It is coincidence, I decide, and I am getting old and batty, thinking the universe revolves around me.

How deep and sticky is the darkness of childhood, how rigid the blades of infant evil, which is unadulterated, unrestrained by the convenient cushions of age and its civilizing anesthesia.

Sometimes people go off in a slightly different direction of wanting to be different, of wanting to be special, of wanting to be more, and I think that those people are often - not always, but often - genuinely different in some way. Perhaps their gender orientation is not acceptable or popular, not the norm. Or, their physical design is literally, in some way, setting them apart. Or, in many cases, they feel the burden of their ordinariness so dreadfully that they strive to find some way of being unique. I think that can be a very positive thing, but it also can be negative, destructive.

I know if I were in your generation I would be really tired of seeing Sophia Loren as a sex object.

Perhaps the strongest evidence that women have as broad and deep a capacity for physical aggression as men is anecdotal. And as with men, this capacity has expressed itself in acts from the brave to the brutal, the selfless to the senseless.

In the end I would always pull up with a sense of glory, that loving is the strong side. It's feeble to be an object. What's the point of being loved in return, I'd ask myself.

Pretty things will swarm you like that, like your heart was a hive of electric bees.