This is an essay about money, but it begins at a two-hour-plus Lady Gaga concert at Madison Square Garden, the second leg of her massive spectacle The Mayhem Ball. I stood the whole time (and danced, schvitzed, and waved my iPhone’s flashlight in the air with 20,000 or so new friends).

The truth is, I didn’t know why I, a middle-aged straight man, was there. I got invited at the last minute by my wife (a free ticket!), and I made the conscious decision to say “yes” instead of what I normally do when asked to try something new, which is to pretend I’m a statue.

I didn’t belong there, but I was accepted by Gaga’s little monsters, her fanbase of fabulous freaks. The vibes were positive; everyone was family. The costumes were DIY goth cyberpunk glam. I don’t think I’m the “dress up like a goblin king” type but, you know, if I were ever to see Gaga again, I could be talked into wearing some light eye shadow or a fun wig. I’m open-minded, sort of.

The entire experience was transportive, and I also learned a few valuable lessons: First, I’m older than I’d like to be. Growing older is something I have no control over, and neither do you. We’re both decomposing right now, as you read these words. Second, I need to invest in better footwear because the morning after Gaga’s spectacle, a pair of screaming callouses had formed on the balls of my feet.

If you’re not middle-aged, get ready. It’s a fun journey that begins with aches and pains and then, one night, while singing “Poker Face” at the top of your lungs, your pedal extremities break.

I wish I had gone to the concert wearing shoes that properly supported my feet, as my wife had suggested weeks prior when she noticed that the pair I had on looked like they had been stolen off a sleeping hobo.

I’m cheap about things I should spend money on, and a total spendthrift when it comes to unnecessary purchases, like fancy ice cream. I don’t need to spend eleven dollars on a pint of praline butter cake ice cream, but I do. Conversely, I wear the same shoes for months—and months—until I wear holes into the soles for no good reason.

I pinch pennies on pillows and umbrellas and end up wondering why my neck hurts, or why I got drenched. I just bought this umbrella four years ago for five dollars at a bodega. But I will happily spend a small fortune on new glasses. I have an expensive blender, but ask me how much I spend on shampoo? As little as humanly possible. I buy off-brand shampoo and all of my soapy goods at the dollar store.

My financial decision-making skills are impaired by my greatest flaw: I’m a flibbertigibbet with a salt-and-pepper beard. I have a hummingbird’s attention span. I know, intellectually, that I should buy quality shoes at least every six months, because I pretty much burn through a pair in that time since I faithfully get my 10,000 steps in every day.

I was raised by parents who had grown up without money, and while I enjoyed what they did not—which was a comfortable middle-class childhood—I was taught to be thrifty but not miserly. To shop at secondhand stores, but to, on occasion, treat myself to a pre-job-interview haircut that costs forty bucks instead of twenty. That has proved to be a difficult balancing act, and now, years later, here I am, writing about money while soaking my feet in a tub of hot water and Epsom salts.

Is this gendered? Probably, unfortunately. “Fashion” was not introduced to me as a traditional male virtue, James Bond, Frank Sinatra, and other well-dressed dandies aside. Maybe it’s also generational: I’m part of Generation Hoodie, along with Adam Sandler and (pre-bro) Mark Zuckerberg. Men are from Old Navy, Women are from Neiman Marcus.

And yet…I struggle with money, whether or not I have any in the bank. I budget but then I walk past a record store and, boom, fifty bucks gone! There’s a part of me that would empty my savings to buy a tricked-out barbecue grill, a purchase that would make my wife pause for many reasons, one of which being we live in an apartment and don’t have a backyard.

The irony is that my old man bought off-the-rack suits from Sears but took care of them as if they were made from the rarest of silks. He accessorized with modest but stylish watches and cufflinks, and he always smelled like middle-shelf cologne, which didn’t sting the nostrils like bottles of Aqua Velva did. He took care of his shoes, too, polishing them every night. He’d have been bemused by the sight of my falling-apart kicks. ”You get what you pay for” was one of his many hoary Dad-isms.

Meanwhile, my mom was a master of thrift-store shopping, but for her, the game wasn’t just about finding bargains; it was about finding pricey, tossed-aside clothes, lamps, and knick-knacks for little to no money. I remember in the late 80s, in middle school, I went through a vest phase. It was during a brief period in my adolescence when I was really feeling myself, and I thought I looked pretty damned cool in grey, pin-striped suit vests. Don’t worry, this was a month or so long delusion. But one day, triumphantly, my mom returned from Treasure Trove, a local thrift store, with a fine vest that she assured me was worth a small fortune. She made sure to show me how well-made it was, and examined the fabrics and seams and she tried, in that moment, to teach me that clothes, like anything, are only worth what they’re made of, and the skill that went into them.

