Will Conley’s Random Things

I grew up without my father. The bare fact of it seemed like no big deal, when I was a child. Then adolescence came, and I have never recovered. I probably never will. I consider myself developmentally disabled by fatherlessness.

I was born William Edward Fleeman II on February 29th, Leap Year Day, 1980 in Upstate New York. My mother and father were already separated at this point, I think, but my father was present for my birth. He paced outside the birthing room, chain-smoking. The moment my head emerged from my mother, I began screaming. When all my hulking eight pounds and some ounces had fully emerged, my father, a lifelong weightlifter, held me up in the air in his very own hands and smiled proudly on me.

My father had me on weekends when I was a newborn. I once read a letter from him to my mother relating a summer afternoon he had spent with me in the stroller by Canandaigua Lake. A poem in that letter compared my brown eyes to deep clear pools with goldfish swimming in them, flashing quick as a firefly's wink.

My mother kidnapped me from my father when I was one year old and raised me to adulthood on her own.

Why did she do that?

My mother grew up in a living nightmare. Try to follow me as I explain. My mother's mother, my grandmother, who died more than a decade before my mother gave birth to me, was a severely paranoid "schizophrenic", as goes the catch-all psychiatric term. Once in 1949, when my mother was a beautiful 7-year-old little girl, my grandmother, thinking that my mother was trying to kill her, chased my mother through the house brandishing a butcher knife. My mother hid under the porch and survived until that particular bout of my grandmother's severe paranoid behavior passed.

My grandmother's husband - my mother's step-father - was a violent alcoholic. He beat my grandmother badly. My mother saw him "bloody the walls" with my grandmother on at least one occasion, if memory serves her.

With this life-threatening atmosphere came much verbal abuse and shouting.

My mother's psyche is therefore built upon a bed of chaos and terror and survival.

My mother grew up, bodily intact, and moved to New York City at age 18, the year 1960. She took jobs as a secretery. Once, she worked in an advertising agency. She made a lot of money in those early days of adulthood. Her middle and older ages would not prove as fortunate.

My mother has had four husbands in her life. She had two children (neither of which was me) with her first husband, in Connecticut. She drank. When her daughter was 8 and her son 12, she abandoned that family, convinced of her inability to parent properly. Today, she sometimes gets along with that daughter. That son never forgave her.

Her second husband was little more than a drinking buddy. My mother had a "spiritual awakening" in 1976 in which the ghosts of her mother, other family members, and Catholic Jesus appeared to my mother in the kitchen. The spirits asked her, "Do you want to live?" My mother said yes, sobered up, and hasn't had a drop since.

My mother's third husband was my father. They met at an A.A. meeting in 1978, married and conceived me in 1979, separated, and gave birth to me in 1980.

Though my mother and father got on thick as thieves when they were on good terms, they often fought verbally whenever they were living together. Probably when he was just visiting, too. My father had a rage problem. He once smashed a coffee table. On another occasion, he literally tore a neighboring apartment unit door off its hinges when the resident ignored my father's polite telephone requests to turn the music down so his infant son, me, could sleep. My father (and his live-in adolescent son from a prior marriage) never laid a violent hand on my mother or me. My father broke things, he made noise. He verbally battled with my mother, herself no slouch in the Verbal War Department.

During divorce proceedings, my mother resolved to kidnap me from my father before he could hurt her or her son, me. So went her reasoning.

Do you see why my mother kidnapped me? It seems rather inevitable in hindsight, does it not? My mother's mind was built on terror. Confronted with my father's frightening behavior, her fight-or-flight instinct kicked in.

Yet the story becomes even more subtle than this. Neither my mother nor my father shall be labeled "angel" or "demon". Not if I have anything to say about it. I want the truth, not easy conclusions. If you are reading this to bolster either a "masculine reclamation" or a "feminist" agenda, you will not find what you seek here. This is my story, but it is also the story of hundreds of millions of fatherless adult children who are dying of a slow spiritual murder committed by a culture hell-bent on preserving the status quo of our own crippling ignorance.

