Fed Up

My name is David Geoffrey Courtenay, but that isn't my real name. My real name is Joseph-August Bonnevie. I haven't heard it in sixteen years. I'm twenty-two now, born June 2 1962. My family and I moved to the United States from Lacoste, France when I was five. I have an older brother, Claude, who is a thirty-three year old lawyer, and who had a twin, Daniel. Daniel didn't leave France until I was about thirteen, and him twenty-four. He'd mixed in with the wrong crowd, and it followed him to the United States. He didn't survive past twenty-five. Besides Claude and Daniel, I have a sister, Audrey, who is three years older. She's always aspired to be a chef, and I believe that she probably is now. I haven't seen my dad in years; I received news of my mother's death three and a half years ago.

I'm tall and pale; I look sick, which I am. But I'll get to that later. I have - well, I have an afro. It's light blonde, pale like the rest of me. My eyes are light blue and heavily circled. I keep a bit of a scruffy goatee. I have dark dots running up each arm, from following Daniel's footsteps. I look like I have muscle, but I don't think I'm really that strong. Most of the time I'm a little bit shaky, but I try to cover it up. I shiver a lot.

Before I settled into what I do now, I wanted to be a firefighter. I know. It's cheesy. But something appealed to me about going into those burning buildings and saving people and heroic shit like that. The only downside was that it isn't the most highpaying job ever.