I am chronically discontent. Set a goal, draw a line in the sand, set a bar, articulate a dream, an intent, an aspiration, and I will get there and immediately embrace some version of failure. Here are some of the things I’ve achieved, a master’s degree in writing, four published novels, a marriage lasting into the third decade, a healthy, happy adult child, a sulky but secretly content cat, several houses, the ability to swim over a mile, a full-distance triathlon, bicycling over seventy miles a day for six days, wonderful friends, over forty years of continuous sobriety. Guess what? It’s all slightly flawed, not quite perfect, shadowed by an overwhelming feeling that while I am fully aware, the life I inhabit is privileged and, at times, extraordinary, there is that pea under the mattress I can’t avoid, the slight flaw in the dream, the cloud in this sky where I live in such aching beauty here in Northern Michigan.

My publishing history has been…interesting. Back in 1990 after getting fired from my editing job at Bantam-Doubleday-Dell, I started to waitress and do things that artists sometimes do; I was a fake patient for training foreign doctors, I posed naked for a photographer wanting to diversify his portfolio, (Me: “Do you want a picture of me naked? Boyfriend: “No! You look terrified.” Me: “I’m smiling!” Boyfriend: “Your eyes are filled with fear!”) I edited a few essays for money and I wrote.

Fraternity row was walking the gauntlet of men screaming at you, telling you what they would like to do with your body, suggesting you come into the frat house to party, something to be avoided if possible. Belonging to a fraternity at Rutgers marked you, at least as far as this hippie was concerned, as an asshole to be avoided at all costs. My scene partner in my acting class belonged to a fraternity. Despite this, he seemed okay, modest and prepared for our scene together, almost apologetic about his living with the bros, not your typical drunken idiot. So when he asked me to a party at his fraternity, I agreed to go, briefly was the plan, but I did not count on being drugged and apparently, since all was a blackout, raped.