The Gift

    When I was a teenager I believed in Hate. I believed in it the way religious people believe in their stories, or the way young people always believe in what they believe in; it was an organizing principle. It was my armor against the meaninglessness and ugliness of the world I was born into (which is that much more meaningless and ugly, when you’re young), the means by which I distinguished my kind, my allies, from the mass of Enemies I lived among.