The Naked Dad Problem

Part of my father Adam's superhuman shock value and power comes from the fact that we believe he can do anything. Later, after Egypt, after a million other places, a friend of his in South Africa calls, crying, saying her ex has taken their child. All she knows is that they are supposedly somewhere in the Alps. She doesn't know what country. My father gets on a plane to Europe and finds that kid in two days. The irony of his returning a child taken from its mother does not occur to him. There is no superhuman to rescue me, to return me to my mother when Adam takes me at the age of five. I don't want anything the next six years with him brings - not the world travels, not the upheaval, not the violence. A razor blade goes missing once. My brothers and I are lined up as one-by-one we are asked whether we are responsible. Dad slugs us in the face, going down the row, until one of us confesses. I forget which it is, but I don't think I'm the one.

The sexual experiences start early. Five. It feels incredibly good. Is the idea of kid-sex rooted directly in the whole hot-naked-dad-problem? Or is the adult prism, the looking back, is that unduly influenced by the satisfying gasps and horror-filled eyes of adults I now tell? When I am five and the little girl next door is six we don't play doctor, we don't play post office - we have oral sex. The only surprise to me now is that it's a girl the first time. Maybe there are others earlier. Now that I think of it, there is, a boy with an overly sandy crotch. The grains of sand taste too gritty and I don't like it. We're four. Also no pretense of playing a child's game here.

Is this a direct path from Dad? Does violence lead to tasting a sandy crotch? Aside from fear tactics, empathy is my father's greatest weapon. If you talk to him for any length of time he walks away knowing everything in your heart, especially your weaknesses. While oozing genuine understanding and charm he ferrets out what he can use against you. Half the time he probably isn’t even aware he's doing it. Sometimes it can be something small - guessing he can tease you to tears about your looks, for instance, or knowing you're a kid who's embarrassed about the child-like size of your penis in relation to his. It could also be something that affects you for the rest of your life, like using your mother's deep sense of shame and uncertainty about her background to convince her she's unfit to care for a child. You know. Something like that.

Many years later my father accidentally admits something to my cousin Edy. It happens in such a trite, "Law & Order" way that even now it makes me giggle. Whatever else I think of him never imagine Dad capable of reducing himself to making an easy slip on the witness stand. Edy is on the phone with him and asks how things are, and he tells her how aggravated he is with Aaron, who is in his mid-20s at the moment, and on the outs with him. He tells how Aaron has crazy ideas that as a child he is beaten and abused, allegations Adam heatedly denies. My cousin asks him, "Well, what if Sam has the same memories?" That's when Adam loses the plot, telling her, "Not Sam, maybe Gary and Aaron, but I never hit Sam." After thinking of him as a superhuman genius, the fact that he implicates himself, admits to hitting Aaron and Gary so easily and stupidly, is thrilling. You can see the late Jerry Orbach turning to Sam Waterston: "We got our guy."

The few times Adam hits me, with his fist, in my face, make a big impression on me. But the barrage of sound, the screaming, the constant everyday vitriol make me think it can happen again at any moment. That's worse. That's what can still wake me up at night, Dad's voice in a bad dream, all these years later. No words, really. Just a roar. My brother Aaron feels it the same way. Plus he wakes up thinking that a million pound weight is bearing down on his chest, forcing the life out of him, all the while the roar screaming away, surrounding him, penetrating every part, until he dies.