was not going to be able to attend the dance with him as she was planning to be deceased.

Stu spent the rest of the evening drinking massive quantities of Natural Ice and regaling anyone who would listen with his tale of woe.

Unsurprisingly we later found that the young lady who had ended her life so early was not only very much alive but apparently quite well adjusted. Well, just maladjusted enough to break off a date by feigning suicide.