Belts and Welts

Owen Hall’s silent rage steamed hotter than the mashed potatoes and gravy he was eating for supper. Delicious food, though right in front of him, was the last thing on his racing mind. Sitting across from him at the dinner table was his wife Valerie and his daughter Leila. Both ladies smiled arrogantly at Owen while the father’s expression was dripping with ogre-like hatred. “Come on, old man, smile and make people wonder about you!” said Leila with a mockingly saccharine tone. Owen’s mouth curled even further downward as he tried to eat his dinner.

“Did you do your homework tonight?” asked Owen with disturbing calmness.

“I’ll do it after America’s Next Top Model is over,” said Leila. Her phone vibrated in her jeans pocket and she immediately went into text-messaging mode. Her eyes never left the screen even after Owen waved his meaty hand over her face.

“Relax, Owen,” said Valerie with her hand on his shoulder. “She’s a teenager. You know how they are. I’ll bet you anything you were like that at her age.”

Owen cracked his thick neck on both sides and said, “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“Of course you don’t, because you’re an old fart,” said Leila while her thumbs continued to dance around her smart phone’s screen. The sharp jab got a small giggle from Valerie.

Owen shook his head and put his fork down to address his daughter. His muscular hands formed a steeple underneath his hairy chin as he said, “You know, Leila. I got a call from the school today. They said you haven’t been keeping up with your homework. In fact, it’s pretty much the same song and dance for the last few weeks. Whenever the school has a problem with you, they always phone me and I get the blame for it.”

“Honey, eat your potatoes and we’ll talk about this some more after dinner,” said Valerie as she patted her manicured hand across her husband’s sausage fingers.

“I don’t want to talk about it later,” said Owen. “I want to talk about it now. If we don’t talk about it now, we’ll never talk about it again. You keep saying we’ll have all of these chances and those chances are always squandered. Put the fucking phone down!” The last sentence directed at Leila had some extra bite to it.

Instead of honoring her father’s wishes, Leila mocked his words with a semi-retarded voice and kept texting. Valerie smiled at Owen and said, “Come on, it’s not like this is the end of the world. She’ll figure it out soon enough.”

“No, she won’t!” snapped Owen as he stood up, garnering Leila’s attention at last. “She’s going to keep fucking up and nothing’s going to get done! What about college?! What about a job?! Does she not care about these things?! Last time I checked, sitting on your lazy ass watching TV isn’t exactly a nine-to-fiver!”

“Dude! Chill!” said Leila. “You don’t have to bite my head off! School’s been really hard lately!”

“School is supposed to be hard, you dumb shit!” barked Owen. “That’s how you grow and develop as a human being! If everything was easy, there’d be no fucking point!”

Valerie shot up from her chair and pointed at her husband while shouting, “Owen, sit down and eat your food! You’re acting like an old bastard!”

Owen took off his glasses and rolled up his flannel shirt sleeves. “No, Valerie, you’re wrong. That’s not what an old bastard acts like. This is.” With no trace of high voltage anger in his voice, Owen took off his leather belt and slowly walked around the table to Leila’s side of the table. Both wife and daughter looked up at him with wide, horrified eyes while Leila kept asking him what he was doing with a stutter.

The towering father grabbed Leila by the hair and slammed her torso against the table, not caring if the violent act got food on her T-shirt. Both ladies screamed like they were trapped in a real-life horror movie while Owen smacked his leather belt across Leila’s ass five times, each strike more sadistic and louder than the last. Both women collapsed to the floor and hugged each other while sobbing and screaming simultaneously. Leila could only bury her face in her mother’s chest while the mother looked up at Owen with puppy-dog eyes, asking, “Why?” over and over again in a whispery voice.

“I’ll tell you why, Valerie,” said Owen with trembling jowls. “I’m tired of being the bad guy at this dinner table. I’m tired of being the principal’s scapegoat when this whole shit storm is clearly my daughter’s fault. I’m tired of being disrespected. I’m tired of being walked on. And to think, this is Leila’s first belt whipping and she got to experience it at age fourteen. Too little too late. She’s grown up to be a bigger super-bitch than her mother.”

Leila pulled her face out of her mother’s hug and tearfully mouthed the words to her dad, “I hate you. I hate you so much.”

Owen slowly crouched down beside his daughter, placed his free hand on her convulsing shoulder, and quietly said, “That’s okay, darling. I hate you too. I hate you so much that I want to get the fuck out of this place as soon as I can. That belt spanking wasn’t out of discipline or even love. It was out of rage. It was out of a whole decade of disrespect and nothing being done about it. I’m done with you, Leila. I’m done with your mother. She better hire a good divorce lawyer, because I’ll be doing the same. Don’t expect a huge custody battle, little girl. Not even that creep Roy Moore will want you after all of this.”

Owen stood back up and his tree trunk knees popped like fireworks. Valerie also stood up, but brought her daughter to her feet with her and continued to hold her in a loving and sorrowful embrace. Valerie sobbed, “You can’t divorce me, Owen. After what you did tonight, I’ll take you for everything you’re worth!”

