It’s a long ride between Toronto and Brockvegas, where I grew up.<\/p>\n

When I was 13 I started to occasionally accompany my dad on business trips into Toronto. At that age I was ready to escape the bizarre conservatism that the town’s parents exuded and the boring, “lets get drunk every night” attitude my high school chums demanded I enroll in. Toronto was an “otherworld”, a safe haven where my hidden gay desires could be “not so hidden” and I would beg my dad to take me along with him, if only to sit in a hotel room in a large metropolitan city for a day.<\/p>\n

As I said, it was a long ride, especially before everyone in Ontario collectively decided that 120kph was the unofficial legal limit (I doubt cars could sustain that limit for long, back then). It took under 6 hours with rest stops as opposed to the manic 4 hours you can do it today in good traffic\/no peeing.<\/p>\n

One particular trip to Toronto defined my car relationship with my father and was possibly the most notable. Trapped in Dad’s LTD, he decided somewhere around Kingston he was going to give me The Talk<\/em>. Yes, The Talk<\/em> where as a teen, you have to discuss sexual intimacies with a parent. Yes it was spine-curlingly embarrassing, with long pauses and awkward metaphors and aphorisms that made me press my back hard against the passenger door. I could see it in Dad’s eyes that his back was equally plastered to his door, the window crank making an indelible mark along his spine. But he was determined to get this parental duty done.<\/p>\n

Dad started out slow with a statement that would make any teen boy writhe in panic. The harbinger of adult responsibility. The trumpet blow before your cocooned, responsibility-free young adult world crashed down around you. <\/p>\n

“You’re at an age, now…”<\/p>\n

The depths of which my father went into sex was kept to a respectable level, almost 10ft pole distance, but every so often he would prod one of my prudish nerves like some one-off serial killer extra on Dexter: “You… know about vaginas…?”<\/p>\n

“Dad!”<\/p>\n

“You know about sex, right? About …fucking…?”<\/p>\n

“DAD!!!”<\/p>\n

I tried to deflect it by pointing out that we get this subject in school now so this awkward talk can change to something else. But no, he continued. <\/p>\n

“You know how babies are made, right?”<\/p>\n

“…Dad…? Please.”<\/p>\n

And so it went through several topics, until, like some great engine seizing up with a lack of oil, our conversation seized at a long pause, unsure where to go next. <\/p>\n

Those who know my father, know this whole incident skirts on the edge of irony. Three years after this scene, my father came out of the closet, finally admitting his own sexuality and becoming comfortable with himself to drive faster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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