“A big part of our jobs, as mature adult human beings, is figuring out who we are and what we value WITHOUT falling back on a million and one inaccurate and clumsy stories told by other people who know us about as well as a fucking squirrel knows the moon. The squirrel might say, “The moon is on fire, dude! Look, it’s lighting up the whole night! That’s white-hot fire, my friend!” And even though we have literally visited the moon (because we are experienced astronauts!) we listen to the squirrel and we tell ourselves, “You freak, you blocked all of that white-hot fire from your memory, I guess because you’re just someone who hates heat.” “Yeah, you can’t stand the heat, you’re always getting out of the kitchen just when things get fun,” the squirrel chimes in, then swigs his bourbon and trips over the throw rug and breaks one of your best highball glasses and it takes hours to fish the shards of glass out of the piles of stuff all over the floor.”