ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In the making of this book I am deeply grateful to the following people:

My longtime literary agent, Binky Urban, for telling me that she knew the perfect editor for a memoirist.

Jennifer Barth, for turning out to be exactly that, an editor of great tact and taste who saw what I was trying to do and saw to it that I did it.

Steven Barclay, Sara Bixler, and Emily Hartman of the Barclay Agency, for helping me tell my stories onstage before I pinned them to the page.

Jane Maupin Yates, Louise Vance, Darryl Vance, Kathy Barton, and James Lecesne, for reading early drafts of this text and offering invaluable suggestions and corrections.

Kirk Dalrymple, for holding down the family store and for being Philo’s loving uncle.

Edward Ball, for his enthralling book Peninsula of Lies, which helped me fill in the blanks about Dawn Langley Simmons.

Patrick Gale, my dear old friend, for coaxing some of these memories from me for his 1999 biography, Armistead Maupin.

My husband, Chris, for loving and indulging me through the usual tremors of writing and for insisting that a term I coined a decade ago would be just the right title for this book.