Uses for Boys Quotes

“I want to go back to the tell-me-again times when I slept in her bed and we were everything together. When I was everything to her. Everything she needed.”
― Erica Lorraine Scheidt, Uses for Boys

“And then he hugs me. Really hugs me. Like he thinks that there's only one of me and I'm special and I'm enough for him. Like he doesn't need anything else. Like he was alone and then I came along.”
― Erica Lorraine Scheidt, Uses for Boys

“And the stories we tell ourselves are not the only stories.”
― Erica Lorraine Scheidt, Uses for Boys

“In the tell-me-again times, (…) when my mom and I lived in a little apartment in a little building downtown, I slept in her bed. It was a raft on the ocean, a cloud, a forest, a spaceship, a cocoon that we shared. I could stretch out like a five-pointed star and then she'd bundle me back up in her arms. I'd wake in the morning tangled in her hair.”
― Erica Lorraine Scheidt, Uses for Boys

“In the happy times, in the tell-me-again times, when I’m seven and there are no stepbrothers and it’s before the stepfathers, my mom lets me sleep in her bed.
Her bed is a raft on the ocean. It’s a cloud, a forest, a spaceship, a cocoon we share. I stretch out big as I can, a five-pointed star, and she bundles me back up in her arms. When I wake I’m tangled in her hair.
“Tell me again,” I say and she tells me again how she wanted me more than anything.
“More than anything in the world,” she says, “I wanted a little girl.”
― Erica Lorraine Scheidt, Uses for Boys

“Toy is talking and this is why I love her. She can go on about herself ceaselessly and like the scratching of a branch against the window at night, the steady insistence of it is comforting. She has stories without beginnings, stories that trail off, stories that crisscross and contradict and dead end.
Toy is the star of her stories. Events orbit her like a constellation.”
― Erica Lorraine Scheidt, Uses for Boys

“If you give boys what they want, they give you what you need. Right?”
― Erica Lorraine Scheidt, Uses for Boys

“I belong here, I tell Toy. I'm hungry for every city block. Every brick building. Every crowded intersection. Electric. I feel brand new.”
― Erica Lorraine Scheidt, Uses for Boys

“She's never been touched by a boy who knows what love looks like.I picture Sam's parents, his mom resting her hand in the center of his dad's back and the way his dad leans back against her.”
― Erica Lorraine Scheidt, Uses for Boys

“Sam's house is everything I wanted, but didn't know to want...I want to wrap myself in this house like a blanket.”
― Erica Lorraine Scheidt, Uses for Boys

“I want Toy to know that I know. That no matter how many boys tell her they love her, how many boys tell her she's beautiful, how many boys crawl into her window at night and make love to her, it doesn't help. That I know it doesn't help. She is my sister and I love her. Like I want her to love me.”
― Erica Lorraine Scheidt, Uses for Boys

“Alone is how our story starts. But then I came along and changed all that.”
― Erica Lorraine Scheidt, Uses for Boys

“The thing I've learned is that thinking is not writing.”
― Erica Lorraine Scheidt, Uses for Boys

“All of me, I think. I still have that.”
― Erica Lorraine Scheidt, Uses for Boys

“Then suddenly it's a hot day and we're at my apartment and my dress is off and nobody is saying but. He's not saying slow down. He's looking at me and we can't wait. We can't help ourselves. He's everywhere. He takes my nose, my ear, my whole breast in his mouth. He slides his hand under my arm and between my fingers. He feels the bones down my chest and cups the skin on my stomach. We're on my bed. It's so early that, without any lights, my room is bright and he can see everything. He touches every part of the front of me and then turns me over and touches every part of the back of me. He feels in between my toes. We have sex again and again and again. He's always ready.”
― Erica Lorraine Scheidt, Uses for Boys

“You don’t look like anyone special at all,” I tell him. And I curse him. And I start a club to hate him. And I make a magic spell to get rid of him.”
― Erica Lorraine Scheidt, Uses for Boys

“Angel asks me about Josh and I tell her that he likes it when I fall asleep with my head on his chest. I tell her how he keeps me wrapped up in his arms all night. How romantic it is, how he's loved me forever.
She knows how it is with boys. "It's always romantic in the beginning," she says.”
― Erica Lorraine Scheidt, Uses for Boys

“I'm far from the world and I see it like a brightly lit ball in the distance. The sky behind it is mostly gray. It starts in silence, but I can see the people. Everyone is in a hurry. They're racing around the globe. They each hold a thread, like a bit of string, and it unravels, covering the planet. The buzzing starts. The buzzing gets faster and louder. They're all racing to one spot on the earth. I'm outside of it and I can see everything. I can see every person in the world racing to a single spot on the earth. The buzzing is all I can hear. It gets so I can't take it. Then I wake up.”
― Erica Lorraine Scheidt, Uses for Boys