Pablo Torre Finds Out - Eyes Wide Open: The Consequences of Finding Out, with Tom Junod

Episode Date: March 19, 2026

From 9/11 and Ali to sharing a bed with Nicole Kidman and outing Kevin Spacey, he was already one of the greatest — and most confrontational — magazine writers of all time. Then Tom Junod decided to investigate his own father's "Mad Men"-Lib of a secret life. What could possibly go wrong? What would Mr. Rogers think? And what the hell was in that briefcase?• Read "In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man: A Memoir" by Tom Junod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out, presented by eBay Live. I am Pablo Torre, and today you're going to find out what this sound is. The phone rang, and I went and pick up, and there's this voice, hey, this is Tom Cruise? Is my wife there? And I said, you know, yeah, Tom, she's right here in my bed. Right after this ad. I am wearing what I now realize is a cardigan, that's not intentionally an homage

to the cardigan. Yeah. And therefore to you. Yeah. But it hasn't pointed out to me. Cardigan on the Lou thing or cardigan on the Fred thing? I dare say there is resonance in both of those characters. I would say so.

I feel like you got to explain, Tom, you know, who Fred is. Because you're on a first-name basis. Okay. So Fred is Fred Rogers. Fred is also known as Mr. Rogers. He was the children's television host from early 70s on to just before he died in 2003.

Yeah. And he was the emblem not only of sort of incredibly nerdy children's television, he even sort of like pioneered a certain kind of nerdy style consisting of, dot, dot, dot, cardigans. Yeah, I walk into this office here in our Metal Arc Media studios and I go into the closet and I take out this card again and I...

It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor, would you be mine? Could you be mine? It's a neighborly day in this beauty would, a neighborly day for a beauty, would you be mine? Could you be mine? I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you. I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood,

with you. So let's make the most of this beautiful day. Since we're together, we might as well say, would you be mine, could you be mine, won't you be my neighbor? Won't you please, won't you please, please won't you be my neighbor? For those who are not familiar,

you not only wrote this iconic profile of Mr. Rogers for Esquire, it also, years later, became a film, and I watched that in theaters, not even knowing you, only to realize that when I met you, I'd watched the cinematic adaptation of you. And what level of cringe does one feel when they're watching a Hollywood actor depict you

across from Tom Hanks, Mr. Rogers? So when I first read that script, the guys who wrote it called me and said, we really love the script, and we really would like for you to give it a chance, which is sort of a warning right away. And I asked him, I said, well, so why do I have to give it a chance? And they said, because pretty much everything that involves you and Mr. Rogers is accurate

and the family stuff we all made up. So I read it, and I asked him afterwards to change the name because there were so many things that happened in the script and in the movie that just didn't happen in life. It was you, Tom Juneau, that was the name of the character. Tom Junault was the name of the character. Oh, that's great. Or not, I guess.

Yeah, so there's a scene in there where, like, me and my father get into a fist fight at my sister's wedding. Don't talk about her. Oh, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. You don't know the whole story. Your mom really was not the same. Don't talk. Go ahead. My sister eloped.

So there was no wedding. So there was no fight at a wedding. And so, yeah, so I asked him to change the name. and they did so. And I sort of disconnected from the movie a little bit from there. I just like basically, you know, it's Lloyd Vogel now, and so you can do whatever you want with this. And so I just got to jump in here to say that what I wanted to do

with the real life Lloyd Vogel, Tom Juneau, comes from a place of believing that truth is often stranger and more narratively satisfying than fiction. It's an enormous reason why I've envied the writing, really the life of Tom, for a really long time. In his career as a writer, which followed his career as a handbag salesman, which is the whole other story, Tom has reported some of my favorite magazine pieces ever, including about sports, about everything from Muhammad Ali's funeral service to a hidden Penn State football scandal to all sorts of features about Hollywood.

But ever since I saw that Mr. Rogers movie, from 2019, which got Tom Hanks nominated for an Academy Award, I've been wondering how Tom Juneau felt about how he, this rigorous journalist, was portrayed. Matthew Reese was playing me. I mean, he had spent time with me. He had my gestures down. He had a lot of it down.

And so seeing yourself like that way, sort of transmuted into cinematic art, you can't be prepared for it. And then they, that's, summer, the summer before the movie came out, they invited me in for a screening. And I was like, ah, this is just a, this is just a thing. And I'm sitting alone in the Sony screening room over on like 25th Street. And I'm just sobbing.

