Every time Zini comes for a non-custodial visit,
more of his father's friends are dead:
Chris, Terry, Greg, Ron, John
on and on, gone. Too many for father,
much less son, to count. Some were less
adventurous, more careful men,
but any one could have been him—almost
enough for Zini to believe in a grace
that his father left behind back East.

Zini's father teaches him to cover
public toilet seats with two layers
of paper, to wash his hands, and grab
the door-handle with a towel. This is the 1980s,
and no one knows much about plagues. Ten years later
Zini's father is king of AIDS Walk Chicago,
the man with the clipboard, the drink, the donation,
the microphone, the man who makes The Event,
but it's staying alive that matters.

In the Field Museum, Zini's father tries to point out
Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe and Soup Cans;
but Zini gets lost chasing Cows and Silver Linings.
Zini learns that winter how to ruin a New Year’s
Party: by yelling out to the whole room
that the duck is tough and can’t be cut.
That night in the bedroom where his father's roommate
keeps his clothes, Zini discovers manhood firsthand,
sneaking Joe Orton’s Diaries from his father's bookshelf.

His father confides that he loved
Zini's mother, but that no one makes glue
strong enough to stick them together.
Zini doesn't understand why his mother and stepfather
look at him from the sides of their eyes
when he tells them about his father's trips
to Fire Island. They look away into the sideviews,
then stay silent for the rest of car-ride
home from the airport.

Zini wants to ask Am I like him, or am I
the only one who feels like this? If he is like me,
will I become my father?
For his fourteenth birthday his father sends Zini
condoms for the school trip. Rainbow condoms.
“French girls are a sure thing, son.”
Flaccid, embarrassed, Zini wonders why he can’t manage
to use even one. When Zini’s mother finds them unopened
in his suitcase she knows whom they were from.

His father pours Zini's first martini. Bombay.
It won’t be Zini's last.
He gives Zini Thai food, calamari, octopus, safe
sex tips, always with a side of “You don’t have to
like it, but you have to try it.”
Zini comes out to his father's latest roommate
while his father feigns sleep in the rented backseat.
The next morning, his father gives him
another condom, clear this time.

When his father comes to graduation,
Zini asks him to “tone things down.”
Zini still isn’t sure whether his being gay
is his father's fault, or his own.
His father comes to football games, admitting
years later that it's as much for the boys
in their tight pants as for Zini. Zini spends decades
letting go of normal, but he just wants not to be
his father’s kind of queer.

Zini's father confesses again that he's worried
about aging out of attractiveness.
Zini and his hairline have both reached the point
where they can relate. Knowing neither man
will ever pass for conventional, Zini realizes more
things taken from his father, things his own:
arguments—irrefutable, of course—
a cunning look about the eyes, a set of the jaw,
a whole body laugh, and a love
of Victor/Victoria and Lust in the Dust.