This is one woman's story of growing up in a narcissistic household, becoming a wild child with years of drug abuse. She details a horrific gang rape she endured when she was a virgin, which clearly informed her relationships into adulthood, but she doesn't mention it very often as she discusses her adult life choices.

She cycles through men and a couple of marriages. She contracts HIV in the mid-80s, while she is pregnant with her son. She works several corporate jobs. She has fraught relationships with her parents and siblings, as well as her husbands' parents.

Although she states at the beginning that she is using all aliases for the people she writes about, I never got a feeling about any one of them in particular. She moves so quickly through periods in her life, people come and go, and I never was able to get a sense of any person's personality other than how each one figured into her version of herself.

This could have been an informative and affecting work. For me, it was just too scattered.