happy fucking fathers day

I really need to get out of this house.

I just got back from dropping my dad off at the body shop. He's picking up the van from its umpteenth repair job this week. The power steering keeps blowing out. The van's 20 years old and has a fervent death wish, but we're trying to nurse it along another year, till my sister graduates. On the way there dad starts talking about my trip to California, warning me to "be careful" of "those people out there." My dad is a highly cynical and suspicious kind of guy, and has always been very protective his baby girl. I can't blame my parents for being a little skeptical; they don't know RC at all, so their daughter running off to California, a strange and wicked place to most midwesterners, with a total stranger who's paying her way, sounds a little sketchy.
I tried to reassure him; I've known RC since college, we're very good friends, she's a very kind and generous person, you'd like her. If anything, I'm worried about taking advantage of her.
That seemed to satisfy him a bit. Then he starts telling me about his time in California, in the late 60s, when he was stationed in L.A., going through Marine Corps training before being shipped out to Vietnam.
"You can't trust these Californians, I mean they were crazy back in the 60s! I had a gay guy try to pick me up once. I told him no, no way. He tried to give me a ride back to San Diego--'It's 90 miles back, I got a great sound system'. I told him 'Listen buddy, they told us in bootcamp not to hurt people like you but if you don't back off I'm going to forget about that rule'. Ha ha!"

And I'm just sitting there wondering what the moral of this story is supposed to be. Stay away from scary predatory homos? Don't trust bigoted Marines? Your daddy is a supporting and tolerant guy because he thought about bashing a creepy faggot but decided against it? Did he somehow forget that his daughter is a lesbian even though I told him I'm excited to be going to Pride?

Do you see why I have to get the fuck out of here? I don't know what's going on here. I have a close, loving relationship with my parents, but shit like this keeps happening. Is this his lame ass attempt to bond with me on some common ground--my daughter's gay, my only experience of gay people is that time I threatened that fairy? Sometimes I think my parents have gone into denial. They keep saying how they love me and they just want my happiness, but there's this 200 pound gorilla in the room. They never expected to have a gay child, they have no experience with queer people, they refuse to go to PFLAG or talk to someone or educate themselves. They're perfectly fine with me being gay as long as they don't have see any evidence of it. This is how we handle problems in my family, by pretending they don't exist. If we don't talk about them long enough, they'll go away.

I need to have a talk with my parents, but I can't do it while I'm living in their house. We both need the safety of distance.

I'm going to be soooo dykey in San Francisco. Maybe I'll get a buzzcut and a tattoo. My family thinks I'm a freak anyway, might as well go whole hog.