AMORALMAN: A True Story and Other Lies (Random House Large Print) - Softcover

DelGaudio, Derek

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593295382 ISBN 13: 9780593295380

Verlag: Random House Large Print, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

Truth and lies are two sides of the same coin. But who's flipping it? A thought-provoking and brilliantly entertaining work of nonfiction from one of the world's leading deceivers, the creator and star of the astonishing theater show and forthcoming film In & Of Itself.

Derek DelGaudio believed he was a decent, honest man. But when irrefutable evidence to the contrary is found in an old journal, his memories are reawakened and Derek is forced to confront--and try to understand--his role in a significant act of deception from his past.

Using his youthful notebook entries as a road map, Derek embarks on a soulful, often funny, sometimes dark journey, retracing the path that led him to a world populated by charlatans, card cheats, and con artists. As stories are peeled away and artifices are revealed, Derek examines the mystery behind his father's vanishing act, the secret he inherited from his mother, the obsession he developed with sleight-of-hand that shaped his future, and the affinity he felt for the professional swindlers who taught him how to deceive others. And once he finds himself working as a crooked dealer in a big-money Hollywood card game, Derek begins to question his own sense of morality, and discovers that even a master of deception can find himself trapped inside an illusion.

A M O R A L M A N is a wildly engaging exploration of the fictions we live as truths. It is ultimately a book about the lies we tell ourselves and the realities we manufacture in others.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Derek DelGaudio is a writer and performer, primarily known for his highly-acclaimed theater show, IN & OF ITSELF. He served as the Artist in Residence for Walt Disney Imagineering and cofounded the performance-art collective, A.BANDIT. Mr. DelGaudio lives in New York City.

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THE ORIGIN OF A LIE
 
Back in the late ’60s, on Long Island, a man named George discovered that the neighborhood hardware store he had managed for the last three years was actually owned by the Mob and they were using it to launder money. After making this discovery, George, a former naval officer, grew increasingly uncomfortable with his unintentional involvement in a criminal enterprise. When his employers started asking him to run errands, to take envelopes from here to there, he gave his two weeks’ notice. In response, his employers threatened him and his family. George packed the station wagon and fled to Los Angeles to start a new life with his wife, his two older daughters, and his new baby girl, Kim.
 
From the moment she was born, Kim knew only chaos. Her mother, George’s wife, was a cruel drunk whose shrill voice set the loud and violent tone for the household. Kim and her sis­ters hung out at the beach long after the sun went down, to avoid going home. Eventually their father, too, grew weary of his wife’s abuse. Kim never blamed him for leaving.
 
Rebelling against her mother, Kim became kind and reserved. She was a gangly girl with long hair bleached blond by the sun. By age sixteen, Kim towered above her peers at nearly six feet tall. Despite her imposing stature, she felt invisible. That’s what drew her to my father. Years later she told me, “He was the first boy who ever paid attention to me.”
 
They met in a small mountain town in California. Dad was a good-looking kid with dark hair and olive skin. He spotted Kim in the lobby of a ski lodge and struck up a conversation. They chatted for a bit, exchanged numbers, and a few weeks later they went on their first and only date.
 
Nine months later I was born.
 
My father was a rich kid from Beverly Hills. His parents didn’t approve of my mother. As far as they were concerned, she was a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, and they were not about to let one mistake destroy their son’s promising future.
 
I imagine my father, a college student, sitting on his bed. He’s staring at the phone and the weight of the world is on his shoulders. Downstairs his mother, normally a model of grace, is smoking a cigarette and frantically pacing. His father, a mattress mogul, who made millions selling overpriced beds to hospitals, is sitting in his favorite leather chair nursing a glass of scotch. They have just told my father to call my sixteen-year-old mother and tell her exactly what they discussed. My father rehearses his lines:
 
I have my whole life ahead of me. And while you are entitled to have the baby, I cannot allow your choice to ruin the rest of my life. So I’m calling to tell you I will have no part in the child’s life. This is the last time we will speak. Please do not contact me again.
 
