You're Wrong About
You're Wrong About
Go Ask Alice Part 2 with Carmen Maria Machado
This week Carmen and Sarah read the rest of Alice’s bitchin' diary, and ponder the truths that only lies can tell. Digressions include Pamela and Clarissa, sadistic switch hitters, and orange yeast rolls.
You can hear Part 1 here and Part 3 here.
Here's where to find Carmen:
Website
Support us:
Bonus Episodes on Patreon
Bonus Episodes on Apple Podcasts
Where else to find us:
Sarah's other show, You Are Good
[YWA co-founder] Mike's other show, Maintenance Phase
Links:
https://carmenmariamachado.com/
http://patreon.com/yourewrongabout
http://apple.co/ywa
https://www.teepublic.com/stores/youre-wrong-about
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/yourewrongaboutpod
https://www.podpage.com/you-are-good
http://maintenancephase.com
Sarah: I don't know if roller derby names have to be puns, but like ‘Sadistic Switch Hitter’ could be a really good one.
Welcome to You’re Wrong About, I'm Sarah Marshall. Today, we are talking once again about Go Ask Alice. One episode makes you larger and one episode makes you small, and the episodes your mother gives you don't do anything at all. Anyone? Thank you.
We did part one of this story back in May with our wonderful guest, Carmen Maria Machado. And now she is back to help us celebrate Independence Day with the story of the girl who got sucked into the dangerous underworld of selling marijuana to grade schoolers. Carmen is a writer. She is a national treasure. I love talking about this book with her because I feel like she is willing to join me in taking very seriously something that seems very silly to many people. Because it is, of course. But by taking it seriously, it lets us learn about what its author is saying without really meaning to, and reveals about the culture that embraced it and has never let it go.
This episode is part two of a trilogy. And if you want to listen to part three, you can stick around and check it out right now, because it's already out. It's already on your feed because we want you to be able to take in this whole story at once, as we celebrate our day of celebrating a country that keeps taking civil rights away from people, and yet also having parties about how it invented them. And you have to make a cake with something blue on it and put blueberries on it, because that's the only thing anyone can think of. I think it's going to be a difficult or at least weird day for a lot of people. And so we wanted to give you a big, juicy, weird story for a weird time because we love you very much.
We also have a new bonus episode out for you, which you can find at Patreon, patreon.com/you'rewrongabout, or now on Apple subscriptions. And this was one where I decided to do less work and make something better by handing the mic over to listeners who sent us their stories about times that they had changed their minds on giant things, on little things, on MST3K. It just meant so much to me to be able to hear from some of you and give you the chance to hear each other. I really love the community of people we have around this show.
Okay. Time to pack up our tent and finish this journey. Come along with us. There are going to be a lot of s'mores along the way.
Welcome to Your Wrong About, the show where we try to find the truths behind the made-up diaries and definitely find a lot of homophobia. With me today is Carmen Maria Machado. Hello, Carmen!
Carmen: Hi! Homophobia, indeed.
Sarah: Homophobia actually is all around. And can you catch us up to some of what we've experienced in this remarkable story?
Carmen: Sure! So the protagonist, our protagonist of the author of the diary who we are calling Alice, has experimented with drugs, lost her virginity, witnessed her boyfriend having sex with another man - which began a thread of homophobia in the book - ratted him out to the cops, and then fled to San Francisco with her friend, Chris.
Sarah: Crucially, she began her journey into drugs by being given acid at a party, and then tried most other drugs conceivable - including injecting speed into her veins - before being like, “I finally tried pot” and that's what makes her a pusher.
Carmen: Yes. Yes. Crucially pot is the breaking point, which is so weird.
Sarah: Yeah. I feel like this book does tell us what the gay agenda is, which is to get teenage girls addicted to pot, and then to get them to sell it to grade schoolers. So that's also good to know. It's very informative.
Carmen: Yes. Yeah. I had no idea, but now I know, so.
Sarah: We are going to now go through the rest of this story and talk about the consequences of doing a drug. And then later on, we're going to come back and talk about what we know about how this book was actually made and who wrote it. But for now, San Francisco, October the 1960s.
Carmen: The whorey little spider hole.
Sarah: This is a book that has drugs as depicted by somebody who has never come close to drugs, I assume. And swearing depicted by somebody who also I'm sure draws the line at, ‘oh sugar’. So yes, Alice and her dear friend Chris, end up in San Francisco in a “whoring little spider hole” that costs $90 a month.
“I feel dreadful about my parents, but at least they know I'm with Chris and they think she is a nice and respectable girl who won't lead me astray. Boy, how much farther astray could I go?”
