Page 59 of Rough

“Are you an honest man, or are you a liar?” he asked.

I clenched my teeth at the thought of him even questioning my honesty.

“I’m honest.”

“Is your word good?”

“You know it is,” I insisted. “Good as fuckin’ gold.”

“So, I’ve raised a man that someone can count on?”

My heart swelled a little. “God damned right.”

“If you say it, it’s so. A man can count on you, can’t he? If you give your word, there’s nothing to worry about, right?”

I nodded. “Yep.”

He lifted the cup of coffee to his nose, inhaled a deep breath, and then took a drink. “If you sit there and be honest with yourself, and I mean completely honest, do you feel like a good man – an honest man – when you think of those girls you’ve been with? Did you tell each of them that you were going to fuck ‘em and then disappear, or did you bullshit any of them just to get in their pants? Think about that for a minute, and when you’re ready to answer, don’t. I want you to think for another minute about how it’s okay to lie to aa, and then claim you’re an honest man. Because if you’ll lie, you ain’t nothing short of a fuckin’ liar.”

I stared down at the floor for a long time and thought about what he asked. I didn’t feel like a good man, or an honest man. At least not at that moment. I’d always claimed to be honest, and, in fact, had built a reputation for being so. As I sat and mentally ran through the list of the women I’d been with – and considered the circumstances surrounding each one – I didn’t get very far before I gave up.

I sighed. It wasn’t easy to admit. My face fell. “I don’t feel very honest.”

“You saying that because you feel that way, or because you think it’s what I want to hear?”

“Well, put the way you put it, it made me think. And, fuck, I don’t know, Pop. I feel like it wasn’t right. I mean not all of it. Kind of bad, really.”

“Kind of bad? Hell, it’s nothing short of insane. You know how many girls I’ve been with?”

I didn’t, but I doubted it was many.

“I don’t know.”

“Care to guess?”

I looked at him. “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Five.”

He shook his head. “One. Your mother.”

“Seriously?”

“Dead serious. And, I’ll tell you why. When we reached a point that we made love, I knew. It was that simple. I just knew. I knew I didn’t want to be with anyone else, and I also knew I didn’t want anyone – other than your mother – to have something I felt was so special. You know what that special thing was?”

I felt an odd sense of pride for my father, and for my mother. I grinned. “What’s that?”

“Me,” he said. “To think another woman could even claim to have been with me seemed wrong. Your mother was special to me, and I wanted her to feel every bit as special as I thought she was. So, I gave her my love. No other woman can claim to have had that. Do you know how many people live on this earth?”

I had no idea. “I uhhm. No.”

“7.4 billion, right now. So, your mother has something that 7 billion, three hundred ninety-nine million, nine-hundred ninety-nine thousand, and nine-hundred ninety-nine others don’t. My love.”

I filled with warmth thinking about his genuine love for my mother, and then I felt like a complete shit for acting the way I had acted toward women. Being with fifty different women was impossible to promote as being honest, kind, or caring.

“You made your point,” I said.

“No, I haven’t,” he said. “Not yet.”

“There comes a point in time that all boys become men. You might be thirty, or forty, or even fifty. It has nothing to do with age, or with experience. It has to do with being honorable. Trustworthy. All the things you and that fuckin’ Navarro talk about when you have your little meetings with your cronies. You spout those words from your mouth like you invented ‘em, and then you go and treat women like they were put on this earth to poke your dick in. Don’t get me wrong, there ain’t a god damned thing wrong with having sex with a woman. A woman, not all women. What you’ve done is nothing short of selfish. You’ve done it for no other reason than your own satisfaction. That is the textbook definition of selfish, and I did not raise you to be that kind of man.”