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      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Acknowledgments

      Chapter One

      Grocery stores always give me a bag when I don’t need one, when I’ve bought just a pack of gum or a banana or some potato chips that are in a bag already, and then I feel guilty about their wasting the plastic, but the bag is on before I’ve noticed them reaching for it so I don’t say anything. But in the video store, on the other hand, they always ask if I want a bag, and even though, theoretically, I should be able to carry my DVD without a bag, and the bag is another waste of plastic, I always need a bag at the video store because, for reasons that will soon be understood, I believe all DVDs should be sheathed.

      The camouflage doesn’t work today. I’m only half a block out of the store when I see Ronald, the rice-haired Milquetoast who works at the coffee shop around the corner, approaching. “Hey, Carrie,” he says, looking down at my DVD. “What’d you get?”

      Uh-oh. I have to give this speech again.

      “I can’t tell you,” I say, “and there’s a reason I can’t. Someday, I might want to rent something embarrassing, and I don’t necessarily mean porn. It could be a movie that’s considered too childish for my age or something violent or maybe Nazi propaganda—for research purposes, of course—and even though the movie I have in my hand is considered a classic, and nothing to be ashamed of, if I show it to you this time but next time I can’t, then you’ll know for sure that I’m hiding something next time. But if I never tell you what I’ve rented, it puts enough doubt in your mind that I’m hiding something, so I can feel free to rent porn or cartoons or fascist propaganda or whatever I want without fear of having to reveal what I’ve rented. The same goes for what I’m reading. I want to be able to pick a mindless novel, as well as Dostoyevsky. And I also want to be able to choose something no one’s heard of. Most of the time, people say, ‘What are you reading?’ and if I tell them the name of the book and it’s not Moby Dick, they’ve never heard of it so I have to give an explanation, and if the book’s any good it’s not something I can explain in two seconds, so I’m stuck giving a twenty-five-page dissertation and by the time I’m done I have no time to finish reading. So books I read and movies I rent are off-limits for discussion. It’s nothing personal.”

      Ronald stands there blinking for a second, then leaves.

      My rules make perfect sense to me, but people find them strange. Still, I need them to survive. This world isn’t one I understand completely, and it doesn’t understand me completely, either. People think I’m odd for a nineteen-year-old girl—or woman, if you’re technical—that I neither act excessively young nor excessively “girlish.”

      In truth, I feel asexual a lot of the time, like a walking brain with glasses and long dark hair and a mouth in good working order. If we were to talk about sex as in sex, as opposed to gender—as everyone seems to want to these days—I would say that my mind’s not on sex that much, and I was never boy-crazy when I was younger. Which makes me different from just about everyone. I did have crushes on two of my professors in college, one of which actually turned into something, but that’s a story for later on. That whole saga only confused me in the end. So much of the world is sex-obsessed that it takes someone practically asexual to realize just how extreme and pervasive it is. It’s the main motivator of people’s activities, the pith of their jokes and the driving force behind their art, and if you don’t have the same level of drive, you almost question whether you should exist. If it’s sex that makes the world go around, should the world stop for those of us who are asexual?

      I graduated from college a year ago, three years ahead of my peers, and now I spend most of my time inside my apartment in the city. My father pays my rent. I could leave the house more, and I could even get a job, but I don’t have much motivation to. My father would like me to work, but he has no right to complain. I remind him that it was his idea to skip me three grades in grammar school, forever putting me at the top of my class academically, in the bottom fifth heightwise, and in the bottom twenty-second socially.

      My father is also the one who told me what I refer to as the Big Lie. But that, like all the business with my professor, is a story for later on.

      When I get back to my apartment building, Bobby, the superintendent, asks how I’m doing, then takes the opportunity to stare at my rear end. I ignore him and climb the front steps. Bobby’s always staring at my rear end. He is also too old to be named Bobby. There are some names that a person should retire after age twelve. Sally, for example. If Sally is your name, you should have it changed upon reaching puberty. Grown men should not be called Joey, Bobby, Billy, Jamie or Jimmy. They can be Harry until the age of ten and after fifty, but not between. They can be Mike, Joe and Jim all their lives. They cannot be Bob during their teenage years. They can be Stuart, Stefan or Jonathan if they’re gay. Christian is not acceptable for Jews. Moishe is not acceptable for Christians. Herbert is not acceptable for anyone. Buddy is good for a beagle. Matt is good for a flat piece of rubber. Fox is good for a fox. Dylan is too trendy.

      I get in through the front door and the stairwell door and the apartment door. When I am finally inside, I experience tremendous afterglow. They make the apartments in New York as hard to get into as Tylenol bottles and almost as big.

      I see a therapist, Dr. Petrov, once a week. He and my father grew up in London together. I don’t really need to see him, but I go each week because I might as well get my father’s money’s worth.

      The morning after I rent the DVD, I leave my apartment to see Petrov. It’s drizzling softly outside. The air, a soupy mess, scrubs my cheeks, and the few remaining leaves on the trees bend under the weight of raindrops and dive to their deaths. A pothole in front of my building catches them, emitting a soggy symphony.

      There’s something I love about visiting Petrov: His building is on one of those quaint little blocks that almost make you forget