A heartwarming story
Of Behr's childhood
Done in the Everything2 website fashion!
Set to the music of Enya!
Behr's first memories are of a small shack that might have been in what is now called Lebanon. My mother would sometimes claim to be a Palestinian woman. At other times she would tell son Behr that she was of Egyptian stock. When she would drink a lot of wine, she would tell Behr that she was part of an organization set on the destruction of what was then the fairly recently appeared state of Israel. My mother was not to be believed when she drank wine. She had a moustache then and later a full beard.
Each time on my leaving home
I run back to my mother's arms,
One last hold and then it's over.
Then there was father. He was a strong personality and a world traveler of sorts. As I was growing up somewhere in the Middle East without being told exactly where (for security purposes, my father and mother would tell me), he would disappear for many months at a time, sometimes in a really nice Italian suit and sometimes in a military uniform with many medals hanging from it but no country of origin or loyalty being mentioned along with the large collection of medals. Often son Behr would wonder who had given him all these medals if he owed loyalty to no one country. Wouldn't a president or king or a chancellor or prime minister or queen or at least a count have to arrange to bestow these medals upon him? Behr was often perplexed.
Then, when son Behr was seven years old, mother Sofia and father Wolfgang (full name Wolfgang Beng Goats according to records later uncovered by the aforementioned Behr who is also your friend and writer), picked up the pieces and moved the family to Germany. It was not long after the war and father Wolfgang had purchased a small house that was adjacent, and in fact attached to the Berlin Wall. It was here that father Wolfgang homeschooled son Behr before the concept of homeschooling had been made popular, teaching him important things. Much of it had to do with how Behr's dad was helping to rebuild Germany, which had been split it two as a final insult after two unprovoked military attacks by the imperialist nations of Great Britain and France over the span of some twenty odd years. Father and Mother were both very strict in their upbringing of Behr and any time that Behr strayed in his code of conduct he would see the business end of father's shaving strap or would be thrown into the backyard pit where Norweigan wolves would maul Behr for a period of time that lasted different lengths of time depending on the severity of the offense. This taught Behr respect and honor, which he carries in high regard to this day.
Watching me, you know I cry,
You wave a kiss to say goodbye,
Feel the sky fall down upon me!
When son Behr was thirteen years of age, his parents had a feisty argument. Mother was yelling in her mother tongue and father was yelling back in German, which is an easy language to exhibit madness in. I remember at the end of their fight, mother was on her knees, her tears coming to an uneasy rest in her beard, as father repeatedly yelled, "Achtung!" at such a close distance to her face that his spittle mixed with the tears in her beard to create a watery zone that was freaky in both appearance and in its nature.
We lived on the side of the wall you weren't thinking about just now, and it was a complicated trip to the airport, but my father brought me with him and told me along the way that I would have to walk, scrape and barter my way back to the cottage (which is what he called our home, even though it was made of stone and was hardly in any way what one would consider a cottage). It took son Behr four days to get back, as he was repeatedly picked up, questioned, tortured and molested by communists who were patrolling the area near the airport. When I told them I would not deal with them because of the role the Soviet Union had in the most recent unprovoked attack upon the fatherland, I was put in a pit, not with Norweigan wolves, but with a hardy blonde woman with very thick legs who made the thirteen year old Behr make love to her over and over for eighteen hours, all while telling him of the benefits of communism. Behr played along but was not fooled. He eventually returned to the cottage, as it was called by his father, something already mentioned but which bears repeating, and tried to console his brokenhearted mother.
All I am, a child with promises
All I have, are miles full of promises of home.
Not long after, in 1967, Behr and mother Sofia would book passage on an ocean liner that was actually a Greek freighter, and head to America. We had to live in the boiler room for most of the journey and were thrown table scraps by the unearthly Greeks and their unclean hands. We were only physically and sexually abused by the Greeks a handful of times before we made port in Maryland and began our new life in the state where the great Fort McHenry is located and reminds us of the courage and determination of the always correct Americans.
Baltimore became our home and we did not care that it was the so-called summer of love because we had nothing but our pain to keep us warm that summer. It was then that I began frequenting the whores and angering mother, who would then compare me with my father, who she said was no good, despite referring to him as brave and "stalwart" (a word she used frequently whenever my father's name came up, which was Wolfgang).
I was instructed to stay away from the whores and the strippers, both of which were then and are now great weaknesses for your friend Behr. I was to find friends in the city of Old Baltimore and convince them that we had been friends since we were in diapers. I found four good friends in characters known as Brian Gales, Paul Cheery, Big Jim "Jif" Regin and Mack MacKunkle. They would later deny ever knowing me, much like the disciple of Jesus known as Peter, and treat your friend Behr with unkindnesses, likely because they found out he was of foreign stock and not native American as Behr claims to this day despite evidence to the contrary (some of which I have presented above). They were and are bastards, although I sometimes still will play nine holes of golf with Brian Gales, the wimpiest of the bunch.
If only I could stay with you,
My train moves on, you're gone from view,
Now I must wait until it's over.
In 1972, Behr married his stripper girlfriend Vera Shame (possibly a stage name) and gave her all his money. Behr's father (Wolfgang) had been sending money to the states to help mother (Sofia) and son (Behr) to get established and to live a decent life. I learned in reaching adulthood that my father was a triple agent, a top notch spy who worked for three governments at the same time, the United States, the Soviet Union and the Third Reich. He was very good at what he did and was paid handsomely, and due to his abilities as a spy and his own handsomeness, he had a James Bond type lifestyle with lots of drinking, high profile friends and floozies dripping their sexuality all over them. Unfortunely, his lifestyle was bogged down by bearded wife and bald son. We were lucky to receive his checks, which allowed Behr to get an advanced education and move into the realm of sales and marketing, and in 1973, Behr began to sell high end vacuum cleaners door to door. A lot of money was made because Behr is very good at sales due to likeable personality and lack of a conscience.
Around the time of Behr's beautiful marriage to Vera, mother committed suicide by dissolving herself in a tub filled with acid of one kind or another and due to a mistake in planning her head stayed out of the tub during the dissolution and came after Behr, which had no lasting emotional impact and caused no serious emotional damage to son Behr. This had come as a result of seeing a photograph of Behr's father (Wolfgang) posing with a cardboard cut-out of the St. Pauli Girl somewhere in Germany, which he was working hard to reunify while being paid large sums of money by his Third Reich associates. Life would never be the same.
Father remained aloof and distant, even after Behr flew to Germany and then to England to search for him, following hot leads. This led to much sadness and drinking heavy amounts of alcohol (beer is served in pints in England). He seemed to not want to be found by Behr, even though Behr had seen glimpses of him hiding behind trees and bushes, disguised as a princess of the royal family of Swaziland, and peering at the funeral of his wife, who was also Behr's mother.
Days will pass, your words to me,
It seems so long; eternity,
But I must wait until it's over.
Behr's father taught him much wisdom in the brief time they had together, but Behr no longer knows if his father is alive or dead. There has been no communication since a postcard arrived at the Behr home in 1987 from Switzerland. Although the postcard was unsigned and nothing was written on it, Behr assumes it was from his father and that the blank space was a cryptic message relaying the emptiness that existed in Wolfgang Beng Goats' life since he was away from his family. It is generally thought that my father is being pursued by the agents of countless governments and thus cannot surface to hang out with his son and go to a Baltimore Orioles game even in their state of the art stadium, which was built with blood money.
Behr has been divorced from Vera since 1983 and is free for dating.
This song, "Evacuee," appears on the Enya album called Shepherd Moons and should be listened to while you read this article.