The Balcony King

This is a memoir of my experience in downtown Chicago with Trumans Syndrome. The entire episode lasted 23 weeks and mostly occurred in and around my penthouse apartment. During that time, I was convinced I was on a reality TV show produced by HBO and that everything I did and everywhere I went was on camera. I was actually doing some spying for the US government at the time this started and so all of those details were fictionalized due to national security interests. In the beginning, when all this started, I saw commercials for the show. Soon after I was offered a real role in a commercial by an actual producer. I would never take an actual acting job as my fate veered towards fantasy and psychosis. The imaginary cameras started rolling, there were producers in my ears, there were stage lights covering my balcony and it seemed like almost everyone I encountered knew about the show, had seen it or was in on the plot. The conversation was endless, ranging from politics to comedy, to a side episode where I thought, for a day, that I was Jesus. It all unfolds like a fiction novel but this all happened to me. None of this is fabricated, just the names have been changed. I wrote The Balcony King in the third person, because in many ways, I was living outside myself at the time this all happened so my writing style reflects that experience. Enjoy.