One of the hilarious ironies of growing up is accepting that you are the sum of your parents’ quirks and virtues while at the same time a unique and singular human being. I didn’t have my parents’ hardscrabble upbringing, and, as an adult, while I have struggled financially, I’m currently, more or less, solvent, with a few shekels left over at the end of the month. And yet, genes are time machines, and when I look at my bank account, I’m transported to thrift store aisles, and the sales racks at TJ Maxx, and the store that sold day-old breads and cakes, and I ask myself, reflectively, “Do I have enough money?” I worry, of course, that the answer will always be “no,” no matter my income. My dad, born during the bleak Great Depression, lives inside me, wanting and worried.

It’s not that cheapskates are unlikeable, it’s that no one respects them. Being prudent? Economical? Living within your means? That’s challenging for some, but it’s admirable and necessary. But cheapskates are thoughtless; they don’t understand the value of anything, and understanding the value of things — knowing what is worth your time and money and what is not—is a highly underrated life skill.

I have never spent money on clothes, much to the horror of my many wonderful past partners and my current wife, who insists I have more than two pairs of jeans. (“But my love,” I protest, “all a man needs is jeans for the day and the night.”) I like to think I’m averse to coughing up dollars for nice shirts and shoes because I’m practical, a real salt-of-the-earth type, but I know the reasons are more complex, and those reasons include various insecurities. I often mistake stoicism for anxiety.

I have always been, as the old saying goes, “penny-wise and pound-foolish.” I’ve always been a fan of that aphorism because it’s so British, it’s like something a chimney sweep would say. I’m not actually saving money by avoiding my local sneaker shop.

And here I am, in my early fifties, putting my paws up to “Bad Romance,” trying to pretend that I’m not in pain. I want to be the sort of person who can learn new tricks no matter how old they get, and that’s just what happened: I learned a new trick. As we hobbled home after the show, I turned to my wife and said, “I’m going to go shoe shopping.”

I have two pairs now. They’re swanky and comfy, and I spent hundreds of dollars, but I still refuse to buy a new iPhone. I’ll be fine with the cracked screen, at least for the next few years.

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John DeVore is an award-winning writer and editor whose funny/sad memoir about grief, friendship and jazz hands, Theatre Kids, is now available.

I get asked every so often how I met my wife, most recently by my 11-year-old niece, who recently watched the 1997 romantic blockbuster Titanic for the first time, was devastated by the romantic tragedy, and then scandalized to learn that Ryan, her aunt, once had a teenage crush on Leonardo DiCaprio.

When friends or acquaintances—more often than not single—inquire as to how I met my wife, it’s usually out of genuine curiosity, but increasingly to find out which apps I used. Which is also a way of asking “How did you find someone?”

My answer is: I didn’t use an app. I have successfully dated in New York City for almost *long, melancholy sigh* 30 melancholy years without using Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, OkCupid, Match, or...or...or Friendster? I hooked up the old-fashioned way, at bars or crowded, smoke-choked parties in cramped, fifth-floor walk-up railroad apartments. I’ve met girlfriends at work: Once upon a time, clickbait factories were fluorescent-light-drenched bullpens of busywork staffed by 20-somethings sitting shoulder to shoulder, spending every waking hour of every day hunched over computers pecking at keyboards while flirting with one another. Where else were we supposed to meet people?

I have fallen in love without the help of Silicon Valley’s middlemen. I briefly downloaded an app in 2015, I think, while I was single and on vacation, and I almost got suckered by a flirtatious bot, which led me to delete it. I have been in long-term relationships otherwise, and have avoided swipe culture.

So, how did I meet Ryan? My wife? The love of my life? Well, I have Sammy to thank. If you can find a Sammy in your life, I highly recommend it.

***

There is a legend in Jewish folklore that says a matchmaker must make three matches to enter heaven. The world to come. I’m not an expert in Jewish folklore, but I’ve been told this story by multiple people who are Jewish. I only knew one thing about matchmakers: the song ‘Matchmaker’ is my second-favorite in Fiddler on the Roof, which is my third-favorite musical.

I’m also not Jewish. I am a Catholic, which means I have always had a small obsession with Saint Joan of Arc and mothers superior and the Holy Mother. Strange, and powerful, women. My great-grandmother was born on the Mexico side of the Rio Grande, my great-grandfather near El Paso. The border was more permeable back then, but she was, according to family myths, possessed of shamanic powers. She could, for instance, cure curses. I’ve also always been drawn to witches, Bruja. Matchmakers are magical crone adjacent.

In the Talmud, God helps to bring soulmates together, like a matchmaker. The Yiddish word “bashert” means destined one, and I was destined to meet Ryan. I married late in life; I was a youthful 49-year-old with creaky knees. I didn’t long to get married until I met the person I was supposed to marry. I had loved and been loved by others, but I had never met someone like Ryan, a heart like a honeycomb, a brilliant, vulnerable, courageous world traveler who was so nervous before meeting me for the first time at a coffee shop that she didn’t eat, and then took me on an impromptu pizza crawl throughout the East Village. We floated up and down 2nd Avenue.

Ryan and I talked on the phone for hours before ever meeting. This was at the end of 2022, when the plague was still clawing its way into the lungs of thousands, every day, and the lines for the vaccine stretched around the block. We chatted about family and movies and politics as I chopped vegetables for soups, or slowly stroked the slumbering body of my one-eyed mutt Morley. I was the one who texted first because Sammy gave me her number. “Text her,” she casually suggested. Or not, no pressure.

