I’ve never sought out my father. Absolutely not. He lives in New York. I’m sure I pass by, I don’t know where he is, but I’m sure I’ve ridden my bike past his place. My last interaction with him I was nineteen. It was on the phone.
I’m resigned to what it’s going to be, and have been for a while. I’ve never had that, not once have I ever had that moment that I should let bygones be bygones. There’s nothing in it for me except anger and bitterness and recrimination and I don’t know why I would invite that in. He doesn’t deserve the satisfaction, and I know I’m being obstinate. There’s certainly a bit of stubbornness, but stubbornness is just something you apply to the situation.
I don’t forgive him.
I don’t, nor will I. I hope that I will have children someday soon, we’ve talked about it, and I hope I am an exemplary, good, better father for it because I know, I just cannot wrap my head around a father or mother who just doesn’t care about their kids. Their level of selfishness supersedes responsibility for a child. I don’t understand it, I don’t get it. It’s soft and silly to say I have a lack of respect for it. I loathe it, I hate it, I don’t like those people, and there’s no excuse.
Unfortunately, in this world, that’s how a lot of people are.
I just turned ten when he left. He had just moved us back to Georgia from Syracuse. We had no money, zero, nothing. He basically left to go to Phoenix, owing a lot of money. My mom had no job, three kids. We had come from Syracuse, we got kicked out of there, and he chased this job in Georgia, which didn’t pan out. I subsequently came to find out all the lies. He was not a con man. He didn’t have thought-out cons. He would misrepresent himself, lie about stuff. He was so proud. He was a bit of a pathological liar, and he was the victim in everything. It was never his fault. The world was against him, and if he was fired from a job, it wasn’t his fault.
Again, when you’re ten, and I loved my dad, I thought he was fucking awesome, you don’t really have anywhere close to the full story, but as you grow up, you come to know more stuff. He just sort of sat us down and said, “Your mom and I are going to get separated,” he left, we didn’t see him again until my bar mitzvah, in which he took my bar mitzvah money. Asked for it and took it. I was happy to give it to him because my dad was back in Georgia, oh my God, that’s great. “Don’t tell your mother.” You got it, Dad. “I need this, then I can stay here, and we can hang out.”
I just don’t know that level of psychotic selfishness. As I was saying before, just this idea that there’s this guy who got married, had three kids. Who knows if he ever really loved my mother? I just imagine him truly thinking, you know what, I don’t like this Being Married thing, I don’t like this lady, maybe a kid will make me feel different, so he has a kid, and then they end up having a couple more kids. He’s like, nah, it’s not for me. I’ll see you guys later. It’s a simplistic way to view it, but that’s literally the mind-set of this guy saying, “Yeah, look, I gave it a shot, guys, you can’t blame me. I thought it’d be my thing, it’s not, so I’m going out to the West Coast, you all take it easy. Definitely write. Call me.”
In the beginning I did. He was my dad, I loved him.
DONNELL RAWLINGS—COMEDIAN, ACTOR
My dad spent time away from home in places where it wasn’t too appropriate for me to visit.
Marc
What got him in there?
Donnell
He was a heroin dealer. When he first got out of prison, I kind of just started my career. This is a true story. Only thing I wanted him to do was to be proud of me. I was a stand-up comic. He came to one of my shows. I’m like, “Dad, first off, it’s good to see you.” I was like, “So, how’d you like the show?”
He was like, “It was … It was all right.”
I’m like, “It was all right?”
Then he said, “Why you telling them lies about me?”
I’m like, “What lie?”
I told a joke about him selling drugs. He said, “I never sold shit two-for-fifty, nigga.” He was mad that I made a joke about him being on the block. He was pissed. That’s how he rounded up my set.
SUE COSTELLO—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR
I stopped talking to my family. I told my mother, “You have to treat me with respect. I can’t talk to you.” By stepping away and doing what I did, I realized, oh my God, I don’t need them.
Marc
I had a therapist say to me once that you can train your parents, because after a certain point they will abide by your conditions because they want to have a relationship with you.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN—MUSICIAN, SONGWRITER, AUTHOR
There are irretrievable relationships where events have occurred that relationships don’t come back from. I know plenty of people who had to sign off from their families for a variety of reasons. For good, healthy reasons and move on with their lives. That can happen. But if the relationships are retrievable, and I felt like mine was, then there’s a nice payback in seeing things come closer and become a little healthier.
You look back on your anger as part of youthful misunderstandings. Of course you had your reasons and there was bad behavior. My pop could be very cruel when he was young. It’s not that you let that slide. You live with it, it’s a part of your life. If you’re lucky, it’s fuel for the fire. I mean, people don’t end up in my circumstance who generally had these very placid, loving, very happy, fulfilled lives. It’s not how you become a rock-and-roll star. You’ve got to have some chaos, tumult, disastrous relationships, humiliation at a young age, feel disempowered, enormous amount of weakness, and suddenly things start to burn, burn, burn. When that burning starts, if you take that flame and you aim it toward the right thing—powerful weapon.
RACHAEL HARRIS—COMEDIAN, ACTOR
My parents divorced when I was two and my dad moved away. I saw him once a year until I was in college and that’s when I started having a better relationship with him. I was like, oh, I better know this man.
He always kept contact with us, and what was great was that when I did go to college, and I moved to New York, he got to kind of come in and be there in a way. He didn’t live in New York, he lived in Alabama at the time.
I think because I wasn’t living at home, and because I was in college, especially when I moved to New York, I think it was easier for my dad to deal with me as an adult than it was as a child. Unfortunately, my brother and sister didn’t have that, they never got to really have that relationship with him that I did.
He passed in 2006. I was so, so glad that I’d had that relationship with him.
I got to know him as an imperfect person, and be okay with it. We often put our parents on a pedestal, and want them to be infallible, and I got to deal with the real him.
LOUIS CK