The other night I asked my mother, Louise, how she met my father, Sol.

She told me that she had been out with some friends, in late 1958, and walked into Mr. Kelly’s Nightclub in Chicago and saw a guy she thought was cute.

She told Norm Jacobs, who told his friend, my father, Sol, about Louise. So Sol called Louise, they went out on a date (to a Hungarian restaurant) and hit it off. They were engaged and then married six months later.

The only problem with the story is that the guy my mom saw in the club was not my father. He was just given her number and called her up blindly.

Hearing this story, I wondered if I hadn’t inherited some gene that makes one behave randomly and obliviously in matters of great importance. I don’t quite know how to phrase this. I’m the byproduct of a mix-up of two people who met, on a blind date. And here we are….

Looking back now, I realize that the younger me, just like me now, has walked down the road of life backward. I never look ahead. I have always kept family history in my head, organizing slides, photo albums, letter and chronology with my mind swirling around mid 20th Century America.

People tell me that I have a lot of talent, and others told me I was good looking, and still others admired my hair, my ass, my smile, my dick, my wit, my writing. But it hasn’t added up to much of anything. (Dollarwise) I sit here today, just as I sat in this bedroom 30 years ago, a virtual teen-ager. Jobless and undefined in my money-making “career”.

I’ve seen sour-faced idiots become successful comedy writers; less masculine guys procreate and raise kids; illiterate, book hating dudes practice law; brown nosing queens rise to the top of NYC fashion. Everywhere I turn there are a lot of people earning a lot of money. They are dumber than me, but I have to admit, perhaps a lot smarter.

I’ve come back to Woodcliff Lake, NJ to pack up a house that I first saw at 17, and now I wander these rooms, just as I roamed in them so many years ago, lonely.

Like most humans, I’ve devised a series of lies about myself and my life and I have tried to stay true to them. This house, at 25 Birchwood Drive, was a noble lie. It was a refuge, a place where I had love, books, food, peace,quiet and security.

So now that my parents are leaving this house, and I have been elected as the executioner, my sad daily duties involve making sure that this property will be vacated by August 15th. People, things, memories: all swept out the front door so someone new can go into debt until 2038.

And I look backward, as I always have, through decades of Kodachrome, to try and dissect how I got to this place of limbo, a middle aged adult eternally trying to reinvent himself so that he will become that idealized man he once imagined he would grow into.

It’s un-American, I realize, to not brag about your success. Ask anyone how they are doing, even if their legs were amputated, and they will say, “good”.

Somewhere deep inside of me, I want to say that I’m doing good, and frankly, despite the loss of this house, the decline of my parents, and the futility and powerlessness that I feel for both myself and them, I want to believe again in the power of happy accidents, those unforeseen events that bring us good things.