I was only a little allegorical when I wrote I watch Trust on FX and old Blood Relatives episodes to remind myself that not being with family on holidays is okay last week as not only do I watch Trust, but I feel a need to watch it over and over again, just spent ten bucks to own the show to stream on Amazon. Now, fifth (?) time watching it, I realize there really is a parallel between my family and J. Paul Getty's, the same dysfunction permeated our home, just without billions of dollars.
Grand child
Paul III was born in 1956, me in 1948. I
remember his generation well, as they shadowed us from LSD and the Beatles and somehow
ended up at Heroin and Nirvana. The series dramatizes Paul III's 1973 kidnapping and J. Paul Oil Tycoon's refusal to pay
his ransom, in Rome. In 1966 I was kidnapped in Paris,
not for ransom, but for what they kidnap seventeen year old girls for, when I was wandering around Paris without supervision or anyone to even call (written
about here many times before).
At sixteen
Paul III was living in Rome on his own, at seventeen I was wandering Paris on
my own. Both of us grew up in homes with a level of benign neglect that got us both
kidnapped.
Another similarity in the Getty story and my story is in the patriarchs. My dad's personality was formed in the same times as Getty, an attitude of "I worked hard for what I have, now you should do the
same, so don’t ask me for a dollar."
They were raised thinking Machiavelli and Nietzsche were men of great
foresight whose radical selfish beliefs would plow mankind to new heights when all
those philosophies really did was allow a few people at the top to become autocrats and billionaires.
My dad often had the same cold emotion-less delivery as J. Paul Getty, as played by Donald Sutherland in Trust, firing his
sons. I called him in L.A. after
escaping my kidnappers saying I want to come home, and with same cold delivery he
explained I had to stay in Geneva for several more weeks, as it would cost too much money to change my return ticket. Getty as portrayed in Trust sent formula
"refusal letters" when people asked for money. My dad refused to help
one of my sisters pay for critical surgery for her son. My dad had "worked his way up" so
expected everyone else to also. Once I wanted him to pay for my son to join us at
Thanksgiving, and he adamantly said no, doing, I think, permanent damage to my relationship
with my son from whom I now never hear.
I remember cousins etcetera whispering angrily about my dad because he would
not help family members when he could and they needed it.
I grew
up observing all that and became self reliant to an almost neurotic extent.
Over the years, I didn't even collect welfare at times when I could have, like when
I was a single parent with a small child, working two-three jobs instead. Today, I won't even fill out forms to get
low-income rates for electricity, as I have almost a PTSD reaction to the sheets
of paper, as if someone at the utility company is going to shout at me for
not just paying it myself.
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