Sh*t My Dad Says

by Justin Halpern

  I started sweating and couldn’t keep my legs still, which was unfortunate, seeing as we were just about to drive through the border patrol inspection. The officer waved us through even though I’m pretty sure I looked like I was sitting on about two thousand pounds of cocaine and hiding a half dozen illegal aliens in our trunk.

  Once we were across the border, Stacy’s friend pulled over at the first exit.

  “I am totally fiending for some Jack in the Box,” she said.

  “No. I need to go home right now,” I snapped, my voice ascending to a note I hope no woman ever hears out of my mouth again.

  “Whoa, chill out. We’re just gonna grab some Jumbo Jacks—God.”

  In my head, I was fantasizing about jumping into the front seat, drop-kicking her out of the car, slamming the door, and stepping on the gas. Instead I just sat in the dining area of the Jack in the Box while the four girls leisurely enjoyed their hamburgers. I called Dan to see how much damage was done.

  “Your dad looked all pissed off. I told him you were in Mexico,” Dan said.

  “You told him I was in Mexico?! Why did you tell him I was in Mexico?!” I screamed.

  “Because you were in Mexico.”

  I hung up the phone. Shortly after, Stacy and her friends moseyed back to the car. We continued our drive up the coast and, upon reaching San Diego, headed to Stacy’s apartment, where my car was parked. I grabbed my travel bag out of the back of the Blazer and briskly walked toward my car.

  “Um, okay—bye?” Stacy said snidely.

  “Yeah, yeah, bye—sorry,” I replied, jumping into my car and slamming the door.

  I began the drive over to my parents’ house, trying to figure out what lie I could tell to diffuse the situation. I came to the conclusion that there really was no diffusing this because it had too many volatile elements: I blew off my dad; I disappeared and was unreachable; and—the final straw—I had gone to Mexico. My parents had irrational fears of Mexico and assumed that once you crossed the border, drug runners made you swallow a heroin balloon and then within the hour you were in a bathtub full of ice and they were harvesting your kidneys.

  As I pulled up to the house, I spotted my dad’s car in the driveway. I walked up to the front door and opened it. I saw my dad sitting in the living room, staring right at me as if he’d been in that position for the last two days.

  “WHERE IN THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN?!” he screamed, getting up from his chair and quickly moving toward me like an overweight panther.

  “Listen, hold on,” I said.

  And then I launched into an elaborate lie about a school project and a birthday that made no sense before he cut me off.

  “Mexico!! You went to fucking Mexico? They’ll gut you like a pig, piss on your corpse, and then say ‘Welcome to Mexico!’” he screamed. “You say you’re going to fucking be somewhere, you fucking be there!” he added.

  “I know, I know!” I hollered back in defense.

  “No, you don’t know! You don’t know shit! Everyone is worried sick about you. I got your mother freaking out, then everybody else. I called the cops to look for you!”

  “You called the cops?” I said.

  “Yeah, I called the cops!”

  “Well, shouldn’t you call them and tell them you found me?”

  My dad paused for a split second.

  “They’ll figure it out,” he said, the tone in his voice changing.

  I looked at him. He very rarely lied to me, and when he did, it was obvious.

  “You didn’t call the cops, did you?” I asked suspiciously.

  “I called somebody,” he replied.

  “Was that somebody the cops?”

  Silence fell over the room.

  “No,” he said, a little embarrassed. “But fuck you! I could have called the cops! I should have called them, but I figured you were just being dopey, and I’d have wasted their time!”

  I realized I had somewhat disarmed him and should just cut my losses now and try to make things right. So I apologized profusely, explained that I had gotten caught up and completely forgotten about our date, and reaffirmed all the reasons why I was an idiot.

  “Okay, okay, I get it, you don’t have to keep listing reasons why you’re a dumb shit,” he said, interrupting my laundry list of self-insults.

  He motioned me over to him. I cautiously approached. Then he grabbed me and gave me a big hug.

