At twelve, I faced a pivotal moment in my maturity, choosing between a clear path to manhood and the simpler route of just being a dude.

When I was twelve going on thirteen, there was a fork in the road of my maturity. I saw one path that clearly led towards a distinct manhood. It was a dark, hard path. Along it there were characters who I’d already largely distrusted. I would need to grow strong, and I would need to harden. The other direction, the one I chose, was to just simply be a dude.

Being a dude was closer aligned to what my friends were, the older ones. They were all dudes, and aside from the bully-bonding nonsense that came with them, they were chill. They’d take you around and talk to you about life. They’d play up how cool it is to be a dude while shunning the man. It would go so far as they would all say if you asked them what they thought of the man, they’d universally say “fuck the man.”

It wasn’t a hard path either. You could get by being a dude without much effort and you didn’t have to worry about things like growth or responsibilities. You’re not judged by other dudes for not having a job or paying child support. Really you can get away with having horrible opinions and other dudes would just shrug, because deep down we were all aware that none of us really matter. It definitely wasn’t a top layer belief or one that was really acknowledged in the realm of dudes, but it was there. In fact, it was a common function to wildly overestimate your value or what you were going to make out of your life while at the same time, deep down, knowing that you would do no such thing.

From 13 to 39, this is a tangible and – like I made clear I’m sure – fun path. But something happens on your 40th birthday when you’re a dude. Instantly you change from a dude to an “old dude”. An old dude is a lot different from being just a dude. At first you got started being a young dude then some dude then after that you’d be “my dude!”, but in the end all dudes that make it to 40 graduate from being a dude to an old dude.

Now, I am not trying to put down any old dudes. I’ve met some great ones, and they are almost always incredibly nice guys. But when the choice came for me to decide if I was going to continue down the path of being a dude, I could not become an old dude.

Some of my good friends were old dudes. The charm in them was gone and mostly replaced by bitterness and paranoia. I think some of those old dudes I had met were like that too. I just knew them long enough to cop a bag and have a few words.

But the ones I knew who were young dudes before they turned into old dudes were different and I didn’t want to be them. With five years of sobriety under my belt, I also didn’t have much in common with the run of the mill dude old or young.

So where did that leave me on my 40th? Well, it led me back to that fork. After a long and hard walk, tracing my steps over decades back to where I abandoned growth, I found that same old starting point. I was to be a man.

The premise scared me like nothing else. I didn’t want to be grouped in with what modern society was lumping together. But somewhere along the first few steps, I began to learn that being a man means not concerning yourself with what other people think of you. And as a former dude, that was a hard lesson. As a dude, you’re constantly wrapped up in yourself and you believe others – who have almost zero interest in you – are judging you and aware that you’re a piece of shit.

Well, as a man, you might still be one thing or another, but there is no time to care about what others think. You’ve got to get up at six in the morning. You’ve got to work out before coffee, because if you don’t your body will crumble into a loaf. After that you’ve got to shave the hair from your face that will cause people to not take you seriously. You may not care what people think of you, but you still need to command a certain amount of respect in order to move gracefully through your day.

Then after a morning routine that is always the same every single day, you get dressed well. You have a collection of slacks and polo shirts that can be interchanged between and you put on shoes that are sensible, but not nearly as comfortable as you’d want. Why? Because that comfort would be a weakness.

And you move slowly with precision. You talk little and you emote even less. It is a strange way of living that is surprisingly calming. Your movements take on a certain kind of patience for inertia that people think you’re wading through reality on an alternative plane, one that is thicker or somehow heavier.

But the biggest thing you do is you wrap yourself up so tight within yourself that the outside world, and all of its inhabitants are alien beings that exist when you’re awake but disappear when you are asleep at night or on the rare occasions after a big meal when you take a heavy and loud nap on the couch.

All the while, the old dudes that once called you friend see you in your ironed pants and collared shirt and they not only accuse of being the man, but they also accuse you of selling out to the man. As if everything you had in common was slovenly crawling through life.

Now, I’ve met old dudes who think they’re men and men who think they’re old dudes. Each covets the benefits of each while never committing fully to themselves. They are the most bitter of all and will turn on you in a heartbeat.

To get really to the center of things, the way you present yourself to the world, the way you perceive yourself inside, are all connected. I used to walk the streets of Oakland in ripped jeans, dirty bad shirt, unshaven, and long-haired. And not one street person asked me for a dollar or a cigarette. At the same time, nobody would hire me for a solid job or trust me as far as an impact with a bus could throw me. For that time in my life, things worked.

As a poet, it didn’t matter to me. I trudged through the night from bar to bar, scribbling in my notebook. I’d wake up hungover and hating life until I opened the notebook and saw the poems and felt warmer than any sun could make me.

These days though, after a few hundred thousand poems have come out of me and I’m ready to do more with my writing, I am nicely dressed. I am cleanly shaved. I wake up early and workout. I am a man.

When I have made it, when I am respected and when accolades come from the fruits of my labor, I will dress even finer. I will have a very nice suit. One so nice that if I was to ever walk down those midnight corridors that I once openly haunted, I will be pursued by a gunman who will be absolutely convinced that taking the chance of mugging me will be a financial windfall.