papa was a rollin' stone. made of shit.

Dear i+i: I found out my 12-year-old is not my biological son. His mother and I have been divorced for two years, but I never questioned the paternity even when I caught her cheating on me four years ago. My mother urged me to get a DNA test since my “son” was young because he didn’t resemble me. I’ve been paying child support and seeing him every other weekend so far. Since finding out, my ex has offered to pay me back for most of the child support since our divorce. I won’t be taking further legal action because I just want to move on with my life. I’ve also decided to stop seeing him because I am not his father. I’ve already spent more than a decade parenting (financially and emotionally) a child that isn’t mine, and I don’t want to do it anymore. Most of my family has been critical about my decisions—they insist that I should make my ex suffer more and sue her for all she’s worth, but then they say I should keep being a father figure so an innocent child doesn’t lose his dad. What am I to do? - Manhandled


ian: Well, first off: you're not alone. Every parent ever since the dawn of the species has fantasized about being freed of the spine-cracking obligations of parenthood. So, to set you mind at ease on that score: we've all had that impulse. It's perfectly natural. 


Heck, my own dad took off when I was nine. Then killed himself later on. And it didn't do me a bit of harm. Unless you count my lack of trust. Or my robotic and dispassionate lack of response to the human emotion that is just shy of Asberger's. Or my fits of rage over the tiniest non-event. Or the bleak certainty that overshadows my every move of a crushing and inescapable sense of futility that governs all human activity, rendering every exertion and aspiration of every man, woman, and child on the planet a pointless joke for now and all time. 


But no biggie. Right? My dad had his OWN thing going. And that's what matters. Right?


Here's where I think you cross over from "we've all been there" to "sweet god above, what a selfish cunt" is in the following:

• The quotation marks you put around the word son. You're pissed at your ex. You're hurt. The child you've been raising as your own - you're right. Fuck him. Sorry: "him."
• The order in which you itemize your "parenting" of this Thing Unrelated to You: "financially and emotionally." Your priorities are straight as an arrow. An arrow pointed at a target of Being a Giant Shit-Punk in a Cunt Wig. Oh. Yay. Bullseye again. You fucking fuckwad.
• Your legitimate desire to move on with your life. Because, as you correctly surmise, it is all about you. You Tepid Thimble Full of Cock Snot.
• Your fucking family, which is clearly a nest of asshole vipers. They raised that fucking monster in the mirror, then taught it to see a hero. Your only correct feelings, the only ones you should heed, at all, ever, are your well-earned and richly deserved feelings of self-loathing, you Stunted Little Swinecock.
• Your ex. A sex-addicted and approval-seeking cess pit of need whose dad (or uncle, or coach or pastor or whatever) diddled her when she was little. She's conflated her feelings about her depressing sexual past with how she defines affection in all her subsequent relationships with men. You somehow qualify as a man, apparently.
• Fucking YOU, you piece of shit. You're obviously predatory enough to have sought out somebody this fucking damaged, and persecuted enough to claim you're shocked when it fucking backfires. You sub-moron.
• Your inability to peel apart your family's viper asshole advice regarding the vindictive fuckstick approach to your ex, which would only succeed in maximizing damage to your "son," and the the uncharacteristically sane and compassionate advice they give about continuing to pretend you're a father. You Soulless Deadbeat Slurry of Gutless Self-Interest and Entitled Shitheadery.

What are you to do? 

Simple. Make an incision in your nutsack; insert a melon baller; scoop out the loveless man cherries that are just taking up space in there. Burn them. You are a chronically deficient and epically selfish Leaning Tower of Shit. No breeding for you. This is paramount. Fuck everything else up all you want. It's a fair bet your nut custard is completely inert and useless, but better to have a fail safe built into Operation Terminate Your Bloodline.

Next: execute your family. They are perfectly horrible. Hack them up and douse the chunks in acid.

Finally: never see the boy again. 

Lest you misunderstand - this has NOTHING WHATEVER TO DO WITH YOU STINGY LITTLE FEELINGS ABOUT THE MATTER, YOU WITLESS FUCKING HUMP. It is for him. His life will be improved immeasurably by your disappearance. While your ex is without question a total fucking mess, there exists the possibility that she might have at some point had a thought for the boy, however fleeting and probably damaging to him it will ultimately prove to be. But she may have expended some effort on his behalf. This minimal expectation continues, obviously, to elude you. So go fuck yourself. Go permanently fuck yourself.

Epilogue: die alone. Under a threadbare blanket. That pilled-up institutional polyester kind in a shade of yellow once cheery, but now like a sun-baked duckling corpse. Die alone in a room with flickering fluorescents and cracked linoleum that smells of bleach and panic and neglect. Die in a broken hospital bed that reeks of your piss. Die with terror in your eyes as your stroke-swollen tongue long robbed of speech lolls in your dry mouth. Die seeking the compassion of the Estonian nurse who looks blankly at your demise from the hallway while snapping her gum and checking her watch. Die knowing that the only worthwhile thing you ever did in your misspent little life was to leave that fucking kid alone. You brutish little jerkwad anus-faced prick.