Nonfiction | July 14, 2015

This is my father’s cyclical descent into madness; I’ve seen it before. The last time it was him in his underpants marching around the house wearing his enormous noise-canceling headphones, blasting his iPod into his ears. Singing all day while zipping from one activity to the next, from the wee hours of dawn to well beyond midnight. Only now, I am ascending into adulthood and wondering feverishly if I am graphing a trajectory that in any way resembles his. I often find myself in the shower scrubbing this feeling off my body until my skin is red and raw. I hang around at the house and keep a watchful eye on him and hide the car keys. Every day, by ten in the morning, the entire second floor smells like a dive bar pushing cheap rail liquor. By noon, it’s the Doors nonstop, my father’s all-time favorite band. Jim Morrison’s voice bellows throughout the house alongside my father’s abominable imitations.

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