This powerful, compelling memoir/essay is the story of my life, between the ages of 18 and 38 (Years 2000 to 2020). The story begins my freshman year at Vassar College, and ends 20 years later, when I have my first gay sexual experience with another man. This is not a normal memoir, in the sense that a good dose of philosophy and psychology is sprinkled throughout, in the form of observations about sexuality, aesthetics, morality, and self-esteem. The central arc of my story is that, as a young man, I was on a quest to lose my virginity so that I could be "normal" like everyone else, but I wanted to find a lover who was perfect, in the form of physical perfection, in other words, beauty, and I believed that I had to be perfect myself in order to deserve to be with someone who was perfect. But I was not perfect, which gave me an epic sense of guilt and shame, which manifested as body image problems from being chubby, as well as extreme embarrassment in the form of Social Anxiety Disorder, and fear of coming out of the closet as LGBT, combined with clumsy social skills bordering on Autism. Because I knew that I was not perfect, but I wanted to be with someone who was, I did not date or have sex in college, and, in cowardice, I turned to drug addiction and alcoholism for escape from the pain of being a virgin in college, and drugs and alcohol really messed up my emotional mental health for decades. Now, in a traditional story of this type, I would "find God," find God's forgiveness for being less than perfect, rely on faith for recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction, and then, in being humble, I would see the beauty in imperfect people, and love them, stop looking for love in a desperate way, and then magically stumble into a good marriage by happy accident. But I am not normal. I am wonderfully strange, and my story is different: instead of finding God, I found the philosophy of Objectivism, as told in "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. I ultimately came to realize that I am perfect, and that every human being is perfect, and I found the power of self-forgiveness to overcome my issues, to forgive myself for being less than perfect, and to forgive other people for being what they are, and I realized that I deserved to be loved, even though I was chubby, and I gained the confidence and hope to become sober, and put my life back together during the 20 years following my time at Vassar. And then I finally had sex for the first time, at age 38, after wanting it and dreaming about it and mourning my lack of it for two decades, and I never lowered my standards, and the guy I hooked up with had a perfect body, and I found him to be incredibly beautiful, and it was everything I had wanted. So it's sort of a sad, warm, weepy, happy story, and in the end I was able to believe that I am a good person and to accept the fact that I am imperfect and that "to err is human; to forgive, divine," but this book has a good deal of my sense of humor and sarcasm and pride, some might even say arrogance, and it's not for everyone. But you might really like this book. I sincerely hope you do. I think you will. And this book is interesting. It's worth reading.