I met Sammy years ago; she was one of my ex’s besties at the time. Sammy is a sunbeam, with bright, waggish eyes, an actor-photographer-singer-matchmaker-mother who loves breakfast foods and long rambling conversations. Sammy checked in on me after the break-up, which was amicable, but I was still tender.

She managed to get me out of my apartment at one point. We met for lunch at a trendy sandwich spot. She knows where to find the best cured meats. She asked me bluntly if I wanted to date, and I said “No,” and that was that. Sammy is a yenta, in the best possible sense of the word. Yenta is Yiddish for ‘busybody,’ but Sammy cares about her friends and family, and she was my friend.

A few months later, I felt a little lighter, and Sammy and I went out to lunch at a trendy Middle Eastern restaurant. There are two kinds of hummus: “Oh this is nice” and “Sweet Jesus, that’s good.” We had the latter. She asked me if I was open to dating, again, and I didn’t say “no.” I didn’t say “yes,” either. But I was…open.

She knew someone. A therapist. Adorable. Sammy approved™.

It turns out, Sammy had spent the weekend with childhood friends, and one of them expressed dismay about her younger sister, who was unlucky in love. She used the apps. Unhappily. Has anyone ever praised a dating app? Forgive the tangent, but anyone? I know a few couples brought together by apps, but they’re loath to discuss the process. Mostly, playing the apps is like a game of sexual Russian Roulette, only instead of one bullet in one of the revolver’s six chambers, it’s a lonely, horny, socially-awkward millennial with intimacy problems who will 100% ghost you after a night of sloppy heavy petting.

I don’t judge anyone who uses the apps; we do what me must to connect, but the world could use more matchmakers. People who care, maybe a little too much, but that is preferable to caring too little, I think?

There’s plenty of money to be made in romance, but love is sacred; it is quiet, sturdy, and more valuable than whatever it is you think is the most valuable thing—gold? Diamonds? Bitcoin? There is nothing more precious than a friend who tells you a joke when you’re glum, or the laughter of an 11-year-old who thinks you’re the funniest uncle she has ever met (you’re her only uncle), or a kiss from your supportive wife at the end of a long, dispiriting day.

Sammy immediately told her friend with the Tinder-hating sibling she had a single friend, and that friend was me. It was, or sounded like in the retelling, like a real eureka! moment. She had a friend who wasn’t on the apps. A friend with a dog. A friend who lived in Harlem, far from Ryan’s neighborhood in Brooklyn. Ryan admitted to me on the phone before our first date, the pizza crawl, which happened the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, that she had set her dating app’s radius to Park Slope, where she lived alone. Even if I had been on the apps, we would never have met.

Not without the help of Sammy. So when I’m asked how Ryan and I met, I tell them a friend set us up, which is what happened. Two more, and Sammy gets into heaven.

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John DeVore is an award-winning writer and editor whose funny/sad memoir about grief, friendship and jazz hands, Theatre Kids, is now available.

The truth is, you’re never too young or old to dance.

Dance. If you’re at the club, dance. At a party that’s getting out of control, dance. At a bar next to the jukebox, dance. At your wedding, dance. Dance like your feet are on fire. Sweat like a love donkey and boogie. Shake it off, boldly, for everyone to see. To paraphrase the great American poet Bonnie Raitt, give them something to talk about.

According to a recent article in the popular counterculture newspaper The Wall Street Journal, there’s a new, unspoken, but increasingly followed, social rule: do not dance in public, lest someone record it and throw it on social media. Writer Elias Leight quotes choreographer and professor Sydney Skybetter: “Dance like anybody could be watching and that footage will follow you forever.”

Leight also spoke with several Gen Zers, who confirmed there’s a “feeling” that getting funky on the dance floor could make you “a big joke or the next meme.” Even DJs and other artists are complaining. In an announcement about his album Don’t Tap the Glass, rapper Tyler, the Creator wrote: “I asked some friends why they don’t dance in public, and some said because of the fear of being filmed.” The article also delves into a viral Reddit thread that asked why younger people aren’t dancing. “I’m scared of what would ppl think of me, or even worse, record me and make fun of me,” posted one 19-year-old.

That a generation has been intimidated by Silicon Valley into squelching the ancient human impulse to jump, wiggle, hoot, and holler is beyond depressing. The only way to fight back is to gather in dark, hot, loud holy places and dissolve into a billion floating, throbbing molecules.

The old cliché goes “dance like no one is looking,” but that’s not quite right. It’s cute, but there’s no juice. How about: Dance like the whole world is watching, and they should, because everyone who dares to flaunt their effervescent swagger and rattle those skeleton bones is a goddamn hero. Dance, you fools. That is my advice.

This might surprise you, but I was not built for dancing. I once dated an aspiring fashionista who explained to me there were five body types: apple, pear, hourglass, rectangle, and inverted triangle. I suggested a sixth, mine, which I described as “warthog.” I’m not saying God cursed me. He just didn’t design me to groove. But I assure you, I have, briefly, grooved.

