What looks good now is guaranteed to embarrass you twenty years down the line, which is, of course, the whole problem with fashion. - David Sedaris

Often I'd take out my magnifying glass and stare into the chaos that was her face.

mates, to my sisters and me, are seen mainly as shadows of the people they're involved with. they move. They're visible in direct sunlight. But because they don't have access to our emotional buttons — because they can't make us twelve again, or five, and screaming — they don't really count as players.

Unlike my father, who blindly churned out one canvas after another, I had real ideas about the artistic life. Seated at my desk, my beret as tight as an acorn’s cap, I projected myself into the world represented in the art books I’d borrowed from the public library. Leafing past the paintings, I would admire the photographs of the artists seated in their garrets, dressed in tattered smocks and frowning in the direction of their beefy nude models. To spend your days in the company of naked men – that was the life for me. ‘Turn a bit to the left, Jean-Claude. I long to capture the playful quality of your buttocks.