Internal Combustion

Boiling Point

Fuck, man.

If there was ever a day when I wished I could just drop everything and just go, it was today.

I'd reached my boiling point.

Although I'd been teetering on the edge, just about to cross that very threshold so many times over the past few months already, I knew how serious it was this time.

I mean, in that moment of red hot fury tinging my gaze red and flooding my veins with fire, I just wanted to leave. To run away and never look back. Responsibilities, family, friends, and my job be damned!

Dad always knew just how to push my buttons.

And there wasn't anyone else to cushion the blows, just me, the stupid idiot.

He didn't bother with Star or Moon because he knew they could care less and wouldn't put up with his shit. He didn't bother with my aunts, his sisters, because they too, just brushed him off. So he zeroed in on me.

Always me.

Am I starting to sound like a victim, yet?

A whiny victim?

If not, don't worry, I will.

He knew that out of everybody, I was the softy.

Anything he wanted, I'd get. Even if I pretended to be angry or like I wasn't going to.

Anything he did or said that was wrong, I'd forgive. Even after an hour-long speech from my broken record series of scoldings.

No matter what he threw at me, I'd get over it and give him chance after chance after chance.

And I supposed it had a lot to do with his... predicament.

He was a stroke victim, having suffered a series of them way back when, that left him weak and with limited mobility and speech. As a result, he took quite a few medications, morning, noon, and night, every single day for as long as I could remember.

And he couldn't work.

That's what killed him. The fact that he couldn't be self-sufficient the way his man's man attitude wanted to be.

Oh, and the fact that he couldn't fuck a woman anymore.

Because at the end of the day, my dad was a fucking horndog.

It was embarrassing, it was disgusting and it was plain old tiresome of getting the same calls from nursing homes, assisted living facilities, hospitals, and even in-home caretakers-

"Your dad has been saying inappropriate things,"

"Your dad has made inappropriate insinuations/gestures/advances towards our staff,"

"Your father was caught propositioning one of our staff to sleep with him for money,"

And then, I go over, have the same talk, the same speech, sounding like the same broken record, get the typical "I won't do it again, I'm going to change," in response and all is forgiven. Only for him to ask me to fix his "broken phone" seconds later, and end up finding dozens of messages, videos, online searches- you name it, from Porn sites.

I mean, what the fuck?

It's gross enough knowing your parents have sex or have those kinds of urges but it's another thing entirely to actually hear and see proof of it staring you right in the face.

Just, gross.

That wasn't the issue today though.

No, what set me off today, was when he showed up at my job, unannounced, unassuming, and uncaring about the dozen upon dozens of times I'd told him not to do that very same thing.