There are Manuals for Those

An excess of facts leads to fiction, but an excess of photographs leads to facts. And I have plenty of old photographs.

It would have been May or June of 1979, the early summer, the humidity not yet enough to force them from their cramped apartment, not enough to keep them in the living room at night, facing the box fan, the only fan in the apartment, all night, every night, sleeping nude or in underwear, each curled up against an arm of the old wood-framed, flower-upholstered, hand-me-down couch. Love gave way to survival, as it so often does.

During the day, he studied and she worked two and three jobs, dead-end jobs at dead-end places in dead-end towns: Frankie’s Laundromat, some desk job, some other desk job. He studied deciduous teeth, molars, compaction, the complexities and severities of gingivitis, how to compose a business budget, how to buy life insurance, why to buy life insurance. He was practical. And busy. And she left each morning, came home each night, exhausted, but not too exhausted.

He had so much hair. A floppy 1970’s mop-on-top and a full beard, red and brown and brown some more. Her long locks lay braided down her back. Her complexion was soft and simple, but vibrant, eyes like pockets.

The pictures of the living room prove she, even then, vacuumed a checkerboard pattern, an outfield crisscross into the rug. Details, they say. Details.

They didn’t need a child yet. There was no money, only debt. There was no space, only one bedroom. But soon. A father and a mother. A son. The rhythms of their exhaustions matched one of those late spring days before the depths of summer’s humidity swept them from their bed where they could be together, and sometimes that’s all it takes, a mutual understanding that today is as good as someday.

The wreckage of misguided decisions comes only later. Hindsight and foresight. Ass and mouth. Your foot. Metaphors exist so fathers can calm mothers, so mothers can curse fathers, so sons can blame themselves.

He said he said, my son: the noise sons make following their fathers.

I answered to my son. Or my name. Or both, at the same time but never my name first.

I didn’t have just a father or just a dad. I had trips to Brookfield Zoo, the Shedd Aquarium, third-base seats at Wrigley, airshows, fireworks displays, circuses, carnivals, The Taste of Chicago. What I needed: help with my homework, dinner, clothes, a ride to and from soccer practice, someone to hug my mom, tell her everything would be okay. Everything would be okay, okay?

How to reconcile, for a ten-year-old, the responsibilities of a man trying his damnedest to raise a whole family only half of the time?

The dictionary: Father, from the Old English “fæder.” “Pater,” Indo-European. “An early form; a prototype.” A leading man.

Okay, I could work with that.

My father: “A man who raises a child.”

My father: “A male person whose sperm unites with an egg, resulting in the conception of a child.”

Me: “A male ancestor.”

My Father: used as a title of respect.

My Father: to acknowledge responsibility for.

My Father: a male who originates something.

My Father: to act as father to.

My Father: See also, mother; parents.

Creation. Origin. Found. See also. A male parent of an animal. Forefather. Any male acting in a paternal capacity. Misopaterism (though not really). Begetter. Daddy. Old man. Sire. Engender. Make. A mess.

Honour thy father.

The summer I discovered I had a body I also discovered I didn’t know what to do with it. I was ten. Fifth grade Sex Ed told me I had a penis, told me it made life, told me not to make life, but it didn’t tell me the holiness of pleasure.

The boy across the street would come over and we’d swim or trade baseball cards and then we’d be in my closet, on...