He sipped his whiskey and gazed blankly across the glittering city from his rooftop patio. He steered his thoughts to a lifetime ago when his consciousness was free of politics, hatred, or worldly concerns any deeper than Saturday morning cartoons or action figures. With hindsight, he knew attitudes were improving, and progress was taking shape in some circles of the country. Until AIDS destroyed it. Like a sand castle under a tsunami, enlightenment gave way to fear and resentment. His childhood home was in no danger of becoming one of those pockets of reason or empathy, but he was too young to be aware of it.

He recalled having lunch with his father one summer day after they’d spent the morning working one of the pickup trucks in the yard. It was probably around 1980. The television was on, and Phil Donahue had on his talk show about a half-dozen drag queens. Donahue’s studio audience was composed mainly of homemakers, some with their husbands, politely fuming at and dissecting in their minds the dazzlingly beautiful spectacle before them. Again, hindsight dictated this was not an earnest attempt to “understand the minds” of such folks as much as it was grist for the daytime ratings mill.

In any case, it worked magnificently. His father spewed death threats at the television, like, “I’d love to take a lead pipe upside your goddamn head” or “They oughta round all you faggoty-ass pussies up and shoot every damn one of you.” But he couldn’t change the channel or turn off the set. The tone of his father’s tirade frightened him, but not enough to send him running from the room. He wasn’t yelling at him, after all. His father made his opinions heard whenever the TV or the newspapers held the issue up to him.

The thumping of a nearby helicopter startled him back to the rooftop. He drained his glass and stared at the funeral program in his other hand. On its cover was a rare portrait from the 70s of his father in a suit and tie. Many eruptions had occurred since that summer in 1980, most involving things that needed to be feared rather than comprehended. He often wondered if his father took on guilt for something, dodged an inconvenient truth daily.

After all, he kept his secrets in later years. Secrets he feared might get him a lead pipe upside the head.