The Last Haircut

Because I thought being gay was disgusting, and if I was gay, then I was disgusting. Because I thought I would go to hell, because religion sucked me over by telling me my feelings were sinful. Because I was broken, because I couldn't look at your sweet face and say sorry, Daddy can't live with you anymore, because he wants to have sex with men. Because I thought your mother would kill her self. I lied for so long that I didn't know how to stop. I created an entire world,

and how could I stop that from spending? That's William Dameron reading from The Lie, a memoir of two marriages, cat fishing and coming out. Bill's story is about a secret he did his best to keep from himself from most of his life. But as we all know, secrets don't like to sit quietly in corners. They don't appreciate being stuffed down in the silence. They grow until they

can be contained no longer. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves. I like to begin by asking you to describe the landscape of your childhood, where you grew up, the family you grew up in, what it was like for you. I was born in nine in Greensboro, North Carolina. It was very a southern town, very provincial. I think social Moray's and religion played very big in our family.

My mother was Catholic, and um, she stayed at home. My father was an attorney. I had three brothers. I was a second born, so it was a family that was very much a part of the social fabric. My mother was a part of the junior league. We were all into sports. I was not into basketball, but I was a swimmer, so, um, it was all sort of about being that good citizen. I think tell me a bit about your like, your inner life, as a child, this boy growing up in Greensboro. I was the second point,

as I said, um, three years behind my older brother. Uh. And I always looked up to him. And he was the basketball star. He was, um, the kid who did so well and and and that was sort of my childhood is trying to look up to my older brother. And and I specifically sort of remember him sitting on the corner with him and he said, you know, all I want in life is two cars a house in the suburbs, two point three kids. I knew I was different, Um, but I knew the dream or the desires and thoughts

that I had couldn't be the same. I couldn't give voice to what those were. So I sort of adopted his dream is my dream. I went to a Catholic school, Um, we all did. We attended church every Sunday. Was very important. I remember once our car ran out of gas on the way to church, and instead of stopping to get gasps, we walked to the rest of the way to church. So that was kind of an important part of our

lives well. And so interesting. The idea of being quote unquote normal, being average, being like everybody else, that being um, that being a goal, that being something to aspire to. It was it was a goal to be like all the other kids. And it's funny when you're a kid, you know how the other kids are, but also you don't really know what their secret thoughts and desires are.

So as a child, you don't really know that until you learn it, or you say something out of character and then quickly something said, oh, that's not what I'm supposed to say or be like. I remember playing with some neighborhood kids. The rest of them were playing football in the backyard, and there were two other boys that had a football, and we were being kind of silly and and walking to football down the driveway and sort

of dancing behind it. And I remember one of the mothers saying, y'all are acting like a bunch of girls. That kind of stuff stays with you, doesn't it. It does. It's so interesting to just generally the nature of childhood, because no kid wants to be different, and yet every kid, every child has an inner life. Um, but the idea of sharing that inner life is too scary. It doesn't happen,

and so there's that feeling of um. Nobody else feels the way I do, which is of course where literature comes in, because then when we read, we discover that there are these characters who feel just like we do and have in our lives that are so similar to ours. But there's such an isolating feeling. I think that is universal in childhood, but more so when there's something within you where you really do feel like you're different from the large your group that's trying to be quote unquote

normal average. Tell me a little bit about your mother. I can see looking back now that she really wanted the best for all of us. She wanted us to excel at everything that we did, whether that was jobs or sports um or for me, I played the piano as well. So it was really important to her that we presented our best image um to our family and friends and society, and there was sort of one image

to portray that that was the best. In the sixties and seventies, there was no internet, so there was no sort of way of finding different people or connecting to other people. You only knew what was happening in the town that you were in, in that small radius, and my mother was very much that way. Tell me a bit about your dad. My father was an attorney UM, and he was a litigator, so I think he used up all his words during the day in court. When he came home, he was a man of very few words. Uh.

He came home, dinner was on the table. We did have one sort of fun thing when he came home. Sometimes he would have chewing gum in his pocket. We would all sort of punch each other and run to the door to be the first one there to grab the chewing gum out of his pocket. But then we would sit down at the table. My mother would have dinner ready. He would drink down scotch very quickly. He would eat his food in a minute or two. And so there were very few really words spoken between us.

