Prologue
(2025): “Let me tell you a story…”
Wednesday,
July 2, 2025: Trump administration restores $175 million to
Penn after deal reached on trans athletes
Right. This is the revised, updated, all-new, now
with Pine-scent! prologue of a revised book you never read in the first
place.
Everything
in this book happened. Or most of it did. The memories are real, even if the
edges blur a bit with time. The names have been changed—some out of respect,
some out of mercy, and some to protect the guilty. I haven’t exaggerated. If
anything, I’ve softened some of it. It all depends “on a certain point of view.”
This
is the story of my college years—two universities, two fraternities, two lives.
One of them was real. The other was the one I tried desperately to live, with
mixed results and bad hair.
In
the original prologue, reproduced next, I wrote:
Maybe a little of them all, I guess. I’m doing this because I think it’s a story worth telling- if only so I can get it all straight in my head. I want to learn from it."
Well,
that was Truth as I understood it in 2008.
I was in Pain- a deep, howling psychological pain- and I didn’t know
why. I tried to drink it to death. Didn’t work.
So I’d write it to death. I
finished the first draft in summer 2008.
I sent it to editors, agents, and publishers and received some polite
rejections. Some were not polite. Mostly though, I heard nothing. I also circulated a few printed copies to
friends for their feedback. Still, there
was that Pain I couldn’t drink away. Not
even my newborn daughter’s smile could assuage it. (Ooo big word!)
Then
on Halloween 2008, it all changed. Long
story short, I dressed as Lois Lane (accompanied by my Wife’s Clark Kent) for a
party. I knew what was trapped inside
me- my dark secret- but I’d managed to control it, erase it, for twenty five
years. I would be fine.
I wasn’t.
The
psychic wall I’d built crumbled. Driving
home after drinking way too much (Wife and daughter drove separately), I felt
at Peace. All the pain, the anger, all
of it… gone. I looked down at my chest,
expanded by a birdseed filled bra, and knew- I was in trouble.
Fast
forward to March 2014. I’d been to
therapy, support group meetings, thrown out of the house, lost a dear friend to
suicide, almost followed her, I stopped lying, and Lance died. What emerged from the ashes of a ruined life
was Sophie- the person who had been silently screaming for decades. I’ve also done a LOT of writing, for a blog
detailing my transition, online columns, even the New York Times. The voice I found writing the book was honed
a bit.
This
isn’t a trans memoir in the traditional sense. I don’t come out in Chapter 3
with a triumphant montage and a power ballad playing in the background. There’s
no makeover moment, no wise mentor, no tidy resolution. Most of the people
around me back then would’ve laughed—or worse—if I’d said the truth out loud.
So I didn’t. I joined a fraternity. I chased girls. I learned how to chug beers
and bury feelings. I tried very, very hard to be what I thought a man was
supposed to be.
Spoiler:
I wasn’t very good at it.
I
didn’t write this book to make myself look good. I couldn’t if I tried. I was
insecure, needy, petty, cowardly, and cruel when I thought it would keep me
safe. I hurt people. I ghosted people. I threw good things away because I was
afraid someone would see through me. And I hated myself for it. For lying.
To everybody. For my silence.
I
hated myself a lot.
But
that silence, that pretending—it’s part of the story. It shaped every relationship, every misstep,
every small triumph. If you read between the lines, you’ll see the cracks.
You’ll hear the longing. You’ll understand the “shame” I couldn’t name because
I didn’t have the words. Or the courage.
And if you
were there—if you knew me then—I hope you’ll read with grace. I don’t write
this to embarrass anyone. I write it because the past deserves to be told
honestly. Because I’m tired of pretending. Because, for all its flaws, this
story is mine. And if you deserve an
apology, as some do, please know how sorry I am.
The story
is about brotherhood. About desire. About trying to belong in a world that felt
like it was never built for someone like me. It’s about growing up in the
1980s, under Reagan, AIDS, and the eternal war between cassettes and vinyl. “Tastes
Great” and “Less Filling.” It’s about Skull House and Crow House, about
parties, betrayals, and those tiny moments of connection that made everything
bearable. It’s about the people who
shaped me, whether they knew it or not—and probably wish they didn’t.
It’s about
a college boy who thought he was writing a coming-of-age story searching for
answers, and a woman who finally found her way back to finish it decades later.
And yeah,
there’s music. Always music. If you want to understand the 1980s, you need to
hear the beat. The Devil Inside that moved us all.
What you’ll
read is what I wrote Before, with a needed heavy edit, and with commentary and
observations from After. That After
solved the puzzle. That After has no
more secrets. And that before- that
after- that’s where the Truth awaits.
Let me
tell you a story.