My father loved small things. He worked as a mold maker at a construction site for thirty years, gambled, but finally stopped for the sake of his family. He is retired now, and he knows I'm gay. 

Despite all this, my father remained silent.

In 2005, Taiwan joined the “International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia,” and gay activism was on the rise. However, the media filtered the news like a sieve, and everything disappeared like a colorless, tasteless pellet on every household TV screen. When I returned home from my university dormitory that night, I put down my bags and went to the kitchen to help prepare dinner. The pots and pans were boiling over. My mother was washing the dishes and asked, “Do you have a girlfriend?” 

My mother already knew the answer.

Many people have a mother who is good at reasoning. Any diary or correspondence serves as evidence. Even the verbal question 'Do you have a girlfriend?' scared the hell out of me when I was in junior high school. Despite my excuses, the question lingered in her mind for many years, caught between her good son, who accompanied her to the market and into the kitchen, and her gay son, who was looked at differently. As time went on, we all knew what was going on, but she still held onto a glimmer of hope: “Please, tell me you're going to have a girlfriend again, or just reveal your cards and let her heart die once and for all.” That day, I chose the latter.

The sound of the water continued, and the vegetable leaves broke in my mother's hands, making a crisp sound again and again. Before I could predict what would happen, she said, “I thought you'd never tell me all your life.”

Because of these words, a few days later, I invited my then-boyfriend over for dinner. My mother had a pleasant conversation with him. Even though all we talked about was stocks and funds, my mother was satisfied with his plans for the future. After sending my boyfriend off, my father returned from the construction site without knowing what was going on. Before I went to bed, I heard him say from his room, “Ah, I missed it.” 

The distance between me and my father has always been like this.

I rarely spoke to my father; he was mostly absent from my life. During my first year of high school, Typhoon Nari hit Taiwan, leaving all the buses soaked in mud and water, turning them into scrap metal. When classes resumed, my father started driving me to school, and for three years, he became my chauffeur.

During that time, influenced by adolescence, I began to pay attention to my appearance. Sometimes I smelled like perfume, and other times I smelled like hair wax. I inherited my father's rhinitis, and in the mornings, we both had limited sense of smell. We thought the scents that filled the car would remain our secret, known only to father and son. We remained silent until I stepped out of the car. Then my father would say, “It smells too good. Watch out for the instructor.” I would nod, close the car door, and walk to the school gate.

Back in elementary school, I used to envy my classmates whose dads picked them up. When their cars arrived at the school gate, they would open the door, exchange words with their dads in the driver's seat, and then happily enter the school. I often wondered what these children secretly said to their fathers in such a confined space. Were there kisses, hugs, and “I love you” exchanged? After closing the car door, the father, gripping the steering wheel, must have felt content as he drove away.

“Watch out for the instructor,” my father would remind me.

During our car rides, our eyes would accidentally meet in the rearview mirror. We would tacitly look away, gaze out of the car window, and then sneak our eyes back to the rearview mirror. I would scrutinize the end of my father's eyebrows, which were growing longer and whiter with time, until I arrived at school in a dreamlike state. The other students at the school entrance chatted and laughed, and I felt like an outsider.

Eventually, the time came for me to go to school by myself. As the car turned back onto the highway, heading towards the outskirts of the city, my father was still behind the wheel. The city seemed to expand in response to my father's steps.

In the 1980s, the housing market was booming; prices were soaring, prompting people to move to the outskirts of town in search of better living conditions. During that period, my father, already married with a child, lacked stable employment. My grandmother loved to host gambling sessions in the courtyard, featuring mahjong, dice, four-color tiles, and various gambling tools. Even when a sausage stall appeared by the roadside, people would emerge from nowhere to join the games. Frustrated, my mother would overturn cupboards, tables, and chairs in the house, hiding me as a baby in a pile of clothes, and then leave the house.

After gambling in the courtyard, my father got tired and stood up to relieve himself. When he entered the room and saw things scattered all over the place, he thought it had been burglarized. Upon closer inspection, he realized that his wife was nowhere to be found. What had happened?

The timing of the child's cry was incredibly coincidental; a loud wail burst out, jolting everyone awake around the table, their destinies intertwined with the calculations of fate. Following the sound, my father found me and lifted me up as if I were a watermelon. At that time, he sported an afro hairstyle. The way he cradled the baby in his hands made him resemble a teenager outside a disco hall who had found a baby at the door and suddenly had to become an adult. Despite his calm demeanor, even a baby could sense his panic as he made various noises, like “squeak, squeak” and “chirp, chirp”, often used to tease animals.

My father went to his father-in-law's house and begged his wife to come back to him, promising to quit gambling, smoking, and drinking. He even used some of his savings to build a new house elsewhere. Worried that they wouldn't be able to afford the next loan on their salaries alone, he decided to join the construction wave and became a mold maker at a construction site.

It seemed that only when he made up his mind to settle down, my father could finally be considered a real father. Before that, he was just a young Air Force veteran and a prodigal son.

During the house construction, before the cement could be poured, the molds had to be nailed according to the design for the concrete to take shape. Covered in dirt and grime, my father, now a father himself, shaved his head and came home every day.

From elementary school to high school, I heard my father return home covered in dust, asking us if we had eaten, finished our homework, or when our exams were. My mother would retort, 'Go take a bath! The kids did everything themselves!'

My father would enter the bathroom with a rustle, throwing his wood-dust-stained clothes into the bathtub to wash them with his feet. After that, he'd rinse them in the washing machine before washing my uniform. Sometimes, he would wander around the house at night, searching for fruit in the refrigerator, watching TV in the living room, and pacing outside my room while reading a book. If our interaction wasn't crucial, we avoided each other, exchanging glances filled with unspoken words.

There was an awkward and inextricable bond between us.

(to be continued. )

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