They call it the Dirty South for a reason.

My mother, father, and I trekked the 1,090 miles from our Galesburg home to my new Gainesville home, and most of the trip was uneventful. I compiled a seventeen-hour playlist consisting of whole CDs. I was on Mates of State when we pulled into the dingy hotel in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Dad, in order to save money (“We’re in a recession!”), booked reservations ahead of time with Hotels.com. On the positive, the hotels he chose were cheap. On the negative, the hotels he chose looked like something from No Country for Old Men. The Murfreesboro hotel kept all its doors open all night. Apparently they did not think the neighborhood was as dangerous as it looked. Dad propped a chair against our room door that night, but of course the chair would do nothing to prevent the door from being opened. Dad explained the noise of the falling chair would wake us up sooner. I’m not sure it was his greatest plan, but I wasn’t going to argue with him. It made Mom feel safer, at least.

Mom has been hooked on the Olympics since the opening ceremonies, and as she flipped through the channels trying to find them (despite the fact that we got free HBO and there was a history of vampires show on that Dad would have swooned for), she passed a spelling bee. “Go back!” I said. I don’t know why, but I always thought spelling bees were hilarious to watch. They’re even better in the South. We came in at round three, so I’m not sure how many children were competing, nor how many schools were involved. The only thing that mattered was that these kids were dumb as hell. We watched, awestruck but unable to contain our laughter, as one after the other the kids misspelled words and were eliminated. “Your word is ‘crimson’.” “Crimson. C-R-I-M-M-S-O-N. Crimson.” “Oh, just missed it.” “Your word is ‘entourage’.” “Entourage. O-N-T…”

By round four there were only three kids left. Against the backdrop of all those chairs, the pathetic amount of children who could spell even the easiest of words was a testament to Tennessee’s education system. In the end, there were five rounds and a final round, and the winning word was “renegade”. Then came time for the prizes. The runner up, a boy, accepted his $500 savings bond without expression, which forced the woman giving out prizes to lean in and whisper, “I’ll explain it to you later.” The winning girl not only “earned” a $500 savings bond, but $500 in cash as well. This meritocracy had low standards and high rewards. I thought about staying in Tennessee to be their benevolent dictator, but ultimately moved on.

Our next stop was Macon, Georgia. Marty, a friend of my dad’s from college, had settled there years ago, despite being from New York and an obvious Yank (of which he is quite proud). The last time they saw each other was twenty-eight years before. In the time between, Marty had worked as an undercover cop (plenty of drug raid stories there), taken a wife (and her stepchildren), lost that wife (to a hospital that should have known better), developed cancer in his eye (and consequently lost that eye, earning him the nickname "Glass-Eye Marty" between my sister and I to distinguish between that Marty and "Ambulance Driver Mary," another friend of Dad's who drives an ambulance filled with lumber), left the force (as a result of his newly impaired vision), worked as a truck driver (but jackknifed his truck trying to avoid hitting a neglectful driver), and attempted to get a Russian mail-order bride so that he could have children (despite being in his mid fifties). I did not expect the man to look as he did. In my mind, Marty would be a tall, sculpted badass with guns in both hands and scars for each close call. Instead a short, squat man that looked like a cross between Robert De Niro and Santa Claus greeted us.

He drove us around his neighborhood and the seedier parts of Macon, pointing out the house three doors down from his where someone was killed in the front yard with a sawed-off shotgun. Marty attempted to chase the shooter with his Colt .45, but only halfheartedly, as the victim was a crackhead and “had it coming”. We saw his house, his knives, his guns. We heard stories about his stepchildren being addicted to drugs. We saw the work he had done to his house, saw the freezer in his backyard, heard stories about how stupid his neighbors were. We watched him run off on tangential diatribes against his boss, his stepchildren, the South. Always it was the same story: He wanted to kill them, but had to restrain himself. Luckily the waitresses at Shogun had an affinity for him, and he found a home there some evenings, where the bartender, Andy, gave him free Coke to go with his appetizers. He would have had alcohol, but according to Dad, “he gets violent when he drinks.”