“Funny you mention that,” said Owen. “Because you probably will make more money off of my child support payments than you will busting your ass at a real job. Same goes for you, Leila. You’re both a bunch of losers. If you’re this disrespectful to me, what makes you think you’re going to be any better to your bosses? Oh, did I say bosses? I meant johns and pimps.”

“How can you say these things to your own family, Dad?” cried Leila. She could wipe her tears and comfort her sore buttocks all she wanted, but the sorrow continued to be painfully obvious.

“Family? What family?” said Owen with shrugged shoulders. “I don’t see a family in front of me. Just because you’ve got my DNA, doesn’t mean you’re anything more to me than a couple of bloodsucking leeches. The ride’s over. I’d tell you both to get your shit together, but you’re not even capable of getting that right, let alone an answer on a fucking math test.” The hulking father turned around and lumbered to his bedroom looking for a suitcase and some clothes.

“I’m sorry, Dad!” pleaded Leila while on her knees. “I’m sorry! I’ll do better in school! I’ll get a good job! Please, don’t leave us!”

“You’re too late for redemption, honey,” said Owen as he nonchalantly packed clothing into his suitcase and rolled it out to the kitchen. “It’s not my job to save you anymore. You can be someone else’s problem now.” He pointed at Valerie and said, “And you! You’ll be hearing from my lawyer first thing in the morning. Enjoy your dinner. I’m going to get a real meal at McDonald’s.” He waved goodbye and proceeded towards the front door with his suitcase in tow.

“Goddamn you, Dad!” shouted Leila as she picked up her dinner plate and threw it across the kitchen at Owen, who ducked down in the nick of time. The plate shattered and the mashed potatoes oozed down the kitchen wall.

But instead of white hot rage, Owen smiled for the first time in forever and said, “Thanks for giving my lawyer more talking points in court. Maybe your mother will start paying ME alimony instead. Bye-bye!” He waved again and stepped outside to the sounds of screaming teenagers and sobbing wives.

The chilly night air felt heavenly on Owen’s skin. The air tasted sweeter than anything on his dinner plate. A singular tear traveled down his husky cheek. He may have weighed well over three hundred pounds, but he felt lighter than a feather. He wasn’t going to just get away from this prison of a home. He was going to fly away like a caged bird.

There was a small moment where he questioned his need for spanking Leila with a belt. But as the screams and screeches from inside grew less tolerable, he shrugged his shoulders and rolled his suitcase out to the family SUV. He figured even sleeping in the back seat would be more comfortable than any fluffy mattress shared with his soon to be ex-wife.

"The Fault In Our Stars" by John Green

Getting my heart torn out of my chest because of a piece of literature isn’t anything new for me. It happened with books like “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and “Love Letters to the Dead”. The legacy of foo-foo heartache continues with “The Fault In Our Stars” by John Green. Any romance story has the potential to be heart-wrenching. We all want love, we all want justice. But what happens when the two lovebirds are teenaged cancer patients? As a reader, you know tragedy is on the horizon. But is there any romantic justice near the end? It’s easy to believe with all the witty humor the book is laced with, but if you want a definitive answer, you’ll have to read the book yourself, which I highly recommend you do.

Within all 314 pages of this young adult novel, there are many themes John Green touches on: positivity, negativity, the afterlife, sympathy, empathy, and as many Christian bloggers will have you believe, religion. The latter of which is debatable to me. While is true the characters of the book openly mention God and heaven as ways to comfort the cancer patients, I think of it not as jamming religion down the reader’s throat, but rather as keeping an open mind to the possibilities of what lies beyond this life. Truth is, Hazel Grace Lancaster and Augustus Waters (the cancer-stricken lovebirds in question) don’t know what awaits them when the cancer eventually kills them. There is, however, an extreme fear of oblivion and not leaving anything behind when he’s gone on Gus’ part.

Which brings me to yet another theme John Green touches on: immortalization. In other words, being remembered after we’re long gone. It’s a theme I have an obsession with myself. Hazel has a negative view of immortalization since she believes despite all of our efforts to remember each other, the sun will eventually explode and wipe everything away. Augustus wants to be remembered despite everything and he agonizes over it near the end of the novel.

Which then brings me to another point the book makes: living a full life and being immortalized doesn’t necessarily mean you have to create and produce things for society on a relentless basis. Sometimes all you have to do is take it all in. It’s nice to give to the world, but we must remember to take as well. Go see those museum artifacts. Go to that rock concert. Watch that movie at the theater. Read that book. Without people who take things in, what’s the point in producing anything? There’s a reason artists like to put their work on the internet: they want appreciation and appreciation can only come from the people who view their work. This is a very poignant argument made by John Green and his novel.

By the book’s end, yes, I was heartbroken. I even said on Good Reads I needed superglue for my heart. There’s somebody on Urban Dictionary who says being hit in the face with the hardcover version of the book doesn’t hurt nearly as badly as reading it. While it is true reading “The Fault In Our Stars” is a beautifully painful experience, it’s also something everybody can learn from. The philosophical arguments and the love between Hazel and Augustus are great teachers when it comes to the education of life. If you take nothing else away from this book, then take this way: love with all your might before it’s too late.

　

***MOVIE QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“Excuse me, sir, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave. You’re having way too much fun and it’s making everybody uncomfortable.”

-Owen from “The Way Way Back”-