WAIT, WHO AM I SUPPOSED TO BE TODAY?

On Main Character Syndrome, Identity Theft, and the introduction of Jimmy Con

I've suffered from main character syndrome for most of my life.

I suppose having an extraordinarily overdramatic mother helped establish that foundation pretty early.

In our household, life wasn't simply lived. It was performed. Every inconvenience had the potential to become a crisis. Every disagreement could escalate into a three-act tragedy. Every emotional disturbance required an audience, preferably one that understood the magnitude of the suffering taking place.

I learned pretty young that the world was but a stage, and I was but the most famous and bestest person to ever exist upon it.

Naturally.

My mother certainly didn't invent my ego, but she helped provide the theatrical environment in which it could flourish. When everything around you feels like a major production, you start assuming your own feelings, problems, triumphs, and catastrophes deserve similarly extravagant treatment.

I didn't grow up thinking I was just another person participating in the human experience.

I was the star.

Everybody else was fortunate enough to have been cast.

Not the cute, social media version of main character syndrome where you romanticize your morning coffee, walk around listening to Lana Del Rey, and pretend there's a camera crew following you through Whole Foods.

I'm talking about the full-blown psychological production. The kind where every room is a potential stage, every interaction is an audition, and every person you meet is either a supporting character, an antagonist, or someone whose approval you desperately need but would rather die than admit it.

I didn't just want to be the main character.

I wanted to be the writer, director, producer, casting department, and occasionally the villain.

Preferably with an excellent soundtrack.

There were times this served me well. I became adaptable, personable, creative, and unusually comfortable navigating social circles that had absolutely no business overlapping. I could talk to anybody. I could become anybody. I could read a room, identify what version of myself would perform best in it, and have that version dressed and ready for its close-up before anybody noticed the costume change.

It's a useful skill.

It's also a pretty fucking dangerous way to build a personality.

Because when you spend your formative years becoming whoever the room needs you to be, you eventually run into a rather significant problem.

You have absolutely no idea who the fuck you are when the room is empty.

And I started running into that problem long before I had the vocabulary to describe it.

By high school, I was already running a fairly sophisticated identity fraud operation.

I was a social butterfly. A social chameleon. A little bit of everything and, depending on the day, a whole lot of nothing.

I attended a small, well known private school, an environment filled with exceptionally intelligent, talented, privileged, and occasionally insufferable teenagers. I was certainly no exception to that last category.

There were the music kids. The emo kids. The stoners. The jocks. The popular kids. The nerds. The Jewish kids. The kids who took themselves very seriously, and the kids who took absolutely nothing seriously except finding somewhere to smoke pot.

I had a membership card to nearly every club.

I was a pothead and a music connoisseur, which made me an easy fit with the music bums and the emo crowd. Most of us smoked pot anyway, so the distinguishing characteristics between social groups usually came down to whether you preferred Pink Floyd, Phish, or Eminem and DMX.

For the record, I Phucking hate Phish.

Listening to seventeen minutes of aimless noodling while a bunch of stoned white kids pretended they'd discovered the secrets of the universe wasn't my idea of a good time.

Not that my own musical preferences were particularly consistent.

One minute I wanted to disappear into the existential despair of Pink Floyd's "Us and Them," contemplating war, class division, and the absurdity of human existence. The next I was completely immersed in the shimmering synthesizers and detached melancholy of New Order, feeling like I belonged in some dimly lit Manchester nightclub circa 1985.

And twenty minutes after that, I'd be listening to DMX threaten to murder everybody in a five-mile radius while Eminem made elaborate jokes about dismembering his own family.

All of these things appealed to me.

Sometimes simultaneously.

I could spend an afternoon contemplating the futility of human conflict, an evening romanticizing the icy emotional architecture of eighties synth-pop, and the ride home aggressively nodding my head like I'd recently escaped a particularly violent correctional facility.

I was a suburban white Jewish kid with a fairly comfortable upbringing and the musical appetite of someone experiencing several entirely different lives.

The only thing connecting all of it was that I genuinely loved the music.

Except Phish.

Fuck Phish.

I was also a pretty damn good musician.

Good enough to hang with the symphony band crowd, although I didn't particularly enjoy that social scene because they generally weren't interested in the recreational activities that made music even more interesting to me.

I respected their talent.

