“She was the epic crush of my childhood. She was the tragedy that made me look inside myself and see my corrupt heart. She was my sin and my salvation, come back from the grave to change me forever. Again. Back then, when she sat on my bed and told me she loved me, I wanted her as much as I have ever wanted anything.”

“She wouldn't come back. She hated me. She hated Nan. She hated my mom. She hated her father. She wouldn't come back here... but God, I wanted her to.”

“It's my turn to see you through,' she whispers, coming back to me and wrapping me in her blanket as I lose my shit all over again. She holds me until I recover my Y chromosome.”

“The waitress brought me another drink. She wanted to light my hurricane lamp again. I wouldn't let her."Can you see anything in the dark, with your sunglasses on?" she asked me."The big show is inside my head," I said.”

“––but I love her and we're meant to be together and she completes me and I never want to stick my penis into anything else ever again!”

“In the happy times, in the tell-me-again times, when I’m seven and there are no stepbrothers and it’s before the stepfathers, my mom lets me sleep in her bed. Her bed is a raft on the ocean. It’s a cloud, a forest, a spaceship, a cocoon we share. I stretch out big as I can, a five-pointed star, and she bundles me back up in her arms. When I wake I’m tangled in her hair. “Tell me again,” I say and she tells me again how she wanted me more than anything. “More than anything in the world,” she says, “I wanted a little girl.”