Tom Junod

And so then my father goes back to the United States, he goes back to Brooklyn and tries to sing and can't and doesn't.

He chokes, as he told me.

When he went to do a tryout for Arthur Godfrey.

So he chokes.

And so what does he do?

He becomes, I think I call him at the end of the book, a bedroom gangster.

But he's also a bedroom celebrity.

And that's his legitimate celebrity is bedding and wooing probably hundreds of women.

Has been realized.

And then you have a son, me, who is watching this and believes in his father's celebrity, but follows that celebrity to the place where it really exists, which is in regard to sex.

And that is forbidden.

That is secret.

That is never to be spoken of.

And so, hence, that's why I wanted to talk to you about moral injury.

And the I mean, the only measure of my father's wrongdoing was my mom's tears.

She can see it and she knows it, but she doesn't articulate it.

Well, you know, well, once again, I mean, my, you know, my mom, you know, she would, she would go into the, her bedroom, you know, in the afternoon and just, I think that she was taking pills.

I know that she was taking, she used to have, you know, migraines and I, and I don't know whether to put my, you know, quote marks around those migraines or not, but she would take the pills and then just go out, you know, go into the bedroom and pass out for three hours.

Right.

What am I to make of that?