The other night, I found myself at a co-working space around 20th and Broadway, with about thirty to forty people, all working for or running startup companies. As the employee of a startup, this is a perfectly logical and reasonable place for me to be. Besides, they had Yuengling Lager, which is a rare treat at events up here.

So, with my freshly delivered business cards in their holder, my boss and I took in the crowd, the DJ spinning a mix of contemporary and 80s dance music, and the nice shared working space the company sponsoring the event rented out to people. Oh, and we tried to chat up other startup people, swap business cards, and maybe plan future things over the sound of way too loud subwoofers.

This is not my strong suit. Which is a bit of a problem, seeing as I’m involved with the community side of our social network. Dealing with people from behind a computer keyboard is far easier for me than dealing with people face to face. On the Internet, if someone’s bothering you, you can either not reply, or block them. In real life, there’s more social signals to balance.

Still, we’re all there for the same reason, right? [1] We’ve all got companies that we want to promote, grow, get investors and/or users for. The first step is to step out and make the introduction. It won’t come to you.

Looking back on my own performance, I recognized three problems.

1. I hate interrupting conversations.

Looking and walking around the room, I found a lot of people already chatting each other up. Looking for an opening, I found none, at least for a while. This, maybe, could have been avoided by showing up earlier, or just having more patience. Or being willing to jump in.

2. Loud room, loud music.

I left the venue with my ears ringing and my voice hoarse. It was a lot like how I feel when I leave a concert at a small club. [2] This didn’t affect other people too much, but with my pre-existing difficulties in communication, having thumping bass and not being able to hear people made matters worse.

3. I didn’t have a pitch ready.

Mea culpa. I know my product. I know what we need, and what we do for people. The last networking event I went to was one where companies were showing off products, not just meeting and chatting. This gave me something to do, a pre-existing topic to talk about. I found that to be a much more pleasent and productive night than this one. [3] Here, the onus was on me to find something to discuss.

The event wasn’t a washout. I managed to talk to someone who works for the company running the event, and got a lead on new office space for my company. I met someone who had a neat iPhone game. I also found someone who is involved with music promotion and concerts in NYC, which is always a good thing to know. Still, these didn’t happen until I had wandered around the room a few times and downed a couple lagers. It was great networking, but not enough, and a little late, but now I’m a little more prepared for next time.

Children can be cruel.

I know this first hand. I still don’t fully grasp the reasoning behind what happened to me in my elementary school years, but I’ve overcome it as best as one can. I remember the way it started. It was in first grade, and it happened in the school yard at St. Timothy’s before admission. My homeroom was gathered together, waiting to be summoned into line. Thomas Spickett, I think his name was, was being chided by my classmates over his dirty pencil case. It was inferred that he had the “Thomas Disease” and the pencil case was the way it would be transmitted.

Naturally, I touched the case. I think I wanted to prove my classmates wrong. I ended up catching the Richard Disease. It was chronic, and there was no cure.

Thomas was forgotten. For the next five years, The Richard Disease followed me through my education. In the most formative years for developing social skills, children my age would not even stand next to me unless they had to. Any other time, they’d run away—often screaming. There was nothing I could do.

Looking back, with the awareness that comes from adulthood, the Richard Disease stigma was given to me around the time AIDS was gaining national attention. It’s presence in the zeitgeist likely did not escape first graders at a Catholic school, but nobody knew what it was. Even worse, was how it stuck. Day after day, semester upon semester, grade upon grade, I carried the stigma like the Cross that we looked upon every day. Sometimes, I would embrace it, deliberately charging at a group of girls to watch them run in fear. Usually, I just tried to disappear. In fourth grade, I spent outdoor recesses and lunch breaks standing in a corner of the back school yard, my back to my classmates, my face to the wall of the church.

I remember talking to a teacher who had her car parked by my corner one day. I remember explaining the situation. I remember tears.

I remember her saying it was my fault.

Summers were my respite, to a point. I spent them at a day camp, where the bullying changed from mental to physical. I was insulted, beat up, had balls thrown at me, and generally harassed, but there was human contact in the misery. In some ways, this was preferable, but only just. One summer, I spoke to the leader of my group about the bullying. He, too, said it was my fault.

Despite being a “gifted student,” I was also a terrible student. Teachers either loved me or hated me. At least one was offended that I was offered the gift of leaving school one day a week to spend my day with the Mentally Gifted program at another school. Despite this, I was terrible at schoolwork. I was a discipline problem, as well. Days when the bullying became too much to bear in my fourth and fifth grade years, I would get into fights. Naturally, I was the only one punished. One year, I earned an in-school suspension. Why? Because of the Richard Disease. Because socialization with me was either insults, fights, or running away.

I had one friend outside of school, Matt, who was blissfully ignorant of my disease. He went to the public school across the street. And you just don’t talk about stuff like that with your one real friend. When he moved away, I rarely left the house of my own accord. And, to be honest, come fifth grade, the cloud lifted somewhat, and I had friendly classmates. Thomas Bluett, and Chris Palko come to mind, but that was two out of a class of two-hundred. And, though my teachers were quick to blame me, there were a few sympathetic ears.

