Middlesex

Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome created the perfect woman, Zora told me. A number of top fashion models had it. “How many chicks are six two, skinny, but with big boobs? Not many. That’s normal for someone like me.”

hadn’t gotten old enough yet to realize that living sends a person not into the future but back into the past, to childhood and before birth, finally, to commune with the dead.

Whereas I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar. The only trust fund I have is this story,

Zeus liberated all living things from an egg. Ex ovo omnia

Here it comes, I thought. The first ex-boyfriend had been summoned. Soon the rest would follow. They would file around the table, presenting their deficiencies, telling of their addictions, their cheating hearts. After that, I would be called on to present my own ragged gallery.

but the coincidence, being the kind of thing only real life can come up with, is too good to give away right now.)

Pregnancy made her feel too much like an animal. It was embarrassing to be so publicly colonized.

If you were going to devise an experiment to measure the relative influences of nature versus nurture, you couldn’t come up with anything better than my life.

Obstreperous’ is my favorite word. My brother is very obstreperous. Last month my favorite word was ‘turgid.’ But you can’t use ‘turgid’ that much. Not that many things are turgid, when you think about it.

mother she use to tell me something funny,” she said. “In the village, long time ago, they use to have sometimes babies who were looking like girls. Then—fifteen, sixteen—they are looking like boys! My mother tell me this but I never believe.”
“It’s a genetic thing. The doctor I went to says it happens in little villages. Where everyone marries each other.”
“Dr. Phil he used to talk about this, too.”
“He did?”
“It’s all my fault.” She shook her head grimly.
“What was? What was your fault?