My two social modes these days seemed to be total fatigue or a wild, drunken abandon that ended with me in trouble. This had come out of nowhere, along with the sleepy despair of the last few months. Every once in a while I got drunk—in the passive voice, almost: It felt like it took hold of me, even though I was the fool doing the drinking.

Sex was a home and a site of purest simplicity. You just were. It pains me to write these words more than any other words in this book: I liked it. It’s still so hard to say it. The premise of this book is that I was wild and unhappy as a teen, and my unhappiness stemmed from my sex-crazed nature. But what I really felt was what I feel now: Life

6. The, You Know, Encroaching Darkness

The labyrinthine passages of the hotel inspire in me a mood of speculative eroticism. A person could do anything here, and it would pass unremarked. It is its own city of adultery.

Secret 3 A note from a college friend, via Facebook: “Loved the piece. Struck a chord. These days it seems like I want to Do It all the time and [husband’s name redacted] never wants to. I don’t know what to do. Am seriously thinking about having an affair but HOW???? How do you even do that?”

J in her sobbing, her tearfulness, her out-of-controlness, felt unknown, perhaps most of all to herself. Who was this weeping woman? she wondered. Where did she come from? When I said “I know,” I was really saying: “I know you.” In other words: “You are still J. I recognize you. You’re still the person you were before all this fucking crying

I couldn’t keep my head together. The incubus/kisser came most nights and perched on me. I never got used to him, and he kept being an incubus. I didn’t want to think of him as a cheesy old incubus. I wanted to think of him as at least a more literary monster and not one that had the same name as a terrible rock band. But incubus is what he was. He

My parents fixing to die just when I started to like them. The years wasted on the wrong projects, places, self-conceptions. What would happen if our landlord raised our rent to market value? Various occasions upon which I have humiliated myself. The earth dying. Face sag. Child porn. Varicose veins. Dying alone, i.e., the fate of every single

I had isolated myself from that, in my house in the country, where I had thought I would be safe. But I wasn’t safe, just isolated. I believed my cohort, my fellowship, the formerly weird, the troubled, the angsty, the fucked-up was nowhere to be seen here on my island. People on my island were life’s winners. Most had cruised through college and