The existence of the authors suggested a way to live and work within institutions that didn’t involve giving up parts of myself, and their books suggested that fear was not an inappropriate response to the world — that there was real violence at play, violence felt not just by me, but by everyone.

Felix Kent's previous work for The Toast can be found here. When I was applying to colleges a lifetime ago, my atheist father suggested I write my application essays about Sai Baba. He said there were lots of smart kids more or less like me applying to college -- this part of my life set me apart. It was good advice, perhaps. I didn’t follow it. Sathya Sai Baba, who died in 2011, was…

Previously in this series.

Somewhere in the middle is a series of photographs of you. In at least one of them you are smiling broadly, toothily, and unattractively. You don’t look iconic, just human. It will be hard for the reader, especially if she is a young woman, not to relate to you, and this sense of shared humanity will make her uncomfortable and a little edgy.

You

…

Felix Kent's previous work for The Toast can be found here. Between the ages of 18 and 24 I went through a phase of thinking I was good at engaging with other women. Actually becoming friends was mysterious and unpredictable. Love is. Still I believed in courting the possibility; I thought I was good at courting the possibility. There is a (nonfiction) book called Our Hearts Were Young and Gay which I read over…

Somebody you have never met has been nursing a grudge against you for years.

You are tapping a sheaf of papers and looking smug.

You have no trouble balancing your career as a prosecutor with your career as a rock star.

Felix Kent's previous work for The Toast can be found here.

A General Note:

I grew up in Los Angeles, in a household which many people would describe as New Age. A lot of things I believed then I no longer believe, or, more accurately, no longer believe are my business. However, certain habits of mind are ineradicable; one that I have been unable to eradicate is my desire to

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“The same girl who had first let her in had apparently just opened the door and was still standing in the doorway. Jane now conceived for her that almost passionate admiration which women, more often than is supposed, feel for other women whose beauty is not of their own type. It would be nice, Jane thought, to be like that -- so straight, so forthright, so valiant, so fit to be mounted on

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December 3, 1649 A footman in an ugly coat enters the embassy, hands Pierre a note, bows clumsily. Mr. Ambassador, he says. Pierre opens it. Rene, tomorrow it will begin, he tells me. I nod. No, he says, I mean it, no more delays. I nod again. I do not know if I am failing to show enthusiasm to prick at Pierre, a toadstool of a man, albeit my friend, or because I lack enthusiasm,…