I have danced with wild abandon. I can do the robot, the running man, and the Macarena. I can bump and grind. I have lost myself in a mosh pit and waved my hands in the air like I just don’t...well, you know.

I have a great affection for dancers. I grew up watching musicals like Singing in the Rain and West Side Story, and my favorite music videos featured dancers like Paula Abdul and Madonna. I was also dance-pilled by Dirty Dancing.

Like any child of the 80s, I was forced to watch the 1987 movie about an inappropriate relationship between a grown man from the wrong side of the tracks and a sheltered, barely 18-year-old rich girl named Baby. They don’t have much in common, but they both speak the language of the slow mambo. Do you think Johnny cared when he crashed the annual talent show at Kellerman’s resort and danced with Baby in front of all the stick-in-the-muds and old fogeys? No. He did not, and neither did she. They wanted the whole room to stare because love demands a spotlight; Love is rude, love is nude, love lives with its robe open. Love wants to be looked at.

The movie taught me a valuable lesson at a young age: Dancing is a good way to woo someone. As I’ve aged, this thesis proved itself again and again. Sex, you see, is a very silly tango that involves lots of bouncing and undulating and flailing.

It’s not an activity for the shy, although I am sympathetic to those of us who are insecure about our bodies. The dance floor, however, is one of the most effective ways to advertise your willingness to be in your skin, to live in the moment, and to let ‘er rip, as they say.

I’m not naturally confident, just in case you think I am. In college, I mistakenly took an advanced dance class. I had planned to take an easy elective, and the moment I walked into a rehearsal room filled with gorgeous, lithe dance majors, I realized that this was not that class.

But before I could moonwalk my way out of there, the professor, a middle-aged man who looked like an angel or a vampire or some kind of fuckable immortal demigod, gently touched my shoulder and said, “Why don’t you stay?”

He was beautiful and gentle, and if he had said, “Why don’t you give me a kidney?” I would have torn it out of my side.

So I stayed, for a few classes at least, and here’s what I learned there: So long as I was willing to risk looking like a dork, the experienced dancers respected me.

And when I was matched with them in a contact improv exercise, they took over. They were all strong and impossibly graceful. They met me where I was, understood my own relationship with gravity, and danced with me, on my terms.

I looked great, even if I have the rhythm of a broken washing machine.

Thunk-thunk-thunk.

I’m thankful I grew up during a time when there were far fewer unblinking, always-recording eyes everywhere. There are times when I feel like Johnny on the inside, but I probably look like a walking heart attack on the outside. I have sprained my ankle dancing. I have pushed my way through crowds, exhausted and wheezing.

As I’ve gotten older and more dignified—I am silver fox-ish, you know—I’m presented with fewer opportunities to dance, but the last time I really cut a rug was the summer of 2024, during my wedding, which I had never planned on having, because I had never, not in all my years, met a woman I’d wanted to marry as much as the woman who is, now, my wife. The entire restaurant stopped chewing and started gawking the moment I got on one knee to propose as my face leaked from every orifice. I never thought I’d meet someone who I knew—I just knew—was the person I wanted to brush my teeth with, once in the morning, and once before bed.

So we said our vows and laughed and barely ate, and she dragged me onto the dance floor.

I danced for her. I danced for us. I danced because we love each other. Moves were busted, feet were loosed. We danced to Mitski cheek-to-cheek like it was prom. I jumped like a human pogo stick to Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club.” I danced with my 11-year-old best man. I danced with old friends and family. I had the time of my life. I was a nimble warthog, light on my hooves, and there’s video of it.

So many videos.

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John DeVore is an award-winning writer and editor whose funny/sad memoir about grief, friendship and jazz hands, Theatre Kids, is now available.

The truth is, Christmas is a holiday for children. That is my hottest, Scrooge-iest take. After all, ‘tis the season to look in the mirror and ask, “What is the meaning of this time of year?” The answer is simple: little kids laughing and/or tweaking on peppermint bark and/or napping in a pile of wrapping paper and ribbons.

There are other, lesser but still valid, responses, like “giving is better than receiving,” but allow me to tweak that cliché: “giving to children is better than receiving.” Am I making my point? This may feel like an opinion that is coming out of nowhere, but I promise you it’s not.

The next few weeks will be filled with shopping, gingerbread, and festive non-denominational decorations. You will be stressed, exhausted, and filled with existential melancholy as the year abruptly comes to an end, wondering where the days go. It’s not your fault you grew up; we all have to.

So don’t lose sight of the big picture: you were once a child, and the adults in your life did everything they could to make you believe in flying reindeer. Think about that for a minute. There was a time in your life when you just accepted there was an all-powerful demigod who could read your mind.

Ha, ha. Kids are cute, but not very smart!

And if you’re alone this holiday, don’t sweat it. Christmas morning is just another morning. I spent many a Christmas morning alone, only to spend the rest of the day going to the movies and eating Chinese food with thousands of Jewish New Yorkers.

