In honor of my Dad’s birthday, here’s one of my very favorite memories of him. (Spoilers re Santa ahead).

When I was seven years old, I figured out that Santa was just Mom and Dad—the handwriting was a dead giveaway. When confronted, my Mom cracked like lava cake, secrets pouring out in the McDonald’s drive thru.

“Yup, we’re the Easter Bunny.”
“And the tooth fairy?”
“And the tooth fai...

I am a ghost, I think. I can’t feel anything. I float through the crowd of thousands—literally thousands of people—crammed into the gym of our seventies dinner theater-esque Catholic church. All brick and terrible wood paneling. As I drift down from the bleachers into the 2500 funeral attendees, they swarm me. Suddenly, I am Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar, surrounded by lepers, grabbin...

I am breaking up with my fiancé this weekend. But tonight, I’m sitting at a cast party in a divey bar on the Upper West Side. My fiancé and his parents are my wardens in this corner on these stools, their discomfort an invisible barrier between me and the rest of my cast. They sip their beers and shout the small talk that will undoubtedly be repeated on the car ride back to Virginia tom...