But the reason Tom was sobbing, it turns out, wasn't because his life story had been butchered. He was sobbing because there was something in that dramatization, in the conviction of his character that connected to a part of his life that he had never rigorously investigated. His father, Lou, a guy whose fictions have now inspired a work of stunning nonfiction

titled, In the Days of My Youth, I was told what it means to be a man, which speaks to how Tom reported some of his best magazine stories, as you'll see, and also what it means for a journalist to really want to find out the truth. There's some stuff where I'm like, I'm shocked. You put this into print.

Yes. And one of them, speaking of a conceit, again, that we enjoy on this show, which is sometimes we'll put a briefcase on a desk and we'll treat it like Chekhov's gun and we'll figure out when to fire it. Do you realize? Okay, so now we're getting real meta. I dare say that what was in your dad's briefcase was not in Mr. Rogers'. It was definitely, well, you can't say definitely, but it was probably not in Mr. Rogers.

If it was, you did a horrific job burying that lead for us. So last night we did a thing in Atlanta, which is my hometown. And the host, whose name is Melissa Faye Green, surprised me by asking me to read this passage out of the Mr. Rogers story. And I read that and realized as I was reading it, as never before, I hadn't looked at it in a really long time, but as never before, I realized that it was just sort of like a portrait of my dad, like an anti-matter version of Luchinod. You're one of the fucking best magazine writers of all time, and it's not even up for debate.

You can be self-effacing if you'd like, but the profiles speak for themselves, the awards, all that stuff. God damn, yes. From, you know, the falling man, the iconic story of the 9-11 jumper that you wrote and beautifully, again, investigated, there's reporting there. Controversially, the Kevin Spacey's story,

Nicole Kidman, Obama and drone strikes, Mr. Rogers, on and on and on, right? There's that. But the way that I cannot help but see you across this desk is the lens of Mr. Rogers and also your dad. But the notion that Mr. Rogers played along in a way that you want and need a subject to. What did you feel from him that gave him this stature in American life? So I grew up with a dad who was like a full-time seducer. There was nothing that my dad did that wasn't for a fact. And Fred had that, but to a different end. You know, my dad was always just coming at you in some sort of way, the way he spoke,

the way he just conducted himself, just even just walking across the kitchen to get something out of the refrigerator. And Fred was like sort of like the same way. You know, I mean, I happened to first meet him when he was. He was at his apartment in New York. I called him, said, you know, hey, Fred, I've been assigned this story. Can I talk to you? Yes, Tom.

I'm right around the corner from you. Do you want to stop by? And so, you know, so I stopped by and he's wearing a bathrobe. It's in the afternoon. He's wearing, come on in, Tom. I'm sure, you know, you weren't expecting this, were you? And, you know, and I walk in there, and I'm starting to talk to him. And he comes by and, you know, with his camera.

And, you know, he shoots, I'm just talking. and he shoots a camera with a flashbulb in his dark apartment and he gets on the phone he was with his wife joanne hi joanne i'm with my new friend tom i just sent to you know took a picture that i'm going to send to you and and so it was sort of it was sort of invasive but you had said that he plays along the thing that he made me do was play along with him i had to either like say this guy is completely insane or bullshit or just look at the sort of the higher truth that he represented. But you walk in and I'm imagining being you or Matthew Reese trying to imagine being you and already I'm writing in my head. I'm like,

oh my God, is this the lead? Yeah. You know, I'm like, I can't, I wouldn't be able to help myself. But then the follow-up thought I'm imagining is I'm getting everything that I want here. I wasn't. I wasn't. You know, the thing about him is I'd ask him a question and he would give a completely non-committal answer. He wouldn't even, or he wouldn't even answer at all. He would just pivot. Like, tell me about your childhood, Fred. Well, Tom, you know, how about your childhood?

Did you have anything that was very special to you in your childhood? Yes, Fred, I had something called Old Rabbit. Oh, oh, I'll imagine that once he was a very young rabbit, right, Tom? You know, and so it's just that. And he just, you know, eventually just sort of, by sheer force of like his attention that he paid, his kindness, he just sort of won me over. Yeah, which is to say that on some level,

maybe the guy coming in to write an aspirationally interesting profile of a man who has a very carefully manicured image. Right. Maybe you're finding that there is some frustration in how he is in control, but it also sounds like the guy whose dad was Mr. Rogers, but inside out, the opposite on something else. I mean, absolutely. It sounds like you also enjoyed being fathered by Mr. Rogers.