  “You little shit,” he said. “I can’t wait till you have some kid and you got to worry about what happens to him. You never stop worrying about your children. It sucks. You watch what you stick your dick into, because this is your life, this bullshit right here.”

  He released me from the hug and grabbed a plastic grocery bag filled with chips.

  “Grab that bottle of ketchup, we’re late for the barbecue your uncle is throwing.”

  “I was going to meet Dan at the beach, actually,” I said tentatively, hoping he would respect my Fourth of July plans.

  “Shut the fuck up and grab the bag. You got some balls.”

  On Finding the Best Deal

  “Man, you should have seen your mom tear that RadioShack manager a new asshole. I would venture to say she made a home inside his asshole. That will be the last time RadioShack tries to fuck with your mother.”

  On Nontraditional Entertainment

  “There’s something to be said for sitting around and drinking a beer while you watch your dog try to fuck a punching bag.”

  On the Baseball Steroids Scandal

  “People are surprised Mark McGwire did steroids? Look at him! He looks like they should have him in a stall on display at the fair with some poor son of a bitch cleaning up his shit.”

  On My Decision to Try to Make It as a Hollywood Screenwriter

  “It’s like being on a merry-go-round, except the horse you’re riding fucks you.”

  On Driving Through West Hollywood, Where I Lived My First Year in L.A.

  “There seem to be a lot of gay people there…. Oh please, as if that’s what I meant by that. Trust me, none of them would ever want to fuck you anyway. They’re gay, not blind.”

  On Being Lonely and Having Trouble Making Friends

  “Have you tried going out to places, talking to people, making an effort?…Bullshit. Talking to someone in a Jiffy Lube waiting room is not making an effort.”

  On Internet Service

  “I don’t want it…. I understand what it does…. Yes, I do. And I don’t give a shit if all of your friends have it. All of your friends have dopey fucking haircuts, too, but you don’t see me running to my barber.”

  On Bragging

  “I would simmer down a bit if I were you…. Well, for one, the only one who was impressed was the little girl sitting behind you, and for two, they don’t exactly hand out Medals of fucking Honor for eating two Denny’s breakfast plates in one sitting.”

  On Dealing with Loud Neighbors

  “Have you told them it bothers you?…Are they bigger than you?…Are you afraid of getting your ass kicked?…Ah, okay, I probably should have asked that question first, woulda saved time. Yeah, you’re just gonna have to deal with the noise, son.”

  At the End of the Day, at Least You Have Family

  “So there you go. Your mother thinks you’re handsome. This should be an exciting day for you.”

  A couple months after I graduated from college, I finally left my hometown of San Diego and moved to Los Angeles. I had studied film and television in college, specifically focusing on writing, and decided that I wanted to try my hand at becoming a screenwriter.

  “Listen, it’s gonna be tough, and you’re gonna eat a lot of shit at first, but you just get past that, and you will succeed,” was the advice my dad gave my brother Evan at the September dinner when we both announced our new professional goals. Evan had decided to embark on a career in scuba diving.

  “Get ready for a fucking of biblical proportions,” was the advice he gave me about twenty seconds later, a
fter I shared my plan.

  My dad believed in me, though, and supported my decision completely. In fact, he supported me so much that, unprompted, he offered to pay my first three months of rent in L.A. to help me get on my feet.

  “I figure, what’s the fucking point in dying and leaving you money when you probably won’t need it? Might as well give it to you now when you need the help. Plus, I plan on blowing most of it on stupid shit when I get senile,” he explained.

  I found a two-bedroom apartment in a small, ten-unit, white stucco building in West Hollywood. I shared it with a friend from college who was also trying to make it in the entertainment industry. The paint on our walls was peeling, and the carpet was covered in stains that would have made for a great CSI episode.

  Even though I grew up two hours south, I had rarely ventured to Los Angeles. I soon learned that my dad wasn’t totally off base when he said, “Los Angeles is like San Diego’s older, uglier sister that has herpes.”

