I

A First Doubling

He grabbed my arm and swung me over his head like a human lasso. Dizzily I went round and round, the world contracting to the tightness of his grip, the vortical breeze of rotation. Like the carnival Tilt-A-Whirl ride we’d shared a month earlier, everything around me seemed to spin in a fleeting, woozy blur—gray and black checked couch, glass-top coffee table, the television’s small green rectangle in a large blond wood box.

Suddenly he let go and I flew through the air, slamming against the plaster wall. I don’t remember the impact or falling, but when finally I opened my eyes my mother was standing over me screaming hysterically, tears streaming down reddened cheeks. “You’ve killed him!” she screeched at my father. “You’ve killed him!”

I was barely six years old. With the wind knocked out of me I couldn’t talk or move. The world slowly spun as I looked up at Mom, her face a trembling knot of fear and pain. I saw two of her. For the next couple of hours, there was two of everything. I’d never seen double before, never encountered the notion of dual images or the possibility that time, space, and happenstance could play tricks with the senses. Cradling me like a baby, she carried me to my bedroom. As she rubbed my forehead and tucked me into a soft blanket, I caught a glimpse in the mirror. Reflected in the bright surface were two of me.

By the time my father returned hours later, my eyesight was again normal. What a relief there weren’t two of him. I heard him enter the front door, and with a limp I slipped out the back. Even outside I could hear my parents violently arguing, though I could not make out the words. Their angry, contentious sounds pummeled me like fists, yet a second beating. My home seemed to be imploding.

The fort I had built in the backyard of rotting lumber, old screens, and bricks scavenged from a nearby vacant lot was gone, it too a victim of my father’s rabid temper. Constructed that morning, it had been a cozy, private space, a place for aloneness, of oneness. But it had lit my father’s blind ferocity, desecrating the suburban paradise of lawn, peonies and tomato plants he’d labored so hard to create. I was relieved the fort had disappeared the way you are glad a wound has healed. The only scar was invisible and inside me. By building my fort, I had damaged my home.

Double vision from physical injury or other trauma is hardly the same as having a doppelganger or double. But as a young child with a typically rich fantasy life, the distinction was illusory. Fairytales, movies, books, and campfire stories nourished ghoulish, second self notions. In the deep recesses of imagination, the possibility of doubleness, of a living shadow, of someone playing me like a thespian hunkered within me like a seed. Seeing double, however briefly, made such unsettling dreams almost palpable. But it hardly prepared me for the bizarre doublings that were yet to come.

Much later I realized that fear of a double or someone slipping into my identity was not merely the idle imaginings of a child. Confused, invented, and stolen identities have existed as long as humankind. In addition to mirrored selves and resemblances, assumed personalities have been created by famous imposters. They are diverse and often startlingly successful—Grey Owl (1888-1938), an Englishman who posed as an Ojibwe; murderer Christian Gerhartsreiter (b. 1961) who claimed to be a Rockefeller; and Sarah Edmonds (1841-1896) who masqueraded as a man so she could serve in the Civil War. Our cherished singular selfness is not always as distinct to the world around us as we think.

A person might think that their singularity is the one thing that can never be wrested away. But in these days of electronic identity theft for financial gain or ego satisfaction, imposters are legion. Our digital world creates enormous opportunities for humbugs and tricksters. Electronic posers, Facebook zombies, and doctored photos and phony drivers’ licenses are commonplace. Easily distracted, we become oblivious to secret sharers. Though I’ve never yet had a bank account raided or a tax refund filed by someone claiming to be me, muddled identities have haunted my life in curious and unexpected ways.

Call it doppelganger, second self, alter ego, lookalike, namesake, mirrored self, or something else, my life has been populated with doubleness beyond comfort. Forget clichés of “double your pleasure” or “twice is nice,” and the evil twins of low budget films. My encounters run the gambit from laughable coincidences to emotionally wrenching personal and public conflations cruelly mimicking individuality, at times almost a forced ventriloquism. Doubleness is a kind of shadow, cloud, or fog. You feel a semblance of yourself that is something other. It hangs over you. Stalks you.