Like father, like son Dec. 8, 1985

 


They are more similar than either would ever admit. Enemies generally are. The fact that they are father and son makes it all the worse.

Enemies for some silly reason both long ago forgot. Too many reasons have popped up since to justify their hatred.

Yet the more they hate each other the more they seem the same. They even resemble each other physically, a fact that must give Hank pause. Both suffered the same addictions, once Hank got that 60s silliness out of his blood - alcohol and tobacco, though Hank’s father, George, did eventually managed to quit smoking in the mid-1960s.

Hank still smokes. Which begs the question as to whether Hank will follow in his father’s footsteps and get lung cancer, too.

A lot of Hank’s hatred of George stems from George’s treatment of Hank’s mother, Ann – the moody bastard acting like a spoiled child, demanding things and affections that had long abandoned their relationship.

Freud’s Oedipus complex plays havoc with their lives as the two men living under one roof compete for the attention of the one woman, George growing more enraged as Ann showers Hank with affection George believes she owes him.

Ann appears blind to the similarities of the two, the same tendency to moodiness in Hank that shows in her husband, a mingling of love and hate.

Hank’s elder sister – long absent from the house – was clearly the father’s favorite, while Ann reserved her love for Hank.

This was clearly the source of the conflict, although Hank claims it started in the mid-1960s when Hank wanted a stereo in order to play and study music, and his father bought him a cheap, tinny plastic Philco – which became the center of Hank’s hippie life as he played record after record, later a fixture on top of the refrigerator when Hank moved into the East Village apartment with Laurie, a symbol of his dissatisfaction with life at home in Haledon with his father.

Despite Hank’s claims, the stereo didn’t cause the feud, it simply fueled what already existed.

The fact that his father brought Hank any stereo at all didn’t seem to fit in the myth, although no doubt, the purchase as a concession to Ann, less a sign of affection for Hank – and became a plastic representation of Hank’s desire.

Later, of course, when Hank and I grew older, this symbol tended to lose significance, seemingly too trivial to justify the level of hatred that existed between the two men.

Hank focused instead on George’s mistreatment of Ann, an ironic claim since any outsider could see that both men treated Ann with equal hostility.

All this said, I was shocked when Hank told me this week that he and his father had patched up their differences.

“We straightened things out,” Hank said. “And I’m glad it happened before the cancer came on.”

This came out stiffly because Hank struggled to talk to me about intimate things, even though we had been the best of friends for more than a decade, acting like estranged lovers who come together after a long period, unable to touch on certain subjects or how much emotion to show.

“We’re friends now,” Hank said of his father.

But it was more than that. They were more than friends. They were brothers, children of the same genes, full of the same lusts, and hatred, and – fear of death, Hank aware many believed he would die before his father, a fate that apparently, he managed to avoid as his father comes nearer to dying.

 

 1985 Menu

 


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