See, popularity is complicated. You have to spend a lot of time thinking about liking; you have to really like being liked, and also sort like being disliked.

According to Maslow, I was stuck on the second level of the pyramid, unable to feel secure in my health and therefore unable to reach for love and respect and art and whatever else, which is, utter horseshit: The urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick. Those urges just become transfigured by illness. Maslow's pyramid seemed to imply I was less human than other people, and most people seemed to agree with him.

While I did not fancy myself a particularly good person, I never thought my first real sexual action would be prostitutional.

What's the meaning of life? Other people.

I can't imagine us saying these things to each other out loud. But even if I can't imagine hearing these words, I can imagine living them. I don't even picture it. Instead I'm in it. How I would feel with him here. That peace. It would be so happy, and it makes me sad because it only exists in words.

And I don’t blame him. I don’t even trust me.

That's why those tapes we made are going to be so great one day, because they'll tell stories that time has swallowed up or distorted or whatever.