Things that confused him about their relationship.

What it was.

What it meant to him.

When he started finding the boy’s door blocked, a dresser shoved in front of it, that’s when he knew the extent of the damage she’d done. The damage she’d done to their trust.

Paul stopped talking to him. And he’d had no choice but to take things into his own hands, to find out what his son was up to.

And he found things. A few joints. Pills. A boom box and someone’s class ring, both obviously stolen. Girls sneaking in the window in the middle of the night. Girls he’d seen, and heard. Stood in the hall outside the boy’s room and heard them.

But it wasn’t enough. None of it was enough to make him feel like he was still inside his son’s life.

He just had to keep looking. Keep looking until he found the secret that would open his son back up to him.

Hector wakes up, reaches for his turntable and hits play.

The tone arm jerks and drops heavily onto the album that’s cued up and waiting to start his day. The speakers hiss and crack and then explode into “Memories of Tomorrow.”

The sound yanks him from bed and he pogos around the room, flailing his arms and bouncing off the walls.

Suicidal Tendencies got it right.

The Pistols were a great start. Dead Kennedys and Black Flag carried him for awhile. He thought it might be the Bad Brains that did it for him. But it was Suicidal Tendencies that took it all the way. He heard about them after taking the bus to Hayward and riding the BART train into San Francisco for a Kennedys gig at Mabuhay Garden. He had to wait another month for the album to come out. It was worth it. It’s perfect and he’s been listening to nothing else ever since.