Bah Humbug! (ManxMan)

Episode 2 - A hot beverage before going to bed sounds nice.

Episode 2 – A hot beverage before going to bed sounds nice.

Watching patrons clamor for bottles of Christmas ale and drinking straight from the tap—this was how George spent the days that followed leading up to Christmas.

He personally dabbled in the affairs of his business from conception, to production, to actual sales in bars and pubs, because he liked to nitpick at the work his people did, not leaving anything to chance for he had a case of trust-mistrust growing up, which was a personality complex one usually got when one’s entire childhood was built upon a lie.

Secrets exist for a reason, my son. It makes life that much more mysterious, George’s father would tell him whenever he’d come home drunk with a woman wrapped around his arms. The women—who weren’t anything close to the divine image of George’s mother—would scandalously drape their languid bodies around his father, sniffing them of what little money they have like a pack of wretched bloodhounds.

Your mother has secrets too, George. So, don’t tell her mine, his father would remind him often during those cold nights when his mother was out for two days, working backbreaking hours on two shifts that were hours apart.

George would nod, unblinking, thinking nothing of the secret which so clearly screamed the truth of his father’s lecherous treachery. He trusted his father, tried his best to understand his pop’s extracurricular activities. But his young mind, his young mind knew that his father’s actions couldn’t be trusted.

This case of trust-mistrust grew with George over the years leading to puberty. He tried to support his father’s ideals, thinking them as innocent, pure, and just, when in truth they were nothing but hideous lies. He might not have comprehended the word philandering, but he clearly knew that his father was doing it almost every night.

Not long thereafter, George’s case of mistrust developed into full-blown hatred when came those nights of muffled abuse behind closed doors. He would hear the sounds of banging and screaming his mother would do as she argued dad’s infidelities.

He knew his parents were fighting, and he didn’t need to see the brutality of their arguments if the strong rapping of the door’s wood or the crashing of inanimate objects was anything to go by. They weren’t acting like a family. No. They were a bunch of strangers living in the same house.

Trust. It was what his father wanted from him. One of the pillars of belief that George’s world had been built upon. But the trust he gave his father crumbled into dust the night when her mother finally left them for a better man. George thought that his mother would take him with her, but she didn’t. She left him to live with the lie that was his father.

Years of drunken depression didn’t bode well for George’s father and soon thereafter he died. No one went to his dad’s funeral. Cos nobody cared.

George was left to care and fend for himself as a young teenager with the occasional visits from an aunt who’s too occupied with her own life to start caring for another. George didn’t blame her auntie. She had her own life. And he, he had his.

Life had embittered George in the years that followed. It became so deeply-ingrained that it became his persona. Growing into adulthood, he kept his eyes open, and his wits sharp when it came to any relationship he established, may it be professional or otherwise, for he knew that to trust was to be betrayed. And to be betrayed was to feel hurt in a way that was unbearable.

Poor George. Life gave him nothing but poison—poisoned lies that his father had kept all those years which George rewarded with nothing but trust...the kind of trust that maybe his father would change for the better if they waited long enough. But his father never did. He wouldn’t. Why would he? Why would he when lying felt so good, and bedding a different woman every night felt like a different dream coming true every...single...time.