No one is to be judged. No one. We are all in this story together. This is your story, father or no father. Almost half of all American households are without a steady fatherly presence. The ill effects of this new development on our culture over the past half-century (the television era) are astounding, profound, and so pervasive, that there is no calculating how destructive this trend is. This is not some right-wing plea on behalf of "The American Family". I don't care about your politics. Fatherlessness creates emotionally retarded children, who later grow up to be "smarter" emotionally retarded children. If this idea is repugnant to you who believe fathers are little more than brutish semen donors, read Robert Bly's "Iron John" or "The Sibiling Society".

My mother took me to Minnesota, due to its reputation for good public services for single mothers and good schools. We drove the thousand miles from Upstate New York to Minnesota in a raging thunderstorm with nothing but a silver spoon and $100. That's right: I came to my adopted home state with a silver spoon in my mouth. My first home in Minnesota was a battered women's shelter, where she met a lifelong guardian angel, a lawyer named Phyllis. More on her later.

My mother raised me mainly by herself, but she did enlist help. A parade of boyfriends and her heavy involvement in the local A.A. club all informed my development, but only on the surface. I was exposed to an amazing variety of realities through her boyfriends and A.A. I accompanied my mother to her meetings, sometimes five times a week. There I saw hundreds of men and women pour their hearts out to their fellow drunks, confess their powerlessness, and "Let go and let God." A.A. was my church, my community, my family of distant cousins who all collectively raised me.

Many times I nominally adopted my mother's boyfriends as father figures, mainly because I rather envied my friends from school, most of whom had two parents and looked upon me as a sort of pitiful alien they could never hope to understand. I was their reminder that their own lives could be worse. I never understood their instinctive compassion, for I never felt a lack in those early days. My fatherlessness was a simple fact of life. My friends asked me if I missed my father; I replied that I never knew him, so no. Shame and self-consciousness crept into me over the years against this sharply differing community backdrop.

All my mother's boyfriends, she met in A.A. The first father figure I remember was Johnny. I loved Johnny and always looked forward to seeing him. He put a rifle (shotgun?) in his mouth when I was six and pulled the trigger. Though I didn't see it happen - and though he and my mother had broken up a few weeks or months earlier - when my mother told me the news I felt confused, and I almost consciously called on anger, I think because I figured that was the proper response. I seized a large recliner and upturned it hard onto the floor of the apartment. My mother watched me from the dining room, crying silent tears. "Why did he kill himself, mom? Why?" Because he was very sad, she replied.

I remember a boyfriend named Dennis. He was funny. He did this trick where he would push out his false teeth using his tongue. I figured he was triple-jointed in the mandibles. (He must only have been in his 40s; where did all his teeth go?) We spent a Christmas Eve at his house, lots of presents.

Another boyfriend of my mother's was Jerry, a computer expert. This was the mid-to-late 1980s, when computer experts were mysterious and rare birds. I became friends with Jerry's son Dylan. I called Dylan "brother" and Jerry was "Dad". I sometimes slept over at Jerry's apartment on weekends, which is when Jerry had custody rights over Dylan. We ate raw hot dogs as if they were delicacies and listened to portable radios before bedtime, each boy to his own. Jerry once took us to see his workplace full of computers. The ceiling lights were off but the computer banks were turned on, their lights flashing green and red. I wondered whether that room controlled secret spaceships.

My mother dated a state trooper. I showed him my homemade nunchuks. He told me nunchuks were illegal in Minnesota. What a boring man, I thought. I ignored him. I don't remember his name.

Her fourth husband was a United States Marine named Joe. Not the brightest bulb, but he represented manliness, tattoos and all. I was eight, and Joe would be my first legal father since I was a baby. I remember the wedding. I was the ringbearer. I spilled red punch on my white tux during the reception. I cried tears of shame. I knew the tux rental had cost a lot of money. Did I destroy the grocery budget? Joe kneeled down, put a hand on my shoulder, and looked at me with love in his eyes. "What's the matter, son?" This frightened me. It was official: I would have to call this simple, strange, huge, paunchy man "Dad". I just cried harder.

