First Lines Fridays #4

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

• Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
• Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
• Finally… reveal the book

Lines

If I’d known losing my virginity would be so nerve-racking, I would’ve stayed home and watched the Golden Girls marathon with my dad. at’s some uality father-son time I’m missing right there. He even made a cheesecake. Instead, here I am, with my heart racing around in my chest like a horde of drag ueens at a Filene’s Basement clearance sale. Easing my death grip on the steering wheel, I lower the window a few inches. Magnolia-scented night air spills into the car accompanied by a sharp, underlying odor that singes my nostril hair. Magnolia-scented dog shit is more like it. But that’s what I get for choosing a city park as the setting for my transition from virginal gay ingenue to bossy power bottom. I take a deep breath to calm my nerves, which only redirects my thoughts back to Dad. Even though we’ve already seen all 180 episodes at least ve times each, he was visibly disappointed when I told him I had an audition for the Florence Community Playhouse production of Steel Magnolias. He didn’t even blink. I mean, come on. Any serious purveyor of American theater knows there are no male roles in that play. But not Dad. He’s a Rose—sweet and lovable, but not the sharpest tool in the shed. I, as Dad likes to remind me almost daily, am a Dorothy. Cranky, snarky, and a bit bossy. Or to use Dad’s
word, “bitchy.” I prefer “responsible” and “pragmatic.” Besides, someone’s got to be the Dorothy. She’s the glue. And since Mom le us, that’s what I am to Dad—the last bit of glue holding his shattered world together.

And The Book Is..

P.s Today is my lucky birthday and three years since I came out.

Alex