Finding Peace with a Complicated Father

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In a long and varied career in American magazines at places like GQ and Esquire, Tom profiled complicated figures like Norman Mayiller, Kevin Spacey, and Tony Curtis. But in all of those profiles, another flawed man loomed in the background. onene who informed how Tom thought about the very nature of masculinity and manhood. And that was his father, Lou, a man who had a life full of secrets Tom's relationship with his dad is the subject of his new book, which is part memoir and part detective story. It's called, In the Days of My Youth, I was told what it means to be a man. And it's a powerful meditation on what we need from a father, what we inherit from a father and how we somehow make peace with the gap in between those Today, on Father's Day, my conversation with Tom Juneaot. It's Sunday, june twenty first. Welcome to the Sunday Daily. It's so great to be here It's an honor to have you Can I ask you to Read from the eulogy that you read A your father's funeral U believe it's on page four. Yeah So the the eulogy had a title If you're gonna to be a bear, be a grizzly. And that was one of my dad's sayings My father, dad was not like other fathers He was not like other people, period A lot of people have told me that he's with Jesus now Well, with hold your respect, I have my doubts Unless of course, Jesus has shaved his beard ditch the sandals and is drinking a martini at the El Morocco Circa nineteen fifty five with Franken Ava This is not to say my father was not a believer He had a whole belief system He believed in a lot of things and what he believed in, he believed in absolutely He believed that there was not a person in the world whose appearance could not be helped by exposure to the sun. or what he called Fresh burn He believed that there was not an ailment in the world that could not be cured by salt waterater He believed that the way Rhett Butler treated Scarlett was the way all women should be treated and that Clark Gable was robbed when he didn't win the Oscar for B Actor in nineteen thirty nine He believed that the lottery was a game of skill rather than chance And that he had won it twice but for some reason had neglected to turn in the ticket. And he believed to the very end, that he was going to win again And then, as he said Then I'll teach you how to live justust from Those brief words It's very evident that Y dad was a larger than life character. Yeah. Well so You know, he had all these maxims, he had all these ideas about how Men should be And He lived by him And that's the thing about him. So it's not just that he thought that every man should have a fresh burn theoretically And he you know didn't just say wear white to the face or a turtleneck is the most flattering thing a man can wear. I mean, he followed all these things religiously And they worked. I mean, that's the thing I think that you have to understand, you know, with my dad is that it all worked. I mean, if he walked into a restaurant, you know, every what am I seeing? Yeah, so you saw a guy who is wearing A blue shirt the white collar, you know, high to the face, a big fat knot. Cuff links Floorhe shoes Skin, the color of mahogany or A one steak, us, any sort of synonym that you can figure out for brown. He was that. And then and then he had eyes the color of Chartreuse. I mean they were the greenest eyes I've ever seen in any human being They were on fire and they were kind of beautiful and entrancing and kind of terrifying at the same time I feel like I'm looking at Frank Sinatra Yeah. I mean, so I saw Frank Sinatra once And that's all you saw Wore his blue eyes They were burning like gas jets And that was the same with my dad All you saw was his dark skin and his insanely green eyes behind us Very masculine appearance.ure. You have said are some very specific ideas that your dad had about masculinity, It wasn't just a veneer, it was a whole. philosophy. So Tell me about So it wasn't just clothes. You know, it was also some very specific ideas about manhood and how a man should be. And well, number one, always look a man in the eye Tw alwaysways have a firm handshake Number three Always open the door for a woman And then they got a little bit like after sort of sort of the basics, they were complex U There was one time that he told me basically his overall rule for seducing women and It it was Tell a smart woman, she's beautiful and tell a beautiful woman she's smart So he had a lot of tips and they were all acted on. they were all part of who he was Where do you think that these lessons about manhood came from upon what was it modeled, as best you could tell B as I could tell, it was modeled on the movie stars of the late nineteen thirties. Not his dad. Definitely not his dad when We were growing up My brother, my sister and I, we would always ask him know Dad, tell us about your dad and he would say in the way he spoke. I never had Father and then One of us would say What do wait a minute, Tad? you know, your father calls you know, every couple of months to ask for money And he would just look at us and repeat, I never had a father But he would go to the movies you know, when he was growing up in Brooklyn And he absorbed everything. He absorbed had a dress from Fedesire He absorbed how to talk from Carrie Crant He absorbed how to treat women you know, from Clarark Gable. And he was a student of all that. I mean, the thing about my dad, so he was like, he was a rough kid. Gring up in Brooklyn But By the time I knew him. He had expunged like every bit of his Brooklyn accent And a lot of that was because When he was in World War I He was wounded. And then instead of being shipped back to the front A liieutenant heard him saying and put him in a show And so he became, you