They understand that annoyance is a fair price to pay for the strange protective love of the family.
A man always wants his friends to be a little in love with his beloved too.
I had started to believe that I might love her in some way. I came to her room late at night once when I was drunk, shouting, throwing myself at her because I wanted her to respect me more that I thought she did. I wanted her to want me more than she did- I mean, I didn’t want her to look at me as if I were a child, I wanted her to look at me with hunger.
He was an extremely intelligent boy-slash-man from a working- to middle-class family – from what, if he got drunk enough, he called trash – and those two biographical coordinates have always worked on me the way a handsome face never could. His weekly emails to the staff were small masterpieces chiseled out of wit, both anarchic and dry, and what I suspected was creeping intellectual boredom.
The last thing I remember: nestling up close to him, as close as I could get, the front of my knees locked into the back of his, burying my face in his shoulder blades, thinking that his skin smelled like skies heavy with rain.
Everyone has their own New York, and this was ours.
To be a mother meant to die inside, constantly, so that everyone else could live. No thanks.