o one wants to lay the guy who wouldn’t lay himself.”

Between the end of my freshman year of high school and the beginning of my junior year, I grew ten inches. Suddenly I was six feet tall. “You’re starting to look like a man, sort of,” my dad told me on my sixteenth birthday, as I bit into a filet mignon he ordered for me at Ruth’s Chris Steak House.

The downside of such a quick growth spurt was that I wasn’t really in control of my body. I moved around like I was being puppe-teered by someone with cerebral palsy. The good news was: Despite barely being able to walk ten feet without tripping over something, I could throw a baseball pretty hard. I was moved up to the varsity baseball team as a pitcher and led the team in wins and strikeouts.

That year, my school’s cheerleading coach decided that in a show of school spirit, she was going to force her squad to attend all of the baseball games. Going to a high school baseball game is a lot like going to a student film festival; you’re there because you feel obliged to someone involved in it, and after two repetitive, mind-numbing hours of “action,” you congratulate that person and try to leave as quickly as possible. Needless to say, the cheerleaders mostly passed the time doing their homework and watching the grass grow on the sidelines. But my dad, who came to most of my games, thought otherwise.

“I’ve seen the way they look at you,” he said as he drove me home after a game.

I tried to explain to him that they didn’t look at me any way at all; that if they looked at anything during a game it was at their watches in hopes it was almost over.

“Bullshit,” he said.

Fortunately, he left it at that. But not for long.

On Sundays, my dad would usually wake up early and head down to Winchell’s Donut House, where he’d buy a dozen donuts for my family’s breakfast, including six chocolate-glazed twists specifically for me. But on one Sunday in the spring of 1997, I woke up to discover there wasn’t a box of donuts sitting on the dining room table next to the kitchen.

“Get dressed, let’s go get some donuts,” he said as I groggily padded into the dining room.

I tossed on a pair of basketball shorts and a T-shirt, and we headed out into my dad’s silver Oldsmobile. When I tried to turn the car radio on and he quickly shut it off, I knew he wanted to talk to me about something.

Then we cruised right past Winchell’s.

“I thought we were getting donuts,” I said.

“Nah, we’re going to have a real breakfast,” he replied as he pulled into the parking lot at our local Denny’s.

“This is Denny’s,” I said.

“Well, aren’t you the fucking Queen of England.”

We walked in, and my dad signaled to the hostess he’d like a table for two. A waitress led us to the far corner of the restaurant, where a small, square table was nestled right up against a larger rectangular table occupied by six hungover-looking college kids, including two guys who were wearing T-shirts commemorating a “solid rush class” for their San Diego State fraternity. The tables were basically attached, save for a leaf that had been folded under to provide some semblance of privacy. We sat down, and my dad told the waitress he wanted a couple glasses of orange juice for us. She left, and he turned his attention to me.

“I’m a man, I like having sex,” he said.

The group of college kids next to us froze, then burst into muffled laughter. In a growing panic, I realized he was about to lay whatever his version of a sex talk was on me here, now, in Denny’s.

“No—no, Dad. What are you talking about? Maybe we shouldn’t eat here. I think we should go somewhere else. I don’t think we should eat here. Let’s go—let’s go.”

“What in the hell are you talking about? We just sat down here. Denny’s ain’t the best food, but you eat garbage like this shit all the time,” he said right as the waitress dropped off two glasses of orange juice.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that the college kids were now focused on my dad and me like they had paid money to be there. I half-expected one of them to pull out a giant bucket of popcorn. Oblivious to my growing discomfort, my dad continued, telling me that in his day, he’d “had a lot of fun” and slept with, apparently, a significant number of women.

“I’m not that good-looking. Never was. But I didn’t give a shit. You’re not a bad-looking kid. Better-looking than I was. But nobody’s paying either of us to take our picture, right?”

I nodded in agreement, and right as I did I heard one of the college kids say “wow,” prompting his group of pals to burst into laughter again.

Then, my dad told me that the only way to meet women is to “act like you been there before. Don’t worry about them telling you they don’t like you. It’s gonna happen. You can’t give a fuck. Otherwise, guys like you and me will never get laid.”

Our waitress was ten feet away and quickly approaching to take our order. I was crawling out of my skin. I felt like all of Denny’s—all of San Diego—was listening, watching, and laughing, and I just wanted it to end. So I did something I rarely do to my dad: I cut him off.

“Dad, can you please get to the point you’re trying to make? I don’t want to talk about this the whole breakfast with all these people around us,” I said, as I looked to my left and right, indicating that people were listening and that it was embarrassing for me.

He paused and looked around the restaurant, and then right at the college kids next to us, who quickly glanced away.

“You give a shit what all these people think, huh? Even though you never met a goddamned one of them,” he said.

He nodded, grabbed the newspaper next to him, and began reading, which was almost more awkward, since now I had nothing to do but stare at the flip side ofhis paper, alone with my humiliation. We ordered our food and sat in silence until the waitress returned with my dad’s scrambled eggs and my pancakes.

“Dad. What was the point you were trying to make?” I said, finally, in a hushed voice.

“Son, you’re always telling me why women don’t like you. No one wants to lay the guy who wouldn’t lay himself.”

“That’s all you were gonna say?” I asked.

“No. But if you give a shit about what a bunch of people in Denny’s think about you, then the rest of what I was gonna say doesn’t even matter.”

I told him to stop reading his newspaper, and he put it on the greasy table and looked me in the eye.

“So is that why you took me here? Some kind of test to see if I’d get embarrassed?”

“Son, do I look like the type with a master fucking plan? I just wanted to talk to you and eat some eggs. Let me finish doing one of them.”

On Yard Work

“What are you doing with that rake?…No, that is not raking…. What? Different styles of raking? No, there’s one style, and then there’s bullshit. Guess which one you’re doing.”

On Being One with the Wilderness

“I’m not sure you can call that roughing it, son…. Well, for one, there was a fucking minivan parked forty feet from your sleeping bags.”

On Getting Rejected by the First Girl I Asked to Prom

“Sorry to hear that. Hey, have you seen my fanny pack?…No, I care about what you said, I told you I was sorry to hear it. Jesus, I can’t be sorry and wonder where my fanny pack is at the same fucking time?”

On My Attempts to Participate in Urban Culture

“What the fuck are you doing on the floor writhing around?…I’m not sure what break dancing is, but I sincerely hope it’s not what you’re doing.”

On Selling His Beloved 1967 Two-Door Mercury Cougar

“This is what happens when you have a family. You sacrifice. [Pause] You sacrifice a lot. [Long pause] It’s gonna be in your best interest to stay away from me for the next couple days.”

On the SATs

“Remember, it’s just a test. If you fuck up, it doesn’t mean you’re a fuckup. That said, try not to fuck this up. It’s pretty important.”

On Picking the Right College

“Don’t pick some place just because you think it’ll be easy to get laid there…. No, no, that’s a very good reason to pick a lot of things, just not this.”

On Proper Etiquette for Borrowing His Car

“You borrowed the car, and now it smells like shit. I don’t care if you smell like shit, that’s your business. But when you shit up my car, then that’s my business. Take it somewhere and un-shit that smell.”

On Curfew

“I don’t give a shit what time you get home, just don’t wake me up. That’s your curfew: not waking me up.”

On Using Hair Gel for the First Time

“It looks fine, you just smell weird. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s like rubbing alcohol and—I don’t know—shit, I guess.”