Excerpt from Lobster Boy by G. Neri:

Most guys my age feel like a freak a nature.

Unless you’re a quarterback or a bible thumper or the biggest redneck hillbilly in all a Florida, you’re a freak as far as the enemy's concerned. They'll make your life miserable-- pummel you everyday for doing nothing except breathin'.  No girl will be caught dead with you, unless she's a freak too, and who the hell wants that? And to top it off, your body is out of control, doing things that make no damn sense to a 16-year-old.

But what if you really were a freak of nature? I’m not talking about in your head, like your shy and awkward or artistic and the like, I mean for real. I’m talking freakidiki bizarro whoa! I gotta stop and stare freak here—no feet, fins for legs, and hands that look like lobster claws. Then put that freak in a second-hand wheelchair in a place made a dirt roads and stairs.

Then what?

You’d be screwed, that’s what.

And you’d be me.

Now, don’t be getting’ all weepy and sorry for my crippled soul. I don’t need your pity or your scorn. Save it for the devil when you go to hell. All I really ever wanted was to feel normal for once in my life. Just to blend in, go unnoticed for more than 3 seconds without someone starin' at my claw hands. That would be somethin'. That’s why I decided to go normal in the first place.

Normal? you say. How could you ever be normal, buddy? You been drinking hooch or somethin'? Well, let me tell you, normal's just a state of mind. I'll bet you're much more of a freak than me-- you just don't know it yet!

I'm guessin' by now, you got all sorts of freak names you wanna call me. Well, save your breath, I done heard 'em all. Freakshow. Carny. Devil boy. You might as well use the name my daddy gave me for his 10-for-1 show. Everybody's called me it for so long, they all forgot my real name, so it don’t matter no how.

You can just call me Lobster Boy.

So, what can I tell you that the other liars haven’t already said? The truth right? The truth is I am the son of a carny sidehow act and inhabitant of Giant’s Camp, deep in the backwaters a Gibtown, Florida. You may a heard of it. It’s where all the freaks go in the winter when the season’s over. They built their own town practically, draining the swamp and clearing the land. Now it looks like a proper trailer park. ‘Cept for the folks that live here, of course.

My troubles began when I first saw the Mystery Girl, back in the summer of ’54...