I'm stuck in my family's bullshit conspiracy theories about my father's death. 

My father died of hypertension, which caused an aneurysm and he bled out in his brain.  The ER doctor inserted a tube into the back of his skull to drain the blood; they also inserted a tube deep into his throat to force his lungs to work.  Those tubes caused severe bruising and swelling of his face.

Certain members of my family, uncles, aunts, cousins and the like don't believe in scientific mumbo jumbo such as hypertension or elevated blood pressure.  They refuse to accept that mere tubes could cause such swelling of the face.  No, absolutely not.  ER doctor, they said, you don't know shit.  Shove that degree up your ass.  We've watched enough CSI to prove one thing:  He was murdered. 

These motherfuckers think my father was murdered.  Beat down in broad daylight over drugs.  My father, the bastard drug addict, of course he was killed in such a manner.  He had to have been murdered.  No other death was befitting of him.  Dat and his immediate family are so terribly ashamed to have a father like him, no wonder they're covering up his death.

These motherfuckers think my mother, my sisters and I huddled around in a tiny circle, dressed in long robes with adorning hoodies and fucking discussed how to cover up the murder, then we adjourned to drink goat blood and watch vampire porn.  These motherfuckers whispered and gossiped about my father, at his wake no less, though they gave empathetic embraces to my mother, consoled her with compassionate composure as my mother could carry none, and  these motherfuckers were faking. 

Faking sorrow, that's right, they were pretending that they cared about my father. 

Fuck that.  Fuck y'all and your nonsensical inability to think outside your own two eyes.  Like y'all matter more than him, like y'all more matter than me, like y'all matter at all.  You motherfuckers turning me ghetto; I've used the word fuck as a verb, adverb and noun you fucking fucks.

Who was my father to y'all, anyway?  Your families decided to shun him, to shit on him whenever your lives weren't stable enough, but what's that matter now?  So my father dies, so even in his passing, y'all can't get enough of just being engorged with hatefulness.  You want his memory to be written off as worthless. 

Didn't my father fight in the war to bring you gook bitches over to this country?  Didn't my father loan your asses money that should have went to his own children so you motherfuckers could buy a house and eat?  My father did do all those things and never asked to be thanked.  And he never said y'all owe me.  He never asked for nothing from you fuckers, just to be left the hell alone.

My father never looked me in the eye and said, "Son, I'm sorry we're poor as poor can be.  But I hope tonight, when you sleep in your shared bed with your brother, you will sleep soundly because you should know that your uncles and cousins have full-bellies and each a bed.  Good night son.  Don't let the rats gnaw off your toes." 

It was something he just did; he put his own brothers and their children before his own. 

I never looked my father in the eye and said, "Dad, why are we so fucking poor that kids on food stamps make fun of me?  Why do my cousins have Nintendo and my brother and me have to pretend to be Mario and Luigi in the backyard?  Why do you hate us so fucking much?"

I never questioned him.  It wasn't my place as his son to question why he was the way he was.  As a father, it was his paternal obligation to explain to me why he was the way he was.  He never did, though, he died and will continue to die a little bit more every day.

I hear his death when I talk to my mother.  Her voice has lost all its luster and joy, and I hear her suicidal thoughts, beckoning to her, calling her to close her eyes forever.  I see his death when I look in the mirror, crawling beneath my skin and invading my heart like a cancer of rational thought.  I feel his death when my sisters cry, and cry they must for a man who would not cry for himself.  I smell and taste him when I pray for him; the acrid, painful smoke of incense melts my eyes with tears and finally, it seeps into my lungs and pollutes my pores. 

These motherfuckers think my father was murdered.  Y'all beat on him everyday of his life, wore him down with your ungrateful demands, especially with your selfish satires of social status - of belonging and conforming and following.  Fuck y'all.

You didn't bother to even to get to know him in his later years.  You stayed away, for nearly a decade and come death's knock on my father's door, y'all appeared from your luxury cars, carrying your Coach and LV purses and strolled onto my doorstep.  Did you acknowledge my existence, or was I already dead to you too?  I know you're scared of me; scared of the fact that unlike my father, I will speak my piece, I will fight for the women in my life, and I will choke the shit out of you.

How it sucks to be y'all.  Today, y'all came groveling to my mother, to my sisters and to me and asked us for $25,000.  I shit you not. 

