An Extended Vacation

It was the winter of 1998. To be more precise, it was my winter vacation from university of 1998-99. I had successfully completed a year and a half of university and I was slowly starting to realize more and more that I really needed to get out of the situation that I was in if I wanted to keep my sanity. I had a month off from university with nothing to do but hang out at home with my family and try to get away from home as much as possible. I was getting more into computer games then, and I still remember my favorite game of the time—Thief: The Dark Project—which was a stealth first person action game. It was my escape from the pieces of a broken home that were falling all around me.

This time was the defining moment of the downfall of the small empire that my father had built. When I look back on it now, I realize that it was events during this time that would cause it all to crumble. It didn’t seem like it then, of course, though it did look bad and my brother, mom, and I all tried to reason with my father because we were afraid that something bad would happen. I could feel the coming disaster but never could have guessed then that it would turn out as it did.

A few weeks before Christmas 1998 my father decided that he would get liposuction and a nose job. Did he have the disposable income for these expensive procedures?

Of course not.

He simply paid for it with money that he should have used to pay his rent, his employees, and file cases. So instead of using his money wisely, he went and spent tens of thousands of dollars (a large amount for him at the time) on a liposuction procedure to get rid of the fat in his stomach. He wanted to lose the spare tire he had hanging on him, which is understandable, but instead of trying to eat healthier and exercise, he decided to use money that he once again did not really have to get an expensive procedure that may or may not work.

After he got the liposuction, he came home and had to wear this foam padding around his belly. This was because fat and other fluids were essentially seeping out of his body and this foam padding caught all of this crap. I remember how he didn’t want anyone to know he had the surgery because, as I realize now, if is loyal church followers or employees found out that he spent their salaries and tithes for liposuction they would be understandably upset.

But the problem was he had to wear this big piece of foam for the two weeks following his surgery. If someone saw him of course they would be asking themselves like “What happened to him? Did he gain 10 pounds overnight?” or “Why is he wearing a piece of foam around his stomach?”

These questions would lead to inquiries which would lead to the inevitable discovery by his followers and employees that he had liposuction. So instead of telling the 50 or so people that he was recovering from his recent cosmetic surgery, he decided to take the easy way out and lie to them all.

My father was always a very good liar. I was born into them and believed his lies for two decades years. It was his lies that ended up harming so many of the people around him.

Because he was a pastor, and ran a evangelical faith-based law practice, a lot of his lies and excuses could be used twice. For example, a favorite excuse he would use would be to tell the assistant pastor of the church that the people do not appreciate him and his gifts of prophecy, healing, and just all-around wonderfulness.

Therefore, as punishment for their unappreciative behavior he would be absent from church for an undetermined amount of time. Instead of preaching he would play a tape of Abraham Jefferson, the original founder of “The Word,” and they would listen to this tape and ponder the evil of their ways. While everyone would file into the church on Sunday morning and Tuesday and Thursday nights, to listen to a 40-year-old sermon on a tape they could listen to at home, he would be sitting at home eating ice cream while watching the Beatles Anthology for the fiftieth time in a row.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about this kind of thing was not the lie itself but the fact that the people actually believed it. You would see everyone in church talking about how wonderful my father was, how horrible they all were for not appreciating him, and how they can’t wait for the day that he can come back to church and give them the “true word of God.”

Since I was living with him, I of course knew about everything but was sworn to secrecy. I could not tell anyone about the liposuction because, according to my father, “they might get the wrong idea.”

You see, according to my father he did not get liposuction for any kind of selfish reason. He got it to actually help others! His reasoning, to those of us who knew he had it, was that he needed to be presentable and had to look good if he was to be a pastor and missionary who would win over souls for Jesus. What would the people think, after all, if their pastor was a little overweight?! His biggest excuse he used to make himself feel good about it was that the starving people in Africa would be offended when they saw this overweight American missionary come in and tell them how to be saved. They would receive him with more open arms, he told me, if he was thinner. After all, he didn’t want to be a stumbling block (a favorite phrase of the church) to any of them.

Since almost all of my father’s employees also went to his church he of course could not show up at work because they would find out that something was up. He also would look really weird at court or when he was trying to get a new client with a big round piece of foam under his clothes. He decided to that he would take a little vacation from work as well. In addition to the people not appreciating him, he told his employees at his office that he was very worn out from all his “hard work” at the office and thus needed to take a nice, long two-week vacation.

At the time he had three other lawyers working for him (all of whom worked very hard, and I still feel very sorry for because of how much they were used and manipulated by my father) and these lawyers would handle all of the court hearings, client meetings, new client procurements, and other legal matters. The rest of his employees (there were about 5 other secretaries and legal assistants besides my mother, my brother, and myself) would do the rest of the work.

This was a very inopportune time for my father to take a vacation. While the previous year his law practice took in almost one million dollars, he probably spent close to one and a half million dollars, not including all of his expenses. He had just bought a new Mercedes Benz, a new airplane, and many new guitars, amplifiers, and high-tech recording equipment for his band that he hoped would make him a star, just like his idols the Beatles. This added to the fact that there was a lull in business over Christmas and New Years and that he had a lot of new stiff competition all made it a really bad time for him to slack off.

