I Am

I am the son of a man and woman who defined happiness as their children's future.

I am a boy who went to Dwight D. Eisenhower Elementary School in Davie, Florida.

I am a boy whose parents told him he was special and smart and handsome and strong and unique and powerful and destined for success.

I am a 10-year-old who as he closed his eyes as his head hit the pillow, imagined he was holding the hand of an imaginary jumpy, innocent, cute, little girl. A boy with no idea what he was feeling, just a mysterious experience between friendship and sensuality; an emerging growth of the mind, body, and soul.

I am a 12-year-old who knew there was something two people could discover together that was otherworldly and inexplicable and a little dirty.

I am a 14-year-old who discovers his manhood, alone.

I am a 16-year-old who has a full beard and is ready to conquer the world.

I am a disillusioned 20-year-old who graduates with a degree in Mass Communications and realizes it's not enough.

I am a 23-year-old obtaining a graduate degree in speech-language pathology and my first "real" job with the New York City Board of Education, loving every second of every day of it.

I am a 24-year-old who falls so deeply in love with my first wife that I would have literally waited in line for her if that's what it took for her to love me.

I am a 30-year-old who realizes that no matter how much we try, there is no pathway to happiness together, and end up divorcing the woman I promised to love until I drew my last breath. I only cried twice. When I filed. And when I drove her to Pennsylvania, and as I left, she said, "I know you still love me."

I am a 32-year-old who falls in love with the smartest, loveliest, woman who informs me to be cautious because she will get pregnant the very first time we try. She did, and I became a biological dad.

I am a 45-year-old man who found himself single again. On one level, a twice-divorced fool. Yet I never for a second felt stigmatized. As Oprah popularized, I was living my best life, and it felt right.

I am a 46-year-old man who, like an alien from outer space, created profiles on Match, OK Cupid, POF, Zoosk, and Tinder. The girls all made it clear they wanted relationships, the guys all pretended to want relationships, but really just wanted to go fishing, drink beers, and have casual sex. I wasn't young or sexy enough to play those mind games, so I gave it up cold turkey.

I am a 48-year-old in love with a young woman so pretty, intelligent, and loving I wondered exactly what it was I did to deserve her. To this day, I have never read anything more expressive and powerful than the love letters I received from her in the early stages of that romance.

I am a 52-year-old man with a wonderful, sweet, sensitive, brilliant 16-year-old daughter, a new home, and a new 10-week-old brown Labrador puppy, and that's it.

I am a 53-year-old man who jumps back into the online dating scene and has two short-lived relationships with women who make me feel alive and attractive and intelligent and powerful. They made me feel young again.

I am a 55-year-old man who sees my past relationships as a lifetime unto themselves. Some would call them failures, but if they were, wouldn't I have regret and anger, and trauma? I don't. On some level, I will always love them, and suspect, in their own way, they will always love me too.

I am a man who wants to share moments and occasions and experiences with someone special.

I am a man who, despite a whirlwind of ups and downs, is still that boy in kindergarten at Eisenhower elementary.

A boy who loves chocolate milk in small cartons, and playing blocks, and seeing an illustration of a dog hopping across the pages of a book and realizing his name is Spot.

A boy who knew he had no control over anything and was fine with it.

A boy who lived in the moment.

A lucky boy who became a man who may live another year, or another forty.

A 55-year-old boy, who when he places his head on the pillow at night, still imagines a princess who is pretty and kind and smart and, for some strange, mysterious reason, wants to only dance with me. 

I am a boy.

I am a man.

I just am.