My First Book, page 13
Thank you,
Scott & Tracey Levy for literally everything, especially for reading to me every night for so long.
Scott Moyers and Ann Godoff for taking a chance publishing this book, making it all happen.
Mia Council for your patience, dedication, and insight in editing.
Eugene Kotlyarenko for the stories you’ve told, the stories you will tell, and your ideas about how stories should be told today, and for being the first to “get me” and make me “get it” and “make me” “make it.”
Matthew Davis for making mad memories, the year of pranks, your ChatGPT login, and of course the rosary and the baptism too.
Sam Serxner for your determination, work, and words that kept me going and made this happen.
Abigail Walters for representing and understanding me.
Mollie Glick for all of your hard work and help.
Jon and Polina Rafman for opening up your homes and hearts to me.
Mollie Reid, Lauren Lauzon, Christine Johnston, and Matt Boyd at Penguin Press for getting people to read this book.
Marcus Mamourian for the time we had.
Dasha Nekrasova for all the things you’ve said.
Danny & Arlene Toback for all the stay up late, PG-13–rated movie sleepover nights and mornings at the Falcon Theatre and the stories of your long-ago teenage years in LA.
Sir James George Fraser for putting me to sleep most nights.
Lazăr Edeleanu for keeping me awake the other nights.
Brewster Kahle for making sure I’ll never be bored.
Angel Hafermaas for the worlds we built together, for The Augustines, who I still remember, for becoming the first novelist I ever knew that November in seventh grade.
Patrick McGraw for our pen-pal era and getting me to just type and type.
Sam Frank for all those classic “Thank you Sam Frank” moments, being so open and giving and endlessly interesting.
Galen Wolfe-Pauly for the reenchantment that September.
Celia Vargas for eighteen years of care and love.
Olivia Rosenberg for the butterfly effect you set off with a gift you made for me, a book, that flapped into the publication of this one.
Rayna Berggren for making me unlonely and the stuff we wrote together.
Dean Kissick for taking me seriously sometimes.
Andrew Shafer for being the first.
Richard Turley for the most fun I’ve ever had creating anything ever.
Myles Zavelo for replying to my emails freshman year and letting me read the short stories you’ve been working on since then as you publish them now.
Patrick Reid for the Writers Life Tips and the warm milk that time, Bloom’s Day, and all the other magic moments from our time as roommates on Broome St.
Zoe Doudous and Gabriel Salomon for all the games we used to play and many more to come.
Matthew Gasda for telling me to text Mia and for making me cringingly jealous enough I remembered that I am a theater kid.
Matthew Crumplar for writing about Downtown so I don’t have to.
Jane King for being the first writer I ever knew and rescuing me that August.
Sheila Noonen for the best required reading the summer before senior year.
Zans Brady Krohn for starting a magazine with me ;•P.
Sherry Kramer for teaching me that talent can be taught with technique, talk about a perception shift.
Coco Candy for the year and a half that you slept curled up on my collarbone before teaching me while I was still very young the lesson of love and loss, how they are the same and the beauty is totally worth the pain.
Ken & Jaren Levy for printing that story about penguins and keeping it for all these years.
Maia Lafortezza and Adam Friedland for calling all those times, never giving up on me, giving the best pep talks.
Willing Davidson for being willing to publish me.
Caroline Calloway for the title of this book (sort of) even though it’s a bad choice SEO wise, which I only know because of something you once said (not to me) so thanks for that too.
C. S. Lewis, Edward Gorey, Betty MacDonald, Ursula Le Guin, and Terry Pratchett for the read-aloud bedtime stories of my childhood from before I learned to read.
Tonya Hurley, Neal Shusterman, Mary Downing Hahn, Francesca Lia Block, and Jason Pargin for the read alone past bedtime under the blanket stories of my tweens from before I learned “what to read.”
Peter Vack for being one of the first people to read this book.
Kaitlin Phillips for ever even speaking to me in the first place and guiding me.
Freddy & Roger Lunt for the summers in Oregon that let me learn to think and the education that I put the thinking to use during.
Rob Scharlach for all the help with aesthetics and friendship.
Jordan Castro for editing me and doing it all first, 1.0 mode.
Lukas Heller and Nicky Zou for letting me grovel and being so cool.
Giancarlo Ditrappano for supporting my book before it was a book.
Dagsen Love for being an inspiration.
Jenny & Laurent Doudous for love.
Jim Archer, Heidi Archer, Ethan & Elise Archer for all the holidays.
Angelicism01 for your words that changed me when I needed it most.
St. Michael the Archangel for defending me in battle against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. For protecting from The Hat Man.
The Hat Man for always showing up, in the corner of my eye.
Jensen Davis and Gabe Appel and Vita Salvioni Guttman for friendship.
Gabe Kates Shaw for D&G and DMT.
Walter Pearce for the fun while it lasted and more to come.
Sam Wolfe for ever and ever.
About the Author
Honor Levy is a writer from California. She graduated from Bennington College in 2020. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker and New York Tyrant and been anthologized in Flash Fiction America.
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* Not everyone stays canceled.
* Like used italics on the words rapist, racist, and slurs. Words that should not be italicized!
* They do not need protection.
* But these are not their real names.
* We’re at war. Culture war.
* Not the culture war, one of those other two.
* Actually it was the Prozac and I’m actually sorry I wrote this.
* This is called stealthing. This is when you are having sex and you take off the condom secretly. This can get you canceled. This got them canceled. It took me years to ask about it, but they say of course they didn’t do it. They said I should have asked sooner.
* The laugh, this is what really gets me. This is what hurts me the most. Dr. Blasey Ford did not say that Brett Kavanaugh and that other boy raped her. I can’t remember what she said they did, but I do remember how she said they laughed at her. They stood over her and looked at each other, shared something secret in their smiles, and laughed.
* Yes, they see the same guy.
* They haven’t transferred schools or changed their pronouns in this, current draft.
* Good and easy! Just like most apologies!
* Some other factors: time between the mistake and the apology, dollar value cost of mistake, number of other mistakes the apologizer has made, number of other apologies the apologizer has made . . .
* Now that was a better use of italics!
* Boring stuff. Regurgitated stuff. Stupid stuff. Stuff I’d heard cool girls say. Too much stuff to write or remember or go over right here right now.
* So could I even consent to being on the radio? But I did put myself in that situation.
* This was before you’d heard these exact words a thousand times.
* I was on the radio after all.
* What revolution??? I don’t even know what I could have meant by that.
* Some people say she was there because she said the R-word on her podcast and refused to say sorry. Others say she was there for glorifying her eating disorder and because people refused to really listen to her issues with identity politics. Others say she is a dirty bigot.
* Edgelord (plural edgelords) (informal, derogatory): Someone who attempts to seem edgy by doing or saying risqué, nihilistic, or offensive things.
* You can come down too.
Honor Levy, My First Book
