Summary

“Sorrowful Mother – This chapter begins with the author’s comment that “my mother taught me to love the things that would save me, and then, when I was sixteen, she taught me that I wasn’t worth saving” (171). He then goes on to describe a brief period of obsession with a cheap novel filled with gay sex scenes, and his fearful embarrassment when he discovers it in his mother’s bookshelf, next to a novel about interracial love on a pre-Civil War cotton plantation.

The author then returns to the narrative of his routine of staying away from home, often funded by money from his father (who encouraged and allowed him to stay out of his mother’s way) and just as often defined by experiences with drugs and with friends. Recollections of these experiences lead him to recall a meeting with...