During the “satanic panic” of the late ’80s, Oprah warned her viewers of teen listeners of heavy metal being brainwashed into worshipping the devil, and worse, killing themselves on his behalf. Ozzy Osbourne and Iron Maiden found themselves both at the center of lawsuits. My mother, a loyal Oprah viewer and conclusion jumper, frantically told my father about this, who in turn—due to my rather grim demeanor at the time—suspected me of being satanic, which would explain, at least in his mind, my difficulty with girls, household chores, and gym class. Perhaps my morose ways lit the darkness around me.

So what seemed very probable to my father was finally confirmed when he saw the cover of The Cure’s Disintegration, which I had just bought with my long awaited monthly allowance, featuring a ghoul-like Robert Smith in thick mascara seemingly reporting from the depths of below.

“Why is it so dark?” he asked, slipping past Stop signs on our way home from the mall.

“You mean the cover?” I asked. “It’s artistic.” I was already a snob.

His gaze seemed flattened by the windshield, as if there wasn’t anywhere to look but inward. “Do you worship the devil?” he finally asked. “I’ve been talking to your mother.”

I sneered and said he was a deeply confused person. That he had his genres totally mixed up. That working full time at a lousy corporate job had slowly stripped him of any aesthetic intuition. That there were, you know, like, sensitive people on this earth who made art that he would never understand. That life wasn’t just about paying taxes and mowing the damn lawn. “Whatever, man.” I said.

He punched me in the arm, then tried but couldn’t take it back with his eyes. There was the faintest bruise the next morning.