I'm Dr. Rock and Roll: Father Figure

            It was the slap heard ‘round MTV, and the artist would later say it caused real pain. I’ve read accounts where it was the final affirmation that he was a homosexual male.

            I’m talking about George Michael and the video for the seductive, ethereal ballad “Father Figure,” which started out as a mid-tempo dance song but totally changed feel when he removed the snare from the drum track. The video featured him in a relationship with a model, and at one point she slapped him so hard, he really did need to put some steak on it afterward. And like the unplanned direction the song took in its genesis, this writing is about to take a turn. Call me a victim of word-association – but when I hear the term “father figure,” that’s where my mind goes.

            For most of my life, I had a “father” problem. And it only takes a cursory glance around society to know that I’m far from alone in that regard. Womanizers around the world are on the hunt for a girl who has “daddy issues.” The preponderance of sexual and domestic violence in our society points to the lack of solid male role models, and that’s to say nothing of emotional and mental abuse that the women in our society suffer at the hands of those who treat the women in their lives like playthings or objects. In fact, I’d say that “daddy issues” have reached epidemic proportions, on both sides of the gender gap.

            And for most of my youth, I was afflicted. My dad wasn’t around, and I was left to figure it out. Raised by a single mom, my foundation was solid, but it wasn’t the same. My uncle came to bat when necessary, but he had his own family to guide. I escaped to the movies, where I saw John Hughes movies that painted relationships as now-cringeworthy relics of a bygone era, where gratuitous nudity and the quest for “getting laid” was everywhere. And I played the game, but it never felt right. My mom knew how to raise her child, but she struggled with guiding him as a man, like single mothers everywhere.

            At first, I took the option of “faking it” until I point where I could “make it.” It was an exercise in reverse psychology – I vowed to become everything my father was not, making him the scapegoat of my time in the wilderness. He became the avatar of bad examples, the pariah upon which manhood could be built. And it worked, to a degree; there can be a power in that kind of dogged determination. At long last, I presumed, there would be peace. But there was only chaos, and the empty feeling persisted. By the greatest of miracles, I accumulated a legion of friends, and a prescient woman who could see me for what I could be and agreed to follow me on my journey.

            It was during the final years of my career education that I met the father figure I would need, halfway across the country in Oklahoma. Brian was a former youth minister and successful businessman who saw something in me. It helped that my wife and I were the ages of his kids, I guess. Suddenly, manhood wasn’t such a mystery – he carried himself with grace. He was a “man of steel and velvet,” strong yet vulnerable. He could spar with you, but he could also cry with you. From him, I learned that vulnerability, ironically, IS strength. As I started my family, it was his example that I emulated.

            But around the same time, the world grew tired of the antics of my fellow men. Society began its quest to emasculate us. Sitcoms featured clueless buffoons for male heroes, who fortunately had the wise counsel of a strong woman to save them from their weekly antics. And speaking of word association, you can’t say the word ‘masculinity’ without hearing the word ‘toxic’ in a background whisper. Men who have spent decades being told to suppress their emotions act out in the most despicable of ways. And suddenly, I was lost again. I thought I was home, but then the house got wiped out by the ensuing hurricane. 

            I tell people all the time that I’m not surprised. Women have been the fairer sex all along, I propose, and one only need look at the decades that men spent trying to subjugate women to realize that all men know it, at least subconsciously. But it saddens me that this toxic version of masculinity has become synonymous with masculinity itself, and that’s not the case. The man in society doesn’t need to be demonized – we simply need a better way of amplifying the good and allow the toxic parts to atrophy. What we need, I feel, is a father figure.

            This past Father’s Day, it’s occurred to me that I have found a father in the place I should’ve sought him all along – Heaven. I’ve started going back to church, and my relationship with God has strengthened. And talk about your pronoun confusion, referring to God as “He” is simply a matter of semantics, for God encompasses all of the greatest parts about being a human, both the masculine and feminine. You could even argue that the Bible shows this dichotomy in the Old and New Testament. But it has never been easier for me to fall to my knees and pray for the guidance I need, and you know what? He provides, in a way that my father never could. Or that anyone could, for that matter. That inner peace that has eluded me for most of my life now resides within me, and I feel compelled to share it.

            So now, I march forward. It has always been on my heart to be an example, and I hope that I can be that for others, God willing. And it starts with letting go of what has been and looking forward to better. It breaks my heart every year, on Father’s Day, to see people that I call friends do nothing but trash their fathers on social media, calling out all his shortcomings. Once, I begged my niece to show my brother some compassion on social media, and she responded by telling me to “spare her my high-minded advice.” Then she blocked me and never spoke to me again…a wound I still carry. I would argue that the word “deadbeat” is used more on Father’s Day than any other day. And while I feel that pain, the fathers out there who have dedicated themselves to their families must endure this bad mojo on a day they’re supposed to be celebrated. I understand people have the freedom to express themselves, but you never see a Facebook post like that on Mother’s Day. As I said at the beginning, the world has “daddy issues.”

            But we’re trying. One Dad at a time. But this ship doesn’t turn on a dime.