After playing skee-ball with my mother at a local arcade plagued with children and their bored parents…you can always tell people’s socio-economic status by looking for nannies…I sat on my bed retelling her my last few days. She had been out of town at a wedding, and I had been back home in Georgia living in her fiancé’s basement, my Platinum Amex maxed, debt collectors calling, and two checking accounts overdrawn. 

She laughed, wanting to cry, as she heard about my suicidal thoughts, but noted my desire for vodka was warranted and my craving for cuddles was dire, as I searched for my next real income. 

After moving from Los Angeles to the far-out suburbs of Atlanta, I had received a gig on my third day “in town” folding towels at a local gym, all because I knew the manager from my last brief stint in Buckhead. It wasn’t enough to pay the bills, and certainly not noteworthy enough to place on LinkedIn, but I yearned to be busy. The antidote to depression is mindless labor.

I had spent two years schlepping across various cities for Madonna, so I couldn’t help but wonder how I wound up there. Oh, the mighty do fall, and boy did they fall multiple times on their way to stardom and financial success. 

Let’s face it: when you yearned to be a business mogul and a New York Times-bestselling author, you couldn’t simply go to your local Barnes & Noble self-help section to look for the ideal guidebook. Instead, you swiped on Raya, Grindr, the Lox Club, Hinge, any dating app you weren’t banned from, to find your distraction. 

Love, or delusions of love, could have gotten me through anything, right? 

As I sat looking over the pollen-covered deck of the mountain house in early spring, my stomach nauseated as I stared at Red Top mountain, just forty-five minutes outside of Atlanta. 

Why did Georgians even call it Midtown when Midtown was in Manhattan, filled with bright lights and signs advertising the latest Broadway revivals and Tony-winning plays? 

I wished I could say I had been nauseous from the green powder in the air, or the leftover Grey Goose in my veins from the day before, but it had been anxiety and depression instead, a mere result of wondering how the fuck I had wound up in the reality I was living, just months away from my looming thirtieth birthday. 

I had networked my ass off and scrambled to secure a respectable career and Tiffany rock on my ring finger signifying upward mobility. Neither happened. So, even though I had Googled how to tie a noose after wasting thirty minutes on Grindr, my ADD had ultimately distracted me into searching for open jobs in Atlanta, where I found a new post for an Executive Assistant at Fanatics. 

I had left a scattered CEO of a film finance company the previous October and had been desperately seeking the right fit. By the following March, I had no job, just that gig at the local gym. And by local, I meant a forty-five-mile drive from where I was squatting. We love free rent. 

As much as I declared I was homeless, my mom’s fiancé had a decently nice home, atleast from the perspective of the masses. The Calabasas and Greenwich crews were always too hard to impress anyway. 

I had moved across the country two months prior to parlay into a new career in commercial real estate. After countless calls, emails, and meetings, I still was not able to secure a position with a salary exceeding $80K. Shocking, since I had grown accustomed to a six-figure income as a celebrity assistant. 

I had finally secured a series of interviews with a multi-billion dollar privately owned sports merchandise company to be the executive assistant to the COO of the commerce division. I had only secured the first round because of my connections, so I thought I would’ve been a shoo-in. I also should have worked for the head honcho in 2023, but I had given up meeting him to work for an actress in desperate need of a loyal assistant. I attempted to comply because she was soon to be going into production with my favorite director and producer. I never did meet Jim. I was fired the first week on the job for a delayed text response after too much Grey Goose and cocaine at a birthday dinner. At that point, I no longer looked at my work phone after 6pm.  

I had agreed to a pay reduction to work for said actress, which has probably increased since her recent Best Actress Oscar snag. PR really does wonders. 

One of my biggest regrets in life was giving up meeting the owner of Fanatics to work for the actress that fired me within the first week, but thank God, otherwise, I wouldn’t have landed in the fuckery that led me to reach Maslow’s self-actualization. The top tier of psychological development trumps the glitz of Hollywood anyway. 

So there, I found myself looking for love as a distraction from the horrors of underemployment and missed opportunities. 

The day before my final-round interview with Fanatics, HR told me I was the front runner for the position. However, the day after my last interview, I got a call from an unknown Las Vegas number notifying me I wasn’t getting the job. 

I gathered intel from an internal connection afterward…no need to color with detail. The gist: “I didn’t want to pigeonhole him into that. He’s built for more it seems.” 

If only I could explain to my debt collectors at that time, this reasoning for a lack of income. American Express could’ve cared less, they wanted their money. 

