In 1996 when Isaac Madsen laid eyes for the much first time on the green of the earth, his parents had just found haven in Sicily. His mother had been married to a pompous arriviste who had epitomized all the virtues she loathed in men. But for the helplessness of young ladies in Marathon then, she had been forced by her parents to marry the vain chief. And like all unhappy wives do, she sought pleasure in another man’s thighs but found more than she sought.
She fell in love with John Madsen who was everything the pompous chief wasn’t—articulate, brilliant, charming and jobless.
They got married—secured by her divorce settlements—in Longhorn, but as John’s new found job as a teacher was meagre, and Laura found fulfillment only in impulses, they could not afford the meretricious Longhorn life, and thus moved to Sicily, where the blue eyed personage was born.
—it must be Isaac,
Laura had said before his christening. —it must be biblical.
—You know how I feel about biblical names,
John answered. —everyone with such names are idealists. I wouldn’t want my son chasing after some puerile ideals of a man that might or might not have lived eons ago. And as for that particular choice of yours, well I’d be damned if I could burn my son on some alter just to please some god, and worse if he watches idly as I tie him on a pyre.
—but they’re secure,
She retorted. —oh “Isaac” is so secured. And my word is final now isn’t it?
And so the timid husband acquiesced.
It could be said credulously that it was truly on this day that Isaac was born for that day his father vowed to teach him to be his own man. One that was immune to phantasms and impervious to ideals, one who cultivates only in the field of now, and wastes no effort toiling in future gardens.
At a young age when he was, he struggled with insecurities. He
was a middle class boy who schooled in an institution for privileged cretins. He had been convinced vigorously by his mother that he was very smart and intelligent, and as such acted only smart and intelligent.
Still he wasn’t sure he was tall enough (he wasn’t), he felt he was not handsome enough (he was). Nonetheless he tried, as hard as his smart little mind could, to hide his thought behind his mask of erudition.
He also was a slave to forming strong impressions about people he had yet to meet. And as happens mostly when he gets proven wrong, he swears never to judge a book any longer. But as a little slave with only little drops of will, he manages only to loosen its grips, but sadly never could rid himself of it.
Also he read, carefully and selectively. His father never let him read Fitzgerald, or any of those books that “puts those ideas in your head.”