I was born in a remote monastery in the Himalayas, the son of a Swiss banker who’d undergone an intense religious awakening after watching Seven Years In Tibet as his in-flight movie and an Alpine skier who cut her teeth on the snowy slopes of Aspen. Until the age of four the humble tongue of Tibetan monks was the only language that crossed my lips, and I was swaddled in blankets made of goat skin, as my parents had launched all their earthly possessions out the cargo bay doors of the plane that brought them to the edge of the world. Somewhere down between those icy peaks, a Tibetan goat herder found himself a very nice Rolex and a pair of alligator shoes, size 11 1/2.
Life wasn’t always easy, but when I was sixteen I was sent to an English speaking boarding school in Switzerland where I spent much time in the company of sons of the British aristocracy. My tutors taught me in the ways of art, philosophy, and the sciences, while my boon compassions taught me of liquid courage, suit fittings, buggery, and no small skill with the blade.
Finally a man, I opened a riding stable for Lippinzaner stallions who had stolen my heart in my schooling days. Their broad sweaty backs and flowing manes bore me across many continents, to the wide open plains of North America, to the halls and throne rooms of European royalty, to the Great Wall of China where unfortunately I was arrested and found myself clad in chains for my Tibetan backstory laid out so comprehensively in Paragraph One.
Those were dark days (literally, I had no windows in my cell). My soul rebelled against stagnation and the scourge of human imprisonment. I yearned with all my heart to run wild and free like my Lippinzaner stallions across the nations of the Earth.
Finally, fate intervened; I received a visitor. Academy Award nominee Liam Neeson.
“Are you so desperate to fight criminals that you lock yourself in to take them on one at a time?”
His commanding presence, regal tones, and bangin’ goatee thrilled me, but I could not e’er look my horses in the eye again if my soul bore the stain of a lie. So I told him that, while I do indeed bear what some might call an uncanny resemblance to Christian Bale, Bruce Wayne was in fact in the next cell, and Mr. Neeson graciously apologized and went on his way.
Fortunately, I had spent the last several months digging a tunnel under my cell and out beyond the prison walls, so by the time Mr. Wayne was doing his fateful flower picking on the eastern slopes, I was skipping merrily to freedom.