Being Five

When I was five I told my step-father that I was sure there was a girl exactly like me somewhere doing exactly what I was doing at every second. I was plagued by this notion of a twin. With the world so big it must be true. He said no, you are special.

Sensing that my mother was bored, preoccupied, and annoyed by me, I asked her, why did you have me?

I woke up one morning realizing that the Earth had moved around in a circle while I was asleep. I thought, I'm breathing Chinese air!

What is that? I asked my mother, pointing at the genitals of our gigantic Scottish Deerhound as he lay down on the big round center-hallway rug. She said those are his balls and that is his penis. I said wow, he gets to have all that!

I had stomach aches all the time. I guessed that I was being poisoned. That must be why people have children, I thought, to poison them.

I knew at age five I wanted a life like my father's, not my mother's. Men had everything better than women, and men were much kinder than women. I wanted to have fun working every day, not having kids.