I just thought they'd be a lot more fun if they smoked a bowl.

In fact, I'd discovered that a trumpet mouthpiece could be repurposed into a surprisingly effective bong slide. But that's the beauty of being a multidisciplinary artist. I've always believed in finding alternative applications for traditional materials.

Sometimes that means turning discarded objects into sculpture.

Sometimes it means smoking marijuana through a component of a brass instrument.

Creative expression takes many forms.

I was also a jock.

A meathead.

And, regrettably, a bully.

But before I became the bully, I spent a considerable amount of time on the receiving end.

Picture me in the middle of adolescence.

Five foot seven.

Two hundred pounds.

A spectacularly unfortunate bowl cut.

Absolutely no self-confidence.

My father was dying, my family was navigating an increasingly painful reality, and I was stuck in that particular stage of puberty where your body seems determined to humiliate you before deciding what it's actually going to become. I was overweight, emotionally overwhelmed, and hadn't yet hit that final gear of puberty that transforms some awkward little bastards into reasonably formidable young men.

I was an easy target. and the archers noticed

Kids can be ruthless, particularly when they sense weakness. I had plenty of it, and not much ability to defend myself emotionally.

My father was dying, and I was trying to figure out how to exist in a world where the most important man in my life was slowly disappearing while the rest of my peers were primarily concerned with who was getting to third base with whom.

I didn't have the emotional tools to process any of that

I barely had the tools to process my own haircut.

So I absorbed the humiliation.

The jokes.

The insecurity.

The feeling of being less than.

And then something happened.

I hit another growth spurt.

My body changed.

My confidence began to arrive.

I lost my virginity.

And seemingly overnight, the social hierarchy that had previously made me feel powerless began looking considerably more negotiable.

By sophomore year and beyond, I was a 240-pound blockhead with a football player's body, a newfound sense of physical authority, and an increasingly sophisticated ability to make other people feel like shit.

The transformation was dramatic.

Unfortunately, my emotional development didn't accelerate at quite the same speed as my physical development.

I had spent years feeling small.

Now I was big.

And rather than using that newfound size and confidence to become the person I could have desperately used a few years earlier, I occasionally became the person who had made my life miserable.

I could be intimidating.

I could be cruel.

I could absolutely eviscerate somebody with a comment if I thought it would get a laugh or establish my place in the room.

I had been bullied myself, and somewhere along the line I decided that rather than become the person who defended people from that kind of behavior, I'd simply become better at delivering it.

Hurt people hurt people.

A tidy little saying that explains a whole lot without excusing a goddamn thing.

I generally saved the physical violence for the football field, where it was not only acceptable but encouraged. In fact, it was one of the few environments in my life where I understood exactly what was expected of me.

Find the guy with the football.

Kill the guy with the football.

Wonderful. Clear instructions. No identity crisis necessary.

Off the field, however, my personality could be absolutely venomous when I wanted it to be.

Whether that venom was directed at my newly widowed mother, my brothers who were navigating their own emotional shit, my friends, or some poor freshman whose only ambition that afternoon was to make it through the school day without having his bookbag thrown out a window.

Sometimes I was a genuine asshole.

And it wasn't always because somebody deserved it.

Most of the time, they didn't.

That's something I've had to reconcile as an adult. I wasn't some misunderstood sweetheart simply reacting to a cruel world. Sometimes I was the cruel world. Sometimes I enjoyed the power of making another kid feel small.

My father's death had left a hole in me that I didn't know how to fill.

So I occasionally filled it with anger, intimidation, and the cheap satisfaction of making somebody else feel worse than I did.

I don't particularly like that version of myself, but he existed, and pretending otherwise would just be another costume change.

Strangely enough, I think I was generally well-liked.

Or at least I worked extremely hard to create that impression.

I could hang with the popular kids, but I could also sit around with the nerds and recite obscure Star Wars facts with an enthusiasm that would probably disqualify me from ever being considered genuinely cool.

I could talk football, then spend two hours explaining why The Empire Strikes Back was superior to Return of the Jedi. Everyone knows that.

I could hang with the Black kids because I was a massive hip-hop head. I knew the records, the producers, the lyrics, the regional differences. Hip-hop wasn't some accessory I picked up to impress people. I genuinely loved the music, and that love would eventually shape the direction of my entire life.

Depending on the day, I'd show up wearing Tommy Hilfiger or Sean John.

