I was graduating from High School. Did the gown and the hat and the whole thing. I was accepted to Indiana University for the fall. Had an older girl friend. My mom and her new husband were there in the audience and came to take pictures and congratulate me. The girl friend couldn't come for some reason. Ole Glen appears. I had not seen him since I was 12. No communication, no letters, no cards, no money, no presents, ziltch. The step father fades immediately and my mom goes with him. They left me there with him. I tried to be civilized. He gave me a present and then left. Something like the above was in the box. They used to sell these kind of things at roadside tourist gift shops, so I'm sure he picked it up on the way over in the car from Paris, Illinois.
It was ugly. So I spent an entire afternoon in my boarding house room (I had moved out of the house at the beginning of my Senior year, because I had a job and could pay rent and wanted to sleep with the girl friend when I wanted to) painting it with oil paint, melting the wax down from the candle and dripping it all over the thing and then painting it it again. It ended up looking like a LSD bad dream. I'm still not sure, but I think I was trying to destroy it by recreating it as bad art. The girl friend told me I was sick. I finally threw the fucking thing in the trash.
Every time ole Glen had showed up in my life, from 12 until he died, I had these incredibly bad nightmares about being killed by him. This time was no different.
So I didn't see him again until I hitchhiked over to see him a couple of years later. It was time to face my demons. I was a man. - at 20. I was also six inches taller than he was.
I was also very aware that my mom had to go get a lien on his salary to get him to pay child support for the last several years, so he was not interested in helping me and mine in any monetary way.
But he gives me a candle.
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