Member-only story
I Thought I Had a Daddy Complex
Turns out it was more complicated than that
From my earliest days of being attracted to men (far earlier than was appropriate, I’m sorry to say), I have been drawn to older men.
This made perfect sense, of course: my parents divorced when I was pretty young, and it was my dad who went away. Far away, a plane flight away, which was a big deal to a family with as little money as we had. We didn’t even have a telephone.
Dad wrote me letters every now and then. I cherished them, treasured them, read them over and over. I loved his half-printing half-handwriting; I loved how he abbreviated words (“nite”, “lv” for love) even though he knew perfectly well how to spell.
I did get to visit him occasionally, and briefly, flying as an unaccompanied minor on one of those big pink and orange planes with the smile on its nose all the way to his faraway city. He would pick me up at the airport in his big car that had windows that went up and down with the push of a button.
We had so much fun together. He bought food Mom never would feed me and my brother — fig newtons dipped in lemon yogurt; ice cream, Wheat Thins. He would laugh and tease and joke. He had a TV. He let me stay up late.
