The truth is I have had, for whatever reason, several movie-star boyfriends.

Since I’m a cat who doesn’t know what I am, I wear track pants with old-skool Nikes but Gina Lollobrigida skintight sweaters. I am caught between childhood and va-va-voom.

I don’t see what’s so good about being genuine. Clog dancing is genuine. Isn’t being fake more of an achievement? At least it takes some inspiration. Like, sherbet dips, they’re a special food. Think of all the additives and coloring and grinding that it takes to create a sherbet dip. But carrots? They’re just out there, shrieking, “Hi, we’re some carrots! Love us for it!” They never have to prove themselves.

I think that’s such a beautiful sentiment. Love should only last as long as a very expensive and impractical bikini that looks stunning, but dissolves in the sea within days. So many pop songs tell of this terrible, tiresome love that they want to last forever. But that just makes me think of long-life milk, acrid and fake. Love should be like a movie trailer. Even if the film’s a stinker, you get the best laughs and the biggest explosions in the space of two minutes.

I wouldn’t say that my emotions are extreme. I’d say they are committed. My moods are the equivalent of Madonna’s dancing: inappropriate but all-out. If I’m going to be sad, I might as well be the saddest a girl can get. And if I’m happy, I want to be the happiest. The trouble is, I feel highs so ecstatic that just being normal feels like a thousand-mile drop and being unhappy is excruciating.

And if you don’t know who you are, or if your real self has drifted away from you with the undertow, madness at least gives you an identity.

Hotel rooms are funny things. They make everything look different. If people have to sleep with each other, sexually or platonically, they should do it in kitchens. The kitchen is the epicenter of truth in any home or building. You could never misconstrue a look or a word or a touch in the icy cool, compartmentalized presence of a fridge.

I don’t want to go to university. I don’t like unity and I hate verses. I just love the choruses of songs.

There’s so much guilt there attached to having a perfectly good life.

No one ever loved you like him. And no one ever took it away so completely. But it’s here. Look around.