My ambition was to live like music. - Mary Gaitskill

She brightened. "Last week I ran a personal ad in the Guardian. I answered a few too. I'm not looking for sex; I feel too vulnerable for that. I just want somebody to hurt me and humiliate me."

Of course there's something there; unfortunately, there's always something 'there.' Something you will one day be sorry you ever saw.

Dani said this woman, with whom she'd lived for two years, had never known her. "I feel like people accept the first thing I show them," she said, "and that's all I ever am to them."