Mean Dads for a Better America

by Tom Shillue

  Whenever I mention that I was an altar boy, people like to ask, “Did you hit that altar wine?” Everyone seems to have heard stories of altar boys getting drunk on the Communion stash. It’s not surprising; entrusting the keys to a closet full of wine jugs to young boys almost guarantees underage intoxication. Almost. I never once took a sip. For me, this was far too obvious a crime. The fact that we were trusted not to do this—and that it would have been so easy to pour out a mugful, or to take a swig from a jug any time we wanted, made me never want to do it. I had a responsibility, and I took it seriously. So, I’m sorry, I don’t have any stories about getting drunk on bad Communion wine.

  That’s not to say that I was the perfect altar boy. I’ve already mentioned the bell-ringing contests and the sneaker incident. I engaged in more innocent misbehavior with my main altar boy pal Andy French. After the 5:15 p.m. Mass in the main church, we’d have to turn off all the lights and close down the church. In the winter months, it got dark early, so there was no light at all coming in through the stained-glass windows. As we went about our job of shutting down the lights, the church would become a sea of darkness. Total blackness. And that’s when Andy and I would have races: from the back of the church to the front, in the wide middle aisle, we’d run our fastest fifty-yard dash in complete darkness. (If you’ve never done it, it’s surprisingly terrifying to run at top speed without being able to see where you are going.) Then we’d go up on the altar and try to walk around, playing the game of “first person to bump into something loses.” This would always end with something loudly tumbling over and clanging onto the marble altar, making an enormous racket. We’d fall to the floor laughing for several minutes, listening to ourselves echo through the church. In retrospect it all sounds fairly innocent, but at the time it felt like the most cardinal of sins. We were horsing around in God’s house. It was disrespectful, and we knew it, which is why it was fun. I would ask forgiveness when I said my prayers, assuring God that I only did it because Andy was with me, and I’m sure Andy said the same about me. But we’d both do it again. And we were sure that God forgave us.

  AS I MOVED INTO MY DOUBLE DIGITS AND THEN early-teen years, new interests and issues started to creep into my world—trying to look cool; what kind of car we were going to get when we could drive; the fact that people drank and did illegal things like drugs to have a good time; rock music, which was pretty great; and girls, who might be somewhat interesting. Of course, my friends and I were still a few years away from really getting into any of these things, and some would argue that we never pulled off the looking-cool part. But this was the time that these ideas started to seep into our consciousness, and along with that came a slightly different sense of vigilance from our parents that often led to some cringe-inducing conversations. Now, kids just learn everything from the Internet by the time they get to middle school.

  One such occasion involved the now classic album Bat Out of Hell by everyone’s favorite rock star named for a food item, Meat Loaf. I didn’t go out and buy that album, but it sure found its way into my life. I had offered to help Heyn babysit for his sister, and his brother-in-law was blasting Meat Loaf on the stereo when we went over to his house after school. I recall not liking it all that much when I first heard it.

  “You like Meat Loaf?” he yelled at us. “Oh, this album’s great—you gotta listen to this!”

  He turned up the volume on the wailing, plaintive ballad—I want you, I need you . . .

  Heyn and I sat and listened to the album as his brother-in-law got ready to go out. I remember him standing in the bathroom with the door open blow-drying his hair and his mustache. When he was done, he appeared in the living room in tight jeans and a silky piratelike shirt; he checked himself out in the full-length mirror, fluffing the long hair behind his ears with his fingers. He then took what appeared to be a giant water-filled test-tube off the mantel, held a lighter to it, and began sucking smoke through the top. The smoke smelled sweet like manure, and when he was done sucking he held his breath for several seconds. What kind of science experiment was this? Then he gave us some final instructions.

  “There’s vood in the vridge! Stereo’s all yours!” he said through his teeth, still holding the smoke in.