Other days, when the assignment called for suburban white-boy respectability, I'd break out the Abercrombie or Ralph Lauren.

Same kid.

Different uniform.

Somewhere between those two wardrobes existed a Jewish identity I wasn't particularly sure what to do with.

I was Jewish, at least by heritage and last name, which seemed sufficient for admission into the local Jewish social ecosystem.

I wasn't bar mitzvahed.

We didn't go to temple.

Which is somewhat ironic considering my great-grandfather was one of the founding members of Temple Beth El in Detroit.

A fairly substantial contribution to the local Jewish community, followed a few generations later by his descendant turning trumpet mouthpieces into bong accessories.

The family legacy was evolving.

We observed some high holidays with my father's side of the family, but there wasn't much formal religious structure in my upbringing.

My primary experiences with Judaism seemed to involve shivas, funerals, guilt, grief, and smoking tremendous amounts of marijuana with other Jewish kids.

That was Judaism as I understood it.

And frankly, parts of that definition still hold up.

I didn't have much religious education, but I certainly understood the emotional curriculum.

Guilt? Absolutely.

Anxiety? Advanced placement.

Grief? Honors.

I could have graduated summa cum laude in Jewish emotional distress without ever opening the Torah.

I was also, believe it or not, a pretty deep thinker.

Or at least I thought I was.

At seventeen, I'd get incredibly stoned with my friends and watch Pink Floyd's The Wall, discussing the politics, symbolism, alienation, authoritarianism, and musical theatrics surrounding Roger Waters' increasingly miserable fictional universe.

I felt a profound connection to Pink's isolation and the psychological walls he built around himself.

Here was a character who felt alienated by society, authority, family, and his own inability to connect with the world.

I understood him.

Or believed I did.

I'd be halfway through a monologue about the psychological implications of fascist imagery and the destruction of individual identity when some animated hammers would start marching across the screen.

And I'd interrupt my own inner monologue analysis to announce:

"DUDE. WHAT THE FUCK. THAT SHIT IS CRAZY."

Very sophisticated stuff.

A young intellectual operating at the intersection of political philosophy, psychedelic animation, and exceptionally mediocre brick weed smoked out of a little glass bowl named Blue, purchased from Purple Haze in Shops at the Top in Birmingham.

Blue was a treasured member of our social circle until Funny Steve came along- more on that later.

Somehow this deep thinker could a switch when football season arrived.

For three months, I could put the substances aside, lock into training, maintain peak physical conditioning, and devote myself to the singular objective of fucking shit up for the opposing team.

There was discipline in there.

Real discipline.

There was ambition, intelligence, creativity, athleticism, curiosity, and drive.

All the raw materials for a pretty interesting person.

The problem wasn't that I lacked an identity.

The problem was that I had too many of them, and I kept allowing other people to decide which one mattered.

I never really woke up knowing who I was going to be.

I needed to see the day's agenda first.

Who was I hanging out with?

What were we doing?

What kind of person would be most useful in that environment?

Then I'd flip the colors, adjust the personality, change the language, and go about my day.

Being a chameleon wasn't something I did.

It was becoming who I was.

There's a rather frightening distinction between adapting to your environment and allowing your environment to determine your entire sense of self.

One is social intelligence.

The other is a slow-motion disappearance.

I didn't understand that at the time.

I just thought I was exceptionally versatile.

Which brings me to one of my favorite cinematic representations of a complete identity crisis.

The Stepfather.

Not exactly the kind of movie most people reference when discussing adolescence and personal development, but I've never been particularly interested in making the expected comparison.

In the original 1987 film, Terry O'Quinn plays a psychopath who reinvents himself as the perfect American family man after murdering his previous family.

New family.

New identity.

New personality.

Same deeply disturbed individual underneath.

His entire existence depends on maintaining whichever version of himself the current situation requires.

Eventually, the different identities begin collapsing into each other.

And in one of the film's most memorable scenes, he becomes confused and asks:

"Wait a minute. Who am I here?"

It's the moment the mask slips.

The performance breaks.

The person underneath the manufactured identity can no longer remember which character he's supposed to be playing.

Now, I wasn't a homicidal psychopath moving from family to family and leaving a trail of corpses behind me.

I was a kid from Bloomfield Hills who smoked too much pot and occasionally wore Sean John.

