The Second Generation and the Alterity (CKII)

[Izulde]

When I was 5 years old, I fell so deeply in love with Kate Upton that I swore I never wanted to look at another girl.

My father laughed when I confessed and told me, "Son, when you're old enough to marry Kate, she'll be too old to you. As sure as the world is green, there's an abundance of Kates. Or so you'll find. But go ahead, enjoy your love for now. She's certainly a good choice."

My mother was far less supportive when I told her. She shrugged and said, "She's pretty enough and the girl's seen a lot of the world. People also know who she is and that counts for something. But beauty fades soon and all her bouncing and bubbliness won't amount to much in the end. You're also far too young to be in love. Concentrate on something else."

But how could I cast my eyes elsewhere? The very circumstances of my birth, the firstborn son of a couple known for their love affair, bound me forever to Cupid, to Eros, to whatever other non-Greco-Roman name given to the male deities of romance and passion. My younger brother and sister could afford to be interested in other pursuits (dragons and lyre-playing, respectively). And so I took my father's advice, spending hours gazing on the picture of Kate on my wall, wondering to myself what would have happened if it happened that she was born later or I earlier. Would the shifting in temporal placement have radiated out into branches of possibilities that could conceivably, ultimately, end up in our marriage?

Oh, I know my grandmother would have been scandalized and huffed, "That girl is even lower than that Middleton woman - not even average!" But even as a small boy, I knew nobody in the family took my grandmother seriously about anything. They all just smiled and nodded, and my grandfather and father would talk about sports cars, while my mother looked at the ancestral tapestry on the wall, doing her best to ignore the conversations and my little brother racing through the centuries old house yelling, "I'm a dwagon! Fear my fire!"

But I would have done it anyway, even with Grandmother's scorn and Mother's shaking her head in disapproval. But Father would have cheered me on and winked whenever either of the two females pursed their lips, and *his* parents would have been simply happy for me. And anyhow, it isn't as if Mother had room to talk. She married Father after all, who was poor and common, as in love with him as I was with Kate. On the other hand, Mother was furious when Father published the story of their courtship. She was so angry, in fact, she didn't speak to him for a week, frostily declaring that under no circumstances was the world at large to know anything about our family's private affairs or history, and now every ordinary Tom, Harry, and Dick was going to get the idea that he could play up to and win young girls who were clearly their superiors and that was going to cause a lot of problems for a lot of people.

She got over it in the end, though. Probably because Grandmother agreed with her.

But getting back to my original story, I wondered if, in this altered timescape, Kate and I was a reality. Or, would the very constellation of factors of time and place have completely disrupted our identities as I and Kate Upton? Would she even *be* Kate Upton? Or would she be Mary, perhaps brunette? Would she still have the stunning vivacity that made even my father grin when he saw her dancing on Youtube? Would I also have a different name and would I still have the same personality? After all, the perpetuation of specific genes is all a matter of chance, so the very fact of a different point of insertion in time's stream would point to, if not an emotional and cognitive alternative, at least a physical one. But in counterpoint, if my premise of my fate as a devotee of romance and desire (or so I felt when I was 5, but did not sufficiently have the vocabulary at the time to express it in those terms), is correct, then *that* is at least a fixed point which would not alter. Unless of course I was born after my brother. Then it would have been he who received the karmic destiny and then the tapestry I am trying to so carefully weave would snarl and tangle in on itself.

And so I wondered about this now Kate and I, and this other-Kate-but-not-Kate and me-but-not-me and pondered the actuality and potential alterities of our lives and what-might-have-been lives.

Little did I know that these early ruminations would be but the foreshadowing of what ultimately did happen. No, Kate Upton does not figure beyond this, no matter how fine a figure she still has. And I daresay there will be many of you, those of you who hate strange stories at least, who will shut the book and walk away quickly. My father's story grounded itself in reality, and though wonderful and absurd events happened, they were all plausible. I am not my father and the impossible happened to me, and this story is concerned with things that can not have happened. Or maybe they are things which might have happened, given a differing set of events.

In any case, I suppose I should introduce myself, though many of you no doubt have guessed already.

My name is Louis Hunter-Suchet.

This is the picture of Kate I had on my wall when I was five.