To quote y'all:  "Our family needs to stick together.  We need $25,000 to pay for our finances to help support our boys, otherwise, we'll lose our homes and cars and boat.  I hope you can find it in your hearts to help us."

That's right, people.  These motherfuckers think I'll give them $25,000 to help tide them over.  To support their kids.  To bail them out during the recession.  I might as well have murdered my father if they think I'm so retarded to give them anything.  Nope.  Fuck y'all.  Take your homes and your cars - which by the way, you so happily boasted about a few years ago as you put me down in my 1990 Camry and rented apartment- take those along with your conspiracy theories about my father, with your notions of notoriety and supremacy, take all those things and go fuck yourself.

Oh, one last thing: We ain't family.

Dat

Dear You,

It's late again and I'm still up, unconsciously tracing the outline of your silhouette on my bedsheet. I've been unable to sleep alone for the last few weeks.  Just so you know, I haven't changed anything around the house, especially in the bedroom.  The setup is the same: I'm enclosed to my side while your empty space remains vacant. 

I've allowed your pillow to become a soft statute of your shape, if only the back of your head when last you lay beside me.  Admittedly, there have been times when I've coddled it, wishing it were you when separation anxiety transcended my other mental disorders. Are you happy now that you've driven me to desperation by disappearing?

Bravo, my dear, I must say if you wanted me to endure suffering, you've won many times over.  I know without a doubt it's my fault really, for never realizing how you relished tragic endings, considering how well you played the role of a victim.  Hell, I'd give you an Oscar for Best Actress if I could.  At the very least, a Golden Globe.

You left me on a Thursday night. We were lying together in bed and you were pretending to be my corpse bride.  You let the pretty words I whispered into your ear to dissolve, you let my love dissipate morbidly by the blank palette upon your face and lastly, you let our relationship die.  For what?  You wouldn't say.  How can I change this?  You didn't know.  Do you—is it possible—could you—would you continue to love me and stay?  I pestered you with these questions until you could take no more.  At that moment, you sat up, swung your legs over the side of the bed and got dressed in front of me for the last time.

The line you drew into the carpet with pointed foot and arched heel, I candidly could not cross.  You stared angrily at me, daring me to transverse your way.  If I attempted, I'd be trespassing into your personal space and proving that I did not respect boundaries.  A man, however, a man would have effortlessly invaded such territory; grabbing you by the waistline, telling you to quiet your mouth while tossing you back onto the bed. The end of course resulting in rampant sex: angry, Viking, makeup sex.  

But I wasn't a man, therefore I did nothing.  I didn't move from the safe comforts of the bed, where I'd spent my youth hiding from monsters, bogeymen, parents and now, from you.  I would've much rather faced brain-starved zombies or angst-ridden teenage vampires in love than to face your departure.  Reality became frightening.  The thought of me without you meant you with someone else.  The burden of losing you to Mr. Righter could only signify one decisive conclusion: I could have prevented all this.

Our final conversation was pure fallout.  The surplus of words randomizing in my vocal chords did nothing to dissuade your movement towards the door.  I became distraught and the deficit of honest, meaningful words that should have been pouring out of me slipped further into the red ink.  I did not ask you to stay.  I did not tell you I loved you so much I'd die without you.  I opted to give you silence instead when you walked to the door.

"Things are getting old," you said, calmly, almost chipper.  You were happy, bouncing buoyantly while watching my heart burst.  I think back with pure clarity on how much you must have despised me to end on such terms.  To leave in such a manner...

"Okay," I agreed.  You opened the door a bit, holding the frame against your cheek and though I couldn't see clearly, I'm positive you were stifling your laughter.  Those were the last words we ever spoke as lovers.  You stood a bit longer, languishing in victory and left, leaving the door open behind you.  

It's late again and I'm still up, wondering where you are and if you'll ever come back to me. 

I grew up with three overbearing women in my life.  I loved them, my mother and my sisters and floated behind them as a child.  Truth be told, I emulated them; watched them cry over nature documentaries where dolphins were slaughtered innocently with schools of tuna, listened to their phone conversations of riveting, jaw-dropping gossip that revolved around a Jesse, Vincent or an Anthony, how they carried a colorful friendship merely on their wrist and lastly, the rare gift of inspecting an emotion and deciding when it was ripe enough to be shared.  In their case, usually when it was too late.