But the underlying question felt strangely familiar.

Who am I supposed to be today?

I didn't know.

And rather than figure it out, I eventually decided the entire production needed a new direction.

Because at some point, trying to fit in with everybody becomes absolutely fucking exhausting.

And when you spend enough time desperately trying to belong, rebellion can start looking an awful lot like freedom.

So I rebelled.

Against what?

Excellent question.

Authority, I suppose.

Expectations.

My parents.

The suburban existence I'd been handed.

The idea that I was supposed to graduate, go to college, find a respectable profession, get married, produce a few children, and eventually die with a home that looked better than my neighbor's.

I had no particular problem with any of those things individually.

I just didn't want anybody telling me that was the script.

I wanted to write my own.

And like most eighteen-year-olds convinced they're destined for something extraordinary, I mistook having absolutely no fucking idea what I was doing for possessing some kind of revolutionary vision.

I made an attempt at liberal arts college.

For roughly a year, I tried to maintain the preppy football-player identity I'd spent so much time cultivating.

It didn't take.

The whole thing felt increasingly ridiculous. I was bored, disconnected, restless, and utterly uninterested in playing the role I'd apparently been cast in.

So I left

Well, that's the dignified version.

I was more or less kicked out.

But "I left college to pursue my artistic destiny" sounds considerably better than "the institution decided my continued presence wasn't particularly beneficial to anybody involved."

Either way, I returned home with no real education, no employment prospects, a worsening relationship with authority, and the unshakable conviction that I was about to become a famous rapper and producer.

Naturally.

And you have to understand the cultural environment in which this brilliant idea was developing.

8 Mile was enormous.

Eminem was the biggest thing on the planet.

A white kid from Detroit had somehow become the most influential and commercially successful rapper in the world.

And here I was.

A white kid from (suburban) Detroit.

Who loved hip-hop.

Who could write rhymes.

Who could make beats.

Who was obviously only a few minor career adjustments away from becoming the next Eminem.

There was just one important difference.

Eminem was extraordinarily talented, deeply committed to his craft, and had spent years developing a distinctive voice through traumatic experiences, pain and suffering.

I had a drum machine and an unusually high opinion of myself.

Still, the cultural timing felt almost divinely orchestrated.

When 8 Mile became a cultural phenomenon, it seemed to validate an entire worldview I'd already constructed.

Here was a kid from Detroit who'd made it through hip-hop.

Why couldn't I?

Never mind that my upbringing bore almost no resemblance to his.

Never mind that I had enjoyed a privileged education and a comfortable suburban life.

Never mind that my biggest recent obstacle had been getting my mother to stop asking why I wasn't going to work.

The parallels were obvious.

At least to me.

I started messing around with a drum machine.

Writing beats.

Writing rhymes.

Writing diss tracks about practically anybody who crossed my path.

Somebody looked at me funny?

Diss track.

Somebody questioned my talent?

Diss track.

Somebody existed in a way I found mildly irritating?

Potentially an entire EP.

I was essentially running a one-man record label dedicated to settling imaginary scores.

And I worked at it constantly.

Day and night.

I wasn't casually experimenting with music. I was obsessed with it. I could spend twelve hours in front of a drum machine without eating properly, sleeping properly, or performing even the most basic responsibilities associated with functioning adulthood.

My creativity was thriving.

My actual life was a fucking disaster.

I got fired from multiple jobs.

Others I simply stopped attending.

My mother would ask why I wasn't at work.

"They don't need me today."

A remarkable coincidence, considering they seemed to not need me almost every single day.

I wasn't particularly interested in making money unless it was going to come from music.

I wasn't interested in building a conventional career.

I wasn't interested in somebody else's version of success.

I had a plan.

A completely delusional, wildly impractical, poorly researched plan.

But a plan nonetheless.

I was going to become a rapper and producer like my idols

And I'd be damned if a little thing like reality was going to interfere.

Looking back, it's tempting to call this the beginning of finding myself.

But I don't think that's entirely accurate.

I wasn't finding myself.

I was constructing a new character.

One who was louder, more outrageous, more defiant, and considerably less vulnerable than the kid underneath.

I hadn't solved the problem of needing an identity.

I'd just decided to manufacture one so aggressively that nobody would dare question it.

Including me.

Eventually, Chicago entered the picture.

