OUT NOW! Asylum by Julian Burnes
Nobody sang happy birthday to me when I turned eighteen. Instead, I was gifted a bargain-outlet suitcase to pack my belongings. They said that they needed the bed for another boy in need. I guess once you turn eighteen you’re suddenly not considered a boy anymore. If only my shaking hands and panicked heart would get the message.
But I would survive, as I had always done, despite my best efforts to the contrary. Having a home was overrated anyway. That’s why couches and park benches existed, right? All things considered, summer wasn’t such a bad time to be homeless in Boston.
And, hey, without parental oversight, I could go anywhere I wanted. I could even go looking for that something that had always niggled in the back of my brain … that fine line between pleasure and pain. Nobody would yell at me for being out beyond curfew, and nobody would call me a freak if I found someone to show me the ropes, literally.
And if that creepy old codger, Vern, continued to follow me in the shadows everywhere I went, well … that was his problem.