Excerpted from "The Father of Rainbow Key: A Memoir" (unpublished).

"A story is dull if nothing happens in it, and therefore the Show of the World is full of suffering and strangeness. During my own time in the Show, I suffered gladly for the entertainment of the Audience.

Born in Łódź--the ugliest town in all of Poland--and orphaned by the age of seven, I seemed to have a grim, uninteresting future ahead of me. But I was simply a diamond in the rough. 

My birth-name was Ksawery Fryderyk Grzegorczyk. Years later, I took the opportunity to re-name myself. Xavier Freeman Gentry was my new name; my American name. My friends and neighbors called me Freeman, which suited me just fine. The members of the Rainbow Key Homeowners Association simply referred to me as ‘the Father.’

I thought that ‘Freeman Gentry’ sounded like the name of a man who would live a rich and varied existence—and I was not incorrect. During my time in the Big World, I escaped from the Wehrmacht; I bought an island; I built a house made of glass. I clarified diamonds using only my mind, and ingested vast quantities of dimethyltryptamine which facilitated my spiritual perfection. I had countless lovers, and one true Love.

To secure my freedom, I severed my own right hand with a replica of ‘the Jagged Blade.’ Some people even say that I achieved the ability to render myself invisible to the naked eye. The truth of the matter is: I did disappear.

No, I never knew contentment during my tenure in the Show; and I was never ever dull."