Which brings me to the War on Christmas: it never existed. It was just ragebait invented by Fox News executives to sell reverse mortgages to the elderly. You can say ‘Merry Christmas,’ because that’s what I say all the time, but you can also shout Happy Holidays! Or Happy Hannukkah! Or Happy Kwanza, or Happy Winter Solstice, or Happy Rapacious Capitalism Month, or Happy Pagan Goblin Day. Whatever! I love it all. It’s December, and that means I can eat all the frosted cookies I want. Oh, and also, it means peace and goodwill to human beings, especially knee-high ones.

I was raised Catholic and Baptist, and my favorite Christmas carols are “O Holy Night” and “Silent Night,” because they’re beautiful, quiet little hymns about a small family far from home. To me, Christmas will always be about the love of a father and mother, of any parents or parent, and their hopes for the small life trembling in their hands.

I was always moved as a boy by the Baby Jesus story that follows his blessed birth in Bethlehem, and that’s him as a swaddled refugee, held to his mother’s chest. At the same time, his father nervously scans the horizon as they flee to Egypt to escape King Herod’s threats of violence. They would do anything to keep their son safe.

Christmas is about children.

I don’t have children, and I think other people’s kids are delightful, so long as they’re not sitting behind me on a Southwest flight to Texas, but Christmas is their time, and I want to see those little freaks delirious with Yuletide joy.

I may not have kids, but I’m blessed to be surrounded by them, and I get to enjoy their enthusiasm in delightfully small increments of time. I’m fortunate to be included in multiple Google Doc Christmas gift docs carefully composed by my tween nieces and nephews. One of the unexpected pleasures of middle age is listening to my friends talk about their kids, which is always a roller coaster of hopes, fears, and unconditional love. I’m especially drawn to my friends who are fathers, old pals who, once upon a time, were human soup cans of emotion, sealed shut. But now, as men in their forties and fifties, they’re all one recent memory away from blubbering, and I’m here for it.

I was thinking about this topic as I strolled through a hastily constructed Christmas market filled with stalls overflowing with expensive, handmade wind chimes, scarves, and wooden salad bowls. I thought, “These are gifts for homeowners in high-tax brackets.” Don’t get me wrong, I’d love a fancy new salad bowl, but I have a birthday. I love gifts. Who doesn’t? But as I browsed the high-end junk while sipping a cup of warm apple cider, I thought about my nephew, who wants another basketball because one can never have too many, even if his mother gently disagrees.

I want to apologize in advance to anyone who celebrates SantaCon, the annual binge drinking street parties where tens of thousands of adults dress like St. Nick and stumble around in public, getting sick in trash cans in front of six-year-olds holding hands with their daddies. I have seen that before, during SantaCon, which I treat like a yearly zombie invasion. I’m usually up early so I can run my errands and return home before the Ho-Ho-Hopocalypse descends on New York. Again, I don’t want to make anyone feel guilty, but the holiday season is for snot-faced, foot-stomping, rosy-cheeked goblins with eyes full of wonder.

I don’t watch Hallmark Holiday movies because I don’t think Christmas is sexy. I don’t even like traditional Christmas movies, but the best ones are almost always kid-centered: A Christmas Story, Miracle on 34th Street, Home Alone.

I’m a fan of It’s a Wonderful Life, but that’s not a Christmas movie. It’s about capitalism, despair, and benevolent otherworldly powers. I love it, but it’s not actually about Christmas.

For the past few years, my go-to Christmas-time flick has been director Ridley Scott’s existential 2012 Alien prequel Prometheus, starring Michael Fassbender as an insane robot. It ends with a fight between a space squid and a hairless alien goth. (Trust me, there’s a Christmas reference.)

I know I’m coming off as a Grinch, but remember his lesson: Christmas isn’t about stuff, it’s about family. Community. Specifically, little boys and girls. Isn’t that nice? See? I’m a nice guy, god dammit. Christmas is not for adults.

I despise “Secret Santa” office games. Even when I was drinking, I avoided boozy holiday parties. I would prefer to come over and quietly eat cheese than trim trees.

I don’t want to come off as judgmental, but I have never been amused by your fake antlers, Brandon. I don’t want my eggnog spiked with bourbon. I prefer my annual mug of nog to taste the way it’s supposed to taste: weird, thick milk with nutmeg. Also, let’s talk about mistletoe because there’s always someone out there who thinks it’s still a thing when it’s clearly not a thing. It is the creepiest of year-end traditions. Anyway, if you want to kiss me, bro, ask me, and we’ll see.

I feel the same way about Halloween, by the way. That is a holiday for children, too, and I largely oppose adults dressing up in slutty costumes and getting wrecked. Halloween is not Goth St. Paddy’s Day. It’s a night meant to teach the next generation a valuable life lesson: If you eat too many Sour Patch Kids, you will want to die.

There are plenty of adult holidays, like Super Bowl Sunday and the first day of soup season, September 22nd (I may be the only person who celebrates). And my opinion applies in reverse: kids should not celebrate Valentine’s Day, a day dedicated to romance strategically placed smack dab in the middle of dark, cold winter, right when everyone is getting cabin fever. July 4th is a rare holiday that has something for little ones, sparklers, and grown-ups, beer.

I’m mindful that I was 10years old once, with one pajama footie in the twilight wonderland of childhood and the other in the sunlight of adulthood, lying in bed, floating above my dreams, listening for Santa’s reindeers’ hooves clop-clopping on the roof, and wondering if the jolly old elf even existed, while also keeping my ears open to what was happening in the warm kitchen: my father gently cursing as he slowly built a Star Wars spaceship playset for his son, some 10,000-piece toy that I would lovingly destroy a few days or weeks later.

Christmas morning was a show my parents put on for their children. Their Christmases were far less happy than ours were, which was their heart’s desire. They had struggled with money, depression, and anger, but my holidays were light and warm and full of gasps and laughter.

My old man would sit there, smiling, as my brother and I skinned our presents alive. My mom would also hover above us, watching our faces. When it was her time for a gift from him, we’d shush each other and watch her turn into a glowing child as he’d stand behind her and put on a new necklace or present her with a box full of brand-new oil paints. And when it was his turn, he’d unwrap a pair of socks or a tie and chuckle, saying the same thing: “This is just what I always wanted.” I believed him too. I remember being proud of the socks I’d pick for him.

Years later, he’d tell me that’s what adults are supposed to say on Christmas when they get socks or ties, not because socks or ties are wonderful gifts, but because who doesn’t want their family to be happy and safe, watching each other with half-moon eyes, ruby-kissed cheeks, and greedy smiles.

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John DeVore is an award-winning writer and editor whose funny/sad memoir about grief, friendship and jazz hands, Theatre Kids, is now available.

The truth is, I was under the impression that turning 50 was the last significant life milestone. Congratulations on half a century of getting by! Apparently, I was wrong.

The previous five decades were a series of watershed moments, from first jobs to marriages, mortgages, and children. I remember turning 40 and thinking, I’m an adult now. And when I turned 50, I thought, I’m an adult now, only older.

But I believed I was good on rites of passage until at least 65, when I officially become a senior citizen and get a part-time job disinfecting the backseats of Waymos.

Then I went to the doctor for my annual physical.

Now, for years, since my early thirties, my physicals have been routine. Bloodwork, heart check, turn, and cough. Over that time, I’ve had to learn how to manage high blood pressure, but otherwise, my doctors have always said the same thing: “Eat healthy, exercise, and take your meds.”

Don’t be a disgusting sloth blob? Got it, doc.

When I turned 47, my doctor recommended a colonoscopy, and that was a milestone. He was perfectly perfunctory about it: This is just something a man my age should do. So I did it.

While under general anesthesia, while I was being probed, I dreamed I was an 18-wheeler truck driver. It was a sunny day. When I woke up, I was disappointed to remember where I was and who I am.

According to a 2019 survey from the Cleveland Clinic, 65% of men reported actively trying to avoid going to the doctor, with 72% stating they’d rather clean toilets than undergo an examination by a medical professional. But not me. My body is a temple, a falling-apart temple that needs constant maintenance, renovation, and probably historic landmark status.

My first post-fiftieth-birthday physical was a vibe shift, as the Millennials are fond of saying, and the change in tone was stark and sober. Usually, my doctor breezes into the examination room, a boyish, slightly graying professional at the top of his game. Confident and assured.

But for the first time, as a freshly minted 50-something, I noticed he was younger than I was.

For most of my life, doctors were like powerful grandparents, wise and experienced. Instead of pockets full of butterscotch candies, they could write prescriptions for highly addictive painkillers or nuclear-powered laxatives.

And my doctor was, actually, at least 10 years my junior. I was old enough to be his handsome brother!

He was studiously reading my chart when he entered and almost immediately announced the bad news: I was 50 years old. I had tested positive.

He said it just like that: “You’re 50 years old.”

It was half question, half statement of disbelief. I had a birthday party. I know I’m 50, but here was a man of science confirming a diagnosis. A terminal diagnosis: I was 50, and in 12 short months, I would be 51. This trend was irreversible.

This doctor’s previous cockiness had been replaced with world-weary grimness. He addressed me not as an older sibling, but as a talking skeleton.

It was time to see a cardiologist, Mr. DeVore. He called me Mr. DeVore! I nodded. You’re going to have to get a shingles vaccine. I nodded again. That’s two shots, and the side effects are awful. I nodded, only slower. You’re going to need a lung cancer screening because you were a former smoker.

And then he laid hands on me.

The examination was quiet, tense even, as if he was afraid to press the stethoscope to my chest for fear I would crumble into a pile of ashes.

“Does this hurt?” he said as he pressed a finger into my gut.

“At my age, what doesn’t hurt?” I said.

He was having none of my attempts at casual middle-aged dude humor while I was naked, save for boxers and a thin paper gown.

“Does it hurt?”

No, doctor.

