badstar

I had my moment of "WTF Surreal!" for the evening....

So I'm sitting here at my desk, and my cell phone starts ringing. It's a central PA number that looks...vaguely...familiar but I can't place it. I answer it, and the connection is staticky and not so clear. Takes a minute to realize it's my father.

Turns out he heard that I got robbed last week and was calling to see if I'm ok. It got a little old after the eighth time he asked if I was ok...what part of "They never laid a finger on me" isn't computing?

Seriously, I'm ok. Perhaps a little worried walking up Payson street, I've been leaving the house extra-early to make sure it's still light out when I leave (thankfully, it's staying lighter a little longer now) and I'm planning to take the train to Penn station and grab a cab the rest of the way home instead of taking the bus and walking from the bus stop tonight. But it seems like good sense to me.

So anyway...we get that sorted out and he starts going on about never hearing from me. Oh, I knew this was coming. So I give him the "Well, you told me to call you after Chelle's wedding and said you really needed to talk to me and after calling you every other day for two weeks, I gave up."

He tells me I never left a message. I tell him I left a message every time. He says he never got them. WTF ever.

Soooo....he asks me if I can discuss what he wanted to talk about, or at least tell me what it was about. I assume that it's about the divorce and my grandparents and his utter failure as a father. Whatever else on earth could he have need to talk about?

Ding dong, I'm wrong!

So...he starts going on about how he can't believe he's asking this but he's been hearing for a while, and I can answer his question or not, it's okay with him either way, but he heard and had to ask, but don't worry, my answer won't change anything, I'm his daughter, he loves me but he's been hearing things blah blah blah blah....

So immediately I think "Oh, he's heard I'm pagan I guess?"

Ding dong. I'm wrong. Again.

So about ten minutes of the same rambling later, he kinda mumbles that he's heard that I "prefer the company of women to men."

And my first thought is "Where in the hell did he ever hear that????"

For the record...I've never really seen any grand reason to just announce this on LJ (or in general), but given the context...for those who don't know, I'm bi. It's not a hiding thing, it's a "There's no more reason for me to talk about it in most conversations than there would be reason to talk about being straight if I were" thing.

I've never discussed this with anyone in my family...again, had no reason. Were I in a significant relationship with a woman or something like that, yeah I might see fit to let them know. But otherwise...well, I think my mom suspects something. I think she has for a while now. but she wouldn't be discussing it with my father (She avoids talking to him at all costs unless there's a really good reason. She won't talk about the weather to my father, that alone is enough to convince me that my mother is not the culprit.)

I suspect my grandmother, and possibly my sister. It's the sort of thing my grandmother would fabricate, and the sort of thing that my sister has fabricated in the past.

ravenshrinkery suggested that there are actually no rumblings coming from anywhere but his own mind...while anything's possible, I highly doubt it. Putting aside the fact that my father just isn't the sharpest crayon in the chandelier, I don't exactly think he's wholly incapable of fabricating such a thing, but for all his faults, he usually is fairly straightforward when it comes to asking serious questions. I'll give him that.

Gawds know why, but I decided to tell him the truth. Not that it's his business or he has any great right to know the goings on in my life, but I have no desire to lie. I could have said something about it not being his business, but..well, I have this minor flaw in that when taken by surprise I tend to forget all the things I would want to say and either go for honesty, or a completely baffled lack of knowing what to say, depending on the situation. It was a fairly uneventful "Yeah, well truth is I'm bi. But I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone would say such a thing, I've given them no reason to." and his response was just "Oh, okay. don't worry I won't discuss it with anyone." and then somethign about people thinking that it was my big reason for moving away and not wanting to come back to Lancaster, so I could hide.

Yah, whatever.

I never thought that my first discussion of anything like this would be with my father. Definitely not while sitting at a desk in my office (Don't worry, the office was practically empty by that point and no one was in earshot. In any case, this is one of the last places on earth I'd expect to have a problem if anyone did overhear.)

Yeah, I definitely have a boring night ahead of me now.