You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto. Mamma mia! Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest.

This country wants to live in the illusion that it is tolerant but also wants to be able to practice intolerance.

I am a chatty person, but colossally discreet.

When she smiles niggers ask her for her hand in marriage; when I smile folks check their wallets.

So the kind of boy I was, or that I was told to be, you were kind of this like half-gladiator, half-dude who, you know, was supposed to have as many girls as possible and work until your heart exploded, have no fear, you know.

She would be a new person, she vowed. They said no matter how far a mule travels it can never come back a horse, but she would show them all.

Here at last is her smile: burn it into your memory; you won't see it often.