Enough about me. Let's talk about Roger L. Sieloff, shall we?
Long away and far ago I was born in Erlagen Germany in the Chineese year of the fire Rooster. Daddy #1 was promptly flattened by a car crossing the road to get to the other side. Mummy #1 didn't want me growing up in a single parent family so promptly abandoned me in an orphanage. Here I lay in the dark and the cold for six months while the back of my head flattened. Determined not to die, I stuck it out and lo and behold, fate soon cast a ray of hope into my nascient life - I'd been adopted by AMERICANS! Cock-a-Doodle-Doo! (I only peeped at the time actually, and then promptly wet myself).I'm leeeeaving oooon a jet plane - don't know - when I'll be back again.. Perhaps @ the end of my life , but in the meantime I've not visited Germany since, nor was I born in the year of the salmon. In the Meanwhile, I quietly grew up in a middle class neighborhood in the middlewest. Mummy #2 loved me dearly, so much so that she got me a very expensive pet - a baby sister. Adopted of course.
No, neither me or my "sister" were frozen embryos. Freeze dried perhaps, but NEVER frozen.
Daddy #2 was a rambling wreck from Georgia tech and a heck of an engineer. A hekofa hekaofa hekofa hekofa hekofa engineer, no less. Being an American professional and a heckofa family breadwinner, I grew up without him around. Thus,I became an honorary kitten in the cradle with a silver spoon, my feline aloofness dissapointing daddy #2 whenever he found enough time to try to get to know me. This changed about the time my reproductive hormones kicked in. Dad was overjoyed to find his son wanting to be around him. We had a wonderful two hour walk one evening and then he left for Detroit the next morning.
Family dinner, circa 1968. We all sat at the table eating meatballs with some sort of porkchop gravy. I requested another glass of Seven Up when daddy#2 gets up, walks a few steps and promptly collapses on the living room carpet. Dazed and confused, mummy #2 calls an ambulance, I dither nervously about and then my sister squeals in laughter. Mummy Dearest never forgave my sibling for this and continued to slowly twist this knife for years. In the meantime, the ambulance men arrived, hauled daddy#2 onto a stretcher and the last I ever saw of him was his feet dissapearing out the door. A year later, I noted the stalwart kitchen refrigerator met the same fate in pretty much the same manner.
Yes, it was a heckaofa fridge...
Fate can be even crueler, though. Minus a parent but now too old for an orphanage, I soon struck up a relationship with an aging art instructor I came to know as "Uncle John". I'd visit the studio on Saturdays, do a couple pieces in oil or pastel and try and improve. Unfortunately I was 12 years old and independent as ever. My mentor wanted to show me a certain technique but I stubbornly ignored his advice. Being a wise old man, John simply retired to the foyer for an afternoon nap, leaving me to manage things on my own. An hour and a half later, I finally realized I had absolutly no idea how to paint clouds. I swallowed my pride and asked for some help. I even agreed to begin a study of human anatomy, but this would have to wait until after the upcomming Christmas holidays. Unfortunatly what I got for Christmas was the news John had died of a heart attack just like my heckaofa dad had.
By he time I was 18 I was too old to want a father, but mommy #2 provided me one nonetheless. I had nothing against Mr. Slater, but my aloofness was once again a liability. Mummy #2 had matured into a bitter old woman who tended to claw anything around her. Poor Mr. Slater became a portly, late middle aged scratching post. Not surprisingly, he vented his hostility on my sister and I, making me even more aloof. Fortunately, we had a very large 4 bedroom house to live (hide) in but UNfortunately this wasn't big enough. Mummy #2 and Daddy #2.5 rented an apartment, convinced their marital problems were all because of those "damn kids". This experiment in social science was cut short by malignant lung cancer, Mr. Slater's of course, ending a six month marriage which was not quite a second honeymoon by anybody's standards.
He did get one final cigarette before he went....
Mummy#2 passed away in the grand family style - over the weekend. Her heart attack was so swift she left work Friday and me and my sister buried her in the dress she was to wear to work on Monday. Home alone for the first time in our lives, the years of mother's abuse soon surfaced as far as my sister was concerned. She immediatly spent half her inheritance on a train, high on cocaine. Returning home from her magical mystery tour, she began a series of squalid affairs culminating in a relationship with a pedigreed, white trash gigilo. Jo gigilo was good natured until my sister's inheritance began to run out. To keep him around however, she promptly became pregnant. In the meantime, I spent my time working on my bachelor's degree in chemistry, getting beat up by Joe and calling the police every now and then. Seems adoption runs in my family - my nephew was abandoned soon after birth, which broke Joe's heart but what could he do - besides beat me up? He was already married to some trailer tramp with a teenaged daughter.
Joe finally got the notion it was time to leave after he'd wrecked my car "repairing it" and then stole the 400 dollars my uncle had sent to get it fixed professionally. Joe got his first taste of divine retribution by loosing all the money in a back alley poker game, then incurring a substancial amount of debt to people no one wants to owe money to. He of course repaid his debt with several teeth. In the meantime, my bank refunded my money and with his name on a list, Joe finally hit the road for good, and of course I'd RUINED his life it was ALL MY FAULT!!
Several years later, fate again managed to allow me to glimpse just how self destructive Joe was. After returning to his wife, he began a relationship with her 16 year old daughter. It was a sadistic affair however, Joe's foreplay delivered via a nail sticking out the end of a plank. Joe was convicted as a pediophile. A coworker just happening to be on the jury and overheard me talking about Joe. Hence, I learned what eventually happened to old "dumbass".
The next ten (or more) years of my life saw me trying to establish myself professionally as my sister began to sink lower and lower on the socioeconomic ladder. Taking a second mortage on the condo Mummy#2 left us, I bought her half. My sister moved away, got a place of her own and then quit her job to mourn the death of her cat. Six months and twenty thousand dollars later, she'd finished grieving and got back to work as a telemarketer. I continued to finance her little "problems" until, living in a squalid apartment, smoking dope for breakfast and working three days a week, she called one evening begging for my help. Mr. landlord wanted 300 dollars in two days or he was going to throw her out! I just told her not to ask for my money if she didn't take my advice, knowing she usually reacted to any criticism as though I were insulting her.
This, dear readers was where I finally lost the last of my family. I moved out of the condo and rented an apartment and simply abandoned a person who I now realize was trying to drag me down for decades. Sad to think she hated me so much she was willing to destroy herself as well. As always, I attempt to move on, but equally sadly it appears 20 years as a state employee has ruined my professional reputation. I'd really like to move away from my past and start over....
TOMORROW (maybe): what I think about the world
Roger L. Sieloff
