One of my absolute favorite authors is Neil Gaiman. I’ve been happy to immerse Andrew into the multitude of worlds Gaiman has created via his writings, and most recently, Andrew completed Gaiman’s novel Anansi Boys. When I was telling Andrew why I thought he should prioritize reading it, I said “there are important, true things he says in this novel. Things more important and profound than in American Gods, possibly.”

(Funny enough, when he pointed out that the blue-silver spider embossed on the hardcover has only seven legs, I had no recollection of anything within the story which might indicate that this was deliberate; however, I felt a nagging insistence that there was some reasonable explanation.)

When Andrew was finished with the novel, I began to realize that it had not been since its initial publication in 2005 that I myself had read the book. I still had strong impressions buried in my subconscious that told me there were vital truths among its pages, nonetheless.

So, this past Sunday morning, I pulled the book off my shelves and carried it with me to have brunch. I finished the first three chapters before arriving home to rehearse for Sunday night’s show at Martuni’s. Monday after work, I laid in bed and read until halfway through Chapter 12, at which point I headed to yoga; today, while eating a late lunch, I finished the remaining 2.5 chapters.

(It’s no War And Peace, but it’s not a small book. I happen to read quickly, especially when the content excites me–as Neil’s does–and I have been known to devour his novels in the span of a single day. If I hadn’t been performing on Sunday night, I most likely would’ve finished it before bedtime.)

Anansi Boys is, to a large extent, about a trickster-god and his two sons, and what happens to these sons following their father’s death. It is, in a broader sense, about family ties; about things that happen when we’re young; about the capricious nature of True Love, and whatever lesser loves come before that, and about marriage; it is also about where all things come from–it is about singing, and stories.

It did not occur to me as I began to reread this book just how different the circumstances of my life were when it was first published, versus what they are now. Nor did it occur to me just how many of the book’s themes would resonate with me much more deeply now than they did then.

This month at my yoga studio, the theme is bhakti, which conceptualizes a particular sort of love that encompasses qualities of devotion, participation, and conscious effort. The instructor last night opened the class by speaking of her childhood, when she was encouraged to tell her stepfather “I love you” although she did not feel that she actually loved him. She continued on to tell us that, as an adult, she realized that she did indeed love him then as she does now. It’s just that the love didn’t look like what she expected love to look like, back when she was younger.

Especially given the material I had spent my afternoon reading, her words struck a chord with me. I know that, during the period of my childhood which I recall most clearly (roughly 8-11), my primary emotion as regarded my father was fear. He went to work every weekday morning when I went to school, and after school there were a handful of hours before he arrived back home. My mother was expected to have dinner on the table at 5:30, when he got home. If I had done anything on any given day which caused any sort of trouble–and this was rather often, as I understood little about the restrictions of the world around me–I knew that I faced the wrath and punishment of my father.

My father was the bread-winner, and he was the disciplinarian. It wasn’t that my mother wouldn’t paddle me herself, or yell, or confine me to my room; my father just possessed a quality of distinctly Teutonic anger and a physical strength that terrified me, in no small part because of his emotional distance from me. I have few if any memories of him expressing any positive emotions toward me past the age of 6, but I have a catalogue of almost instinctual traumas based on his punishments.

Tensions between us eased somewhat when I was in grades 6-8, because at that point I’d been put in public school, and suffered such constant and vicious abuse from my classmates that I had little choice but to apply myself, make straight A’s, and thereby assure protection by my teachers. I honestly think that my father had already written me off as a permanent failure until that point–my brother Brian, the firstborn, was always studious and made good grades, whereas my own were mostly poor except for the few subjects which interested me–so this academic about-face changed his perspective slightly. Also, with the faculty as my allies, I received far fewer disciplinary actions at school, which translated to less frequent reasons for me to fear my father’s homecoming.

All that changed again after I started High School. Very quickly, my interest in social interaction (combined with a new cohort of fellow students who didn’t know me already and therefore were less likely to torture me) led me astray of studying. As I began to develop friendships and a stronger will of my own, my father became more critical of my failure to continue applying myself…and by the time I came out as gay and started openly studying/practicing witchcraft, well, my father was more or less my nemesis. Any and all freedoms I desired were denied or at least cut down to nubs, which naturally resulted in my more vehement rebellion.

All of which brings me back the point I intended to make: I never believed that I loved my father much, if at all, until I was at least in my early-to-mid twenties. Even then, our relationship was tenuous at best, most of the time; our shared love of comic books was about the only topic we were capable of discussing without contention. My father was simply not an affectionate man. He came from a very stern, old-world German family in which emotions were not openly expressed and for which the values of hard work and strictly-regimented, organized routine were paramount. After my mother died, I tried to strengthen my bond with him (the fact that he started seeing a therapist also helped), but then something happened that set back our progress for over a year.

My father came to visit San Francisco when Pearls Over Shanghai was well into its second year of performances, having been so overwhelmingly popular that its run was ultimately extended a total of 22 months–almost unheard of in regional, underground theatre. I had wanted so badly for my mother to experience this show, and wished so often that she could have, that I somehow convinced myself of the notion that my father might be capable of seeing the show through her eyes; even though he wasn’t comfortable with flamboyant gayness, or drag, or in-your-face sexuality that wasn’t safely contained on a screen, the show itself was a paean to the old pre-code noir films that my father loved. And he had sailed all through Asia while in the Navy, during the Vietnam War; surely that had to count for something, right?

