Not My Father's Son

by Alan Cumming

I got up from the table and moved towards the sink. I picked up a glass off the draining board and began to fill it. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he said, not quite shouting yet, but still too loud, as though he had been waiting to say it, eager to make the next move, and now here it was. “Eh? Did you hear me?” “I need to drink some water,” I gasped. “Put that glass down!” Now he was shouting. My mother said very quietly, “Ali, leave him.” My father rose from his chair and everything went red. At the same time as he began shouting at me he grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and I was being dragged across the kitchen, through the living room, through the hallway, out through the porch and the front door and across the yard to the shed where we kept our bikes. He threw me up on top of a workbench. He was baying now, not just shouting. You couldn’t understand what he was saying but I know it had to do with my hair and my water drinking and how fucking useless and insolent and pathetic I was, but it wasn’t coherent. It was just pure violent rage, and it was directed at me.