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I thought about what I’m about to write, and I was going to write that, except for my Heart Truths, this would be the last thing I wrote about my father. Thinking about it, though, I know that would be a lie. I’ve been writing about my father ever since I’ve been writing. There’s no reason to think just because he’s deceased that I’ll stop writing about him.
And honestly, you wouldn’t know it was about him, unless I explain it.
I don’t want to, when I do talk or write about my father, constantly belittle him or make him appear as a bad man. I don’t know what type of man he was. He wasn’t a good father, and you don’t have to rely on just my testimony for that, but as a man, a human being, in his entirety? I don’t know. I can only go by what I know, which essentially comes to a molecule or two in the whole of Steve Cutlip.
My father was a Polaroid man. Understandable, knowing the time he lived in. The types of pictures he had, you really couldn’t take to get developed. The pictures I saw weren’t bad, simply nudes, nothing more graphic than you would have seen in the Playboys of the time. For all I know, they could have been the only pictures he had, but considering I discovered two different books, with different women in them, I feel safe in guessing it was a bit of a tradition with him. Polaroid hadn’t taken off in the late 60s, or else my father had made effort to hide or destroy photos, so luckily I did not run across any of my mother. Whether or not it is true, I over the years had pictured the photos as some type of trophies for my father.
I don’t know if my father really got into the Internet or cell phone technology. I do know that over many different years of casual searching, I never found him on Facebook, MySpace or Twitter. Google searches did not produce much information on him beyond his birth, marriages and divorces. Perhaps if he had been born when I was or later, his photos would be saved on a SD card or hidden in an external drive.
Today, it’s much easier to see flesh. Many of my female friends have told me they’ve received more than their own share of unrequested penis pictures. It’s hard to say what this means. Honestly, I have no issues with nudity, and I think America as a whole is too squeamish about the matter, in ways many other countries are not. Yet, much of the time, I also think the allure is missing in that two-dimensional form.
The first nudes I had were of my first wife. I had them in a small photo album which I mailed to her some time after I moved in with the woman who would be my second wife. That was about thirteen years after the pictures had been taken, ten years after the divorce. I mailed them because they bothered the person I was with, not because I thought there was anything wrong with me having them. It wasn’t like, I thought to myself, I had even looked at them in a long time. But to keep peace...
Which brings me to now. I often say I know who and how I am. So it comes as a wallop when something points out that maybe I don’t know everything, and that one of the things I didn’t really grasp was how I was like my father. I divorced in 2011. After the separation I did what probably many newly separated or divorced men and women did and dipped my toe in the online dating world. I received my share of risque pictures during that time, probably not as many as One Direction or whomever the heartthrobs of the moment might be in the time it took me to type this. And generally I have not looked at them in the time since they were sent to me.
But I saved them. Upon a sharp figurative poke in the eye, in which I didn’t look at myself in a good light, I realized that, though I may have not meant to, I, like my father, had my own trophy book. With me, it was just digital.
I cleared out everything I had, all the pictures I had received, except for one person (and porn...I mean, let’s not get crazy here). Because what is the point of it besides a prize to show that this person was willing to send me a picture. It’s hard to look in the mirror and realize you aren’t as right as you thought you were, but all I can do now is realize there is a problem and fix it. I don’t want trophies. I don’t want to be a collector.
And honestly, you wouldn’t know it was about him, unless I explain it.
I don’t want to, when I do talk or write about my father, constantly belittle him or make him appear as a bad man. I don’t know what type of man he was. He wasn’t a good father, and you don’t have to rely on just my testimony for that, but as a man, a human being, in his entirety? I don’t know. I can only go by what I know, which essentially comes to a molecule or two in the whole of Steve Cutlip.
My father was a Polaroid man. Understandable, knowing the time he lived in. The types of pictures he had, you really couldn’t take to get developed. The pictures I saw weren’t bad, simply nudes, nothing more graphic than you would have seen in the Playboys of the time. For all I know, they could have been the only pictures he had, but considering I discovered two different books, with different women in them, I feel safe in guessing it was a bit of a tradition with him. Polaroid hadn’t taken off in the late 60s, or else my father had made effort to hide or destroy photos, so luckily I did not run across any of my mother. Whether or not it is true, I over the years had pictured the photos as some type of trophies for my father.
I don’t know if my father really got into the Internet or cell phone technology. I do know that over many different years of casual searching, I never found him on Facebook, MySpace or Twitter. Google searches did not produce much information on him beyond his birth, marriages and divorces. Perhaps if he had been born when I was or later, his photos would be saved on a SD card or hidden in an external drive.
Today, it’s much easier to see flesh. Many of my female friends have told me they’ve received more than their own share of unrequested penis pictures. It’s hard to say what this means. Honestly, I have no issues with nudity, and I think America as a whole is too squeamish about the matter, in ways many other countries are not. Yet, much of the time, I also think the allure is missing in that two-dimensional form.
The first nudes I had were of my first wife. I had them in a small photo album which I mailed to her some time after I moved in with the woman who would be my second wife. That was about thirteen years after the pictures had been taken, ten years after the divorce. I mailed them because they bothered the person I was with, not because I thought there was anything wrong with me having them. It wasn’t like, I thought to myself, I had even looked at them in a long time. But to keep peace...
Which brings me to now. I often say I know who and how I am. So it comes as a wallop when something points out that maybe I don’t know everything, and that one of the things I didn’t really grasp was how I was like my father. I divorced in 2011. After the separation I did what probably many newly separated or divorced men and women did and dipped my toe in the online dating world. I received my share of risque pictures during that time, probably not as many as One Direction or whomever the heartthrobs of the moment might be in the time it took me to type this. And generally I have not looked at them in the time since they were sent to me.
But I saved them. Upon a sharp figurative poke in the eye, in which I didn’t look at myself in a good light, I realized that, though I may have not meant to, I, like my father, had my own trophy book. With me, it was just digital.
I cleared out everything I had, all the pictures I had received, except for one person (and porn...I mean, let’s not get crazy here). Because what is the point of it besides a prize to show that this person was willing to send me a picture. It’s hard to look in the mirror and realize you aren’t as right as you thought you were, but all I can do now is realize there is a problem and fix it. I don’t want trophies. I don’t want to be a collector.