Columbia College seemed like the perfect place to take my dreams seriously, or at least place them in an environment where other people might take them seriously enough to justify the entire operation.

I visited the city with the intention of seeing what the school had to offer.

I'd spent most of my life in the comfortable shelter of suburban Detroit. Bloomfield Hills wasn't exactly a proving ground for urban survival.

Chicago was enormous.

Intimidating.

Dirty.

Beautiful.

A little frightening.

Aroundd this same time, something else was happening that I didn't fully understand.

My anxiety was beginning to become unmanageable.

What would eventually establish itself as a genuine panic disorder was starting to rear its ugly head, and I had absolutely no idea what to do with it.

I was experiencing fear that didn't always have an identifiable source.

An overwhelming sense that something terrible might happen.

Physical sensations that seemed disproportionate to whatever was actually going on around me.

And rather than approach any of it with curiosity or a willingness to understand what was happening inside my own head, I did what any aspiring hip-hop mogul with the emotional maturity of a garden hose would do.

I smoked more pot.

Sometimes I convinced myself it was helping.

Other times, looking back, I wonder whether I was just smoking myself further into the very anxiety I was trying to escape.

Was I medicating it?

Was I making it worse?

Both?

I honestly don't know.

What I do know is that my relationship with fear was becoming increasingly complicated.

Which was particularly inconvenient considering I was simultaneously trying to establish an identity built around the idea that I wasn't afraid of anything.

I went out one night with friends of friends from Michigan who were already attending school in Chicago.

We ended up at a party on the MEAN STREETS OF LINCOLN PARK.

For those unfamiliar with Chicago geography, Lincoln Park is a notoriously terrifying neighborhood where young professionals, Families, boutique fitness enthusiasts, and people with expensive dogs routinely terrorize the local population with brunch reservations.

At some point, a homeless man approached us and asked for a dollar.

I was fucking terrified.

Not because he did anything particularly threatening.

He was just a guy who wanted a dollar.

But I'd grown up so insulated, and my anxiety had become so unpredictable, that the interaction felt like I'd stumbled into a deleted scene from Menace II Society.

This was the big city.

This was the urban jungle.

Apparently, people could just approach you on the street and ask you for money.

How would I survive?

I brought this concern to my therapist.

Now, this gentleman and I didn't exactly enjoy a productive therapeutic relationship.

I disliked him intensely.

Still do, if I'm being truthful. He’s probably long gone from this world at this point.

He was old school. Confrontational. Unimpressed by my dreams, my musical aspirations, and my seemingly limitless ability to construct elaborate fantasies about the person I intended to become.

Every time I presented some grand vision for my future, it seemed like he was waiting with a fire extinguisher.

I thought he was an asshole.

In retrospect, he may have been asking some perfectly reasonable questions.

The two things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

I told him about Chicago.

The homeless guy.

My anxiety.

My increasing fear about leaving the suburbs and entering an environment I perceived as unpredictable and dangerous.

And he asked me something along the lines of:

"How do you expect to exist in the world of rap music, with its associations with violence, substance abuse, and lack of boundaries, when you're frightened by the idea of living in a major city?"

Now, putting aside the rather reductive idea that a career in hip-hop required surviving some kind of organized criminal apprenticeship, he did have a point.

I was talking about becoming a hardened rap-world personality while simultaneously being afraid of a man asking for a dollar in Lincoln Park.

Those two things weren't exactly lining up.

But I didn't appreciate the observation.

My response was immediate, emotional, and almost certainly delivered in an accent that had no legitimate geographical connection to my upbringing.

"BECAUSE I'M A DAWG AND I’M NOT SCARED OF SHIT’.”

Or something equally embarrassing.

A white half-Jewish teenager from Bloomfield Hills attempting to establish street credibility inside a therapist's office.

I'm sure it was a remarkable performance.

And here was the problem in its purest form.

My actual emotional response to Chicago had been fear.

Fear was honest.

Fear was real.

Fear was useful information.

But fear didn't belong to the character I wanted to become.

So rather than explore it, I replaced it with bravado.

I didn't want to feel vulnerable.

I wanted to be a dawg.

Whatever the fuck that meant.

Shortly thereafter, I skipped my next therapy appointment and headed off to Indiana to visit friends at IU.

Indiana University, in Bloomington.

My mother had explicitly told me not to go.