I kind of did. And I guess I was looking for that. I guess I was, this was 1998. I was a little bit adrift since going from GQ to Esquire. The Kevin Spacey thing had happened. I had gone through this whole thing. It might as well explain it now. Yeah, please.

I'd gone through this whole thing where I sort of outed Kevin Spacey. I really got my ass kicked on that story. So just because we're in 2026, it's worth saying, Kevin Spacey is gay. Right. At the time, you framing it as a conceit in this magazine piece. Right. And using, I think, your mom.

Yeah, I used my mom. By the way, this was a rumor and the question that I am grappling with all of the time on this show and to varying success, I suppose, that you were grappling with as a magazine writer was, there is this conversation that's happening in private. and to what extent can that be had in public? Right.

And in this case, of course, there are good societal guardrails, ideally, for how we respect privacy, but the inherent tension of anybody who wants to write and report confrontationally and has a discerning taste for what qualifies as public interest, which can be both serious, drone strike, political level. But this was a celebrity profile. So that's a little bit different from the start. Exactly. The journalist, especially at that time, was supposed to play ball. Yeah. For sure. And, you know, on that particular story, I didn't play ball. I think that you used a word just a few minutes ago, conceit. It was the conceit of how I talked to my mom. She was like, isn't Kevin Spacey gay. And it was the conceit that everybody knew. And so I think that's the thing that got me in trouble, that it didn't sort of like take on this question genuinely.

I did it as a conceit. I did it like a little sort of dance around just to be, it was the first story I wrote for Esquiry after leaving GQ. Oh, I didn't realize that. It was basically of like,

oh my, look at how provocative I can be. And I think that that is the thing that really sort of turned people against that particular story. I get why people had such a negative reaction to it. I get why you have since,

owned up to saying, I wish I didn't do it in that way. In that way, yeah. But all of which is the setup for the fact that Esquire magazine assigns Hotshot magazine reporter who loves provocation, Mr. Rogers. And that was definitely sort of part of the whole thing. I think people thought it would be sort of interesting for that to happen. But I was, like I said, I was a little bit of drift at the time and had taken a beating and didn't know exactly what to do next

because being self-consciously provocative did not work for me. And then I see Fred. And he definitely gave me another direction to go in. The notion, though, of being a confrontational writer and just what that means and how you decided I need to turn that approach, which is fundamentally investigation.

Yeah, it's about finding out. Yes, yes. It's about finding out. Yes. This book was in the works for how long? I began it in 2015 and finished in 2024. So I guess that's nine years. I mean, I've been writing about my dad a number of times.

I had written about my dad by writing about other people. I mean, one of the first things I did when I got, GQ, was write a story about Frank Sinatra, Jr. I wrote a story after that about Tony Curtis. And then I wrote a story about my dad himself. I do like the idea of us sort of traveling through your career with this as the inevitable end point. But Frank Sinatra Jr. Love is lovelier the second time around. Was that a sad character to you?

He was the leader of his dad's orchestra. But the guy that he, like, idolized. wasn't Frank. It was Nelson Riddle, the guy who did the great swing in arrangements for that orchestra. And I saw in him a guy who had dealt with just the huge shadow of his dad by just being like sort of off-putting.

He didn't really do anything to make people like him or even notice him. And I think that that was the thing about him that really struck me was that he didn't want to be noticed. because, you know, he had gotten kidnapped, and he sort of survived that whole thing by memorizing, like, everything the kidnappers did. He was that guy. He lived inside himself, never went outside of himself, and that's how he survived being Frank Sinatra Jr.

I guess I saw that in him because I had a little bit of it in myself. When you are doing that profile, how much are you already self-aware? of like, ah, I'm doing, I'm kind of doing therapy. Yeah, I don't think I was that self-aware at the time. So when I was a kid, you know, I grew up in Long Island, and Sunrise Highway was one of the big thoroughfares by Wanta on the South Shore there. And we used to go to this steakhouse in Belmore called McCluskey.