In the end, it didn’t count for much. Despite the fact that I gave 200% to my performance that evening–my castmates teased me backstage about how loudly I was singing, and playfully mocked my overzealous enthusiasm–my father never spoke a word to me about my performance, or even the show, save to say that Scrumbly (who composed all of the music and was both accompanist and musical director for the run) was very talented and wrote some catchy tunes. Worse, he told my brother Doyle (when they were at lunch the following day) that he found the show raunchy, and would never have gone to see such a thing if I hadn’t asked.

When Doyle told me this, something insides of me snapped–I mean, it actually felt like it broke. I had tried, one more time I had tried with all of my heart and soul to elicit some modicum of approval from him, and instead he shat on the entire production (except for Scrumbly), and I decided then and there that I’d had it: The man would never accept me, never understand anything of my life, and he would never, ever tell me I made him proud. Given the glaring evidence to that effect, why bother even attempting to continue the relationship?

So I stopped answering his phone calls. I deleted his voicemails. I was mad, and I had every intention of staying that way…because, of course, more than being mad, I was deeply and desperately hurt. It was a lifelong hurt that I had never quite so concretely realized, and now that I had seen it for what it was, I made up my mind that I would punish him for it the rest of my life.

After winding down a very long road, fraught with my daddy issues playing out in various ways through my dating/sex life, along with some intense spiritual reflection including a weekend retreat called The Men’s Inner Journey, I finally found an inner peace with my father, which allowed me to reconnect with him. First, I raged (I won’t lie; finally having the opportunity to scream at my father through the phone and unleash a lifetime of injury and resentment felt better than I ever could have imagined). I hope that my righteous indignation spared him any undue cruelty, but I know that I made him cry–something that I’d really only ever seen him do when my mother was dying. But the fact of the matter is, that confrontation finally allowed the healing to begin.

My father died suddenly, unexpectedly, and violently in September 2013. We really had only just begun to have what I would call a proper adult relationship…but at the very least, I am grateful that we’d made peace, and that I was able to let go of all of my venom and bile, and actually feel that I honestly loved him.

I can’t say I have even the slightest inkling of what he might have thought of Andrew. I do, however, have a heart-and-soul sense that he would be glad to see me happy.

That’s not actually the end of things, though.

You see, following the intense and haunting dream I had recently, my father has been making regular appearances in my dreams–something which almost never happened before. In one, we were quibbling over some lyrics in “The Candyman Can” as I rehearsed for last Sunday’s show; in another, he was giving me travel advice as we stood in an airport, awaiting different flights. There are two things that make these dreams extraordinary to me, besides the presence of my father in them: for one, these dreams are shaded by a warm, protective feeling of fatherly love; and for the second, they are the first dreams I ever remember having of my father which are not set in Huntsville and/or my old family home.

Somewhere in my psyche, I believe that I have set my parents free of the place I kept them haunting. Perhaps in doing so, I’ve also opened up a way to better my relationship with them, even beyond death.

I feel their blessings, and as I near the day of my marriage, I have a sense that they really can be there with me, even if not physically.

. . . They began to walk along the bridge. “You know,” said Mr. Nancy, ” I always thought that if you ever came to talk to me, I’d tell you all manner of things. But you seem to be doing pretty good on your own. . . “
. . .
“You’re doing okay. You’re figurin’ it all out by yourself. You figured out the songs, didn’t you?”
Fat Charlie felt clumsier and fatter and even more of a disappointment to his father, but he didn’t simply say “No.” Instead he said, “What do you think?”
“I think you’re gettin’ there. The important thing about songs is that they’re just like stories. They don’t mean a damn unless there’s people listenin’ to them.”
They were approaching the end of the bridge. Fat Charlie knew, without being told, that this was the last chance they’d ever have to talk. There were so many things he needed to find out, so many things he wanted to know. He said, “Dad. When I was a kid. Why did you humiliate me?”
The old man’s brow creased. “Humiliate you? I loved you.”
. . .
Fat Charlie straightened up. His father was looking up at him with an expression that, if he had seen it on anyone else’s face, he would have thought of as pride. “Let me see the feather,” said his father.
. . . He breathed on his fingernails, polished them against his jacket. Then he seemed to have arrived at a decision. He removed his fedora and slipped the feather into the hatband. “Here. You could do with a natty hat anyway.” He put the hat onto Fat Charlie’s head. “It suits you,” he said.
Fat Charlie sighed. “Dad. I don’t wear hats. It’ll look stupid. I’ll look a complete tit. Why do you always try to embarrass me?”
In the fading light, the old man looked at his son. “You think I’d lie to you? Son, all you need to wear a hat is attitude. And you got that. You think I’d tell you you looked good if you didn’t? You look real sharp. You don’t believe me?”
Fat Charlie said, “Not really.”
“Look,” said his father. He pointed over the side of the bridge. The water beneath them was still and smooth as a mirror, and then man looking up at him from the water looked real sharp in his new green hat.
Fat Charlie looked up to tell his father that maybe he had been wrong, but the old man was gone.

from Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman