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I was embarrassed by my father’s fearlessness about his body—how, for example, when we met for a tennis game, he never bothered to change ahead of time or repair to a restroom but instead shucked his trousers off in the parking lot without a care for who observed him in his sagging BVDs. I was embarrassed, and also sort of impressed, one day when I was 7 when I saw him drink some of my pee. The setup was this: I’d spent the morning pissing in a Collins glass I’d hidden in the garage, which I intended to take down the street to show a neighbor friend for reasons unclear to me now. In any case, I set it on the kitchen table while I went to find my shoes. When I returned, my father was hoisting the glass to his lips and uttering these words: “What’s this, apple juice?”

I recall yelling, “Noooooooooo,” in slo-mo basso. Too late. He took a generous slug. Then he set the glass down, turned to me, and said only this: “Don’t ever, ever do that again.”