The Song of My Stepfather
Somehow, I’d never listened to “Life’s a Bitch” by Nas until last year. I knew who Nas was, regularly listening to “NY State of Mind,” “It Ain’t Hard to Tell,” and “Represent,” which is funny to me since all four songs are on the same album, “Illmatic.”
Despite not hearing the song until fairly recently, hearing the phrase “life’s a bitch” was as common as me saying, “That’s not fair,” meaning damn near daily. My stepdad helped me come to this grand realization about life, death, and the meaning and purpose of living.
I was around ten years old the first time I heard the phrase. I can’t remember what set me off, but it was during one of the conversations with my stepdad on the way home from therapy in the black, hard-topped, manual transmission 1985 Jeep Wrangler. It did not have doors, and its interior was gutted and grey, with only seats and a radio from the early 2000s. I remember the interior smelled of cigarettes and oil, even with the doors off. Those were conversations that helped way more than the therapy itself.
“It isn’t fair,” I had said. I can’t remember what wasn’t fair, probably something with Dad and deployment or being upset with something at school. Maybe both. I guess subconsciously, I loved saying, “It isn’t fair,” because things weren’t, and aren’t, fair, and the lack of fairness in the world drove me up a wall. It still does to this day.
“Yeah, well,” my stepdad had started. He paused, as usual, to think about what he would say and how to word it best. I got ready for some eye-opening revelation from him. A lecture that would show me that it can be fair or that I was thinking the wrong way. With my foot hanging out of the doorframe, I awaited the knowledge only a father would have for a 10-year-old.
“Life’s a bitch.”
I waited for something more. Okay, life’s a bitch, but what else? This wasn’t his usual answer of “life’s not fair,” followed by something about getting used to it.
“And it’s always going to kick you down. And kick you while you’re down. Yes, it sucks. You need to understand that life’s a bitch, and there’s no point in bitching about it. It doesn’t change anything. You can spend your whole life bitching about life, but when you die, everyone will remember how much you bitched about everything instead of changing or accepting it.”
That was eye-opening.
He rarely pulled his punches. Given everything I’d seen growing up, I don’t think he saw it as beneficial to “be gentle.” Every other adult I spoke to (therapists, teachers, and the principal) would beat around the bush and be “too gentle,” thereby not helping me. I always felt patronized when I sat in that boring grey office, but maybe life was just too hard and confusing, and I mistook the gentle attitude and lack of directness for patronization.
Either way, the bluntness of what he said made something click. Yeah, life’s a bitch. I liked that. It described how I felt. It made getting up from the ground a little easier and getting knocked back down a little more tolerable. Not by much, but enough.
During the summer in-between freshman and sophomore year of college, I found myself working for a subcontractor for Duke Energy, building dry cask storage tanks by one of their nuclear plants in the middle of nowhere South Carolina. I was on-site with my stepdad and an at-the-time family friend who helped me get the job (and explained the best way to pass a drug test so I could get the job).
We worked out there with four other guys and Dave, the boss. I only remember Dave’s name since it upset me that he was paying me the least, despite me outworking the four other guys combined, who went on constant “cigarette” breaks (I would learn the value of a “cigarette” break while working at a restaurant during COVID. “Cigarette” means whatever you want it to mean).
I cannot remember the man’s name, but his thin, shoulder-length hair, gaunt face, and shifty eyes are clear as day. I tried to stay away from him, but it’s hard to avoid people in a laundromat, especially when you ride there together.
“You’re what, 16?” He stood across from me, who was seated next to the window, leaning against one of the washers.
“18. I turn 19 next month.” I’m unsure why, but I shot my dad a look, worried I was doing something wrong by entertaining conversation with him. He stood beside me, leaning against the window with his arms crossed, just watching.
“Still a youngster,” he said, moving closer to me. He rubbed a finger behind my ear, rubbed it against his thumb, before smiling. “Still wet behind the ears with no idea what life is, huh?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I shrugged. “I guess.”
