My father's name was Simon.

My mother had no name, no face, no body. She was nothing but a womb, an os, a vagina, a vulva, the last-mentioned temptation opening, wide and saucy, onto the fires of hell.

In Nazareth was I born, to a carpenter they called Joseph and his wife Miriam. She had spawned a bastard before me, Yahshua his name. My big brother, a royal pain in the tuchus.

But I was his faithful puppydog brother, and in later life he put all his faith in me.

It was misplaced.

It was not misplaced.

In Kerioth was I born, between Beersheba and the Dead Sea in southern Judah.

Reuben was my father, Cyborea my mother. He lay with her, their organs of procreation took on mass and swell, seeds were sown and found purchase in her moist soil.

Thus it is with husbands and wives.

In the dead middle of that same night, Mom split the air with a scream. "I dreamed," said she, as Reuben calmed her, "that I whelped a son of such staggering wickedness that he brought ruin, utter and enduring, to our people."

When out I slithered, my shock of red hair a sure sign of criminality and bewitchment, Cyborea wove a basket of green rushes and floated me out to sea. Upon the isle of Skariot did that frail cradle drift ashore, there to be found by a discreet maid who conveyed me to her childless queen. The queen, pretending pregnancy, brought me forth, in the fullness of time, as hers. Soon after came along a second prince, her true son this time--though he may have been another rush-baby, so numerous were we in those days.

Birth? What birth?

No birth, no childhood.

The sweet oblivion of not-being-Judas I then enjoyed.

I enjoy it still.