Daddy a thug
It recently hit me that my fancy, estranged daughter—now a woman grown, whom I used to spend Thanksgiving with but haven’t seen in six years—thinks I’m out here livin’ that thug lyfe like ’Pac.
Thanksgiving used to be my favorite holiday. Friends, family, football, and food—how could you go wrong?
As my trad-con law school roommate used to say, “You get several women serving you delicious food and cleaning up after you while you watch football. It’s the quintessential American holiday.” He meant it as a joke, but didn’t wink when he said it. Last I heard, he’s still a bachelor.
Another reason why I loved Thanksgiving is because I got to spend it with my daughter, who just turned eighteen and is now a woman grown.
I accidentally knocked up her mom, who’s a fancy white lady six years older than me, in a city I didn’t live in. She spent the next decade climbing the corporate ladder across the country before settling in a wealthy enclave in Massachusetts.
We didn’t have much in common beyond drunkenness, dubious decisionmaking, and a round of unprotected sex the night we met. She told me she “normally doesn’t do things like that.” While I believe I’m a special snowflake, I still suspect our ride wasn’t her first rodeo.
When she got pregnant, I wasn’t thrilled—especially because I didn’t get any say in what happened. I found it unfair how it’s “her body” when she unilaterally decides but “our baby” once the baby arrives.
But life isn’t fair, and sometimes that’s how it goes.
How it went in my case is that she took me to court for child support while she made about 200 racks a year and I was still a broke law student.
She did toss me a bone by letting me visit my daughter wherever she happened to live at the time, and later agreeing to my request to allow her to spend Thanksgivings with me in Minnesota where I lived once she got older.
My daughter looks like me only if you imagine me as a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl in the Hitler Youth. We never bonded deeply, partially because she’s her mother’s daughter, and partially because I wasn’t a super engaged dad to young kids. If I struggled to show up emotionally for my sons, who were conceived in love, of course I struggled even more with a child who arrived in the manner my daughter did.
Still, she bonded with my ex-wife, her family, and my boys. For awhile, Thanksgiving felt like a blended-family win.
My daughter’s Minnesota Thanksgiving tradition continued when my marriage ended—just not with me. For the last six years, she’s spent Thanksgiving at my ex’s crib while I was barred from seeing her under a Massachusetts court order.
She visited me the first summer after I moved out, and hated my new crib. To be fair, my two-bedroom unit in a 100-year-old duplex wasn’t on par with the four-story Dutch Colonial mansion she shared with her mother. But it had character—more The Dude from The Big Lebowski’s bungalow than HGTV Dream Home. I even had a rug that tied everything together.
She lasted two days before I gave in to her constant pouting and dropped her off with my ex. I thought her next visit with me would go better, but that next visit never happened.
Instead, her mom filed court papers on me describing my place like it was a crack den with skulls and bones in the closets and persuaded the court to effectively terminate my parenting rights. Yes, I was living off credit cards, supporting two households, and holding life together with duct tape—but I wasn’t living in squalor.
That same visit, my babymama threatened to call the cops on me for leaving a twelve-year-old alone for thirty minutes to pick up dinner. When I warned her that calling the cops on a large Black man could go sideways, she said, “It’ll go poorly for you.” My babymama might like to get with brothas, but she still hella racish.
Thanksgiving, once my favorite holiday, now mostly reminds me of how things went with my daughter.
I haven’t spoken to her in six years, and she’s ignored my recent overtures. She’s eighteen now, so at least I don’t have to bankroll her mom anymore, which I’d been doing for years even though she’s the one who cut off my parenting rights and who’d jump off a skyscraper if we switched net worths.
What stung more than getting cut out was watching my ex, whom I shared two sons and a decade of life with, and the white women in my family cosign on the decision. They even scheduled secret visits with my daughter behind my back, staying at my ex’s place.
I wonder if it occurred to them that my white babymama cut me and my Black dad out of my daughter’s life while still reaching out to my white family. I doubt it.
Back then, I saw myself as the victim, disempowered and emasculated, wondering why no one stood up for me or even the idea that fathers should see their daughters.
I recently looked up my daughter online, as I do from time to time. Turns out she captained her elite prep school soccer team to a standout season against even eliter ones like St. John’s, Choate, and Exeter. My daughter is mega fancy.
I told my SO Jodi about it, and she joked, “Daddy a thug”—a callback to when my daughter used “thug” as code for Black people after losing to a soccer team composed of 11-year-old girls whose skin matched mine.
And suddenly it clicked.
My daughter truly thinks I’m living that thug lyfe.
That first crib after I split with my ex? I was proud of that place—it represented grit and survival. But she and her mom didn’t see resilience—they saw poverty. She probably felt embarrassed to video chat her friends from my modest digs. That embarrassment—not trauma, not abuse, not neglect—might could be the real reason she pulled away.
And my ex and the white women in my family? They probably viewed me in a similar light. Not consciously, perhaps, but subconsciously. They’re also fancy, and they identified way more with my daughter’s “downgrade” in accommodations than with me and my dad getting cut out.
It’s like that Black Mirror episode Nosedive, where your social rating determines your life. From their perspective, I went from a low 4 to a low 3—they were doing my daughter a favor.
White people have been removing kids from “uncivilized” homes like this for centuries. Same story, different day.
This Thanksgiving, I finally understand the dynamic:
To them, I wasn’t a bad dad—I was an embarrassing dad.
Daddy a thug.
Maybe things could’ve gone differently if someone in my circle had defended my right—or at least what I thought was my right—to fatherhood and to see my daughter on Thanksgiving. Maybe not. We’ll never know.
Maybe it’s for the best. I’m vegan-ish now anyway, and I doubt I could digest most of the Thanksgiving favorites my daughter loved.
But my oldest son and I plan to get proficient at crossbow turkey hunting. So if my daughter ever reaches out, perhaps we’ll break bread together one of these Thanksgivings using the fanciest china Savers has to offer.