  Because I had barely any concept of what Los Angeles was like, I was met with a few surprises when I arrived—the first during my first night in the apartment. I learned that I shared a bedroom wall with our neighbors when I got into my old queen-size bed and heard the sounds of loud, passionate lovemaking coming through the thin stucco wall. I had never seen my neighbors before, but I had watched my fair share of porn, so immediately I envisioned a blond bombshell with huge breasts getting it on with a faceless man. My visual, paired with the live soundtrack, got me so excited that after listening for a few minutes I popped into my desktop computer the only porn DVD I owned and rubbed one out before dozing off. The next day, I walked out of my apartment just as my sexually active neighbors were strolling out of theirs.

  “Hi, I’m Steven. This is my partner, Lucas,” my neighbor said to me, introducing his larger male companion.

  Hey, I’m Justin, I just jerked off last night to you and your boyfriend having sex, thinking you were a woman, and now I’m feeling fairly insecure about my sexuality, I thought.

  I told them it was nice to meet them.

  My roommate was an impressive person and a hard worker, and within two weeks of moving to L.A. she got an internship at a production company as well as a full-time job to pay the bills. Before I had fully unpacked my bags, she was working 90 to 100 hours a week, and I hardly ever saw her. I spent my days sending query letters to production companies, trying to get internships, while also looking for work pretty much every place I could think of. The only job I could find was delivering apartment guides to 7-Elevens in the greater Los Angeles area. I’d show up in the morning at a warehouse, load up the back of my truck with the thin realty booklets, and then struggle with directions for the next eight hours, trying to find out where exactly I was supposed to drop them off. It was like taking the worst tour of Los Angeles imaginable, and the job was only freelance, so it didn’t even offer the opportunity to make much money.

  I had only one real friend in L.A., my writing partner, Patrick, with whom I had directed my student film and written a screenplay for a feature film in college. Both were fairly poor attempts, but we had fun. We were learning and, most important, worked well together and had similar senses of humor. Patrick had lived in L.A. just a little longer than I had and was showing me the ropes as best he could. But except for him, the only people I saw on a regular basis were the transvestite prostitutes who hung out in front of my apartment complex. One of them approached me a few weeks into my stay, and part of me was actually excited by the prospect of having a conversation with someone new.

  “Is this your car?” she asked, pointing to my white Ford Ranger.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “My girlfriend accidentally threw up on it last night, but I washed it off. Just wanted to say sorry,” she said before walking away.

  For the first time in my life, I was homesick. “How’s it going up there?” my dad asked me over the phone when I called home after about a month to say hello.

  “Oh, you know. Pretty good,” I said, not wanting him to see what a sad sack I felt like.

  “Bullshit, you’re lying. I can tell by your voice.”

  “It’s not going so great, Dad.”

  I told him everything that had been going on, just poured out all of the emotions that had been building up.

  “From now on, when I ask you how you’re doing, I appreciate you being open, but don’t tell me stories about you jerking off to your gay neighbors,” he said, laughing. “Listen, you’ve only been up there a month. This shit takes time. Steven Spielberg didn’t become Steven Spielberg in a month. He was probably just some asshole who’s a lot fucking uglier than you, I might add.”

  He talked to me for a few more minutes about the Padres and the Chargers, how my brothers and my mom were doing, and afterward I felt a lot better. So I plugged away, and a couple months later I got a job waiting tables at a place called Crocodile Cafe in Old Town Pasadena. It was basically a lower-key T.G.I. Friday’s. Landing the job was a minor victory, but my dad thought otherwise.

  “Bullshit, you done good. It’s hard to get a waiter job in L.A. All these fucking actors, they got all the jobs. Your mom and I are proud of you. We’re gonna come up and take you out to celebrate,” he said.

  “That’s really not necessary, Dad.”

  “Bullshit.” (My dad loves the word bullshit and delivers it with many different inflections. This particular time, his delivery said to me, “This is not something you can argue against.”)

