2. Weirdo

Out the house

My father was scared. He didn’t understand what I was doing or who I was. To him and his buddies, I was a weirdo. And he knew too well what that meant. He had been at the cruel end himself, although he would probably never admit it.

His defences were longstanding, entrenched, the interior obfuscated. Outwardly, he had the resemblance of something immovable, being perpetually coated in a thick layer of building-site dust, an inhuman skin, which smelled of burnt stone and setting cement.

His hair made thick and wiry from the dust, tangled in my fingers. His unshaven skin, dark with exposure, felt abrasive on my young cheek when he hugged me. And when I asked why his belly was so hard and round, he told me that he ate rubble and bricks and old cars for dinner just like a rock monster. And by his smell and appearance, I believed him.

He appeared to play the game, a man’s man, work, fight, drink, work, fight, fuck, work. But I know, he was a weirdo too. In truth, I think he was less scared for me than for himself. My strangeness reflected his own unique fear.

A fear strong enough to occlude the threat to his son’s wellbeing. For how does a weirdo make friends? A weirdo makes friends with the first people who will let them.

To him, I was out the house, and that was good enough. But this is what he should have been scared of. Out the house with other weirdos.

It was fun. For a time.

This is part two of ‘Laccolith’ a fictionalised graphic memoir of my life and my relationship with my Father. Go read part one ‘Making friends’ if this one doesn’t make sense. Find all the strips in the Laccolith tab on my home page.

Thanks for reading.

Alexander