My earliest memory is just a flash. A glimpse into a world I had yet to learn anything about. It was 1980. I was 4 years old. I know this because it is well-established that the day of the accident was sometime that year. I must have been lying on the side of that Los Angeles freeway moments to minutes after being rescued from the back seat of a two-door car that was fully engulfed in flames. I remember seeing the freeway overpass not far from where I was lying with cars and maybe trucks traveling across it. I don't remember the fire at all, or being burned. Perhaps it was too horrible to remember and I blocked it out. It must have been. Can't feel good being burned alive. I was actually lucky though, compared to some burn victims. My life was saved by a bystander. A black man who had stopped along with all the traffic after the crash brought the entire freeway to a hault. Apparently my mother, who was driving that day, was either too scared or too cruel to pull me out of the car after she herself had escaped. Maybe she did try, I don't know. We never really talked about it and now we are estranged. I survived with third-degree burn scars on my hands and scalp and a few small scars on my face, with skin grafts taken from my hip flexors and thighs. I surmise that I must have covered my face in the fire with my hands which is why my face was mostly unharmed. A natural instinct I suppose. Thank god for those natural instincts! Many burn victims have it much worse and can scarcely leave the house because society generally rejects people who have been hurt in that manner. I have been able to lead a relatively normal life. Thanks to the hats I began to wear soon after being released from my lengthy hospital stay in order to conceal my permanently-scarred scalp where hair no longer grew. Later, around age 6, I began to wear hairpieces, in hopes like Pinocchio of becoming a real boy. A normal boy. A happy and healthy boy. Unfortunately I never felt like I was or could be, not until I picked up my first weight some 12 years later.

Fast forward to 1994. I was nearly 18 years old and about to step foot into a gym for the first time in my life. At this point I was a freshman at The Boston Conservatory, studying to be a musical theater performer and had no idea my life was about to take another drastic turn. There I was, still pimpled from high school, entering Gold's Gym in Boston, and nervous as hell that I would be rejected for being... I didn't know. Not enough. Not big enough, not man enough. I didn't even know what a man was. Growing up I had basically no father, no real male role models, just He-Man (the great 1980s action figure/cartoon character), Uncle Nando (my biological father's brother who was a recreational bodybuilder), and David Green (the director of the Musical Theater Department at The Orange County High School of the Arts where I graduated from) who truly believed in me. And I had this shame. Shame about everything. Certainly shame about my body. But for no good reason. I had a perfectly normal body. Naturally athletic even, though I had never really played sports or lifted a weight. But I've come to realize that I was raised to be ashamed about everything. By my mother who, despite being a total loser at life herself, raised me and my dear twin sister to believe that we were worthless through verbal, emotional and physical abuse. And I was trapped in this bubble. Unable to connect. Hiding behind hats and hairpieces, I could never get close to anyone. So I became a complete and total loner. I had a few friends, never more than one at a time. Even one was difficult because all I wanted to do was hide and not be seen. By the time I was 10 I was basically the phantom of the opera. But there was this beautiful, glowing, tender soul inside of me. It came out when I saw a dog, when I looked at the sky. Thank goodness for life's natural wonders. But for them I don't think I'd have had any hope whatsoever. We were poor, we were abused. But we had this beautiful world in which to live.

Anyway back to Gold's Gym in Boston. On my first visit I only had the guts to walk in and buy a membership. No way was I ready to step foot on the gym floor! With my laminated Gold's Gym membership in hand, I scurried back to my dorm room and told no one where I had been. Who would I tell? I was still virtually friendless. It took me a week or two to gather the courage to return and actually work out, whatever that meant. I was completely mistified but I knew it meant weightlifting. He-Man and my Uncle Nando didn't get that way by swimming or skipping rope! So there I was. In the middle of a cavernous room, filled with machines I had no idea what to do with and free weights I was even more clueless about. I can still hear the echoing of weight stacks and barbell plates clinking together that day. I was so scared! Trying to look cool, like I'd been there a hundred times before. But I hadn't been there or any other space designed for increasing self-esteem before. Just a cruel, beautiful world. Or so I thought. It was all I knew. Except dogs, and the blue sky, and... He-Man. I wandered around for about a minute trying to decide where to go. My eyes fell upon a machine that said something about pecs or chest. I knew I wanted that! I sat down on the machine backwards (I now know), awkwardly trying to read the instructions which were virtually unreadable from where I was sitting. I put my arms up on the machine in a quiet panic, trying to figure out how to use it. After a few seconds of that, humiliation sank in. I jumped up and rushed back to school. That was my first experience in a gym. I was disappointed but not discouraged. The fire inside me was too wild for that.

Absolutely miserable at The Boston Conservatory, I dropped out after one semester and returned to Los Angeles, which was no home to me but the only home I knew. Within a few months I struck gold and was cast in my first professional production of a musical! Soonafter I found myself at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood watching fellow Star Search alumni (yes, I sang on Star Search when I was 11 and 12), Sam Harris star in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I wanted to be just like Sam Harris! Muscular and proud and playing Joseph. The thing is Joseph has to do most of the show shirtless. I knew this would be a challenge for me because I was basically skinny and had this terrble body shame. But I was smart enough to know there was a way out and was determined to build a body I was proud of and audition for the first Joseph that came up. So I did it. I got a new gym membership and started lifting weights every day. I was shocked at how quickly my body changed. This before I even discovered the wonders of protein! I also went on a medication that cured the acne I'd struggled with since puberty. I could finally look at myself in the mirror and see a strong and capable young man. Developing a sense of self-esteem and self-worth I'd never known before. It must have been no more than 6 months before auditions for a small Los Angeles production of Joseph was advertised. It was go time. When I filled out the application I lied about two things: My age. I said I was 19 when I was really still 18 because I wanted them to think I was more grown up. And I said my occupation was Personal Trainer, instead of mentioning the Orange County print shop I actually worked at. In my mind Personal Trainer was such an impressive vocation! Little did I know only a few years later I would actually begin a career in Personal Training that would last until now. I got the part! Indeed I played Joseph in two different productions before retiring from musical theater when I was 24 and becoming a full-time Personal Trainer.

Oh and about Sam Harris, the musical theater performer who inspired me to pursue weightlifting. Imagine my surprise when in my mid-30s he called me to inquire about hiring me as a Trainer! To be clear we did not know each other before this. Well I knew of him but he did not know me. Nor did he remember me from Star Search as we competed in different seasons. Pure coincidence. After the first session I told Sam what he had meant to me in my youth. We proceeded to work together for several years and had a wonderful relationship. Talk about a full circle moment! So thank you Sam, Nando, David, and of course, He-Man. I couldn't have done it without you. Now I enjoy nothing more than sharing my joy of strength training with others and being supportive of them on their self-esteem and wellness journeys. I know what it means to build yourself up from absolutely nothing. I've walked through fire to get here. Walk with me.