Dad.
I felt like the jaded lover, the son he gave up, the son he could never quite embrace, the son who wanted the father more than the father wanted the son.
MY EARLIEST SEXUAL EXPERIENCES WERE NOT JOYFUL . When I was twelve and still living in Ohio, some girls invited me to play truth or dare. We went to a barn with a haystack, the perfect setting. Little by little, we dared each other to undress. The Southern Comfort we were drinking out of a mason jar bolstered our courage. The game was going well when suddenly a big muscular guy, a high school senior, showed up and decided to fuck one of the girls in full view of all of us. The girl was willing but the party was ruined. None of us wanted to be there.
Turned out that the same dude rode the bus with me every day to school. One day he invited me to his house. This is a memory I suppressed until only a few years ago when, in rehab, it came flooding back. Therapy will do that to you.
The dude raped me.
It was quick, not pleasant. I was too scared to tell anyone.
“Tell anyone,” he warned, “and you’ll never have another friend in this school. I’ll ruin your fuckin’ reputation.”
What do you do with that fear? That pain? How do memories get suppressed, and where do they go to hide?
INNOCENCE VERSUS CORRUPTION .
Hope versus despair.
I had the hope that comes with being a kid with natural athletic ability. In baseball, I had only one pitch—a fastball—but hardly anyone could hit it. By the eighth grade, I was able to launch a football fifty yards. The summer before my freshman year, I practiced with the team every day and achieved my goal: I was tapped as starting quarterback.
I was haunted by a dream that, decades later, still recurs:
I’m in the huddle, call the play, get the snap, drop back to pass, survey the field, and see, thirty yards away, my wide receiver two steps ahead of his defender. I cock my arm, and, just when I’m ready to launch a rocket, the football slips out of my hand for no reason. A lineman recovers the fumble and the game is lost.
What everyone wanted for me
Despite some obvious fears, I was a good athlete. I had a certain wholesome outlook on life. Look at the posters in my room: the famous Farrah Fawcett bathing-suit pose, pictures of badass boxers like Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Thomas “Hitman” Hearns. I was the All-American Ohio boy with a far-off dream of playing for Notre Dame, just as Dad Dave had done.
I wanted the prestige and attention that came with being QB—not to mention the thrill that comes with being the field general. I thrived on competition.
When it came to music, I also had a California-Ohio hip-square split. My first LPs were The Captain and Tennille’s Greatest Hits and Elton John’s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy . I was unapologetic in my passion for Tennille’s version of “Love Will Keep Us Together,” one of Neil Sedaka’s best songs. In Ohio, my mother developed a love for John Denver’s music that, according to her former husband’s new wife, Martha, was a sign of squareness. As a member in good standing of the square Cleveland burbs, I joined the school choir. Riding in the back of my parents’ Cadillac, I listened to Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev, visualizing the animals depicted by the clarinet, oboe, horns, and bassoon.
I got religion.
I would wander over to Chagrin Falls Parks. The people who lived there, almost exclusively black, called it “The Park.” I liked that neighborhood and, in fact, in the sixth grade I had a crush on a beautiful black girl.
In my preteen years, I had developed a deep and abiding love of God, inspired by the ministry of Father Plato and Father Trevisin. Dave brought us into the Catholic fold. My mother had been Episcopalian but felt comforted by the progressive view of Christ afforded by these two gentle priests. It wasn’t about fire and brimstone, guilt or punishment. It was about a compassionate