  Next, Heyn’s brother-in-law walked out on the porch and exhaled the smoke into the cold air as he went down the stairs. Was he holding his breath so he wouldn’t get smoke in his house? Then why would he have a massive smoke apparatus on the mantel? I knew there must be something illicit to this ritual of his, because I had never seen it done before. Most things that were OK to do were either done by your parents or done on TV shows. For instance, my parents drank beer and wine but never hard liquor like bourbon and gin. But I knew drinking bourbon and gin wasn’t illegal because I’d watched it on shows like A Family Affair and M*A*S*H. I looked forward to the day when I would drink hard liquor, because it was clearly something sophisticated people did, even though it was tinged with a bit of danger, too. I remember watching the film Mr. Roberts, which takes place on a WWII supply ship in the Pacific. There is a scene in which Henry Fonda, William Powell, and Jack Lemmon attempt to whip up an emergency batch of scotch in anticipation of a visit from a team of nurses. They mix together rubbing alcohol, Coca-Cola, and iodine. As each of them samples the finished product, they wince, cough, and then say, “Wow. That’s good stuff!”

  So what was this mysterious concoction that provided both pain and pleasure? I wanted to know. Heyn’s brother-in-law’s ritual seemed, like the Mr. Roberts scene, to be both pleasant and unpleasant at the same time.

  It’s not surprising that it was Heyn’s brother-in-law who was the person who introduced me to Bat Out of Hell. Meat Loaf also seemed to be trafficking in forbidden fruit. The cover featured a demonlike motorcycle rider blasting up from beneath the earth of a cemetery plot (fresh from a visit to, apparently, Hell). It was foreboding imagery. The songs, too, seemed off-putting and aggressive, but due to the high recommendation of his brother-in-law, Johnny Heyn bought the Meat Loaf album. He played it at his house for weeks, and some of the songs eventually began to grow on me. When I told Heynzy that I might be becoming a Meat Loaf fan, he immediately offered to sell me the album.

  “Give me five dollars for it,” he said.

  I hedged. “Why do you want to get rid of it?”

  “I need the money. Give me four dollars.”

  I certainly didn’t like the album enough to want to own it, but four dollars seemed to be a pretty good price. A new album went for twice that much.

  It wasn’t until I was actually in possession of the album that I realized it could be a problem. Not only did the cover art suggest demonic activity, but the back of the album featured a photo of Meat Loaf and his “band,” a woman whom he appeared to be groping, and another guy who seemed to be up to no good at all. I hid the album under my jacket when I went home and buried it in my closet.

  One day I was going down to the cellar to get some canned goods, trying as usual not to make any noise on the stairs as I walked so as not to disturb my father, when out of the shadows my dad appeared.

  “Tommy, c’mon in heah,” he said.

  There was usually something fun about being called into my dad’s cigar smoke-filled office. Despite worrying about the potentially terrible conversation that might follow, it was fascinating to see what was going on in there. My dad worked in the exciting new field of computer programming, so the room was filled with stacks of programming books, reams of the green and white zigzag printer paper with the holes on one side, and boxes of large reel-to-reel disks, which stored something called data.

  He also wrote poetry, and had several pads of legal paper on which he would write page after page of rhyming verse. I would always try to sneak looks at the poetry as my dad was lecturing me. I don’t remember doing any of that at this meeting, however. This meeting with my dad would be the most awkward ever.

  I sat down on a box of computer paper next to him and immediately
noticed the Meat Loaf Bat Out of Hell album on his desk. Of course, what was I thinking? Certainly my mother had found the album while rummaging through my closet one day and turned it over to him. The record was out of its sheath, and in my dad’s hand was the record sleeve, which featured all of the lyrics to Meat Loaf’s songs.

  Now, I have to address Mr. Loaf directly here: Why did you include the song lyrics within your album? You must have known your target demographic was suburban youth with strict parents who would inevitably snoop into their bedrooms and find the lyrics, leading to conversations like this:

  “Is this yaw reckud album?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whea’d you get it?”

  “Bought it from Johnny Heyn.”

  “We’ll, you may want to get yaw money back.”

  “Oh.”