“Don’t underestimate him,” my stepfather cut in. He didn’t move and remained rather emotionless at first. “He’s been put through the wringer.”
I watched a small smile cross his face, the smile that only revealed itself when he was proud. I can’t explain it, but his recognizing that my life had been a bitch and a half brought me an odd amount of relief and a sense of confidence in who I was. It was one of the few times I felt like my problems in life were validated by him. He saw it all and recognized it, even if he wouldn’t say it to me directly. I wasn’t “wet behind the ears,” and that made me proud. That made me feel like a man, not a “youngster” in his eyes.
Our coworker looked at me, then stepdad, then me again. “Yeah, I can see it now. So you smoke?”
“I used to,” I lied. My stepdad was standing next to me, and I was not about to say I roll one daily.
“You used to hit the pipe?” He was shocked, assuming I smoked what he did. I was shocked, realizing he was not talking about weed. “Want to later? I got a little, you know?”
“Oh, I don’t mess with all of that. Not for me.”
He shrugged and leaned up against the washer again. “You will,” he said. “Life’s a bitch, and then you die. You keep this life up; you’ll learn that.”
I’m not sure what he meant by “this life.” I couldn’t figure out if he meant construction, being around men like him and his friends, or if he had some prophetic vision where he saw my future and meant my life overall by “this life.” Either way, I wasn’t comfortable being offered crack. I ended up quitting the job and working for a tree service, where my coworker there gave me the whole rundown on how to make, sell, and use crack (occasionally asking if I wanted any) on the way to a job site. It was a daily occurrence while we passed a blunt back and forth on the highway.
I didn’t get my sunken-faced coworker’s name or story, but I got the life stories of Zack and the man we called Zee, who worked for the tree service alongside me. Their stories showed that Nas’s words rang true, maybe more so for them than me. Although they had vastly different yet wild lives, they both lived by “life’s a bitch.”
Thirteen days after New Year’s of 2021, I broke my fibula and twisted my ankle in a way that pulled the bones away from one another. Honestly, it was one hell of a feat; even the doctor was shocked at what I’d managed to do. It ended with surgery that left me with six screws and a metal plate that now holds my foot together.
I can’t move my toes, or not very well. My ankle doesn’t bend or twist one way or the other, and I am not supposed to lift heavy things. It aches when it rains. It aches when it’s cold. It hurts if I stand or walk for too long, and it aches when I work too much, which is hard to do when you live on a farm with livestock. I refuse to let it stop me.
That said, the lightest tap against something solid is the most excruciating pain in the world and will drop me to my knees while screaming curse words one didn’t even know existed.
My stepfather shattered his wrist while roller-skating, although I don’t know when. He’d been going around thirty mph when a child stepped into the ring out of nowhere, and instead of plowing into them, he chose to dive over the kid, resulting in a shattered wrist.
Ever since I can remember, he’d always wear a brace and be in and out of the base clinic and hospitals for exams. I remember his final surgery; he seemed excited to have it over and done with finally. I can’t remember why they had to operate for a third time, maybe because he refused to “be handicapped” by it and picked up heavy things, but I remember what followed.
He cannot move his fingers, not very much. His wrist doesn’t bend one way or the other, and he isn’t supposed to lift more than five pounds with it. It aches when it rains. It aches when it’s cold. It hurts when he works too much, and it aches he lifts things heavier than five pounds, but you have no choice but to lift heavier than that when you live on a farm with livestock. He refuses to let it stop him.
That said, the lightest tap against something solid is the most excruciating pain in the world and will make him sit down momentarily and breathe.
After I got out of a cast and started relearning to walk (I knew how, but feeling a constant block in my ankle made it complicated to walk comfortably), consisting of many angry phone calls to my stepdad, who explained that I would get used to it. When I finally figured out a comfortable way to walk and drive and got used to having a foreign object in my ankle that I could feel 24/7, I went home to talk to my stepdad about it. I may have gotten used to it, but I always felt it. It ached almost all the time.
“You’ll feel it for the rest of your life,” he answered while we sat on the porch, watching the goats graze, listening to the kids scream for their mother before bouncing across the field. “It looks like you’ve gotten used to it, though.”