Apparently, my therapist had contacted her about my substance use and increasingly ridiculous ambitions. I understood this as a betrayal of confidentiality, although I can't reconstruct what permissions or circumstances surrounded that conversation now.

What I remember clearly is feeling exposed.

My mother believed I needed help.

For marijuana.

At the time, I thought the notion was preposterous.

Help?

For pot?

Was she out of her fucking mind?

Never mind that I was unemployed, academically derailed, frequently intoxicated, experiencing increasingly disruptive anxiety, and convinced I was going to become the next great hip-hop producer despite having produced essentially nothing of commercial value.

The marijuana clearly wasn't interfering with anything important.

Except everything.

But I didn't see it that way.

I saw people trying to control me.

Trying to suppress my creativity.

Trying to force me back into the tidy little suburban existence I'd decided was beneath me.

So I went to Indiana.

I partied all weekend.

And I did so with the understanding that I'd probably return home to some form of catastrophic parental confrontation.

A shit sandwich of historic proportions.

Didn't matter.

I was going.

I didn't give a fuck.

Or at least that's what I kept telling myself.

Indifference was another identity I found incredibly attractive.

The kid who didn't give a fuck.

The outlaw.

The misunderstood artist.

The guy nobody could control.

It was a hell of a lot more glamorous than admitting I was confused, scared, directionless, and completely dependent on my mother to keep my life from collapsing.

I wanted independence without responsibility.

Freedom without consequences.

Success without structure.

And recognition without having to endure the possibility of failure.

A very reasonable list of demands.

Eventually, I needed to demonstrate that I could function in an academic environment if I wanted another shot at Chicago.

So I enrolled in community college.

One semester.

Four classes.

Three As.

One F.

Now, the three As were significant.

They proved something I'd known all along but had become increasingly reluctant to demonstrate.

I wasn't stupid.

I could perform academically when I decided something was worth my effort.

The F, however, was something special.

Film Appreciation.

A class in which we watched movies and wrote two-page papers about them.

That's it.

For a kid who could spend hours dissecting The Wall while absolutely obliterated on marijuana, this should have been the easiest A in the history of American higher education.

And I failed.

I simply didn't go to class.

My intentions were always excellent.

I'd wake up planning to attend class.

Then I'd stop by a friend's house.

We'd smoke pot.

Maybe watch Family Guy.

Smoke more pot.

I'd start thinking about beats, melodies, lyrics, ideas, and all the incredible music I was undoubtedly going to create just as soon as I finished doing absolutely nothing.

Then I'd look at the clock.

Royal Oak Oakland Community College was fifteen minutes away.

Fifteen whole minutes.

An insurmountable geographical obstacle.

I'd decide not to go.

Tomorrow, perhaps.

There would always be another movie.

Another paper.

Another opportunity.

And this is something I can see with painful clarity now that I couldn't see then.

I wasn't failing because I lacked talent. I was failing because I had developed a remarkable ability to confuse potential with accomplishment.

I thought being capable of something was practically the same as doing it.

I could write a great paper.

So why did I need to actually write it?

I could be a successful musician.

So why should I concern myself with paying bills?

I could be disciplined.

I'd already proven that on the football field.

So surely discipline was something I could just switch back on whenever the situation required it.

But potential doesn't graduate.

Potential doesn't show up for work.

Potential doesn't turn in the assignment.

And potential sure as shit doesn't make you a successful record producer.

You have to actually do something with it.

At the time, this was a concept I found deeply offensive.

Fortunately, my three As were enough to convince my mother that perhaps Chicago was still a viable option.

And perhaps there was still hope for her youngest son.

So I got my shot.

Chicago.

Columbia College.

A new city.

A new school.

A new beginning.

And, most importantly, a new audience.

I arrived carrying years of unresolved insecurities, a collection of wildly contradictory personalities, a growing appetite for intoxication, an increasingly problematic relationship with anxiety, and an ego that was beginning to exceed the capacity of its original container.

In high school, I'd changed myself to fit into whichever social group happened to be standing in front of me.

In Chicago, I discovered something infinitely more intoxicating.

I could invent an entirely new version of myself and introduce him to people who had never met the original.

Nobody knew the intimidated teenager.

Nobody knew the kid who'd been bullied.

Nobody knew the suburban blockhead who could recite Star Wars trivia while wearing Ralph Lauren.

