Catsby: A Novel

Chapter 1: Part 1

In my younger and more innocent years, my father gave me some advice that's served me well: "Never rub another man's rhubarb."

No, wait—that was Jack Nicholson in Batman.

What was it my father told me? Oh, yeah: "Not everyone's had the advantages you've had in life, Dick. Unless you want to become a world-class asshole, you'll need to learn to check your privilege."

He explained that as an upper middle-class white male, I'd won the privilege lottery. We lived in a posh, gated community in the Chicago suburbs, free of crime and poverty. While this probably sounds idyllic to the modern reader, it was, in practice, very boring.

Don't get me wrong: My upbringing certainly had more ups than downs. I just sensed there was a more interesting world out there, one with conflict and drama. Growing up, I wasn't exposed to this other world through TV—my mother watched Friends, my father watched Seinfeld—or through the Internet, which was deemed too treacherous after my parents caught me ordering my own baby food on Amazon. It wasn't until I went to kindergarten that I realized just how much I was missing out on.

The school library's shelves were lined with thousands of novels, each a window into another world. Books were my escape from the prison of privilege. With books, I could be anyone, go anywhere, do anything. 

The book I remember being the biggest revelation was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Although the school's copy was heavily bowdlerized, it was still quite a powerful tome. In the sanitized edition of Mark Twain's timeless tale, a boy befriends a stray orange tabby named Jim. Together, they boat down the mighty Mississippi.

Reader, I literally couldn't even.