�

sometimes you can't avoid the smackdown even in your own home.

i was getting ready to go to my friend's for brunch, listening to queen's "news of the world," i-boy had just gotten up and done the dishes...seemingly all going according to plan.

i thought, i'm going to try out that little data-stick thingy that you can plug into your computer, an accessory my dad gave me to go along with the laptop.

i thought, i wonder how many music files it can hold. i'll bring songs to k8's.

there were folders on the stick already.

photo folders...and a face i recognized but told myself 'no, it can't be...'

the photos weren't gross or wrong, or bad, or anything that could be used against anyone *really* in divorce court, but they were there. of my father's "girlfriend" i suppose. the sweet maid who showed my girlfriend and i around bangkok when we were on our proto-honeymoon, visiting my dad. the one trip to see my father that did not end in a mushroom cloud of emotional wreckage. i had no suspicion when it came to her.

but when i got this laptop, i went through the internet cache, finding the hotmail messages that told me he was lonely for this woman, who wrote back in the most broken english text that he was a good man.

i didn't think it could be the same person. i had no suspicion.

and here are photos of them on hikes around pakistan, rangoon, vietnam...his house, decorated with carvings from poland, and korean screens, and indonesian vases - remnants of my life abroad, familiar in this foreign setting - and there are some pictures of my father.

smiling.

perhaps, feeling appreciated for once.

powerful? needed. smiling.

i tear up now out of embarrassment that i was put into that situation more than once by him (like the time he got me a job at the embassy, setting me up in the immigration section where his mistress worked); i tear up at the fact that he "loves" this woman, and my mother had been waiting...at least waiting for change; i tear up at the fact that he is so righteous and such martyr and such a VICTIM all the time that he believes this is what he deserves; i tear up at the fact that my brother's godfather is a co-conspirator in this game...

most of all i tear up at the fact that i don't recognize this man,
and that i feel like i don't have a father anymore.