When I was 15, I conned my way into an office job at a company that represented makers of breast implants. The manager had a wart on the end of her tongue that she’d push against her teeth, making a very specific sound.

Magician’s assistant on a cruise ship for two weeks when I was 19. When I was meant to be being levitated, I was silently crying while pretending to be unconscious as I hung limply off a metal pole. It was bleak.

Father Christmas at a department store. The plaintive sadness of the children’s unrealistic requests was almost unbearable.

Doing an episode of Doctors was a bit of a nadir.

Sometimes when I’m on a plane, as I often am, the weather is rough and we’re worried about going down. I think: If I hold the hand of the person next to me, I’ll be holding everyone’s hand. Like my dear friend, the late Wilma Mankiller, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, I want to know: I’m going to the other side of the mountain.

Since hostile people still call me a former Playboy Bunny, even at 82, I probably shouldn’t have done that in my youth, even to write an exposé. And since a couple of times they’ve also referred to me as a former CIA agent, because I went to two Soviet-era communist youth festivals, I probably shouldn’t have done that, either. Yet if I hadn’t done both, I might have judged other people by such empty symbols, too.

Dying just a millisecond before I was about to say something I really wanted the people I love to hear.

As someone who left the world around me a little kinder and less hierarchical.

I’m walking down a street in New York, the sun is shining, I’m on my way to see friends who are chosen family—and I’ve just written a couple of pages that I like.

I haven’t done it yet.