It was a great steakhouse. But on the way back, we'd pass this old dance hall called the sunrise bohemian village. It was huge. It's been long knocked down. But I used to occasionally see the sign there. Tonight, Frank Sinatra Jr. I was like five or six years old,

and there was a part of me that said, oh, that poor bastard, you know. So I was always fascinated with Frank Jr. And when I went to GQ and my editor, David Granger, said you can basically write whatever you want, to write. What do you want to write about? I was like, Frank Sinatra Jr. And he was like, okay. But Frank Sr., as a matter of how your dad carried himself. Sure. That's pretty on the nose. Oh, it's very on the nose. So he was a Sinatra kind of character to the extent that during World War II,

so he got, he got, he was an infantryman, got wounded in Normandy. And, he was about to be sent back to the front when a lieutenant heard him crooning heard him singing and you know the troop truck came in my father got on and then a lieutenant took him off and he became he became a you know a roving crooner around around western europe we need more of those singing to the troops right in a traveling show called for men only oh my god and so the for men only it sort of became the theme of my dad's life in a certain way. I like that now it's like U.S.O. tours and it's very fancy people. Back then, it was Lou.

It was Lou. It was, you know, some comedians, a guy from New Orleans who could play hot jazz trumpet. It was that kind of thing. I mean, my father sang Silent Night to the troops on Christmas Eve during the Battle of the Bulge. I mean, they would go as close to the front as they could. and they did it for the men. They did it for the troops. So for men only, and this is a key part of this, because there are lots of women in this book.

Lots of women. And we'll get to that. But just the notion of who you're performing for. Right. When your dad has these commandments. I can name some of them right off the bat, you know, from always look a man in the eye, always have a firm handshake,

always wear white to the face. The turtleneck is the most flattering thing a man can wear. don't bullshit a bullshitter so my dad had this way of speaking that I try to sort of reproduce in the actual sort of prose of the book with ellipses with the ellipses my dad had this way of pausing in mid-sentence and then landing on a word of emphasis and he did that in virtually anything he'd say so if you're going to be a bear be a grizzly But how much of that do you think was him performing for women versus performing for men? So that's a great question.

I would say that the employment of the maxims, he would say it for men, but he would do it for women. So he would like wear white to the face or wear a turtleneck for women. And, you know, my father's day wasn't complete unless he could turn some woman's head. That was his, that was the mark of a good day. And so he, that was my childhood, was watching my father enter rooms and people turning around to take a look at him. And so did he find it thrilling when you became men's magazine celebrity profile writer? My father really enjoyed and took great pride in my magazine career. Half of it.

He loved the celebrity profiles. He really loved that. Like after I wrote about Tony Curtis, he thought, that for some reason that Tony and I, you know, were best friends. Anytime I went like into the city, he would say, did you see Tony? And, but he didn't, he didn't read the other stuff, like the falling man, all of this, like why,

he couldn't understand why I would even do that. That's story. It's a downer. And with Mr. Rogers, he didn't get that. he didn't get that at all because he thought that Mr. Rogers was effeminate. Oh, that's funny. Why would you write about somebody who is effeminate? Who's not wearing white nearly as often to the face as he should.

Even though it was really interesting with my dad. So he had a uniform that he would wear in Christmas season. And it was gray slacks, a white shirt, a narrow black tie, and a red cardigan. So he wore, it was like the one sort of Venn diagram overlap spot between my dad and Fred Rogers was the red cardigan. I'm not saying that your dad was evil Mr. Rogers. I'm just saying in the yin and yang. No, that's my first no comment. But your dad, to put a finer point on where a lot of the danger and the tension is in this book and in his story,

I'm wondering what he thought of your profile of Nicole Kidman. Oh, he loved that. The obvious sort of flirtation that occurred there. It's such a memorable story because, number one, you're like, who the fuck is this writer who's putting himself literally in bed with Nicole Kidman? This was 1999, and summer of 1999, and Nicole and Tom Cruise were coming out with and promoting eyes wide shut. which was if you remember that time it was supposed to be a little bit of a view into you know beyond the veil of their marriage yes that was like this sort of the subtext of a lot of the

promotion right to what extent are there masks orgies right exactly all that all that stuff yeah and you know they were sort of they were showing a little leg as the old statement used to go and so i went down to australia to meet with Nicole and, you know, had a really wonderful time with her. She was a wonderful person to hang around with. We went to some cops bar in Australia and all these, you know, sitting at a table with her. It was just me and her. And, you know, people waited a really long time to approach her.

