Nothing says "Good Morning"...

...like a phone call informing you your father is missing. And he has been for a month. And it seems like no one has filed a missing person's report.

When I first found out - and after the phone had been placed back in the cradle and I was safe from prying ears, from people who might judge me - I wasn't sure how I should feel. I've been out of contact with my father for years, and we left on a less than fantastic note.

Should I be happy that the bastard was getting what he got coming to him? I've always been a believer in Karma, and it just seems too crazy to ignore, to think that this isn't the World flipping my father a big "FUCK YOU".

My father is ungodly in his good looks, insanely smart, wealthy with his own business... and he knows how to manipulate people, especially giddy young women who can't help but fall head over heels in love with him. He also is a raging drunk and never afraid to put his women into place, teach them where the belong. Women should be seen, ogled and fondled, not heard. But once the poor women know who he is, it's much too late. They are stuck, forever, in his web, until he grows bored of them.

Proof: One of his girlfriends (that's right, he's in two to three long-term relationships) had been dating him for three years when he had a steamy affair with my mother and got her knocked up. They are still together, even today.

To say I hate my father is watering down my feelings for him. Words cannot express what I feel for this wretched men, but nonetheless, he's my father. I love him, if only for the fact that he gave me half of who I am. Also - and I have to give him this - he is the one who started communication between us when I was about 13 years old.

I'm upset that my father is missing because no matter how much I hate him, how much I would love to spit in his face and scream out years and years of pent up frustrating, I was always hoping, some place deep inside of me, that we could one day reconnect, catch up, be father and daughter again.

Except the reason we stopped talking, the reason I started pulling back from him, thus causing him to stop talking to me, is because he creeped me out. The way he looked at me on hot summer's days when I was in shorts and a tank top. Sneaking me into strip clubs. The sexual jokes. The prying questions about my budding sexuality. Lingering touches on the back of my neck. Stroking my legs.

Torn between a daughter's love and a victim's hate.