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Memoirs of a Narcissist
I had big dreams and an ego to match. Until I realized they were never mine.
[Listen to this essay as a podcast, here.]
When I was seven years-old, my middle class father married for a second time. Sandy was pretty and athletic, an expert tennis player who came from old, Chicago money. This meant a drastic socioeconomic and cultural shift for us. Practically overnight, I went from playing Kick the Can on dusty, Little League diamonds to picnicking on pristine, Nantucket beaches. (Imagine if the kids from The Sandlot showed up on set with Slim Aarons. That was me.)
I was out of my league. And frankly, more than a little hurt about how inadequate I felt all the time. I might have even told my snobby stepmother and her Wimbledon-whites wearing cronies to pound sand if not for one major factor: I saw how much our new, glamorous life meant to my dad. He’d been the awkward townie at a prestigious, Connecticut boarding school and carried a chip on his shoulder ever since. So marrying Sandy felt like redemption. He was giddy. Like ’80s beer commercial giddy. “This is first class, buddy,” he told me. And I felt pressure not to blow it for him.
So I swallowed my discomfort, ironed my Izod shirts, and combed my hair. I brushed up on etiquette and learned how to swing a seven-iron. In time, I found that — like my dad — I became really…
