StrangeTrue

A framing exercise:

Doctor Spielvogel, it alleviates nothing fixing the blame— blaming is still ailing, of course, of course— but nonetheless, what was it with these Jewish parents, what, that they were able to make us little Jewish boys believe ourselves to be princes on the one hand, unique as unicorns on the one hand, geniuses and brilliant like nobody has ever been brilliant and beautiful before in the history of childhood— saviors and sheer perfection on the one hand, and such bumbling, incompetent, thoughtless, helpless, selfish, evil little shits, little ingrates, on the other!

“But in Europe where—?” he calls after me, as the taxi pulls away from the curb. “I don’t know where,” I call after him, gleefully waving farewell. I am thirty-three, and free at last of my mother and father! For a month.