Logical Family: A Memoir

by Armistead Maupin

Sooner or later, though, no matter where in the world we live, we must join the diaspora, venturing beyond our biological family to find our logical one, the one that actually makes sense for us. We have to, if we are to live without squandering our lives.

It was then that I saw how life could be if you let it happen.

The hardest thing about confronting your past is the pinch of the overlapping parts, when you are no longer one thing and not quite the other. It makes you squirm to face yourself in transition, foolish and floundering.

MOST OF US don’t know when our Moment comes. We don’t feel it at all. It’s just a passing whim, or a phone call or a snippet of conversation that leads to one thing and another and you end up with a life you would never have had at all had it not been for that first thing, that first random thing.

“You don’t know who you are until you’re thirty. You’re in no position to judge anything.”