The Memories of Eskar Wilde

"It's the main reason I've never enjoyed writing - this difficulty with knowing

how and where to begin. It's a particular challenge for me right now, being

already at the end of the story. The story of my life, that is.

I must be plain with you. I'm no author. I don't know how to structure

my "story" in a conventional way, though I am now reconciled to telling it.

Of course, whether you choose to read it is another matter, for it will surely

jump about in time as my memories do. But if you possess sufficient patience,

and a willingness to forgive my amateurish style, I'll explain to you how I

came to be telling the story of my life in a small Paris apartment on my

eighteenth birthday, with only my faithful black cat and a bottle of Domaine

Leroy Richebourg 2000 for company. I'm told the exercise may be therapeutic.

If it helps to know the short of it, it's a story of love and loss, guilt and

penance. Oh, and there are secrets and subterfuge and other such things of

which I'm not proud. And there's evil - I must foreshadow that, in fairness,

for you may find it disconcerting.

Perhaps you're questioning what a just turned eighteen-year-old could

know about such weighty matters. I don't resent your scepticism; you're right

to ask. I can tell you with certainty that no amount of reading and research

will prepare you for experiencing these phenomena. Even so, perhaps you

can learn a thing or two by reading about the mistakes that I have made."

E.H. Wilde