“I want to learn your trickery and feel what it’s like to have me wrapped around your finger. I want to lie to everyone because it gets me where I want faster. I want to be like you, because you are blind; and now that I finally see, I don’t want to.”

“If I had no imagination, I would hate you. But I don’t want to be part of your reality.”

“...I know I’ve broken all the rules of all the games, that all the great players and best love calculators recommend that you play, if you want to make someone like you a lot. But that’s okay, because I give up. I’ve got my coffee sitting in my San Francisco cup, I’ve got Kona island and a working beating heart that’s not cold, hard, or numb—very workable and capable of loving, breaking, mending and repeating. So that’s just what I’ll do. Because I’m too tired. Too tired uping all nighting wasting my precious timing wishing it was your heart pumping, wanting me— like I used to want you.”

“I want to read, write, and nothing else. I do not want to get married, I do not want to go to church, I do not want to file taxes; I do not want to eat. But Grandma disagrees, and Grandma always wins.”

“I hope you stand there for me, even though I won’t be listening, I hope you speak like I am hearing, that’s the man you are to me, that’s the only man I want to keep here inside of me. That’s the man you can be, and that’s the man I will take with me.”

“What had I done? Where was my fun? I wanted play, I wanted sun, he was the opposite —I called him Zum because he’s an un-fun, the sort of mean-fun bully on the playground-fun. Mean Mr. Zum.This was madness, this was badness this was sadness this was too much un-fun-ness.”

“Stop pretending. You wanted to be real right? This hurts, this is what it feels like, this is the growing up, the stoping pretending, the false past tap-dancing. This is the owning. This is the no-i-won’t-be-performing, this is growing out of the glamour and back into the tattered shabby mis-constructed hearts shadow. This is me owning. This is me admitting. This is me realing-up, maning-up. growing up, wanting up.”