So I got this email the other day from Todd Dark-Fox [maiden name is just Fox, he was posing as his brother Tony, too] in reference to a blog post from about a year ago. In this post, Operation Secret Eck-strac-shun, I mentioned Dork-Fox's mother and cock-sucking in the same sentence. He claimed it was one thing to give my take [the truth] on how our friendship came tumbling down like the house of cards it was [my words, not his], but it was an entirely different thing to say anything other the kindest of words about the slag he calls mother [my words]. He wants me to remove the sentence from my story. His reasoning is based on the faulty premise that his mother was "never anything but nice to me." So since there is no chance in hell I'm changing something I wrote a year ago to placate someone I scraped off my boot 12 years ago, I thought a sort of compromise was in order. I'll tell you what happened between Todd's mom and me that makes it possible for me to say not nice things about her.
It's true that for the years I knew Todd's mother, she was, for the most part, great. I thought she was the bee's knees and cat's PJs. But nothing lasts forever and parents are, after all, only human. They do things like screw and shit and fuck up. Some drink, some cheat, some gamble, some are just emotionally dead. It's not really any big deal and accepting that fact as their offspring is a good FIRST step to maturity.
Todd's mum didn't commit any great sin, she just turned out to be a closet bigot. It happens. My dad's a bit of a bigot. I can forgive him that because in addition to being a bit xenophobic, he raised me and has many great qualities. If he ever said anything to one of my friends, I wouldn't expect them to forgive him. I wouldn't cut him off or expect my friend to want me to. I wouldn't expect my friend to continue to think the sun shines out my dad's ass though, I can tell you that. I'd apologize for my dad's behavior and keep the two apart diplomatically.
You see, Todd's mom didn't know that in all the years I was hanging out in her house, eating her food, using her bathroom, taking her son to teen dance clubs and playing D&D in her kitchen that I wasn't entirely white. I was and am in fact about 25 percent Indian. It's no big deal. I grew in Iowa with all the other white bread. I don't look particularly Indian or act any differently than anyone else [taking into account normal human variation]. The other 75 percent of my genetic makeup is French, English and Dutch. No one ever freaks out about that.
Todd's mom found out my apparently dirty little secret about the second to last time I ever saw her -- through no fault of mine -- after making some strange remark about Indians having short legs. "They rode high in the saddle, but when they got off their horses, it looked like they jumped into holes because their legs were so short." Todd told her I was Indian and it embarrassed her a bit. Like I said, not my doing. I wouldn't have said anything.I've heard worse.
The last time I ever saw her [about a week or two later], I got the impression that she felt rather betrayed by my lack of full racial disclosure on this subject. I had to suffer some crazy mini-lecture on, of all the craziest fucking things, Indians raping white women. Of course, she did this while Todd was upstairs, so their were no witnesses. I never even bothered to tell Todd about it at the time. It wasn't the first or last time I had this experience with otherwise decent people who were made so uncomfortable by the subject of race that they did or said something really stupid. I've heard worse, but I never really expected to hear this from a woman I actually quite liked.
This incident disappointed me greatly. Like I said, I quite liked Todd's mom. Of all my friend's mothers, she wasn't the coolest or the hippest, but she was definitely the nicest. She liked me well enough until this Indian thing came up and in case anyone's curious, yes, all it takes to make me turn off someone is one bizarre lecture about Indians raping white women. It was a real "What the fuck?" moment, I can tell you that.
So if the only objection Todd or any other member of his family has to my post is that I am unfairly treating someone who always treated me with kindness and compassion, they can now feel much better about things. I'm justified. Besides, I'd say that about my best friend's mother and I like her.
P.S. Of course, Todd sends me this email pretending to be his brother because he's a poser and a shit-starter who wanted to get one more little dig into me without getting involved. Unfortunately for his story, I saw a bunch of Google hits on my blog from his area of Texas about two days before I got the e-mail. Even if I hadn't, the casually condescending tone was unmistakable. Had Tony actually sent this e-mail, he would have engendered my empathy by saying something like, "Hey, I know my brother's a complete and utter tool, and I can't say that I totally disagree with the rest of what you said, but ..."