That's how the kids talk. So Chris and Alice look for jobs, they have trouble finding anything. Alice gets a job first so that she can support Chris. And the plan is that Chris is going to find a job in retail, and then they can learn how to open their own business together. Which shockingly does happen for a while. That's kind of one of the most interesting things about this book to me, that it has space for little teenage dreams every so often. And then Chris does get a job working for a lady named Shelia, who's very glamorous. She is “without a doubt, the most fabulous looking woman I have ever seen. Skin as clear and white as snow and eyelashes as long as my arm - fake, of course. Her hair is jet black, and I know that she is all of six feet tall.” And we learn later on that she's a fantastically preserved 30.
And Alice has sworn off drugs. She and Chris both have. She says, “I will never, ever under any circumstances use drugs again. They are the root and cause of this whole rotten stinking mess I am in. And I wish with all my heart and soul that I had never heard of them.”
Carmen: Yeah. It's so weird how many times in this book, I feel like, she makes these pledges. Which I guess is the point, right? She's constantly affirming like, oh, I made a terrible mistake. If only I'd listened. If only I had not done the single one thing that has led me down this terrible path.
Sarah: I mean, this reminds me of the sort of fake diaries of 18th century literature, like Clarissa or something like that. I actually can't remember if Clarissa was a diary, but Pamela certainly was. And Pamela is a fascinating book about going to work as a servant girl for a guy who keeps trying to rape you, but not that hard. He hides in your bed and pretends to be an older servant woman. And you're like, “Hey, I know who you are, it's you, Mr. B.” And he's like, “Oh, you got me.” Just this vast literary tradition of books written by adults pretending to be 15-year-olds who are naively wandering into very scary situations.
Carmen: I feel like when I did very infrequently and badly keep a diary, a written diary when I was a child, occasionally there are sort of moments of I guess fourth wall breaking, but they're very unintentional. Whereas they feel like there's something really interesting about the fake diary, whereby definition of the author and feel the need to reach back out to the reader. There's this sort of very intentional hand kind of coming back that is irregular and strange.
Sarah: And it's maybe a reason why you don't tend to get a lot of actual diary best sellers, I feel like. Fake diaries lend themselves pretty well to that.
Carmen: Right, because an actual diary is bizarre, an actual diary is like a weird document.
Sarah: Yeah. And even this diary involves enough boring stuff to feel authentic, but it still moves along. So okay, so Alice and Chris are in San Francisco. They've both gotten jobs. They're bummed out with the sort of grown-up grind of working, but they're saving money so they can start their own business. Alice is working for a guy named Mr. Milani, who makes custom jewelry, and he's one of the few good characters we get in this whole book. Big fan of Mr. Milani.
Carmen: When he is introduced, you're like, oh, he is going to do something terrible.
Sarah: Because he's Italian. So he's ethnic for one thing.
Carmen: And he's a large man with a family and a wife, and I'm like, oh man, something bad is going to happen. But he's literally just there to take her to dinner and be kind to her and just be in a kind adult presence.
Sarah: Yeah. Or maybe the author is like, I know this is controversial, but I'm taking a stand and saying that Italians are good people So she gets to go to dinner with the Milani’s and kind of misses family life watching them. And then they're invited to a party at Shelia's, and this is where things, once again, take a turn. And trigger warning for everything going forward into this book, but especially for sexual assault, we do get a fair amount of that.
November 22nd she writes, “Oh, happy Saturday. Tonight is the sophisticated night. I wonder if they'll think I'm terribly naive if I drink Coke or something instead of champagne or whatever they have.” And then November 23rd, we have our post party entry. And would you like to read us some of that?
Carmen: Yeah. So it opens with, “It has happened again. And I don't know whether to weep or rejoice. The men were so gorgeous. They were like tan statues of the Roman gods and the women were so breathtaking it made me happy and frightened all at the same time. But after a while, it dawned on me that we are young, and shiny, and healthy, and these women are old, old, old.”
Sarah: Thirty.
Carmen: “They probably couldn't even go out of the house in the morning without half a ton of makeup on.” The way she observes women and men is so different. And I feel like describing the women as terrifying is really interesting. It all feels like both like very youthful and also a little gay. The men are just beautiful, they're like Roman gods or whatever. But women are breathtaking, and it makes me happy and frightened. I'm like, uhh.
Sarah: It almost feels, what's a textbook description of an attractive man. All right. Got it. And I just picture a bunch of George Hamilton's in here.
Carmen: But yeah. So then they smell pot and then they're like, ah, they're so compelled by the smell of the pot that she says, “I turned around, one of the men passed me a joint and that was it. I wanted to be ripped, smashed, torn up as I had never wanted anything before. This was the scene. These were the swingers, and I wanted to be a part of it.” So this begins another sort of downward movement in terms of her drug use.
Sarah: And by swingers, she means, they're actually swinging in the sixties way where you trade partners and have sex with each other. Because at the end of this entry, she says, “One thing, if we are going to get back on the merry go round, I really am going to start taking the pill. I can't stand the suspense. And besides now, all I need to topple completely would be to find myself… but I won't even think about it.”
