Sit down, let me get you a drink. It’s on me. Just use a coaster.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, force of habit. Dad was always particular about that sort of stuff as you can imagine.

People used to say I looked like him growing up. Like if he had hair. I kind of let myself go when I emancipated myself. Now not so much I guess, ha ha ha.

Why did I leave? I had to. I don’t know if you ever met anybody who’s dad was a celebrity before, but no one ever says they were happy about it.

Did I grow up in a clean house? You bet your ass I did. Every day I would see him, new shirt on white as the top as Kilimanjaro. He was always going over the same spots.

We would eat breakfast with enough time to clean the whole table. We had to change our clothes if there was one stain on anything. He’d clean it off and have it ready the next day. We never had maple syrup. I only had pancakes dry until I was about 35.

Don’t mean to harp on this but please use a coaster. I know we’re in a bar but the wet circle under the glass I…

Sorry, it’s just the way I was raised.

There were five of us. I don’t know how Mom handled us all with Dad’s whole thing. She used to say that most wives do the cooking and the cleaning, so she was happy. That’s what she said.

He would line the five of us up every day and look through our teeth. They were just as important as the bathroom tiling to him.

One day, when I was a teenager, the school nurse called him at work. He was appearing in a suburban woman’s house with a puddle of tomato sauce on a wooden floor. I was sick and had to come home.

“Don’t bother,” he said, “we’re a Clean family.”

I don’t know what it was. Did he have something against me? Something he thought we had to keep up?

That’s when I ran away.

It was paradise. First on the manure farm, then the oil rig, then in the slaughterhouse. I went everywhere. I would only shower in the rain. It was like Shawshank. I was free.

One night while dumpster diving behind a strip joint in Bellevue, the bartender came out to dump trash and smoke a cigarette. He had white eyebrows and was completely bald. He looked more like Dad than I do. I thought he was one of my brothers.

He wasn’t. He was a half-brother.

He took me back to his mom’s house, who told me all about my dad’s unclean life. I learned about the all night parties, the secret families in Los Angeles and New York and Winamac. Anywhere he went.

To America he was Mr. Clean, but when he looked in the mirror, with its cloudy stains wiped off, he was dirty. Just something about himself he couldn’t erase. Magically or otherwise.

Dad died a couple of years ago. Immune deficiency!

Haven’t told anyone in the family about what I learned. My brother Albert, who runs the sewer system in Scranton, sent me his earring in the mail. Don’t know how to get rid of it. Seems like the last place he’d want it would be the trash.

Anyway, sorry to bother you. I know you just came out for a drink and I’m unloading my life story on you. Just thought I would say you have a stain on your shirt.