Finally he saw the pathway under the railroad. He skidded down the bank, and ducking low, scampered under the bridge.

The lagoon was lined with the backs of expensive homes and the railway. There was no road anywhere near it. Michael squatted on the banks and looked at the insect patterns imprinted on the creamy mud. He waited.

He remembered his Dad used to bring him here, to look at the birds, and spend an hour or two fishing. It was always hot and still. What do you think of your son now, Dad? Michael asked the memory of his fishing father. The sun pounded like unrelenting boredom.

Hungry, Mikey? You've still got the price of a Huevos Rancheros in your pocket. In a week you won't.

Just how much of a baby are you, Michael? This is what a five-year-old does. He decides to run away and gets halfway down the block before realizing that he can't cope.

Michael slapped his own face again. He had to slap something, he was so mad, so bereaved, so ashamed. He couldn't stand it. He couldn't stand being inside his own skin. He seethed tinder his skin, like oil in a joint being roasted in the oven. You're not hitting hard enough, Michael. He really slammed himself on the cheek. It went numb. He picked up a stone and drove it as hard as he could into the centre of his face. His nose started to bleed. Drops of blood dotted his trousers.

Stupid fucking fairy, what the stupid fucking hell good does that do? He broke down again, and started to cry. It was late and getting hot and he was sick from hunger, bleeding, and lack of sleep. Ten am. Maybe it was safe to get going.

A train roared overhead, hooting and rocking the track from side to side like a crib. Michael toyed with the idea of waiting for the next train and walking under it. That might even look like an accident.

The thought of Huevos Rancheros made him decide he wanted to be around. And that made him laugh and snuffle at the same time. All I've got to look forward to is a 101 breakfast.

He strode alongside the tracks, perfectly safely into Oceanside. He climbed up another bank onto a side street and walked among all the whispering ranch-style homes, with their lawns and succulent ground cover being automatically watered. Michael was watered too. He washed the blood off his face.

He turned up the street to the cafe and went in the back door from the parking lot, and the first person he saw in a booth was Dad. Michael thought about turning and running and realized that he didn't have the strength.

'Hiya Mikey,' said his father, in a voice that seemed to come from far away across a valley. 'Have a seat.'

And you thought you were being so smart: he knew you'd come here all the time. Michael sat down. The booths had tan upholstery and individual jukeboxes at each of the tables. They didn't work.

'You been in a fight? Who did that to you?' His father's voice really was different, it was higher and more gravelly at the same time. His sunglasses were different, old-fashioned, dark green, not mirrored at all.

Michael considered making up a story about how homeless people had chased him and beaten him up. But he didn't have the heart for it.

'Me,' he said. His own voice was far away too and now he understood why: neither of them wanted anyone to hear.

'You. You did that to yourself?' His father's mouth opened and shut helplessly. Michael couldn't see his eyes.

Then his father reached across and touched the bridge of Michael 's nose, and made him turn his head. His father's implacable face remained mostly unmoved but the voice shifted down an octave. 'You've broken your nose, Michael.'

In that gesture, Michael knew it hadn't gone away. The tips of his father's fingers were soft and cool. This guy was his ideal man – big, masculine, kind. Michael still wanted to marry this guy. He wanted to take him in his arms, and kiss him, and live with him. Whatever this was, it would not go away.

'What'll you have to eat?' his father said, business-like.

'I'm not hungry.'

'Yes you are, Michael.'

Michael's head hung in shame. What could he do to make up for it? Starving himself wouldn't do any good, if a broken nose couldn't. He asked for a Huevos Rancheros.

His father paused at this and seemed to ruminate. It seemed to Michael he was thinking: I thought we'd be doing this a lot. He pretended to study the menu.

'I… uh didn't tell your mother everything. I just outlined some of the basics. I couldn't say it, Mikey. I just couldn't say it about you.' He kept looking at the menu the whole time.

Michael felt relief, and felt cowardly for being relieved. 'I will tell her. After a little while.'

'I bet,' said his father, darkly.

Another voice spoke. 'Hi, what'll it be for you folks?' The waitress was too old and thin to fit the stereotype but her smile was huge and professional.

'Huevos Rancheros. Two big cups of coffee. Maybe a Danish.'

The waitress had picked up on something. Her smile went rigid and her eyes skidded sideways towards Michael. There was a bruise across his face now, he could feel it, and his clothes were torn. She looked back at Michael's father with suspicion. We look like it, thought Michael, for the first time we look like an older faggot and a poor kid he's picked up and is bribing with a meal. His ears burned.

For the first time ever his father asked, 'You wouldn't be able to serve a beer this hour of the morning would you?'

Two days later, Michael was on the aeroplane. His mother greeted him wearily at the airport, circles under her eyes. She was wearing a beige mac in summer; it was drizzling a bit. She took him in her arms and gave him a hug that was meant to say: you're still my son, whatever happens.

'Welcome home, Michael.'

What the hug actually said was: Michael, you will never go home.

Home will always be with the man you love, and nothing else will ever be the same again. The externals of his old life, everything he had thought he would escape, closed over him.

As for his father, well, early to mid-forties is a bad time in the military. If you start slipping, your career almost certainly will end. They give you courses in making the transition. It's still too big a shock for many people, to go from an ordered environment where people respect each other and work together for common aims, to a world in which loneliness and justified suspicion is the basis on which everyone must live their lives.

Dad got taken in by an investment scheme on the Salton Sea. How, they reasoned, can you ever lose on property? Look at what happened in Palm Springs. The folks who bought there early doubled, even trebled their investment. Now, this is Palm Springs with water, a lake even. A salt lake.

Michael's legacy from his Dad was an empty plot of land, on a named street without a single house on it.

His father never could handle booze. He just couldn't metabolize the stuff quickly. Nor, at forty-eight, could he get a job anywhere. He tried to stay in shape, hung around with floozies more and more, sold the condo in Oceanside for something right in the heart of where all the whores hung out. He drank and whored, which on the coast of California almost certainly means he also did drugs. He started to get fat.

He shacked up with a tough little Mexican lady. This most American of men was continually asked for his passport or identity papers. When he passed out on the street people started talking about illegal immigrants. Finally he moved back to LA, and tried to set up in his brother's law firm. He wore a suit and tried to find something to do: accounts, sales, even typing. He had a fight with his brother, and that's when he and Michael's mother lost touch. Michael's uncle said he'd heard that Louis was working as a gardener now, in Beverly Hills. 'A sad case. Not something we like to talk about, really.'