Brainy Vapours

I've hired a private investigator to find my father. She finds him quite quickly, which surprises me. I meet her in some sort of empty grey nondescript kind of room, we sit at a table. She lays out all these papers in front of me, and tells me that he has been going by the name of Joe, which is not his birth name. Some of these papers are pictures, and I am shocked to be looking at the image of the man that is supposed to be my Father. The man looks nothing like I thought he would look like. I've never seen the face of my father though, not clearly, so I suppose there is no reason for this feeling. One of the pictures is strange, it looks a bit like an animated .gif image that cycles through a few head shots of him. The investigator tells me that there isn't very much family resemblance, which doesn't surprise me. I've always looked like my Mom.

She tells me that Joe is working as an actor on a British Soap Opera/Comedy kind of production, it reminds me a bit like "Fools & Horses", and that he's actually doing quite well for himself. I am surprised at this, as from what I've heard of my father, he wasn't the type for such an extroverted profession.

Flash forward to the meeting. I don't know where we are, in a trailer of some sort maybe. It seems dimly lit and there are wood panels and brown carpet. We're talking, but not about anything in particular. I can tell he's uncomfortable and doesn't want to talk about any issues or hard questions. He talks about his work mostly, then finds an excuse to leave the room and I am left with his girlfriend.

His girlfriend seems fairly nice. She's an attractive blond that is much younger than him. She is dressed kind of boho chic I guess. We make polite conversation. She tells me a few things about him, including why some of his ear is missing (I don't remember the reason) and that leads us to talking about plastic surgery, which she seems really interested in. She asks me to get us some ice cream from the freezer. It's a crazy complicated and extensive compartmentalized freezer with at least 10 different slots for ice cream. The slots are all filled up with all kinds of novelty ice creams, much like you would see on an ice cream truck. I don't know which to pick. My father isn't much help, telling me to just pick whatever.