Carmen: Does she just mean pregnant? That's the thing that she…
Sarah: Yeah. The pill keeps coming up as a light motif in this book as well, in a funny way. So then we get, “Shelia has parties almost every night and we are always invited. I haven't found anyone I'm really into yet, but it's fun, fun, fun.” So it's a little bit vague, right? Is she partaking of the swinging scene, or is she just sitting there with her joint and watching all these tan statues have sex with each other?
Carmen: I mean, actually, that sounds fun. But of course it can't be this pleasant forever.
Sarah: Yeah. And it takes a turn within 10 days, because then we come to December 3rd.
Carmen: So this is the moment where they get introduced to heroin. “Smack is a great sensation, different from anything I'd ever had before. I felt gentle and drowsy and wonderfully soft, like I was floating above reality and the mundane things were lost forever in space. But just before I was too out of it to notice what was going on, I saw Shelia and that cock sucker she goes with lighting up and setting out speed. I remember wondering why they were getting high when they had just set us out in this wonderful low. And it wasn't until later I realized that the dirty sons of bitches had taken turn raping us and treating us sadistically and brutally. That had been their plan strategy all along, the low-class shit eaters.”
This whole section really threw me because it is the only time that she brings this up ever. And it never comes up again, but it's so throwaway, right? It's this weird throwaway line that is actually so serious. But again, I haven't read this book in a long time. And when I reread it this time, I was like, oh my God, is there like a whole thread in here about violent the sexual trauma, like whatever. And it just never appears again.
Sarah: I feel like there's a thread in that it keeps being mentioned by different people, but never more than once about the same incident. And throughout this book, Alice keeps meeting at least a couple of girls younger than her who were sexually abused by male family members or who ended up in sex work really young. And the implication is that drugs were a part of this, but no one ever lingers over any of these things.
Carmen: Right, yeah. Yeah. What precisely is it just that oh, if you do drugs, a side effect of that is like sexual violence?
Sarah: Yeah. I think it's like, listen, this is another bad thing that could happen to you along with everything else. Because in the next paragraph she says, “We've had it. The garbage that goes with drugs makes the price too god damned high for anyone to pay.” It's like some kind of a health class PSA where it's like drugs may be really awesome, but you'll get assaulted. So that's persuasive, right kids? Isn't it?
Carmen: This entry also ends with, “I had condemned Richie”, Richie being the boyfriend that she had fled and called the cops on, who had slept with his friend. “I condemned Richie for being a frigging homo, but maybe I should give even that mother a break. With the shit he was on every day, it's no wonder he was out of control.”
Sarah: Poor Richie. I'm going to write a diary by Richie. And so then, because I guess this is how the economy worked at the time, they saved $700. So they flee to go to basically just another part of the Bay Area to start a business.
“I hate to leave Mr. Milani. He's been so kind and good and considerate of me, but neither Chris, nor I can even stand the thought of seeing or hearing from that sadistic switch hitter Shelia again so I guess I'll just leave another ‘thanks and I love you note’.” Which she I don't know if roller Derby names have to be puns, but ‘sadistic switch hitter’ could be a really good one.
Carmen: No, it's so good. I mean, it's the implication being in the last section that Shelia was like a part of this, like rape and sexual assault that they experienced. And so just as these notes of homophobia that keep appearing over and over in the book.
Sarah: The vibe around lesbianism in this book feels like those cautionary prison matron movies in the fifties and sixties where it's totally, ‘I'm just going in for six months for shoplifting’. I don't know why she's British. ‘I'm going in for six months for shoplifting. My boyfriend will be waiting for me when I get out.’ And then the matron mage is, “We'll see about that. You'll get to like it in here, little lady.”
Carmen: Yeah. That sadistic switch header Shelia is like just, yeah. It's pure poetry.
Sarah: And then can you tell us about just this? I don't know, honestly, this kind of lovely interlude that we get, honestly.
Carmen: This is another sort of moment that feels, so it just feels you're seeing the inside of the actual author's brain. Which is, they open a little boutique that also is kind of like a place where like local kids can hang out. I had all kinds of fantasies like this when I was a teen, which is opening my own place or having my own little home or being in charge of my own something.
So yeah, they fix up this little shop. They do a little bit of business. They cover the chairs in fake white fur. Local kids stop by, they have a little refrigerator with cold drinks and they charge them $0.50 cents for the cold drinks. It's so weird. It's so specific and so sweet and just feels like an actual adolescent fantasy about going off to the big city and being able to direct your time and your energy in this way. I don't know. It's really lovely.
