But though I was, in most respects, an average Joe, as ordinary as a doughnut, there was a time there when I was, in my own small part of the world, and in my own small way, as popular as Michael Jackson, as hunted as the finback whale. For I did have one small attribute that made me special. One rare quality that made me stand out among my peers like a scarlet ibis in a flock of penguins. "And what was that, Mike?" I hear you ask. Did I possess artistic genius? Intellectual brilliance? The character and personality of a Mother Teresa? Had I inherited forty million dollars and a suit once worn by Elvis Presley? Won the lottery? Discovered the Fountain of Youth or a cure for cancer or the meaning of life?
The answer is: no. None of the above.
The answer to the question "What was it that set you apart from other metropolitan men of similar education and socioethic background and gave you a notoriety and appeal usually reserved for rock stars or serial killers?" is: I was single.
As of the summer of 1986, some stockbroker in the Village and I were the only two fully operational, healthy, solvent, heterosexual males within, say, a seventy-mile radius of New York City whose sell-by date had not yet expired, who had no severe bad habits (like a tendency to violence or a toxic dependency), and who were not married, about to be married, or as good as married. And because of that one simple - and in most societies unnotable - fact, in the years that have followed 1986 as surely as the honeymoon the wedding, my entire life has been turned around and upside down.
- My Life As A Whale, by Dyan Sheldon
