I never knew what my fathers job was. All I knew was that whatever it was, it required a suit & a tie, & when he got home, threatening to kill me. 

I remember vaguely a sense of apprehension, that quickly & quietly escalated into fear, following me around all day then finally stopping me in my tracks around five-thirty or so each evening so that I could meet it head on. 

That was the time my father usually got home. I knew this &, as the years passed, instinctively understood that I had to be there at that time, at or somewhere near the doorway, so that when he walked in he would see me & know that I did not hate him for terrorizing me. That I knew that that was his job & I knew that he was my father, the only one I had,  & that I had to love him in spite of myself. When he would walk in each evening, reeking more & more of something that just smelled to me like Daddy, he saw me & opened his eyes as wide as he could & made a face at me, sticking out his tongue & pretending to be some monster that had come to get me; a sick joke now. I would run into his arms & hug him as tight as I could & he would pretend to dance with me or toss me up in the air without letting go of my sides. He never let go. Not once. As the years went by, I turned five, turned six, still he didn't let go.

And it pissed me off.

I thought that by six you could surely handle flight. Or the illusion of flight. Just being up in the air for a few seconds, gravity suspending itself just for you because you wanted to know what it was like to feel like you were weightless, like you were outside of yourself. Like you weren't even there.

My father would beckon me to him when he was sitting outside in a white plastic lawn chair on the patio & say to me, "Don't forget that I can murder you, I could kill you & no one would even think to think it was me. I'm your father, you hear me dear-heart? You tell someone this, you don't even know... I'll cut your heart out & feed it to you in front of your own mother."

Now this last part, this certain threat, it wasn't just specifically the heart he had the ability to cut out, it could pertain to anything. My right foot, my fingers, the thumb on my right hand, my whole right hand, my left hand, one of my arms, even my nose got dragged into it. I could loose a leg, I could loose an eye. It all depended on his mood. I remember always having to look at Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' - it was one of my favorite paintings as a child, & still is to this day- to reassure myself that if I did in fact have my ear cut off I would still have the ability to create beauty. Even if I got it forced fed to me in front of my own mother. I still don't know what the hell that was all about. He was always so specific. 'Your own mother.' Like he would think if he didn't make that clear I would think he'd just start going door to door with me, a little thin pale girl with bright red blood spurting out of the place where her ear used to be, asking to see the lady of the house so she could see him feed me my ear. No, it was not to be just any random Mother, it was important that I know that this terrific torture could, & would, only be carried out in front of my own Mother. 

It took me awhile to realize that this wasn't a normal situation, that in a normal family the father didn't usually go around threatening dismemberment & execution. A father was supposed to be a source of comfort & safety, he wasn't supposed to just overall scare the shit out of his daughter.

I remember thinking, "Yeah, I just do not buy that."

Fast forward to several years later, I am watching television. Sketch comedy better than Python, which I watched probably too much of when I was little. Like Python, there are five guys in the troupe, & like Python, they play both genders. It's not drag, though, because it is too believable to be drag. These guys play women like women. Not like men in dresses. There is a guy in the troupe who is vaguely familiar to me. Especially when he wears suits & looks confused. I ask my mother why that guy is familiar to me. Where do I know that guy from? Goddammit, I know I know that guy from somehere. Who in hell is he?  There used to be a sitcom on that I watched about a news radio station in New York. The guy who starred in it wore suits & most of the time his face was a mask of confusion. He bounced when he walked, I remember that. He was funny. This is the same guy, & he looks about my age (I am twelve at this point), & he is making me laugh. All of these guys are making me laugh audibly & it's weird because for the last six or so years I do not remember laughing even once. I don't know it yet, but the next sketch is going to somewhat change my life. The sketch is called "Daddy Drank", & as I'm watching it I know that this sketch is hitting too close to home, that the metaphorical knife has already cut through the bone & into the heart. 

The guy who is the center of this sketch, the one who is telling the story of his homicidal alcoholic father, is not the suited twelve year old with the bouncing soles like Doc Marten's; he reminds me a little bit of Tim Burton (because of his paleness & the weird mess of black hair on his head) & a little bit like a cartoon character (because of his voice, & the fact that this man, simply put, does not look real ).  

This whole sketch is in every way, shape, & form fucked up. One of the lines the father says to the son when he's about to go to bed is 

"Goodnight son, & remember, I can murder you while you sleep.",

then he elaborates further that "All you have to be, son, is quiet &, uh, willin' to do it, & son, I am willin'  to do it. " 

This is sickeningly similar to what I remember hearing my own father say as a goodnight. 

& I can not stop laughing. 

As he is remembering through flashbacks these awful moments with his father he is smiling & his eyes are wide & innocent, he is turning this into something remarkably funny even when the content is supposed to not be.  

The really creepy part is that this is all real. "Daddy Drank" is based on this mans actual childhood & his actual real-life father growing up.  This is his reality & he's chosen to make it funny, to create art from his pain, to find the humor in it, not let it destroy any part of him.  He went through a lot of the same evilness that I went through, I am not alone, & he is still living & still has the ability to create beauty successfully. 

This is it, the epiphany.