Sarah: Yeah. And the way domestic fantasies are when you're a teenager maybe, where you focus on kind of the fun parts of it and not kinda all the little bits of infrastructure. It's really sweet. And she and Chris get to play house, briefly. And we also get to hear about how all these teenagers are annoying her. She says, “they never talk about what they want out of life or their families or anything. Just who's holding how much bread they'll get next year and who has the least crumbs at the moment, and will they cover? And the crazies are beginning to get to me too. I wonder if we really are going to have a full scaled revolution in this country. When they're discussing it, it all seems pretty reasonable and exciting, destroying everything and starting again, a new country, new love and sharing in peace. But when I'm alone, it seems like another insane drugged scene. Oh, I'm so utterly confused.” And I feel like this is an alleged teenager saying don't worry, we don't know what we're talking about. It's okay.
Carmen: And then she hears she's leaving home and begins this process of being like, I should go home.
Sarah: I wonder if the Beatles ever read this book. They’re like, hey, that song's having an impact.
Carmen: You and the British accents today.
Sarah: It's that kind of a day.
Carmen: Then she calls home. I don't know, just this idea of calling home, being like my parents aren't judging me. They'll come and get you. It's a very prodigal son sort of moment, prodigal daughter, I guess, but she says, “Why didn't we do this weeks, months, centuries ago? Stupid us.” What a lovely fantasy.
Sarah: Yeah. And then they have this lovely Christmas together. She says coming home was like reaching heaven, gran and gramps are there. There's also this whole thread of her trying to learn how to cook like gran and learn her recipes. We hear about orange yeast rolls so much in this book that I had to make some after I read it the first time, and they're very good. And then the day after Christmas, she writes, “The day after Christmas is usually a letdown, but this year I enjoyed helping mother and grand clean up and put away and take out. I feel grown up. I am no longer in the category with the children. I am one of the adults and I love it. They have accepted me as an individual, as a personality, as an entity. I belong. I am important. I am somebody.” I don't know. I think it's also interesting. Do you want to read to us?
Carmen: Totally. She says, “Adolescents have a very rocky insecure time. Grownups treat them like children yet expect them to act like adults. They give them orders like little animals then expect them to react like mature and always rational self-assured persons of legal stature. It is a difficult, lost, vacillating time.” Yeah. I mean, it doesn't feel like it's the voice of this alleged teenager, but I'm like, yeah. That's absolutely a thing about adolescence that makes it such a nightmare.
Sarah: Yeah. That's kind of probably one of the other things that has kept this book going is like, there's all these moments of lucidity whereas a former teenager, I'm like, yes, stick with that. Say more about that. But then we get into her next troubles, which are that she's trying to go back to school and pick up where she left off. And basically the other kids won't stop harassing her because of her very recent history as a pusher. And keep literally twisting her arm and asking if she's holding, she's getting harassed by Gloria and Babs one day. Which is just a really, I love that as a name for no good mix.
Carmen: Yeah. And she is fighting back against this, which is nice. “I've also very truthfully or at least part truthfully told mom that a bunch of pretty fast kids are pushing us at school, and we'd like family support.” So she is trying to resist these bad girls who are trying to bring her down, back down the path of the bad path.
Sarah: Gloria and Babs.
Carmen: And then she goes out with George, this is the funniest, “George asked me out for Friday night. He's kind of nothing, but I guess that's the safest kind.” And I was like, oh no, George.
Sarah: And she's trying to live the good teen life, going out with a guy for whom she feels nothing as all the good kids do. And then January 24th. I'm just goanna make you read all of this type of entry.
Carmen: “Oh, damn. It's happened again. I don't know whether to scream with glory or cover myself with ashes and sack cloth, whatever that means. Anyone who says pot and acid are not addicting is a damn stupid, raving. idiot, unenlightened fool. I've been on them since July 10th. And when I've been off, I've been scared to death to even think of anything that even looks or seems like dope, all the time, pretending to myself that I could take it or leave it. And then later after you've had it, there isn't even a life without drugs. It's a prodding colorless, dissonant, bear existence. It stinks. And I'm glad I'm back. Glad, glad, glad.” So, yes, she has fallen off the wagon again.
Sarah: Yeah. The thing about this book that I find maybe weirdest, I don't know, that's a deep field, but it is pretty weird is how it's just, there's no answer for her. Once you are dosed with acid without having chosen that for yourself, which is what happens for her, there's apparently just no way to escape from the cycle of swearing off drugs and relapsing, and then all the traumatic stuff that comes with that. And it feels as if the answer is not even don't do drugs even once, because she didn't do that on purpose. It doesn't… What is the lesson here?
Carmen: I mean, it's weird. Because it's whatever way you frame it's fucked up. Because it's don't be in the presence of kids who might dose you. But also, I believe we call that victim blaming. Yeah. But it's true. Every time she relapses in this book, there's no way out for her.
Sarah: Yeah. It meshes perfectly with adult paranoia, I guess where the answer is like, just don't leave the house. Just don't leave the house, just stay in and watch dragnet with mommy.
Carmen: Or almost constantly be searching your kid, questioning your kid, never leave them alone. It would inspire just like the kind of insanity that would also probably drive a kid to drugs in the first place. Cause they would be just insane with stress, and they never have any privacy or any sense of self.
