Being hip almost killed me.

I grew up in Scarsdale, a grotesquely wealthy suburb of New York City, and I failed at striving early on. I always had the wrong clothes, and I never had a car, a phone, social skills, a nose job, a Bat Mitzvah, or a dot of confidence. My father began to sexually molest me when I was five. Then, guilty, he rejected me with a shocking vengeance: constantly criticizing me, cursing me, beating me. I was a terrified mess, hungry for love, desperate for friends. My peers smelled it and hated me for it. In junior high, they even formed an Eve-haters club. I felt dirty, ugly, suicidal. I lived in a continual state of longing and despair.

Then the ’60s happened.