When I processed my reality, my hyperventilating continued and my tears began ricocheting. As I drove through Atlanta highway traffic, my mental breakdown amidst the five lanes of I-75 exploded. I couldn’t pull aside to gather myself, I had to get to my gym job. While the towel folding didn’t pay much, I was surrounded by lovely members who saw my potential and never stopped encouraging me to keep pushing forward. 

To top off the mental disparity, five minutes before the rejection call from Vegas, I had hung up from a telephonic hearing with a judge and prosecuting attorney in Winslow, Arizona. Apparently my speeding ticket was actually a misdemeanor charge for driving ninety-nine in a seventy-five zone. That later led to a suspended license and a warrant out for my arrest, but all could’ve been avoided if said cop would’ve enjoyed another donut and put down his radar gun. 

Years prior, I would’ve just given Winslow’s court system my Amex information to pay off the charge, and wrote such payment off as a business expense, but funds were tight and T-mobile was threatening suspension of my phone lines. 

Folding towels at the local gym in Brookhaven barely paid for my gas to get there, considering I drove a 2016 4Runner. I couldn’t even go to Umi for dinner. Instead, I pillaged my stepdad’s pantry for Jif Peanut Butter and Saltines between Grindr messages and Hinge exchanges. 

In case you were dying to know, no one ever responded on the Lox Club, even though a monthly paid membership was required to keep active access to exclusive single Jews in metropolitan cities. 

I was still temporarily a goy because my conversion class at the JCC on the Upper West Side years earlier had only led me to a far too liberal Reform synagogue. And let’s face it, as a Southern gentleman, my only viable path to conversion is the Conservative movement. 

That epiphany led me to stumble upon the oldest synagogue in Atlanta, fostered by a connection of a member of the gym I worked at. Yes, I needed God at that point in my life and in my job search, but I more so desperately was seeking a husband to rescue me. 

I had never really considered love a drug, since I had actually been a drug addict once upon a time in my early twenties. I gave up amphetamines and benzodiazepines at the ripe age of twenty-two, and when I say gave up, I meant daily intake. I still partook a few times a year when long flights, bachelorette trips to Tulum, or weddings fell on my iCal. 

Spending my early twenties splashed across AA meetings in Manhattan, I learned about addiction in a way I never was taught in my personality psychology course at NYU. 

If you had told me at twenty-two, when I gave up my goodie bag of survival skills, various stimulants, anxiety meds, and Ambian, and the occasional Klonopin, that I would be stuck in the fuckery of that current present reality, I would’ve traded all pills for a gun with a bullet. 

Suicide was never a part of my story, because as a Southern gentleman, I didn’t have the choice to be a pussy. Plus, I had a story to tell for Reese to option into a mini-series. 

You never could discuss suicidal thoughts with people, because it either seemed too heavy, or they’d get plagued with worry. I simply did not have time for another 72-hour involuntary hold. 

After two psych ward stints during my senior year at NYU, and three years with an amazing therapist named Robin while completely sober (not the California sober bull-shit Demi preaches, actually sobriety), I no longer feared my suicidal thoughts. 

Robin had taught me that the dark thoughts I sometimes had weren’t actually a threat to my existence, but rather a coping mechanism for emotional overload. 

As much as I fantasized the thoughts of despair and ending it, I could never fathom the sound of loved ones screaming when they received word I was dead…or the fact that I wouldn’t be smiling in custom Ralph Lauren as I accepted my first Pulitzer. People as ambitious and self-involved as me couldn’t kill themselves; there is simply always more to achieve. 

I wish I could tell you what was about to cross your eyes on these pages was made up for my debut novel, but I don’t exaggerate nearly as much as Lukas Gage. 

The fact is, I write nonfiction essays and strive to deliver the world the truth as Sedaris and Didion attempted, but never quite mastered, because they didn’t develop cerebrally during the technological revolution of being a millennial. Their panic attacks never hit quite the same, because let’s face it, they didn’t have the overstimulation we face today with constant information. 

Just like the unhinged qualifications at Perry St AA meetings, the events I detail next will question your sanity and reality. 

Reflecting back, they don’t even sound real to me. But I’m not currently in psychosis and the Illuminati is not actually inducting me (yet?). My mind isn’t altered with uppers and downers, and my nervous system is relatively regulated, for now. As a human Vizsla, I’ve come to recognize my intelligence level is rare, so my likelihood for mental illness is higher than most. 