  “You think this guy is a good musician?”

  “I just like the guitars.”

  “You think this is an ahtist? ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’? You agree with this viewpoint?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He began to read aloud. He proceeded to read all the lyrics aloud, slowly and deliberately, occasionally pausing to ask things like, “You concur with this type of sentiment?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “We’re gonna go all the way tonight, tonight. Could you tell me what that means?”

  “I just like the beat. Of the drums.”

  I was just looking for something to say so he would stop reading the lyrics to me.

  My dad parsed the whole album, song by song, occasionally pausing to see if I would help him interpret a passage.

  Clearly, Mr. Shillue was no fan of Mr. Loaf. He had no desire whatsoever for his son Tommy to be filling his head with the imagery of his songcraft. And after hearing my dad describe all that sexual longing out loud with a heavy Boston accent, I was ready to become a monk and take a vow of celibacy.

  Needless to say, I took the album back to Heyn. He refused to give me my four dollars back, but I told him to keep it anyway.

  “I’ll play it for you when you come over,” said Heyn.

  “No, thanks. I’m sick of it,” I said. Those songs would never be the same after the dramatic reading my father had given them.

  To this day, if I’m in a café or a mall and one of the songs from the Bat Out of Hell starts playing, I can hear only the voice of my dad.

  “Now, whattaya think theyah getting at here? Is this the kind of behaviah somebody should try and emulate?”

  *

  Heyn and I were riding our bikes around Karen Barker’s block. When we passed her house we’d slow down and do some donuts opposite each other, talking loudly as we circled, then continue around again. Karen Barker had a pool in her backyard, and we were bucking for an invite. We couldn’t have been more obvious if we’d been wearing snorkel masks and fins, but we thought we were being subtle.

  After several laps around the block we came around the corner and Karen was out on the lawn. Casually, we stopped our bikes to talk. We’d known Karen since the second grade. She was always one of the smartest, prettiest girls in the class.

  We talked about school and who our teachers were going to be come September. After fifteen minutes of small talk she finally asked the million-dollar question: “Do you guys want to come swim in my pool?”

  Heynzy and I looked at each other like we had to think about our decision. It was the same faux nonchalance that my brother and I exhibited when my dad offered to stop at McDonald’s. I spent my whole childhood faking a lack of enthusiasm for things I was absolutely ecstatic about.

  “Okay.” We shrugged. “We’ll have to go home and put our suits on.”

  Since the whole thing was very deliberate, we really should have had our suits on under our cut-off shorts, but we didn’t want to appear too eager. We really considered ourselves masters of the low-key approach.

  After skidding into my driveway I dropped my bike and ran up the stairs into my bedroom. I fumbled through my drawers until I found my bathing suit and slid it on. I was putting on my sneakers when my dad came in my room.

  “Where you headed?” he asked.

  “I’m going to swim in Karen Barker’s pool.”

  He sat down on the end of my bed and patted the mattress twice with his hand—the signal for “sit down, we’ll have a talk.” There must’ve been something in the way I had pulled in on my bike and ran up the stairs that my dad could sense the excitement in my step. There was no other explanation for his impromptu visit. These father-son talks were rare and always brief. But given how excited I was to get over to Karen Barker’s, I was eager to get this one over with. Plus, I had no idea what he wanted to talk about.

  I listened to him breathing and waited for him to begin. Finally he broke the silence.

  “You know how to deal with women?” he asked. I was surprised by this question. I hadn’t done anything to indicate that my swimming endeavor had anything to do with “women,” as my dad had put it. It also didn’t seem like the kind of question that required an answer from me, so I waited for his. “Smile at ’em,” he said. “Just smile at ’em.”

  “OK,” I said.

  “That’s all you gotta remember. No matter what they do—smile at ’em.”

  I looked up at my dad. He put his hand on my back and showed me all his teeth, and with a wide-eyed expression, like a ventriloquist’s dummy, he repeated it once more for good measure, through the grin: “Smile at ’em!”

