There’s physical description lacking. If this isn’t to be a movie then it better flesh with words. And I’ve probably got the best perspective for it.

I’m the point at infinity. It all orients to me. I’m the baby.

Once upon a time there were tribes or at least extended families. Each member wasn’t so rare and precious and loaded as today. Especially the baby…everybody else’s baby…the limit of the family wisdom.

I’m the focus at infinity. When you look at a picture, I’m the implied point toward which everything aims, the place where parallel lines like railroad tracks meet. Usually you look at a picture from outside, and you can see me suggested by everything. Imagine a view described from where I am. My vision is wide-angle, my lens telephoto.

I can see my great-great grandparents’ fingertips, my great-grandparents’ elbows, my grandparents’ noses. My parents and my older siblings and all their accoutrements weave in my immediate vision like dancers around a Maypole, like maggots on a turkey neck.

My folks are in their 50s now, but I can see them younger; all the slides and snapshots (tucked into odd white corners in scrapbooks or scabbed on their backs with the clots of old paste) have informed me, as well as the oral histories. My mother was some kind of beauty but to me my father is the one with the looks.

I’m not gay. I don’t find men more attractive than women. But I have an honest eye, and my father had classic handsome features and posture, while my mother offered little beyond cute roundness. She was a platinum Betty Boop, Dagwood’s Blondie, Mattel’s Barbie. I prefer dark hair, or something more sultry.

Mom was round-eyed, round-faced, curly-haired, buxom, slim-wasted. Her eyes are blue, her hair was originally pale blonde, her complexion was once small-pored. I understand she had a ready laugh; I’m sure she was bubbly. Based on what my sisters have told me, she was probably a stick in bed.

My father was tall, slim, straight-backed, with thick dark hair, hazel eyes, and large features like Nicholas Cage. His olive skin has aged better than Mom’s.

Now she’s fat. Her breasts enter the room before the rest of her and she has this unattractive habit of standing with her arms crossed above them, like they’re a shelf. When she sits they sag to where her waistline must be under her polyester tunic top.

She colors her hair herself, and it’s now thinning and strawlike. But she still has a good laugh. She’s a creative worrier. She’s easy to bait and nag. She’s a good woman and she’s boring.

Dad’s actually handsome. He stands up straight and he’s dignified about his hair: no combover. His face is getting a little craggy as he wrinkles. He exercises every day so he’s still fit. I have no way of knowing this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if old Dad is good in bed.

He’s romantic. Occasionally brilliant, he was apparently confused by an early exposure to Wordsworth and Blake and the influence of a military father (his dad was a real tyrant), and he now has strongly-held and possibly pre-verbal confusions about this country’s foreign policy. He can be repetitive and tiresome, but he’s passionate enough to be interesting.

I’m not sure why they got married. Then again, I have trouble seeing the marriage motivation in anyone; as much as I have loved and watched Emily I still don’t understand why she had to marry Steve.

I’m not sure why my folks got married but it probably had something to do with family. Parents and kids. There would have been pressure to marry instead of cohabitate, and then came us. Shit: five of us…what were they thinking?

My mother has two brothers and Dad has three older sisters, so there are a lot of cousins, but it’s mostly my siblings I see when I look around.

The twins are 27 and they’re dark-haired like Dad. They are fraternal of course, being of different gender, but they look as similar as a brother and sister can. Thick-haired, hazel-eyed, tall and graceful. Emily is beautiful. Ned is attractive.

My other two sisters and I take after our mother. We’re blonde and blue-eyed and we have to be careful not to appear cute.

Liz is 24 and has had a rebellious wild unhealthy life. She has many stories. She has AIDS. She’s in remission right now, very medicated, very thin.

Laney is 22 and a rabid ecologist. She used to be a selfish shellfish vegetarian and now she’s a devout vegan. She succeeds at looking so odd she’s unattractive. We’re closest in age and best understand one another.

I’m 19. My full name is Eric Gorman Essex, but I go by Rick. I’m mostly vegetarian but there’s violence in me. Six years ago I brought a gun to school and shot two schoolmates and a teacher. I wasn’t actually trying to kill them; I was trying to make the situation so bad that I’d kill myself.

Since then I’ve had a lot of therapy. I’ve learned to control myself. But I still hear the urge to violence in me. Mostly now it’s around sex. I have to allieve myself at least twice a day. Myself. I’m not sexually active. Good thing, too. Because there’s no one I want more than my sister Emily.

Got your attention? It gets mine. I find my other sisters unattractive. Oh, I know they’re goodlooking enough; they’re blonde and blue-eyed and young and not deformed. But I’ve always been put off by their feet, repelled by the way Laney tends to spit when she’s talking with excitement, disgusted by Liz’s fingernail-chewing. I wonder, even, if these minute irritations are Nature’s way of avoiding incest? I mean, I’m virile and motivated lately, and I do not want these siblings.

But Emily’s different. She and Ned are so much older that I didn’t grow up with them. Familiar strangers. And she’s so pretty. Her brown hair is glossy like satin ribbons. Her eyes are sometimes green, sometimes brown, always warm. She has a grin that looks like it’s going to go on forever, past the edges of her smooth cheeks, past the frame of my vision, splitting the world laterally to let in nothing but good humor. Her skin feels like silk. Her earlobes are exquisite. I can’t help it. I can’t keep her out of my imagination when I love myself.

Is she coming alive yet? I can see her in my head but I don’t know if she’s vivid on this page. Cancer survivors say you can’t know what it’s like unless you’ve been there. I guess all survivors claim that. But it can’t be true, or there’s no point in writing. I have to believe life’s describable. I’ll try some more.