know, a crooner singing in a traveling Army act called For men only whichich is almost too on the nose. It really is And um When my dad came home from World War II He tried to make it as a singer and did not But one of the things he still did Go down to the basement. and tape himself singing to instrumental records And for an audience of himself himself for an audience of himself. God one look than I knew. And so he behaved the way a Krooner and his mind was supposed. He behaved the way a Krooners was supposed to behave Crooned his daily language. I mean, he was a crooner even when he was talking It was all You know, a mechanism of seduction of some kind He would stand in front of the mirror in the morning I'd be on my way to school and I'd go in to say hello or goodbye And he would be standing there in his black bikini in front of this enormous mirror in his room and he would say at this body Have you ever seen a body Good And he had a body. I mean, he was built like Charles Atlas How did all of this philosophy manifests in the kind of father that he was you What what kind of dad was he He was actually a really good dad in a lot of different ways He was attentive He was prescriptive He taught me how to play football, He taught me how to box. He would kiss me hard good night on my head or in the morning when he went away on a trip you know, he was a super tentive dad at the same time He was terrifying I was terrified of my father. He was not a violent person around the house, but the amount of force that his presence had was just the kind of thing where you felt like If you came too close to him, it was like going too close to the son that you would be obliterated toughest thing about growing up with my dad was having this warm overwhelmingly, you know, demonstratively loving person who at the same time was person I could not be in the same room with Eespecially when I was like five, six, seven years old, you know, without crying. And specific behavior would make you cry. I mean there was definitely a time when I was so given to tears That my father at dinner time would sort of make it a game Tommy Why aren't you finishing that steak And I, you know, my lip would start quivering and I would cry. And I think it was just there was a power imbalance that was Really just tough to deal with So Here's the disconnect that I have having read your book. Intimidating guy He sells purses He was a handbag salesman. Square that. Well, so he didn't make it as a singer. And he hadn't gone to school past eighth grade And he had really nothing but his looks and his charm and one of his army buddies had gotten a job in the leather business as a salesman. and he took my dad under his wing and they went out on the road together And, you know, my father quickly became The To the degree that there were legendary handbag salesmen, he was the legendary handbag sales. Legendary for what Legendary for two things Legendary for, you know, being Big Lou. That was his even though he was, as he would say S feet in shoes, meaning he was about five, ten. He was Big Lou But he was also known for seducing women So He was selling handbags And he was is seducing buyers. But his sex appeal was the thing It not only made him the celebrity that he wanted to be, but also made him money. I mean, my father was an extremely successful handbick salesman. And I think that like his earnings topped out in the early seventies or the mid seventies att around two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year, which in the midst for nineteen seventy four. that was big money. Huge money. I three X that given relation toay. Exactly. I mean, I think that he was I think that he was promiscuous. I think that he was a you know, if he was a philanderer, he was a driven landerer And this is a deliberate intentional word you're using, he's married He's married, who's married to my mom from as long as he was alive, you know, in in my in my world. I was born to a marriage that stayed together until both of my parents passed away He's described, you know often in the press about the book as a philanderer. And I guess that's the right word It seems almost too mild for what he was Correct me if I'm wrong, but you come to understand All of this. not just through youthful intuition But as you write through pretty big moment of Discovery. Yes So Tell me the story of how you come to understand that your dad's masculinity and his virility is is not just an external identity, but something he is Sting on in ways that are perhaps not meant for you to have understood. The thing about my dad was he presented himself in a very forthrightly sexual way And it wasn't like that was simply for show My father had an affair with My first friend's mother when I was three years old. And I knew it You knew it. I knew it. someomehow. someomehow I knew that something was wrong, something was off. somethingomething that made my mom unhappy That was always sort of compass needle I talked to you before about always crying around my dad and that I felt, you know, sort of powerless around my dad the way that I try to deal with that was to try to like figure out my dad And so you know, I never stopp sort of spying on them, snooping around And then when I was sixteen My father came home with something that he had never had. So my father was not like an organized guy. and he kept all his work stuff in like a mananila envelope. handandwriting scrawled all over it. Andne day he comes home and all of a sudden he looks like every other guy on the Long Island raailroad. He comes home with his Samsonite briefcase And the minute I saw the Sansonite briefcase, I did not think Oh my dad's like a normal guy now I said there's something inside that Samsoni briefcase. And you wanted to figure out what it was. And I was driven to figure