But once they did, the whole place was just all over her. And she was just fantastic. So she was really cool. And but then, you know, came the day that I was supposed to leave. And I called and told her I was going to leave. And she said, well, Tom, you know, I'm going to come down and see you. And I was in my hotel room, which I had been in for like eight days by that time because you can't go to Sydney without spending, you know, time there because the, you know, the flight there is so punishing. So, you know, my room is horrible, but I'm thinking I'm just going to go down into the lobby, you know, to meet her that I'll get a call.

They saw Ms. Kidman's here and I'll go down there. Instead, I get a call that says, you know, Miss Kidman's on her way up. And so I, so I'm running around the room, like sticking my socks and my underwear. where like under the bed. And, you know, she walks in in jeans and a black turtleneck and just walks right to my bed and lies down. And I'm like, so what do I do? So I, what could I do?

What would Lou do? And there is some of that. There's no doubt some of it. But I did go in, you know, laid next to her. And then the phone rang. And I went and pick up. and there's this voice, hey, this is Tom Cruise?

Is my wife there? And I said, you know, yeah, Tom, she's right here in my bed. Elypsis. In my bed. And he goes, yeah, right, in your dreams, man. And that's how that's how that scene ended.

And it's been, you know, I've thought of it a lot since, basically, what was really going on there. And I've always wondered whether it was a little bit of a setup. I don't want to put too fine a point on the tease here, but the point in which you discover that your dad has been living a life that is so destructive to how your mom would feel and how your household had been constructed.

A life of, I don't know, infidelity and more. Yeah. When does the tonnage of this begin to sink in? When do you first realize that, oh, my God, like, I've seen maybe hints of an iceberg, but there's so much underneath. The answer to that question is that is both really early and then much later. When I was three years old, my father had an affair with the mother of one of, like my first friend, the guy who I shared a crib with.

And so he had an affair with her, you know, a little. longstanding affair with her that was definitely going on when I was three. So I was quite aware that something was happening there because I was so tuned into my mom. And I could see how unhappy the whole situation was making her. I was definitely aware of it. And so I went through a whole life with my dad knowing that there was a secret life that he was leading whose resonances could be felt without ever being spoken of, without ever being articulated. When I was 16, I cracked the combination of his briefcase and took a look inside to see what was there.

Because I knew something was there. I knew something was going on. And so I had to find out. All that said, I started writing this book in 2015, and right away, I started calling people who knew my dad and was confronted with stuff I didn't know yet. And I thought I knew everything by this time. I thought it was almost going to be a matter of just sort of writing from memory

without really even requiring an investigation. But I started making those calls and realized that I was in the freaking deep end of the pool. I laugh because I can imagine, again, that this starts off being like, this is going to be a real quest of interiority. I'm going to have to negotiate within myself what I'll be putting on the page. And what I get in reading this is you traveling around the country

interviewing the women your father cheated on your mother with. Right. And getting details. Even somewhat graphic details. I mean, what's the most graphic detail that still feels like, oh, wow, that's a lot? How graphic do you want me to get? I would like you to be so graphic

that I'm wondering if it's time for me to pull out the part of the book that I've been gesturing. Okay. Well, what's the most graphic part to you? One of my father's lovers described how my father seduced her and how that went. And she had borrowed money from him. And she had, she offered to pay him back. And he said, why don't we take it out in trade? And so he invited her to his room at the Essex House, of course.

Yes, an iconic New York hotel. And she got up there and there was a bottle of champagne waiting and two stakes under glass. And as she said, you know, within, you know, in 15 minutes, he was giving me the greatest I ever had. So that's a lot. Hearing that about your dad. Put that on your book cover, Tom. It's a lot. It's a blurb of sorts, but it's a lot. I believe my editor, Bill Thomas, was just like, we don't need that. And I was like, I think you do because I wanted to account for my father's hold on women. And I also also wanted to say to the reader, that that hold was not something he was making up.

My father also talks about having affairs with various movie stars and so on. And so the question is whether is this just in his head or is just all bullshit. The details that I got from that woman that day seemed in the investigative trade confirmation. Jaja Gabor. And Ava Gabor.

And you don't forget that. Some of this is just like a mad lib, admittedly. It's a mad men lib. It brings me to this briefcase. The briefcase. And I'm going to have you read this part because I... Really? Okay. Page 72, of the galley at least.

If you can just read for a while and then... Sure. Okay. Like a lot of other men, I have sought out transformative experiences in the belief that I need to be transformed. Unlike a lot of other men, I have found them while trying to find out the truth about my father. There is an automatic light overhead, the light in his closet.