I once saw Joe naked, sleeping face up on my mother's body in the morning. His dick scared the shit out of me. I closed the door silently, knelt in the darkened hallway, and sobbed, trying to make sense of matrimony. I convinced myself, rightly, that this was normal behavior for a married couple.

Always thirsty to be like my friends' families, I voluntarily changed my last name to Joe's last name, Rootes, as my mom did upon marrying him. Families were supposed to have one last name. Different last names were a sign of freakishness, I figured. I tirelessly practiced signing my name so that the given and surname appeared as if they were written by the same person.

Four months after marrying my mother, Joe disappeared with the contents of their humble but crucial joint savings account. The preacher who married them telephoned one day. I picked up. The preacher asked, "How are your mom and dad?" "They got divorced," I cheerily informed him. "What?!" he replied. "Let me get my mom, you can talk to her," I said. I felt I had disappointed the preacher.

When I was 11, mother renounced marriage. Four husbands were enough. She reverted to her maiden name, which I assumed as well. I was born a Fleeman, played a stint at Rootes, and now I was Conley. Again I reengineered my cursive written name: William Edward Conley William Edward Conley William Edward Conley. The adjustment was harder this second time. I was older, my script beginning to solidify. To this day, my written "Will" and "Conley" don't quite match up. I scrawl my signature; you can't mismatch two messes.

Messes comfort me.

A kid at my middle school used my chameleon last name as a slight against me. "What the fuck is your name, anyway, William Fleeman Rootes Conley."

I slammed him back against the wall and screamed obscenities at him. The obviously-frightened 7th-grade teacher directed me out of the classroom. The next morning I woke up and informed my mother I would not be going back to "that piece of shit school". She looked at me, detected that I meant business, and said, "Okay." Ten days later I was in a new middle school.

In those ten days I resolved to become a better person. No one would find out I was a short kid with a Napolean complex and an aggressive rage issue stemming from fatherlessness and rampant confusion. I shortened my first name to Will and calculated how I could be popular without being a jerk. I would be a nice popular kid who was nice to the nerds and dweebs. My shortened first name would be a constant reminder that I was to be a kinder, gentler, sauver person. It worked. I was well liked throughout the rest of my middle school and high school career. Calculation and ten days of intense introspection produced the exact result I was going for. I realize popularity and acceptance by other children would not be a worthy goal in adulthood, but by God I accomplished it. Unfortunately, most of us "adults" in this culture still step all over each other for such adolescent aspirations.

Shortly after our final name change, my mother started dating a Viet Nam veteran Green Beret named Larry. Larry was a house painter by trade. I asked him about his time in the Viet Nam conflict. He showed me the bayonet scar on his belly, slashed left to right, a souvenir from a Viet Cong who had fallen into Larry's foxhole before Larry shot him. He gave me three lessons in hapkido, his martial art of choice, before giving up on me due to my being AWOL for our scheduled trainings.

When I was 12 or 13, Larry showed me how to shuck ears of corn. He said, "I hate to say this, but it's kind of like masturbating." I got nervous and shameful and told my mother what he had said. Larry overheard. "You're such a mamma's boy!" he barked. I started hating Larry then. His comment was, in all honesty as a man, rather innocent. Masturbation is a fact of life among men, not some sick taboo to avoid discussing. I do not apologize to any prudes reading this who might disagree. Sex is to be discussed openly by parents, in my opinion. Unfortunately Larry was not my real parent, so it seemed out of place. The poor guy was trying to be a dad, as misguided as his approach was. No, he never "touched" me.

To my knowledge, Larry was the last boyfriend my mother ever had. All this occurred before my adolescence, an adolescence which was tough as nails for both my mother and me. Our verbal jousts became verbal battles as my mind developed and became more sophisticated. I became able to match her biting words with some doozies of my own, backed up with a powerful, matrilineally inherited gift for sonic vocal manipulation. Soon she felt bested. Her authority in the house was being undermined by me, a teenage boy with no trusted steady father figure to rein me in. On a few occasions she called the cops on me as a desperate "win" tactic. They would come into the apartment (my apartment?) and make sure I was no physical threat to my mother, and then leave. I learned to resent The System for its pathetic and unwelcome attempts at "playing father". (And yes, for the record: I still despise the system for this intrusion.) I also learned to resent my mother, rather than respect her.