I don’t know how long he sat there by the phone, but I’m certain making that call and saying those words to my sweet, young, confused, vulnerable mother was the most difficult thing my father ever had to do.
 
Or at least it would have been, had he called. But he didn’t. And while I’d like to think my father wanted to call, the truth is he couldn’t even find enough courage to be a coward. Instead, my mother heard through the grapevine that his parents had shipped him off to another state, far from her and her mistake.
 
My pregnant mother was living in a cramped apartment with her alcoholic mother, who survived solely on welfare and child support. My grandmother suggested her daughter, my mother, have an abortion. Considering the circumstances, that was arguably the most thoughtful advice my grandma had ever given her daughter.
 
By this time my mother’s father, George, had started a new family with his secretary-turned-wife. When Mom told George she was going to have a baby, he mustered up all the compassion he could to say, “You’ve ruined your life.” To this day, my mother has never heard him utter the words “I love you.”
 
After I was born, Mom’s priority was getting us out from under Grandma’s roof. A wise decision on her part. The few memories I have of my grandmother include the time she came home on the back of a motorcycle, holding a half-empty bottle of wine; the time her new “boyfriend” showed me his Hitler Youth knife; and her casual use of the N-word.
 
Mom dropped out of high school and got a job stocking shelves at a health-food store. Her two older sisters had their own apartments and we couch-surfed between them until Mom could afford a place of our own. She found an old laundry room that had been converted into living space. It was a single room with brick walls and a concrete floor. It had a toilet and a sink, but no kitchen.
 
We used a camping stove to cook our meals. Mom would clear an area on the floor and screw the gas can into the burner. I had the important job of making sure a gust of wind from out­side didn’t sneak by and blow the flame out before it reached the stove. I took great pride in my work.
 
One day my mother hesitated before striking the match. She asked me, “Do you want to know how this works?” After I nodded, she explained that the match was made out of various chemicals, and how striking the match on the box created fric­tion, which ignited the chemicals using the oxygen in the air as fuel. Somehow, my mother had gotten her GED and was going to school to become a firefighter.
 
We didn’t have much, but it felt like enough. I felt like enough. Then I watched another boy fly.
 
I was five, my mother was teaching me how to swim at a pub­lic pool. I wore floaties around my biceps and my mother held me on the surface of the water yelling, “Kick! Kick!”
 
In the center of the pool I saw a little boy standing on his father’s shoulders, while the mother cheered them on. The father and son counted to three. On three, the dad propelled the boy into the air. The boy rocketed into the sky, defying gravity, flying so high that he touched the clouds. Eventually the boy returned from the heavens, crashing into the water, and emerged with a smile as his mother and father laughed in delight.
 
We got out of the pool and, as Mom dried me off, I asked her, “Where’s my dad?”
 
“I don’t know, kiddo.”
 
Not long after, Mom started dating Ken, a man with broad shoulders and a caterpillar mustache. He took us camping. It was my first time outside of the city. I eagerly helped Ken set up the tent and collect firewood. He showed me how to bait a hook, and I sat next to him as he fished. Most kindergartners wouldn’t have sat so patiently for so long.
 
The next day, I became violently ill and our serene excursion came to an abrupt end. We packed up the car and drove back to the city, where my mother nursed me back to health in our tiny apartment. There wasn’t enough room for Ken, so he left. We never saw him again.
 
Later that year, when I was six years old, my mother moved us to a slightly larger apartment in the same building, on the second floor. It had a kitchen, so we didn’t have to cook our meals like campers. It also had a separate bedroom, which allowed for more privacy. I’d fall asleep on the bed. When my mother was ready to go to sleep, she’d make room for herself, picking me up and moving me to the cot next to the bed.
 
One night I was tossing and turning, trying to fall asleep, while my mother was in the living room. I was afraid of being alone in the dark, so she always left our bedroom door cracked, allowing...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Large Print
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593295382
• ISBN 13: 9780593295380
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Purmerul LTD; https://strengholt.nl/en/; ; 22 Liuleburgaz Str., floor 4, app. 9; Plovdiv; 4000; Bulgarien