Our relationship was one of sharing stories as responses to each other around topics, fathers and sons, types of love, types of pain, what you need to learn from your pain or how to know when you can't learn anymore from it.
But it slowly shifted. As the day went on his tone towards me took an ever more paternalistic note. He began to speak to me about love, and life, and family, and death, sometimes making suggestions based off his analysis of his own mistakes and successes, but always hedging, always laying out where he was giving suggestions from, the situation he was using as a frame of reference.
And he told me that having a relationship with his son when he got out of prison was more important than being hung up about his son's love for a man, because, ultimately, it's all about love, his love for his son, his son's love for another man—what should it matter if he has "a daughter or a son, and what should it matter if they love a woman or a man, as long as the love was moving."