So many ways to come out, but birth is one of the more elemental and vital and bloody coming out parties. It can be happy. Mom said she was in hard labor with me for 24 hours. She was more than glad to get me out. You know my opinion on the matter. It was worse than I imagined.
Popeye was pitiless, defensive, and angry. Today he'd be diagnosed as a narcissistic, low-grade sociopath. Oh, and an alcoholic. His mother and father, Queenie and Randolph, warned Mom he was dangerous and that she shouldn't marry him. She thought this bourgeois German family was trying to scare away the poor Irish girl. She was wrong. They were dead serious.
On her deathbed, Queenie said Popeye was a bastard, if that's the word. She was separated from Randolph in 1921 and was date-raped - not the words she used. Popeye was the result. Its not implausible, but I look a lot like Grandpa Randolph, I think. And Queenie did lie, all the time. But would she lie about this, on her deathbed?