Despite his craziness my father was an excellent salesman. On the surface he was a very likable, sincere, convincing person who could sell anything to almost anyone. Up until the end we always had at least 30 new clients a week. His staff of three other attorneys were all just out of law school and were not as good at sales as he was and could not procure as many clients. Since that time of the year was already a very slow time it made things even worse. Thus, my father’s practice didn’t get many new clients while he was away.

One would think that, given the situation at hand, he would have told at least his employees about his surgery and gone back to work as soon as he could so he could deflect as much damage as possible. I originally thought that he would be back in two weeks.

But, knowing my father, I should have realized that rational thought was too much. Instead of going back to work once he no longer had to wear the foam around his stomach, he decided that it was a perfect time to get a nose job. He always hated his nose, and he always complained that it was getting bigger. Since he was already gone from work and church, and already had an excuse in place that everyone believed, a few more weeks away from work and another ten thousand dollars shouldn’t hurt anything, he thought. He proceeded to take money that wasn’t really his to use in the first place and get a nose job. He decided to take another two weeks off and was away from his office and church for over a month.

During this time, he continued to have more pressing financial problems. He was threatened with eviction from the building that his office was in, he was late on all his car payments, was about to default (again) on his mortgage, couldn’t pay his employees, and could barely buy his family food. But he got what was important: his liposuction and nose job.

He told those of us who knew about his escapade (he ended up telling more people than he would have liked to) that when he goes back to work, he will look so great that he will get hundreds of new clients, pay all his bills and employees, and be an even better pastor of his church. All because of his newfound self-confidence through liposuction and a nose job.

What was even worse than all of this for me was the fact that my father stayed home all the time during my winter vacation.

As anyone who has lived with my father at the time can attest, it wasn’t fun. Even though he subjected himself to those surgeries he wanted everyone to feel sorry for him and do everything for him. He couldn’t even get a drink by himself – he always had to ask someone to do it for him just because he was so lazy. He used to sit in his library, which was right next to the stairs to the second floor of my old house, and whenever he heard someone go up or down the stairs, he would go through everyone’s name until he found out who it was so he could ask them to do something for him. He needed more wood in his fire, or a sandwich, or a glass of water, or his medicine, or another of the seemingly million things he had for his wife and children to do.

During his month-long vacation, his business was on its way to oblivion. Like a blind person being led by a blind dog, my father’s firm was being led to inevitable failure because of his ridiculous selfish ventures that he seemingly failed to see the danger of. His staff were growing tired of working long hours while their boss stayed at home relaxing. It wouldn’t have been so bad if this law firm was a firm without any financial problems, but during this time his firm had started to fall into some serious holes. The staff was well aware of this, as was my father, but that did not stop my father from continuing his long vacation. The rent for the huge office was months late, the phones were about to be cut off, not one payment had been made for the brand new $20,0000 computer system that my brother and I had just installed (and that was purchased on my brother’s credit), car payments were late, creditors couldn’t be paid and eventually neither could the staff.

While all of this was happening, my father was taking a leisure vacation at his house, sitting by his fire every day, reading his books, playing his guitar, listening to music, watching television, and abusing prescription drugs while he continued to verbally and mentally abuse his children and physically abuse his wife. The money that was coming in at his firm was going to pay for the “important” things, such as the rent for our huge house (that we didn’t need and that Alex and I tried to convince him for years to sell), our fancy cars, and his prescription drug addiction.

Eventually he was in such bad need of money that he convinced one of his attorneys that he had just recently hired to ask their parents for a loan to give to my father. But he told his employee not to tell their parents that they were giving it to him but instead pretend that they needed the money. This happened twice with the same employee for thousands of dollars. Not only were my father’s employees not getting paid, but they were being essentially used to get money for my father so he could pay for his liposuction, his nose job, and his nice things.

I felt really sorry for my father’s employees at the time, especially the three lawyers who had no affiliation with my father’s church. For the longest time my father would hire only Christian people. What this meant was people from our church. It was a very smart move from his part because he already had authority over these people through being their pastor, and now he was their boss. It was nearly impossible for them to ever win an argument with my father because he, being the pastor, was always right and it was disrespectful for them to talk back to their “spiritual guide.”

It also was beneficial because he could abuse them much easier than a person who was outside of his church. There were many times when we would have a huge amount of work to do, but my father would go home early and take long weekends while his staff would work until 9 or 10pm at night and then again on Saturday and Sunday (myself and my brother included).

He would always say things like “I’m tired from preaching and being a lawyer and if I don’t get some rest I won’t be able to procure new clients or lead the church” or “I have to answer missionary mail,” or “I need to pray for a solution to our problems,” or “I need to prepare for the church services,” or “God will bless you if you help out your pastor; it’s just like helping Jesus himself” or some other excuse that always made his employees and church people believe him and do just what he wanted.

What no one seemed to realize then, even myself included up until I finally left the church and his house in my early 20s, was that he was just using people for his own personal gain and abusing their trust in him as a pastor and a leader.

No matter what the situation was – buying a new car, getting liposuction, or taking extended vacations when he shouldn’t have – he was always able to get his employees and his church followers behind him and get them to believe him. He would always come back to the fact that he was their pastor, and it was wrong of them to question him, because to do that would be like questioning God. It would also prove that you are not a born-again Christian, which was what everyone was striving to be because they believed once they became a born-again Christian, they could have a guaranteed ticket to heaven.