Eleven stories by the author of the critically-acclaimed HOW ANIMALS MATE. Daniel Mueller reveals the distance between our everyday masks and the selves we strain to recognize in them. A boy whose parents live apart decides to model himself after a neighborhood sociopath. A corporate systems analyst attempts to reconcile a homoerotic childhood with his conventional nuclear family. A divorcee dating a rape survivor must admit that what he loves most about her would, in his daughter, completely destroy him. Funny and grim, stylish and provocative, these stories find in disjunction and misalignment unparalleled tension and exquisite grace.