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i don't understand how ridiculously stupid people can be sometimes.

(can you guess that i'm at the homestead?)

i had a bit of a personal, private breakdown last night. while everyone else slept and snored, i restlessly rose from my bed, went into the garage, and started chugging beers.

(i never knew how easy it was to down a beer in 4 goes)

(i've always responsibly sipped)

my father indeed gave me his old laptop. i was joking with my friends that he had been reluctant as he needed to clear the porn off the hard drive.

ha. ha. ha.

well, it's true, there were no actual FILES on the computer, per se, but my father is (see above) ridiculously stupid. and i was born in a time that allowed me to come of age with an apple IIe, DOS, and windows 3.1. so i think i kinda know a thing or two about an internet cache, temporary files, and history. ooh, you dangerous "internet options" tab. you lure like a siren song, and my ship can't help but crash into your rocks every.fucking.time.

so what did i find?

well, two years of my father not clearing the cache was a treasure of...porn - it seems like he clicked every link sent to his junk folder in hotmail.

oh yes, hotmail - i found my father's secret secret email address and his pseudonym, i suppose.

ah, yes. i found messages, too.

as the mystery unravels, it deepens, too. it turns out that this pathetic excuse of a "thai domestic" that lives here and "looks after" my grandfather is NOT the object of his affections. (this is his only saving grace, i suppose)

when i went to stay with him in thailand, he had a very pleasant maid. i thought she was very sweet, and she showed socks and i around when we were there together. she showed me how to cook some traditional thai dishes. i thought i would get her an italian cookbook, as she had expressed a desire to learn.

i think this is the woman that my father has been having his affair with. the reason he goes through thailand every time he comes here, or goes back. at least, the woman in the emails has the same name.

and she has stayed with him for months on end in pakistan.

he got a visa for her so she could stay there. his colleague at the embassy (whose wife went "crazy" when they lived in ottawa and threatened to shoot him...oh, brenda, i TOTALLY buy your story now!) in islamabad warned my dad that there were "rumours" going around about his eventual "visitor" - my dad wanted somewhere "private" to go...

i sat on my bed last night, in the dark, illuminated by the laptop's screen bearing these secrets to me.

my mother slept in the bed next to me.

my father snored on the couch downstairs.

so i went into the garage and pounded beers.

i wished i had the gumption to empty the fridge (but i only had one cigarette)

i wished that my father would wake up and find me talking to myself in the dark cold garage.

(i wish that i had gotten so drunk that i had thrown up on the mercedes.)

instead, i spat out my drool, reams of it around the garage, went inside, and brushed my teeth with "a toothbrush".

and toothpaste from thailand that i used to ask my dad to bring back with him.