Chapters (55)
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Cast of Characters
- Part One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Part Two
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Forty-three
- Forty-four
- Forty-five
- Forty-six
- A note on the Author
Don’t look at fat dead Mom. Or cold living Dad. It’s not my family’s fault I’ve had such a bumpy ride. Yes, I’ve cried and cried because my mother is dead and because she did it all by herself, without the aid of cancer or heart disease. But still, I have never cried as hard as when Liev left. Or as hard as I did when I knew he was not coming back.
After Mom was gone, I started to hate Dad less. He became so tiny and ridiculous. And then, as soon as I emancipated myself from him, he no longer had to feign the slightest interest in me and, once that happened, he began to find me a more intriguing proposition. He would actually ask me what I thought of his latest exhibition or protégée. I would tell him and then leave, because I did not like being around him as he began to humble. When he started to care, I could barely tolerate him or his house or neighborhood.
It is worth visiting Brooklyn to see Manhattan. It’s worth living in hell to get a better view of heaven. That’s stupid. Brooklyn isn’t hell. It’s just where my family comes from. Manhattan is where I made myself. Los Angeles is where they took me because they liked what I had made. Manhattan is where I returned to be disassembled. Smiling and fresh-faced, unaware of imminent implosion, I bought a Greenwich Village apartment, and met Sebastian the same week. By the time we broke up, I barely knew my own neighborhood. So I went back to L.A., to auditions, to Scott, to quasiauditions and quasi-Scotts.
Working on Mean People Suck I was forced to reacquaint myself with my lovely apartment on its beautiful block. I hated it.
“Excuse me. Where is the mailbox?” I’d ask, only to be told that it was on the corner of my street. I’d go and try to mail a letter to an ex-lover in L.A., but I’d get distracted and end up leaning on the mailbox until a teenage girl asked me, “Are you her, or do you just look like her?” I couldn’t answer myself. That’s when I first met the kids next door.
The kids next door are twin sisters from Queens. One twin has red hair and one is blond. They told me their names over and over, without malice, or offense taken, but it took me a while to process. I noticed, in order of recognition, that both sisters are snappy dressers, heavily accented, fun, smart, and very kind. When I realized how central the last attribute was to their outlook, I felt ashamed that I had been so bowled over by their clothes.