I once had a friend who didn’t believe in pirates.

She said, “They’re a conspiracy.”

I said, “why?”

“I’ve never seen one.”

I nodded. I had no idea what she was talking about.

River Hickey was my first bite. That was his name—River Farslayer Hickey. In the app he told me interesting names make for interesting people and I asked if I could be the judge of that. Later that same evening, he pulled up to the old lady’s house whose attic I sleep in with his cherry-red pickup. When I sat in the passenger seat, he stared at me like I polished off a meals-worth of mayonnaise packets.

Henry Cooper never learned how to walk forward, so backward was out of the question. He could only walk sideways.

Eventually, as Henry reached puberty, he started to think about girls and became extremely self-conscious about walking sideways. So he took action.

You’re a masochist. Orchestrating the universe’s workings for your own pleasure, transforming everyone into a whip-wielding master.

Pervert.

Not satisfied with mundane dungeons and pro-dommes, you’re into the lifestyle, baby. 24/7.

Space station Zeta Orionis was, it must be admitted, a strange place. Not only was it located on the far fringes of known space, many light years from Earth, it also had been designed by an exceedingly eccentric architect known only by his initials, NTBFW. This man, or woman—no one was sure which—must have had a grudge against the conglomerate that commissioned the station, because it was designed and built in such a way that it resembled an obese chihuahua. It was well known at the time that the CEO of the conglomerate, Ms. Francine von Chew, had accidentally killed just such a pet when she forgot to outfit the dog in its custom tailored space suit, and the dog—Pepe—subsequently exploded when Ms. von Chew left her gigantic mansion on Mars to take Pepe for a walk.