I Saw Daddy Blowing Santa Claus

Son sees his father having gay sex with Santa Claus.

Because of what I saw Christmas morning, now every time I hear, I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, I substitute Daddy for Mommy and kissing with blowing. That song has new meaning for me, after I saw my Dad blowing Santa Claus. A true vindication, it was shocking, revealing, and comical. Let me start from the beginning.

I never had a close relationship with my Dad. I was a disappointment to him, maybe because I wasn't much of an athlete and never participated in team sports. A man's man, my Dad was an ex-Marine and he has the tattoos to prove it. Once a Marine, always a Marine. Only, now that I know my Dad's secret, don't ask, don't tell applied to him all of his life.

My Dad was a big time basketball, baseball, football, and hockey fan and he watched all the games, both college and professional, as if he was playing them. Not into jocks, unless they were naked and gay like me, I'd rather stay in my room and read, write poetry, or play my guitar. I was the type of kid who didn't have a lot of friends, but the ones that I had were close ones, loyal, real, and true. Lucky in that regard, most kids have only one best friend, I had five.

"My little treasure," is what my Mom called me, when hugging me.

Little Treasure was a good name for a girl, but not for a boy.

"He's sensitive," is how my Dad snidely described me, when pushing me away.

Already, by inferring that I was inferior because I was gay, my dad was setting the stage for my emotional, dysfunctional development with his caustic and mean spirited, drunken remarks.

My Dad was a drinker and I can't remember ever seeing my Dad without a beer in his hand. When I think of my Dad, I think of him being drunk, abusive, and angry. Consequently, I more feared him than loved him. The only child, you'd think he'd treat me better than he did, but he didn't and I have the physical and emotional scars to prove it.

After putting up with his bad behavior for too many years, the hurtful things he said to the my Mom and me and the physical abuse he subjected us to, especially when he was drunk, my Mom finally threw him out of the house, when I was in junior high school. Puberty was not the best time to be without a father, as I was having my own personal, unresolved problems with my sexual identity and it would have helped to have a male figure for guidance and understanding. Still, without a doubt, my home life was much better with my Dad not there. Only, now alone, my Mom fell in a deep depression, a funk that remained with her, until the day she died.

She stopped cleaning the house and cooking. She'd just go to work and, once home, she'd sit on the sofa, smoke cigarettes, drink highballs, and watch TV all night. After a while, I just stayed in my room occupying my time with homework and video games. Knowing there wasn't going to be any supper, I ate whatever I could find during the day, usually junk food, which caused me to gain weight. Then, when it was apparent that she wasn't going to do it, I started cleaning the house, doing the laundry, and cooking whatever I could. I turned into a regular Felix Unger.

With no one to talk to about guy stuff, or gay stuff, for that matter, except for my friends, a time before bullying laws, my Dad wasn't there to protect me from the bullies that chased me home from school every day. If they weren't calling me fatso, they were calling me homo. Finally, in college, after losing the weight and dating a few women, I was never excited about women in the way that I was aroused by my male friends. It was then that I determined that I was gay. I couldn't imagine the shit storm I'd have to put up with if my Dad was still living with my Mom and me and he suspected that I was gay. Back then, I'd never tell him. That's for sure.

It had been ten years, since I saw my Dad and I missed him. Even though my Dad was mean and abusive to me, when I was growing up, he was still my Dad and I needed to have him in my life. I always wished I had some kind of relationship with him, even now, so many years later. Maybe it would have been different if I had a brother or a sister, but it was only my Dad, my Mom, and me. That was the extent of my family. Yeah, definitely, if I had an older brother, I probably wouldn't have felt so disconnected in missing having a father figure in my life.

My Dad wouldn't even allow me to have a dog growing up. After my Mom kicked out my Dad, I figured I could at least have a dog then, but my Mom didn't want the extra care of a dog with me being in school all day and her working. Without doubt, I think a dog would have helped me get through those troubled teenage years. I needed to have something to love and to feel that loved and needed me. I was always bringing home stray dogs, but my Mom wouldn't allow me to keep any of them.