When we finally did arrive in Gainesville, I found someone else occupied my room. I knew there was the possibility he would be there, but it was still frustrating unloading all my possessions into the living room and dining room. Even now my backseat and trunk contain my hanging clothes, which are starting to smell a bit moldy, like everything in this humid climate. Although still waiting to enter my room, I know this house will be a great fit. Jared and I played DBZ: Budokai Tenakichi 2 yesterday, and Brian and I have discussed the virtues of video games. We sit around making smartass comments at the TV, whether it is a commercial, movie, show, or Rick Warren interviewing the presidential candidates. It seems this must be where I belong. I have come too far for it to be otherwise. And though I do not yet have a niche carved out, by next week I hope to be settled and beginning the grueling and painful process of my education.

But perhaps the most enlightening revelation of this trip was not the stupidest states in our nation, the stereotype of a philosopher, or the vast number of attractive women stalking the campus. Instead, I would embrace Ben Folds’ mantra, “It sucks to grow up.” When my family and academia collide, the result is something similar to the antimatter in the electron accelerator at CERN. When academia is near my family, separated by only a few hours of Illinois farmland, I can be the diplomat. I can freely travel between the two worlds, keep my life neat and compartmentalized. When academia is in Florida, and my parents have come to wish me well, the struggle begins. As an adult, I strive for my own independence. I want to do what I can on my own, tackle and solve problems, smile at my own work. Yet as a child, I want to be kind to my parents, to show them that I appreciate their help and time and investment in me. This time I only succeeded in one of those. Despite the fact that my parents had traveled so far with me, had taken the time to help me move to a new place, wanted nothing more than to see me happy and settled in a place that is so alien to a Midwestern boy, I brushed them aside at the end, eager to prove my worth to myself and to my roommates, who are older and have traveled further distances (San Diego and Singapore). The result was a calloused goodbye after a long journey, the breaking of the fellowship. Despite some redemption at the end, there will be some lingering regret always. But I suppose there usually is with virtually anything one does. We’ll always have Christmas, right?

So I sit, surrounded by cats, waiting for my turn to demonstrate my ability in this discipline of philosophy. Waiting to carve out my place in the world. Bracing myself for the coming hurricane (literally and figuratively). Knowing those who love me most have gone, wounded, back to a place that I will once again designate as home with an asterisk.

We have come to terms.

Mom says Dad drinks too much. The week before the wedding she told him he needed to lay off the alcohol. Apparently bowls of margaritas no longer sit well with Mother. After this weekend, I think alcohol runs in our blood.

I asked my dad why he drinks margaritas over other alcohol. “It’s the only thing that doesn’t make me sick.” But I pointed out that I had seen him drink beer. “I drink beer when margaritas aren’t available, but I’d prefer margaritas.” So, then, I inquired, margaritas really aren’t the only thing that doesn’t make him sick? “I like margaritas.” I thought about asking the next logical question, but knowing that it would be the first question I asked, and fearing an infinite loop, I backed off and accepted my father as he is.

My father as he is…. I hate to sum a person up in one image, but the best image I have of my dad is him lying on the bed, fresh from the shower, completely naked save for a towel draped over his genitals, with a bowl of margaritas on his chest and the Sci-Fi channel on, preferably with some horrendous movie such as Ice Spiders or Return to Raptor Island. And yet I love this image precisely because my father is so utterly ridiculous that it is nearly impossible not to love him. He is quirky. He is corny. He is probably slightly deranged. And it’s wonderful.

Before the wedding, Dad, Brian, and I found ourselves victim to Mom and Stephanie’s shopping whims (the former not really needing anything but wanting new jewelry or shoes for the wedding, despite Dad’s constant cry, “We’re in a recession. We’re in a recession.” and the latter “needing” silver shoes and jewelry to match her new dress). Dad, getting in touch with the genes that led him to have sarcoidosis, demonstrated his fashion prowess with a pair of South Pole shorts:



Lately, several different people have told me I sound or look just like my father when I say or do something. Sometimes it is intentional. Other times it is not. It is this melting of identity, this futile resistance to my inevitable transformation into the man who helped create me that terrifies me. Because I love my father dearly, but I do not want to be my father.