Sarah: But she has fallen back into drugs and interestingly enough, she then talks to the guy who literally was twisting her arm, trying to get drugs from her a few days ago. And he supplies her with drugs. So it's like, all right, well that thing's turned around for him. And again, mixed in, we get these random moments of lucid commentary. “I think I'm going to start taking the pill. It's a lot easier than worrying. I bet the pill is harder to get than drugs, which shows you how screwed up this world really is.” Yeah. Yeah. So basically Alice now has been outed to her parents basically because of the raid. They send her to a head shrinker.
Carmen: The whole rest of this book, she's interacting with institutions of various kinds, but never court. She's never at risk of going to jail, she's interacting with various institutions, but none of them are the police or the court system or jail. It's all like mental health resources and well, it's actually, we'll talk about this later. Because I was actually kind of unclear a little bit like these places that she was going, I'm like, is it a rehab center? Is it a mental institution given the year that this book is being written?
Sarah: Yeah, we also get, this is maybe her at her most antisocial. She has a little brother named Tim who is escorting her to the drug store and back so that she doesn't do anything drug related. She says, “I almost felt like telling him why mother wanted him to go with me. It would serve him right. It would serve them all right. I know what I ought to do. I ought to turn him on. Maybe I will, maybe I'll surprise him with a trip on a piece of candy. Wow. I just wish I could be sure it would be a bummer.” Quite wicked of you, Alice. But like, your language makes it funny.
Carmen: So the next scene or the next entry, March 5th, “Jackie slipped me a couple of co-pilots”. Which also, what is a co-pilot?
Sarah: So we just looked this up, and according to the DEA - who I trust on slang, as much as this book – ‘co-pilots’ mean speed. It does mean speed. Okay. Tell us about the co-pilots Carmen.
Carmen: Okay. “So Jackie slipped me a couple of co-pilots in English. When she passed out the test papers. Tonight, after everyone goes to bed, I'll get high all by myself. I can hardly wait.” And then there's a question mark, which is used to indicate, we don't know where we are. And then, “Here I am in Denver”. That's the next line. It's so funny. I laughed so hard when I read that. And then also crucially, there's a footnote where the little question mark is. So we don't know in terms of time, and it just says, “there are no dates for the following material. It was recorded on single sheets of paper, paper bags, et cetera”.
Sarah: I love picturing the paper bags.
Carmen: It's funny, because it's supposed to give this very similitude to what's happening, but in fact it is in itself completely unbelievable.
Sarah: I would say that this is her low point, like she's hitch hiking, up in Coos Bay, Oregon. She's sleeping in the park. She gets this racking cough. She's wasting away again like an 18th sanctuary heroine and, “at last the bitchin’ rain has quit.” I don't think that's how you use that word, Alice, but maybe bitchin’ has changed since then. I don't know, basically she's in a bad mood or a great mood, which is supposed to be dependent on drugs. But again, we talked about this last time, this feels in keeping with just sort of teenage moods as well, where just things are great or terrible.
Carmen: She's also hanging out with this girl, Doris, who she met in a doctor's waiting room.
Sarah: Yeah. And we get Doris's backstory, which involves her stepfather sexually abuses her. And then one day when she's 12, “when he had hurt her pretty bad, she told her gym teacher why she couldn't do the exercises. The teacher had her taken away and put into a juvenile home till they could find a foster home. But even that wasn't much better because both the teenage brothers gave it to her. And later an older teenage girl turned her in and turned her on drugs. Then took her the homo route. Since then she's pulled down her pants and hopped into bed with anyone who would turn down the covers or part the bushes. Oh, father, I've got to get out of the cesspool.”
Yeah, I guess not to dwell on this, but it's just, “the homo route”. I feel like the author doesn't know how genuine this language feels of Alice's interest in and kind of fixation on other girls. And then it's the homo route is the worst thing that can happen to you, and it'll happen after repeated rape.
Carmen: Exactly. It's like an implied escalation.
Sarah: Yeah. Like with pot.
Carmen: And yeah, you're right. It is not clear how conscious it is.
Sarah: Oh wait. Oh, we're coming up on my very favorite entry in the whole book.
Carmen: I wonder if this is the same one that I've highlighted the shit out of.
Sarah: “Question mark. I don't know what or when or where or who it is. I only know that I am now a priestess of Satan trying to maintain after a freak out to test how free everybody was and to take our vows.” That is it. Nothing more on Satan for the rest of this book. Can you believe it?
Carmen: I mean, it's funny, right? Again, what are things that are thrown in this book that never appear again, a violent, sadistic rape on drugs and becoming a priestess of Satan during a drug trip. They had to just stick it in there just because it just had to be in there.
