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This is the first paragraph of my auto-biography, which I am attempting for the seventh time, as long as the telekinetic teddybears leave me alone.

I am sixteen years old, but for the purposes of this work, I will be eighteen. No one else’s age will have two years of live added to it, just mine. I already feel like I’m forty so it’s no big stretch. Well, as I say, I’m sixteen years old. I live with my mom and dad in the university district of Buffalo, New York, where the property values are slowly decreasing. I have four half brothers, three of whom are married. My worst brother, and therefore, my most interesting brother, is Bill. Bill lives in either Florida or Texas with his wife Lisa the cocktail waitress and their three kids, in a car. Aside from my brothers, all of whom are thirty or forty or something in between, I have two cats and two dogs. I also have a room, a bed, and a paper-mâche mask of the Creature from the Black Lagoon that my dad made for me in the third grade. Right now, my philosophy is based on Kierkegard’s Fear and Trembling and Herb Goldberg’s The Hazards of Being Male (I especially like the chapter entitled “The Wisdom of the Penis”); I like to alternate weeks so neither philosophy gets jealous. My mom was a Lutheran but now she thinks she’s Jewish and my dad thought he wanted to be a priest until he met his first wife, or maybe it was after, anyway, whatever happened made me Catholic, I guess, but not really because I was baptized in the fourth grade because Ms. Fisher told me I was going to hell. I don’t even respect the concept of hell enough to capitalize the h, what the hell was I thinking? I have a checking account and some stock in Johnson & Johnson, so you’d think I’d be a republican, but then, I suppose, you’d remember that Johnson & Johnson makes baby oil, which is often used as a lubricant so then you’d know that I’m obviously not a republican because the republicans would get as far away from that one as they could. But I’m not a democrat either. I thought I was an anarchist once. Then I decided I was gay for about two months, but I didn’t tell anyone. So I went back to being an anarchist. Now I’m looking into communism, not because I wanted to be cliché or anything, it just has a great dental plan. (How else would they be able to identify all of Stalin’s victims?) Every time I walk into a house I lock the door behind me. I can get drunk off of anything and I’ve never had a sip of anything besides church wine. I’m most susceptible to love, Shirley Temples, and the smell of a hockey bag. I used to take pictures of everything but then I realized I was missing out on life. I ended with a cold and a whole lot of three-year old pictures on my wall. I watch the NFL Draft for seven hours in April, but I can’t sit through a whole game. Actually, I can’t even sit through a whole quarter. I would have started that sentence with hell, but then I would have had to capitalize it. I have psychosomatic seizures brought on by either too much stress or too few funny hats. There are a whole lot of words that I simply cannot spell. I give really bad advice, but I just can’t stop giving it out. My girlfriend can’t tell time, but I love her anyway. I wrote a letter to her once, and she accepted my proposition, and now I’m something of a demagogue at a local girl’s school, but who isn’t these days. Every one thinks we know so much about relationships, but actually, when you finally get it one, you come to the realization that you know absolutely nothing about the subtle dance of love between a man and a woman. First of all, it’s more of a 5/8 Charleston than a 3/4 waltz. For about fifty percent of our time together, we actively pursue the secret hatred of most of the people who hang out with us. For our anniversary, I made her a scrap book of all the movies we’d seen together and she did a drawing of me in my brown leather coat that I bought at a vintage in Toronto. Her name is Katie. She thinks I am a sexy sexy man. What she doesn’t know is that I leave dishes all around the house, and when I manage to get them to the kitchen, I never ever do them, because a girl’s got to have some principles. I hate those moisturizing tissues. I haven’t had a class picture in two years and I feel really guilty about it. Some times, I take twice as much Benadryl as I’m supposed to. I wish I was a heroin addict about twice a day. The most important thought of my life occurred in a field, on an island in Lake Michigan, while I was alone looking for turtles. I’ve kind of felt bad for my old Minnesota Vikings wallet, ever since I switched to the more mature, black leather style. It’ll pass though, it’s been like five years. I must confess that I have absolutely no idea how to use the Palm Pilot that my aunt gave me, but I know that my aunt and uncle’s new house smells REALLY GOOD. I can play piano but I pretend that I just like pounding on the keys like a four year old. I am a four-year-old. When I was in the eighth grade, I lost the State Geography Bee because I was wearing my lucky Miroslav Satan jersey and the proctor gave me a really hard question because she thought that I was a Satanist. And she missed pronounced the name of this one island too, but it wasn’t in Lake Michigan. I think my ice cream’s melting. I have reason to believe that my third best friend had sexual relations with an old flame he hadn’t seen for four years, and her sixteen year old sister, in a house that wasn’t even theirs. But then again, I have reasons to disbelieve that too. I am insanely jealous of mimes. I cry at funerals. I laugh at standup comedians. But what I’ll never do is dance the electric slide. The second most memorable moment of my life is singing “American Pie” in the locker room before a championship hockey game freshman year. We lost the game. My girlfriend doesn’t like onions so she makes me eat them. There are five pictures of her on the wall in my room and one on my desk. I wish I was French. I wish I was having an affair with someone who did the voices for children’s cartoons, or perhaps even a puppeteer. I can never begin to talk about a movie when I’m still watching it. Katie does this all the time and it drives me nuts. Nuts with passion, of course! But George Bush says we have to cut back on passion. I’ve never broken a bone. I’ve never broken a heart, no wait, I have, that’s too bad… that was a really clever progression. Well, I’ll you the story, it’ll be quick. I did Fiddler on the Roof one summer and the girl playing Hodel fell in love with me. She professed her love and tried to kiss me in the rain during a cast party after she had gone to get her stuff from this other girl’s car. Nobody was there to see it which made the whole experience rather, well… fruitless. Anyway, I’ve never broken a window, shit, I’ve done that too. With a hockey puck. What haven’t broken? Screw it. I can’t hear anything on a CD player below about 7 on the volume dial. I carry a quote from Gulliver’s Travels with me at all times. I always think that there is someone in my house, even when there is. My one goal in life is to come home from a job I love, tired as all hell, with my wife already in bed, to peel off my clothes and crawl into bed and wrap my arms around her and declare an eight day weekend for parts of the northeast. I can’t write poetry. I’ve never been fat. I wear too much deodorant. I refuse to like anything that at least half of my friends like, and that includes tennis shoes. I fear stagnancy. I loathe low-talkers. I crave Mexican food for about five minutes into it, and then I’m all gone. I could die for the girl next door, but all I have is some Asian college guys and an old Polish lady. I could listen to Katie talk about the gastrointestinal goings-on of her aged dachshund forever and three weeks and I wouldn’t care what time it was. I’m horribly afraid of daddy-longlegs’, bacon fat, unwieldy success, and headaches you can’t get rid off. In short, there is absolutely nothing wrong with me.

And yet, I think I wish there was.

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