Father is a manly man who values the manly man. The straight man.

Father is the kind of man who has large hands. Large muscles. Large appetites. Appetites for beautiful women. He enjoys being at the gym in short shorts and low cut V-necks getting large. Pumping iron. Getting his pump. He enjoys popping his large muscles in his little V-neck to fuel his large appetite.

In the 70’s his appetite was discos. In the 80’s, Miami clubs. In the 90’s, affairs and prenuptials. In the 2000’s, calls from pay phones in Tijuana. “Looker this bitch is. Absolute looker. Keep it hangin sport,” he’d say. In the 2010’s, my mother and him back again. Father expecting me to be him. Me to be a manly man.

The kind of manly man that pumps iron and pumps his chest out when he’s taking a woman out. The kind of manly man that takes women out.

Father says the money lift is the incline. He says it’s the one that gets the chest pumped. That gets the v-necks sloping. He says it’s the one that gets the women. He says in his prime he was repping 315. I rep 170 on a good day. And on a good day, father says to me, “That’s some pussy shit.” On bad days, “Some faggot shit.”

Two words father puts below himself. Below weak. Otherwise he would say weak. Lesser. But he says what he says.

When I tell the man in my bed about this. About father. He asks why I call him father and I say, I call him father because father sounds better than dad. And I’m sure father thought straight sounded better than gay. Sounded better than me.