Although mom and dad have gone out and I am alone in the house, I don't want the doors to be wide open because I don't want to be, well, exposed, if they come home and somehow sneak up on me in the middle of my investigation. Unfortunately, a floor-to-ceiling mirror covers the back of each door, and I can see myself cross-legged in front of the briefcase revealed as I seek revelation. I do not walk away. I open the lid, and I look.

For a second, I think that my father has stowed in his briefcase something that was once alive, that I am gazing at a package of chicken parts he bought at the same. supermarket and then forgot about. I told myself that I was opening the briefcase to find the joy of sex and two vibrators of generic providence note two days before, two weeks before, two months before I had gone into my father's bag and found two vibrators and the joy of sex. Which feels like a lot on its own. A lot on its own. Side note.

But of course, I needed to go like to the next place. You couldn't help it find out. I couldn't help it find out. But while the joy of sex has not returned, the vibrators have mutated, metastasize, into two dildos so large they seem prosthetic. They are sheathed in sleeves of venous rubber, each remarkably realistic in detail,

but outlandish in scale, the size of fungobats. They share space in the briefcase with a stack of invoices in order form, from various handbag lines, as well as several boxes of pornography, all of it on film in Super 8 format. Dad occasionally brings Playboys and Penhouses at home, and I do not read them for the articles. But I have never seen real pornography before. Is this real pornography?

It is in that the photos on the boxes depict human beings engaged in identifiable acts of copulation. It's not in that the acts and the photos are. are as different from what I imagine to be normal pornography as dad is from normal people. They are extreme, even by porno standards. There are about five films, and the only one I can bring myself to look at is the one called her master's piss.

The rest are captioned in German and scare me. Everything in the briefcase scares me. When I came across the vibrator stashed away in the corrette leather bag with the joy of sex, I hopefully remembered that they were called marital aids. But these look like martial aids, like truncheons, the kinds you used in riot control. I have no idea what dad does with him nor with whom.

You made quite a move there by, you know, getting the sports angle in. With the fungo bats. The fungobats metaphor. I mean, never mistake this show for anything but a sports show. But the idea that you are... 16 at the time. And I had never been kissed. So that was my sort of...

That was the door opening into some sort of strange world. Eyes wide shut or eyes wide open. Right. The notion that you saw all of this and at some point committed to secrecy. Yeah, right. Sure. To not telling. I mean, that is the consequence of finding...

out. Yes. So I go there. I am obviously, I've been determined to find out since I'm a really little kid. I mean, I used to tape my family's dinners and, you know, listen to it later to find out what was really said. Were they aware that they were being said? They were and they weren't, just like the way interview subjects are in order. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They forget. Exactly. They forget it. But the consequences of finding out in this case was this decision I had to make. Do I tell my mom? Do I tell anybody? And that's a huge decision

because you've been given the nuclear codes to your parents' marriage. I mean, all you have to do is just say, hey, mom, it's done. But of course, I didn't want that, so I didn't do it. And I've wondered many a time whether I should have gone and done it.

And there's so much that happens like that. You know, I am, there's my, my aunt who falls into a coma and then comes out of her coma. And when she comes out of her coma, I'm like, well, what did you think of my dad? You know, she's 91 years old. And she, you know, she's dying. And I'm a tape recorder right in front of her. I'm right there, you know, reporter on the spot. Yeah.

Before you go. You know, I'm so, I'm. pretty obsessed and the you know the the the searching you know never never stops but the the telling only starts here with the book how much of what you were feeling inside as you're gathering all of the evidence and you're finding out how much of it was anger or other emotions that surprised you you know i was i was terrified but as far as as far as anger i mean it's a really it's a really interesting question. There is a part of you that says

at least I'm not crazy. I was right. And so that is the whole thing with my dad. I'm always suspicious and I'm always right. There's never anything that I suspect of my father that does not pan out.

Yeah. And so the question of anger is an interesting one because in a lot of ways, I never sort of conceded that I was angry. And in fact, I'm on a bus heading for New York City, and I'm sitting next to a woman. It's right after Christmas, and she makes the mistake of asking me, how was your holidays? I'm like, you want to know?

And like, she's sitting there, you know, trapped on the bus next to this guy telling, like, intimate details about his family for the next two hours. Yeah. But she was incredibly smart and she was incredibly cool. And I'm getting off. And she says, can I ask you one question? Why are you not angry at him? and I have a long response to that in the book. But my answer to that at the time was,

he gave me who I am. He gave me my life. How can I be angry at him? It is important to note, and you make this clear, that your dad, as always, we're trying to clarify and even subvert the traditional caricatures of what it is to be a guy like this. Right.