And when I look back, I sort of see that he was. He was missing a lot of the time. Even before he left us, he was sort of not there. Did you feel like you knew him? No, I don't think I ever really knew exactly who he was. Looking back, I know now who he is. He had a difficult childhood as well. He was an only child and his mother was an alcoholic um so he was sent to live with his grandparents in Fletcher, North Carolina for a

while while his mother recovered. So as an adult, I understand that as a kid, I didn't was in this image conscious childhood in this traditional Southern family. There was also the matter of the body, as in Bill's body. I think our bodies are for many of us, a source of embarrassment or shame. There's just something so messy, so exposed, so physical about our bodies. This shame came into play in Bill's early life. I was a swimmer for most of my childhood. My brothers and I were

all painfully skinny. We just could not seem to gain weight. And as as a boy, you don't want to be skinny, and also too, it's sort of portrayed this weakness on the outside that I felt the inside. And I remember swimming at the City swim Me getting out, my mother's sitting in the stands, and I go up and sit next to her on the bleachers, and I remember her comment was, you're so damn skinny. You need to press

weights like those other boys. Um so, so there was no there wasn't really a comment about, wow, you did a great job, you know, swimming. It cemented that feeling that there was something wrong with me, not only inside, but on the outside. You internalized that I did, and then you, and you carried it with you. I did carry it with me. I think when you have something you consider ugly on the inside, that's all you can see on the outside. When I looked in the mirror,

I just saw all of the flaws. What Bill considered ugly on the inside was the awareness, not necessarily conscious knowledge, but something else, something thrumming deep in his interior that he wasn't attracted to girls. He felt something for boys, something he knew he wasn't supposed to feel. I was in college for two years at a piano performance major. I had an opportunity to have a summer job with my aunt, who lived in Denver, Colorado. She knew a

couple who owned the Lost gold Mine. It was a gold mine where you could take tours through and I would live with her. I remember my mother sitting me down in the living room. She was a nurse, so she was wearing her starched nursing whites, and she sat down and said, okay, Bill, I want you to know that your aunt is and she lowered her voice a lesbian because you couldn't say that out loud. It was almost like it was a curse word. And she said to me, I want you to promise that you won't

let Sheila change you. I is that okay? And I'm still not quite certain why she let me live with her. If she was so afraid, she must have had some sense of of who her son was. But she still let me live with her for that summer. So two questions. One is you you had a consciousness that you were gay at that point? Yeah? Did you have language for it? I didn't have language for it. You're exactly right. I I could not say in my head that I'm gay, and I never did. It just wasn't how I identified

and it wasn't an option. I knew it wasn't an option, but I knew I had these thoughts and desires. So I lived with my aunt for the summer. The Lost gold Mine was owned by a couple of gay guys, and it was a great summer. She eventually took me to my first gay bar in Central City, of all places, which is such a conservative passion. So we went into the bar. I met a friend of hers don who was twenty three. I was nineteen. I had a few drinks.

We walked out to the parking lot, and it was the first time I kissed a man, and it was the most amazing feeling. It was right and it was wrong, and I knew that could never happen again. So now you're twenty and you're back from your summer. Yes, And as a matter of fact, that summer too, I remember I um got a gym membership in Denver, and I went to the gym as well, so I was a little more fleshed out too, And so I was actually feeling good about myself for sort of the first time.

And it felt good to have, you know, two or three months of just being myself. But I came back to North Carolina and I knew I had to tell my mother. I knew I had to let her know that, you know, the things that she said and the things that I heard about gay people were wrong. I still was not strong enough to say, Mom, I'm gay. What I said was, you know, Mom, the love that Sheila has for her girlfriend and the love that these other people have, it's the same. And she was immediately incensed

and said, no, it's not that's disgusting. It's it's not were her views informed primarily by her Catholicism, or by community and culture, or all of the above, all of the above. Yeah, I have actually spoke, you know, talked to her, interrogated her a bit, since it was taboo, That's what she told me. It was taboo, and I didn't want you to experience that pain. You know, the world would never alter, so I had to. So, now you're back from your summer and you're feeling pretty good

about yourself. You've you've been able to be yourself for three home months. What happens next? I was thrown right back into this was so, I was thrown right back into society in North Carolina. When you escape hundred miles away from home, you fill this freedom. But when you come act, it's sort of like the humidity of southern summer. It's oppressive and you start to feel it and there's your church again, and there's all the people you know. And here was my mother saying this is wrong, this

is disgusting. You're never going to be happy. And it wasn't just a one time thing. It was sort of Okay, let's talk about this. As I came home from school every day, do you want to talk to the priest because the priest can help you. Do you want to be a woman to My mother asked me, um, and I just it was immediate. It was like, okay, this, this is wrong, this is not good. Also, at the same time, the AIDS epidemic had become national. It was

