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Her parents named her after a writer I'd never heard of before. Neither the name nor the writer. I was behind the bar and had just made her and her Korean friend a Vesper. That's a gin and vodka drink that's shaken with a dash of Lillet. The white one - not the Lillet Rouge. 

She asked my name and at the same time her friend asked where I was from. It is polite to answer those questions directly and honestly and then ask them back in return. This is the way things are expected to go. Once, for about two months, I used to tell people in a posh part of Hollywood that I was from Mumbai.

"You know - the place with the bombs and the cricket and where they answer the phone when you call Verizon..."

That's different though - I was trying to be impolite and unexpected back then. 

A Letter: When I Was a Kid, I Was Really Young

I was eleven years old when I started 7th Grade. I think you're supposed to be twelve. Twelve turning thirteen. I think you're supposed to have your Bar Mitzvah in 7th Grade. But I was eleven, turning twelve.

It wasn't that I was smarter or more advanced or anything like that. It was a time of the year thing. See, the people who decide such things have a cut off point -  a date on the calendar - and if you're born after that day they bump you in with the next intake. The next year. I was born just in time to ride just above that line. I snuck in by a matter of days.

All of that which is only to let you know that I was eleven when I started 7th Grade. It is important to be accurate. Even when telling fiction...... especially when telling fiction.

I was brand new to this Secondary School, but I did have some history with the place. It was part of a small private school that ran all the classes from Kindergarden to 12th Grade out of one asphalt, tanbark and orange brick campus. So signing up for the Secondary School simply meant rocking up at the same damn address, with the same damn tanbark and same damn asphalt. The only changes were the new teachers and a new principal to answer to.

But I had more history than just that with the place itself , I also had history with said 'new principal' - a man we shall call 'The Baker's Son'.

That history had been foisted upon me. I hadn't asked for it. Nor did I even know it was available to be asked for. It wasn't a history that I had made or participated in or been present for. It was a history that my uncles had cultivated through years of arrogant and pointless struggle against the stubborn and petty force that was The Baker's Son. He then turned those collections of running battles into a grudge to be played out with and upon me. Their history was now my history and with all that hanging around, I started Secondary School..

Years later, as an older and far more distant fellow, I'd come to understand The Baker's Son better. His way. His method. Why he acted the way he did. It was not due to some misguided romantic vision of providing us with that which we needed to face the world. It wasn't because he had an idealised notion that what he was doing was for our best. It was because he was - and I'm sure, still is - a Pathological Narcissist. A man without reproach. Who felt no empathy and was filled with the zeal of a predator who wanted nothing more than to inflict pain. Or something.

But back then, as an eleven year old, I simply thought he was an arsehole. Though, to be fair, that too was certainly accurate.