I Wrote About My Dad (Which I Rarely Do)
Happy Father’s Day from Fatherless Behavior.
Happy Father’s Day, my Fatherless Followers!
As many of you may be aware, despite what the name of this Substack would have you believe, I do, in fact, have a father and a pretty normal relationship with him, all things considered. With the exception of a short story I wrote in college that everyone seemed to hate (but mostly just because the professor, who was filling in for my advisor junior year when she was on sabbatical, seemed to hate me, my writing, and especially my love of an adverbial phrase), I have almost never written about my dad. Both because I think he would hate that and also because I’ve never really had a reason to. When I write, it is usually because I’m trying to understand something—typically something about myself. I write first to understand and then to be understood. My dad is someone who has always made me feel quietly understood, even at times in my life when I have felt the most alienated, the least knowable.
Anyway, last month I did write about him (sorry Dad, who is definitely not reading this) in an essay for Another Jane Pratt Thing, the latest project from media legend Jane Pratt. This essay, about the time an anonymous woman outed me as a sugar baby in a physical (possibly hand-delivered?) letter to my parents, is about the closest my, ahem, “professional” life has ever come to upending my relationship with my dad. It didn’t, although he and I have never again spoken of this incident in the four years since it happened. Anyway, below is an excerpt from the story. Head on over to Another Jane Pratt Thing to read the full version!
Oh, also, a quick reminder that paid subscriptions to Fatherless Behavior are currently 30% off for Father’s Day! If you’ve been on the fence about subscribing, now is a great time to pull the trigger (for just $3.50 per month!)
Excerpt: It Happened to Me: My Sugar Daddy’s Wife Outed Me in a Letter to My Parents
My dad’s name in my phone contacts is “REAL Dad.” It’s leftover from a mostly forgotten inside joke from high school that involved me yelling, “You’re not my real dad!” at my best friend’s boyfriend like an angsty child of divorce. I don’t remember why, just that the “REAL” in my actual father’s name was to distinguish him from this not-real dad, and the caps were for emphasis. I’ve kept it that way for ten-plus years out of something I suppose started as laziness and eventually became nostalgia.
Contrary to what you may think based on the fact that I am a sex writer and have a platform called “Fatherless Behavior,” my dad and I actually have a pretty good relationship—distant yet warm, to whatever degree that’s possible.
I’ve inherited his general distaste for social interaction, so we don’t talk much outside my occasional visits home. Still, I’ve never had reason to doubt a mutual if unspoken understanding that we’re good. That maybe we both know we’re a little too alike. That maybe we both see our own worst traits reflected back at the other and love each other in spite (or because) of it.
All of which is to say that when “REAL Dad” flashed across my phone screen one sunny April afternoon in 2021, it was unusual but not alarming. I figured he had a question about my taxes, which he still did for me at that time despite the fact that I was 24 and living on my own in New York, 200 miles and three years removed from under my parents’ roof.
I picked up, expecting to hear his usual, “Heyyy Kay.” He always says it the same, dragging out the first syllable. I can tell he likes the rhyme. Only a handful of people call me Kay. It sounds best when he does it.
Instead he just said, “I don’t care. I don’t want to know.”
Never before nor since has anything other than heartbreak knocked the wind out of me the way those words did. It was that same feeling you get when you realize someone’s about to break up with you and the world spins and the air gets sucked straight out of your lungs and your body goes into fight or flight because it thinks you’re supposed to do something even though there’s nothing to do.
Except this time I had no idea what was coming. Just that it would be bad.
“This came in the mail today,” he said.
“I don’t care. I don’t want to know,” he repeated. “I just thought you should know.”
I stayed quiet and he read the letter, which began:
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Kibbe,
I regret to inform you that your daughter Kayla is a working prostitute.
When I’ve told this story to friends, I usually make a joke at this part—something to the effect of, “It’s flattering, honestly. In reality, I’m a halfway whore at best—and a lazy one!”
I don’t remember any other specifics of the letter, just the basics. The author claimed to be the wife of a man I’d met on Seeking Arrangement. She made some references to their children, asking why I would attack a family in this way. She asked my parents if this was how they raised me. She was slinging accusations, yes, but mostly, she seemed to be seeking answers. Why would I do this? To her? To her family? To the kids? To the dogs? To the institution of “family” itself? I’m not sure why she thought my parents would have those answers.
I briefly thought about denying it, then said nothing. My dad had made it clear he was interested in neither truth nor lies, confessions nor alibis. Instead I just asked if there was a return address. There wasn’t, which remains perhaps the most disturbing part of this story—to me, anyway. It’s one thing for a scorned woman to look up your parents’ address and mail a letter. It’s another for her to drive all the way to your rural hometown from god knows where and place it in their mailbox.
“I’m going to destroy this now so your poor mother never finds it,” my dad said on the phone. To this day, I remain as relieved by this gesture as I am amused by any father’s assumption that he could ever know anything the mother of his children didn’t find out long ago. I had no direct evidence to suggest my mother knew I’d dabbled in sex work—we’d never discussed it. But I quietly assumed she knew the way I fear mothers know everything whether they want to or not—the permanent burden of having a part of yourself living outside your body, out loose in the world and fucking other people’s husbands for money. Even then, insufferably 24, I’d already aged out of the arrogance it takes to assume you can ever truly hide something from the woman who created you, whose mind will never be wholly her own again for having done so.
“Are you okay?” my dad asked, matter of factly.
“Yes.”
“Do you need help?”
“I…don’t think so?” The end of the sentence curled up into half of a laugh. I was bemused by my own answer as it came to me in real time. Up until a few minutes ago, I hadn’t been under the impression that I needed help. Now I really couldn’t be sure, could I?
“Okay,” he said. “Be careful.” And then he hung up.
He didn’t say “I love you,” which I usually leave out when I tell this story. Without that part, my dad comes off pretty cool—a man who behaved as rationally as anyone could possibly be expected to under the circumstances. He could have ratted or reamed me out, shamed or scolded me, and he chose not to. Instead he chose to protect me, to keep my secret safe. If I tell it that way, it’s almost like he took my side. Like we were in it together. I like that version better.