Finding my father

My clothes felt like a cold, damp extension of my body, as I lay panting on the floor. Blood, water, sweat, I wasn't sure what it was. At this moment, I was just glad to be alive. As I attempted to pick myself up off the rough asphalt, I felt a warm liquid well up in the depths of my throat, as I retched onto the ground. Oddly, this wasn't how I normally felt at 11 am on a Thursday morning. My name is Alex Watson. Alex was after my father, a man who I heard a great deal about, but never met. My mother was only a college girl when she met my father. He was dead before I was born. When I asked my mother about it, she got angry or said she was tired, anything to avoid my questions. In the end, I just had to get on with my life. I moved to New York, into an apartment block which encapsulated the bleak misery of city life. You eventually learn to block out the sirens, gunshots and screaming.

About a year ago, I got an urge to discover who my father was, beyond the facade of distorted facts my mother decided to disclose to me. For some reason, I needed to know. I needed to know the truth, and seeing as nobody was going to tell me, I decided to look for myself. The task turned out to be the proverbial needle in the haystack. The problem with my father was, he liked to keep a low profile. So much so that, until I was sixteen, I had no idea what he did for a living. Anything I did find out about him was on a need to know basis. Discovering my father wasn't going to be as easy as I first imagined. The home was not exactly awe-inspiring. My roommates were cockroaches, and a stray cat who I had named Takeshi. These more than minor inconveniences allowed me some pleasures, such drowning my sorrows in "The Manhattan", a bar so close to my apartment that I could wander out if it is drunk and fall into my bed...or at least the floor. This was my escape, my salvation from the nine to five drudgery of my life. I was never good at working inboxes.

I worked as a retail technician for a major electrical appliance company. I answered phone calls from people whose children had put jam sandwiches in their VCR's, or people phoning me asking why the cup holder on their new computer was broken. I was supposed to respond to them in a cheerful, knowledgeable manner, but most of the time I had to concentrate on not screaming and slamming the phone down. However, their phone calls did break the monotony of staring at a prefabricated cardboard wall, rules, and codes of conduct staring at me in the face. I felt trapped. I felt like I needed to escape, a release from my life. It's probably normal to, at some point or other, question your existence on this planet. Why are you here? What's so special about you? In my case, I took a long hard look at myself and found nothing. Nada. Jack shit. I could find no real reason for me to be on this earth. And to be completely honest, this didn't surprise me. I had always been decidedly average. My only sense of purpose was finding the truth about my father, but to do that I needed money, and to get the money I needed to work. Unfortunately, as I've already stated, my job was like a nine to five lecture on the art of watching paint dry.

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What I needed was a miracle.

What I got was a blessing in disguise.

"Sir, you can't stay here, it's public endangerment!". I can't say I ever heard these words, my drunken demeanor, as well the cacophony of the halted cars horns, prevented them from reaching my ears as I wandered down the middle of a road. I tripped over my own feet and landed back first. "Back off!" I warned, "I'm armed!". I swung my whiskey bottle wildly until it flung off and hit the floor. "Crap" I murmured before passing out.

Two hours later, conscious and sober, when I was informed of the events, I can't say I was surprised. My excuse? I was bored. However, when I told this to the police, they were less than impressed. I was expecting them to throw me into one of their first-class, luxurious cells for the night, and maybe, if I'm lucky, beaten to a pulp for saying I supported the wrong football team. But if I've learned anything, it's that life's a bitch, and you never get what you want. Simply a clip round one ear and a "Don't do that again!" in the other. Jesus, my mother gave me better telling off than that when I was seven! Slightly disheartened at the state of the judicial and law enforcement services, I made my way towards the door and the unbearable natural light of the afternoon. As I did this, I glanced over at the desk. She was there. The woman who arrested me last night, when I decided to take a walk on the wrong side of the road...figuratively and literally. Suddenly, I felt something I hadn't expected. I felt a twinge of guilt. It was a feeling I hadn't felt in a long time, not since before I started destroying my mind with a drink. I felt guilty for what I had done, I felt like I needed to apologize. I crept over to the desk, unsure of what to say, but sure of what to do.

"Excuse me miss. Er...I just..er...wanted to say that...er...I'm sorry about last night."

Normally I'm a little more articulate than that, but the effects of last night's binge hadn't quite worn off.

"That's ok." She said, as her face broke into a smile. It was at this point I noticed something that had escaped me last night, (possibly because my eyesight was in a less than perfect state). This woman, smiling at me from behind the desk, was beautiful, not in a catwalk supermodel kind-of-way, which had never appealed to me, but in a regular, everyday kind of way. Her smile was kind and gentle, and her deep brown eyes sparkled in the hazy midday sun. She was stunning in a subtle way. I was falling for her, and I could feel it. Her smile broke as she spoke again, "Normally, I get a nasty sneer off people, and that's off the nice ones. But I could tell you were different, even when I first saw you." Her face broke into a smile again, and I just hoped I wasn't staring at her. "I don't know...I just knew you where different." I returned the smile, the first real smile I had had in months. "Thank you. Hopefully, I'll see you around." She smiled at me, "Hopefully not under the same circumstances, but we can live in hopes otherwise." As I walked out of the door, the painful brightness of the midday sun couldn't dampen my mood. I was no closer to finding my father, but maybe a step closer to finding myself.

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