What Other People Call Dark And Despairing,

People Discuss Their Relationships All The Time, But You Can't. I Don't Think People Realize How Harmful That Is, How It Twists You Up To Hide Who You Are. It's Not Healthy, And The Great Gains That Homosexuals Have Made In My Lifetime, I Think That We'll Look Back In Twenty Or Thirty Years And Say, "i Can't Believe We Ever Made Them Go Through That."

I Always Think It's A Good Policy To Like The People Who Like You.

Even As A Child I Was Fascinated By Death, Not In A Spiritual Sense, But In An Aesthetic One. A Hamster Or Guinea Pig Would Pass Away, And, After Burying The Body, I'd Dig It Back Up: Over And Over, Until All That Remained Was A Shoddy Pelt. It Earned Me A Certain Reputation, Especially When I Moved On To Other People's Pets. "igor," They Called Me. "wicked, Spooky." But I Think My Interest Was Actually Fairly Common, At Least Among Adolescent Boys. At That Age, Death Is Something That Happens Only To Animals And Grandparents, And Studying It Is Like A Science Project.

I Spent Months Searching For Some Secret Code Before I Realized That Common Sense Has Nothing To Do With It. Hysteria, Psychosis, Torture, Depression: I Was Told That If Something Is Unpleasant It's Probably Feminine. This Encouraged Me, But The Theory Was Blown By Such Masculine Nouns As Murder, Toothache, And Rollerblade. I Have No Problem Learning The Words Themselves, It's The Sexes That Trip Me Up And Refuse To Stick.

Hugh Returned From His Trip, And Days Later I Still Sounded Like A Red Chinese Asking Questions About The Democratic Hinterlands. "and You Actually Saw People Smoking In Restaurants? Really! And Offices, Too? Oh, Tell Me Again About The Ashtrays In The Hospital Waiting Room, And Don't Leave Anything Out."