The Battle of Los Angeles Part 3: California Knows How to Party

Early in my fourth year of college at Virginia I spent more money at Buddhist Biker Bar in October than I spent on rent and I started to realize I probably wasn’t prepared for life in The Real World. Staying in school felt like a smart move so I looked into graduate writing programs, since getting drunk and telling stories was basically what I learned in college. I applied to MFA Fiction programs at Columbia, Iowa, UC Irvine and UVA and I applied to USC’s MFA Screenwriting program. These schools are the most prestigious and elite MFA writing programs in the world. I was wait-listed at UC Irvine and USC; evidently, despite being East Coast raised and educated, my style and voice still resonated out West. I didn’t know it at the time, but waiting to hear back from these graduate programs was actually great preparation for my career as a screenwriter after (eventually) finishing USC. I spent every single day staring at my phone, hoping for a call that would change my life. It never came. I was ultimately not admitted to either program that year.

Three years later, when I decided I had to go to grad school to get away from the tedium and oppression of working for my Dad, I mostly considered, applied to and interviewed for top-tier MBA programs. But I couldn’t shake the thought of applying to USC again. Then I saw one of my best friends’ pictures in Rolling Stone magazine as the bass player in one of their “10 Bands to Watch.” I was standing in a Walgreen’s visiting my girlfriend at the time in Chicago and I thought to myself, “Michael doesn’t get to be more successful an entertainer than me,” so I applied to USC. I went to graduate school and pursued a career in screenwriting because of an imaginary competition I was engaged in with one of my closest friends. I was wait-listed. I developed a good rapport with the Assistant in the MFA office and she emailed me a few weeks later saying I should expect an information packet soon. “It’s not bad news,” she clarified and I knew I’d been accepted. I was the only person in my Dad’s house when I got the email and I screamed so loud my voice shook the foundations and rattled the walls like an earthquake. It’s the closest I hope to ever come to knowing what it feels like to get out of prison.

When I drove to Los Angeles later that summer, the only things I brought with me were my clothes, my computer and my drums. My friend Gary and I had played music together in high school but lost touch after college. We reconnected thanks to Michael’s band being in Rolling Stone. Gary lived in LA too and we planned to start a band when I came out. The drive was long but I was excited so I did it in three days by myself. The navigation system I bought crapped out as soon as I entered California, so I had to find my way to my apartment in Miracle Mile with printed MapQuest directions and a whole lot of squinting. Driving in Los Angeles proved difficult and was complicated by the fact my driving glasses, with their protruding telescopic lens, didn’t allow me to also use sunglasses. There was little I could do about the glare and nothing I could do about the traffic and erratic driving of Angelinos.

When I arrived, I met Katie in person, who was also admitted to USC and whom I had met via an online message board our MFA cohort had started. Sometimes in life, things just work out. That’s how I feel about meeting Katie. Katie is smart, funny, cool and we have similar interests, including television without commercials, alcohol and talking about why everybody else is so fucking stupid. We got along well from the moment we met each other and we lived together for almost three years. Katie and I struck up a deal where, in exchange for the bigger room and private bathroom in our place, she would drive us both to school anytime we were both going. This was very helpful in ways I didn’t fully appreciate at the time. I was so overwhelmed with a new city, a new industry and making new friends that any little bit of diminished responsibility was a godsend. Being able to stare out the window and get my bearings while Katie dealt with the anxiety of driving us to school was helpful. But being easy to live with also made it easy to take Katie for granted. To be honest, I was too self-absorbed to appreciate what a gift it was to live with her at the time.  (Spoiler Alert: Self-absorption is a prevalent theme in any LA story and, as you'll read, mine is no exception). That August, Katie and I lived together for three weeks in a new city before meeting anyone else from our program, so it feels like my friendship with her predates graduate school. While I’d become closer to members of our MFA class, there is no other member with whom I can imagine having lived. She’s the best roommate I’ve ever had and one of my Top 10 Favorite People in the Whole Wide World.

When our USC MFA cohort met up for the first time at a bar, I soon realized my albinism was going to be my defining characteristic within this new social group. In my peer group back home, I’d known most of them for over 10 years, so they had a decade of experiences with me, each of which gave them a sense of my identity beyond my white skin and bad eyes. But to these new friends looking for a quick way to define me, using my albinism was an easy shortcut. I was not at all comfortable with it and picked a fight with a guy in our class named Ryan that first night at a bar. Better to be known as the asshole than the albino, I guess. Our confrontation had nothing to do with my albinism and everything to do with the fact I was an agro borderline alcoholic jackass. In a hilarious twist of fate, because our last names are next to each other alphabetically, Ryan was the only other MFA student with whom I had every single class that first semester. We soon developed a friendship based on mutual admiration for one another’s talent.

