ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

HUGS! Word Hugs! TO:

To my mentor, Chris Higgins, who made this all happen. There was an impassable chasm between who I was and who I wanted to be, and he single-handedly built the rope bridge across it and walked with me step-by-step the whole way. He didn’t have to, but he did. Also he keeps my Ro warm at night.

To Jessica Papin: She can move the earth and sky and everyone in the New York Port Authority with the sweet silver that comes off her tongue. She moved this dang book in two days.

To Jean Garnett: My God, you believed in me. And you worked so hard. An editor who stays up past midnight matching jokes about chamber pots to their corresponding images while telling me I make Shakespeare look like a turd. Thank you for flattery, faith, and ferocity. Turns out I need all those real, real bad.

To Tiffany Hill: Thump them all over the head with it.

To Molly: Every girl needs an imaginary sex-librarian friend.

To Alison Southwick and Dr. Matthew Anderson: Thank you for letting me sit with you in the cafeteria. Thank you for still loving me, nonstop, for twenty weird years. And for not being remotely surprised about all this.

To Mrs. Lois Simmons: You were the person I was writing to in my head. An absolute lady in every regard, but not one to be squeamish. Thank you for loving me so long and so strong.

To Maren Bradley Anderson, who wanted to be a writer and so became one. Then told me to quit whining and be one, too.

To all the Shed Girls: Thanks for laughing on cue. You’re my best nerds.

To Lisa: My wizard with a tool belt. You changed everything. Don’t you ever get sick of being right?

To Jayne Yaffe Kemp and Deb Jacobs: Copyeditors don’t get enough love. Without you guys I’d just have a three-hundred-page underwear rant on my hands.

To my babies: LE, Brubby, Mason-boy, and Little Birdie. I love you.

To Mom and Dad: Just… couldn’t have hung around a tad longer to see your kid write a book about old-timey vaginas, huh? Always, I am writing for you.

To Gus: All you ever wanted was to be left alone. But every time I’d come to you with something new and awful that my career trajectory would do to your dream of living in a cave on the dark side of the moon, you’d smile and say “Great!” You are my heart and my head and my husband. If ever two were one. Stay cool and have a rad summer.