  My parents wanted me to feel good about myself, and they knew that I wasn’t going to have a shot at being successful unless I did. I wasn’t Charles Bukowski; my misery was not going to translate to literary genius and royalty checks. My dad ended the phone call with one emphatic sentence.

  “I’m taking you to Lawry’s Prime Beef!”

  Lawry’s is mostly known for its seasoned salt, which you can purchase in almost any large grocery store, but they also have a famous steak house, Lawry’s The Prime Rib Restaurant, in Los Angeles, which my dad loves. Shortly after our phone call, he had my mom (who had broken him down and gotten Internet on her computer in the house) create an e-mail address for him just so he could send me an e-mail with a link to the Lawry’s Web site. The subject heading was “Lawry’s” and the body simply said, “This is fucking prime beef!” with the link to their menu.

  The next Friday, my parents picked me up in my brother’s Chevy Blazer, which he had left with them since venturing to Hawaii to start his scuba diving career.

  “Who’s ready for some fucking prime beef?!” Dad said as I stepped into the car.

  Then he proceeded to ask me questions about my writing, life in Los Angeles, and pretty much anything else he could think of on the twenty-minute drive to the intersection of La Cienega and Wilshire boulevards, where the restaurant sat. I had invited Patrick, who met us in the restaurant’s lobby. The four of us sat down at a table and as soon as we had our drinks, my dad called for a toast to me and Patrick.

  “To you guys. For sticking your asses out on the line and going after it. And to Justin for getting a new job.”

  I never would have thought a person could so energetically toast a job that paid minimum wage, but my dad’s pride was completely genuine.

  The waitress who was covering our table was blond with big blue eyes. Even in the unflattering Lawry’s waitress uniform, she looked very attractive. As usual, my dad went into full flirting mode. He started asking her every conceivable question about Lawry’s history, the prime beef, the seasoned salts, and then moved on to questions about her personal life—where she lived (Hollywood), what she did (actress)—and so on. When my mother made the mistake of trying to order the only seafood dish on the menu, my dad used the opportunity to crack a joke.

  “Aw, Joni, you’re killing me. KILLING me. This is Lawry’s. This is prime beef. You can’t come here and order seafood,” he said, a little too enthusiastically, to my mom. “Am I right, or am I right?” he added, gazing up at
our waitress.

  Though my dad likes to say he’s not a flirt, his way with women is a big family joke. Whenever we call him on it, he replies with, “Oh please, I’m a married man. I’d never cheat on your mother, and she’d cut my nuts off anyway if I did, so there’d be no point in cheating. She’s Italian, she’d do it.”

  In addition to loving women, my dad has always had a great affection for waiters and waitresses. He thinks they’re hard workers who often get treated poorly by customers, so any time he eats out, he tips 30–40 percent, no matter what. I glanced at the bill and noticed it was around $220, which was definitely the most expensive dinner he had ever taken me to. We almost never went out to fancy meals, so I could tell this meant a lot to him. As I stared at the bill, I saw him jot down $80 for the tip.

  Now, having worked in the restaurant industry for eight years—as a waiter for five of them—I can tell you that we operate the same way a stripper does: Give us money, and we’ll pretend we like you. After our waitress saw the tip, she sashayed back to the table and began chatting us up even more. When my dad found out she was single, he pointed at me and said, “That one is single, too. He lives up here now. You two should get together.” (Because if there’s any indication that two people should begin having sexual intercourse, it’s that they live in the same city.)

  Ten minutes later, we finally got up from the table. My dad thanked each and every employee he saw on the way out as if he were walking offstage after winning an Oscar. Then he grabbed a toothpick from the dispenser at the hostess desk, popped it in his mouth, and strolled out the door. My parents and I bid farewell to Patrick, and when the valet brought our car around, my dad jumped in the driver’s seat, my mom in the passenger’s, and me in the back. After a few moments of silence, he looked at me in the rearview mirror and said, “That waitress, she was sweet on you. She was chatting you up for ten minutes.”