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My father was a relentlessly self-improving lingerie salesman with low-grade narcolepsy and a panchant for buggery. My mother was a 15-year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, make outrageous claims like he had invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. My childhood was pretty typical. Summers in Rangoon, louge lessons, in the spring we would make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap sack and beaten with reeds. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe. At 13 I met an Austrian barber-surgeon named Wilma. She ritualistically shaved my testicles. There's nothing like a freshly shorned scrotum. It's breathtaking, you should try it.