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Authors: Stephen Elliott
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chest nearly parallel to the floor as he walked. Growling, he gripped the furniture, grasping the edges of the large white couches he’d bought with his new wife. “Motherfucker!” He turned to me, face red, eyes looking like they wanted to jump out of his skull. My big, strong, vain, and fearsome father with his beautiful body, always lifting weights so his chest and arms were thick, strutting naked through the house, past my mother and me, his cock flapping between his legs. But now he seemed broken. “My body is a burning building!” he shouted. “I have to get out!”
I felt a surge of emotion like I had never felt for my mother. My father left and I was alone in his big suburban house with the nice furniture. I cried for a long time, a deep, uncontrollable cry. Shortly after that his spine collapsed and he was placed in a halo and he moved to the first floor because he couldn’t climb the stairs to the bedroom where he’d installed skylights. His new wife was trying to leave him and I said to her, “Now is the time.” But she didn’t, and I wasn’t really that involved.
It was a period of my life that could have gone either way. Or maybe not. Maybe there’s only one way to go with a needle. I went to school. I took my clothes off at The Manhole. Men ran their fingers along my legs, working their tips inside my underwear, trying to get a thumb in my asshole. I pressed my back against them at the Bijou Sunday mornings, rubbed my cheek against their necks. It all made sense at the time, twenty-two years old, a year out of college, graduate school, the rapprochement with my father, the nights and weekends spent dancing on a box bathing in anonymous attention, the rigs full of heroin. But when I try to make sense of it now it’s like a soup. How could I be so many different people? My stripper year ended with an overdose in a rented room a couple of days before Thanksgiving, and when I got out of the hospital I spiraled into a period of unbearable depression. I was never the same after that.
Returning from the dungeon the woman’s boyfriend drives my rental while I lay my head in her lap. She wears tight jeans and I press against her legs and she runs her fingers absently around my ear. A truck passes with a placard stuck to the sideboard:
We cheat the other guy and pass the savings on to you.
It takes a while in rush hour through the 405. She says she’s hungry and wants to stop for Mexican food. I tell her I need to get back to Hollywood where I’ve been sleeping on my friend Bearman’s couch.
I have no idea why I’m in LA. It’s a city I’ve never liked. I’d been having the latest in a string of minor breakdowns. According to the book I’m reading these breakdowns are going to become more frequent, and more severe. But it doesn’t happen. I start to feel better almost right away.
I sleep in the living room, near an open window, in an old-style courtyard building in a part of Hollywood known as Little Armenia. There’s a fountain in the courtyard and a small hill where cats bathe in the sun. Beyond the gates old men set tables on the sidewalk and play backgammon until dusk. Bearman doesn’t question why I’m in Los Angeles. He always seems genuinely happy to see me. He lives with his fiancée and people come over all the time. Everybody has keys. Nobody calls, they just walk in and out. There’s no need to make plans. I take ten milligrams of Adderall with my coffee every day. At night, two milligrams of Lunesta gets me to sleep, but I wake up feeling groggy. The sleeping pills give me headaches. Or maybe it’s the combination. I remind myself to eat, but sometimes I forget. In the mornings I meet Nick Flynn, who is writing a book about torture, and we sit across from each other with our headphones on. We met years ago after I reviewed a book he wrote. Now he’s in LA with his girlfriend, who is starring in a new television series.
“It’s not really about torture,” he says. “It’s
I felt a surge of emotion like I had never felt for my mother. My father left and I was alone in his big suburban house with the nice furniture. I cried for a long time, a deep, uncontrollable cry. Shortly after that his spine collapsed and he was placed in a halo and he moved to the first floor because he couldn’t climb the stairs to the bedroom where he’d installed skylights. His new wife was trying to leave him and I said to her, “Now is the time.” But she didn’t, and I wasn’t really that involved.
It was a period of my life that could have gone either way. Or maybe not. Maybe there’s only one way to go with a needle. I went to school. I took my clothes off at The Manhole. Men ran their fingers along my legs, working their tips inside my underwear, trying to get a thumb in my asshole. I pressed my back against them at the Bijou Sunday mornings, rubbed my cheek against their necks. It all made sense at the time, twenty-two years old, a year out of college, graduate school, the rapprochement with my father, the nights and weekends spent dancing on a box bathing in anonymous attention, the rigs full of heroin. But when I try to make sense of it now it’s like a soup. How could I be so many different people? My stripper year ended with an overdose in a rented room a couple of days before Thanksgiving, and when I got out of the hospital I spiraled into a period of unbearable depression. I was never the same after that.
Returning from the dungeon the woman’s boyfriend drives my rental while I lay my head in her lap. She wears tight jeans and I press against her legs and she runs her fingers absently around my ear. A truck passes with a placard stuck to the sideboard:
We cheat the other guy and pass the savings on to you.
It takes a while in rush hour through the 405. She says she’s hungry and wants to stop for Mexican food. I tell her I need to get back to Hollywood where I’ve been sleeping on my friend Bearman’s couch.
I have no idea why I’m in LA. It’s a city I’ve never liked. I’d been having the latest in a string of minor breakdowns. According to the book I’m reading these breakdowns are going to become more frequent, and more severe. But it doesn’t happen. I start to feel better almost right away.
I sleep in the living room, near an open window, in an old-style courtyard building in a part of Hollywood known as Little Armenia. There’s a fountain in the courtyard and a small hill where cats bathe in the sun. Beyond the gates old men set tables on the sidewalk and play backgammon until dusk. Bearman doesn’t question why I’m in Los Angeles. He always seems genuinely happy to see me. He lives with his fiancée and people come over all the time. Everybody has keys. Nobody calls, they just walk in and out. There’s no need to make plans. I take ten milligrams of Adderall with my coffee every day. At night, two milligrams of Lunesta gets me to sleep, but I wake up feeling groggy. The sleeping pills give me headaches. Or maybe it’s the combination. I remind myself to eat, but sometimes I forget. In the mornings I meet Nick Flynn, who is writing a book about torture, and we sit across from each other with our headphones on. We met years ago after I reviewed a book he wrote. Now he’s in LA with his girlfriend, who is starring in a new television series.
“It’s not really about torture,” he says. “It’s
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