Looking back, I was terrified and I had no coping skills. The only way I knew how to deal with fear was to deny my feelings and get drunk. Not feeling my feelings was a full time job. I couldn’t admit fear or weakness at all because, to me, showing weakness was a sign of… well, weakness. It was a slippery slope. To admit I was self-conscious about my albinism was to admit other people had sway over my life and feelings. To admit driving in LA scared me was to admit I was susceptible to fear. That certainly didn’t sound like Me. To admit how intimidated I was by the talents of my peers meant first admitting my peers were also my competition for screenwriting work. Worse, their very existence meant I wasn’t that unique, I wasn’t Special, Entitled to Succeed or Destined for Greatness. None of that was comfortable for me to think about and I wouldn’t let myself feel any of it.  Truthfully, I was just another talented writer, trying to do his best and that was a major source of unacknowledged Dread. Like many people, I was too self-absorbed to be self-aware. Rather than face any of these insecurities or talk, write, think, admit or feel honestly about any of my feelings, I elected to escape, which was significantly more fun at the time.  

I hadn’t smoked weed in almost three years before moving to Los Angeles. I remember one night early on I split a blunt rolled in a grape-flavored wrapper (who knew such things existed!) with some people as we drove up La Brea and arrived at the Cat and Fiddle so high I couldn’t stand-up. Katie took care of me while I sat on the curb, trying not to fall into oblivion. Despite the helplessness of this experience, weed soon became a mainstay. Mandatory for sleep, mandatory for the creative process, mandatory for recovering from terrible hangovers. As luck would have it, in LA weed was as powerful as it was plentiful. I was buying a bong when the kid at the head shop asked me if I had my weed card. I said I couldn’t get it because I didn’t have a California Driver’s License and he said he knew a doctor who could get me one with a Passport. I got my medical marijuana card from a Doctor’s office above a Popeye’s Chicken on Vine and soon had access to the best weed I’d ever smoke, purchased legally, like I was buying scotch, the way it should be everywhere. The dispensary had probably 30 different strands, sorted by price and varietal. Plus, there were edibles: brownies, cookies and lollipops, weed tea, breath spray and lip balm. Eventually, the state changed their laws and my Passport was no longer a valid form of identification so I lost direct access, but for about two years, I was like a teenager in a weed store. While most people associate smoking weed with diminished ambitions, that was not my experience. Weed helped me recognize the relative lack of importance of my own ego and see the interconnectedness of all living things. The downside was it made me anti-social. Few things in the world could compete with the entertainment value of me getting stoned and traveling around the infinite corridors of my own imagination, so I ended up isolating myself a lot under the guise of being creative when I should have been out networking and meeting anyone who could get my career going or my stuff made.

There had been opportunities to network, but I was also isolating myself because going out was never quite as fun as advertised. Thanks to my buddy’s band’s success, I had entrée into some B list LA hot spots. VIP access to clubs and private parties. Backstage access at KROQ shows. Shows in Vegas.  Green Room at Kimmel. We hung out with a lot of beautiful and glamorous people. I once remarked “Who’s that fat chick by the bar?” not recognizing Khloe Kardashian. When I saw George Clooney at a club, it was exactly what I hoped his life would be like: he sat in the middle of 25 of the prettiest women I’ve ever seen, basically holding court. We saw Matthew Perry, Sarah Silverman, Jonah Hill, Hillary Duff – seems awesome, right? I should have felt so cool, right?  I just felt how much I didn’t fit in. The skin of my arms was blinding when reflecting strobe lights. I felt eyes on me in all the worst ways, except when nobody paid any attention to me at all. “How’d he get in here?” I swear I heard people whispering about me. When I asked my friends about it though, they said they didn’t hear anything, which made sense since I was probably having auditory hallucinations from the cocaine.