As a boy, unexposed to the brutality of macho-inducted life, I tended to overdo my feminine side.  I was a hopeless romantic, light-years ahead of any limitation on male sensitivity, timid and unfortunately, soft.  Too damn soft.

 In fifth grade, I got laughed at for expressing my feelings about how much I despised water pollution and the destruction of our Eco-systems.  The teasing made me cry.  That invoked more teasing.  I got into a fight, no, I rebuke that last statement.  To actually get into a fight means I'd have to put up my dukes, be prepared to throw hands, rumble, brawl down, put up or shut up... I'd just get the shit beat the fuck out of me.  There's no other way to phrase it than that:  I got the shit beat the fuck out of me. 

In seventh grade, I secretly wrote a love poem for Adrianna Huxom.  She was half-Jamaican, half-Brazilian, cream-skinned with curly hair that resembled how the stairs to heaven would look.  She'd always use this peach body spray and every time she'd pass by, I'd tingle and shiver all over.  Later on, I would realize I was horribly allergic to it.  The love poem was found by my older brother during one of his nighttime raids of my belongings and by first period of the next day, Adrianna had read it and so had my entire seventh grade class.

She never looked my way again.  Except the day when I informed my class I was moving to Fresno, a crime-infested city nobody knew about, she told me then that my poem was alright and wished me luck.  Years later, I came to find that she gauged her love interests with my poem as the main criteria.  If they could outdo a wimpy kid who had never even kissed a girl before, then she'd give them a shot.  It took her until college till she found her King Arthur and the Excaliber poem.  Woot, I guess.

Living in Fresno took my emotional side and shot it in the face.  Let it bleed out and hoped for a painful death.  My sisters were all grown up and out, brutalizing the world one man at a time.  Or maybe two at a time, but I don't like to think of my sisters like that.  My mother was in a world of her own, dealing with my father and his stressors.  I was left to figure shit out on my own, the way a man is supposed to.  Problem was, nobody told me that.

I didn't cry when my mother cried anymore.  I didn't cry when people laughed at me anymore.  I didn't write love poetry anymore.  All of it was still there, waiting for that moment to come out, to overwhelm me possibly. 

I didn't cry when my daughter was born, yet I cried when she sang to me.  I didn't cry when my daughter's mother left me with a baby, yet I cried when she asked me back a year later.  I didn't cry in the hospital where my father lay in the ICU, dying in only his physical form, yet I cried ninety days later at his last burial rights. 

This boils down to a point, a convoluted point I'm slow to make.  I couldn't protect the women I loved then, but for damn sure I'll protect them now.  In Vietnam two months ago, someone asked my mother rudely for money, thinking that if he persisted she'd give in because women there are treated like rudimentary slaves.  I stood up, demanded an apology and if it wasn't in the way I wanted, I'd punch a hole through his chest.  A very sincere apology was given.

New Years Eve, I'm walking the wife down the hall out of the loft where we reside, and a group of drunk white college kids are behind us.  One of them chants, "Ching-chong, chong-ching."  It doesn't phase me, it doesn't bother me.  I'm the most diverse sonofabitch you'd ever meet.  The chanting continues, however, it escalates to - "Me so horny," followed by laughter.

As a man, I have to protect the women in my life.  What if my daughter were with me?  How could anyone disrespect women so easily? 

I turn around and walk towards the group.  They freeze in place, as if I were wielding a samurai sword.  There are four guys and three girls.  The guys are typical college scene kids, wearing lighter shades of gay polo shirts and the girls are pale and orange-toned.  I remember one of them having the worst acne I've ever seen this side of a Pro-Activ commercial, and I confront them.

Apologies resound across the hallway.  They blame it on their drinking.  They blame it on their ignorance.  They were so scared of me, just one man by himself, that when I saw them again later that evening, they continued apologizing.  Now every time I see them in the hall, they run back into their apartments.

Being a man doesn't mean having to fight.  It doesn't stipulate anger, doesn't give any justification nor cause.  I was willing to get a beatdown, and for what?  In the end, if things are bloody and broken, swollen and stinging, what was it all for?

I'd have to say that the women, the women that I love and emulate, will look at me and think to themselves, "I love him." 

Dat