Finding my father

My clothes felt like a cold, damp extension of my body, as I lay panting on the floor. Blood, water, sweat, I wasnt sure what it was. At this moment, I was just glad to be alive. As I attempted to pickaxe myself up off the rough asphalt, I felt a warm liquid well up in the depths of my throat, as I retched onto the ground. Oddly, this wasnt how I ordinarily felt at 11am on a Thursday morning.My name is Alex Watson. Alex was after my father, a man who I heard a great deal about, only when never met. My mother was only a college girl when she met my father. He was dead before I was born. When I asked my mother about it, she got angry, or said she was tired, anything to parry my questions. In the end, I just had to make for on with my life. I moved to New York, into an apartment block which encapsulated the bleak misery of city life. You eventually canvas to block out the sirens, gunshots and screaming.About a year ago, I got an urge to discover who my father was, beyond the facad e of distorted facts my mother opinionated to interrupt to me. For some reason, I needed to crawl in. I needed to greet the truth, and seeing as nobody was going to promise me, I decided to look for myself. The tax turned out to be the proverbial needle in the haystack. The problem with my father was, he liked to keep a low profile. So more so that, until I was sixteen, I had no idea what he did for a living. Anything I did find out about him was on a need to know basis. Discovering my father wasnt going to be as easy as I first imagined.Home was not exactly an awe-inspiring. My roommates where cockroaches, and a stray cat who I had named Takeshi. These more than minor inconveniences allowed me some pleasures, such drowning my sorrows in The Manhattan, a bar so close to my apartment that I could wander out if it drunk and retrovert into my bedor at least the floor. This was my escape, my salvation from the nine to five drudgery of my life. I was never good at working in boxe s.I worked as a retail technician for a major electrical appliance company. I answered phone calls from concourse whose children had put jam sandwiches in their VCRs, or people phoning me asking why the cup holder on their new computer was broken. I was supposed to respond to them in a cheerful, knowledgeable manner, but about of the time I had to concentrate on not screaming and slamming the phone down. However, their phone calls did break the monotony of staring at a prefabricated cardboard wall, rules and codes of postulate staring at me in the face. I felt trapped. I felt like I needed to escape, a release from my life.Its probably normal to, at some point or other, question your existence on this planet. Why are you here? Whats so special about you? In my case, I took a long hard look at myself, and found nothing. Nada. Jack shit. I could find no real reason for me to be on this earth. And to be exclusively honest, this didnt surprise me. I had always been decidedly average . My only sense of purpose was finding the truth about my father, but to do that I needed money, and to get money I needed to work. Unfortunately, as Ive already stated, my job was like a nine to five lecture on the art of watching key dry.What I needed was a miracle.What I got was a blessing in disguise.Sir, you cant stay here, its public endangerment. I cant maintain I ever heard these words, my drunk demeanour, as well the cacophony of the halted cars horns, prevented them from reaching my ears as I wandered down the middle of a road. I tripped over my own feet, and landed back first. sustain owf I warned, Im armsed. I swung my whiskey bottle wildly, until it flung off and hit the floor. Crap I murmured before passing out.Two hours later, conscious and sober, when I was informed of the events, I cant say I was surprised. My excuse? I was bored. However, when I told this to the police, they were less than impressed. I was expecting them to throw me into one of their first clas s, luxurious cells for the night, and maybe, if Im luck, beaten to a pulp for motto I supported the wrong football team. But if Ive learnt anything, its that lifes a bitch, and you never get what you want. Simply a clip round one ear and a Dont do that again in the other. Jesus, my mother gave me better telling off than that when I was sevenSlightly disheartened at the state of the judicial and truth enforcement services, I made my way towards the door, and the unbearable natural light of the afternoon. As I did this, I glanced over at the desk. She was there. The woman who arrested me last night, when I decided to take a walk on the wrong side of the roadfiguratively and literally. Suddenly, I felt something I hadnt expected. I felt a wo(e) of guilt. It was a chanceing I hadnt felt in a long time, not since before I started destroying my mind with drink. I felt guilty for what I had done, I felt like I needed to apologise. I crept over to the desk, unsure of what to say, but su re of what to do.Excuse me miss. ErI just..erwanted to say thaterIm sorry about last night.Normally Im a little more articulate than that, but the effects of last nights binge hadnt quite have on off.Thats ok. She said, as her face broke into a smile. It was at this point I noticed something that had escaped me last night, (possibly because my eyesight was in a less than unblemished state). This woman, smiling at me from behind the desk, was beautiful, not in a catwalk super model harming-of-way, which had never appealed to me, but in a regular, every day kind of way. Her smile was kind and gentle, and her deep brown eyes sparkled in the hazy mid-day sun. She was stunning in a subtle way. I was falling for her, and I could feel it. Her smile broke as she spoke again, Normally, I get a nasty sneer off people, and thats off the nice ones. But I could tell you were different, even when I first saw you. Her face broke into a smile again, and I just hoped I wasnt staring at her. I don t knowI just knew you where different. I returned the smile, the first real smile I had had in months. Thank you. Hopefully, Ill see you around.She smiled at me, Hopefully not under the same circumstances, but we can live in hopes otherwise. As I walked out of the door, the painful brightness of the midday sun couldnt dampen my mood.I was no walking(prenominal) to finding my father, but maybe a step closer to finding myself.