Once, when I was twelve, my father swiped the glass slider away and stumbled into the house. His eyes were closed tight, and he was possessed of a preternatural calm that was so calm it ceased to be a comfort and pushed back through the membrane into a pallid and clammy unease. "Get your mother," he said, and I did. He said that he needed her to drive him to the hospital. She made a sound like those crying dolls. It doesn't really sound like a baby. It sounds like something else.

He had been recharging a car battery in the garage apparently, and it blew up in his face. Figuratively. But also literally. And he was apparently fine with it…? We didn't get along very well, seeing as I am emotionally and intellectually his photonegative; that was always gonna be a heavy lift. But I'm a much better father because he was my father. Sometimes, oftentimes, because I can just do the opposite of whatever he did. But sometimes, you have to really gauge and temper your responses to life. Not because we don't deserve our full humanity, or something. There's a lot of monstrous ideas with tremendous currency about how men should be, and I don't subscribe to them. No; it's because that horror is multiplied for the people who rely on you. It means something different to them. It's like learning that God can die, or something. Let me build a scaffold to that up, day by day. We don't gotta do it now.

Gonna stream from home with Eric today, starting at around 11:15 or so - gotta write a couple strips, and then I'll see you there.

(CW)TB out.