Sarah: You can see the agenda. She writes, “Dear diary, I feel awfully bitched and pissed off at everybody. I'm really confused. I've been the Digger here, but now when I face a girl it's like facing a boy. I get all excited and turned on. I want to screw with the girl, you know. I want to get married and have a family, but I'm afraid I'd rather be liked by a guy than a girl. I'd rather screw with a guy, but I can't. I guess I've had a bit of a bummer.”
So it's like too many drugs will turn you gay, I guess. It's almost like the gayness is the drugs, right? You start slow and then you can't go back again, and you become ruined.
Carmen: She also says, “Sometimes I want one of the girls to kiss me. I want her to touch me, to have her sleep under me. But then I feel terrible. I get guilty and it makes me feel sick.” I mean, again, we flagged gay stuff before she does drugs. She has that intense thing with her friend. Because I feel like what's being described here very clearly is just being a teen, a queer teen in a homophobic system, where you're taught to hate something about yourself. And you're like, I'm turned on, but I also feel like shit, because like I've been taught that this is bad. Yeah. I mean, I see what you're doing structurally speaking, but also, I feel like it's just, yeah. It tells me a lot about the author. The author doesn't seem totally again in control of this queer narrative, I guess.
Sarah: Yeah. And then we got another classic line, “Another day, another blowjob. If I don't give Big Ass a blow, he'll cut off my supply. Hell, I'm shaking on the inside more than I'm shaking on the outside. What a bastard world without drugs.”
And then she, day of sex machina, runs into an old priest who really understands young people. “We had an endlessly long talk about why young people leave home. Then he called my mom and dad” and in the TV movie of this book, which is not bad, this character is played by Andy Griffith.
Carmen: What? Well, love that.
Sarah: That's a good casting.
Carmen: This actually was another moment. I feel like there were just a couple moments in this book where I got a little, I don't even know if emotional is the right word, but there was like a beat of emotion that really surprised me. And this section also has it, it says “they were so glad to hear from me and to know I'm all right. There were no recriminations or scoldings, or lectures, or anything. It's strange when something happens to me, dad always leaves everything in the whole world and comes.”
That sounds like someone wanting somebody to do that. It's almost like a moment of fantasy in the same way that like the little boutique is a moment of fantasy. There's something about that just really surprised me and struck me.
Sarah: These moments of genuine emotion and kind of longing.
Carmen: Yeah. Longing. That's I think that's what it is.
Sarah: Yeah. The whole thing together and that they do keep showing up for her and that it doesn't work because she has been placed as a cautionary tale on this doomed toboggan ride to the bad place. It feels like it's enthusiastically accepting such a huge role in stigmatizing drugs, furthering drug stigma. And yet it also seems like that is exactly one of the things that is so hard for Alice, because she comes back home, and her parents open their arms to her. And she is staring at the possibility of this great future.
There's structural problems, keeping her down too. All these other kids who keep trying to get her high again, but also the fact that she feels so worthless based on what she's been doing. And yeah, if only there was less stigma in this very book that she's a character in.
And then we have diary one and diary two. Diary two is about to start, but ending of diary one, she writes, “I have lamented until I'm dehydrated, but calling myself a wretched fool, a bely worthless, miserable, poultry, mean, pitiful, unfortunate wo begun, tormented, afflicted, shabby, disreputable, deplorable, human being isn't going to help me either.” At least she has a thesaurus. “I have two choices. I must either commit suicide or try to rectify my life by helping others. That is the path I must take for I cannot bring further disgrace and suffering upon my family. There is nothing more to say, dear diary, except I love you. And I love life and I love God. Oh, I do. I really do.”
Carmen: Diary number two.
Sarah: Diary, number two, start us off.
Carmen: So she's come home again, “But I wonder if I will ever feel completely new again, or will I spend the rest of my life feeling like a walking disease? I'm really gonna try to make kids see that getting into drugs simply isn't worth the bullshit. It simply isn't worth it. Every day for the rest of my life, I shall dread weakening again and becoming something I simply do not want to be”. And she also talks to her brother and gives him a lecture, the brother she almost drugged, or that she seriously considered drugging.
Sarah: This book really feels like a horror movie because when things are going well at this point, you're like, okay, what terrible thing is going to happen next? Because I know it'll be something. And then she goes back to school, kids start harassing her again, and then she has her first flashback.
Carmen: She says, “I guess I must have had a flashback because I was sitting on my bed planning my mother's birthday, just thinking about what to get her and how to make it a surprise, when my mind got all mixed up. I can't really explain it, but it seemed to be rolling backward, like it was rolling in on itself and there was nothing I could do to stop it. We were all standing around reading the ads for a secondhand junk and for every kind of sex deal imaginable, then suddenly it all changed into some kind of underground movie. It was slow and lazy, and the lighting was really weird. Naked girls were dancing around and making love to statues. I felt so sexy. I wanted to break wide open and run after them. But the next thing I remember, I was back on the street panhandling and we were all shouting to tourists, ‘mighty kind of you, I hope you have a nice orgasm with your dog tonight’.” And then considers that maybe she is schizophrenic instead of it being a flashback.
