I think, that as a father, I have a right to know. He’s living under my roof after all. Besides, it’s such a strange thing–he never used to do anything like this. He was a good student all through high school, though not great, and was working part time downtown at a restaurant while we worked on some credits at a local community college. Then, seemingly out of the blue, he starts acting…different.

It was little things at first, things that I only notice now in hindsight. The faint scent of cigars I’d catch on the air when I came home, the window of his room always open. On occasion, when I was switching a load of our laundry, I’d notice that all of the briefs he’d worn were slowly disappearing, and were being replaced by jockstraps. He cut his nice hair down to the scalp and started growing out a beard. Nothing on its own was enough to raise an alarm, but he was becoming so distant–we’d always had a solid relationship. I’d always told me he could tell me anything, anything that was on his mind, and I wouldn’t judge him for it, and he’d told me plenty. Now, though, he hardly ever spoke at all to me, about anything. Not about school or work, not about his friends, nothing at all. He was…afraid. I knew something was up–he was in some kind of trouble, but he wasn’t letting me help.

Things got worse. He was disappearing all night long, even on school nights, and I wouldn’t see him until the next afternoon, when he would come home looking haggard and exhausted, smelling of booze and smoke and who knew what else. We started getting into fights, and he told me he wanted to move out, that he was sick and tired of me policing his every action, and trying to control my life. I just want what’s best for him! So this time, I’m going to follow him, and see what’s going on with him myself.

I know he usually takes the tram into town, and the station he usually gets off at, and so I decide to stay late at the office, and then I camp out and wait for him. It takes a while for him to arrive–he doesn’t get off the tram until nearly 10–and I almost don’t recognize him in the long coat he has on. He just looks so…different, and I don’t know when I lost my little boy. Then, when he took out the cigar and lit it on the sidewalk…I was so disgusted, I didn’t know if I wanted to know more than that…but I followed him anyway. The cigar made it easier, to follow him, both by the smell, and by the thin line of smoke rising into the night air. I was so focused on him, that I didn’t really pay much attention to where we were walking until I happened to catch my foot on a crack and stumbled.

It was…not the nicest neighborhood. Seedy bars and a couple of condemned buildings, mostly…but it was the people around us that unnerved me more than anything else. The usual nightlife crowds had all dispersed at this point, and the people who remained in the sidewalks…well, they weren’t the sort of company I had raised my son to keep, I can tell you that much. Watching him, I noticed that he’d pause on occasion, and have a short conversation with some of the men we’d pass, usually older men, some of them smoking as well, but I kept too far back to catch what they were discussing. How did my son know any of these people in the first place? How much of this had I missed, when he was living right under my nose?

It wasn’t too much further that he reached his destination–a bar I had never heard of, called Pigtown. The name didn’t leave much to the imagination all the same, nor did the various breeds of men hanging around outside of the bar, wearing all manner of leather…rubber…or, well, nothing much at all. I’d known my son was gay–I wasn’t kidding when I said earlier that we’d had some rough conversations–but I’d imagined that to be a more…normal thing than it was. You were just substituting a girl for a boy, right? He went inside, and I stayed outside, and wondered what, exactly, I was planning on doing next.

I didn’t approve; but did it matter? He was a grown man, he could do whatever he wanted, couldn’t he? But had I really even answered my question? I still didn’t know what my son was doing here. Well, my imagination could sketch a…broad picture, but I also didn’t really…know much about what these sorts of places were. I admit it, I wanted to confront him about this, not only about…this, whatever he was doing…but about him hiding it from me. But not here, not in public. I could do it later, at home, when we could be a little more…level headed. I turned to head back to the office, get my car and go home–

***

“Hey, where you goin’, man? Don’t think I’ve seen you around here before.”

“Oh, I’m not…I’m just on my way home.”

“Home? You came all the way here, and now you’re just going to walk away? Whatever you’re looking for, man, it’s in there, trust me. Nothing provides like Pigtown. No judgement, no limits.”

“No, look, I don’t think you understand…I’m not…like you. I’m not gay.”

“Who said anything about gay?”

“I mean, you’re…well…”

“Yeah, come on, I think you need an introduction. Rod would never forgive me if he let someone so cute get this close, and didn’t even bring him in for a round of drinks.”

“Get your arm off of me–”

“Don’t worry man, we’ll get you what you need–Pigtown provides, even if ya don’t even know what you need.”