A Life in Forty-Three Verses

Today’s my forty-third birthday. As a malignant narcissist with a captive audience, I wrote a forty-three stanza poem about myself. One for each year of my life. I hope it resonates. If you hate it, pretend you love it—for me.

1. One damaged human fertilizes another. You have no say in the matter.

2. An abused child is impossibly tasked with raising you alone. She retreats to her mother, who retreated to her mother, who retreated to her mother.

3. The collective trauma of generation,

after generation,

after generation,

after generation, is beaten into you via perpetual neglect and sporadic terror.

7. You don’t know what you did to deserve this.

8. At church the collection plate gets passed around and you wonder how many times the Good Book has been retconned and declare God a myth.

9. You’re a precocious child destined to become a disaffected teenager, then a hardened young man, then a cynical grownup, then a regretful corpse.

10. Your best friend is a Cuban boy with blond hair and blue eyes and a nuclear family. You envy him, because you don’t yet know appearances can be deceiving. Every family harbors darkness.

11. The broken people around you deploy humor and insults to mask their insecurity and self-loathing. You learn to deploy humor and insults.

12. You excel at school because it’s easy. But you never fit in. Your peer group is comprised of wealthy White kids whose moms and dads are lawyers or doctors or professors. You’re below their station and certainly their daughters. The Black kids think you’re part Hispanic and the Hispanic kids think you're part Black. On standardized tests you choose Native American/Pacific Islander as your race. Allegedly you’re one-sixteenth Cherokee Indian and you don’t know where Pakistan is, so…why not? You unexpectedly become a big brother.

13. You adapt. You change colors like a chameleon and code switch before it was an NPR podcast. You’re naturally extroverted, and you trained to be funny, so you cruise through seventh grade. You’re about to become a big man on campus. There’s a girl you like. You’ll finally ask her out.

14. You’re uprooted to Michigan, and all your progress is lost. You have no say in the matter.

15. You don shoulder pads and a helmet and your coaches tell you assault and battery are legal. For the next four years you crack backs and issue concussions with impunity. It’s an effective, if destructive, outlet.

16. In Ocala, Florida, visiting your grandmother and great grandmother, you enjoy an indelible up close and personal taste of racism. You never visit again.

17. Your boy lends you a copy of Wu-Tang Forever. You’re not sure if you like it, but you keep listening, and then it clicks, and the lyrics speak to you, and you begin a lifelong love affair with nineties hip hop.

18. College seems like something other kids do, but apparently you’re qualified. You want to go to Auburn—thanks to Frank Thomas—or Arizona State—thanks to your homies—but your mom won’t let you. She forces you to apply to the local state schools, one of which happens to be among the best in the world.

19. First semester shell shock humbles you. Your mom says, “I knew you weren’t smart enough to go to Michigan.” Uncontrollable anger fuels you. You crush class,

after class, after class,

after class, after class,

after class, after class, and depart for graduate school in the Tar Heel State.

23. You crush class, after class, after class, after class. You’re the top student in your program…

24. …but you hate it. Your high school, turned college, turned graduate school girlfriend of five long and formative years dumps you. Your scumbag stepfather divorces your mom on your sister’s twelfth birthday. Your great grandmother dies. You’re depleted. You exhaust your anger—your fuel. Worn down, and resigned, with nothing but pain on the horizon, you plan to end it all. You need help.

25. You get help. Deep in cognitive behavioral therapy, and hopped up on antidepressants, you grind away in a program you despise, littered with people who don’t deserve your respect. You read Catch-22 and the madness of reality crystallizes: You’re not insane, everyone else is. You inexplicably fly to Seattle and meet your biological father for the first and last time.

26. On New Year’s Day you bail on your Ph.D. program. You’re forever branded a quitter by the people who weren’t brave enough to walk away. You get a real job and move to the Garden State. Globalization, neoliberalism, and outsourcing to India ensure you have the last laugh.