hidden for so long. I remember my aunt telling me don't do poppers because they thought that's what caused it. There was, you know, nobody really knew. But suddenly was on the news and men were wasting away and here was my body dysmorphia coming again. Okay, this is gay. People are getting skinny and wasting away. And and so it was the combination of all that guilt and shame and being back that sort of drove me back into the closet. We're going to take a quick break. We'll

be back in a moment. So Bill returned to the norm, you know, wife, two point three kids, white picket fence. In the South. In those days, people married young and got on with it. His brother, his friends, they were all getting married. He meets Catherine, the friend of a friend, and he's drawn to her. She seems like a kindred spirit to him. First time I met Catherine, there was something I saw in her eyes. It was this this

look vulnerability. I can remember it so specifically, looking at it and seeing something there that I connected with, and I think it was the same thing I saw in my eyes. She was adopted, and I've heard that adopted kids often find each other because there's something about them that connects them. I wasn't adopted, but it was feeling like it didn't have parents, and so I think, you know, we really connected on that level. It was our our shared pain that we we didn't externalize, but you know,

we had it inside and so we connected. And how long after that did you marry and begin a family? We dated for a year. We dated for a while. Um I remember introducing her to my brother and he sort of said, she seems a little immature, And it mattered to me so much what my older brother thought. Um, So we stopped dating for a while. But then my older brother got married and and Catherine, you know, I called her up and said would you come with me to his wedding and she was like, well, you didn't

call me, so I thought we were off. And when I saw her again, um, well, she dolled up, right, she was dogged up. You know. It was a nineteen eighties, and she had the big hair and the shoulder pads, and she had this tiny waist. And I remember all the men they are sort of looking at her, like, wow, she's beautiful. And I felt proud, like this is great. And and she always had an amazing sense of humor,

and I think I love that about her too. So I think at weddings, that's what happens, right you you're with someone and you see all of this happiness and joy, and you want to capture that and have that for yourself. And was this the wedding of your older brother who was admired and emulated and wanted to be like So Bill and Catherine start to plan their wedding. The details

kind of take over the way wedding details. So often do you talk about flower arrangements and place cards and whether to serve chicken or duck breast, rather than actually talking about what you're doing, which is committing to another person for life. Bill had all kinds of doubts, but he didn't articulate them, not to Catherine, not even to himself. He was going to make the best of it. A

beautiful wedding would lead to a beautiful future. I remember the night before my wedding, we had a rehearsal dinner, and I remember thinking I should feel something different, I should feel this immense joy and wonder and love, and I'm not feeling it. But it's too late to change it. Everybody's been invited, all the gifts are here, and I

can't go back. Yeah, you're reminding me of I mean, I had a brief, ill fated marriage when I was in my twenties, and I remember walking down the aisle on the arm of my nineteenth century literature professor who was standing in from my dad, who was no longer living, and just thinking, this is a mistake. This is a mistake. This is a mistake. Um. Yeah, it's not what you're

supposed to be feeling on your wedding day. Yeah. Katherine and Bill begin their lives together, first in Tampa, Florida, where he had a job working at a bank, but Catherine was terribly homesick, so they packs up their stuff and moved back to Greensboro, North Carolina. After a year, Bill found another job and that's where their children were born. Bill throws himself into his life as a family man.

He stuffs any feelings he has for men even further down into the recesses of his psyche, it just isn't going to happen. He loves being a dad to his young daughters. He's a really hands on father, unlike his own father, who not only was distant and absent, but was known to be a full landerer. So this is yet another reason why Bill is never going to cheat on Catherine, not with anyone, so that part of his life, the sexual romantic part, just ceases to exist for him.

The family moves a number of times as his daughters go from babies to little kids to teenagers, and he works his way up with the corporate ladder in the banking business. I had moved from North Carolina to Virginia for a job. That company declared bankruptcy and I found a job in the northeast. My kids were teenagers. Then we made the decision to move for my career. So suddenly I was out of the conservative state of North Carolina and Virginia and in the very liberal bastion of

