Me Being Me Is Exactly as Insane as You Being You (43 page)

Liesa Abrams—my genuinely brilliant, astoundingly diligent, and endlessly thoughtful editor—opened this door and explicitly invited me to walk through it. She more or less demanded that I write the way I wanted to write all along, at a time when I was beginning to wonder if that was even a remotely good idea. Though I wrote all the words, it was Liesa who figured out (again and again and again) how to make this peculiar book accessible at the same time. In about six distinct ways, this book wouldn't have happened without her. Last and far from least, she found a way to bridge the personal and the professional without compromising either.

Taal Hasak-Lowy is my patron and my best friend. I would like to thank her for agreeing, all these years later, to be number one on my list.

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

SIMON PULSE

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First Simon Pulse hardcover edition March 2015

Text copyright © 2015 by Todd Hasak-Lowy

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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Jacket designed by Jessica Handelman

Author photograph by Ariel Hasak-Lowy

Interior designed by Hilary Zarycky

The text of this book was set in New Caledonia.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hasak-Lowy, Todd, 1969–

Me being me is exactly as insane as you being you / Todd Hasak-Lowy. —

First Simon Pulse hardcover edition.

p. cm.

Summary: Through a series of lists, a narrator reveals how fifteen-year-old Darren's world was rocked by his parents' divorce just as his brother, Nate, was leaving for college, and a year later when his father comes out as gay, then how he begins to deal with it all after a stolen weekend with Nate and his crush, Zoey.

[1. Family problems—Fiction. 2. Divorce—Fiction. 3. Brothers—Fiction.

4. Gays—Fiction. 5. Dating (Social customs)—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.H26865Me 2014

[Fic]—dc23

2014011035

ISBN 978-1-4424-9573-9 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-4424-9569-2 (eBook)