After I finished the reading, I waited a couple minutes, browsing books, until I left the bookstore - alone. All the women who’d watched me, who were so supportive, so attractive, were huddled in a group. They were friends, they were a community.

Once upon a time there was no sex, but sex was everywhere: in Laura's 6th grade locker with her roll-on deodorant, in Dr. Davidson's walk—slow and tight-calved, in Mr. Robinson's guitar—Cat Steven's "Wild World" each afternoon before the bell, in Mrs. Roger's wavy, knee- length red hair—smelling of Wella Balsam and cigarettes. 

By the time I arrived at the Phoenix airport the next summer I was thirty pounds heavier. I’d spent the previous nine months eating vending machine moonpies and packaged cookies in my dorm room.

This was the year Canseco was the first to join the 40/40 club, hitting over 40 homeruns and stealing 40 bases in the same season. 

My grandfather, his English name was Benson. As the houseboys opened the gates, he came out on the balcony and fired off a shotgun, boom, one or two blasts.

I made my mom promise me that she was going to live until she was 100 years old, and I would be 82 and we would die together, peacefully, holding hands. 

My siblings and I never liked each other as much as we did on those early mornings; we never made a better team. 

Carefully open the wrapping paper. Inside is Teddy Ruxbin. See his stupid face on the box. Fuck you, Teddy Ruxbin. He reads you bedtime stories if you put a cassette tape in his abdomen.

So a few weeks before that Christmas, I decided to do some detective work. I was interested in science and generally curious ...

So on this X-mas eve. There I was. Sitting in the basement. On an old blue sectional couch. Alone

Confessions don’t make good stories. 

 It doesn't take much for a curve to become a coil, for a bridge to become a cage.

That winter my mother takes me to her country, a little place on the equator I had not yet seen.

Love Story (1970, dir. Arthur Hiller)

It’s comical that the rich kid with a building at Harvard named after his family is a hockey bruiser while the baker’s daughter not good enough to marry

We wiped down, scraped, rearranged, shook out, swept, mopped, vacuumed, stripped, waxed, sealed.

If you are flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.

It is not the anniversary of her death that wrecks me but a day some weeks before it. It is the anniversary of the day I sat on my porch, barefoot, polyester graduation trappings in hand, and thought to call her but then did not because I was too busy. 

I was birthed alongside a digested McMuffin evacuated from a parallel pipe—my mother’s last pre-labor meal. She opted for a natural birth, taking only an aspirin, never uttering a complaint.

I lift my knees to walk in flippers, grab a glass of water in the kitchen before high-stepping my way back to the living room where Joe and I have dinner in front of the television.

It’s getting harder and harder to shave my pussy, let alone the tight star of my asshole.

You would be forgiven for thinking Vegas is not the place for you. 

The first thing you need to know about being a Disney is that you should avoid letting anyone know that you are one.

You gather one brush, one can of paint, one room, and one hand tethered to attention.

I began my life in a trailer. A black and white shaky construction plunked on a corner some farmer had carved out of an old cow pasture. One silver maple with a rotten core clung to life. I watched the world outside through drafty windows and remember the shade slapping the sash when the wind picked up. 

I used to think my father was a baseball card.