It has been my unpleasant fate to prove my father's ideas correct
over and over again. He raised me on a diet of all the influences he felt
had corroded his spirit, while my identical twin was sent to live on a sec-
luded island. I've always assumed my mother was there, though for all I
ever learned about Brian, he could have been raised by monks. Or wolves.
I grew ugly, to my father's cynical delight. As a teen I smoked in lib-
raries, finally causing a costly magazine fire, and developed an interest
in mathematics. My father, following Goethe, mistrusted math.
	His will left me a speedboat and some surveyor's notes containing
errors he must have been unaware of. I am in that speedboat, presumably to
meet my brother. A promontory visible in the distance supports two houses,
of which the northerly one looks grander. Behind me, the coast of Virginia
has dropped below the horizon. I've been drinking heavily all day, a new
habit which would have thrilled my father. The waves blur ahead of me,
seeming to rock back and forth sideways, perpendicular to their axis of
movement. If I manage to reach the island I doubt I will make it up to the
houses. I've slept in dirt before, wearing a suit even more expensive than
the one I have on now, but the prospect of doing so tonight revolts me.
	My father clung to his image of me as a grotesque distillation of
modernity, an image I came to disagree with. The New York Times called me
(or rather, my career) "uniquely horrible". I have no interest in inno-
vative badnesses -- nor innovation of any kind, really -- but I do like to
feel as though I'm different from those around me as more than just a
question of degree. My friends' claims to individuality are dimmed by no
such paternal penumbra and yet they have said they feel much the same.
	I land the boat on a beach littered with scraps of paper bearing
my name: Holloway. Stray tabloid pages show Brian Holloway with my face,
my bearing, my clothes. They must understand him here, or maybe (I don't
read the language) they fear him. Lights nearby mean I may yet avoid waking
with sand in my clothes. My hip-flask can serve as a weapon, if need be.

written for Khawla 9/22/01

This is an unpleasant story; I don't know if that's an accomplishment or not. The introduction of the narrator's name at the end was poorly done, in any case. Still, I had a particular personality clearly in mind and I feel like that came through. I made one technical error toward the end that I couldn't stand not to correct (I flubbed a verb tense), so you've just read something icky AND inauthentic.

Can you tell I reread City Of Glass recently? Maybe not.

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

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