Except for my 25^th birthday in Vegas, I hadn’t partied in over three years before moving to Los Angeles. When I lived in New York, I’d developed a taste for booger sugar and, given my unacknowledged insecurities and self-loathing, this taste became an appetite in LA. It didn’t help that my LA dealer remains one of the most efficiently and effectively run business enterprises to which I’ve ever borne witness. It didn’t matter where I was in the city, if I called him, he was there within half an hour to deliver the envelope. Pink Dot can’t even make that claim. Honest to goodness, I hope he opens a legitimate business because that guy was a real go getter with an entrepreneurial spirit. Cocaine was a sexy drug. Chopping up the rails and vacuuming them up, I felt like some awesome character in some awesome movie. I never thought about how GOODFELLAS ends with a rolled up twenty to my nose, a numb face and drip running down the back of my throat. Key bumps in alleys, bathrooms or taxis, lines in WeHo, lines in Hollywood. It became impossible to go out without it. ‘Always be holding and never beholden.’ One night, we were partying with some luminaries and some working writers and someone remarked, “Man, that albino guy does a lot of cocaine.” Better to be an addict than an albino, I guess.  I don’t mean to glamorize these drug experiences, but they did feel glamorous at the time. Well, not the hangovers. See, part of cocaine’s appeal is it releases an insane dopamine rush in the brain. Once the drug wears off, there’s no way for your brain to continue producing dopamine at the same levels, so there’s naturally a crash the next day. Days after heavy cocaine use were spent sullen and on the verge of tears, feeling guilty and so depressed. But the hangovers weren’t even the worst part. The worst part about regularly doing cocaine was all the stupid conversations I got myself into. I eventually came to realize cocaine put me in situations where I was ‘yes anding’ idiots for hours, nodding along as they talked through clenched or twitching jaws about their business ideas or script projects or whatever the fuck else was racing through their feeble brains and flying out their flapping mouths. I started to realize the bullshit cocaine exposed me to was almost worse than the damage the drug was doing to my body. I also recognized I was doing too much and it was time to stop. My solution was to isolate myself and go out less, which worked to get me off hard drugs, but ultimately impeded me from meeting people who could further my career. 

I recognize now I was just insecure and spiritually adrift. I was earnestly trying to pursue a career as an artist for the first time in my life and I wasn’t sure I had the chops to make it work, but I was certain I couldn’t admit this uncertainty to myself. I’d come to LA for a fresh start but was not at all prepared or cognizant of the challenges and growth this new beginning would demand from me. I didn’t want to feel what I was feeling, so I tried to act like I loved Hollywood and USC, like I ‘could sail through the changin’ ocean tides, handle the seasons of my life,’ the stresses of school and pursuing a career in the industry. But, the truth is, I was scared shitless and I didn’t know how to begin admitting that to anyone. I felt completely awkward, out of place and drugs helped me ignore the fear, if only briefly.

I know I’m supposed to say I wouldn’t do it all again but I don’t know if that’s true. I wouldn’t do it all now, that’s for sure. If there were some magic self-awareness pill I could've taken to help me see things clearer back then, I might have taken it.  Maybe. But, I didn’t know any other way to do it at the time. “When you’re young, you get sad and you get high,” says Ryan Adams. Besides, drugs were never my problem, they were the symptom, at least that’s what I pay my therapists to tell me now.  


Continue to The Battle of Los Angeles Part 4: Bangin' on those Bongos Like a Chimpanzee...

The Battle of Los Angeles Part 2: Vacation, All I Ever Wanted

My Dad was 27 when my parents got divorced in April 1985. I can’t imagine how strange it must have been for a California Boy who intended to play baseball or be a sports broadcaster for a living to find himself in Virginia mowing lawns, separated from his wife and family, struggling to figure out what to do with himself and how to stay in his albino kids’ lives with the obstacles he’d made a mess of the marriage, had no emotional skill set and his entire family – sisters, parents, grandparents, closest friends – were all back in Southern California. It must have been so lonely. No wonder he had so many girlfriends.  

He also took us back to LA regularly. Every single summer from as early as I can remember, we flew to LA for 10 days or two weeks of fun in (spite of) the sun. I can remember the joy I felt on these flights as we approached Los Angeles. We descended below the cloud line and the enormous, sprawling city became visible – the hills, the concrete freeways, all the cars. The colors were so different than Virginia. Though I had lived there only a year as an infant, it was a place that felt like home. Long before Phantom Planet used the classic line from an old tune in the theme song for THE OC, I can remember humming to myself, “California here I come, right back where I started from,” and fighting back tears almost every single time we touched down at LAX. Landing was immediately followed by spending two hours in LA traffic as we drove up to Reseda, Sylmar or Thousand Oaks. But I didn’t mind. There was something in Los Angeles that always excited me and the warm, dry air felt like a hug from someone familiar and loving. 

