All I Could Do Is Lie There

And Later That Night To Be With My Family At Dinnertime And Have Things Just Be Like They Always Were. That Was The Amazing Part. Things Just Keep Going. We Didn't Talk About Anything Heavy Or Light. We Were Just There Together. And That Was Enough.

And When She Started Becoming A “young Lady,” And No One Was Allowed To Look At Her Because She Thought She Was Fat. And How She Really Wasn’t Fat. And How She Was Actually Very Pretty. And How Different Her Face Looked When She Realized Boys Thought She Was Pretty. And How Different Her Face Looked The First Time She Really Liked A Boy Who Was Not On A Poster On Her Wall. And How Her Face Looked When She Realized She Was In Love With That Boy. I Wondered How Her Face Would Look When She Came Out From Behind Those Doors.

Not Everyone Has A Sob Story, Charlie, And Even If They Do, It's No Excuse.

I Know That Things Get Worse Before They Get Better Because That’s What My Psychiatrist Says, But This Is A Worse That Feels Too Big.

When You Publish A Book, You Do So In Part To End The Silence. All Censorship Is Silence. I Would Never, As An Author, Feel Right Requiring A Young Person Whose Family Would Object To The Book To Read It. Just As I Would Never Force That Person To Read It, I Would Ask Those Folks To Not Force Others Not To Read It. To Me, That Is Just Good Manners.