—

There I was at 6:13pm on a Saturday night, driving to Acworth, GA, to go on a first date with a 35-year-old hair stylist, ZJ. Allegedly, his husband had died a year prior, so he didn’t have a car, because said husband had bled out in their shared vehicle. Three minutes from the redneck hotspot, Generations Pizza, I looked down to four missed texts. 

“Have you left already?”

“I need to go over to a friend’s house.”

“Her nephew just died.”

“Hello.”

Someone please explain to me how I had confirmed I was on the way 20 minutes prior, this man’s friend’s nephew had died and he was canceling our date? 

First thought: should I have sent him a Venmo request for my gas bill and Frédéric Malle sprays of Promise, a French fragrance that cost more than most people’s car payments per bottle? 

After a few deranged texts back and forth, I simply replied, “We’ll meet another time.” 

“I’m so sorry.”

Was he sorry that his friend’s nephew suddenly had died, that he was blatantly lying to me, or that he was blowing me off two minutes prior to my arrival after I had sprayed $15 worth of perfume on my body to mask the smell of emotional pain I was under? 

Two years prior, I had been driven around Manhattan in a Range Rover, picking up various items for Madonna, and yet there I was, driving to the MASSIVE town of Acworth, to go on a first date with a man I met on Grindr with star tattoos on both of his V lines.

…All because his tongue had looked playful and he still had hair. 

Two days prior, he had sent me all his nudes on Grindr, and I told him to throw away the T-shirt of my old boss. He replied that he would never, because it had belonged to his late husband. 

I had to pull my iPhone away from my face like a woman refusing to get reading glasses. Did I read that correctly? 

So I had asked by late if he meant his husband was dead, and in fact, he was. The day of the date, I had called him after seeing his text: “Are you going to murder me?” 

All because I, as any gentleman would, offered to pick him up, since he allegedly did not have a car. When had being a gentleman become an invitation to being the local Dexter? 

On that phone call, ZJ had mentioned he didn’t have a car because it had been totaled after his husband bled out in it. Wait…I thought he had told me his husband had died of cancer? Why does the plot always seem to thicken when someone is lying? 

So, I asked him point blank to explain. To which, he went on to tell an elaborate story about neck cancer, driving from Texas to Georgia, a jugular vein bursting, someone calling 911, an ER transfer via helicopter transport, coding in flight, and ultimately being left brain dead. 

Then, he proceeded to bitch about probate court with said late husband’s family, battling over the estate, because the mother fucker forgot to write a will. Did he need an introduction to a lawyer, a therapist, or a lie detector? 

“I used to drive a Porsche and live in a big colonial house with four bedrooms, but our money was frozen, and he was the breadwinner, so now I’ve been careless, living in a one-bedroom apartment.” 

I should have known the first red flag was he declared a four-bedroom house big. Guess, he had never been to Hidden Hills, Buckhead, or Scarsdale. But what’s wild was I still had arranged to go on a date with him after hearing all this. Because, you guessed it, loneliness was a gateway drug to deranged behavior. 

I was a Cancer, and I cared. I had liked his photos, despite all the tattoos, and he was a vers top, and I had been craving physical closeness, something that would let me forget, for a brief moment, that I was broke, jobless, and living in my stepdad’s basement.

Needless to say, I felt rather lonely. I had been contemplating suicide daily, because no matter what I did to get out of my predicament, God just simply kept saying, “Fuck You,” and it got worse. 

If someone had told me at 22 that at 29 I would’ve been single, overweight again, broke, AND jobless…I would have swallowed three months of Xanax and jumped from that high-rise I lived in my senior year of college: Avalon Willoughby Square in downtown Brooklyn. 

Yet, I had escaped death, just to fold towels at F45 in Brookhaven, Atlanta at 8am on a Sunday morning after being stood up by a widowed hairdresser from Grindr. 

The ironic part was, the hairdresser had the same first and last name of an old crush I had from my brief stint in my hometown during Covid. Who, ironically, I had seen the weekend prior on the Beltline. A handsome Pisces I was too embarrassed to approach because he had left my Instagram DM on read the week prior. 

Let’s just say that my friends have banned ZJ from crossing either of my iPhones’ contact lists. 

God really wanted to drill into my head that loneliness will always be a gateway drug to deranged behavior.  

At least when I accidentally had snorted meth (I thought to be MDMA) in my early twenties in the Lower East Side, I had been kicked out of Webster Hall and reprimanded for stealing a pomegranate from the West Side Market on 3rd Avenue.

