Comma Female Was My First Name

 i was relinquished by a stylish “girl in trouble” in 1960s manhattan. 

from what i have gathered about her, she had ambition, style and auburn hair. 

her boss - my first father -  was movie-star handsome and supremely successful in his printing business. if you watched mad men, he's don draper. my mother was the bombshell character joan holloway, played by hottie christina hendricks. 

when she informed him that she was pregnant with me, the girl was demoted from assistant to switchboard operator. he made me; he denied us. 

when i was forcibly removed via emergency c-section from the mothership of her body, i was placed on a cruel space transport that dropped me off at the once-posh doctors hospital on the upper east side en route to canarsie, in brooklyn. 

the girl has been living in the same east side apartment since the early 1970s. she has been rejecting me since i sent my first letter, written on my funky, chunky "portable computer" some time in the early 90s. from where i lived on west 14th street between 8th and 9th avenues, 42 blocks uptown. decades passed. life kept happening, drawing me towards and away from my evolving obsession with her. hearing her voice, knowing what happened, fantasies about a nice lunch at a swank midtown restaurant. mostly - seeing her face. 

unexpectedly, 23&me delivered the link. to a biological brother who would connect me to the son of someone who knew her.  i saw her picture for the first time at 53 years old. 

when i was waiting for the email containing the image to appear, i knew i was sitting in the "before" time. that there would be a time, imminently, that would be the "after" time. i would be changed forever. there would never again be a time i didn't know what she looked like. my most consuming wish was about to come true. 

i sat on my new jersey couch hitting refresh and taking out my anticipatory excitement, anxiety, and fear on my beloved, badass wife.

refresh, refresh, refresh.

it came. a picture taken almost a year after i was born. she would have been 26.

my wife said, she looks like kate middleton. she did. 

my head exploded. my life exploded. my world blew up so hard i needed a new name. 

here we are.