This was also true. I had gained 40 pounds through a new bodybuilding routine, shaved my head and grown a goatee — dyed jet black. I was searching for my identity in the gay community, trying on different visages. If the Village People staged a reunion, I could have stood in as the middle-aged biker. And if dates with my daughters felt odd, dating men for the first time was like entering a foreign country with no map, attempting to navigate its twisted streets and decipher its secret language. After a few tragic encounters with other men, I met another gay father named Paul.

Wearing a barn coat and a Brooks Brothers shirt, Paul was the soccer dad next door type who didn’t realize how handsome he was. In person, he looked just like his profile picture, better actually. His dad jokes made his three kids roll their eyes, but I could sense a deep and abiding respect and love that they felt for him. It was eye-opening to me that another gay dad could be — well — just a dad. I was smitten. For the first time in a long while, a tiny glimmer of hope flickered, and I imagined an identity that I had never before considered: being Paul’s husband.

One evening, after we had dated for a few months, Paul watched my face drain of color when my ex-wife called. She had discovered Marisa crying alone in her bedroom. A classmate had scrawled Marisa’s Dad is a faggot on the blackboard.

“I feel like my father has died,” Marisa sobbed.

Paul took my hand and told me to breathe.

“Be the rock, their constant,” he said. “Don’t you think the girls miss their father?” he added.

He was pointing to my shaved head and tugging on my goatee as if to say it was the change in my appearance they were missing, but I understood what he meant.

I stopped shaving my head and started shaving my face, and I started insisting again that my daughters call me Dad, reprimanding them when they misbehaved. They responded with silence. My calls went straight to voice mail. My text messages were left unanswered.

“Who’s paying for those fancy phones?” Paul asked.

“But, they might need me!” I said. “I can’t turn off the service.”