New England. Same sex marriage had just been approved the year we moved, and there was this cognitive dissonance inside of me. So there was the combination of the move. The kids were teenagers and not relying on me anymore. And I met this guy who sort of affect and me in a way I had never experienced before. He was an ideal, He was funny, he was generous, he was kind a lot of men in the South, they're kind of guarded, you know, and they don't really express

their emotions and their feelings. This was the first guy that did that, and it really affected me. Bill's feelings for this man can't be expressed. It's way too dangerous. So instead he finds another outlet for those feelings. The skinny kid whose mom told him he really ought a lift weights. That kid asserts himself big time. So I

began to feel those feelings and it became stronger. Because of all of that, I was still feeling like that skinny, ugly kid, and I wanted to sort of shore up the outside to help shore up what was crumbling inside. So I began going to the gym working out. It was an obsession. It was a way to control something in my life when everything else was spinning out of control. And I remember the first I'm sort of clicking on the by for steroids on the internet and it was

like all my life, I've been the good boy. I'm going to do something now that is just for me. I'm going to control this thing. And how did that play out? With the steroids and within your I mean, you're you're living this family life. You're in this house, You've you've got Katherine, You've got your daughters, and you have this other life, this secret life. It's sort of like a double secret life. It's a secret on top of a secret. It is. I remember getting them in

the mail and Katherine and the girls were sleeping. It was a Saturday morning. So I got up and I had planned it all out. I had printed out how to do a steroid cycle stack. I did all my research like the Internet was the greatest teacher. Looking back, of course, now that's so foolish, but you know, I felt like, oh, I verified it with several different sources on the Internet. It was foolish. I got this in the mail. I had no idea who the supplier was,

except it was someone in Eastern Europe. I actually, in order to get the steroids, my father had died and he left me in I ra a and I needed to cash a check every year, and I used that money to buy the steroids, and I wired it to the supplier. I went down to the bathroom, closed the door, and I remember looking in the mirror, thinking, all right, am I really going to do this? Is this what I'm gonna do? And I filled up the syringe, pulled down my pants, stuck it in, pushed the plunger in,

and then pulled the needle out. And I sat there waiting, thinking how fast is this going to work? Is this going to make me strong right away? Is it going to cause a heart attack? Of course, none of that happened, um, But over the weeks it became more of an obsession. And then I began to see the scale move from one sixty one seventy, and I became really hungry, finishing

my plate, finishing the girl's plates. It's interesting because I was spiraling down, but somehow Catherine was becoming stronger in a way. I'm not sure if she saw, Okay, something's terribly wrong with her husband, um, but she had struggled for a while, you know, in finding her birth family and and all the results of that. But she started to sort of question me, like what's going on? Like you're a lot bigger and like, you're going to the gym all the time, is you tell me if something

was wrong? And of course I was like, no, no, I'm just stressed at work and this is just my way of just beating distress. Within your marriage to Catherine, during those years and the years prior, was there a kind of accommodation in terms of intimacy. Catherine Um struggled for a while with i'll call it sadness, just just to call it that. Um she was adopted, she found

her birth family, who was wonderful. It was a wonderful birth family, and as it turned out, her birth mother married her birth father and they had another child, so she was given up so that she could have a two parent family. Her adopted father died when she was five, so she didn't have that. But here was this family that gave her up, who did have that, and a sister and that, and she struggled with that. She always wanted a family that would sort of choose her and

not regret their decision. So she struggled a long time. And so intimacy in the beginning, it was we were very intimate. As the years progressed, it became less and less frequent and I would say, oh, this is what all married couples do, this is what happens to all married couples. And because she was struggling with some of this sadness too, she was less frequently interested in it. So I think that was sort of the accommodation. But there was a certainly times where she would say, why

don't you ever kiss me? Why don't you kiss me the way we did when we dated? You know, I shouldn't be the one who's initiating it all the time. This is what she said. I would listen to that and say, Okay, I've got to make a note to make sure that I do initiate it. And I do that. But I'm sure in her mind it was always playing behind it that there's something wrong, and is that thing

that's wrong me? And so I think she began to think there was something wrong with her, which was extremely painful for me because I knew what was happening, and I was causing her to feel less desirable. And you loved her. I did love her. That love comes through

so strongly in Bill's memoir. His bond with Catherine may not have been romantic or sexual, but it was love, So it would be a painful thing to know you're causing the person you love pain, or that she's blaming herself for something that's got nothing to do with her. For so many years of our marriage, she always worked at home, so I was always sort of the breadwinner

and the caretaker. Even when the kids were born. Um, Katherine had a C section with both of them, so I would get up with the kids in the middle of the night. So I was always the one to sort of take care of things. And I sort of prided myself and that I love doing that, and and I love taking care of Catherine as well, but I wasn't taking care of her completely. So this period of time where your body is changing, there is a moment

