Also, her hands fall asleep when she raises them over her head. Once, Leslie chopped off the tip of her thumb. Serena is psychic and can read Leslie’s mind at the strangest times. Years after that, their daughter Serena Joy was born (so named because her mother thinks of herself as Neurotic Misery). After over 10 years together, they got married so that they could go on a honeymoon. He was nice and funny and smart and she loved the way that he played guitar. It was around this time that Leslie met her husband and they have been together ever since even though he wasn’t her type-a hippie with long hair and a beard. In college, Leslie joined a band that once opened for the Thompson Twins, but her bandmates did too much cocaine and the band broke up. In the early 1980s, she was one of the first people to rollerblade. Around this time, she started going to see bands and she once met the Ramones after she was thrown out for standing around backstage.

She knows what it is like to be without friends. After this, Leslie remembers sitting in the dark in her walk-in closet listening to Patti Smith and writing death poetry. On her Sweet 16 birthday, her three best friends stopped talking to her, though years later they apologized. She wrote poems that got passed around the school because everybody could relate to Leslie’s poems. Leslie liked to sing in front of the mirror with a hairbrush for a microphone. Growing up, she sometimes ate frosting out of a can for dessert, which is a partial explanation for why Leslie can’t control herself around cake. She was also one of the early latch-key kids. Miller was born in Baltimore on the eve of Yom Kippur, the day one is supposed to do no labor.

Let Me Eat Cake by Leslie F. Miller