out what it was And one night, he was going out to the track with my mom, which he frequently did And I went into his closet I pulled out the briefcase and looked at it and wondered whether I should open it because I knew Things were about to change right there. heart was beating And then I opened it anyway. And what did you find? There was this huge stack of really Dream pornography in super eight. a celluloid format for watching home movies. And there were these two gigantic rubber dildos a Wh moment Yeah And you watch the Superides. I watch the Superides and It's on an old, you know, movie projector that we used to watch home movies on. and I'm watching this really extreme pornography. It was It was subjugation porn. But you're a teenageer. I'm sixteen Just turned sixteen And so you've never seen anything like this. I've never been kissed I didn't know anything and it jams in the projecture And I smell the smoke. Oh my and it burns and it breaks, it snaps. Oh my God So That presented me as a son with a problem likeike What do I do I rewound it meticulously. I spent hours rewinding it so that you're terrified of him. I'm terrified of him and I didn't want him to know My secret, which was that I knew his secret And you know, I went from thinking that my dad was sort of a chararming Thief. someomebody that would be in a movie played by Carrie Grant or David Niven. to a hit man Just help me understand that. I mean you by this point do seem to have understood even from Toddler days Yeah, that your dad was sleeping around Sleeping around, yeah. but This Does what It made me wonder if my dad at some level was bad Did it cross your mind to talk to your mom about this? It crossed my mind But then I knew that it was the nuclear codes to my family. I mean, I don't think my parents' marriage would have survived. I don't know if I would have survived. I mean, that's the whole thing about secrets. you really don't know what's on the other side of them. or they enlist you in them And I was enlisted in that particular secret I sort of got bonded to my dad. through the secrets that sort of upset me most, when I was twenty You know, I went out on a date with my dad and a buyer with whom he was very clearly having an affair with What was thatll like It was at once of concern because it was another thing I had to keep from my mom And also I'll just say it, it was like one of the most glamorous nights of my life. We went out to see Woody Allen at Michael's Pub We walked my father's date and her sister in law who was sort of like my date, you know, back to the plaza. And it was my first night in New York City and I was sort of, I was just swept away as the two women were. So My dad presented himself as a paragon of masculinity. but Masculinity to my dad didn't just mean being able to handle yourself with your fists. It didn't just mean looking sharp. It didn't just mean having a firm handshake. You know, it meant it meant having sex. That is the thing I think that distinguished The way I grew up from a lot of other people who had sort of macho dads I had a macho dad who was forever on the make. And that that was the difference and wanted you to be on the make and wanted me to be on the make As your father gets older What's your relationship to him and these secrets that He may or may not understand you possess that are bringing you closer to him but also clearly have left you wary of him You know I became in some ways H protector He did not age well. And he went from Being a guy who made two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year to a guy who had had lost everything And how did he lose everything He was a terrible gambler and he was evense he was even a worse investor in the stock market. I he was the most confident man I had ever come across, and that itself was like seductive and powerful And then he became a guy whose pockets were lined with regrets. I mean, he was one of these guys. that's all he did was talk about, you know, wouldve could have should have And so In nineteen ninety six I was writing for Q. I wrote the story called My Father's Fashion Tips. which was a way to sort of allow him to u found his principles and his maxims and introduce those to the wider reading public The reason I did it was as a gift to him. I wanted to makeake him the celebrity that he never was But And there's always a butt, I think, in all of these stories I did that story to corner my dad with a tape recorder between us. And so I finally had the chance to talk to him about all this stuff. And, you know, so I found out that he had in affair with not just Jaja Gabor, but with the Gabor sisters I found out.inkabore. Yeah, not enough He talked about the affair that he had with my first friend's mother, Valerie Shockett The one you sensed when you were three. The one I sens when I was three Then he told me about somethingomet that happened to him. that At once ennobled him. as like a tragic character and also made me wonder if I really knew him at all Yeah Well, they're right back This podcast is supported by Hulu Ey nominees Steve Martin. Martin Short and Selena Gomez are joined by Meryl Streep, Christoph Waltz, Renee Zellweger, Diane Whast, and more to crack the case of their beloved dead doormman in the latest season of Only Murders in the Building For your Emmy consideration in all categories, including Outstanding comedy series, Ostanding lead actctor in a comedy for Martin An Short, and lead actress in a comedy for Gomez. For more information, visit hulu. com slash fYc This podcast is supported by UJA Federation of New York. Right now, it can feel like everything is pulling us apart. The world feels louder, more divided at UJA. The focus is simple people where it matters most, like supporting struggling New Yorkers, making sure Holocaust survivors can live