Sometimes you hide away a memory because it is so precious that you don’t want to dilute it with the attempt to recount it.

It’s funny how many ways there are to hurt people. As many ways to hurt as there are species of flower. Whole bouquets of hurt.

Who’s out there?” I say.”Just teenagers,” my father says.”Why are they like that?””That’s just the way they are.””Will I be like that when I grow up?””You? Perish the thought.

It was possible, I saw now, to be a grotesque, to be huge and free, to wander the streets in utter freedom despite your atrocity, as long as you did it when everybody else was...