I look at this painting for the first time in years, then read the back. He says he is quoting the author Albert Camus, but in fact the quote has no confirmed origin. As I contemplate this, I realize I don’t know who the man in the painting is. I thought maybe it was supposed to be Albert Camus, but no. When I looked up photos of Albert Camus he doesn’t look anything like the man in the painting. Then I thought maybe it was supposed to be a self-portrait of my dad. But it doesn’t look like my dad either. The face is too long and thin, the eyes are different, the hair too wild. I start to realize it will remain a mystery who the man in the painting is. He is naked from the waist up and I immediately wonder, “Did my dad sleep with this man?” I answer yes in my mind even as the question is forming. The answer feels true in my gut. He usually only painted people he wanted sexually, both famous and unknown. Or had had sexually. There is a certain intimacy implied in the subject’s nakedness and the way he stares that strikes me. I imagine my dad meeting this man in some bar. They spend the evening drinking and discussing Albert Camus’ philosophy on life. My dad, always using his musings on art and philosophy to charismatically entice people has mistaken the quotes origins. It doesn’t matter though, the stranger is seduced. They go back to this stranger’s place or a hotel or the back of the bar, have a sexual encounter, never to see each other again. That was the way my dad preferred his liaisons, variety over the familiar. But I’ll never know for sure. I’m reminded of all the questions I never asked out of fear of the answers, though of course now that both my parents have passed away, I pretend I would have had the courage to ask those forbidden questions. Why did my parents stay together? Why did my mother stay when she hated my father for being sexually promiscuous? Why did my father stay when my mother started a long-term affair that drove him crazy? Why didn’t she leave when she started the long-term affair, after supposedly falling in love with this other man? I know despite my parents never remaining faithful to each other, their love was too strong to break. My dad always told me to stay alone, that any commitment in one’s life was nothing more than a noose tied around your neck suffocating you till you died. The more commitments, the quicker you hang, the more you’re tied down and unable to escape. Better to have fleeting, intense encounters with strangers. He told me to never get married, to never have children, to never get an office job, to limit time with friends. It was better to be alone as all these were death sentences. I knew without him saying it directly, I was one of his death sentences.