Shame

A twelve-year-old boy, a closet, a cousin with breasts, and the indelible shame of getting caught — plus some thoughts on what we owe the teenage boys who do creepy things.

Descending a particular stairway at a particular subway station, I didn’t remember how I used to feel. I felt it.

Shame lives in my body — hot, constricting, brutal. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

Two flavors of shame — and neither is better, neither is harder.

I got a detail wrong about *Shame*, and in correcting it, I found a whole other movie hiding inside two minutes of Lucy Walters’s face.

Michael Fassbender’s soulless, brilliant performance yanks my heart out — it captures so much of what I remember from that time in my life.

Where shame comes from, and why I need it.

On secrecy, privacy, parental spying, and Edward Snowden.

I struggle with whether creep shots are violating of women’s privacy. I decide to behave as if they are, but I remain unconvinced….

A reader responds, thoughtfully and at length, to my earlier post on teen sexuality.