27. You stop trying to be who everyone tells you to be and figure out who you are. A special friendship proves you’re worthy of love. You turn the corner. You relocate to Colorado for work. You hike, and bike, and swim, and fly fish, but never ski.

28. You move to Hoboken instead of Manhattan because you can’t afford roommates. You bench impressive amounts of weight, do Pilates, and begin a pull-up obsession. You spend Friday and Saturday nights in your apartment reading comic books and listening to electronic music and watching college football and devouring novels and absorbing The Economist. You’re no longer miserable, but you’re not quite content. You’re unfulfilled.

29. You drop the antidepressants cold turkey, lose fifteen pharmaceutically-induced pounds, and reclaim your libido. A coworker cheats on his wife, who’s a loose acquaintance. She files for divorce, decides you’re interesting enough for a rebound, and wild times are had. You apply to many and are accepted to one MBA program.

30. You move to Pittsburgh. Your latent rage resurfaces, but you channel it. You crush class, after class, after class,

and interview, after interview, after interview, and win the irrelevant internship which introduces you to the smalltown girl from Southwest Missouri who becomes the love of your life.

32. You move to the lamest possible suburb of Philadelphia and start a pointless job and entrap that amazing woman in a hopelessly co-dependent relationship.

33. The two of you seek adventure and head west to San Francisco. You get prestigious, high-paying jobs. She works for a burgeoning biotech powerhouse which cures Hepatitis C and bankrupts Medicaid. You work for a toxic moron,

at a meat-grinding investment bank, covering fraudulent specialty pharmaceutical companies, writing bullshit equity research reports, at the height of an M&A boom-bust cycle,

and get paid handsomely. You repay your student loans. And your wife’s.

36. Your daughter’s born. You quit your awful banking job to care for her. It’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done. You’re a flawed father—because you’re human. But you’re not a drunk, or a deadbeat, or a dropout, or a drug addict, and you show up each and every day, which means you’re the best dad she could possibly ask for.

37. The rent is too damn high. You go back to work at another ridiculous company. San Francisco isn’t real life. You need an exit plan.

38. You buy a decrepit condo in Chicago. Your wife gets a better gig than you fleecing Medicare for a Fortune 100. You quit your idiotic job and delusionally declare yourself a writer. You start a shitty novel around Thanksgiving.

39. Your son’s born. You’ve found your forever job: dad. You do a little better the second time around. Your son sleeps, at least. Your shitty novel limps along.

40. You’ve kind of, sort of, almost figured out this dad thing, so the universe throws you a once per century curveball. Your family’s privileged, which means your wife keeps her job while you introduce your kids to Marvel comics and Star Wars movies. The isolation and confinement are punishing, but your kids survive the pandemic (mostly) unscathed. You finish your shitty novel.

41. Zero bloodsucking literary agents want to represent your shitty novel. You stew. You’re deflated. You’ve survived worse. Your kids are healthy and back in school. You’re becoming a better parent. You’re grateful. And ambitious, and hungry, and indomitable, and always angry. Productively angry. You start a kickass novel. You launch the progenitor to your newsletter.

42. Your daughter turns six and your son turns three. The days drag and the years fly. Your kids drive you insane because they’re happy. They antagonize you because they’re safe. Because you’ve given them more than you ever could’ve imagined. They say, “I love you, Dad,” and you say, “Even though you’re spoiled, ungrateful savages, I’ll always love you, no matter what.” You launch your newsletter. You write ridiculous stories for incredible people who are way funnier and smarter than you and they love them anyway. You push your kickass novel toward the finish line.

43. You survive the U.S. healthcare system. You go on a field trip to the zoo with your daughter and watch RRR with your son and they’ve never been happier. You grow as a writer. You finish your kickass novel. You’re ready to query but know it’s a crapshoot.

Your rage—a rage worthy of Achilles—will forever burn hot.

But your name needn’t be immortalized.

You’ve made your mark.