“Now, people have their bat kites and their diamond shaped kites,” Dad said to me when I was ten years old, “but the box kite, Mark, now there is the most aerodynamically sound of them all.”
He demonstrated by making a box kite out of balsa wood and brown paper. We took it to the park on the Air Force base where Dad was stationed, just behind the theater where I saw horror movies whenever I could get Mom to provide the parental guidance suggested.
“But it looks so weird,” I told him about the kite. “It’s just a box, Dad.”
“That’s the beauty of it!” he exclaimed, and he let out one of his big laughs, a roaring Santa Clause laugh that shook his whole body. He held the box high above his head, I at the other end of the string, and I ran across the grass, looking behind to see it climb high above the movie theater. The box soared for an hour as Dad stood behind me, explaining the principles of flight through the eyes of a B-52 bomber pilot.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Box kites became his obsession, and he engaged Mom and the family in his quest to build bigger kites capable of higher altitudes. Our next one stood six feet tall, made with wooden dowels and light fabric. Mom and my sister Nancy sewed to Dad’s specifications while the boys stayed in the garage, piecing together the frame with hot glue.
The glue gun seemed invented especially for Dad, who used it liberally for every project. “Lots glue!” he commanded to me and my brother David, hard at work to bring the box kite to life. “You can never have enough glue, boys. Lotsa glue!”
We took the kite – placed atop a Volkswagon convertible – to the spring kite flying contest held in the fields behind Louisiana State University in Shreveport. They had a category for largest kite, and Dad intended for us to win it. One of the entries was an enormous bat shaped contraption made with layers of newspaper and a wing span of at least twenty feet.
“Not aerodynamically sound,” Dad said, eyeing the competition. “Won’t fly. Can’t fly. Shoulda tried a box kite.”
Sure enough, the massive bat kite took one fast swoop upwards and then veered down again, demolishing itself. The contest rules stated that kites had to stay aloft for a full three minutes, and our box kite soared perfectly, winning the King family a sparkling trophy presented on the windy lawn of the college.
It made Dad hungry for more.
“Never worry about making a fool of yourself,” he would say, “if it means taking a risk, Mark.” He would recognize my adolescent need to simply fit in with everyone else and he would deny me of it, locking his eyes onto mine. “You gotta take the risk.”
Over the summer the six foot kite became ten feet, built with heavier fabric and stronger wood. We tried it out on a field on the edge of the Air Force base, and I remember Dad forgetting the gloves that protected him from the slick nylon string, and the kite fighting for higher altitude and the nylon going whizzzzz! across his hands, cutting deep into his palm. He looked at his hands with a shrug and then, predictably, laughed. He had lost his grip in the process, though, and the kite escaped to sights unseen.
We jumped in the car and chased it across the base, both of us with our heads craning out of the car and shouting visual sightings to one another, only to find its taught nylon cord snagged on a nursery school swing set. The box kite had dragged the set twenty feet from where, until recently, it had been embedded into the ground.
The air force police would soon arrive to inform us that our “craft” had been picked up on base radar and was a “menace to aviation.” Dad (or “Colonel King” as the uniformed men called him) sheepishly explained and then laughed with the cops as we carefully pulled our menacing craft, foot by foot, back down to earth.
The following year the Kings would risk it all, creating what would become the mother of all box kites. We built it in the driveway for a couple of weeks, using yards of nylon material and cord strong enough for a box kite approximately the size of a Winnebago. We transported it to the annual contest by securing it to a chartered flat bed truck, and the driver – after taking the monstrosity across the Jimmy Davis Bridge to the university – swore he could actually feel the truck lift a little as the kite fought to respond to invitations from mighty spring breezes.
The fabled hush fell over the crowd as the kite was driven onto the contest grounds. Three eight foot box kites – all larger than our original entry – were brought along, and the crowd stood incredulously as each of the three were launched into the air. Then we secured the cords of the three airborne kites to the top of the Mother Kite, and the crowd watched aghast as the King family coordinated their efforts, releasing thick rolls of nylon cord, until the massive kite lurched off the ground and up to stronger winds that would carry it back and forth above the riveted, gasping spectators.
For two minutes and twenty seconds.
Later, on the evening news, Dad would stand amid the wreckage of a violent descent, knee deep in plastic, wood, nylon cord and innumerable remnants of hot glue. It looked like the aftermath of a commuter plane tragedy.
“And how do you feel, Mr. King,” the reporter would ask my Dad, “about your creation not flying for very long. Are you disappointed?”
“Of course not!” Dad replied in the midst of a belly laugh already begun. “Didn’t you see it? It was a spectacular crash!”
Those days, and that glorious moment, are lost to time now, and so is my father. Not long after our kite flying adventures, our personas traded places. I embraced my sexuality and my misfit charms, while Dad struggled to understand a son who was turning out to be more different than he could have imagined. Worst of all, he was made to contend with a teenager who saw him as something abhorrent: typical.
We had many years, later, when our outlooks merged again and we reveled in his various projects and my work as an outspoken gay man. Ultimately, Dad raised exactly what he valued, a man who steps up and asks stupid questions and knows that to soar you must risk the occasional, spectacular crash.
On my best days I live happily as the man my father built, writing and living as an HIV positive queer for all to see and never afraid to take a risk. And on the worst of days, my mind’s eye conjures up a hearty laugh coming from nearby, maybe the garage, where something is being cobbled together that will solve absolutely everything.