their final years with dignity, and protecting Jewish spaces so communities feel safe and strong When you give to UJA, you're choosing impact. Be part of it. Learn more at UJa. orgot Cancer is loud when it enters our lives We built the Jack and Cheryl Morris Cancer Center, so cancer doesn't get the last word. The Jack and Cheryl Moor Cancer Center, New Jersey's only freesting cancer hospital. to Silence Cancer. R WJ Barnabas Health and Rutgers Cancer Institute, the state's only NCI designated comprehensive canancer center Rwjbh d. org slash Morris Cancer Center Tom describe This information your father shared with you that better word Clearly changes your life and chang your view of him.ure. So this was my last stay with him for this story I had taken him out to the Dune Deck Hotel on Dune Road in West Hampton, which was sort of his refuge When I was growing up, he would leave the house, our house around four or five o'clock. you know, dressed in his sort of uniform, he'd wear an orange alpaca sweater. which were white pants, and he would go out for a drink at this hotel. And so I took him there when I was doing the story for GQ And there was a moment where I felt I felt that I didn't have to ask any more questions. I felt like I was done And then that night When we were at the hotel An eighty one year old woman asked him for his phone number when we were out at dinner, which was just he was seventy seven at the time. So it was just beutiful it was just a beautiful moment. But the next morning God I asked him. I said, Dad, you know, when that woman asked you for your phone number, is that what it was like? when you were in your thirties and forties and even fifties And he shook his head and he said Tell me, tell me, tell me There was a time walked. Fth Avenue And I said Gee, dad, did you take any of them up on it And his answer was not All of them you know, and I said, okay, dad, how many? I' a gentleman. centage? Oh, I don't know twenty five percent That led me to the next question. which is Did you ever fall in love with one? And there was a pause And then my father looked at me and held out a finger I asked, Who is she? What's her name? What happened to her and he said, She died He said she fell down the steps of her home in Florida. And she was a married woman And it was the central tragedy of my dad's life. It was the thing that I didn't see coming Like I think I saw Corn and the dild' coming more than I saw that coming And that he could be deeply that he could be deeply in love and have have loved and lost that he had somethingomet happened to him that couldn't be just sort of shuffled away like any of his other lovers. Did you end up putting the story of this great love of your dad's life in the piece about him that ran in GQ No I didn't put that story in there I didn't put any of the secrets that he shared with me at the Dune Deck that weekend in the story You spared him. I spared him And I put in the secrets that he wanted everybody to know, the secrets of grooming, the secrets of hygiene, the secrets of dressing everythingverything else I kept to myself. A final tribute. The final tribute And to a diminished man to a man who was A diminished man and It was intended as a gift to him And it worked as a gift to him. And the piece became one of the most popular pieces I hadd ever written. There was a photo of my father in it in a tuxedo drinking a martini, and it wound up in the window of the B. Altman on Fifth Avenue. The department store. The department store. And he was immortalized in a way. I thought my job was done. And he passes away. ten years later Age of eighty seven That would be the moment for most people where their relationship with their father their mother, their parent moreore or less comes to and end, right You have a bunch of secrets They've died with him, they're probably going to die with you As you write at this precise moment when you actively start to seek out a very Big and new chapter in your relationship with your father and What made you do that? So I orchestrated my dad's funeral service I hired a Chantuse from New York City to come and say I'll be seeing you. inststead of You know Christian hymns, I selected sinatra songs for everybody to sing at the funeral. I gave the eulogy that I spent you a long time preparing. Right. I got the last word. I'm done and then At the end of the funeral, this beautiful woman stands up that I didn't really even like notice her presence. I was so involved in what I was doing. She's the only black person at the funeral She's six foot tall She's wearing a black leather jacket. she's wearing Blue jeans cut to capri pant length She has these gold sandals on with five inch heels And she stands up, she turns around And she brings her hands down on the lect turn And she says Can we all just agree This was a man Wow. And that's throws that throws me. And so you discover yet another woman So there's an so there's another woman has there's another woman. She was person who was in the handbed business. She's not the woman that he was in love with. She was just another woman that he had a long affair with. And once again, it was something that eventually set me set me on the path of trying to find out everything about them How did you actually go about investigating parts of your dad's life that you didn't know because by this point, you know a great deal Yeah, a lot Basically the way I did it was You know, I tried to call people who were connected with my dad either sexually or through the business through the handbag business I mean, to the extent that I went and went out to California and found the woman with whom he had an affair when I was three years old The biggest thing that I did was try to find out more about The one. The great love, who did great the great love, Lora And that was