One of these was Sister Elizabeth, the principal of St. Timothy’s. With her help, I got to spend mornings helping in the library before classes instead of wait in the schoolyard. I spent lunch minding first graders, a task typically given to seventh and eighth graders, rather than spend it with my peers. The real escape, however, came when I left the school after fifth grade, for Masterman, Philadelphia’s magnet public school. There, I would have other problems, but no more bullying, no more Richard Disease.

I’m almost thirty, and I still remember the pain. It’s still fresh to me. I wonder of any of my old classmate remember. I know they remember me, at least. Years later, in high school, and in college, when I would walk around my old neighborhood in Northeast Philadelphia, I would be noticed by my former classmates. They would be friendly, and kind, and ask how I’d been. It took all the willpower I had not to shake them, and scream in their face about what they did to me, deliberately or otherwise. I wanted to tell them how they never would give me the time of day, or even stand near me. I wanted them to know my pain.

But I never did.

Even writing this feels like I’m picking at a scab that hasn’t fully healed. Still, it has to be done. I’ve approached this from so many angles. I tried to make a joke out of it, something about how first graders discovered a new disease hitherto unknown to modern medicine, and I was the carrier, and so forth. Better to just lay it on the line, instead. If I hadn’t gotten out when I did, I can’t imagine what would have happened. I could have been another teenage suicide, or worse, one of those kids with guns who shoot up their own school in a twisted revenge fantasy. The Columbine massacre happened while I was still in high school, and some people thought I would “pull a Columbine” as well. By then, I was going to do nothing of the sort. But I was free, then.

And I’m free now, as free as I ever will be. Perhaps I’m more free putting this out there. I’ve never kept this story a secret, but I’ve never made it public, either. Maybe doing so is as close to closure as I’ll get. It’s not exactly screaming it into the face of my now grown-up tormenters, but it is probably better for the both of us.

Boris cuts my hair.

Boris is a Russian immigrant, and looks the part. A hulking rock of a man, with black hair, and a thick black mustache whose corners come down to the edge of his lips. The mustache, up close, has a few silver hairs in it, as does the hair visible beyond the edges of his kippah. He wears a barbers smock, white with blue line drawings of scissors, razors, mirrors, jars of Barbicide. His accent is thick. English is not his first language. And yet, he is friendly, polite, well spoken, if terse.

And he wields the fastest pair of scissors in the Borough of Queens. Possibly, in the entire city. Fast enough, I’d say, that he could hold down a second job as a Cuisinart.

One of the first things on my list once I arrived in my new home was to find a good barber shop. Back in Philadelphia, as my move grew closer, I put off getting a haircut. I’d twice tried to go to my old barbers in Center City, but found they were closed. Once, it was my fault for forgetting they were closed on Sundays. The other time, I don’t know why they were closed. I was depressed, my hair was long and shaggy, and I decided it would be an added incentive to find a barber shop once I moved.

During my college years, I had long hair. I grew a wild mane that, at one point, fell down to the top of my backside. When it was time to remove it, I went to a proper hair salon, spending fifty dollars to have a professional cut and style it. Money well spent. While I was comfortably well off, I kept going back to her, but this grew unsustainable. I went to the local beauty school, paying students to cut my hair, unsure of what I was getting. I gave them up when I found my barber shop. For sixteen bucks, they cut my hair, trimmed my sideburns and eyebrows, and did it quickly.

There’s a risk in trying any new place to get a haircut. Before settling on my barber in Philly, I poured over Yelp reviews. I didn’t want to go just anywhere, and take my chance. I only get a haircut every six weeks or so… more like “or so” for me. I didn’t want to travel out of my way, or pay out the nose if I didn’t have to. I had made my home, but it was doomed to be temporary, knowing I would be moving after only a handful of cuts.

I found Boris by near serendipity. Yes, I used Yelp, but I didn’t discover his shop immediately. Not far, down on Jamaica Avenue, there’s another barber shop, one famous for its cuts. I was all set to make the hike down there, only to find out that they focused on a different clientele, and didn’t provide the sort of haircut I was looking for. Dejected, I returned to the Internet.

There was one review of Boris’s shop, but it was glowing. Five stars. Excited. One bright, warm, Thursday morning in late Summer, I made the hike. It’s a mile from my building to Union Turnpike and 162nd Street. The shop is unassuming. No name, just a pale red awning with the words “Barber Shop”, and a rotating red, white, and blue barber’s pole by the door. I thought it may have been closed, but looking in, I saw Boris. I entered, was seated in a red leather barber chair, enrobed in a black barber’s cloth.

I told him to take an inch off the top. Clippers on the back and sides. Trim my sideburns, but keep them the same length. Out came the clippers, at a 3. I felt my hair slip away, the weight holding it down going with it. We spoke, politely. I told him I was new to the neighborhood, came from Philadelphia. He told me about his trip to see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall.

Then, out came the scissors.

A few tentative test snips in the air, first, like a batter taking a practice swing before the pitch. I felt him take up some hair, and then felt a swish of air, followed by a quiet click. Again. Again. Hair flew away from me like leaves on the wind. He adjusted my head, kept snipping away, and before I knew what had happened, he handed me my glasses, and I could see what this man had wrought.

