R.I.P. Rusty Hayes

Pretty soon here I’m going to say goodbye to my dad.  I suppose that I already have.  When I walked into the place where he lived and saw him there, dead, with his mouth cocked open in a very strange angle, I realized that I had been saying goodbye to my dad for some time now.  That body that laid there in the nursing home did not resonate my father at all.

You see, my dad was a big guy.  Always was to me.  That body there was emaciated and small; so much not the powerful figure that I remember.

When I was younger, I remember how much I wanted to grow up to look like my dad.  He was muscular, handsome and light skinned and I was anything but (I still have beef with every negro that got blessed with being light skinned in the ‘90s).  The best thing about my dad, though, is that he had a serious thirst for life.  He always laughed so hard that you had to turn around and wonder what the fuck was going on over there that was so damned funny.  When I was young, I couldn’t stand it.  We were straight up working class and all of us, in our own little ways were struggling to hash out our own identities in the hood.  All accept for my dad.  He loved to be alive.

That lust for life is at the blame for his later health issues.  My dad could drink.  He also did other drugs.  When I was young, my dad would lock himself in the basement and the smell of marijuana would gently rise from the vents.  Back when we were too tiny to realize what was going on, my mom would send us outside to play.  His friends would be over enjoying the love of life that he brought on.  It wasn’t until much later that I realized the connection to the smells. 

That love of life is what ultimately killed my father.  He had cancer in his throat and stomach but he never picked up cigarettes.  It was the other things that he ate and drank over the last 62 years that got him.  Underlying that, was my father’s underlying will to enjoy himself.

My dad never introduced me to drugs or alcohol.  He never even suggested them to me, but, in the later parts of his life, he loved to be able to have a drink with me.  Me and my dad would hang out, listen to Curtis Mayfield on Pandora and just enjoy being alive.  I don’t think we ever connected so much over our entire lives beforehand.  It was maybe his last lesson.  As long as I have good music and somebody to drink with we are perfectly at ease.  There was something more to drinking with my dad though.

When I was a kid, it was clear that this dude was not a role model.  My dad would act a fool at any given time.  This is a man that gave my sister a full belt whipping at Disney world.  That’s right, this fool beat his kid at the happiest place on earth.  I even remember seeing my sister getting a whipping, then laughing about it (because she deserved it, as I remember) then, my Dad, in his infinite wisdom, beat my ass too.  It was shit like that that drove the wedge between me and Rusty Hayes.

It wasn’t until I moved a few blocks down the streets from him that we really, really got close.  It was after I returned to the city from college and after he returned from jail, and after a stroke cost him the left side of his body, that we got into that rare relationship when a grown father and grown son can actually be friends.

The day that Michael Jackson died, my dad decided to visit me.  He was so inexperienced with pronouncing my name that he asked for ‘Rodney’ instead of ‘Russell’.  When my roommate figured it out, he woke me up from my nap.  My dad was so excited to see me that when his face lit up, mine did too.  He had a way of doing that.  We sat on the couch and watched Michael Jackson videos until I had the bright idea to go get something to drink.  Luckily, one of the few words my dad was always able to pronounce was ‘YEAH!’

It was then that I learned to hang out with my dad.  It was also then, that I learned how much my dad loved music.  Even up to his death he could sing any Curtis Mayfield or Temptations song that came on the radio (Also an Eddie McCann song that emphasized the phrase ‘Goddamn it’).  I had always enjoyed good music but only then did I learn where it came from.  It wasn’t the only thing I got from my dad.

I don’t do drugs.  I’ve seen the way drugs unraveled my Dad’s life.  I will get me some drinks though.  That thirst for life is something I got from him.  There is a saying that you have to laugh to keep from crying and that saying pretty much sums up my dad’s life.

It isn’t so much to avoid crying but those little things that make me smile.  I haven’t been afraid to laugh since getting to be around my dad.  He loved things in his life that people were ashamed of.  My dad would talk about alcohol, women and sex with candor, even when I was a kid.  When I was a kid I learned the three things a man needed to be happy (TP, NS, WPS… Tight Pussy, New Shoes and a Warm Place to Shit, a little piece of Nam Vet wisdom). 

The one time I remember having a good heart to heart with my dad when I was young was one day when I was cutting the grass in my mom’s back yard.  It was after they had divorced and my dad came walking down the hill (that yard is fucking huge).  It had been a while since I had seen him and we were glad to see each other.  I remember him saying “You just have to keep your nose clean.  Cream always rises to the top.”  We also joked about the thinness of his hair (his hair never got any thinner) but for the first time, my dad didn’t see me as an annoyance.  I loved that. 

My dad didn’t speak so well later in his life but one thing that he didn’t lose was his ability to yell.  I moved into an apartment that didn’t have a bell, not far from my dad’s place.  My dad was on a cane (and a now infamous scooter) and not much for knocking so what did he do?  He would yell my name at 8AM in the morning in a manner that I could scarcely describe.  “Rus-sell!” he would yell.  If any of you haven’t experienced the shiver in your spine that you father yelling your name might inspire, I woke up every damned time.  It was so bad that I would dream that my dad was outside yelling and wake up.

Part of that is that I knew that I wouldn’t have him for long.  My dad was always chubby.  He was always fun and he never relied on other people to help him enjoy his life but in those last few years, he was looking for someone to hang out with.

As crazy as the universe works, my dad came to me in order to feel the thrill of having a friend around.  I admit that I also loved that feeling when he showed up; that we were about to have fun.  We were going to sing songs that we both know the words to or maybe some girl with a nice ass would stroll by and we would both see and then look at each other in acknowledgement.

My dad and I are a lot alike.  Had I not moved very close to him, I probably wouldn’t have known that.  I know that now.  I am going to miss you dad.

R.I.P. Rusty Hayes

I love you.