where Catherine finds the steroids. Yeah, the way that that happened is I would I She was beginning to doubt, of course, because no man goes from hundred and fifty pounds pounds and suddenly as acne on his back. There was a package that came in the mail well after Christmas, Um, and I had told her, you know, I might be getting stuff in the mail and it might be a Christmas gifts. Don't open it clever. She did she she

saw this package. It was from Moldova and um I she told me, well, their writing was sort of so interesting and intricate, and when I opened it up, the vial of steroids was wrapped in this newspaper that was very intricately wrapped, and so she thought, oh, it's a gift. You know. The girls were with her and she's like, should we open it. My daughters were with her and they opened it, and unfortunately it was all of them that discovered sort of this vial of amber fluid at

the same time. So when I came home that night, she actually called me at work and said, all right, you need to come home. Now. We're going to pause for a moment. Bill comes home, his wife and his girls are all sitting at the kitchen counter, very solemn, just sitting there staring at him. Catherine opens up her hand and in her palm is the vial of steroids. At first, Bill is just plain angry she opened his mail, violated his privacy. He knows this is the wrong response,

but he just can't help it. His daughter, Claire says, I think I know where the rest of his stashes. She's noticed that Bill has always been protective of his work back, he doesn't let it out of his sight. She grabs his bag, pulls out a brown paper bag filled with syringes, and Catherine Catherine confiscates it all. It must have been a terrible feeling on top of a terrible feeling, because those steroids are the only way that Bill is managing to control his shame, guilt, and desires.

So how long after this does she confront you and straight out ask you if you're gay? It took a couple of months after that actually before she confronted me. That's so interesting because I think we only ask what we're ready to know, and it would seem so completely clear once that discovery of the steroids were made, plus everything else that had come to for that that was the case. But it seems like she couldn't take in more than she could handle until she was able to

ask the next logical question. Right, She had to be prepared if she asked that question for what the answer was, and that answer might destroy everything she always knew. So I think it was a series of steps to discovering what the true nature of the secret was. We were driving to Walmart to get some supplies for the girls for school, and I could see she was very quiet and she was mulling something over and she said, very quickly, okay, just pull over, pull over, parked the car. I got

to ask you this or I never will. And I knew in I had what she was going to ask me, but I didn't know what my answer would be until we parked there, and I owed her the truth. When you love someone, you can't lie to them. You've got to stand in the truth. And even though I knew it would destroy everything I built, because everything was built on that lie everything, I owed her the truth. And what was your response to Catherine when she asked you if you were gay? I don't want to be. And

it was exactly what I was thinking. And that was also the truth of your entire life, which is you didn't want to be exactly I had tried so hard not to be. So after telling Catherine, there was this immediate sense of relief. Oh my god, I've finally told somebody, and the person I've told is my wife. In some ways it felt really right, and in some ways it felt really wrong. Catherine had been with Bill all those years. She deserved to be the one who knew the truth

to begin with. For a while, the two of them had a renewed connection because they both knew a secret no one else knew. They clung to each other. They wondered, where do we go from here? Do we stay together? Because we got the kids, the house, the job. Each night, as they laid in bed, they talked it through. Eventually they came to the conclusion that they both deserved to be happy and they needed to tell the kids. It

wasn't fair to lie to them. Their girls were at this point fourteen and sixteen, Bill and Catherine call a family meeting on a weekend afternoon. Okay, girls, I want you to know something. I'm the same person today that I was yesterday, but I want you to know this about me. I'm gay. It was the thing he never wanted to say to them, to anyone. Well, that makes sense, one of them says, are you getting a divorce? The other asks, we're talking about it? Your parents respond, does

this mean we'll have to move again? So many questions and the sound of a house so carefully constructed breaking apart. You wrote a really beautiful modern love column in The New York Times about the last time that Catherine cuts your hair. She had always cut your hair throughout your entire decades long marriage. Was it two sixty four haircuts? Two and sixty four haircuts? And it's this beautiful piece

about her giving you the last haircut. You know it's going to be the last haircut, and actually you asked her to just shave your head, and she shaves your head, and she's crying as she's shaving your head. It's really powerful. So after after we decided to get a divorce and I came out to the children, I was sort of

so racked with shame and guilt. Then Catherine didn't have a support system in the Northeast, and she felt like she just had to take the girls back to Virginia, where we had lived for nine years, where they would have a support system. So she had moved back, and I helped them buy a house and I set up the house, and I would go back every weekend, using all these miles to spend time with them, to set

up the house, to get things ready. And finally, after a while, Catherine had had enough, like we can't keep pretending. You can't keep coming back here every weekend and pretending that we're a married couple. It's too hard on me. I've got to move on um. And she had always cut my hair. Nobody else had cut my hair. I don't know why I was so particular about it, but she had done it all of those times. And I remember just getting the briefcase because we wouldn't even say anything.