That time, I had no excuse for my behavior, except loneliness. 

Now, rewind, to fifteen minutes after I had been stood up by the widowed tatted hairdresser. Instead of going home, I had decided to stop at a brewhouse to have a beer and pout. Like a Vizsla, when I didn’t get the attention I wanted, I balked. 

As I stared past the unlit fire pit, sipping my Blue moon knockoff, I had decided to text the guy who had blown me off. What the fuck was local craft beer anyway? Where was my dirty martini from Bemelmans at the Carlyle? 

“No worries. Happens all the time. LMK when you leave hers in case I’m still in the area.” 

The second I saw the message say delivered, I had rolled my eyes at how pathetic I had let myself become. BUT, I hadn’t secured the pathetic title enough, so I had decided I needed one more emotional cut before retreating to the basement of the mountain house. I had to call Blade. 

Blade was the 22-year-old dispensary counter clerk I had encountered on Grindr the week prior. He was a sexy, mix-raced, Aries with lips that could make the straightest KA pledges question their heterosexuality. 

The kicker: Blade drove a car from the 90s that broke down often, but it was okay, because he had become a self-taught mechanic. How someone had a car older than himself that wasn’t a vintage Rolls Royce for his beach house, I would, and still will, never understand. 

He picked up on the second ring, disgruntled. He had been asleep after vomiting for the past few days, and had apologized for not responding to my text three days prior: “Daddy, I want you to make me cum.” 

Don’t ask me why I was into verbal role-play. Because if you could have sex without role-play, you clearly weren’t my level of fucked up, or as I like to brand it, cerebrally needy. 

The phone call with Blade was brief, and as I hung up, I immediately dialed my friend who worked as an RN in an ER. She didn’t answer either call, because probably someone was actually coding, so I texted: “Am I pathetic?” 

Yes, Golden, you fucking were. Because you know what? Just like Courtney Kelly would come to tell you over chicken biscuits: 

Loneliness is a gateway drug to deranged behavior. 

I’d always been hardheaded, so God likes to make sure I learned my lesson, with repeated lessons. 

There I was, Off-White sneakers perched on the table outside Two Urban Licks, overlooking the Beltline, I told Courtney about the 61-year-old I had been talking to on Grindr. With judgement, she had said I needed to check this man’s photos to make sure he wasn’t too old. After I had shown her pictures, she had confirmed he was handsome and to proceed. 

“We’ll finish this convo when I get back from the powder room. I must get rid of this distracting booger.” 

On the way to the bathroom, I saw said man sitting at the interior bar. He was the right height, right hair, but not the same aura. He looked much older as he played on his iPad. iPads are for flights so why the fuck did he bring this out with him? 

When I got back to the table, I had looked at my friend and exclaimed, “You won’t believe it. I think that guy I just showed you is at the bar. Do not hate me, but go to the bathroom and see if that’s him.” 

“Don’t hate you, I need to pee anyway. Let me see his photo one more time.” 

—

“You were correct. That was him. But he was, FRAIL.” 

I knew in that moment that loneliness was a gateway drug to deranged behavior, and I must not follow up on scheduling the date. I’m sorry but it’s not my responsibility to cater to the elderly unless there’s a tax write-off or misdemeanor pardon involved. I should’ve asked the Winslow Arizona Police Department if a date with a geriatric counts as community service. 

One might ask how I got to this level of derangement, and I still couldn’t fully tell you, since I never made it to meth or heroin in my twenties. I had gotten too distracted by the sexy guys that plagued Lower Manhattan’s AA meetings. 

Love had always been stronger than any pill or powder I encountered, even stronger when delusional. Delusion meeting childhood trauma with loneliness was and will always be a recipe for disaster. 

As nice as shooting up H had sounded in those moments of darkness, I chose to save that for my retirement in Boca, sitting along a nice waterfront property completely paid off. 

For that moment, I sat in my derangement and laughed at the realities God continued to hand me. I managed to still stand, shockingly, considering the drugs that hit my system throughout my life, and the love delusions that had permanently rewired my hippocampus. 

Love, or at least, the idea of it, was certainly the most powerful drug. Temporary debt was stressful enough to send the brain into delusion territory, but in a strange way, delusions can dull suicidal ideation. 

Between money issues and love confusion, at 29, I sat lost, confused, just like Noah waiting on that damn flood while everyone around him called him crazy. 

However, looking back, I will say, stay delusional because reality tends to suck. Newsflash kids: “Hang in there, it gets worse!”