Splitting Heirs
It occurs to me, probably more often than it should, that I have yet to see my twenty-two-year-old son in the company of a female. His life is his own, of course, to do with as he sees fit, but I see a lot of me in a lot of him. So, why wouldn’t I want to see him strolling down the boulevard with a dame on each arm, in the parlance of an earlier time?
This bothers me since my own father often questioned my sexuality during my youth. I chalked his suspicions up to me having accidentally written a poem in his presence. I was twelve, three years before my father went to the grave never knowing I’d go on to snake the puss with ferocious regularity. Anyway, I can’t quite recall the premise of the poem. I’m pretty sure it involved rhyming couplets. I’m dead certain it did not quell the tumultuous sea within my father’s heart.
“Whatcha writing there?” My father spoke like a gangster, a throwback to a time when he was actually a gangster rather than a janitor. When he narrowed his eyes, he called to mind an amalgamation of Paul Sorvino and Stephen Graham. Today, in hindsight, anyway. Back then, he was just an angry man in a navy-blue monkey suit, the kind of work uniform I swore I’d never wear but jumped right into the first opportunity I got.
“You writing, what? A song, there?”
“It’s a poem, Dad.”
I winced. Why couldn’t I have said it was a song? It’s not like he would have made me sing it. Even at twelve I suspected poetry was best written in dark alcoves far from the prying eyes of the artlessly judgmental. This was back in the mid-eighties, of course, before Starbucks.
“Poetry? Ah, Jesus, no. What’d I do to deserve this?”
I have three younger brothers. My father began pinning his hopes and dreams for masculine sons on the lapels of their Iron Maiden T-shirts. Near as I can tell, not one of my brothers has yet to dabble in poetry. I, myself, quickly transitioned to the less gay free verse. A move that was noted by nobody.
My father worried about the continuation of the Koweski namesake. He was the only surviving male of his brood. He held it to be of the utmost importance that there be at least a handful of dumb Polacks named Koweski wandering the blighted industrial wastelands of the Apocalypse hunting for petrol.
My own son is our last hope for continuing my father’s legacy. My brothers all failed to produce a male heir, because, in the immortal words of my baby brother, Alex, “if you’re getting prostitutes pregnant, you’re doing it wrong.”
Unless you can get an Xbox pregnant, I don’t think we’ll see a Koweski saving the denizens of a desert fort from mohawked marauders.
I love my son, but he’s as useless as Neil McDonough in a Tinto Brass film.
That said, regardless of his sexual orientation, I wanted my son to understand my frustrations with him are based solely on his financial failings. So, over breakfast, I casually mentioned I thought the Huddle House waitress serving us our twin MVP breakfast looked kinda pretty.
This was a test. There’s no such thing as a pretty Huddle House waitress. I just wanted an idea which direction his tastes veered. Was his idea of feminine beauty based on a lifetime of watching weird ass anime? If so, there was no end of Huddle Houses and Wal-Marts for him to find a suitable partner.
He refused to rise to the bait.
“You’re married, Dad. And she’s like thirty years younger than you.”
“Not for me, jackass. For you. Is she someone you’d ask out on a date?”
“Ah, I don’t know.” He got real cagey, perhaps fearing I’d try to make a spectacle of us by trying to arrange a date for him. “I don’t think so.”
“All right. Fine. Say, are you doing anything, tonight? Maybe I can carry you up to Uncle Buck’s Booty Bungalow for a couple hours. Help make a car payment or two for those poor strippers.”
“Nah, Dad, I’m good. I don’t want to waste money on that.”
“I’m paying for it. It’ll be on me, son.”
“Nah, I don’t want to waste your money, either.”
“Since when? I’m literally wasting half my monthly income keeping you housed and internetted.”
“And I told you I appreciate it. I just don’t want to pay twenty bucks every time I want to touch a meth head’s ass.”
We thanked the waitress for refilling my coffee and his Dr. Pepper and waited for her to scuttle away before continuing our conversation.
“Son, it seems I’ve done you a terrible disservice, allowing you to entertain these delusional opinions regarding the erotic dancers employed by Uncle Buck’s Booty Bungalow. They run a classy place full of upstanding young women. Some of them maybe not so young. But, I’m telling you, when you drop that twenty bucks, you’re cupping your hand on the ass of a hard-working single mom looking to do right by her kids. Either that or a young lady making that cheddar so she’s not overwhelmed later in life with crippling student debt. The only meth heads you’ll find is over yonder flipping your flapjacks.”
“Dad, I just ain’t interested in all that.”
“Son, you know I love you above all else. If you don’t like women, I support you one hundred percent. I just don’t want you to go through this life lonely. I want you to find some kind of happiness in this fucked-up, shitty world.”
“I get that. And I like women just fine. I just don’t want the hassle, right now.”
“The hassle?”
“I don’t want to have to answer to anybody. A girlfriend will expect me to get a job. Spend money. Be places. Meet people.”
“I expect you to do those things!”
“Yeah, but you’re my dad; I can ignore you. A woman would expect me to shower. Get up before noon. Eat when she wants to eat. Listen to her music…”
“All right. I get it. I get it.”
Basically, he listed everything I’m compelled to do on a daily basis. Either, this kid was a fucking genius, or your typical dumb Polack. Sometimes, it was hard to differentiate. He seemed to have figured out more in his twenty-two years than I had in fifty.
“Don’t you get lonely?” I asked.
“No more than you do. Except when I get lonely, I get on the computer and play games with friends. Talk shit. I ain’t gotta be in the same room with them. I prefer not to be in the same room with them.”
“Fair enough. You ever see yourself having kids?”
“Yeah, eventually, when I get shit figured out. Maybe in my forties.”
“All right. Just make sure you have all boys. Make your uncles happy. They want to make sure that Koweski name lives beyond us, you know.”
“What about you? You worried about the Koweski name dying out.”
“Me? No, I don’t give a shit. I ain’t never known a Koweski I can tolerate longer than five minutes.”
Karl Koweski is a displaced Region Rat now living in rural Alabama. He writes when his pen allows it. He’s a husband to a lovely wife and father to some fantastic kids. He collects pop culture ephemera. On most days he prefers Flash Gordon to Luke Skywalker and Neil Diamond to Elvis Presley.
THE POLISH HAMMER POETRY CORNER is a weekly column, posted each Tuesday morning.
