I once was asked when I was young. “I’m the me I chose to be,” was my quick response. “Where did you come from, and how did you get here?” Equally glib responses waited on the tip of my tongue. I’m no longer young now, and the season for summing up is descending upon me with steady insistence. So no further spin need be placed on answers to who I am or where I came from or how I got here. I am what I’ve become. I came from a place of purity. I got here with the help of my friends, and my family, and perhaps the benign and protective influence of forces I’ll never understand. I entered this world with the standard equipment of an average child, as was plain for all to see. Throughout my first ten years, my days were filled with the uneventful but traditional boychild developmental rituals of a semi-primitive society. Outside our island township the world at large didn’t exist, except in snippets infrequently picked up from adult conversations. In the next five years, the outside world introduced itself to me and instructed me as to where the lines were drawn: what the style of my behavior should be, where I should find a place to fit, and how I should rein in my expectations (never, ever reaching above the level approved for persons like me, if such meager dreams as I was allowed were to find accommodation).