When I was a freshman in high school I elbowed a hole in a barely-tougher-than-cardboard closet door, in anger, during a verbal battle, as a display of dominance. This only resulted in a cop showing up at the door.

I spent the last two years of my high school career living at the home of a sweet and supportive couple named Ken and Phyllis. Ken was a constitutional law professor, and Phyllis was a mostly-pro bono defense attorney for poor people who had committed crimes ranging from theft to murder. My mother had met Phyllis at the battered women's shelter, who had been volunteering free legal advice to the women. The two women became lifelong friends, and Ken and Phyllis have been in my life, on and off, ever since. They were and continue to be humble, non-intrusive people. I was mostly on my own those last two years of high school. I excelled in music and theatre, and began to discover my writing voice. I was named Student of the Month. I had a good buddy named Jason, a fellow musician. All was well, as far as I was concerned.

My mother moved back to Upstate New York after I graduated high school. Her goal was to be reunited with her childhood extended family and resume full membership therein. I started attending the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities campus, School of Journalism. I spent a month in Paris on a U of M French language and civilization immersion program. I took a year off college to be in the original London cast of a Tony- and Emmy-winning drum corps-style musical called Blast!, from which I was fired for being AWOL for some rehearsals and one performance, and for "not playing well with others". One simply does not screw up that badly in professional theatre. I did. I was my own man, by God. I'll become a rapper. That way I am the band, and I'll show up when I want. Plus, you can't sell your vocal chords for rent.

One Father's Day in the year 2000, in my 20th year of childhood, in my second full year of college, while living with Ken and Phyllis, my mother sent me a letter. I no longer have the letter, but the crux of the letter read something like this:

Another Father's Day, another day not knowing your father. I know you have not "missed" your father, never having known him. But you may want to meet him some day. You are old enough, now, I feel, to meet him. You are a man now.

Something I never told you is that I have kept tabs on your father since I took you from him. Your father lives here in Upstate New York. Here is his phone number.

On a whim, not really caring what might happen, I dialed the number then and there. It was 3:30 in the morning. I got an answering machine. A husky, warm, eerily familiar baritone said something along the lines of:

Hello, and thank you for calling Tranformations Enterprises and Anger and Rage Anonymous. This is Bill! Please leave a message, and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. Have a wonderful day.

Beep.

"Uh, hi. Um, hi. My name is, or was, William Edward Fleeman the Second. I, uh, am looking for a William Edward Fleeman the First. I got this number from my mom...um, I don't know, it could be out of date. If this is the wrong number, please ignore this message, I apologize. But, um, if this is...right...call me back at this number, if you want. Thanks."

I recited the phone number, including the area code, of Ken and Phyllis' house, hung up, and went to bed, not really expecting a call back.

At 8:30 in the morning, Phyllis walked into my bedroom, which was essentially a section of the basement, and said, sounding rather excited, "Will! There's a man on the phone who says his name is Bill Fleeman! What should I do?"

I opened my eyes, said, "Oh, that's probably my dad. Tell him I'll call him back. I have the number." I very much enjoyed my sleep, as I continue to do today.

I did call him back a couple hours later. I re-introduced myself as William Edward Fleeman the Second, but now Will Conley. I told him my mother's name, and when and where I was born.

A pause.

"Well, Will," said Bill Fleeman. "Looks like you found your old man."

I liked him instantly. He described his feelings in that moment as "powerful". He asked me, "Where do we go from here? Do you have an email address?" He was treating me as an equal, even looking to me for direction.

We exchanged email addresses, told stories for a month, and then I was on a plane to go meet him and his wife of 17 years. They were both delightful. We all accepted each other joyously. It was a great reunion. I learned that my father and I have a lot in common. Our life stories were similar. He didn't much like his step-father, who was an Army sergeant, and so didn't really have a steady father either. He hitchhiked to Venice Beach to hang with the Beatniks in the early 1950s; I was into doing spoken word poetry. He wrote; I wrote. He tried college on for size; so did I. We shared a similar sense of humor.

