Fuck him indeed. My father is also years-absent and I feel much the same way about him. He pops up in my thoughts from time to time, but mostly in the same way as my appendix does (bear with me here)... it was removed when I was 11 and isn't what you'd call a major part of my life, but every so often I happen to notice the scar, or be talking to someone who is for some reason talking about their own appendix, and I'm all "oh yeah," and remember having the stomachache and going to hospital and recovering afterwards. But in a sort of *shrug*, meh, way, rather than a traumatic, wailing, "WHY?!?" way. Families need fathers, sure, but only the fathers who are prepared to work at being fathers - men who, as you say, contributed a few cc of genetic material and precious little else, can just bugger off.