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Room One

I am in Room One, the first on the left at the top of the wide marble steps, with the rest of the first-graders. The mothers are beginning to leave. A lot of kids are crying. It still has not occurred to me to be afraid.

On Seeing A Sex Surrogate

Pounding the keys with my mouth stick, I wrote in my journal as quickly as I could about my experience, then switched off the computer and tried to nap. But I couldn’t. I was too happy. For the first time, I felt glad to be a man.

Testifying

“What did he say?”

“Something like, ‘At approximately seven miles from the epicenter of a nuclear blast, the eyes of anyone looking in the direction of the flash will be melted.’ And then he just sat down again. It was like he was reading from a script.”

Facing A Few Of The Facts

What are you going to do? I mean really: what are you going to do? Do you actually believe anything is going to stop the drift toward disaster? The drift of an entire planet? Do you actually believe we’re going to be saved? Everything is heading straight to hell, the whole thing is falling apart, the whole world is going insane. Do you really believe all this can be halted or reversed? It’s too late, it’s all over. Just dig it.

The Bomb

“The Ed Sullivan Show,” 50,000 tons of dynamite, the word hope

The Man In The Mirror

On the best of days, it’s a little like falling in love; like opening a stuck window inside yourself; like taking a drug — one that’s perfectly legal, dispensed by your own apothecary, your strange and marvelous brain.

Sunbeams

You’ve never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.

Jean Cocteau

On A Narrow Ledge

Lying awake in the gray hours of the morning, I heard a hissing little voice, insinuating, familiar, from the depths of my own being. What it was saying, over and over again, was simply, “Metastasis. Metastasisss.”

Serpent’s Tooth

We lived in a walk-up apartment house. The three of us would anticipate his footsteps, listening for them up the tiled stairs and across the tiled floor. He had a variety of walks: a confident, sober stride; a penitential limp; a self-assured, rocking swagger.

Sunbeams

My religion is very simple — my religion is kindness.

Dalai Lama