Women My Father Slept With
How could so much cash leave me feeling so empty? This was the answer to my debt, my car that needed a new transmission, yet I didn't feel happy. I was holding my father's life savings in my hands, sitting on the stiff single mattress that he had likely died on. 20 grand could have bought him a lot of heroin, prostitutes, a nicer place… hell, even a new bed. Yet this lump sum of wrinkled bills had remained hidden away, untouched. No matter how it had evaded the jonesing hands of an addict with little to no impulse control, it had been intended for me—at least my name was written on the envelope. Not 'Ian' my legal name, but 'little bugger', his nickname for me. I suppose I must have been a 'little bugger' when he knew me. I was only 6 when he caught a bus out of the city and left my mother and me to fend for ourselves. I never forgave him for that—and neither did she up until her death.
