“When I’m there, Rube’s eyes fire into mine. Make sure you get up, they tell me, and I nod, then jump up. The jacket’s off. My skin’s warm. My wolfish hair sticks up as always, nice and thick. I’m ready now. I’m ready to keep standing up, no matter what, I’m ready to believe that I welcome the pain and that I want it so much that I will look for it. I will seek it out. I’ll run to it and throw myself into it. I’ll stand in front of it in blind terror and let it beat me down and down till my courage hangs off me in rags. Then it will dismantle me and stand me up naked, beat me some more and my slaughter-blood will fly from my mouth and the pain will drink it, feel it, steal it and conceal it in the pockets of its guts and it will taste me. It will just keep standing me up, and I won’t let it know. I won’t tell it that I feel it. I won’t give it the satisfaction. No, the pain will have to kill me.”

“I could smell something. Fear.I could taste it now.It tasted like blood in my mouth, and I could feel it slide through me and open me up when I saw him ...”

“I’m here to right wrongs and I’m gonna do it, Angel. You told me I’d had my last chance but I don’t accept that and I won’t. If you tell me now that my explanation is not enough and you want me gone, I’m not goin’. I’m not giving up. I got one part of my life’s dream still open to me, very sign she gives me is screaming that she’s standing in my arms right now and I’m not gonna be ninety years old, looking back on my life and regretting that I gave up that dream.”

“The Standover Man. all my life, I've been scared of men standing over me. I suppose my first standover man was my father, but he vanished before I could remember him. For some reason when I was a boy, I liked to fight. a lot of the time, I lost. Another boy, sometimes with blood falling from his nose, would be standing over me. Many years later, I needed to hide. I tried not to sleep because I as afraid of who might be there when I woke up. But I was lucky. It was always my friend.When I was hiding. I dreamed of a certain man. The hardest was when I traveled to find him. Out of sheer luck and many footsteps, I made it. I slept there for a long time. Three days, they told me...and what did I find when I woke up? Not a man, but someone else standing over me. As time passed by the girl and I realized we had things in common. But there is one strange thing. The girl says I look like something else. Now I live in a basement. Bad dreams still live in my sleep. One night, after my usual nightmare, a shadow stood above me. She said, "Tell me what you dream of." So I did. In return, she explained what her own dreams were made of. Now I think we are friends, this girl and me. It was she who gave me a gift - to me. It makes me understand that the best standover man I've ever known is not a man at all...”

“He chuckles. “I won’t pry, but I should probably get some discipline in here somewhere. Or some fatherly advice. What’s your poison?”See? Cool Dad. I stand up, shakin’ my head. “Just tell me how one girl can make me act like a psycho, then I’ll be on my way.”“You know, I’m still tryin’ to figure that out.”

“And when we finally stood up and turned to face the world, I could feel something climbing through me. I could feel it on its hands and knees inside me, rising up, rising up - and I smiled.I smiled, thinking, The hunger, because I knew it all too well.The hunger.The desire.Then, slowly, as we walked on, I felt the beauty of it, and I could taste it, like words inside my mouth.”

“Don't make me happy. Please, don't fill me up and let me think that something good can come of any of this. Look at my bruises. Look at this graze. Do you see this graze inside me? Do you see it before your very eyes, eroding me? I don't want to hope for anything more.”