Sarah: Yeah. So now once again, it feels like Alice keeps escaping the basement and then we keep seeing like different sets of demon hands reach out totally to drag her back down. And here's our latest set.
Carmen: Because there's another moment of this really intense body critical stuff where she shaves. And she says, “I shaved my legs and underarms. I really looked at my body critically for the first time in my life. It's a nice body, but a little small through the bust. I wonder what would happen if I exercised, but then I guess I'm afraid that I'd wind up looking like a Jersey cow. I'm glad I’m a girl, I even like having my periods. I guess I never wanted to be a boy. A lot of girls do wish they were boys, but not me. It's hard to believe that at one point I was so screwed up.”
Sarah: A thread that feels very visible here is that as a girl in society at any time but looking at this particular moment in the late sixties, there's a line when they get to San Francisco about how she doesn't even take a bath every day anymore, because it's too much time to have to line up, to use the bathroom in their spider hole. And yeah, that's fine. You don't have to take a bath every day. And it feels like it to me that this whole world of what femininity is and has been for a lot of people, which is just treating your body as a farm that you have to rise early and aggressively and judiciously tend to and reign in and control. And then the idea that if you're critical about any aspect of that performance, then you're on the road to being a sadistic switch hitter. There's just, no, there's no way to win here. And yeah.
So she's back home. She's working hard in school. She's getting good grades. She's really lonely, but she's sticking to it and then gramps has a stroke. Yeah. Her parents fly out to be with him and gran. So she's taking care of her siblings, Tim and Alex. And then a few days later, gramps dies during the night. And then we get his funeral, which begins this slight motif of nightmares and visions that carries us through the rest of the book.
Carmen: She begins to have nightmares about his body, all filled with maggots and worms. “And I thought about what would happen if I should die. Worms don't make distinction under the ground. They wouldn't care that I'm young and that my flesh is solid and firm.”
Sarah: God. They would like that, probably.
Carmen: I was going to say, yeah.
Sarah: I, again, feel like this is a very fake book about drugs written by somebody with some real understanding of depression. And she just is either committed and trying and working and just trying to manifest this better self by kind of working as hard as she can, it feels like. Or just something flips, something bad happens or time passes. And she's just got this horrible weight of self-hatred and mortality and futility on her. And she just seems to have no control over it. And I know that this is positioning this as a drug thing. She was like this before drugs entered the picture. Maybe the central thing that of course, the time that we're looking at has very little vocabulary about.
Carmen: Being a depressed, queer teen who is self-medicating because of these things.
Sarah: So really, it's like how do we use this book in some kind of real useful way? And well, think about what the depressed queer teens need.
Carmen: The next part that I was- this is really amazing in so many ways, is May 16th, “Today dad took me to an anti-war rally at the university. He is very worried and upset about the students and talked to me as though I were an adult. I really enjoyed it. Daddy is not as worried about the militant students who he thinks should be dealt with very harshly as he is about the kids who could be easily led into the wrong thinking. I'm worried about them too. I'm worried about me.”
We need to be worried about these kids. I guess in the same way, we need to worry about kids who are on drugs. It's like the same language as being used to describe, I guess the anti-war protesters.
Sarah: And then she meets Joel Reams. What do you think about Joel, Carmen?
Carmen: He’s a little older than her, but very honorable and sweet. And he works really hard. He works, doesn't he work in a factory?
Sarah: Yes. He's a little Bruce Springsteen character before that's a thing.
Carmen: No totally. I mean, ultimately, I guess not. I mean again, spoiler alert, but the thing that she's going to lose by being involved with drugs. And Joel also kind of serves, I think ultimately as also like a kind of father swap. Because Joel also, the whole time that she goes to the rest of this book is very accepting and loving.
Sarah: Yeah, so they start having their lovely courtship. “Daddy looked up Joel's record”, which is amazing. And that's how we got some exposition about him. It's like, oh, I don't know, Daddy. That seems unethical. But what do I know?
Carmen: Also, crucially right before she meets Joel the kids at school put a joint in her purse to try to get her in trouble.
Sarah: Yes. The no-good Nicks.
Carmen: Totally. These kids are still harassing her. We also have that moment that I feel like we need in every book like this, where it's like, she writes out, “Mrs. Joel Reams. Mrs. Joel Reams, Mr. And Mrs. Joel Reams.”
Sarah: I assume he's the cousin of Harry Reams, the star of Deep Throat. And they're different branches of the family tree. Oh, also gran is ailing. We got the line, “Gran is sick, but mom thinks it's just the letdown. I hope so because she really looks terrible”.
So, I mean, there is the not terribly subtle implication that she's killed both of her grandparents through bad behavior. Oh, I almost forgot. Dad has gotten permission for me to use the university library. So that's where she's going to meet Joel.
Carmen: So she is babysitting for Mrs. Larson, who I actually don't remember who that is.
