It all started with James Frey, who gained national infamy when his some of his claims in his memoir, "A Million Little Pieces" were shown to be untrue. You'd think that after that, authors and publishers would wise up and that sort of thing would never happen again. But in the last two weeks, now less than two other memoirs were exposed to be factually challenged. More so than even Frey's book.
Last week, it was revealed Misha Defonseca's book, "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years," in which she claims that, as a Jewish child, she lived with a pack of wolves in the woods during the Holocaust, was untrue. She didn't live with wolves, nor in the woods. She wasn't even Jewish. Her parents were killed, but not because they were Jews, but rather because they were resistance fighters.
You'd think that the publishers might have been a little suspicious about the fact she claimed to live in the woods, being protected by wolves. But I guess they didn't doubt her truthiness because she mentioned the Holocaust. I mean, who would be a scuzzy enough to lie about the Holocaust for personal gain.
If that wasn't bad enough. this week it was revealed that Margaret B. Jones lied in her memoir "Love and Consequences". In it, she claimed she, a white woman, was raised in poverty by a black foster mother and sold drugs for a gang in a tough Los Angeles neighborhood. Turns out she grew up in an affluent suburb with her biological parents. Never lived with a foster family, never lived in the Hood, never sold drugs for the Bloods.
Luckily, this trend in fake true stories is not going to change the way book publishers do business. Which is good because I have been shopping my memoir around. And unlike these others, my memoir is 100% true (wholly depending on your definition of the word "true". And "is". )
What's more, I have decided to print an excerpt from the first chapter here in my blog. I figure, what better way to get the bidding war started. The title, you impatiently ask?
RAISED BY POODLES, The Bill Gatevackes Story. A Memoir
Chapter one
Fleas are the bane of my existence.
Some might have called Sally a bitch. I called her mom.
She stood about 15 inches high at her highest point. She had intelligent eyes and grey fur which came to puffs at her ankles. She was the poodle, and she helped make me the man I am today.
How did I come to find myself in Sally's "pack". Well, I only heard this information second hand. So, I cannot verify the accuracy of this account.
My biological father is unknown to me. He could have been the lifeguard at the local pool. He could have been Englebert Humperdick. Or he could have been a member of the 1970 New York Football Giants. I just don't know. But I do know who my birth mom was.
My biological mother, I would later find out, was named Bambi Barbie, a teenage girl who found herself pregnant after sleeping with one of those 27 men. I like to think that she, freaked out by the thought of having a child at 17, gave me up to adoption and that is how I found myself in Sally's happy home. But the truth was far worse.
My mother was a Tabsca addict. You might be unfamiliar with "Tabsca", a hallucinogen with a cult popularity in the 1970s. It was a dangerous cocktail of "Tab" and "Fresca". Separately, they were refreshing carbonated beverages. Combined, they formed a highly powerful psychotropic drug 10 times as potent as LSD.
One November, my birth mother went shopping for Thanksgiving after a six day Tabsca bender. She says the last thing she remembers is freebasing a dose of the "Tan Demon" in the car right before going into the supermarket. The next thing she remembers is arriving back at her apartment and seeing a 13 lb. turkey the car seat. She assumes that while in the store, she put switched me out with the poultry. She put my jumper on the bird and left the store with it, leaving me in the refrigerated bin with the other turkeys. Such is the horrific effects of Tabsca.
When I related this tale of abandonment, people expect me more upset than I am about the event. "She got you confused with a frozen turkey!" they ask. "Doesn't that piss you off?"
I guess I should be angrier. But I take a rather zen approach to it. This is what fate had in store for me. It was supposed to happen. This is the way my life was supposed to go.
That, and I'm glad my birth mother mistook me for a turkey while we were still in the supermarket and not when she was preparing Thanksgiving dinner.
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That's all for now. Agents and publishers, contact me if you want more. As to what to expect from future chapters, here is a little taste:
"Sally named me Wrrrraowrrr, which translates into human as "Fluffy". I guess this is an ironic reference to my being completely devoid of fur. Kind of like calling a bald man "Curly", a tall man "Tiny" or a dumb man "President of the United States""
"I remember getting that first, simple, black leather collar. I knew then that I finally belonged."
"The family cat didn't like me. I still have the scars to prove it. But I gave as good as I got."
"I remember to this day exactly what I said when social services took me away from Sally. I said, "Aaaaooorrrrrroooo!!!""
"He said "Try these man, you'll taste the raaaaiiiinnnnbooow!" That was the day my Skittles addiction began."
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