I did not return to my grandparents’ house for many years. it is true. I boycotted all family affairs. And because secretly and sadly I told myself that I was too well-bred, well spoken, and snobbish to fit in with my father’s side of the family I avoided them entirely. they always made fun of me when I would visit them, and their poor manners offended me as much as my good manners offended them. So I was a very lonely young man for many years, which we needn’t go into here as I am sure there are thousands of pages in the diaries already recounting it from those days.

For the next five years I tried desperately hard to be an average working class kind of guy and fit in with the rest of the world. But no one would have it. The problem with being even slightly well-bred is that people can see you coming from a mile away. They can see it in the way that you walk and hear it in the tone of your voice. It makes them immediately suspicious of you. So trying to figure out where I fit in at all became an impossible exercise. So I stopped trying. I just started accepting who I was, and creating who I wanted to be. by the time I grew up and out of all of that both my grandfathers had already died. I was not sad. Instead I felt free. I was no longer bound to either side, but rather I could forge ahead and make my own path for my future family. But the mystery sometimes is what kind of path will that be... somewhere down the middle I guess.

Last night we were at dinner with some girl friends of ours and these girls started talking about their sex toys and masturbation habits. It was hilarious but at the same time I was aghast. They were describing things that they assumed that all people knew about and spoke freely about at dinner and everywhere else. I was in shock. And they were in shock that I didn't know anything about these things and they kept looking to Bas and Ferret and asking is he for real? “Fishy’s kind of been living in his own little world for a few years now... don't mind him.” somewhere inside I still hang on to this vision that all women aspire to be Princess Di or Audrey Hepburn. But the truth is that perhaps its only I that aspire women to be like this now. And most girls these days don't even know ... well you get the picture. But here's where it gets tricky.

On the way home last night we were all discussing politics as is all the rage these days---there is nothing like a good villain to get the people excited about politics and government, and we haven't had a villain as wicked and sinister as W. since I can ever remember, perhaps never in our history. At one point I commented that I was a conservative liberal along with the others in the car, at which point everyone started to laugh and yell how hilarious that was. That I was even beyond liberal, that I was more liberal than most liberals if you could be such a thing. “Fishy you are the most extreme liberal person in the world! Good god man, don't you hear yourself? Have you never been to your own website?! You're beyond liberal. You’re radical. There's nothing conservative about you. You’re always talking about free health care for everyone whether they even work or not. You want to raise the minimum wage, start a maximum wage, whatever the hell that is. it sounds fucking like communism to me. You want to tax the hell out of the rich to help the poor, you think that everyone should take care of everyone else in the world whether they want to or not...” “Well they should want to don't you think...” “But that's just your opinion. You think gays should have equal rights,” “Well duh!” “You’re for affirmative action... and you’re always saying that all black people should get to go to college for free! I'm not fucking going to college for free man! What about me?!” “Uh well yeah, we only brutally enslaved them for five hundred years... i think we can give back now... you weren't enslaved man.” “You want us to give back the whole country to the Indians for Gods sake man and put us out on the street!” “Well don't you?!” “No! this is where we fucking live Fishy! You're insane!” “Yeah, but Its their country, not ours...” “You're an anarchist man. You think prostitution should be legal and drugs should be legal and that God and religion and government should all be outlawed! But if a girl says the word vibrator you excuse yourself from the table! Your insane man! Face it!” o.k. well now that you put it that way... 

Of course none of this is true. I made it all up because I was bored this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. The truth is that I was born into a small loose group of gypsies and thieves in the slums of Paris, France in the early seventies. This is common knowledge by now. but you'd be surprised what people would believe if you write it. In my early years I met many men who claimed on occasion to be my father but my mother was never forthright in revealing who he really was. And I was never sure if she even really ever knew. the closest we ever came to aristocracy was the rich people we’d pick pocket in the center of town. 

Last screening: Tavis Smiley presents the fourth annual forum on the state of the black family on C-Span. I learned so much. At times I felt like crying. Really moved. I took incessant notes. I  added some of them to those I will interview in the coming months. The judge Mathis was a real character. I feel so much for the American black person. I cannot put it all into words, so I will not try.