Before leaving Human Kinetics, Christine and I had a discussion concerning this very topic. Both Christine and I are quite knowledgeable about zombies. (If you aren’t, I’d recommend a brief jaunt to Wikipedia or reading The Zombie Survival Guide or World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War [both by Max Brooks].) As a result, we made a pact that should an infestation break out, and should it be plausible, each of us is responsible for putting a bullet in the brain of the other upon a bite. See, a zombie bite is a death sentence. Depending on the severity of the wound, one may have several hours—perhaps days—to survive before death finally claims the body and the corpse becomes reanimated with a hunger for the flesh of the living. But after reflecting on the inevitability of becoming a zombie, and the struggle to take down as many of those lifeless bastards as possible before becoming one of them (or before the coup de grace administered by Christine), I also reflected on the inevitability of becoming my father. Of my genes. Of time’s torturous tick. I have been bitten, so to speak. I am doomed to become my father. And that’s why I asked Christine to make a second pact with me, similar to the original zombie pact. She obliged.



Dad didn’t heed Mom’s warning. At the reception, we were all disappointed to find the only alcohol available was complementary merlot or chardonnay. No beer. No liquor. Just a free glass of wine with the hor’dourves. I passed on this first glass of wine. I don’t drink that often, but when I do, it’s virtually Guinness or nothing. Not too long after mingling in the meeting hall we were allowed to find our seats at the tables in the dining hall. At the table, my aunt, uncle, sister, brother-in-law, mother, and father began complaining that there was no more alcohol. Where was the waiter with the bottles of wine to fill the goblets on the table? They had already drained their other glasses (I think by now they had had at least two glasses of wine each, save for Stephanie and Brian) and were clamoring for more. And I admit that, based on the atmosphere and lack of sociability of most of the guests at the wedding besides those family members at my table, I was anxious for some alcohol as well. Dad went back to the meeting hall with my aunt, Lisa, to see if he could procure any more alcohol. The waiter hadn’t come to our table yet and I was worried there might be a riot if they didn’t get more wine soon. Their trip was unsuccessful. Luckily, a waiter came shortly afterward and subdued the angry horde, at least for the time being.

I drank a glass of merlot, and I planned on trying a glass of the chardonnay a little later. But soon we realized that one fill up was all we were going to get. There would be no more wine. There would be no more alcohol. I could see the desperation in my relatives’ faces. The desperation was eased when it was time for the toasts, but when the champagne was poured and Brian raised it to his nose, he regretted to announce there was no alcohol in the glass—it was just sparkling cider. After watching my father and mother drop their jaws in disbelief and disappointment, I turned to Lisa to pass on the news. “Are you shittin’ me?!” She smelled it. “God!” Clearly, we were going to have a mutiny on our hands.

We suffered on like that for several more minutes, through dessert and the first dances. The band began to play, a big band in a jazz style. That’s when my dad noticed my cousin Nathan coming back with a couple bottles of Budweiser in his hand. Dad flagged Nathan down, and my uncle, Tim, jogged along. After a brief discussion away from the table, Dad announced, “We’re going to get alcohol. We’ll be back.” Brian, Stephanie, and I looked at each other. Being bored out of our minds, we were hoping for some alcohol to at least cloud those minds and take us somewhere more pleasant.

Ten to fifteen minutes later, Dad and Tim returned with beer. Dad handed one to my mother. There was none in his hands for us. Stephanie, Brian, and I demanded to know the secret. Dad led us down the elevator and explained that next door there was a bar. He simply bought the beer, smuggled it down the street under his jacket and past the building guard, and came back to the reception hall. Brilliant.

