I don't even like thinking about it.

So, one night I'm with my crazy aunt, drinking beer on her back patio - she's a lightweight, and thus was probably already three sheets to the wind - and I think I was ranting about my parents, and somehow their divorce came up. Suddenly she gasps and says "Oh! You don't know?? That's not what happened!"

Basically, my dad had nude pictures of his past girlfriends, and my mom thought it was tacky. He wanted pictures of her, and she didn't want to do it. So I guess he was drugging her drinks (open soda cans) with sleeping pills of some sort, and then taking pictures of her when she passed out. She found the pictures, obviously felt violated and betrayed, and rightly skeeved out, and she loaded four year old me up in the car and we escaped. That is, after he disabled her car, and the garage door, and blocked her in with his truck. My grandmother (his mom) came to the rescue (while he was out) and she and my mother managed to get the car out and my gran pushed my mother's car to a nearby shop with her Benz.

Growing up, my mother had told me they divorced because she caught him walking out of a hotel with another woman. To be fair, I wouldn't doubt it probably happened.

I adored my dad growing up, and he was great with me - unconditionally supportive and nurturing. So it's hard to resolve the image I had of him - on a pedestal really - and the creepy version after hearing that story as an adult. It's terrible, and while my dad has his short-comings, I never, ever thought he was capable of that level of .. god, I don't even know the word for it.

I would never mention it to my mother - she's a very classy, respectable woman, and I think she would feel ashamed and embarrassed about me knowing (even though my father is the one who should be ashamed), and probably rather angry at my aunt.