Nobody knew the aspiring rapper who was scared of a homeless man asking for a dollar.

Nobody knew the guy who failed Film Appreciation because he couldn't be bothered to drive fifteen minutes to watch a movie.

I could tell people whatever I wanted.

Dress however I wanted.

Act however I wanted.

Exaggerate whatever I wanted.

Drink, Smoke, Produce, rap, party and fuck my way into everyone’s good graces.

The old identities didn't have to follow me unless I invited them.

For somebody who had spent his entire adolescence desperately trying to determine who he was supposed to be, this was an extraordinary opportunity.

It was also a catastrophe waiting to happen.

I'd spent so much time worrying about how other people perceived me that I never developed much of a relationship with the person doing the perceiving.

My self-consciousness didn't disappear when I moved to Chicago.

It mutated.

Into ego.

Into arrogance.

Into performance.

Into a level of manufactured confidence so aggressive that it occasionally bordered on performance art.

And because I was reasonably charming, creative, socially adaptable, and capable of being genuinely entertaining, people often bought the act.

Which only encouraged me to take it further.

I wasn't merely putting on a costume anymore.

I was starting to believe the character was real.

And that's where main character syndrome becomes particularly destructive.

It's one thing to imagine yourself as the protagonist in the story of your own life.

Now I wanted people to become whatever I needed them to be.

Supporting characters.

Fans.

Admirers.

Groupies.

Romantic interests.

Enemies.

An audience.

I was still relying on other people to tell me who I was.

I'd just changed how I collected their opinions.

Instead of asking for approval, I started demanding attention.

And attention, unlike genuine self-worth, could be manufactured in almost unlimited quantities if you were willing to behave outrageously enough.

The scary thing is that some of the best qualities I have today grew out of this same psychological mess.

My ability to connect with different people.

My musical instincts.

My willingness to experiment.

My comfort with reinvention.

My instinct to challenge expectations.

The curiosity that would eventually carry me into an entirely new career as a visual artist.

Those qualities were real.

They weren't necessarily the problem.

The problem was my inability to distinguish between expressing who I was and performing who I thought I needed to be.

Somewhere along the line, I confused being interesting with being important.

Being noticed with being loved.

Being outrageous with being original.

And being feared with being respected.

I wasn't searching for an identity anymore.

I was searching for a legend.

Which is a particularly dangerous thing to do when you've already decided that conventional rules don't apply to you.

Looking back, I can see that the boy who watched Pink Floyd's The Wall at seventeen understood far more about his own situation than he realized.

He was fascinated by a character who built walls to protect himself, only to discover that the walls had become his prison.

I spent years doing essentially the same thing.

Except instead of bricks, I used personalities.

The jock.

The bully.

The pothead.

The musician.

The intellectual.

The hip-hop head.

The rebel.

The suburban kid pretending to be streetwise.

Each one served a purpose.

Each one kept some vulnerable part of me protected from the possibility of rejection.

And each one moved me a little further away from having to answer the simplest question in the world.

Who am I?

But that answer was still decades away.

For now, I was a young man in Chicago, and the opportunity to start over had presented itself.

A blank slate.

An entirely new social environment.

A city full of people who didn't know my history.

The perfect conditions for a chameleon who'd spent his whole life changing colors.

And I was about to make a very important decision.

I was no longer going to waste my energy trying to figure out which personality best suited the room.

I was going to create one so big, so obnoxious, so charismatic, and so completely full of shit that the room would have to adapt to me.

The legend of Jimmy Con was born.

An infamous scoundrel whose exploits would eventually provide enough material for an entire book, several apologies, a few genuinely remarkable memories, and an alarming number of conversations that begin with the words:

"You're not going to believe what this fucking idiot did."

Jimmy Con wasn't the answer to my identity crisis.

He was the identity crisis with a slightly better wardrobe, a louder mouth, and substantially worse impulse control.

And for a while, I thought I'd finally figured it all out.

I'd found my character.

I'd found my stage.

I'd found my audience.

There was just one small problem.

When you spend your entire life pretending to be somebody else, eventually you forget that you're pretending.

The cameras were rolling.

The soundtrack was excellent.

The main character had arrived.

And the poor bastard—and just about everybody unfortunate enough to cross Jimmy Con's path—had absolutely no idea what was coming…