Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace Read Free Book Online

drove home to the house in silence, with both hands on the wheel, and that look on his face about me asking about it—now I was totally pissed off. I always thought that thing you hear about seeing ‘red’ if you get mad enough was a figure of speech, but it is real. After I packed up all my shit in the van, I moved away, and did not get in contact with my folks for over a year. Not a word. My apartment, in the same town, was maybe only two miles away, but I did not even tell them my phone number. I pretended they did not exist. I was so disgusted and pissed off. My Mom had no clue why I was not in contact, but I sure was not going to mention a word to her about any of it, and I knew, for fucking-‘A’ sure, my father was not going to say anything to her about it. Everything I saw stayed slightly red for months, after I moved out and broke off contact, or at least a pink tinge. I did not think of the memory of my father waggling his dick at me as a little kid very often, but barely a day went by that I did not remember that look in the van he gave me when I brought it up again. I wanted to kill him. For months, I thought about going home when nobody was there and kicking his ass. My sisters had no clue why I was not in contact with my folks, and said I must have gone crazy, and was breaking my Mom’s heart, and when I called them they gave me shit about breaking off contact without explanation constantly, but I was so pissed off, I knew I was going to go to my grave never saying another fucking word about it. It was not that I was chicken to say anything about it, but I was so fucking over the edge about it, it felt like, if I ever mentioned it again, and got any kind of look from somebody, something terrible would happen. Almost every day, I imagined that, as I went home and was kicking his ass, my father would keep asking me why I was doing it, and what it meant, but I would not say anything, nor would my face have any look or emotion on it as I beat the shit out of him.
    Then, as time passed, I, little by little, got over the whole thing. I still knew that the memory of my father waggling his dick at me in the rec room was real, but, little by little, I started to realize, just because I remembered the incident, that did not mean, necessarily, my father did. I started to see that maybe he had forgotten the whole incident. It was possible that the whole incident was so weird and unexplained, that my father, psychologically, blocked it out of his memory, and that when I, out of (from his point of view) nowhere, brought it up to him in the van, he did not remember ever doing something as bizarre and unexplained as coming down and threateningly waggling his dick at a little kid, and thought I had lost my fucking mind, and gave me a look that said he was totally disgusted. It is not like I totally believed my father had no memory of it, but more like I was admitting, little by little, it was possible he blocked it out. Little by little, it seemed like the moral of a memory of any incident that weird is, anything is possible. After the year, I got to this position in my attitude where I figured that, if my father was willing to forget about the whole thing of me bringing up the memory of the incident in the van, and to never bring it up, then I was willing to forget the whole thing. I knew that I, for fucking-‘A’ god damn sure, would never bring any of it up again. When I arrived at this attitude about the whole thing, it was around early July, right before the 4 th Of July, which is also my littlest sister’s birthday, and so, out of (to them) nowhere, I call my folks’ house, and ask if I can come along for my sister’s birthday, and meet them at the special restaurant they traditionally take my sister to on her birthday, because she loves it so much (the restaurant). This restaurant, which is in our town’s down town, is Italian, kind of expensive, and has mostly dark, wooden decor, and has menus in Italian. (Our