Book 1 / Part 2

HE'S DOING IT

AND IT'S JUST AS SHIT AS EVERYONE THOUGHT

You are like a shittier version of that shittier version of Proust who seems to be popular these days as a cigarette and leather jacket model.

Elaine had been born a few months previous to my own exalted birth, and already by the time we first met she had grown the mass of black curly hair which would later define my image of her during this early period. As my father's wage alone was sufficient to sustain our financial expenses, my mother remained at home to perform those duties necessary for a clean and comfortable house and to care for her youngest son. And so when Elaine's parents were in work or out of state, she would be left at my house until her parents' return. Lacking a sibling my own age, I was delighted to be able to share the excitement I had towards the strange world to which I had been recently introduced. As an only child Elaine was also glad to have someone whose energy and curiosity matched her own, and so we quickly became close friends, our initial discomfort towards being encouraged to share our toys and the attention of our parents and in turn often shunned this attention to enjoy each others' company alone, usually in the large garden at the back of my house. She was most certainly glad, too, to have a playmate whose precocious grasp of humor and instinctive ability to entertain those in his company allowed her to escape the rather serious atmosphere of her own home and spend her days giggling and exploring her surroundings with such a fine representative of the opposite sex.

I posted and so the posts "critiquing" him must have been him too.

The clothing I wore at this time would become characteristic of the type of clothing. I would wear and the aesthetic I would embody throughout my life. Comfortable, oversized sweaters often worn over a loose-fitting shirt. Bluejeans with upturned hems. A baggy buttoned jacket with "LA 91" embroidered on one breast. Buckled well-polished shoes. Untucked shirts with a waistcoat worn over it. Bucket hats. Thick white sneakers with white elasticated cotton socks extending up my shins. Denim overalls. A block-patterned jacket in purple, crimson, black and yellow. Striped pastel t-shirts. Knee and elbow length white t-shirts. My hair was left long on top with the sides cut short, forming something akin to a bowlcut albeit more redolent of a traditionally aristocratic look than a bowlcut usually allows. I was shorter than most of my peers, but even this allowed me my appearance a "cuteness" which would later define my physical appearance in a way that I came to accept and appreciate.

Elaine and I would spend our first afternoons together in the long living room which extended from the front of the house to the rear patio doors, and where the masses of toys I had either inherited from my siblings or which had been bought by my parents lay scattered across the thin grey carpet, each one picked up and discarded soon after when my attention would be drawn to another toy or another nearby distraction. When we grew tired we would sit comfortably on the padded seat of our diapers and sip from plastic cups full of juice, and then occasionally fall asleep on our backs with our limbs spread out among the rubble-like carnage of the toys around us. In August of 1992, only a few months after Elaine and I had first become friends, our family left REDACTED Avenue in my father's Mercedes and traveled to a holiday resort where my parents had rented a small bungalow for us to stay. This would be my first holiday, and one of the two holidays our family would enjoy with all members present. I was not yet a year old.

How long is this whole thing going to be?

The bungalow we occupied during this holiday was located along a street of dark clean asphalt bordered on each side by the untrimmed lawns of neighboring holiday-making families, within a forest of tall pine trees. Behind the bungalow a short path led down through long grass towards a man-made lake surrounded by other bungalows. When we arrived I was deposited in the cot near the sliding glass patio doors from where, supporting my weight on the cot's edge, I could see across the heads of the reeds that littered the shore to where a gaggle of geese floated in loose formation across the reflective surface of the water. Soon after we arrived my parents rented four bicycles which we would use to explore our new surroundings and the various activities advertised on the brochure and on green wooden signboards along the streets. My father, dressed in a tight hooped tshirt and shorts that covered only a third or so of his muscular thighs, carried the video camera my parents had purchased shortly after my birth, which my mother had so far used primarily to document the infancy of her third child, perhaps aware if only in a vague and ineffable sense that this child would go on to distinguish himself as one of the most sensitive and intellectually astute minds of (at the very least) his own generation. My mother also wore a hooped t-shirt of red and light faded yellow and a pair of white tennis-style shorts which accentuated her own sturdy and well-proportioned frame. Following behind them, my brother and sister sat on the edge of their bicycle seats, their toes barely reaching the dry grass as they slowly walked their bicycles down the narrow front path to the street. The front of my mother's bicycle was affixed with a seat on which I sat in a white sun hat, staring with wide-eyed curiosity at the passing sights as my family members cycled around me, sometimes speeding ahead before turning and charging the oncoming group with a feigned desire to crash. As was often the case my sister soon grew restless watching my mother serving as my sole source of maternal affection, and insisted that she and my mother swap bicycles on the journey back to our bungalow. Having ridden for a few dozen minutes along the pinecone-littered roads and passed some of the areas where we would later return to take part in some activity, my mother and sister traded bicycles and soon I was racing along the shaded avenues with my sister, unable to sit on the bicycle's high seat, pumping her thin pale legs with great effort behind me. Wearing a green and black baseball hat with an extended peak, her central incisors still square and striated and gapped, she leaned forward so that her face was beside my own, laughing and asking questions I could neither comprehend nor answer. After napping a while on our return to the bungalow, I was carried outside on my sister's hip to the edge of the lake with dusk arriving to prepare for the coming night.