The great thing about vacations in LA was we had family with whom we could stay. My Dad is the oldest of four and his three younger sisters were elated to see and spoil my sister and me. My Aunt Jana dated a guy who I thought owned a candy store. I would later learn it was a liquor store, but it was all the same to me with my mouth full of Sugar Babies. She had a house with a pool and a BMW with a sunroof, and she ran her own business with my Aunt Julie. The two of them were 1980s Valley Girls and I thought they were the coolest. They took us everywhere. Disneyland. Magic Mountain. Universal Studios. I remember we drove down to Sea World in San Diego while I sat in the back of Julie’s Suzuki Sidekick, hiding under a blanket the whole time to avoid sunburn. My Aunt Caren was studying at UCLA at the time, so we saw her more sparingly until she graduated and we got older, but when she was a contestant on the game show PRESS YOUR LUCK she gave a shout out to my sister and me (though we didn’t call it that back then), which felt very Hollywood and glamorous. My grandparents were divorced, but we managed to spend at least a night at my Grandma’s apartment complex, which had a pool, or my Grandpa’s house with his hot tub and guns. On these trips it was also pretty standard for my dad to take a day to go hang out with his buddies.  On these days he’d drive down to Newport Beach to spend time with his friends (cold beers and women in and out of bikinis) and we’d spend time with my Aunts or Grandparents alone. From these parentless moments, the idea grew for me to visit LA by myself sometime.  

I know I went to LA two different times during the summer by myself, one in 1992 and one for sure in 1993. But it was 25 years ago and somehow these two separate trips as an unaccompanied minor have blurred into one experience in my memory. These trips were my first ever experience flying alone and the first time I got a taste of Los Angeles without my parents. Flying alone as a child with albinism was not much different from flying alone as a child without albinism. I had to register as an Unaccompanied Minor, wear a red and white striped button so people knew I was a kid by myself, and the airline employees took special care in looking after me. I flew from Dulles to LAX and was scheduled to stay with my Aunt Jana. During my time with Jana, I got to look after her daughters and take us all to Universal Studios. I was basically babysitting, but it didn’t really feel like work. One of my Dad’s best friends had two sons who were about my age. Their Dad had gone to high school with my Dad and, in fact, their Grandmother had gone to high school with my Grandmother.  Their Grandma graciously invited me to stay with them in San Diego. They had an enormous beach house, the backyard of which backed up to the Pacific Ocean. We ate sushi, I rode in a Benz and sat on the balcony watching the sunset over the ocean and Southern California felt like anything but a hellscape.  

The young lady who regularly babysat my cousins was named Jerry Lee.  She had a Honda, a brother with special needs and, to that point, she was the coolest chick I’d ever met.  She was 16, she wore flannel, had piercings and she listened to KROQ.  She was edgy and funny and bore a striking resemblance to all the women I would later fall in love with (and the woman I’d marry). We heard a brand new song called “Cherub Rock” on KROQ and I told her I liked it so she played me Gish.  Turned out The Smashing Pumpkins were her favorite band and she was excited for their new record, Siamese Dream, which was released on July 27, 1993, two days after I returned to Virginia from that trip. I rode my bike to the Kemp Mill Records and bought the CD the day it came out. (I liked it, but never as much as that first time I heard that song with that girl).  I was all awkward and gawky with Jerry Lee (and pretty much every girl after).  With no experience talking to girls, I dressed up nicely the last night I knew I’d see her and tried to make things feel like what dates looked like in movies. I think I even cooked her dinner to the extent I was able when I was 13 (ramen).  She was sweet about it and made it a point to call me on the day I left town to say goodbye to me and tell me she thought I was cool. I’ve always wondered what happened to her.  My Grandmother, who knew Jerry Lee’s parents, said she ‘stopped listening to her parents and became a real jerk,’ which Grandma probably thought was a bad thing but kinda sounded awesome to me. Though we’d return to LA again a few times when I was in high school, I never saw Jerry Lee again. 

As I got older, these trips changed.  I wanted to do more adult things, like drive with the music loud or go see rock shows, but my little brothers and sisters and my younger cousins meant we continued to do family friendly stuff on our trips out West. When I was 17 and looking at colleges, we toured Pepperdine in Malibu and my dad basically laughed at the idea of my attending, even though my paternal Grandfather got his MBA there. While the drive to attend Pepperdine was by no means pressing, my desire to return to Los Angeles was beginning to grow.  

