Faith Is A Choice Like Any Other.

It Turned Out To Be Impossible For Me To 'run Away' In The Sense Other American Teenagers Did. Any Movement At All Was Taken For Progress In My Family.

No Road Offers More Mystery Than That First One You Mount From The Town You Were Born To, The First Time You Mount It Of Your Own Volition, On A Trip Funded By Your Own Coffee Tin Of Wrinkled Up Dollars - Bills You've Saved And Scrounged For, Worked The All-night Switchboard For, Missed The Rolling Stones For, Sold Fragrant Pot With Smashed Flowers Going Brown Inside Twist-tie Plastic Baggies For. In Fact, To Disembark From Your Origins, You've Done Everything You Can Think To Scrounge Money Save Selling Your Spanking Young Pussy.

Having A Great Dad Probably Permitted Me To Pal Around With Guys In A Way That Some Women Don't.

I'd Spent Way More Years Worrying About How To Look Like A Poet -- Buying Black Clothes, Smearing On Scarlet Lipstick, Languidly Draping Myself Over Thrift-store Furniture -- Than I Had Learning How To Assemble Words In Some Discernible Order.

When You Do Try To Picture The Boys Who Do Ask You Out, They're Absolutely Featureless, Like Old Carvings Eroded By Centuries Of Rain And Wind.