“I suppose,” I started. “But my whole life, it’ll ache? There’s nothing I can do? I can’t get it taken out or trick my brain into thinking there’s nothing there?”
He shrugged and lifted his arm. I looked at the scars that ran down his hand and wrist in jagged lines. He tried to move his fingers, he tried to rotate his wrist, but neither were too successful. “No, that’s life from here on out, just as it’s been mine for years. You get used to it.”
“That fuckin’ blows.”
“Life’s a bitch,” he started.
“And then you die, yeah, I know.” He nodded and added a “yep” before we went back to sitting in silence, watching the goats before I began to laugh.
“Hey,” I added, kicking my leg out. “We’re that much closer to being Iron Man, slowly being turned to steel.”
“Or a pirate,” he added, sticking out his arm.
The first time I heard the banger of a song, I was walking home from a mechanic last year. Yes, last year was when I realized everyone was referencing a song from one of the most influential hip-hop albums. In my defense, I have only begun listening to more than the Unholy Trinity and 80s metal bands within the last few years.
Anyway, my car has just blown its brand new spark plugs, which was beyond my understanding of how, but probably because that Mazda was a piece of garbage. Its engine blew up in December after driving from Raleigh, NC, to Cowpens, SC. I had no working heat or radio throughout the five-hour trip, and my speedometer kept moving all over the place once I went faster than five mph, meaning I had no idea how fast I was actually driving. I was frozen by the time I made it to Cowpens.
I do not miss that car.
No one was able to give me a ride home. Mom was at work, my stepdad was at work, my siblings were at school (and couldn’t legally drive), and I didn’t know who to contact since I hadn’t spoken to anyone from high school in a hot minute; I didn’t know who was there and who was not. So, I checked the GPS, saw that I had a 10-mile walk, cursed, grabbed my lighter and wallet, sparked a joint (the one I had been saving for a “rainy day”), chose one of the playlists Spotify recommended to me, and started putting one foot in front of the other.
I kept my thumb out, but unsurprisingly, no one wants to pick up a sweaty 21-year-old limping his way down some country backroad and blowing as much smoke as an overcompensating truck. Even the four cops that passed by me didn’t stop, even when I stood in the middle of the road at mile 4, purposely trying to disrupt what little traffic there was to get a ride from one of them.
He drove around me. He even waved as he did so.
It was around then that the song began to play. I thought back to every time I’d heard the phrase, and the memories and life lessons centered around my stepfather, centered around the man who made me into who I am today. How three words inspired me to keep going. When he said it, just like Nas, it was never a “ life is miserable and then you die, so there's no point.”
It was always a “yeah, it sucks, but what can you do other than live it.”
It brought a smile to my face and made the walk easier. Yeah, walking 10 miles home on a steel ankle sucks, but that’s just a part of life, sometimes. Worse things have happened and could happen. Not that it needed to be, but the idea of what life is was reinforced when I started living independently; from financial struggles that left me sleeping for dinner to going an entire month without a vehicle and walking everywhere (in an unwalkable city). I learned, once again, life just isn’t fair to those at the bottom of the barrel.
It’s a bitch.
But what else will you do other than laugh it off and keep going? I find it hilarious that a rap song makes me think of my stepfather since he can’t stand the genre. Nevertheless, the song reminds me of all the times he reminded me not to get too bogged down but to acknowledge and laugh at life’s stupid, unfair, and absurd aspects.
He made me as resilient and easygoing as I am and the man I am today. I am immensely grateful for everything he has done in the 20-something years he’s been a part of my life. If he ever sees this, thank you.
Nas’s song reminds me of all the times he picked me up, dusted me off, and threw me back into the ring with life, only to repeat the process when it kicked me down again, but not once did he let me stay there. He is a hard man, who I know so little about, who recognized a hard life and did everything he could to ensure that it wouldn’t get the better of me.
A man who reminded me that life’s a bitch and then you die, so it’s best to make the most of what I can.
