Though the son did struggle and try...in vain.

Letters were dispatched, telling the father what the son thought, that these things—-this damage control—-was immaterial, it didn't change the fact of blood. The son simply stated that he wanted his father to be proud, a member of his life, so that the father could look on the things this son had done with a smile and heart full of pride. Whether or not his father had intercourse, no matter who with, did not change the reality of their link: they were blood, nothign changed that. Calls were made, answered by solitary machines in solitary duties...the mechanics of avoidance.

Nothing.

And then one day the son was trying one last time, as he realized that nearly seven years had passed, to find and contact his father. And he found the father, in a manner of sorts.

The father had become a member of a group online, and had posted comments regarding the life of the father, with only one line dedicated to the son. You see, the father had apparently always considered the world homophobic, that all were against him...including his own son. The son had become the one to be punished for the father's inability to communicate, for the father's self-enforced exile of solitude in order to protect him from an imagined world of hate. The son had grown to a man by this time, and would not have his own thoughts forced on him, pigeon-holed into the stereotype of a world viewed with contempt.

And in one of these messages...the father had declared he was HIV+, undetectable for the last four years...but the son wondered, did 'the last 4 years' simply indicate that the disease was advancing now?

Though more to the point...the son was confirmed on everything he had thought. He had surmised the hidden meaning of the grandmother's card correctly, as the father had been diagnosed at that time; it had become so clear now that the uncle was sent to see his nephew, the son, not to wish him well and spend time with him, but rather to control the father's fragile sense of pride; to keep the son in the dark; to treat the son as if he was an ignorant interloper, not worthy enough to know his father's health.

The son reported all this to his mother, who remembered so vividly that her son had deduced an affliction in her former husband from more than 3,000 miles away. And the son, in the same instance, wondered if he would be able to talk to the father now, without being disrespectful by appearing to only be reaching again since the father was marked by a virus that has no cure; he knew it was a risk indicative of the father's chosen life-style; and then he thought of the utter contempt presented against the son by the father. How could the father have so clumsily tried to control a frail lie like this? How could he have had the audacity to shut his own son out of his life, in such a manner?