And I looked, and I saw that it was good.

Boris asked for ten dollars, a price that seemed, as I looked and preened in the giant mirror, far too good to be true, especially for New York. Walking out the door, and back home, I felt like a new man, holding my head high—easier to do without two months of hair growth weighing it down, and singing the praises of Boris. I’ve been back since, and I will be back again.

When this goes out, I’ll likely be on the road to my new life in New York City. These last few weeks have been absolute chaos, particularly the last couple days. In the last 72 hours, I cut my wardrobe by half, cleaned an apartment, packed up my life, shoved all but the barest essentials into a storage shed, and the rest into suitcases, backpacks, and bags. I’m writing this now, in the spare bedroom of my parents’s condo in Northeast Philadelphia with my sinuses clogged from my cat dander allergy.

I do not know how I will sleep tonight.

This is finally happening. Years of delay, some externally caused, mostly my own fear and laziness, are finally over and I’m making the move. It’s a risk. I don’t have a lot of money. I don’t have a job. I have bills to pay. I have a place to live that I don’t have to pay rent for—a rare luxury for someone like me. I have to hit the ground running. Then, I have to keep running.

If I stop, I will die.

For me, death is being shoved back into a shared fabric covered box, moving papers from Point A to Point B. Death is strapping a headset on and calling people who don’t want to be called to push products they don’t want. Death is when I give up, take the “easy” route and give up my dreams, my desire to live by my own means and make stuff. Death is when my brain eats itself trying to survive eight hours a day of labor that can be replaced by a clever script programmer, or an auto-dialer and an answering machine.

I am running now. I’m picking up speed. The road stretches on ahead, where it goes I don’t know, but it’s there and I’m following it. There will be forks along the way. When the come along, I will have to make a decision, but I will keep running. It’s an open road, and I should be able to see any forks before they arrive, as well as any other obstacles to overcome. After all, I’ve overcome the first one. I’ve started. It’s physics.

An object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by another force.

I am that object.

Let’s go.

And woe to any force that gets in my way.

I have always been a heavy sleeper, and I have trouble with alarm clocks. This is probably why I wasn’t terribly surprised six years ago on the morning of my Astronomy final to find that I had exactly zero minutes to make it to campus. I was in a panic, just not surprised. Everything was a blur, in that just woke up kind of way. I rushed through the routine: get dressed, put on glasses, tie my shoes, pack my bag, grab my keys. I ran out the bedroom door, and down the stairs. No thinking, just doing what I had to do. It would be better to show up late than not show up at all.

Then, everything went black.

When I came to, I was on a gurney in the corridor of a hospital, my friend Alex next to me, and with a very large lump on the right side of my head. I didn’t know where I was, how I had gotten there, or what happened to me at all. Hours had passed in the space of a black instant. Alex filled me in: I was at Jefferson Hospital. I had a concussion. And, yes, I’d missed my Astronomy final. Eventually a room opened up, and they wheeled me in, sticking electrodes to my chest and hooking me up to monitors. There was nowhere to go, but I had a book, my cell phone, my iPod and headphones. Alex had to leave but I was joined by another friend, and eventually my oldest sister. I called my girlfriend, desperate to hear her voice. At the time, my parents were on vacation, having just arrived in Florida after driving from Philadelphia. When they heard what happened, they immediately turned back around for home.

I had to stay overnight for observation. By the time things had settled down, the hospital kitchen had closed, but they were able to get my a roast beef sandwich. Sleep was almost impossible with the things stuck to me, but somehow I managed. The next day, I was set free, and taken home by my sister. I got a call, almost immediately from my Astronomy professor about the missed exam. I ended up taking it at home, after explaining the situation—an automatic open book exam that I aced. Despite being told to stay home and rest for 24 hours, I went to campus the next day for my Humanities final, knowing there was no way I could reschedule. The professor was leaving for Japan the next morning. Word had, apparently, gotten around about my accident, and my Professor seemed surprised to see me. I aced the exam, despite my unsteady state.

The attending physician had told that the memories I lost in the concussion would, eventually, return. They did not. Even today, the entire morning is a complete blank in my memory. Chance encounters in the following days and weeks helped me fill in some of the blanks. Another student told me that he’d found me wandering the building where my astronomy class was held, confused and clutching a check that I couldn’t explain. (I had won it in the semester’s creative writing competition.) He was the one who called 911, and sent me to the hospital. Alex would later tell me that I spent my time in the hospital hallway calling for my girlfriend Kassandra. Weeks later, a man on the El recognized me and told me that I had fallen down the stairs of the Spring Garden El station that morning.

I remember none of these things happening. Once I left my bedroom, everything just went black. In my memory, that morning does not exist. Lost time. A reel of blank film with no soundtrack. Damaged sectors on a hard drive. I wish I knew what happened, but I don’t think I ever will. If the memories haven’t come back by now, they never will. The accident itself stays, however. All I have to do is touch the right side of my head, about two inches above my ear. There, under my hair, is the knot from where my head made impact. Unlike that morning’s events, it has never gone away, and it probably never will.