My bio (much abbreviated): a gifted first child, destined for great things, leads a rebellion against the Izod wearing faction of his fourth grade, becomes a wrestler, first girlfriend, develops extraordinary cunnilingus technique, leaves home at 17, drops out of high school, starts co-founds a criminal gang, escapes life of crime by moving to Seattle, discovers loneliness and LSD, gets a job that starts a domino chain that will years later lead to his dream job, home, GED, rejected by UMKC, leads friends to California to follow the Grateful Dead, homeless in Hollywood, Venice and Santa Monica, home again, accepted by UMKC, meets and is seduced by future wife, quits UMKC, becomes an alcoholic and then a parent, gets a truly pivotal job at a comedy record label, loses job, get job back, quits drinking, discovers exercise, installs phone networks which leads directly to dream job, becomes a workaholic, back to alcoholic, rediscovers himself through art and exercise, does nude modeling, develops the basis of his philosophy (that leads to this website), has an affair, encourages wife to do the same, becomes amicably but permanently separated from his wife, endures some dark times, quits drinking for good, discovers California sobriety (hint: starts with a T and sounds like THC), tries and fails at professional photography, achieves his lifetime programming goal, discovers the source of all his anxiety, realizes his life is just too weird not to share, and here we are.

Now that you are up to speed, what follows are stories that span a time frame of 55 years, perhaps a little longer if I get to speculating on the specifics of my conception. They are told with a level of honesty that is somehow both vulnerable and brutal. I will restrain my tendencies towards rhetorical flourish, shocking with gritty detail rather than the my usual free imaginings. The thing is, the whole point of the exercise is to review my life in order to figure out what just the hell happened. Truth is an absolutely necessary ingredient for that particular cake. Besides, the truth is pretty interesting. It’s kind of an experiment. What happens if you mix smarts and willful stubborn self assured boldness and physical fitness in equal but very generous measures into a child and pop him down into comfortable white suburbia with a silver spoon in his mouth. In 1969. At the risk of hi-lighting my age, I point out the year because I think when is another aspect of the experiment. It was a different time, or maybe not. It’s so hard to tell. I’m not saying it was a better time. The porn is so much better today. A lot of other things too.

At the risk of spoiling the ending, I can tell you it was a long strange trip. The boldness meant I didn’t follow the lines at all, the smarts kept me both alive and once I found a calling, a lot of money. But that same boldness and mind led me deep into alcohol. And then anxiety. Then exercise led me to a quite different place. A much better place. For a while. For about a three year timespan, a little over ten years ago. It was a time that I really just shined brightly. In the intervening anxious fearful years, it became exceedingly distant in my mind, the memories of a different man.

I am back. And I’m even badder. I’ve decided to feed two birds one scone and both further my writing career with all the juicy, sexy details, and rewrite my own history, undistorted by all the fears. There is a third motivation. I’m an unscrupulous artist who wants all your love and is willing to do almost anything to get it. As long as it’s honest. Which is proving so far to be all it takes.