“Why you are never coming with us to our boat in Antibes?” Giancarlo, my father’s Italian business partner, asks me through his thick accent as he furrows his brow. “You are not liking to be with us?”

It’s a dark boreal evening in January, 1977, and I’m in Paris for my junior year of college, living in a palatial duplex in the chic Montparnasse neighborhood with Giancarlo and Patricia, his American wife. When I arrived in September, they invited me to crash in their chambre de bonne—maid’s quarters. When I went to look for my own place, not wanting to be the homme who came to dîner, they were offended, and insisted I stay with them.

I first felt pure hatred in kindergarten, when I met a boy named Travis. He was humanlike in appearance, jelly-stained and sticky like the rest of us, but in reality he was a putrid beast, crafted out of pure malevolence and hellfire. He probably hated me for the same reasons most people did—because I was the annoying little chunker with big glasses and blunt-cut bangs—but I’d like to think that he was just intimidated, acting out of fear. That, perhaps, behind my huge glasses were eyes so full of wisdom and truth that it pained him to be in the same room as me. Maybe he knew that I was destined for greatness, and despised me for it. Maybe he had never encountered such an electric energy before. Either that or my stupid haircut.

I’m very concerned about marriage; not mine, mind you – I enjoy all the benefits of life as a trophy husband – but matrimony as an institution is in trouble, and infidelity is a major contributing factor.

I’m very familiar with the best resources: “The Five Love Languages,” “Weekend to Remember” conferences, Marriage Encounter, and “Love and Respect” seminars. As I studied each approach, though, I grew troubled. Something crucial had been overlooked. I racked my brain, but I could never put my finger on it.

Above my grandfather’s bed hangs a picture of his parents taken in Italy just before they came to America. My great-grandfather is wearing his cavalry uniform and my great-grandmother stands beside him. She’s a large woman. Not round—square. No, cubed. Four feet by four feet by four feet. On Christmas Eve, my grandfather and his eight siblings would wrestle for her stockings because they figured Santa had an obligation to just keep filling until the thing was topped off, no matter how deep.

I want to write a book that will make a lot of people very angry. I call it Harry Goes to Disneyland. It will start with the protagonist, Harry, on an airplane, a baby behind him screaming. Then he will arrive at his destination: Disneyland! Only Disneyland is closed. The airplane will have lost his luggage, and the hotel his reservation. From there, things will go downhill. Harry will be forced to stay with his ex-wife’s parents, who will constantly ask him why a grown man wants to go to Disneyland by himself. (Their voices will be nasal, and I will write their speech in dialect.) Finally, on Harry’s last day in town, Disneyland will re-open. Harry will spend hours looking for a parking spot, and someone will hit his rental car. After completing two hours of paperwork, he will spend the rest of the day waiting in lines. Although he will get to go on a couple of rides, they will be incredibly disappointing. The novel will end with Harry back on a plane, another baby screaming. I am certain that this novel will sell millions.