My stepfather could do no wrong, even though he was often dead wrong in the eyes of the rest of us. In fact, he frequently boasted that he and Christ were the only perfect people ever created. He was unapproachable, totally unwilling to listen to the viewpoint of another or to allow us to touch him with expressions of physical affection. And except for bedroom encounters with my mother, he showed very little affection towards us. As an ex-serviceman, he identified more with the macho image of the marines he had fought beside in the South Pacific during World War II, than he did with the image of the Navy corpsman he had actually been. He continually bragged about how strong he was—how he could crush our skulls with one hand, if he wanted to. On occasion, he even boasted that he could kill a man with his bare hands, which had already squeezed life from men in combat during WWII. As evidence, he kept in the garage a box filled with the bloody uniform and flag, glasses and several gold teeth of one of his victims, a dead Japanese soldier. Periodically, he even threatened to kill mom if she ever tried to leave him. He instilled in us fear and contempt for him, rather than love and respect. And in his inability to accept me as I was, he continually strove to make me into something that he wanted me to be, something he had failed to attain for himself but now sought vicariously through me.
On the other hand, he did possess a few, more admirable qualities, even though his tyranny tainted them too. Having always provided us with the food and the clothing we needed, and a roof over our heads, he once told me that was all he had to do when I confronted him about how little time he spent with his children. For he seemed to have a better relationship with the neighborhood toughs—parodies of the youth he never outgrew—than he did with us. Having bought what few friends he had, for the most part he failed to ever buy his way into our hearts with all of his bravado. Instead, he scared us off. He was so totally incapable of relating to us in any other way but this macho-man style of his, that it was difficult for us as children to see the tenderness, my mother saw in him, beneath all the callousness of the mask he had donned so long ago as a child, himself, in the service of his country.
While he was enamored by the images of the manhood he had acquired in the military, they also haunted him. Many a night was he awakened in his torment by the images of combat from his past and forced to relive them in his dreams. In his sleep he would shout out the vivid detail and horror of his experiences, till mom roused him from his nightmare. Obviously, he was tormented during the day too, by these haunting memories as evidenced by the incredible amount of alcohol he consumed to numb the terrible pain they must have caused him. For he suffered a life of quiet desperation and utter loneliness.
