There had been options, before the baby, but none of them had been pursued... I had been quiet when there was no reason to be quiet, consisten when consistency didn't matter. For the last twenty years...
Then one night I woke at three A.M. certain he was rotting like a chicken carcass. Only as I lowered him into the sink did I realize this was a crazy time to wash a baby and I began to cry because he...
Their prayer was rage.
The usual treatment is psychotherapy. I know. I didn’t explain that I was single. Therapy is for couples. So is Christmas. So is camping. So is beach camping.
The subtitle of the book was Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships. I was working through it, word by word. So far I had done Keeping and was just starting on Love. I worried that...
That is my problem with life, I rush through it, like I'm being chased.
Teachers of subjects that this person wasn't even good at are kissing this person and renouncing the very subjects they taught. Math teachers are saying that math was just a funny way of saying I love...
People tend to stick to their own size group because it’s easier on the neck.
Our bleak reality was now apparent: we couldn’t leave and we couldn’t change partners.
Like a rich person, I live with a full-time servant who keeps everything in order—and because the servant is me, there’s no invasion of privacy.
LA isn’t a walking city, or a subway city, so if someone isn’t in my house or my car we’ll never be together, not even for a moment. And just to be absolutely sure of that, when I leave my car my iPho...
I was going to die and it was taking forever.
I guess that's true, you really can't complain, can you?
I always had to resist the urge to go to him like a wife, as if we’d already been a couple for a hundred thousand lifetimes. Caveman and cavewoman. King and queen. Nuns
He seemed to be waiting for me to move forward. Weren't we all.
He didn't call me for a few weeks. This was customary within our friendship, confide and retreat, but I wondered. I wondered if perhaps our last conversation had been an overture. Not the conversation...
Except she wasn’t like a husband from the 1950s because she didn’t bring home the bacon.
Did you ever really love her? Not really no. But me? Yes. Even though I have no pizzazz?
But it had another layer to it, because imitating crass people was kind of liberating—like pretending to be a child or a crazy person. It was something you could do only with someone you really truste...
And she felt a real sense of loss. Even though she knew she had never had an accent. It was the birthmark, which in its density had lent color even to her voice. She didn't miss the birthmark, but she...