“You scare me.” I began this way in a previous draft, but my need for perfection compelled me to take way too long and to have way too much censure. Candidly revealing my unedited self and even emotion, as opposed to concealing me with studied abstraction, scares me. A lot. But only by means of numerous dates can this romance succeed.

What determines the acceptability of moral impropriety in fiction? In my youth (has that passed already?), females showing too much skin, cussing, drug use, so called anti-Christian sentiment, and a thousand other criteria would earn any movie or TV show (book, commercial, magazine article, or person, for that matter) a quick rejection. I was a member of a punk band called Poindexter, and I remember refusing to cover “Semi-Charmed Life” by Third Eye Blind because it talks about drugs. Is that an appropriate response?

I am a late bloomer, but not in terms of physical growth. I have stayed around the same size since twelve.

I am talking about character growth—maturity. From the precarious perspective of self-judgment, it appears that I have finally begun maturing.