Tough Guy

A Memoir and a Search

A powerful hybrid memoir exploring the connections between father and son, addiction and disease, and what it really means to be a man, from an award-winning queer journalist

Growing up in and around New York City, all Mat really knew of his father, Tofi, was that he loved to cook, he loved to dance, and he was, for the most part, completely absent from his familys life. As Mat grew older, he realized his father was an addict despite his mothers silence on the subject, and he realized that he himself was gay, a revelation that was met only with Dont get AIDS, a stinging blow to young Mat.

But it was not until Tofi was on his deathbed that his son learned his father had been HIV-positive for all of Mats life. The two had had such different, disparate lives; yet lives that ran parallel to each other all the while, and this set Mat on a journey to truly understand his fathers story, as well as his own