I was subject to the common domestic hazards. Horseplay with a loaded salad shooter, all fun and games till someone loses an eye. Raging sister advancing on me with an Epilady. That's not a toy, hold on now. The daily threat of an attack of searing gas pain from whatever was burbling in the crockpot, that cauldron of suburban anguish. That's about all I remember, bad or good. No traumas, no depravity, except inside my head of course. Weren't there events? There must've been, time elapsed. Nothing inflicted, no blame to assign. Just a salad shooter, an Epilady, and a crockpot. Lots and lots of television. There was an incredible amount of grocery shopping, our cart crawling down the aisles with excruciating deliberation. Sometimes we needed two carts, which for some reason always filled me with embarrassment. If I saw a stranger glancing at the contents of our overloaded shopping carts I'd inch away so as not to be identified as part of my family, my shameful family of dreary gluttonous clowns.

I was poking around and found a gun once, but who didn't? It's standard, a Norman Rockwell. I liked to sneak down to the cobwebby basement at night and imagine unspeakable events occurring, something far worse than forcible depilation of siblings. Sweaty interrogations, buckled straps, mind control, damp evidence (the result of illegal searches of lower drawers) thrown down dramatically on a brightly-lit table, surgically illuminated for the scrutiny of glowering men with rolled-up sleeves, angry men whose hands crunched into fists of moral disgust. Appalling magazine collages, unequivocal evidence of a demented and pornographic mind, cruelly displayed on humming overhead projectors. I'd lie awake at night and listen to distant sirens, imagining with a kind of erotic glee the fabric of society coming apart at the seams, the spark of a faraway transgression igniting some kind of gasoline flame of deviance, a bright snaking line leading helmeted authorities straight to my bedroom. How thrilling!