Fairness is not a thing in the autocratic world of The Flozberks

The Istanbul Bunch and The Flozberk Way rest on a bedrock of disparity to extents that have often rocketed into the ludicrous. Disparities are inherent in human life; it's usually the magnitude of them that most matters.

Considering this issue, it became challenging to decide where in the bloody hell to start. Chronologically? No, let's go with a more free-flow type thing:

Pore Dad
Dad spent a lot of time rubbing sickly Mom's back and feet. Often entire evenings would be spent on the sofa, him rubbing Mom's feet.

Never did I see Mom touch Dad in a way to deliver significant lasting pleasure. I've no idea what Dad groaning in pleasure - like during a massage - would sound like. The one avenue via which Mom touched Dad beyond the cursory was to squeeze blackheads outta his back. Mom, as evidenced by her focus and breathing, got a cathartic kick out of hunting down clogged pores.

Same with tweezerin' ticks offa Playboy, that nasty-ass, house-ruining poodle. For whatever reason, she clearly got off on it.

And, of course, Mom spent endless hours caressing her dogs and playing ball with them from her perpetual perch on the sofa. Yet Dad, who took such good care of her, got essentially zero.

DISPARITY: HUGE. Thousands of hours vs. sumptin' real close to zero.

TIB vs TAB (Temporal)
As harped on here (and for damn good reason), Dad's lovely family, The Arkansas Bunch, was banished from our lives while we drowned in The Istanbul Bunch lunatics. Dad was usually punished for seeing his family, regardless of whether he went to Arkansas or they came here.

Dad waited hand and foot on Mom's alleged mother, Mutchie, toward the end of her life. He saw his own mother, a delightful woman, perhaps once in the last years of her life.

DISPARITY: COLOSSAL. Tens of thousands, minimum, of encounters vs. a handful.

TIB vs TAB (Financial)
Between John, Neila, Mutchie, and Aydin, directly and indirectly, The Istanbul Bunch proved very, very costly people to know. Dad's people? I'm not aware of a penny going their way. But, unlike the ever-needy Istanbullers, The Arkansas Bunch didn't need help and therefore never asked for it.

DISPARITY: ASTRONOMICAL. A seven-digit fortune vs. sumptin' damn close to nothin'.

Rewind
Here, Mom, a "double agent" in this topic, gets to be on the oppressed side. The Sultan of Sodomy Aydin ruthlessly dominated her:

He had to be on the go all the time and total control over me. It was fun but I was disappearing, he never took NO for anything.

DISPARITY: DISGUSTING. What a creep. Fuck that guy.

Save the Drama fo' Yo' Trauma
The awe-inspiring avalanche of calamities from The Istanbul Bunch is the stuff legends are made of. I'm not aware of a single instance of any antics from The Arkansas Bunch disturbing our lives.

DISPARITY: STUNNING. Near-constant and often coming in layers vs. zero.

The Drunken Sailor
Dad spent very little on himself. He never went out with friends (he wasn't allowed any) and even the notion of him sitting down alone for a decent restaurant lunch was farfetched - he went home and made himself cotto salami sammiches or leftovers. Even the notion of his wife making him lunch was a pipe dream.

When he did flip his lid in the late 90s and dare to buy himself a little v-hull fishing boat and 8hp motor that totaled $1500 at most, Mom repeatedly loudly bitched that he spent money "like a drunken sailor." At that time, middle-aged John was soaking them for four digits per WEEK and Mom downplayed it.

I still have the motor, a great workhorse Nissan, and have used it extensively in several states. John was banished from the family about 20 years ago.

DISPARITY: A CRYIN' SHAME. Hard-working and frugal man degraded while a habitually overspending bum and con man was coddled and had his pockets repeatedly stuffed.

Sharper than a Flozberk's Tongue
I've seen Neila shout at Reagan or speak disrespectfully to him many, many times. Never have I seen Reagan do same to Neila. Never. Not once. Ever. Period.

Now I shall copy this entire segment, paste it below, add a "2" to the header, replace "Neila" with "Mom" and "Reagan" with "Dad," and add something to the last line before deleting this sentence and the following one. Ain't technology grand?

DISPARITY: TOTAL. One with carte blanche to rage at will, the other must be a submissive doormat or pay the price.

Sharper than a Flozberk's Tongue 2
I've seen Mom shout at Dad or speak disrespectfully to him many, many times. Never have I seen Dad do same to Mom. Never. Not once. Ever. Period.

DISPARITY: TOTAL. One with carte blanche to rage at will, the other must be a submissive doormat or pay the price. FlozWorld is where male dignity goes to curl up under the porch and die.

