It was a competition, and sometimes a drinking game, in which, one by one, we compared the sordid details of our messed-up families. There were eight of us, and we played it over and over; we never ran out of material. There was only one rule—never embellish—and a clear winner always emerged. Sometimes it was the person whose parents were the most narcissistic and oblivious, like my friend Violet, who overheard her mom, mid-divorce, say to a friend, “Hell, if I hadn’t had kids with Tom, I would have had them with someone else.” On another night the victor might be the one whose parents had caused the most spectacular damage, had burned the broadest swath through their son or daughter’s childhood, like Ari, whose parents woke him up one night when he was six, stood together in the dark at the edge of his bed and said, “Choose!” I had my share of victories: the way my parents told Seth and me they were splitting up during Christmas Eve mu shu at our favorite Chinese restaurant; how I overheard them screaming at each other in their bedroom one night and then suddenly grow eerily silent, and when, finally, overcome with concern, I went to investigate, I found them rolling around on their bed, pale globes of flesh in the dim light.