Usually it’s a box kite, crafted from unlikely supplies and fatherly magic, that carries me far, far away.
joseph
OMG! What a beautiful commentary on your “Truly” Loving Dad and You as a ‘SON”..Makes Me think back to my Days with my DAD..All LOVE toYOU.!!!!
Atrius
Brilliant.
Mark
Thanks, y’all. I miss that crazy guy. But at least I know where I got it.
Blazipitous
This was awesome, though nothing ruins a good head more than red hair.
mada
@Mark: What a beautifully written and thoughtful piece. I’m pleased to read this on Queerty. He’d be proud of you. I just lost my father myself a few months ago, and this hit the nail on the head for me about how I feel about his zaniness. Thank you for writing this.
@Blazipitous: That is a bit uncalled for, though I’m sure the writer doesn’t care, but I’ll say this: His red hair makes a beautiful head and mind. If you can’t see that, I’m sure your head is terrible, and I do mean that in every way.
Ditamo
Nice story!!!!!
michael
@Mark: Thanks for the lovely story Mark. My father had four sons and not a lot of extra $$. Cheap paper kites were a big part of our childhood entertainment in the 1960s and we had a big open field across the street from our house perfect for flying them. We began with small triangular kites from the dime store (with added tails created from torn and knotted bedsheets). My father and I once made a “star” kite together out of balsa wood, brown paper bags from the grocery store and Elmer’s glue. We eventually did progress to (store bought) box kites. The epitome of our kite flying was when we could afford nylon string that didn’t break and a plastic reel to to protect our hands.
Jump ahead 50 years and I now enjoy hanging out at the gay beach near my home in Chicago. The boys there regularly fly kites of all shapes, sizes and colors. They are beautiful to watch and always remind me of my father and brothers.
Blazipitous
Meh! Who cares what and how you mean it, mada? I’m sweet … with a little bite 😉
Demarion
Man oh man oh man, did you ever have a great dad!
martinbakman
Love that picture: Dad and son (and that pipe!)
ScottOnEarth
Very sweet and your dad looked like a guy with character and charm to spare. I’d love to know the in-between….the ups and downs of your relationship and the path it took.
Chris
Great story; great memories. I hope that each of us — including the author — is making sure that we each leave someone with similar memories of their own.
jwtraveler
@Blazipitous: You are a truly revolting individual.
Clark35
This is a nice commentary/essay for Father’s day. Thanks for posting it. 🙂
Tracy Pope
@Mark: Wow. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing/posting this.
Dakotahgeo
Wow! Just… WOW!!! So happy for this personal story. I’m surprised Queerty allowed it. Mostly sensationalism not worth commenting on.
Jacob23
Your father seems like a good man, full of life, grounded in reality but with a sense of fun. You shouldn’t blame him for how you turned out. Take responsibility for your depravity; don’t lay it on him.
Yeah, I have seen your site and it is a cesspool. I stopped reading after the post where you advise gay and bi men to learn to accept being chronically diseased and not worry about getting infected repeatedly with syphilis. You’ve harmed yourself and others and rather than take responsibility for your actions and attempt to change, you put your warped mind to work trying to celebrate loveless sex and venereal disease. Your dad deserved a better son than he got. I hope he never saw your site.
Ruhlmann
My father drank a bit too much and could be mean but he always apologised and he was a hugger. There are six boys in my family. I was seven and was on my first moose hunt with my dad and my maternal Grandfather. It was our second day out and we hadn’t seen anything. We were in a position at the edge of a small kettle lake being quiet really early in the morning. Mt dad and granddad were whispering to each other and suddenly a couple of plonks in the water and there’s a big moose sniffing the air and then eating water cress.
My granddad quietly loads the rifle and passes it to my dad. He aims and my heart was pounding and I swear I could smell blood. I jumped up and screamed and then yelled “run away, run away” and my dad shot in the direction of Mars he was so startled. He quickly turned to me and I had never seen him so angry. I thought I was going to get a beating. My granddad actually picked me up and put me on the side of himself that put him between me and my dad.
I kept saying that I didn’t want to see the moose die but he didn’t say a word to me all day. Later that evening he asked me to come to the lake to wash the pans. He was quiet and I wasn’t saying anything still worried that I might get a paddling. Anyway after a few minutes he said “I never saw a moose run that fast” and I burst out laughing. Then he pushed me in the lake and he burst out laughing. When I came out of the water he hugged me soaking wet and kissed my forehead and said “I’ll never make a hunter out of you, you’re my sensitive boy”.
It was 7, it was 1963 and even then I know my dad knew and accepted that I was “sensitive”. A few years later, around 1968-9 in conversation at table I remember announcing that I was never going to get married. I wasn’t self aware yet but I knew I wouldn’t. My parents looked at each other and my dad looked me in the eyes and said “I know, some men just don’t get married”.
I never got asked to go hunting again and I never got married. Joyeuse fête des pères, papa.
Stache99
@jwtraveler: Add the Jacob23 troll to that list.
Stache99
@Jacob23: Maybe instead of just attacking people over and over for years just stop and ask yourself what have you done to help anyone? All you know how to do is be a toxic hateful troll. Says way more about you. You are seriously fucked up.
Jacob23
@Stache99: I think that’s a great idea. All of us should regularly do an inventory and ask how we are helping others. And we also should ask ourselves whether and how we are hurting others. On my last inventory, the total number of gay people whom I physically harmed, put at risk of harm, infected with venereal disease, and/or exploited for my sexual pleasure stood at zero. How about you?