Wrathful Condemnation
John, middle-aged, emptied the bizarre joint savings account Mom opened for him of over $30,000 to buy a woman a ring:

"She took the ring and left him, he was so crushed. I didn't have the heart to say anything."

Mom called me a disgusting thing unworthy of any sympathy when I called her out on her absurd excuses as I tried to get them to start feeding sickly, suffering Tasha better food. After Mom died, I finally implemented the better food plan and Tasha's health greatly improved almost immediately.

DISPARITY: FUCKING INSANE. I mean, what in the hell else can ya call this? Perhaps the worst one on the list. Perhaps.

More Golden Psycho...and His "Twin"...and Co.
John insisted on having things his way right down to bizarre little things. The seizure and exercise of disproportionate power was often his aim. Same with Neila. Same with Mom. Same with Aydin.

DISPARITY: BRUTAL. Lasting and life-shaping.

Where'd All That Shit Come From?
From the Parade of Kooksters, that's where! Zsa Zsa, Mutchie, and Aydin vastly overvalued one "Twin" while disregarding, for starters, the other. So, Mom woefully overcompensated with the other and largely lost the one. They were foundationally unbalanced.

Dad, a fair-but-submissive man who entered the picture when Mom was 27, John 10, and Neila 6, was unable to set them right alongside Mom's iron rule.

DISPARITY: BRUTAL. Lasting and life-shaping.

Medically Flabbergasting
Despite being Dad's son and badly disabled since age 12 with a time bomb in my mangled knee, I had no medical or dental care or coverage for 20 years while both of Aydin's children John and Neila (and her whole household) had their costs covered for long stretches and by Dad's sweat.

Fortunately, I was assembled in a pretty decent genetic factory and learned enough about self-care and field medicine to keep it together.

DISPARITY: SICK. Thank heavens this one didn't cost me my life.

Watch It!
Mom had total control of the two backbones of the American household - the purse strings and TV remote.

Not once do I recall Dad watching what he wanted while Mom was in the den. If he wanted to watch the end of a Razorbacks game or whatnot, he was banished to the little kitchen TV. Mom detested football and wouldn't even meet the guy in the middle of the road for an occasional hour in that dance of give-and-take we're supposed to do with our loved ones.

When John was there on relevant holidays, though, she turned football on for him.

The amount of time Dad, an old-school noble redneck, spent watching Yanni concerts, soap operas, and antiquated Euros bearing puffy shirts and powdered skin randy and dandy about on PBS was quite robust. We sometimes joked that it was what made him go blind.

DISPARITY: TOTAL. More of the same.

Ya Gots the Right to Remain Silent, Dumbass
In the late 80s I took my girlfriend of about 30 months, a nice gal who never had a cross word with my parents, to get a driver license after being expired a while. Waiting, I went outside to have a smoke, returned, and she was being read her rights. Unpaid speeding ticket and failure to appear from before I knew her back home in east Texas. I had no idea and she hoped they wouldn't check.

The state trooper said they'd hold her for two hours awaiting payment, then she'd be booked and perhaps moved 3 hours SE of us. I hauled ass "home," needing a $220 loan for 4 days until she got paid. There was always a few thousand dollars in the safe for, one would think, exactly that.

Mom balked. I, a stupid college kid, had a fit. Mom, a middle-aged kook, had a fit of her own. We argued for impossibly long over such a simple matter, then, defeated, I started to storm out, livid, swearing I was gonna rob liquor stores (I'd never do such a thing) until I had the two hunnr'd n' twenny bones. Dad intervened then, bless him. I made it back there just as they were haulin' her to the clink.

We paid it back as promised. Less than a month later, John swung by for $400 and heard nary a grunt of protest. When I remarked on that, Mom incredulously asked if my girlfriend was worth as much as John (actually, she was, but that's a different chapter) and I could only reply that she wasn't (at least, not to Mom), but was worth a 4-day $220 loan to keep a simple crisis from getting much worse.

DISPARITY: NOT COOL. Why not just help out and be happy ya did so? Thanks, Dad.

Ho, Ho, Whoa!
Lisa said she first noticed that I was regarded disparately on her first or second Xmas with us, 2001-2. John unwrapped a Fawlty Towers box set - perhaps the funniest TV show ever - and a check. He never even opened the box set and I knew he wouldn't, for British comedy was way over his head. John's son Tony got a real nice Starter Dallas Cowboys coat and a check.

I dug into my bag and there they were - the old man golf shirt and the old man boner sweatpants, color - dark gray. Every birthday, every Xmas. I still have a mountain of them, kept as a curiosity, almost a monument. Really, there's enough meat on that bone for its own essay and a photo or two. Seriously.