And your dad said that he loved you all the time. All the time. He wasn't like absentee in that traditional way. He was absentee in that he went away for six weeks and carried on with countless lovers during that time. But when he was home, he was remarkably present. He was not a distant dad. And I can't tell you how many people that I've talked to about him and about this book or who have read the book and said, at least he told you he loved you my dad never told me that and he did my dad was always sort of you know

love you love you love you i mean it was it was not something that we were short changed on it also informs why when you are becoming the again the title of the book is in the days of my youth that was told what it means to be a man when you're becoming not just a man but eventually a father and a husband. There's a calculation that, okay, I also need to write a part of the book that is not funny, but is like potentially destructive to my own household. And you write in the book about a weekend in 1996. Right. Could you explain the decision to confess something in public and what that confession was and how, again, in the decision, do I do this, do I not do this? What I hold back? What do I reveal? How you arrived at a part of the book that is striking because

as much as dildos are one thing, this is like some real shit. This is personal and it's real, and it's real shit. I'm definitely going to like limit how much I talk about this because I've, you know, I've caused, I've caused pain and I don't want to, I don't want to go there and cause more pain. But it refers to a brief affair back in, in 1996. And what I put in the book is about my decision years later to reveal that secret to my wife, to confess that to my wife. That's what's in the book. And so then I in turn confess that to the reader.

And the reason that I do it is I find the woman who had the affair with my dad when I was three years old. I go out and find her. and I don't leave the house until she basically confesses up. And that sort of dynamic is played out again and again and again in the book. I mean, how could I do that and not expect the same thing of myself? I'd be dishonest. This book, which I think is very honest and is truth-telling,

it would be dishonest. And I got the chance to tell the truth in writing this book. And I mean the whole truth about everybody in my family, about my dad, and about myself. So how could I subvert that by pretending that I was somehow above my father's influence? There's several sections in the book where my father is actively trying to coax me into having affairs. I mean, there's a part of the book where I am, during my handbag salesman days, I am held up at gunpoint in a hotel room and nearly executed. And my father's answer to that, his response to that, was trying to hook me up with one of his lovers.

How could I pretend that that didn't affect me? As someone who does investigative journalism in ways, that continue to terrify my family. It's a weird way to make a living. It is. And yet one of the scariest things, of course, is to consider investigating yourself. Right.

And those you love, knowing what it's like and the power that you have given an audience insofar as you could embarrass someone in front of the whole fucking world. Sure. And so the thing that I am left thinking of

near the end here is, what do you think his reaction would have been to this book? I do think that he would have been mortified. What I expose is a guy who doesn't quite live up to the ideals that he never tired of espousing. So I think that that would be tough on him. On the other hand,

a lot of this book sort of channels his charisma a month ago. I went to KGB in downtown New York and did a reading. And all I had to do was start doing his voice. And the place we sort of responded immediately. There was like you could feel like this flutter of excitement in the room. I felt like my dad was back there and by God he still had it. So the fact that he, the fact that I'm able to sort of give people him, give people that in 2026, and therefore give him at last the celebrity that he always craved, I mean, either it's a payoff or it's a paradox.

I don't know, I don't know what it is, but I am glad I did it. What would Fred have said upon reading this? I think that Fred would say something, you know, saying, gee, Tom, you really like to use those details, don't you? I didn't stay in touch with Fred just for that story. I stayed in touch with Fred for the rest of Fred's life. I wrote the story in 1998. Fred died in early 2003.

And for those five years, I was in touch with Fred. And he wrote me emails a lot. And any number of those emails are about my dad. And the thing that Fred was always trying to tell me was your dad would be proud of you and your dad loves you. I know you are a man of conviction, a person who knows the difference between what is wrong and what is right. Try to remember that your relationship with your father also helped to shape those parts. He helped you become. what you are.

So I think that he'd be, I think that he'd be, I think that he'd be, I think that he'd be good with the book. Yeah. Tom, you know, as I sit here, sweating profusely under this cardigan. Maybe you'd be sweating even without the cardigan, given the content of this interview. I dare say that I think we've reached our natural end. I think we have.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out, a Metal Arc Media production. and I'll talk to you next time.