My Cardboard Balcony

Vanessa Doll by Belinda Roddie My name is not Vance Dubois, ma'am, so please don't call me Vance Dubois, ma'am. I'm not from Woodstock, Illinois, ma'am, and I wasn't meant to have been born a boy, ma'am. I grew up in a seven-child household, see, and didn't like the way my siblings looked at me. They made me shave my head more than once, you know, and I tried running away from home about twelve times or so. All the boys wore suits and flannel at the bars, and I stole tubes of lipstick from my girlfriends' cars. Thirteenth time was a charm when I fled at seventeen, started hormone therapy once I was three years clean. So my name is not Vance Dubois, ma'am, so please don't call me Vance Dubois, ma'am. I'm a small town girl in my own private world, and I've never been from Woodstock, Illinois, ma'am.

His main character was named Dawn, and the opening scene of his novel was her watching the dawn from her window. Eliza could feel her nose crinkling like wet paper as she perused the manuscript, her fingers barely touching it as if it were moist or toxic. The writing pretty much went on like this, until she had to stop after Chapter Two to call her mom and pour herself a stiff drink.