The universe began with a big bang. Incidentally, so did I. Or at least, that’s what my father told me every night while tucking me into my bed in the attic of the brothel our family owned. It was a very middle-of-the road brothel, a real working person’s whorehouse...

...From birth it seemed, I had been raised to resent the fancier brothels which were our competitors. “They think they’re better than us because they wash their sheets,” my father would say while hosing down a door knob that had become coated in a ubiquitous sticky substance...

...Though I’ve traveled wide and seen much, and really should have an answer to the question “What was the ubiquitous sticky substance that coated the door knobs of our family’s brothel so thickly that we had to keep a high pressure hose on the premises to remove it?” I do not...

...It was not the most obvious substance, of that we were sure. Nor was it the second most obvious, or the third. It might have been the least obvious, but that seemed far-fetched...

... Either way, I spent the best years of my youth hosing down door knobs, serving watered down port wine in old mayonaisse jars and reminding guests as that if they wanted clean sheets, they should try the Motel 6...

...I never quite knew how my family came to own this particular brothel, as opposed to another one, or no brothel at all. I was told that several decades ago, one of my ancestors won it in a poker game, which raised more questions than it answered...

...In any event, however one comes to inherit a brothel in a poker game, I was born with a big bang, though my mother insisted it, like the family brothel, was more middle-of-the road...

... My father never seemed to envy his fancier competition, perhaps he was too busy hosing door knobs and swearing that “The day a cleaned sheet lies under a customer in this house, will be the day I quit the business!” And it was, but that’s another, much longer story.