After graduating college, in a different place in my life, happier and excited about leaving school to start a working career, I decided to track down my Dad and invite him to my college graduation. It was a good time for me that day. Graduating from college and seeing my Dad, I was the happiest I've ever been. My chest was swelled with pride, excitement, and anticipation in readiness to embark on a career as an architect.

Out of the closet a few years by then, I told my Dad that I was gay at my college graduation. In hindsight, I should have waited and picked another time, a better time, to tell him. Why I picked that day, I don't know? Maybe I figured I was enlightened and educated enough to handle whatever he had to say to cut me at the knees. Only, I was wrong. I didn't. He knew just what to say that would hurt me the most.

"You're a fag? I raised a fag? You suck cock? You take it up the ass? You little cock sucking queer," he said giving me a look that hurt me, as much as his words. "I want nothing more to do with you, Robert. You're no son of mine," he said storming off the campus, getting in his car, and driving away. I found out some months later that he was arrested that day for DUI again and thrown in jail.

I just stood there with my mouth gaping open, taking all his insults, in the way I did, when he abused me as a helpless boy. He always called me Robert, when he was really angry at me. He didn't even come back to the house for my graduation party. I guess that was a good thing because there was alcohol there and he only would have gotten drunk and embarrassed me in front of my friends. All I could think about was him calling me a fag, a queer, a cocksucker, and taking it up the ass. He wasn't even proud that I graduated college with honors and had a great job offer. The exchange I had with him may have ruined my day and put me in a funk for a few months, but I wasn't about to let him ruin my life.

"Let him go," my Mom said. "Now you see why I threw him out. He's no good. He's nothing but an angry drunk. He has too many unresolved issues and he wouldn't get the help he needed to stop drinking."

Her words were of no consolation, then. So happy to have him back in my life again, just as quickly as he entered my life, he was gone. A bittersweet moment, the best day of my life had become the worst day of my life. Now, I didn't have a Dad again.

As if I was an orphan, especially after my Mom died, I felt so alone. For sure, I didn't feel loved. Because of all the emotional abuse I suffered as a child, I didn't feel worthy of affection and from that day forward, I had trouble establishing relationships and keeping them. My sense of trust had been cut to shreds by my Dad rejecting me and not wanting to see me again.

I had been hoping to have some kind of relationship with him. It'd be nice to show him where I worked, what I did, and where I lived. I didn't think we'd ever be close, that was obvious, but it would have been good to go see a ballgame with him, once in a while, go out to lunch, take in a car show, or just sit and talk.

When I think about it, I know more about my Mom than I do my Dad. I hardly know anything about my Dad. He never told me about his childhood or about him personally, that I could use to help me mature into the man I wanted and needed to be.

Funny, even though my Dad had been out of my life for so long, I missed him in the way that I'd miss a limb, if my arm or my leg was suddenly amputated from my body. I never felt complete without my Dad. I needed him for moral support, my compass and a barometer to use when wading out too deep in new waters. I needed him as a sounding board for advice, when treading uncharted grounds, but now he was gone for good. He'd never be back and I had a sadness for the loss of him.

Still, for me to go beyond the dysfunctional childhood I suffered and endured, I had to forget about my Dad. I wasted enough of my life and too much of my thoughts with negative inner monologue dragging me down. This was my life, not my Dad's life and what he didn't and couldn't teach me, I needed to learn for myself.

Gay man or straight man, what did it matter? The bottom line was that I was a man and if he couldn't accept me and love me as his son, just because I was gay, then fuck him. Still, unable to cut him off like that, I had too many unresolved issues that I needed to confront him with and my Dad was the only one who could help me through all of that.

As I mentioned before, my Dad was a drinker and over the years, he had been arrested for DUI several times, going back to the early '70's. The one night jail stays, until he sobered the next morning, turned into month long stays, and the last conviction was a two year stretch, after he crashed his car into a police cruiser and injured a state trooper. After suspending his license a few times, they revoked his license. I couldn't help but think my Dad was dead, in jail, or some homeless bum on the street. Every time I saw a homeless man, I always reached in my pocket to give him my spare change or a dollar, if he remotely resembled how I envisioned my Dad would look after ten years on the street.

