I had a couple days left in the ward when one of the counselors told us we were getting a new kid. We were curious. People rotated in and out of Upstairs all the time, since most didn’t stay for more than a week or so.

Tina was the girl whose mother was a prostitute. The council had taken her into care when she was four and this was her third children’s home. She was seventeen like me, but she had left school and worked at a hairdressing salon.

I bought my copy of Ronald Firbank’s Five Novels at a gay bookstore in New Orleans. The store’s owner, who had never seen the book before, flipped open the cover to read the table of contents—exactly what I hoped he wouldn’t do. I had already noticed the third title down the page read Prancing Nigger. [...]

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