we perceive silence where, in fact, there is a muffler.

I say you hurt me. You say I scorned you. We say we care. It begins. The conversation begins.

Everytime I say "sure" when I mean "no," everytime I smile brightly when I'm exploding with rage, every time I imagine my man's achievement is my own, I know the cheerleader never really died. I feel her shaking her ass inside me and I hear her breathless, girlish voice mutter "T-E-A-M, Yea, Team.

Much female conversation is, in fact, about survival - but in code.

What we have in common is what keeps us apart.

Between sisters, often, the child's cry never dies down. "Never leave me," it says; "do not abandon me."

The illusion of companionship sits waiting in the television set. We keep our televisions on more than we watch them - an average of more than seven hours a day. For background. For company.