My Mom passed away last year and I would have contacted my Dad, but I didn't know where he was. Now, it's sad that my Dad is all I have, when, in truth, I don't even have him. I always figured with all the drinking he did that my Dad would go first, but my Mom had been sick for a long time with cancer. I was an only child and, when she was ill and I was driving her back and forth for Chemo, it would have been nice to have a brother and/or a sister for emotional support during that time, while caring for her, but I was alone. Then, out of the blue, maybe it was part of his Alcoholic Anonymous rehabilitation, my Dad called me to wish me a Merry Christmas. I was as shocked as I was surprised.

"Hello?"

"Bob? It's your Dad."

"Hi, Dad," I said.

I had to stop myself from calling him Daddy. Somehow, I felt jetted back in time, when I was a kid. I learned later that abused children don't mature in the normal way that those kids who weren't abused do.

"I just wanted to wish you Merry Christmas," he said with a sad sigh and a heaviness to his voice.

There was a genuine sadness in his voice and he filled me with what could have been, but never was. Suddenly, I was sad, too. I told him about Mom dying, but he already knew, somehow. I was shocked not so much that he knew, but that he didn't attend the wake or the funeral or contact me then. I could have used him for moral support.

Still, I was happy that he called, that is, until I remembered the last day I saw him at my college graduation. He called me a queer, a fag, and a cocksucker. He said that I took it up the ass. Even though it was more than ten years ago, the wound of his words were still fresh in my mind and now with him on the phone, his voice set off a fast forward movie of all the terrible things he said and did to my Mom and me.

By the labels he had given me, I was still hurt enough to feel that my Dad thought of me more as a fag and a queer, then he did as his son and a man. It took some self-control, not to tell him off, tell him that I wanted nothing to do with him, and hang up the phone on him. Yet, it didn't matter. None of that mattered, now. He was still my Dad, the only family I had. Ten more years had gone by, since my college graduation, and I was a successful architect now. I was so beyond any name he could have called me or label he could attach to me.

With some success in my life, in a loving relationship with my partner, and surrounded by great friends, I was happy that he had contacted me. It was Christmas, after all, and good cheer to all men, including my Dad. When he told me that he had stopped drinking for five years, three months, and two days and was celebrating Christmas alone, I invited him to stay with me and my partner, Jim, for the long weekend.

"Robert, do you think it's a good idea to invite your dad to stay with us? I mean, you haven't seen him in ten years." Jim knew the pain I suffered over my Dad. He had a similar background with his Dad, too, in not accepting him for being gay. His only saving grace was that he was a doctor and not a fashion designer.

Jim calls me Robert, not out of anger, as my Dad did, when he called me Robert. He just prefers Robert to Bob or Rob or Robbie or Bobby. If I had to pick one name to go by for the rest of my life, I'd pick Bob. Growing up, all my friends called me Bob.

"Yeah, I do. He's still my Dad, the only family I have. Now that my Mom is gone, I need closure in my life. How could I live with myself if I turned him away? Who knows, maybe now that we're both older and he's stopped drinking, I'll finally have the relationship I always wanted to have with my Dad."

My attitude towards my Dad made Jim call his Dad and now there's hope for a relationship between them, too.

"Okay, but I know how you are. You put yourself out there and then get hurt," said Jim giving me a hug, a kiss, and a pat on the butt.

Before my Dad called and before I invited him to stay the weekend, I had planned on having my friends over Christmas Eve. It was all guys, of course, no women. Just us men and all of my friends are gay. I have straight friends, of course. Maybe it's just me, but all of my straight friends keep me at arm's length distance. I never bond with straight men, in the way that I do with gay men. There's always a wall there, whether it's put up by me or them or mutually erected by the both of us, it's something I've never been able to scale.

Of course, I was concerned how my Dad would react to being in a room with a dozen gay guys, not counting me and Jim. Some of my friends are obviously gay but, you'd never know with some others. We're all regular guys that discuss regular things, cars, sports, politics, current events, and religion. It gets a little dicey for Dad, when we talk about fashion and sensitivity issues and when everyone makes a fuss about my English Bull dog, Elton. Yeah, finally, I have a dog and he's a real beauty, a real dog.

