I was born in the Forties in Portland, Oregon, but I actually began the slippery career of life in 1948 in the maroon bricked, Shattuck School in Miss Lincoln’s first grade class. It was there and on the playground outside that I was introduced to the continuous shifting equation of joy, confusion and fear, the intricate stitch needle work of chestnut tree, dog, pumpkin, slug and street sign, and the ever-changing dictates of my personality, whose hidden center remained mysteriously constant. Eisenhower was my president, and the stiff, short, thick-necked, Mr. Bullock was my principal. The country was well-behaved and so was I, even in the 6th grade swimming pool when the difference under the girls’ wet swimsuits stung me over and over.I made the acolyte’s sacrifice at St. Stephen’s Episcopal. They stole me away from vacant lots and abandoned houses on empty, tempting Sundays and locked me in cold buildings of arranged stone. They dressed me in robes of their fear and told me things about a God and a Jesus I could not know they could not know. I lit their candles for three hundred and forty-two Sundays, in return for a little brown and red service pin. Then, on to high school and an introduction to the hidden curriculum, graduate work for Dick and Jane and Spot—further commandments on thinking, feeling, and behaving.Slowly my body grew and enlarged as if I’d swallowed a time-release magic mushroom from Alice’s wonderland. To the urgent brickwork of puberty, cars, clothes, school and money was added the rough masonry of love, death, sex, politics, religion and shopping.Thus I entered the high-rise cement world of grown-ups. Another Bush is president now and the country is still well-behaved.I’m still alive, I lust, lie, cheat, and steal—but only when it is the right thing to do.