We often discussed nature versus nurture, using ourselves as a case study.

During the 19 years of our estrangement, my father had become a trained psychologist and an anger and rage management specialist. He had turned his own experience with anger and rage into a career. He continues to help people gain an understanding of their anger. I don't much care for his methods, and I disagree with him on a number of issues. I think he doesn't understand the first thing about anger. He may know how to "deal with" anger, but I don't think he understands its nature or its root cause for shit.

(Interestingly, my mother studied chemical dependency counseling at a technical college when I was an early teen. That makes two parents in the head shrinking industry, neither of whom, in my opinion, understands a thing about their area of "expertise". I believe this is true of the majority of "head tinkerers", as I call them.)

Still, my father seems to have overcome his rage issues, even if he does get snippy from time to time. Who doesn't? His wife hasn't killed him, anyway.

On that first visit to my dad and step-mom Janet's house, I engineered a reunion between my mother and father. My mother drove the three hours from her apartment to my father's house, and the four of us had dinner. We were joined by my father's mother, my grandmother(!). My father and mother took a walk together to the lake. When they returned, they announced to Jan and me that they had made amends.

Everything was coming up roses.

In my early twenties, soon after meeting my father, I dropped out of college and started an arts association with some friends. We networked and marketed each other's art, and encouraged each other. We partied a lot. I began to view the association as a family. A Sibling Society, if you will. The association crumbled under my own fiscal mismanagement. I lost friends.

I lost jobs. I have always been a creative person. I have always been full of ideas. I have always "made things happen". I have a knack for understanding people's minds. I know how to throw a few words together to make your synapses fire. I enjoy creating things and exploring the human condition in art. But I have always lacked a sense of responsibility. I have always lacked any deep-seated desire to hold up my end of the two-by-four, if you will. When I work, I work hard. I work smart. I help people at every opportunity, as if by instant reflex. But sustaining any habit of responsibility has always been tough for me. I have always relied on my natural talents and my ability to pull a rabbit out of a hat (if you will) on occasion, rather than stick-to-it-iveness.

I have always been prone to frustration. I have little tolerance for the inconsistencies of other human beings. I hold the world to a much higher standard than it is capable of withstanding. When I meet a verbal impasse with someone, I assess their intelligence. If they are simple and happy, I drop it. If they are intelligent, I often challenge them to see things from a new perspective until I am blue in the face. This usually ends in a storm of rhetorical bullets from me, and the other person just slinking away into silence. In that sense, I am a part-time tyrant.

I have never been one to damage property. I have never been in trouble with the law. I have never been an immoral person, from most perspectives. I can be mischievous, though. I enjoy humor very much.

I have always sought the comfort of women.

I am still working on many of these issues. But this was supposed to be about fatherlessness, anger, and how I met my father. Maybe there is not enough in here about my anger, and how I don't understand it as well as I should, and what causes it, and what can be done about it, and how I can channel my anger, and how best to navigate my ship through the terror waters of postmodernity. I believe our culture as a whole is trending towards treating fathers as expendable. I believe we have all developed such a pervasive adaptation to this that it affects the way in which we live together and work together in every single moment of our lives. The lexicon has changed. For me to go into a detailed list of symptoms would be to describe, oh, about 50% of our societal ills, all solutions to which often appear to be extinct.

Fatherlessness informs everything. We need to start making a big deal of it. Now. Not because we necessarily have the intelligence to "solve" fatherlessness, but because without radical honesty and Total Acceptance, all the fatherless adult children out there will die never knowing what their problem was. We need to share these things. We need to stop being so damn laissez-faire about it. Now is the time to get real.

Everything is not OK. We can be Tao or Zen, and we can still laugh and have fun and live fruitful lives, but we need to address fatherlessness concurrently. Start with your own experiences. I have just given you an example of how to begin.

Thank you for reading.

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