When I was a kid I used to sneak out to my dad's garage and play his records while he was at work. He had an old Arc Madison that he kept in perfect condition. He treated it with the utmost care, and wiped off the discs with each use. If he knew I was going in there without his permission he would probably break my fingers again. He never asked me to listen with him. I wish he did.

I used to sit there on his spotted, pocked carpet when he was gone and go through his collection by myself. My favorite was Heroes on the Dock, the rock opera by Electricity. The cover featured a pencil drawing of a naked girl sprawled on a school bus, a limp cigarette hanging out of her mouth, eyes peering into the camera with a look I've never seen on a living woman. It was the first naked woman I'd laid eyes on. We lived in the country at the end of a driveway so I could play these things as loud as I wanted, and I did.

Ten years later I found myself jammed into the backseat of Jamie's Mustang, smashed between two guys I'd met a few minutes before, so stoned I could see my name in the smoke. It was late and the party was wrong. Too many strangers. Too many glad-handers, meaningless promises and vague plans to make great things. I hated it. There were naked girls in the pool but they never invited me in. I left with Jamie and three friends of his I didn't know. He took us through the hills. There was something at the top we had to see. The guy to my left exhaled with a flourish of smoke, soaking our minds with a strobe-light version of the winding roads that Jamie was taking entirely too slowly. Jamie was drunk. "I just don't get her, man," muttered the other stranger to his fogged window, staring out at the gridded city of blue and orange below us and the sad potential it held.

Moira divorced me shortly after she discovered my odometer was higher than she thought it should be. She accused me of seeing Veronica, which was true. Veronica was younger and involved in the music business, or as she called it, the business of music, which had always in my mind glimmered like an elusive dragon just beyond grasp. I met her through Graham. I don't know. I don't want to talk about it.

I can't hold back tears as I relive what I did to Daniel earlier. He'll have another angry bruise tomorrow right where I'd slammed my angry fist. Why did I do that? I'd become my dad, and I saw through his eyes as he knocked me to the ground because he discovered a scratched record. Did he ever cry too afterwards? I never knew, just like Daniel will never know. I have my own record collection now. I wish Daniel listened to them with me.