INDIGNIFIED: The Unmaking of a Man

by CD Familias

The following is a work of fiction that isn’t. I’ve written a prompt query to myself in order to craft this story. I will not be writing this piece of non-fiction fiction with AI - yet. First, I will write this story with my hands, my brain, my thoughts, my feelings, my emotions, my words. Then - after this story is written - I will take the same prompt I am using on myself and I will feed it into the major AI platforms and see what they produce.

The boy wanted to please his father and since his father seemed to take so much pride in his shiny shoes, it was natural that he should want to learn to shine them. His father obliged, happy to have a homegrown valet to serve his dignity.

He’d grown up in the depression and felt a great satisfaction looking down on someone else doing his menial tasks - even if that person was his son. His son, whom he had just turned into his personal shoe shine boy.

“There’s a dull spot on that tip. Hard work is good for the soul and if you are going to do a job, make sure you do it right.”

The boy ate up his words. He looked up to his father, literally, from where he shined his leather shoes.

“It’s good to start from the bottom,” his father said. Even though he had never felt what the bottom actually felt like. He’d gone to a prestigious university, been doted on and spoiled by his mother, and had been loaned (interest free) or given money by everyone from his siblings to his parents to his in-laws whenever he had wanted to make a fresh start. He’d never carried student loans nor been forced from his home. He’d always been given opportunity - even during his childhood in the Great Depression. His parents had shielded him from want.

---

His father, his hero, his mentor. That was the guy who abandoned he and his siblings and left them to survive half a decade amongst drug abusers, alcoholics, sex fanatics, and cult members.

“I couldn’t find you, I looked everywhere.” His father said when he finally showed up. They hadn’t been hidden. They’d only been abused, unwanted, rejected, and endlessly traumatized.

The boy was angry. He knew he was being lied to.

“Sometimes you have to put up with bad things to get to the good things,” his father said as he offered the boy and his sister a guilt induced shopping spree in a toy store. “I have so much more that I can give you,” but he wouldn’t give more. He never gave more. He only offered promises in return for dignity. He liked making his children beg and then saying no.

---

“Mr. King,” the boy said in 8th grade algebra class. “I’m not sure that talking about the Bible is going to help us understand this. Religion shouldn’t be in public schools.” The class tittered. He was class clown but his jests had become too adult. He knew it was a stupid thing to say. Mr. King always talked about Jesus and he was a very loved teacher by most of the students. Most.

Mr. King made a big show out of polishing his oak paddle every time. “The holes allow the air resistance to be minimized for a better swat,” he explained while wiping it down with a soft cloth. The boy came to know that paddle far too well. The welts making it hard to sit in the classroom, hard to pay attention to anything else. His jokes were quieted. Mr. King kept swatting until he saw tears, that was his rule. The boy held onto his dignity as long as he was able. Too long. Over and over.

It was only another student being sent to the emergency room that ended the nightmare. Mr. King had opted to use his belt. An investigation was opened. The boy spoke up. He was removed from Mr. King’s class. He was ostracized by the students who didn’t know the dark side of Mr. King. Most students. He chose his victims well. Poor, indifferent parents, living lives of quiet poverty and shame.

---

It took drastic action to get his father to take him from the hell he lived in. A shotgun shoved in his step-father’s mouth when he found him using his ham-sized fists to pound his now unconscious mother. He didn’t pull the trigger but it was enough to end his welcome in the house of horrors. His mother sided with her husband. His father was left with the choice of showing the world who he truly was - a man who had abandoned his children into a life of poverty and suffering - or - abridging his enjoyable single lifestyle by taking in his abused and traumatized teenage son. He made a big show of his magnanimity.

“I’ve always been there for you son. I’ve always helped those who need me. I promise I will always be there for you.” They were all lies. Like the lies he told about how he would pay for college, take his kids on vacations, or how he had looked for them for years and even hired a private detective. That detective must have been terrible since everyone who had ever known them knew exactly where his kids were.

When you take a child from violence and place them in solitary confinement, it doesn’t really solve the trauma. The boy was left on his own for days, sometimes weeks. When the father returned he would invariably berate the boy for his sloppy upkeep of the house or something else. Anything, really. There was no leash and when alcohol, drugs, and bad influences entered the picture, the father took the high road and kicked his son out.

The boy lived in a campground for a week, stayed with his aunt in her crowded apartment, even lived with his father’s ex-girlfriend who had also been booted out by the man of dignity. Finally, with no options left, the boy’s grandmother coached him on writing a letter that would earn his father’s ‘forgiveness’. All it took was shredding his own dignity, self-effacing himself, and begging for help.

His father took him in again but quickly saw that he hadn’t broken the boy’s spirit. He berated him constantly with abuse disguised as advice. “Keep your elbows off the table. Don’t wash your hands in the kitchen sink. You missed a spot on one of the dishes so you need to wash all the dishes in the house because it shows that you weren’t doing the job to the best of your ability.”

“Where is your dignity?” he demanded. “Don’t you want people to admire you? Don’t you want to project an image that people will respect?”

“I think I’m worthy of respect how I am,” the boy said. Their time together wasn’t long. One demanded obeisance, the other had an unbreakable spirit that wouldn’t allow it. It was all he had, his will to be unbroken. The world tried to strip it from him again and again.

---

With high school finished the boy enlisted in the Marines to become a man. The rules, the order, the discipline. They were things he needed. Not college, not parties, not an education designed to turn him into a cog in the great machine of exploitive capitalism. He would learn to fight then turn those skills upon his oppressors.

He learned of his best friend’s suicide when he got to his first duty station. The non-commissioned officer in charge of him mocked his tears. He broke the man’s nose and was thrown in the brig. Thus began four years of drunken brawling and rejection of order, rules, and discipline - the very things he had gone there for. He learned to fight and to bear unthinkable pain, but that was all.

Somehow at the end of four years he took an honorable discharge. There was nothing honorable about his time except his unwillingness to be broken. His family looked on, shook their heads, and couldn’t see anything but defectiveness.

“My time in the military shaped me,” his father said. His father had lounged by the pool for a year as a life guard because of a skin condition that kept him from going to the Korean War. Dignified. That’s what he was.

(The rest of this essay—including how I turned eviction notices into kindling and a video of me literally burning dignity in the backyard of Satoshi Manor—is for paid subscribers. Or, if you’re broke, email me for a free pass. Fuck gatekeeping.)