My brother emerged from the open patio door in black tracksuit bottoms and a black sportscoat with elasticated waist and cuffs.My brother's poor eyesight required that he wear thick-lensed glasses at almost all times, a squint and a somewhat pained facial expression otherwise betraying his blurred vision. The spectacles he wore were wide-rimmed, the base of each frame resting on his freckled cheeks. His hair was cut like my own into a ragged bowlcut of sorts, though his hair, curlier, drier and with less sheen than my own, contributed to his bookish and "nerdy" image, distinct from the traditionally masculine appearance of my tall, athletic father. While my sister stood with her torso leaning to one side to provide a counterbalance to the weight of my body resting her narrow hip, he appeared nearby, squatting at the water's edge and prodding the broken head of a reed into the shallow water. Some ducks gathered nearby and while their attention appeared to rest on my brother, his own was focused only on his own stabbing movements. My sister, readjusting my position so that I may be carried with greater ease, approached my brother from behind and for a brief moment the three of us were framed as an idyllic image of three young siblings enjoying their time together, their futures promising more of the same health, happiness and success which had defined their lives until that point. Perhaps attracted by this tableau of familial love, my parents too joined us at the lake's edge. My father now wore a bright red t-shirt and my mother a white t-shirt tucked into her denim jeans. I was still dressed in the loose yellow tshirt and light blue overalls I had worn throughout the day, and though it was no longer as warm as it had been when we had left for our bicycle ride the sun's warmth lingered in the air. Crickets chirped wildly in the surrounding grass. The lazy movements of the distant swans formed small ripples which barely reached the part of the shore where my family had gathered.

Soon I was handed over to my mother, whose wider hips and stronger frame resembled something of a maternal ideal in its capacity to bear the weight of heavy clinging children. My father, often a quiet and distant individual who usually seemed more content with providing the means for his family to enjoy themselves rather than participating in the enjoyment himself, approached my mother reached out towards me. Soon I was being held against his chest, my face almost parallel to his own, each of us staring out across the water on which the setting sun was faintly reflected. He pointed out over the lake and I squinted my eyes in mock-comprehension, unaware of which aspect of my vision I should be most surprised and curious about. My father had shaved though I could still feel the prickly stubble against the skin of my face, a sensation I loathed more than any other in the first year or so of my life. Already my heightened sensitivity, keenly reactive to every aspect of the external world, had caused me distress whenever I escaped the threatening darkness of my own bedroom to find refuge in my parents' bed. There, having braved the dark landing and the chasm of the stairwell which led down to the ground floor which I was sure had been overrun with savage predators, I nestled between my father and mother at the center of their queen-sized bed. Whenever my father attempted to hold me or comfort me however I would feel the sharp pricks of his jawline stubble and begin to cry while reaching out for the soft, warm and scented skin of my mother. But there at the lakeside, pinned against my father's side by one of his powerful arms, I felt the security and power with which many children later associate with their father. My mother retreated indoors meanwhile to find the video camera. My sister, seeing it pointed towards her, fled the lakeside and ran laughing through the long grass, eventually hiding behind a tree where only a portion of her thin frame was visible. My brother continued to squat at the water's side, standing occasionally to trudge a little further along the edge of the lake.