BROTHERS.

(from At Home With the Pumpkin King)

Is it true other people have childhoods and then become different and are called adults? This progression was never observed in my family. Obviously my father was never an adult--unless the word be synonym for madness. By the age of 8, probably sooner, my brothers and I were pretty much as we are now--bookish, drunk, horny, resentful. The first grudge, beer, novel, dirty picture we recognized as if it were the 10,000th. We did not begin; we continued.