I am sitting here looking at these two kids in a silver frame on my desk and I don't even know their names because the CVS packaging didn't list them when I bought the frames three months ago. I’m twenty-six and I’m lying to people who are fifteen years older than me just so they’ll stop looking at me like I’m some kind of alien species because I live in a studio downtown and don’t have a mortgage or a soccer schedule to manage. It started as a joke in my head when I first got promoted to lead this department of suburbanites but then I actually went through with it and now I’m "Tyler from Marketing" who has a seven-year-old named Leo and a four-year-old named Maya and I HATE it, I hate how easy it was to just invent them out of thin air and how much more everyone likes me now that they think I'm exhausted by parenthood. Every Monday morning it’s the same thing where we sit in that windowless conference room and Greg and Sarah spend twenty minutes complaining about sleep schedules and teething and I just nod along and offer some fake anecdote about Leo’s soccer game because if I don’t they treat me like a child myself. They think I’m "one of them" now and the truth is the promotion only happened because the VP thinks I’m a "family man" who won’t quit for a better offer in a different city because I have "mouths to feed" and it makes me want to scream because I’m actually just paying off sixty grand in student loans and trying to afford a life that doesn't involve a forty minute commute from the sticks. I am so ANGRY that I have to perform this version of adulthood just to be taken seriously by people who can’t even figure out how to use the shared drive without me holding their hands through it. Last week Sarah asked why I never have photos of my wife on my desk and I just blurted out that we’re private people and she gave me this pitying look like we’re on the verge of divorce or something so I had to invent a whole backstory about how "Jen" is a nurse and she works nights so we barely see each other. I spent three hours on Sunday night looking at stock photos of "woman in scrubs" trying to find someone who looked plausible but not too pretty because then they’d get suspicious and the whole thing is just a web of SHIT that I’m stuck in now. I’m living this double life where I go home to my cat and my quiet apartment and I drink a glass of wine and read and then I wake up and put on the Dad Mask and talk about diapers and preschool applications like it’s my actual reality. I feel like a fraud but not even a cool fraud just a pathetic one who’s scared of a bunch of people who think the pinnacle of existence is a trip to the zoo or a new lawnmower. I saw Greg at the grocery store on Tuesday—the nice one way across town where I shouldn’t have been—and I panicked and literally hid behind a display of cereal because I realized I didn't have the "kids" with me and I couldn't remember what lie I told him about where they were supposed to be that afternoon. My heart was pounding and I felt this pure white heat of RAGE that I’m a grown man hiding behind a box of Cheerios because of a lie I told to keep a middle management job I don't even like that much but I need the health insurance. So now I’m sitting here at 2am and I’m looking at the photo of "Leo" and I want to smash the frame against the wall but I won’t because I have a 9am meeting where I have to talk about his upcoming birthday party.