How does one become a Child of a Career Criminal (CCC)?

It started for me at a strip club.

I'm not sure it was a strip club, it might have been a bikini bar.  As a CCC, you never really get told the whole and complete truth.   There are elements of the truth told to you from family members and friends, tearful confessions at totally inappropriate times, lengthy searches on the internet that dredge up possibilites of the truth or other means of finding out information - but never a fully verified, fact checked truth.

As the story goes, my father owned the establishment.  My mother started working there as a "can can" dancer.  I think this was only a shade of the truth, I'm reasonably sure my mother was a stripper.  He was just beginning his career, she was looking for some fun (i.e.  starting down the long path of bipolar insanity).  They made a good pair.

My parents had a lot of fun together.  There were trips across the Mexican border.  To me, this speaks of drugs but I could be wrong.  There were also boats in the Pacific, diving for abalone, horse racing, and gambling in Vegas.  Somewhere Dean Martin fits in - I guess he hit on my mom once.  She was pretty in that blond big haired way back in the 60's. 

But then she got pregnant with me.  By then, my parents were married and living in Chicago.   When I asked my father why the hell he ever married my mother he said that "She was fun and I thought that was what I was supposed to do".  Things went to major shit not long after that.  

As my father's career progressed, so did my family's station in life.  My first memories are of a beautiful house in the suburbs, ballet lessons, pretty clothes, and a father who wasn't around much but who loved me more than the thing he seemed to love most:  money.

I have fleeting memories of that time, for reasons that will come later.  One sticks out in my mind, and I'm grateful that my broken brain hasn't suppressed it.  My father, dressed in a tuxedo and me in a little frilly white dress.  We were dancing together at a father/daughter dance for Brownies group, my little black patent shoes on top of his Italian leather ones.  I can still smell his cologne and feel the heat and size of his hands on my shoulders. 

Too bad my mom read the invitation incorrectly - it was supposed to be a square dance.