At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid, and it hurts, but then it's over and you're relieved.

Boys do not have the monopoly in Staring Business, after all.

Not the brightest gem in the jewelry shop, but you've got to admire his single-minded dedication to drug abuse.

I always had this secret suspicion that I was special.

For the longest time, it felt kind of like my chest was cracking open, but not precisely in an unpleasant way.

I pointed at the little kids goading each other to jump from rib cage to shoulder and Gus answered just loud enough for me to hear over the din, 'Last time, I imagined myself as the kid. This time, the skeleton.

In English, we don't have a word for people who aren't virgins. What the non-virgin lexical gap really made me think was that our obsession with sexual purity is such that once you are no longer this THING, you are indescribable.