Does he know who he’s talking to? I thought. I have sprained my ankles while wearing ill-fitting flip-flops, discovered new and horrifying skin rash allergies, and nearly sliced my hand in half while cutting avocados.

I’m familiar with emergency rooms, buddy. I have spilled my own blood from acts of sheer thoughtlessness, so I know a thing or two about all the various vulnerabilities of the flesh.

I once fell up a flight of stairs during rush hour on the New York City subway and almost ruined my right kneecap. I’m no amateur when it comes to wrecking myself before checking myself.

I actually took offense at his sudden concern with my well-being. I’m completely paranoid when it comes to germs and plagues and various body horrors. How dare he suggest I’m some kind of reckless redneck he-man who wouldn’t drive himself to the hospital if a pitchfork was sticking out of his neck? I’m part of the 35% of men who are convinced they’re dying.

He asked me if I drank alcohol, and I said, “You know I’m sober.” I filled the pause with the information he actually wanted: “No.” Drugs? No. Are you sexually active? I desperately wanted to respond “ask my wife” while pumping my eyebrows up and down, but replied: “Yes and no, I don’t require an AIDS test. Yes, I’m sure.” Are you currently actively dying? Bleeding profusely from any orifices? Any bodily appendages recently rotted off? Are both your eyeballs still in your skull? He didn’t ask those questions; I’m just trying out more casual middle-aged dude humor, but he may as well have asked these questions.

I assured the doctor that I take care of myself: I walk 10,000 steps a day. I eat oatmeal. I even meditate. That’s right. After a long day, I meditate on my couch. I meditate on my couch while watching Netflix and scrolling through social media. (Gotta stay on top of the news.)

He wasn’t impressed.

The appointment ended with a heart-to-heart, a talk I did ’t receive when I was a young lamb of 49. I had no idea 49 was last call and 50 was lights up at the dive bar.

First, he said, “I’m going to put you on medication to lower your cholesterol.” And what I heard was: “Most, if not all, of our internal organs are way past their expiration date.”

It was at this point that I came to the following conclusion: My doctor, who I thought was a seasoned healthcare professional, was 12 years old. Finally, he looked me sternly in the eyes and told me to take care of myself.

Who did he think he was talking to? Someone not terrified of death? But I understood his point and his concern.

I’m but a mortal. A living stick of butter. I’m not stone. I’m a bouquet of wet bones wrapped in sheets of throbbing meat. I’m a dream with feet, a wooden boy blessed with life. My time here—our time, your time, Doctor 12-Year-Old’s time—is short, compared to the life of a tree or a tortoise. A short stroll between two sleeps. Six dozen years or so, if you’re lucky, each one as fragile as a soap bubble.

As milestones go, being told to take care of yourself as you age isn’t the worst. I should eat more “nutrient-rich” foods like lean proteins, veggies, and whole grains, the way they do in the magical, faraway land of ‘The Mediterranean.’ I should do squats, lift weights, and get eight hours of sleep.

I’m aware of my mortality, but also that slowing down and lightening up could add a few extra years. And who knows what I could do with those years? Re-binge all four seasons of Battlestar Galactica? I also need to accept that people will be younger than me, which isn’t their fault. My new optometrist is probably in her thirties, and my future boss at my first post-retirement part-time job is probably in kindergarten right now.

A few weeks after my physical, I messaged my doctor: I pulled my back out bending over to pick up a potato chip. “Ice and ibuprofen,” he replied.

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John DeVore is an award-winning writer and editor whose funny/sad memoir about grief, friendship and jazz hands, Theatre Kids, is now available.

‘Truth Hurts’ is a monthly column about accepting who you are, where you are, and how you’re doing. It’s written by John DeVore, a writer who doesn’t always feel comfortable in his own skin.

The truth is, I shouldn’t scroll on my phone before bed. Neither should you. (Good for you if you don’t.)

A 2022 poll conducted by the National Sleep Foundation revealed that 58 percent of Americans doomscroll on their phones in the hour leading to bedtime. I discovered that statistic while in bed, in the dark, my iPhone’s light dimmed so as not to wake my wife.

Have you ever nodded off while reading Reddit, only to wake up abruptly when your phone drops on your face? That’s a call for help. If you want to spiral emotionally, I know one guaranteed way to do it, and that’s to read Elon Musk’s nihilistic right-wing message board, formally called Twitter.

It’s a self-evident fact—backed by plenty of actual scientific research—that staring at your device at night causes insomnia, disrupts sleep patterns, and feeds anxiety. Everyone knows this. It is so painfully apparent that our smartphones are the equivalent of brain cigarettes, which are, and always have been, cancerous nicotine delivery vehicles. And our devices, loaded with dating and video and social media apps, are just Pez dispensers of dopamine.

I’m old enough to remember the good ol’ days of Marlboro, when everyone smoked everywhere, and the world was a giant ashtray. My old man smoked, so did my mom. As a teen, I sucked Newports, one after the other. We all knew they were bad for us. I knew an 18-year-old shouldn’t wake up coughing like an 80-year-old coal miner. But we couldn’t help ourselves, and it took decades of activists and whistleblowers and non-smokers nagging and begging and proving, without a doubt, that cigarettes were a public health disaster, for the country to change. And the change was slow. But today? Young people are smoking at a historical 25-year low.

