“When I see a cop’s lights behind me at two in the morning, and I have my disco ball dangling from my rearview mirror, it’s like, Hey, a party! Especially if I’ve been drinking.”

“What season?” I asked. “A delayed adolescence, I guess. When I get up in the morning and see my face in the mirror, it looks like someone else’s. If I’m not careful, I might end up left behind.”

“So what I realized when I was a child was that if I were traveling as fast as light while holding a mirror before me, I would not see my image in the mirror, because as fast as the image of my face in light moved toward the mirror, why, just as fast would the mirror be moving away... It is a rather frightening idea, in fact, that if I moved at the speed of light, I could get no confirmation of my existence from an objective source of reflected light such as a mirror. I would be like a ghost in the universe, materially unverifiable in the stream of time.”

“You grew up too fast, baby."Didn't always feel that way, especially this morning when I couldn't find my other flip-flop and I'd been, like, two seconds from kicking a fit.”

“I jumped up and ran after the words that trailed like the dangling string from an air ball, up and up, from branch to branch escaping. Then like a cracked bowl the fixity of my morning broke, and putting down the bag of flour I thought, Life stands round me like glass round the imprisoned reed.”

“You’re joking, right?”“No. I’ve been living here for a while—like a couple of years with my roommate. You know, the fucktard who put poor Raphael outside.”“Hey!” the guy yelled from inside their apartment. “I have a name. It’s Señor Fucktard!”