The First Step

By Adam Gilad
Published on January 22, 2004

First let's do the numbers: It's been about four days that I've been single. I was married at 23 and stayed that way for 17 years. I've just met a charming and articulate woman at a party and stumbled through an uncharming and inarticulate request for her phone number.

And wonder of wonders, she gave it to me.

Now all I had to do was call her for a date.

I, Me, Not-Husband

By Adam Gilad
Published on January 8, 2004

I am completely frozen.

I have just walked out of a pitch meeting in Santa Monica. Wilshire Boulevard is breezy and gorgeous. It

is 4 p.m. I have been married for 17 years and now, it appears, I'm not. For the last 17 years I had a wife, a family, a home, a dock in the open sea of the world.

Moreso, for the last 10 years, I've had chubby, laughing babies to return to, who then morphed into muscled cyclones, ready to hurl themselves onto my back the moment I walked through the door, then preteens, eager to sing me their triumphs, real and imaginary, at school.

At the end of the day, I knew where to go -- home.

If the Spaceship Comes

By Adam Gilad
Published on September 3, 1998

I am in a cult.
Not one with an Indian twist, nor a homegrown one full of fervid believers waiting for a modern-day Shabtai Tzvi to fly us all to a New Jerusalem. No, my cult is more like that of those UFO suicides in Rancho Santa Fe waiting for the spaceship to take them away to a far better place.

My cult is called Hollywood.

A Jewish Guy

Published on March 12, 1998

Frankly, I'm all for it.

But what about sports? Girls? Humvees and washboard abs? This column's supposed to parse the experience of a Jewish Guy in the world. But some guys have called, confused. What's all this about singing baby boys to sleep? About tender talks and the salve of toddler hugs? It's all very sweet, but, guy, hey guy, they ask, where's the testosterone?

Funny. My wife's been bugging me about the samething.

Where the Action Is

By Adam Gilad
Published on January 29, 1998

These are three experiences that have made me most hate being Jewish: