First, let me state for the record that my son is eighteen, which means that he can go die for Dick Cheney in Iraq or Iran or wherever else Cheney wants to make money,which in my heart and soul, means that my son can make pretty much any other adult decision. Second, let me say that I woke up this morning and my son had not come home, when he had last told me, around one am that he would be coming home. Was he dead? Was he in jail? Had he had too many brewskies? I had no idea, so I called him at 6:30am. After several attempts, he finally picked up the phone.

"Where are you?"

Silence.

"Where are you?"

Silence.

"Where are you?"

He then hem and hawed and spewed the name of some older guy, a soon to be burnt out skateboarder. I don't know if my son was telling me the truth about where he was. I do know that he is alive. I guess that is all that matters, though I tell you that when we don't live together for the first time in over 15 years, starting in two weeks, it will be a bit of a relief to me. Sons don't always turn out the way you hoped that they would, and fathers never know exactly how to handle any given situation. When I last talked to my son, I told him that I was going to go to bed and not to call me unless it was an emergency; so maybe I'm fucked on this issue. Maybe I'm the dickhead, the callous mother fucker that doesn't care if someone wakes up and has that sick empty feeling of not knowing where a loved one is, because they didn't follow through on what they said were going to do.

Gosh, this is carrying me back to when I was 18, and I was a callous dickhead.