the hardest part as well My. because She had children She had four children I looked at the notes that I had written to myself when I first found out the name of the one And her name was Peggy Monahghan and When I found out her name, I found out the name of her children And in one note that I wrote to myself I ask myself, I say, you know, my father forty years ago invaded this family's life and It had a tragic ending Do I presume to do that again And why? Wh Did you want to invade this same family again, just like your father becausecause when I first started doing my research into the book I spoke to the children of my father's best friend in Florida His name was Frankie Kleine. He was my dad's wing man. He was one of my dad's best friends. And you know, they had met Peggy Monahghan, they had seen Peggy Monahghan. they had seen Peggy Monahghan with my father. In this secret life in this secret' back up here. Yeah. One of Frankie's daughters said I always knew that it was a forbidden love H and then Another of Frankie's daughters called up one day and said, listen, there's something I need to tell you And what she needed to tell me was that Peggy had a child by my dad or was rumored to have had a child by my dad. I didn't know which one but I took it upon myself to find out Be suddenly, you have a sibling It was such a powerful urge because I knew what my dad's secret life had dumb to my family. And I had an idea what my father's secret life had done to the Monaghan family and I was driven by this urge to put it all back together again And I took it upon myself to do that We are going to take One more quick break We'll right back This podcast is supported by Hulu Chase Infinity stars in the Testaments, who lose new coming of age drama series set in the worldld of the Handmaid's Tale. Variety calls it an exemplary follow upp to the original series and a magnificent coming of age story. 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So Tom, after you discover that You might have a sibling you didn't know about and you realize how deep this urge is to figure it out What do you do Well, I sent out an email and letters. to some of the children saying in that email Hello My name is Tom Juno You don't know me my father was in love with your mother Y mother and my father had A long affair And I've been given to understand That your mother was the love of my father's life What did they communicate back to you Well The first person in the family that I met was named Tommy and we met on New Year's Eve twenty sixteen, we went to a bar in Queens And Tommy was basically trying to suss out you know, my motives in contacting him and then pursuing, you know, because I told him I was writing a book. He asked if he could go outside and smoke a cigarette And I said, sure, and we went outside, and the minute he turned around and lit up a cigarette, looked at me and he goes, It's my sister, isn't it? And I said, yeah And he was like, I knew it And then he said ere's the thing You can never tell her So you're being asked to keep yet another secret, but You decide Not to You do reach out to her, why because I couldn't live with not finding her I couldn't live with it. I couldn't I had started trying to, you know, trying to put the pieces back together. and the idea of not completing that task. while knowing that there was someone out there I couldn't I couldn't I couldn't abide by it And I didn't think ultimately it would be anybody's decision, but hers. And so in twenty eighteen, I decided to approach her And Her name is Lizanne and she owns and runs and cooks in a food truck at the University of Connecticut And one day I decided to approach the food truck And I've done a lot of interviews And I've done even, you know, pretty scary interviews. I've knocked on any number of doors and nothing ever in my entire, you know journalistic career scared me more than walking up to Lizanne's food truck. and introducing myself And She asked me, how can I help you? And I said I said I said Lizanne Sometimes you know She has this beautiful, beautiful smile and she was smiling And then the smile disappeared She looked at me And she looked at me And then the smile came back. She said What the hell are you doing here? Did she know? I think she knew I certainly did There was something about seeing somebody who is related to you is hard to describe When I first saw Lizzie's picture, onn our Facebook page It's not that I identified her. It's not that I was able to say, Ohh, yeah, we have the same nose or we have the same smile lines, or our smiles are similar It was beyond that I recognized her. And I think that she recognized me as well. I mean, it took it took a while it just turned out to be one of the most remarkable experiences of my life not just because we found each other. But we had lost, we each had lost somethingomething enormous In May of twenty twenty two, I lost my sister, Kathy. She died. in July of twenty twenty three Lizzie lost her brother Michael and on Christmas Eve, twenty twenty two She called me to tell me that she had gotten the results of the ancestry test back Hm You had lost siblings. had you had gained s. You Yeahah. And so in that moment We each had lost family and we each had found each other But there was there was something else about it. I felt like I had settled Finally, what I'd never been able to settle in my life, which is, you know, my feelings about my dad and my knowledge about my dad. Well, how does this settle Well, it'd like Iot disrupt despite A lifetime of betrayals that ends with Arguably the greatest betrayal of all. Yes. A secret family,, A secret child. R A great love who he paraded around Florida. in a pretty cavalier way. when he was allegedly off selling purses, who knows what he was doing, wasn't taking care of you in those moments