Who's my Daddy?

"How were you raised?" A common question I get when someone finds out that I’m the author of Penis Pokey. I think I had a pretty typical childhood – middle class, suburbia, brothers and sisters (probably adopted), Catholic, divorced parents. The usual.

"What about your parents?" Typical for the era – detached father, medicated mother. Again, the usual. Not very exciting. Actually so uninteresting that I used to wonder about who my “real parents” might just be.

I settled on Steve Martin and Harrison Ford. I know that can’t happen. I know where babies come from. Storks. And storks don’t deliver babies to male couples. That’s called homosexuality. Jesus doesn’t like homosexuality. Well, he doesn’t say exactly that, but our religious leaders do. And they’re men of integrity and morals. You know, like priests - those guys with the cool outfits that have sex with young boys. I would look good in a priest’s outfit.

Anyways, back to Steve and Harrison. I know I should have coupled them with someone like Barbara or Liza, but that just didn’t work for me. I’m sure there are plenty of you out there that would be happy to adopt them as your dream parents, but I needed parents with a sense of style and adventure, someone with handsome calves to replace my skinny pair.

I’d listened to my father Steve on his albums Let’s Get Small, and Comedy’s Not Pretty so many times that I knew the routines by heart, as if I’d written them myself, and I’d watched repeatedly my other dad Harrison in Star Wars and eventually as Indiana Jones to the point that it was obvious to me and any other sensible person that he was the father I got most of my looks from. Eerie.

I even had people calling me Steve and sometimes Harrison. Strangers even. But that was silly – who’d be so egotistical to name there kid after themselves. Not my daddies. Not Steve or Harrison.

Eventually I was forced to grow up. At least that’s what my teachers told me to do. I was told that it could only have been one of them that was my real father, because there had to be a mommy. I was taught that in biology - yeah right, natural selection and all that other hooey. But I was impressionable and I fell for it. You know “fall for it and you fall from God”. Anyways, given the popular “science” of the time, I was led to believe that I had to have a female parent. I was in no mood to look for a mother and decided my existing mom was pretty good, so I kept her.

Now the question facing me was – who’s my daddy?

My mother was no help. She denied it all – the sordid affairs, the drunken whoring, the key parties. Typical mother, pretending to be all saintly.

Clearly, it was up to me to figure it out.

I was good-looking with a mischievous grin like my daddy Harrison, but I’m also into art like my daddy Steve, and I kind of have his body hair. I like Wyoming like daddy Harrison. Okay, I haven’t been to Wyoming but I think I would really love it – woods and cows. I have been to Beverly Hills, and I know I like that. I even tried to talk to my daddy Steve. I got a Star Map from some Mexican guy on Sunset. I knocked on daddy Steve’s door, several times. I even looked at the camera above the door and told him it was me – his son. No answer. The Star Map must have been a fake or maybe just outdated.

I’ve slowed my quest for the eventual reunion with my father. As the years have passed I’ve come to accept that perhaps I’m not supposed to know. Maybe it would limit my possibilities – comedy or drama, art or cattle, grey hair or brown. Yeah, I know – don’t mention that I have no hair and both my daddies do. It’s probably a recessive gene or something. It happens.

It’s just that I would like to give them the gift of pride – allow them to take pride in what a fine son that they created. To be able to stand back and appraise the gift I’m giving them – me. If nothing else, I’m a giver.

Daddy Steve sure likes art, I hope he likes my artwork in Penis Pokey.

Sincerely,


Christopher Martin Harrison Behrens


P.S. Daddy Harrison, if it’s really you that’s my father, I wrote a great action/adventure script about a really good-looking young man who reunites with his older, but also really good-looking archaeologist father and fights an evil lord in the outreaches of the universe.

It’s awfully good, we would be perfect in it together, plus I hear they do really good hairpieces in Hollywood – so don’t worry about my bald head.