This is largely an account of my youth, that is to say the thirty-some years it took me to claim my truth. (In a few places in the narrative I’ve skipped forward briefly for the sake of completing a tale.) You may already have read some of these remembrances—in interviews and newspaper essays, or thinly disguised in one of my novels—so please know I reserve the right to plagiarize myself. I have reconstructed long-ago scenes and conversations to the best of my ability. I’ve tried not to imagine anyone’s thoughts but my own.