There was always, though, a card with a check for a couple hundred bucks so I could get me something that didn't make me feel sad, baffled, and disregarded, so...cool. But, still.

DISPARITY: LESSER. Heck, it's a lot better than the dog food or health care things, I gotta say. But, still.

:(
Mom sprang for a $12,000 extravaganza for John (Aydin's son), his girlfriend (that mucked that $30K ring from a few screens up), Tony (John's son), and his girlfriend from the head shop to celebrate the year 2000 in style befitting their...something-or-other. Tony said t'was massively bad ass.

When we were in desperate need for a short term $4200 loan so Lisa could have surgery and get back on her feet (and we could $ettle the case), she pretty much told me to go fuck myself, resulting in an 8 year trip through the gates of hell that almost killed us both and cost about a half million dollars net loss.

The $12K/2000 Bahamas Bunch were all nonfactors at the end of Mom and Dad's lives. Lisa was a quite large factor.

She made both Mom and Dad their last meals.

DISPARITY: It's hard not to cry just writing this.

Rolls in the Hay
When The Istanbul Bunch, led by Mom, wanted to go absolutely haywire advancing their perceived interests, it was a free-for-all, with both John and Neila taking massive rolls in the hay on my parents' dime. Nobody asked Dad or me what we thought about it and Dad was appallingly drugged through much of it.

When it came time for The Arkansas Bunch to set things right for Dad and me, it brought pushback from what was left of The Istanbul Bunch that further obliterated the already-trashed end of Dad's life.

DISPARITY: Quantitatively and qualitatively enormous.

Zowie!
Witness accounts often differ, but there's a limit. If one witness says the robber was a tall blonde guy and the victim says it was a tall blonde guy, but another witness bitterly insists it was a penguin, which is rarely tall or blonde, what in the bleedin' hell is afoot? Huh???

Tiffany insisted these here things:

I want to tell you to take care of grandpa, because I know you and Lisa are incapable of caring for another human being (just ask her mother). I know this “care” would not last a week. As a human being, it would be unconscionable of me to punish my grandfather with your inept care.

But, Dad was emphatic, documented multiple times, that Lisa and I were and had been for years doing an excellent job of caring for him...AND Flozberk-neglected TASHA, who The Princess conveniently left out.

Then, she actually puffed her chest out and actually wrote this masterwork humdinger:

And for your information, there has never been an appropriate time for “half-assdness,” in regards of taking care of my grandfather...you have never given even come close to half-assdness in your care for him.

Mercy! These are the most half-assed people I've ever known. Good lord. I mean, just...zowie, whatever that even means. Dang!

We made sure Dad knew we were on a mission to get every detail right and to sound off hard if we could improve in any way. We essentially BEGGED our Flozberk detractors for critique and heard not a peep. We pleaded for cooperation and good faith scrutiny, yet got almost none.

DISPARITY: Polar. Again, tall blonde guy...penguin. Whassup?

The Biggie
We close with my character. Duh Princess wrote that I was of such poor character that it's astonishing and that I was the most dangerous type of narcissist.

Dad stated in front of an entire law firm that I had not done a single thing to make him seriously question my judgement or integrity over the last 20 years.

My relationships are stable, strong, and enduring. The enemy-laden Flozzsters be our only enemies on the planet. We, and those we spend time with, all score low on scales of pathological narcissism and don't get along very well with those who score high, like, uh, The Flozberks!

As part of an ongoing mission to keep evolving (and spurred some by Tiffany's claims), I even asked those I know to please freely suggest anything I can do to be a better man, a better friend, a better student, a better teacher.

Hell, I asked Tiffany herself! No answer, and to me, the question remains open, her input welcome.

I've never seen Lisa do a bad thing and her tolerance for such is very, very low. Her character is absolutely beyond reproach.

Everyone outside of tiny Flozworld disagrees with their stance on me. Everyone. The evidence is not par-ticker-lurly flatterin' to them. Their history is dismal. Their silence is deafening.

DISPARITY: Polar. Tall. Blonde. Guy. Versus. Penguin. Whass. Up?

While I don't dig my former comrades insisting I'm a scumbag, for me the worst part is for poor Tiffany and her family. I got free. It's too late for Reagan, his ticket is punched and the less said about Ryan, the better, but these kids had a shot at breaking the bad part of the chain.

The way her mind goes off the rails, still remaining in fine Flozberk form four years later, is most troubling. I can only hope I get the worst of it, for there are others around her with much bigger stakes in her connection with rational, good faith conflict resolution, and the roots of her raging imbalances can be clearly traced back a good 80 years.

While it's a helluva bummer, it's also fascinating.

I hope I wasn't playing the victim card too hard here. LOL.

Return to Appendices

Immense Disparities