“There’s a feeling I get when I look to the West and my spirit is crying for leaving” is a line from Led Zeppelin, but it also applies to me and Los Angeles. By the time I was 17, Los Angeles was a magical place. Any of the dangers the environment posed for me as a person with albinism seemed inconsequential to me. Besides, I was 17, so bravado like 99% of my identity.  Plus, I kinda made it point to not think about my albinism. LA was a place of boundless possibility, of optimism, of opulence. The term “Lifestyle” was invented in California and I can understand why. The people who hosted me had swimming pools, marble showers, gyms in their homes and drove German cars. Their neighbors were Janet Jackson or I was babysitting while they went to the premiere of THE FUGITIVE.  My aunt’s lighting company did installations at Disneyland and at theaters throughout the country. Los Angeles was glamorous. It was a place that became an idea: a glimmering beacon of possibility.  Los Angeles became a Promised Land.  Never mind the earthquakes and smog, the scorching sun the drought or the traffic, Los Angeles was a place for limitless optimism in the face of objective reality.  I knew at some point I’d eventually live there. I didn't know how hard living there would be. 

Continue to The Battle of Los Angeles Part 3: California Knows How to Party.

The Fairest One of All

“People kill for hair this color.” Every time I get my haircut, the stylist remarks about it. But I haven't always been comfortable with my appearance because white hair and pale skin have meant people have stared at me my whole life. It's hard to remember a time when I didn't feel like I was on display. As a child, I remember this unwarranted gawking bothering my mother quite a bit. We'd be out at the mall, at the movies or maybe out to eat and her face would tighten into a scowl, “They're staring at you,” she'd hiss, remarking about a group of people I, in most instances, didn't even notice. 

Sometime in eighth grade I started to say, “If people are going to stare at me, I at least want to control why they stare.” I figured if I dyed my hair a shocking color, people would stare because of a choice I made about my appearance and not because of a mathematically improbable genetic shortcoming; so, I dyed my hair blue using food coloring. I thought this was taking ownership. Unfortunately, school administration wasn't on board with my self-expression. I was called into the office even though, Eleanor, a really popular girl whose hair was dyed in really cool sparkly streaks, was never in trouble for her hairstyle. The Vice Principal was named Mr. Lynch and he was a short, fat bald man with a mustache and an ego as fragile as those of the pubescent pupils he patrolled. He said my dyed hair was disturbing classes, but he was probably just jealous I had any hair to dye. My mom was called in from work and, according to her, she yelled at Mr. Lynch but I was still sent home, which was a much easier way to make sure nobody stared at me. I wanted to believe “If people are going to stare at me, I at least want to control why they stare” was my philosophy, but the truth is I just wanted to fit in. I wanted people who were ballsy and cool to think of me that way. I hoped dyeing my hair would gain me a social group and someday, just maybe, the affection of a woman. I'd love to tell you getting sent home from school solidified my reputation as a dangerous rebel, got Eleanor's attention and we became fast friends who fell in love, but the truth is I was a ghost with acne and poor hygiene and Eleanor and I never even spoke to one another. 

Freshman year of high school I couldn't figure out how to take care of myself because I couldn't figure out who I thought I was supposed to be. I'd expected to play football but when the doctors wouldn't let me because of my eyesight (See Fun with Balls and Sticks), the dickhead jock persona I probably would've cultivated was out the window and I had to find a different identity entirely. As a result, Freshmen year was basically a return to seventh grade levels of depression and an abandonment of all self-care. I grew my hair long, I didn't bathe, wash my clothes regularly or care about my appearance. I hated myself too much to even overcompensate for the fact I hated myself. One day two Persian girls with really hairy necks came up to me in the hallway and told me I needed to wear deodorant because I stunk. I tried to dye my hair red and it turned out peach. By sophomore year I was bathing because I liked a girl but I got way into punk rock so nobody stopped staring; though, now they stared because I had a green mohawk or a shaved head and a bomber jacket with patches for bands they'd never heard of. They probably stared because they thought I was a neo-nazi. My Junior year, I was a fairly well groomed weirdo musician and people stared at me all the time, but it was partially because my closest friends were two really good-looking twin brothers, a guy who resembled a handsome Quentin Tarantino, a guy who looked exactly like John Travolta on steroids and my best friend was a dead ringer for Timothy McVeigh, the man who blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995. 

Besides my albinism and friends, there are 100 other reasons people might have stared. Until I was 18, I was also morbidly obese. On July 27, 1997, a month away from starting Senior Year of high school, I was just under six feet tall and I weighed 290 pounds. Over the course of the next year, thanks to cultivating some discipline related to what I shoved in my mouth and late night jog sessions every single night regardless of weather, by July 27, 1998, a month away from starting college, I was just under six feet tall and weighed 190 pounds. Losing a small person and keeping most of it off has been one of the hardest things I've ever done and you know what's frustrating about it? I've now been in shape so long many of my friends from back then don't even remember that I lost 100 pounds in 12 months 18 years ago. 

