England offers new comforts. I could write a novel there.

Masks are the order of the day - and the least I can do is cultivate the illusion that I am gay, serene, not hollow and afraid.

I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.

I felt the mask crumple, the great poisonous store of corrosive ashes begin to spew out of my mouth.

If I rest, if I think inward, I go mad.

I hadn't, at the last moment, felt like washing off the two diagonal lines of dried blood that marked my cheeks. They seemed touching, and rather spectacular, and I thought I would carry them around with me, like the relic of a dead lover, till they wore off of their own accord.

Happy! That is indefinable as far as states of being go.