Men! Dead or alive, they could be exactly the same.

I gripped the stapler even harder and felt like a fool planning to battle a crazy man with a stapler that even, I suddenly remembered, contained no staples. Well, strike that line of defense.

Finally, a human man saw me as intensely valuable. Just my luck he was happily married and thought I was a freak.

Men sometimes have to leave their ladies alone, and ladies are not responsible for the bad manners of fools.

Not one man in a million would have allowed me the time without speaking. I opened my mind, let my gaurd down completely, relaxed. His silence washed over me. I stood, closed my eyes, breathed out the relief that was too profound for words.

I'd been blindsided with the most painful knowledge: the first man to ever say he loved me had never loved me at all. His passion had been artificial. His pursuit of me had been choreographed.