The only Guinness at the bar was in a can. I chose to suffer a Sam Adams with Brian since it was in a bottle. But I had no jacket. Brian did, but didn’t want to risk getting caught drinking in public in the middle of downtown Des Moines. Dad didn’t stick around for our discussion. He nonchalantly put two more bottles of beer in his jacket and walked out the door. “To hell with it; I’ll just chug it here,” I said. And I did. Stephanie refused to down her Smirnoff Ice, and Brian wasn’t as quick with his beer as I was. But after several minutes Brian had downed his beer and placed Stephanie’s drink in his jacket. We went outside, walked past the guard, and returned to the reception hall. My family was smuggling beer into a wedding. Obviously, Fritz is German for “classy”.

After passing more time at the reception, Dad not dancing with Mom because he claimed he didn’t know how (“Kyle, come dance with me because your dad’s a dickhead.”), mingling with some family members, and putting in our time, we decided to head out. On the way by the bar, Dad and Tim ran into Nathan again. “Come have a beer.” We were happy to oblige. This time, knowing I was sticking around, I went for Guinness. Two beers isn’t really enough to cloud my mind, but it does put me more at ease. There at the bar we watched as more family members left the wedding. The walls were glass, windows, really, and everyone leaving could see we had just left so we could drink together. At the bar, Nathan was getting a girl’s number.

After a round of beer, Tim realized the twenty dollars he paid the valet to park his car was not the bill, but a tip, as the valet parking cost was simply added to the room charges. “Well, I can’t have another beer now!” We laughed. Dad chimed in to remind us all that we are in a recession. So we headed to the hotel in hopes of finding a bar there where the alcohol was cheaper. We were successful.

After a few more Guinnesses, Brian and I decided we needed Queso Crunchwraps from Taco Bell. Upon texting Zane in Colorado to discover that there was indeed a Taco Bell less than a mile from the hotel, Brian and I embarked on our journey to fulfill our basest of desires. The time was approximately midnight. Unfortunately for us, there were no building numbers. Every corner saw a multi-storied parking garage complex or occasionally a church. I texted Zane again, and Brian and I were disheartened to find we had already ventured several blocks in the wrong direction. No, no…toward the river, Zane said. We began again, an odd couple. Brian had his suit on, the tie loosened from his purple shirt’s collar. Dressed to impress for downtown Des Moines at midnight. We got as far as Cherry Street before realizing that we were coming upon a stretch of Des Moines that may as well have been the Narrows of Gotham City. To our right a bridge rose into the darkness. A hobo hobbled toward us from under the bridge, glass bottles clinging together in the basket on his bike. I texted Zane once more. We were halfway there. We needed to cross railroad tracks, go several more blocks. I looked at Brian. “Damn it! Let’s go back.” In our current condition we would be no match for any hobo armies that lay in wait under the bridge, and we had already been gone for quite some time. Most likely the lobby of Taco Bell would be closed, which meant we would have to walk through the drive-through in our wedding attire, conspicuously inebriated. So the best-dressed drunks in Des Moines headed back toward the hotel empty handed. “Where is your crunchwrap?” Lisa asked upon our return. “We don’t want to talk about it.” With nothing left but a dying buzz and a dwindling barroom crowd, we each headed back to our hotel rooms to rest up for the return drive in the morning.

“I need to take a shit,” my father announced as we entered our room. Lovely. That meant the bathroom would never be the same—a power I seem to have already inherited. His grunts and strains, most of which must have been purely theatrical, were not muffled by a door, since he saw fit to leave it open. The closet doors outside the bathroom were mirrored; perhaps he enjoyed watching himself.

The sound of my father’s snoring was comparable to a chainsaw in an elevator. In the morning he awoke and said to my mother, “That bed was really comfortable, wasn’t it? I slept really well.” My mother, in her most condemingly sarcastic tone, responded, “Well, good, honey.” I pulled the comforter up to my face and tried to steal some more rest before my turn in the shower.

And that’s when I realized that I wasn’t as doomed as I initially thought. Sure, my father’s blood runs through my veins. But my mother’s blood is there to combat it, to balance it, to preserve some sense of order. I have the quirkiness of my father, but I have the sarcasm, the sharp tongue of my mother. I have intellect and passion that has been developed by my friends. And I had a massive case of diarrhea, which I felt obliged to tell my mother. “That’s probably from all the Guinness. Alcohol will do that to you.”

We have come to terms.