Today, I made someone cry. I didn’t hit them or shove them down the stairs. I wasn’t screaming at them, brandishing a weapon, or kidnapping their child. I made them cry without any desire or plan to reduce them to weeping in public. I did it simply with words. A vast majority of my life is spent in the company of words. Whether searching for the right synonym, stringing a few together to create irony or a laugh, or toiling over just the right adjective, words to me are what butter, cream and salt are to the chef – the basic ingredients of pretty much everything. Words are also the things in which I take comfort and solace, like my old friends, because in many ways that’s what they are. I’m comfortable with words the way a fireman is running into a burning building to save someone. Which is why I was stunned into silence as the kind, sane and intelligent person sitting across from me in a meeting that was really and truly about nothing important, began to well up and then whispered, “I feel like I’m being attacked” as tears spilled. And in that moment, my insides violently turned themselves inside out. My face burnt with the fire of embarrassment and the bile rose so quickly from my gut I didn’t even feel the sting in my throat, just the sour taste rolling across my tongue. I excused myself, went to the bathroom and vomited. I rinsed my mouth and washed my face with cold water and caught my own eye in the mirror, feeling the deep, abiding, and consuming shame that makes us human. I hadn’t felt it since I was trying to pray the gay away in long sessions, prostrate...