Grandfather's Day

 I adored him. 

When I was four, I could sit cross-legged on the right arm of his overstuffed chair while he watched the Cincinnati Reds on television. There was a faded anchor tattoo on his forearm. I would run around the living room sucking up the smoke trails from his unfiltered Camels--this was 1959. Out at his woodworking bench in the garage, he would enjoin me not to tell my grandmother he was chewing tobacco. I would then of course report to her. 

When I was five, he had the stroke. I remember him smiling at me while he squeezed the exercise ball in his right fist to regain his strength. He'd flex his biceps and let me feel it.

When I think of how sexy I find men's forearms, it clearly goes back to him--the tattoo, the cigarette between the fingers of his right hand, even the exercise ball as he worked at rehab. He got a little cranky after the stroke, and would shout "Get out of the road!" if I came between him and the batter on the TV. But I was still utterly in love.

He was born in 1886, the eldest son of German immigrants. He was a shoe repair man, then later a cabinetmaker at the local piano factory. He voted for the Socialists in the 1930's, but listened to the quasi-fascist Father Coughlin on the radio, along with thirty million other Americans. It was another era in which the populist frustration of the disenfranchised could bend class consciousness full circle to right-wing demagoguery.

I lost him to a second stroke when I was seven. I can access my love for him in a way I've never been in touch with the memory of my own father.

I think with longing about how my adolescence might have been different if he'd been there to guide me through it. Though it's pure wish-fulfillment to imagine he would have been OK with his youngest grandson turning out queer.

Six decades later, though, I imagine showing him the life I have now, and want to believe he'd be glad to know the man I've become, proud that he made my life possible through the miracle of his orgasm and sustained it through his love.

What I feel for him is unquestionably erotic, reaching back over the years. I fantasize about an alternative universe where he's still alive and healthy when I'm on the cusp of puberty. Where he still forages for wild mushrooms in early May, and takes me along with him. Where he sits me down on a log in the woods for "the talk" with a smile on his face. Where maybe in due time he invites me into the bathroom for a demonstration of how things work, and encourages me to discover for myself how good it feels.

I'm flesh of his flesh. I adore him still.