Unwifeable(41)

“But it’s in the column,” I say. “She’ll read that exact same quote on Sunday.”

“I know,” he says. “But it still wasn’t appropriate.”

When Blaine and I make plans to fly to San Diego to meet my family, I think of all the stories he’s let slip when he was drunk. Like about one ex-girlfriend’s family he met who was so crass and expletive-prone, Blaine knew it would never work.

I anxiously relay to my parents some of this “please do not embarrass me like that one girl’s dad did” oppo research and beg them to be on their best behavior. My mom says not to worry, she plans to just “prostrate herself on the floor at Blaine’s feet when he arrives,” and I can’t help but love her for it. My parents don’t give a fuck. They never have. A huge part of me respects that.



* * *




TO SAY MY parents are themselves crass and expletive-prone is the understatement of the year.

When we were growing up, my parents let my sister and me curse as much as we wanted. They both swore in spades. As part of their therapeutic teachings, my parents studied at the Esalen Institute, birthplace of the human-potential movement, where they were taught “bad” words are “just words.” As a kid, I was allowed to say almost any obscene word or phrase there was (I once named a cat that I adopted “Buttfuck” without even knowing what it meant), and I relished the freedom. Part of me just wants to list a bunch of swear words right here because I can.

My ever-irreverent father at one point started the tradition of referring to fellow blind folks as “blindfuckers.” It somehow made the tragedy of losing your sight into this darkly comic absurdity—and banished the deep wells of victimhood and pity my dad never chose to live in. My mom followed suit in taking up his catchphrase.

“Daddy’s going to his blindfucker training today at the VA, so you guys are going to be watching each other,” she’d tell my sister and me, and we would nod, understanding. “It might be a while, because you know how those blindfuckers get.”

My parents are a gotcha journalist’s wet dream. They live their lives leaving a heavily bread-crumbed trail of self-indictments, and I’ve always loved them for their defiance. Who cares? You could get shot in the face tomorrow. Enjoy today.

“My dad is different,” I warn Blaine over and over. “So is my mom. But they are great. You will see.”

One of the more illustrative stories about my dad came early in my parents’ marriage. Walking along with my uncle Bob and the rest of my mom’s family in the airport, my dad accidentally walked head-on into a giant concrete barrier, smashing his head and crying out in pain. A major scene soon unfolded. He began yelling uncontrollably, his frustration morphing into a full, unbridled screaming session at the people who hadn’t prevented it, and at the world in general.

“GODDAMMIT MOTHERFUCKER SHIT FUCK COCKSUCKER!”

This went on for a while. Later, on the plane, my uncle Bob came over to my father and said calmly, “You know, Jerry, I think we were with you. All the way up until ‘cocksucker.’?”

Humor, as it always does in my family, provided relief from the pain.

My dad never censored himself, including when he came to speak to my seventh-grade class about Vietnam. One of the kids raised their hands. “Mr. Stadtmiller, what do you think of Rambo?”

He paused to give his response the maximum impact. “I think it’s pure shit.”

“They are kind of unlike any parents you will ever meet,” I repeat to Blaine.

I always tell the following story so people will know what to expect when they meet my dad. One time I watched from the sidelines as he chatted up his female boss and waxed on about how much the two of them had in common.

“We’re both from San Diego, we both have no siblings . . .” He rattled off his list, and then his supervisor interrupted him.

“That’s not true, Jerry,” she said sharply. “I had a brother. He died.”

Without pausing a second, my dad replied with a big grin on his face, “Well, fuck him!”

My dad could not see his boss’s reaction, but I could. I stared red-faced down at the concrete.

Would I have laughed if someone said this to me? Absolutely. Jarring, fearless, funny, unexpected, a reprieve from the tragedy at hand. But most people are not Stadtmillers.

“They aren’t really about fitting in,” I tell Blaine. “Never have been.”

Both of my parents worshipped at the altar of the taboo and the inappropriate.

My mom often gave jaw-droppingly honest—and specific—answers when I was a kid. In middle school, I once asked her, “What are you going to do today after the parent-teacher conference?” My mom replied casually, “I’m going to smoke a joint and masturbate.”

After I went to mandatory D.A.R.E. training in school, I confronted my mom in hysterics. Whipping out my mom’s marijuana from the refrigerator, I told her she had to throw it away or she was going to go to jail. I even threatened to call the cops, like the little snitch I was. But inside, I was really just scared. She finally relented. She even disposed of it across the street to ease my fears that the cops would catch her in the major manhunt I imagined would soon unfold.

As I write all this, I feel so guilty.

Do you know how terrible it feels to criticize your combat vet hero of a father and your emotional warrior of a mother? It feels terrible. But my parents taught me it is okay to recognize and name and examine your flaws and mistakes—and that those flaws and mistakes do not have to define you.