If I got the briefcase that had the haircutting equipment in it. She okay, it's time for a hair cut. So I got it. She puts the cape on me and she's cutting my hair, and that's when she's saying, you can't stay here again. And so she asked me, who's going to cut your hair? After all this time, it was our most in a way, our most intimate act because she would have her hands on my head and in my hair. And so I thought, well, I don't know who's going to cut my hair, so I

just want you to shave it all off. And so she did. And when she saw me, she saw me the person with no hair shaved off, and it was a different man. And so for her that was shocking, and she knew she was never going to cut it again. And here was this man who's no longer her husband. And so for me, that is just sort of the heart of the book and why I published it in modern Love, because we did have this love, in this intimacy, and it was expressed through two hundred and sixty four haircuts.

And if she's cut my hair all these years, I'm gonna shave it and nobody else is going to cut it. Is a way to start new. So, speaking of starting new, talk about your life today. Life today is really good. After all of that. I had a few tragic encounters with men, of course, because after forty some years, dating men for the first time was a whole new experience.

But then I met another father named Paul, who has three children, and I've written him about him in my book, and my brother told me, you make Paul too perfect, Like, well, he is perfect. We're married, we have five kids between us, three of them still live with us there in their twenties. He has a great relationship with his ex wife because he was married to a woman before, and his ex wife is married and has another child. And my ex wife now is engaged to somebody. Um he has the

same name as me. We talked on the phone a week ago and she asked if Paul and I would come to her wedding, So we're all in a really great place. It took this bomb to explode, to sort of blow things apart so that we could come back together in a new configuration, which was in truth instead of lies, and in real love instead of this sort of faking. Yet, so what happens when shame goes away? When a secret is no longer sitting in any corner or stuffed under any rug? What does it feel like

to walk through life? Or I don't want to put words in your mouth? Is that the case that you walk through life now without that feeling of something wrong being on the inside? You're exactly right, it is. It's gone away. You have an energy you never thought you would have before. You don't have to hide pronouns, you don't have to hide you know, when you're in the closet, it's not just a part of you, it's all of you. And when you step out of that, you can suddenly

see things so clearly. And I always wanted to write, but I couldn't write because my words weren't authentic. Now I had this sudden creativity and this energy, and I'm writing and reaching out to people who were in the same situation and helping them, And it is night and day. It is night and day when you get rid of a secret. And that's I think the way to see it.

It was dark before and now it's light. I asked Bill to me a pass from his memoir, the Lie that to me perfectly encapsulates the beauty and the pathos of his story and the way ultimately that love wins. Oh and when it comes to love, there's one more thing. After our interview, Bill wrote to me to make sure I understood that his mother, the same mother who once berated him and shamed him for being gay, is his

fiercest and most loving supporter today. So there's that in the richness, the fullness, the amazing span of a life he never could have imagined. If this were a film playing out in the camera, pand you would see a family of four standing silently by the front door, with no sense of whether they were coming or going. Pulling further back, a set of upset kitchen chair is lying on their backs, and then drifting above the house, and then old branches of leafless trees hovering over the roof.

We're chattering squirrels, anst and mocked. A barking dog just behind this house, where other similar homes, where warm yellow lights began to illuminate windows, and the headlights of cars cast yellow triangles in the dark driveways. Behind the doors of these homes, you might hear the muffled cries of excited children running toward the front door, holding out their hands and shouting Daddy's home. I'd like to thank my guest,

William Dameron, for sharing his story today. He is the author of The Lie, a memoir of two marriages, cat fishing, and coming Out. You can find out more about Bill at www dot William Dameron dot com. Family Secrets is an iHeart Media production. Dylan Fagan is the supervising producer, Lowell Bolante is the audio engineer, and Julie Douglas is

the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd like to share, you can get in touch with us at listener mail at Family Secrets podcast dot com, and you can also find us on Instagram at Danny Writer, and Facebook at Family Secrets Pod and Twitter at fami Secrets Pod. For more about my book Inheritance, visit Danny Shapiro dot com. For more podcasts. For my Heart Radio, visit the I heart radio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.