I didn't warn my friends about my Dad. I wanted them to make their own opinions. I didn't want anyone to be on their best behavior or to walk on eggshells, just because my gay bashing Dad was there. If my Dad couldn't accept me and my friends, then that was his problem and his choice to make. If that was the case and if he was still a hard ass, I'd give him some food to eat, a place to sleep for a couple of nights and send him on his way, until I saw him in his coffin at his wake or when accepting his ashes stuffed in a jar. For sure, there was no way that I could change the opinions of a sixty-year-old man.

Well, the party went well. To be honest, I was a bit nervous with all the alcohol around, but my Dad stayed with his bottled water and black coffee. My Dad drinks a lot of coffee. He's a night owl. Never requiring much sleep, he goes to bed late, around midnight, and wakes up early, around 5:30am.

Actually, he was a Godsend. He helped out around the house, ran some of the errands, cleaned up, and setup everything for the party. Doing all the chores wasn't as boring with my Dad there to help. We talked, as if we were old friends. We did more talking in that weekend then I talked to my Dad in my whole life. He acted unlike the Dad that I remembered as a kid growing up with him in the house. He was sober, for sure, that's why, no doubt.

Since Jim had to work and wasn't going to be there at the end of the party, to my delight, he had arranged for a surprise. He hired a friend, a gay friend, of course, an older, obese gentlemen to play Santa Claus. It was great! This guy, looked the part. He really looked like Santa Claus. His beard was as white as snow and real. He was jolly, too. He had us all laughing, when we had to sit on his lap and tell him what we wanted for Christmas. Some of our responses were outrageous and I thought my Dad would take offense with so much blatant gay talk, especially when one of my friends asked him for Ricky Martin, but he didn't. He seemed comfortable and even laughed, along with us, at our antics.

Well, Santa came early and stayed late, later than I could stay up. My Dad was still up and it was obvious by their conversations that they had a lot in common. They had hit it off and had become best pals, when they discovered they were both Viet Nam Marine Corps vets around the same time. I never knew so much about my Dad that I discovered that night listening to them talk about their experiences in the jungle and then later in Saigon, Da Nang, Hanoi, and Cambodia.

After all our guests left, I went to bed. I was so tired and a little bit drunk. To be honest, I was wishing Jim was there with me. I hate sleeping alone, especially since it was a holiday. Yet, I was on cloud nine with the realization that I was finally going to have the relationship that I always wanted to have with my Dad.

"I'll lock up, Bob," said my Dad, "after Mike leaves." Santa's real name.

I was too tired to care. Planning and hosting a party, after working all week was exhausting and I collapsed in bed without even changing into my pajamas. Jim had to work that night. He's an intern at the hospital and gets all the shifts that no one else wants. I can't wait until he has his own practice.

It was after two in the morning, when I heard sleigh bells in the distance and I actually dreamt of Santa on the roof coming down the chimney. The sound of sleigh bells made me wish I had written a Dear Santa letter, as I did when I was a little kid and asked him for all the toys I wanted. Yet, now that I remember, every Christmas was ruined by my Dad being drunk and mean and in all the yelling, door slamming, and chair tossing arguments with my Mom. For some reason, it was always worse over the holidays. I can't remember having a happy holiday.

As I got older and grew more tired of my parent's dysfunction, they were both at fault, as it takes two, I'd stay in my room and wouldn't open my Christmas gifts, until my Dad was in bed sleeping it off and my Mom was sitting on the couch crying. With both of them ruining my holiday, some Christmas that was for me. No wonder I was fat back then. Food was the only comfort I had. Maybe had I had a dog, I wouldn't have turned to food. As I grew older, I'd stay over a friend's house for Christmas.

Yet, as I was more aroused from my sleep and more awake to have my wits about me, I realized the bells were coming from downstairs. Acting as if I was a kid hoping to catch Santa Claus delivering presents and arranging them beneath the tree, I crept out of my room. There from the landing I saw my Dad on his knees, in between Santa's legs, blowing him. I couldn't believe my Dad had Santa's cock in his mouth and was sucking off Santa. I couldn't stop myself from staring.

Watching my Dad blow Santa was just as exciting, as it was disturbing. I mean, I knew Santa was gay, but I didn't know my Dad was, too. I had no idea. After the way he treated me and all the names he called me, when I told him I was gay, who would have figured that he was gay, too?