Townies is a series about life in New York, and occasionally other cities.
When I was 11, I wanted to marry Lee Majors.
Small and not particularly athletic, I was already a target in the locker room of my middle school. It was the early '70s and setting up house with someone of the same gender wasn't imaginable. I knew I needed a cover for my crush.
Then, a miracle.
In 1976, "Charlie's Angels" debuted on TV. Farrah Fawcett-Majors uttered her first breathy line ("Hello"). Here was my salvation.
I transferred my fixation from the hairy-chested Six Million Dollar Man to his wife, the all-American goddess, who, every Wednesday fought crime and barely escaped death in skimpy bathing suits and low-cut gowns with no place to hide a gun. She gave me a respite from my teenage angst by providing the quintessential "beard" and sending the appropriate straight message. "Yeah, she's so hot! Check out those nipples," I'd say, joining my voice to the chorus of testosterone in study hall.
No one had to know that, for me, her best asset was Lee Majors.
I embarked on a fantasy of denial. Images of my new idol began taking over the walls of my bedroom: posters, publicity photos, magazine layouts, as well as a few of her standing with Lee — where his shirt just happened to be unbuttoned. Her presence was a sign to all, including my middle-class, Jewish, suburban parents, that this indeed was the room of a "normal" boy who was turned on by women in tight red bathing suits.
I even started to convince myself: I found comfort in Farrah's serene face and accepting smile, as if she were looking over me and keeping me safe from bullies and rough realities I couldn't handle. I decided then that I could stealthily lust after Lee, but would someday marry Farrah or someone like her. I obsessively daydreamed about living with them in their beach house by the Pacific. I was caught in a celebrity love triangle.
I decided to take action. After all, if they were going to invite me to live with them, they needed to know who I was. One afternoon after school, I grabbed the canary yellow rotary phone and pulled the wire taut so it reached the small walk-in closet. I needed privacy. I was calling 20th Century Fox, the studio in Los Angeles where "Charlie's Angels" was filmed.
"Uh, hello. May I speak to Farrah Fawcett-Majors?" My voice was trembling as if I were a 13-year-old boy trying to speak to Farrah Fawcett-Majors. The receptionist, appropriately suspicious, refused to put me through. But I was not deterred. I called every day for the next three weeks, until finally …
"20th Century Fox. May I help you?"
"Hello. I would like to speak to Farrah Fawcett-Majors."
"May I ask who's calling?"
"This is her cousin, Jeff," I said with authority.
"One moment, please."
Wow, maybe I had lucked out and I got a new guard who didn't know she was supposed to keep me from talking to Farrah. Or maybe Farrah really did have a cousin Jeff.
The line was ringing again. Suddenly, I heard a sweet, angelic voice with a hint of a Texas accent say, "This is Farrah."
I pictured her feathered tresses caressing the receiver as Lee stood beside her, his unbuttoned shirt flopping against his hairy chest. Malibu, here I come! I tried to speak, but couldn't. No sound came out of my mouth. In a panic, I banged the receiver down onto the cradle, hanging up on my pretend girlfriend, my future lover's wife.
It was a terrible setback. But it didn't stop me from continuing to pine for the couple whose devotion was featured on the cover of People Magazine. Twice. I coveted what they had: an ideal romance that wasn't hidden or secret. I wanted that kind of deep, visible love. And to get it, I knew I would need to find a Farrah, not a Lee.
New York in the '80s was a haven for anyone who felt different. Its clubs and bars catered to outcasts, the disenfranchised and self-appointed freaks. People came to start fresh and drop whatever oppressive restraints held them back from celebrating their true selves.
I was not one of them. Instead, I went in search of a Farrah of my own. But my attempts at dating women left me feeling angry and confused.
At 29, I decided a change of scenery was the answer. I packed up my Shield of Denial & Fantasy and moved to Rome. I loved all things Italian, so why not an Italian woman, a dark-haired, olive-skinned Farrah? My plan was thwarted when, after only six weeks, I fell for Giovanni. I was suddenly living a new kind of dream, one where I was finally able to be true to who I was.
But Giovanni still lived at home (like many Italian men his age), so we often spent nights at his sister's empty studio apartment. Our relationship was a secret from his family and from mine. So long as no one knew, I could go on pretending that it existed outside the real world.
Nine months later, Giovanni met me along the banks of the Tiber on his Vespa, delivered a curt breakup speech, and then sped off, saying he was late for dinner with his relatives. With that hit and run, my first relationship with a man was finito, and the hurt I felt was very real.
Worst of all, there was no one I could talk to about it. I began to wonder: if no one witnessed the experiences of my life, did they even exist? The thought of living a half-realized existence scared the fear out of me. I needed to be visible.
Back in New York, I returned to my one-bedroom apartment in Hell's Kitchen. I had stopped seeing the city as a place to hide, had stopped seeing a dream as a refuge. Even Farrah had let go, years ago. Her seemingly idyllic marriage to Lee ended when she left him for Ryan O'Neal.
So at 31, exhausted by a life of pretense, I finally dropped the facade. Although I'd known I was attracted to men since Nixon's first term, it wasn't until the Clinton administration that I actually began dating them.
Today, I've been with my husband, Tony, for 15 years. He is sweet and gentle, and he makes me laugh. For years I had wanted this to happen with a woman, but here it was with a man. I first presented Tony to my parents during a Labor Day barbecue. "By the way, you're the first guy to ever meet my family," I nervously confessed on our way up the front walk. He froze and needed to be pushed through the door. Two years later we bought an apartment on a tree-lined block in Greenwich Village. And on one rainy evening, we were married in a SoHo loft, surrounded by family and friends.
I found my own love story, but I also discovered something unexpected: a good relationship didn't fit within an idealized image. Tony and I made it through serious illness, painful surgeries, long rehabilitation, financial difficulties and potential relationship-ending fights over whose turn it was to do the dishes. Commitment wasn't about declaring your airbrushed love on the pages of a national magazine. And it was certainly not about gender. It was about openly and passionately sharing your life with the person you love without fear or shame.
It's not Malibu. But if you ask me, it's better than any fantasy.
Townies welcomes submissions at townies@nytimes.com.
Jeff Nishball, whose writing has appeared in Tablet Magazine, is working on a novel.
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