By admin 
Introduction
The year was 1964, and the air in Brooklyn was thick with the scent of youthful promise and the looming shadow of a secret that would eventually fracture a man’s soul. Barry Alan Pincus—the man the world would soon worship as Barry Manilow—wasn’t a superstar yet. He was a struggling musician, a dreamer, and, most importantly, a husband. He had married his high school sweetheart, the “perfect” Susan Deixler. To their friends and family, they were the ultimate success story. But behind the closed doors of their modest apartment, a psychological war was being waged between Barry’s public obligation and his private identity.
The world has long praised Manilow for his sweeping orchestrations and his ability to articulate heartbreak, but for decades, the public was fed a sanitized version of his history. The reality is far more gut-wrenching. After only one year of marriage, Barry didn’t just walk away; he effectively erased the existence of his union. He sought an annulment—a legal erasure—rather than a divorce, as if trying to scrub Susan from his DNA. This wasn’t a simple breakup; it was a total collapse of a life built on a lie.
For fifty years, Susan Deixler remained a ghost in the industry. She stayed silent as Barry ascended to the heights of global fame, singing songs of longing and lost love that millions assumed were about fictional muses. But when you listen to the haunting, jagged edges of “Even Now,” the mask begins to slip. This isn’t just a song; it is a confession of a man haunted by the person he sacrificed at the altar of his own ambition.
The stakes of this scandal aren’t just about a secret marriage; they are about the emotional cost of fame. Barry lived in a “time bomb” of a closeted era, forced to choose between the woman who loved him and the truth of who he was. He chose a third path: the lonely road of a superstar. While he sang to sold-out arenas, Susan was left with the debris of a marriage that legally “never happened.” This introduction explores the raw, unfiltered pain of a man who reached the top of the mountain only to realize he left his heart in a Brooklyn apartment in 1965. Why did it take half a century for the world to learn her name? And does Barry still see her face when the stage lights go dark?