I should know better, though. There’s a good reason, when my alarm goes off, that I think “The world is ending.” The world is not ending (it just sucks). I went to a Mets game last week, and there were all sorts of people getting hot dogs and laughing and watching millionaires hit a little ball with a stick. It was a good time. I high-fived a guy named Big Bobby when the Mets hit a homer. But later that night, I crammed as much bad news into my eyeballs as my phone would allow. I should know better because I know what it’s like to blot out existence with, oh, name it: booze, pills, Domino’s pizza.

I haven’t had a drink in over 15 years (hold the applause). And my “journey,” as an old therapist insisted I call it, is actually a day-to-day stroll through relationships and responsibilities and all I have to do to stay off the sauce is say “Yes” to whatever life has to give me at any given moment.

If there’s one thing sobriety has taught me, it’s that there is no escape from the intense, terrible, beautiful, bracing, and aforementioned, present moment. One can try, and I have tried. One can hide from their commitments, or ignore them, or light a stick of dynamite and wait for the ka-boom. But eventually, you’ll wake up and be exactly where you were, which is alive, breathing, and hurting.

I have come to realize that my screen isn’t a black mirror, but a cold, dead pool that I can fall into. In those waters are everything I fear, and I wonder why I dream of desolation and wake up worried. I’m worried. I’m worried about my friends, family, and the future. A trans friend in L.A. wonders if they’ll come for him. My 82-year-old mom is in Texas, and she drives around more aware of her brown, Mexican-American skin than she has been since the 1960s. She feels the stares, and there’s nothing I can do. I worry about teachers I know, journalists, and ranchers. People I care about. I worry about myself, and so I scroll and worry more. Rarely do I ever connect those two actions.

The platforms I scroll are designed to capture my attention, and the easiest, most efficient way to do that is to terrify me with distorted, hope-flattening visions of a false reality populated by miserable little bigots and bots programmed to mock compassion. If you were to stand at the foot of my bed at midnight like a ghost and watch me scroll, you’d see my handsome face melt as I read the news on my feeds. Endless, horrifying videos, and preening influencers, and real people screaming and seething. Or, at least, I think they’re real people?

My wife keeps her phone charging in another room at night, and you’ll get no argument from me because that’s a solid mental health strategy. One reason I won’t argue is that she’s a therapist. I know she’s right, but the problem here isn’t just the technology. I mean, my most conservative political opinion right now is that phones should probably be illegal for anyone under the age of 18, and they should come with warnings. The only way to change these habits is to repeat the truth again and again: social media is rotting our souls from the inside out.

But it’s not just the devices and the apps; it’s something inexplicably, dependably human. We crave control. And as chaotic as Facebook and TikTok feel, they’re just products, widgets. They’re predictable. There are few surprises on social media: it’s just a conveyor belt of snack-sized miseries. The posts are all ugly, rarely uplifting or illuminating. These platforms are public spaces where your most sincere wants and dirty secrets are mined and sold to companies. And if your secret is “I don’t like my body,” you can be sure that these days, there are plenty of ads that will agree with you and offer a solution that won’t work. Or is that just me?

I don’t like to assume everyone knows the Serenity Prayer. I have friends who kind of cringe at the “p” word. It’s my favorite part of any AA meeting, but it’s not important that you know it. Look it up if you want. The prayer is a welcome reminder—to me, at least—that there are things I can and cannot change, and it takes courage to change the things I can.

I cannot change the material fact that there are a handful of billionaires who dream of a society where no one talks to anyone unless they’re on a podcast. The only way to be free, to be clean and sober from Silicon Valley’s unhappiness machines, is to live the life that’s right in front of you. The life that makes direct eye contact with you.

And here’s what’s staring you in the face: Love. Sunlight. A hot cup of coffee. A hug. A niece’s long, winding explanation about her middle-school science project. A 12-year-old dog who slowly rolls over and shows her belly like she’s still a puppy. A long phone conversation with your oldest friend, who lives on the other coast. A joke texted to you by your brother. Every day is a new life, and every breath is a chance to open your heart, make a decision, or reach out to someone who’s struggling.

There’s a popular bit of internet advice that is thrown at those of us who are Extremely Online: “Go touch grass.” Translated, it means “go outside, into the world, without a screen.” But I’ll go further than that. Don’t just touch grass. Roll around in it, take a nap in a field, have a picnic. Picnics are underrated; who doesn’t love blankets and sandwiches?

To misquote the Zen poets: Time on your phone is time lost forever. Be mindful of that. The moment happens whether you’re living in it or not; you are, right now, existing in a minute that will pass and never return. What are you going to do? Who are you going to be? What truths will you own?

I know one thing: I need to read a book before bed, like the good ol’ days.

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John DeVore is an award-winning writer and editor whose funny/sad memoir about grief, friendship and jazz hands, Theatre Kids, is now available.