  I nodded my head, as if I fully comprehended, but as with most of my dad’s advice, I’d spend years sorting it all out. With that, he got up and left my bedroom. That was all I was going to get. My dad was famously frugal with language, but on this occasion he outperformed his own reputation for brevity. This would be the only “birds and bees” talk I’d ever get, although at the time, I didn’t know it was that at all. I had absolutely no idea why my father was giving me this strange smiling lesson, and I was as uncomfortable as I had been during the dreaded Meat Loaf conversation, but eventually I saw the value in that talk.

  But again, I think it was intentional. My dad would probably have been a great ad copywriter, such was his ability to boil down a big idea into a few words. The phrase “Just Do It” can mean almost anything, but in the context of what we know about the products Nike makes, and the people who use them, the phrase is loaded with meaning about physically going the distance and pushing beyond one’s limits.

  “Smile at ’em,” in the context of my life, and knowing my dad, contained so much more than just the meaning of those words.

  Actually, the full extent of my sex education was probably the two bits of advice I received from my dad and Father Curran: “Smile at ’em,” and “Just hold hands.” There was a great deal of intention and substance in both of the phrases. Women are important . . . women are special . . . women should be handled carefully . . . be kind . . . be a gentleman . . . go after what you want, but don’t push too hard . . . don’t overthink things . . . don’t be cool . . . less is more . . . play the long game . . . be open . . . be gentle . . . be unafraid.

  The message from my dad that day was also aspirational. I knew that sex was a thing, and knew I was at that stage of life where girls were soon going to be more than a mystery. I knew that on Happy Days, Ralph and Potsy went up to Inspiration Point to “neck” with girls and I knew that stage was coming for me, too. As far as learning about sex, there would be other things I would be exposed to, of course: Playboys that were stashed in the woods, and “the books” that were passed around at Boy Scout camp, but those were just the dirty details. There were no lessons in those things. Education is about applying knowledge.

  I applied the advice from Dad and Father Curran over and over again, eventually. Smile at ’em became my icebreaker, and holding hands was my key move. I used them on every girl I ever went after. And I’d give the same advice to any young man to this day. These moves work! The smile beats the brooding look
, or the dis, or the playful shove, or anything else that teen boys try on a girl. And hand holding, which is never attempted unless you’re already on solid ground, is so much better than an arm around the shoulder. You can elicit a response almost immediately when you take a lady’s hand, and if you get a squeeze in return, you’re on cloud nine. Trust me, young man, you know where you stand with the hand, and it is a gentlemanly way to find out.

  WOULD YOU GO TO BED WITH FARAH FAWCETT?” asked Mitiguy.

  We were in Heyn’s backyard doing what we were always doing: working on a fort.

  “What? No. Wait. Why?” I said.

  “You wouldn’t go to bed with Farah Fawcett?”

  “What are you talking about? Why would I do that?” I asked.

  The guys giggled.

  When it came to girls, I was a little behind Heyn and Mitiguy, and probably most of the guys that were headed to seventh grade along with me that fall.

  Sure, I knew that Farah Fawcett was pretty; I stared at the poster of her in the red bathing suit all the time. It was hanging everywhere in the ’70’s (not in my home, of course, but everywhere else).* I just didn’t understand all this talk about going “to bed.” It seemed an odd thing to want to do with a girl. I certainly would not have passed up the opportunity to spend an afternoon with Farah Fawcett, or someone like her. Truth be told I was more partial to Christy McNichol from Family or Erin from The Waltons. If I could get one of them alone for the afternoon, I knew exactly what I would do—take her straight to the Paragon Park amusement park on Nantasket Beach. We’d skip the rides and take a walk together, share some cotton candy, and discuss what the second installment of Star Wars was going to include. But that’s where my G-rated fantasy ended—sitting on the rocks of a distant jetty and talking until dusk with the sun setting in a sea of beautiful colors and the Ferris wheel slowly turning behind us. That was my idea of perfection. What was all this talk about “bed” anyway? I just had no clue.