9.16.1996

Well, Dad was here for the entire weekend and now he's back home. I put him on a plane for San Francisco at 7:30 this morning and I'm glad he's gone. He made me nervous most of the time he was here, and he was also completely annoying. There just isn't much here to do in Spokane and Dad seemed to think it was my fault things were so boring for him while he was here. It was like he wouldn't believe me when I told him there isn't much going on in Spokane or that there aren't many places to go outside of the area that are interesting. One morning we bumped into a talkative guy in a coffee shop and Dad started grilling the guy about what there was to do for fun around here. Much to my amusement the guy told him they like to call the city Slo-kane because it's so slow all the time and that's the way people who live here like it. Then he told Dad there isn't much to do around these parts. I was laughing hard on the inside.

Dad told me he was surprised I haven't been cheating on Jennifer. He said if he had the opportunity to be young again and be away from his girlfriend he'd be "chasin' pussy all over town". I'm not like that. I explained to him that I can't cheat on the woman I'm with, and that if things don't improve dramatically with Jennifer once I arrive home, I'll just move out. I will never cheat on Jennifer, no matter how bad things become for me. Dad didn't seem to get it. He also belittled me for not "making friends" with the local people in Spokane that are my age. All the ones I met here seemed really weak or messed up to me so I chose not to hang around them. I thought what Dad was really getting at was he'd have had a much better time on this weekend trip if he'd met some people. I can't invent people to meet or things to do, so he got restless.

I slept on the couch the whole weekend so Dad could sleep in my bed. Like the dumb ass that I am I didn't figure out I could just pull the cushions off the couch and sleep on the floor much more comfortably than I did on the couch. I don't fit on couches or hide-a-beds or in sleeping bags very well. I'm too tall so I have to sleep in a semi-fetal position and I wake up the next day aching and feeling like crap. Happens every damn time. I slept all funky Friday and Saturday nights and really messed up my neck.

We went out and saw the film "Eraser" at the theater Saturday night. It was okay. I went just to kill some time so Dad wouldn't be quite so bored for a couple of hours. Part of the problem during the weekend was the weather. It was really cold and raining most of the time so we couldn't get out of town on a road trip. There would have been no point. On Friday afternoon we drove part of the way around Lake Coeur 'd Alene. On the way to the Idaho border there's a sign that says you can't bring in fruits or vegetables from Washington. When we both saw the sign I acted very apologetic to Dad and I told him I was going to have to pull over and drop him off along the side of the interstate. He was looking at me like, "What the fuck are you talking about"? I said, "Dad didn't you see that sign? I can't bring you into the state of Idaho. No fruits OR vegetables so you can't go. Sorry". I thought it was pretty funny but all he did was sit there in the passenger seat and glare at me for about five minutes. He never did have much of a sense of humor. About 25 miles into the trip we stopped at a little roadhouse bar. Inside the bar we saw a map of the entire lake and realized it was way too big for us to drive around in an afternoon, so we turned around and came back into Spokane.

There was only two main things Dad talked to me about over the weekend, and he sounded like a broken record almost as soon as he stepped off the plane. He rambled on and on about how shitty things have been at the firehouse for him, and how frustrated he has become with Mom. I'm really worried about the latter issue because he's angry and he apparently started drinking again. It's the first time in like, fifteen years or more. I knew something was wrong when we went out to shoot some pool at a place called Mc Q's. The whole time I grew up I knew my father had a serious drinking problem but Mom forced him to stop when I was very young. After we shot a couple games of nine ball Dad started ordering both of us beers. This was the first time I've had a drink with my Dad, and it seemed wrong. All wrong.

The drinking started a few months ago, he said. Dad had some cooking sherry in the kitchen and snuck it down into the workshop he has under their house. He drank all of it and got loopy. Then he told me he began making trips to the corner store and bringing home harder stuff wrapped up in paper bags so Mom wouldn't notice or see what it was. He'd take it into the shop and stash it for later or drink it as soon as he got down there. Dad has one bad personality, and when he mixes booze with it everything is exponentially worse for anyone with the misfortune to be near him. He's like what I consider to be a classic alcoholic. He's one of those people that when he drinks his personality is altered completely and he becomes an angry drunk motherfucker. So, something is definetly up with him at home and I'm not real clear on what the story is yet. I'm worried though. This is a very bad development.