Because I went to college in Boston and then transferred to UVA, many of the people around me were from wealthy families; as such, they dressed really well. I also had some kinda superficial, Seinfeldian friends, so I started to take a real interest in my appearance.  I wore jeans and a black t-shirt nearly all the time to try and look dangerous, except when I'd dress up to go out drinking. Now that I wore a 36 waist, I could shop at Lord & Taylor or J Crew. I took care of my face, shaving with a multi-bladed razor, nice shave cream and using an aftershave balm with no alcohol so as not to damage my skin. I became quite vain. By the end of college, my friend Lexi would describe me saying, “I mean, you have albinism. But if people can get over that, you're really hot.” But I couldn't 'get over that' because people still stared at me all the time. While I now recognize maybe people were staring at me in college because they liked what they saw, at no point did I feel good about their prowling eyes because at no point did I like the man staring back at me in the mirror. 

A misunderstanding of Bret Easton Ellis' fiction, led me to a period during which I really cared about clothes. In my 20s, I became a brand whore, only wearing Diesel jeans or other designer labels. I cared about some guy's name in my shoes or how much my watch cost. My value was reflected in what my sweater was made of or that people knew I had cool socks. I told myself a new version of the same old lie as I overpaid for haircuts. “If people are going to stare at me, I at least want them to like what they see.” Staring down and seeing “Hugo Boss” written on the inside of my coat momentarily made me hate myself less after someone called me “Grandpa,” “Frosty the Snowman” or remarked about “Powder.” Sure, I didn't know my value or values, in any sense of the word, but at least I knew my jacket was expensive. I could always tell you the total cost of everything I was wearing, right down to the Calvin Klein boxer briefs. A designer wardrobe was my costume. Diesel jeans, Cole Haan shoes and a Gucci sweater were the disguise I wore to convince myself and everybody else I was no longer that scared, stinky freshmen who hated himself so much he couldn't even bring himself to bathe. I'd come to like myself just enough to overcompensate for how much I hated myself. 

When I started riding my bike around Los Angeles instead of driving, (See Driver/ Driver) I became far less concerned about wearing designer clothes because anything I wore ended up drenched in sweat. Biking also demanded I focus on the world around me in ways I hadn't before. It didn't matter how much my underwear cost as I pedaled and swerved around BMWs on Melrose trying not to die. My actions mattered in a whole new way and having to stay focused on real world obstacles forced me to get out of my head. I also dropped 20 more pounds. 

It took 30 years for me to have an ass small enough to fit into a pair of Levi's jeans, but they looked great. And you know what? My cheap new jeans didn't matter. In fact, I got more attention in the Levi's than I ever got in Diesel jeans. Turned out nobody really noticed what I wore. Then my apartment got robbed and my nice watches were stolen. I used my cell phone to tell time and nobody noticed that either. I came to realize, nobody had noticed any of it. Nobody but me cared who made my clothes, nobody but me obsessed over my watch or my socks or my undershirt or that I used shaving balm without alcohol or put white strips on my teeth. Like a Bret Easton Ellis novel, most of the people I was trying to impress were too self-absorbed to notice anyone else's choices. And worse, I was too self-absorbed to notice they weren't noticing. It was eighth grade all over again: I wanted people to think I was cool, but nobody was paying attention. Even when they stared, nobody saw me. 

Or maybe my friends just saw through my costume to a version of me that I couldn't see yet. 

By paying more attention to my actions, words and deeds than the costume I'm wearing, I found a way to be more comfortable in my own skin. Today, I don't care about brands but I do take pride in my appearance. I remain very aware of how I dress because, while clothes aren't as important as I thought, costume still matters. Like anyone, my appearance and the effort I put into it send cues which inform other people how I treat myself and thus, how they ought to treat me. Three years ago, I started wearing a tie and jacket when I lecture. I was instantly taken more seriously by students at the colleges where I teach and by the staff members at the Chipotles near those colleges. Nobody really stares at me if I dress well now, they just treat me with respect. Because of my white hair, I think I just look like every other well put together middle-aged doofus. The anonymity is mostly liberating. And if I ever want to feel completely on display, I can always dye my hair or stop bathing.

Further Reading: Albinism and Aging: A Case Study by the Numbers