I’ve now been with Linette for exactly half my life.

Today marks not only the 50th anniversary of my birth, but the 25th anniversary of our first date.

Saying that I shouldn’t just be sitting around the house on my 25th birthday, Linette drove out to Ann Arbor, picked me up, and took me for my first drink at the Tap Room. [John Farres, who had owned the place from ’41 to ’93, was still working behind the bar back then. He would have been about 94 at the time.] Linette and I known each other for a few months by that point, having first met at Cross Street Station, where Ward, the bartender who ran the place, had made the mistake of booking my band. Linette, who, as I’d come to know later, had been a fixture at the bar since moving to Ypsilanti at 17 to attend EMU, was kind of perched on the back of a booth directly across from the foot-tall platform that served as a makeshift stage. [I’m told George Clinton used to show up unannounced and play on that same stage, but I never actually saw it happen.] And, unlike everyone else in the bar, Linette actually stayed once we began screaming and assaulting our instruments with power tools.

As cell phones didn’t exist at the time, there are no photos. According to Linette, I was wearing an “Akron” t-over a short, silver dress, which sounds about right, given where we would have been in the evolution of the band that would go on to become Prehensile Monkeytailed Skink. Linette, as I recall, was dressed like she was on her way to a Dexys Midnight Runners costume party.

Linette came up after the show, and we talked for a while about her unwillingness to be moved by our ‘songs.’ As I recall, she told me that she was studying graphic design at Eastern, and offered to help us with t-shirt designs, if we ever decided to have any made. And that was about it. Over the next several months, though, our paths kept crossing, and eventually numbers were exchanged at a house party somewhere. And we started talking. As I was going to school at U-M, and working at both the Hands On Museum and Sava, I didn’t have a lot of time, but we started calling one another in the evenings. And that went on until my 25th birthday came around, and she offered to drive out to Ann Arbor, pick me up, and buy me a beer. [I didn’t have a car at the time.]

Given my awkwardness, it didn’t exactly go well. After a few drinks, panic began to set in, and I asked to be driven home. As I recall, there was a blizzard, and her car slid sideways the whole way back to Ann Arbor. But the wheels had apparently been set in motion. The late night calls became more common, and, a few months later, when both of us graduated from college with absolutely no plans as to what we’d do next, we decide to move to Atlanta together. The plan was to eventually get our own places, but that just never happened. We moved in with one another, found a mattress in dumpster, built some furniture out of cardboard boxes, and the rest, as they say, is history. And we’ve been together ever since, moving back and forth across the country a few times, but always returning to Ypsilanti, where we first met.

Here, I believe, is one of the first photos of Linette and me together. This was taken at the family home of Linette’s college friend, Tracy Wells, in Wixom. It’s worth noting that, while I look stoned, I wasn’t. The fellow next to us is Linette’s friend Ken Boyd, who had driven with us out to Wixom in Linette’s giant, wood paneled station wagon. [Accord to Linette, he’s holding a green M&M.] Looking back, I guess he may have been our chaperone. All I remember from that night is that Linette’s friend Tracy introduced herself to me with an axe in her hand, and Linette almost got us killed, turning across some railroad tracks just seconds before a train passed, as both Ken and I screamed our heads off.

For what it’s worth, I don’t like birthdays. Linette and the kids wanted to throw a big party for me this weekend to mark my 50th, but I said no. Partly, I think, I stopped them because, deep down, I’m painfully shy and hate attention. Mostly, though, I just couldn’t accept the idea of publicly coming out as being 50. I know it’s stupid, but I’ve never liked talking about my age.

It’s not that I’m embarrassed of being middle aged, exactly. I don’t, after all, mind the wrinkles or the grey hair. What bothers me is the idea that I haven’t done more with the time that I’ve been given here… I mean, Orson Welles made Citizen Kane when he was 25, and I’ve yet to move beyond zines and blogs… I know it’s a stupid thing to beat myself up about, especially when I’m doing what really matters, and contributing toward the raising of two good kids, but there’s this part of me that thinks I should have worked harder and done more. And, with each passing birthday, this feeling just continues to grow more intense, feeding into the depression. So, up until just a little while ago, I wasn’t planning to mention that I’d turned 50.

I’m not sure what changed exactly… I was just sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace, after having come in from shoveling snow, and I started thinking about Zsa Zsa Gabor, and the fact that, with every passing decade, she’d shave a few more years from her age, to the point of absurdity, where, for her math to work, she would have been 8 years old when she won Miss Hungary. And I guess I decided that I didn’t want to go down that same path… And it just seemed dumb to hide from the fact that I’d turned 50, especially as someone who talks somewhat publicly about other highly personal things, like living with depression and OCD… So, yeah, I got my AARP card in the mail a few days ago, I just switched over to vitamins that say “50+” on them, and I’ll probably never make a film as good as Citizen Kane. On the plus side, though, I feel like I’m where I’m supposed to be, and I’ve helped to create one hell of an awesome little family.

While I still didn’t have a birthday party, Linette and the kids did a lot of great stuff for me this weekend, starting with a mysterious drive to Saline, where I was introduced to a man who measured my hand for a bowling ball. [I recently decided to pick up the inter-generational baton from my 93 year old grandmother, and join a bowling league.] And, from there, I was taken to Webber’s, where we spent the night eating calamari, swimming, and watching old movies. [As I got to choose, we watched Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein and Dinner at Eight.] And the kids gave me gifts. Alro presented me with a box of 50 monster drawings, like this one of a monster that shoots rocks from its body. [Almost all of them have missiles and grappling hooks.] And Clementine, while still not done with it yet, showed me that she’d started knitting a bust of my pale, white, tiny little head.

So far, it’s been a pretty good life. To be honest, I never thought that I’d make it this far. I never imagined myself being 50. And I certainly didn’t think I’d ever be married, or have kids. I just didn’t think that’s what my life would be like. [Someone told me relatively early on that I’d never find anyone who would love me, and I guess I kind of took it to heart.] But I got incredibly lucky. And I think that’s why, at least in part, I’ve always had such a fondness for Ypsilanti. It was here, back in ’93, that I met Linette and started to think, not just about making it from one day to the next, but actually building a life with an eye toward the future… Life can be pretty incredible, and I’m so glad that I never gave up.