The most important things in our intimate lives can't be discussed with strangers, except in books. - Edmund White

Once I accepted my extravagant mendicancy I stumbled upon the sober, intelligent little boy I had once been. This was the kid with the sweet smile and an interest in all sorts of things, the boy with brushed hair and cloudless eyes, the child so whole he could forget himself: the birthday boy.

Teenagers, flooded with destabilizing hormones and a longing for elsewhere, are particularly prone to the seductive power of dark narratives.

I thought that to write of my own experiences would require a translation out of the crude patois of actual slow suffering — mean, scattered thoughts and transfusion-slow boredom — into the tidy couplets of brisk, beautiful sentiment, a way of at once elevating and lending momentum to what I felt.