“This town will turn you and burn you if you don’t look out for yourself.” Those were my father’s words to me during my first night in Manhattan, awaiting an interview to confirm my future there. I wish he would’ve told me that when I moved to Oxford. I wish a doctor would’ve whispered it into my newborn ear instead of smacking my pruned ass. It would’ve been a ruder and more necessary awakening. Just replace the word ‘town’ with ‘world’ and it makes universal sense.

We were at Tavern On The Green, where he had booked reservations under the title of ‘Doctor’ in order to obtain a seat. I think this was an outdated trick he had picked up from his time here in the eighties, when the place was in the midst of it’s heyday. That or the student has surpassed the teacher, because three months later I would slip Mark and myself in there with ease during the National Board of Review Awards, where we would eat for free and chat with Steve Buscemi and bum cigarettes to Queen Latifah.

My father and I share this trait, this ability to fall ass-backwards into positions our brains – but not our actions or status - merit. I fuck women out of my league, and throw back shots with Hunter S. Thompson, and exchange tired elevator hellos with the NBA-sized red-haired Late Night idol I grew up laughing at. My father once told the Rev. Jesse Jackson to go fuck himself, and had a member of The Beastie Boys spit in his face. These weren’t idols that he grew up with, but I can’t help but think that, like me, he probably spent a great deal of that time wondering ‘how the fuck did I get here?’

He burdened me with a number of his less desirable traits – his hairline and stubbornness, his drinking problem and tendency to resort to knowingly cutting remarks in order to distract from guilt. But he also instilled in me so much of what makes him great – his ever-swelling heart, his admirable musical tastes, his eye for the honest man’s bottom line, his dogged persistence and his cunning ability to work a crowd. I possess double the talent and ability he does, a result of him pumping me full of the knowledge he possesses, and the knowledge his father possessed, and etc, etc., etc. Each birth is another chance to get it right.

“What’s John doing now?” I asked him this once on a car-ride home when I was around seven or eight. He had meticulously briefed me on all of the Beatles’ current whereabouts — George played on the Traveling Wilburys cassette we always listened to, Ringo was a near-microscopic conductor on PBS, and I already saw Paul everyday. Paul hung above the desk in my father’s office, a gigantic framed promotion from one of his lamentable 80’s post-Wings solo projects. He’s strumming his guitar with a large, open mouth, as if surprised to hear the sound he’s just made. His hair is starting to gray a little, and the wrinkles have set into his face. But for some reason, he never talked about John.

“He died,” he answered, eyes darting, stroking his mustache with apprehension.

“How?”

“Some idiot shot him.”

“Why?”

“Because he was an asshole…he didn’t care about anyone but himself and now no one likes him.”

Historically, Beatles-related discussion, coupled with sports, always seemed like the easiest method of filling up the silence with words, as well as bringing out some of his more memorable simple-yet-brilliant observations. About a half decade after that exchange, we were on a similar car-ride home, when I inquired about something else curious and burning.

“Why do you like Paul more than John?” It was a question that had bothered me for quite some time, but it had never occurred to ask. It finally came out one happy hour in downtown Cleveland. I was eighteen, and we had been having one of those occasional bonding moments where he, without explanation, yet somehow ceremoniously, ordered me a beer along with his. A light buzz had set in, and it just sort of slipped out. He took a swig from his beer and curled his lips in contemplation, the little bristles of his mustache grazing his nose.

“Wait until you fall in love with a girl,” he started, lowering his chin in thought before finally settling on an answer. “Then you’ll like Paul more.” He gave no further explanation, and I never asked for one.

He’s no great sage, but he’s no run-of-the-mill simpleton, either. He’s sharp, and if it weren’t for his own self-destruction, the sky would be the limit. Like father, like son. I want to be everything he is, and everything he isn’t, all at once. Despite our glaring differences, I see myself in him, and that’s all we want from the world around us in the end, isn’t it?