About Me

Autobiography
Imitation of Raymond Mungo
I was born in Baptist Hospital on November 14th, 1966. The doctor that attended my mother while I was coming into the world was Dr. Wall. The only reason I know this is because every baby who was delivered in Winston-Salem between 1900 and 1999 was delivered by Dr. Wall. I'll be in casual conversation with a grandfatherly type and it will come out that he was birthed by Dr. Wall during the blizzard if nineteen-ought-six. Dr. Wall retired in 2000 at the age one-hundred and forty-two.
Not much is known about my birth except that I was a couple of weeks late. Perhaps that's why I wait out the entire grace period before I send in my mortgage payment. There is a picture of me in a baby seat, on the dryer with my sister staring at me. I don't know if she was admiring me or waiting for me to spit up, but she certainly seems transfixed.
I had three older sisters growing up, and to torture me they would hold my foot. For some reason this would drive me out of my mind and I would howl like the world was ending, while trying to contort my way out of their vice like grip. I really don't know what my problem was, and I must have outgrown my held-foot-phobia at some stage, because it doesn't bother me now.
There is also an old color photo of me at about the age of two, sitting in a pile of leaves and laughing hysterically. I have no idea what I could have found so funny about sitting in a pile of leaves. I vaguely remember this early photo shoot because our cat Solomon was wandering around in the leaves with me. There is also a photo of me shoving a handful of leaves into my mouth. I can't remember what they tasted like, but this could have been the first moment that I showed a love for gourmet food. Even now, on the rare occasion that I'm raking leaves, I either start to giggle uncontrollably or start to salivate.
When I was five my mother threw a birthday party for me and gave it a soldier theme. I was decked out in an American G.I. uniform and I think our German neighbor came as a Prussian infantry man complete with jackboots and handle bar mustache. She looked pretty cute. All I remember of this event is that my mother baked a cake shaped like a castle and that my German neighbor had us digging a parameter around the front yard until nap time.
At the age of twelve my parents moved the whole family to England. The reason for this is so convoluted, and covered in myth and speculation that it’s better to stay off the subject, but there we were. We arrived in mid-winter when the sun comes up at 12:15 p.m. and goes down promptly twenty minutes later. I was to be schooled at Scolfields School for boys which had no heat, no electricity, no running water and worse, no girls. Actually I made the part up about the electricity, heat and running water but there really weren't any girls. It was in an old gothic building that was modeled after the Tower of London and always seemed to be damp, cold and creepy. Whenever I read Poe the settings take place at Scolfields.
Back in the States I went to a Catholic high school for two years, until my parents were forced to take drastic measures and send me to Christ School in the mountains of North Carolina. This was a haven for all the rich snobbery on the Eastern Seaboard, and once again it was all boys. I started to see a theme.
Then I was off to college and guess what? Too many Girls! I got no studying done but it wasn't because of one romance after another. It was that I would pine away so hard for one that I couldn't eat, sleep or most importantly, study. So I dropped out and went to Africa.