Sarah: I don't think we've seen her before. I think Alice is just like Mrs. Larson called. You figure it out. I'm not writing context. I'm very busy.
Carmen: So Jan has promised to babysit but called that last minute. So she goes over and then Jan shows up and is stoned and is like, oh, I want to babysit because I need the money. But then she's, I cannot let her because she's stoned. The baby is only four months old.
Sarah: You shouldn't be babysat by a stoned person until you're at least eight months old.
Carmen: Exactly. And then she has to call her parents, Jan's parents, or she feels like she has to call Jan's parents, which again, creates more problems for her. It could have gone terribly, had it been Jan watching the baby, would have certainly been baked like a turkey.
Sarah: And then we also get some amazing insults. So after she calls Jan’s parents, we get June 3rd, “Jan passed me in the hall today and there was bitterness and hostility in her face like I have never seen before. I'll get even with you, you fucking Miss Polly Pure, she said, and she practically screamed it out in front of everyone.”
And again, this is like where the sort of real scope of the author's experience may be visible. Because if I were Alice, I might be like, you know what? I've been a homeless, satanic priestess doing subsistence level sex work. I don't really fucking care what Jan thinks of me. But these are the only real stakes in the world that I think this author lives in.
Carmen: These kids are pushing her and they suggest what would happen if we stash something in her dad's car, wouldn't that be so funny? She says, “Surely they wouldn't pick on me so immersively if it weren't for the drugs, would they?” It's like, yeah. Kids are never mean, or terrible, or cruel to each other without drugs.
Sarah: No. Teenagers, they need a lot of support and a lot of patients, that's kind of their whole deal. Sobriety doesn't make them less complicated.
Carmen: Oh, George is also giving her the cold shoulder, has been giving her the cold shoulder for a bit, which she says this allegedly, because she's a quote unquote ‘doper’ and he's straight or whatever. But also, I'm like, maybe he knows that you don't like him and that you think he’s boring.
Sarah: Yeah. It doesn't matter who cares. And then June 16th. “Gran died in her sleep last night. I tried to tell myself that she's gone to gramps, but I'm so depressed, all I can think about is worms eating her body.”
Carmen: Death is coming for her. It's moving toward her with every one of these sort of moments.
Sarah: Right. I mean, it is a parable. We're doing drugs means getting the Reaper's attention and he shows up at your house and starts taking people one by one. I also feel like teenagers would be drawn to this because this book is just, it's all about doom. Speaking from my own experience at the time, I was very drawn to at least have access to stories that were like, no life is fucking scary. You're skating on this facade and people are telling you that life is just going to be great and there's just going to be health and opportunity and joy. And as long as you brush your teeth and eat enough leafy greens and whatever, then nothing can stop you from getting what you want, if you work hard for it. And I think we crave stories that are like, yeah, or sometimes just the worst possible thing happens for basically no reason. Fate is random and apparently cruel and scary random things happen to kids who don't deserve it. And I mean, this book is not giving a lot of useful information on most of the stuff it's talking about, but I feel like it does recognize the fact that teenagers do understand how scary the world is.
Carmen: Yeah, “Everything is wrong, and I can't go on anymore. I really can't. Today I was just walking down the street by the park when a boy I don't even know, grabbed me and threatened me. He kept pulling on my arm and twisting it and calling me every rotten thing in the world. Then he pushed me around to the back of the clump of bushes and kissed me. It was totally humiliating and disgusting. He pushed his tongue into my mouth and just kept rolling it around until I was crying and gagging. Then he said I needed all I needed was a good fuck and that I better not tell anyone, or he'd come back and really talk things over with me.”
Ugh. We mentioned earlier that there's this like awful sort of detail of being like brutally raped that feels so weird because it's just mentioned once and never again and in no detail. And it's just boom, done over, but this is so specific. And it feels, I mean, this is awful to say, but like an early experience of sexual violence. You can be assaulted by somebody without drugs. You could be just sober and walking down the street.
Sarah: Yeah. And your hometown can be the scary place, too.
Carmen: Totally. Oh yeah, exactly. You don't have to be in San Francisco. You could just be in your home in, where are they again? Utah somewhere. Yeah. You could just be in your hometown and something like that could happen.
Sarah: Yeah. And then despite this, summer starts. Joel is away. He's back home for the summer, but that romance continues. Things are going really well, it seems, so that's a bad sign. And then July 7th, “Mrs. Larson broke her leg at an automobile accident, and I'm going over there every day to clean the house and cook for Mr. Larson and take care of the baby until Mrs. Larson's mother can get there. Good practice for the future. Little Luann is a sweet little thing, and I'm going to love it. I got to go now and start my new job. I hope Mr. Larson doesn't eat at the hospital all the time because I want to practice cooking. See ya.” So gosh, what could happen next?
Carmen: So another one of these dramatic, smash cut, lost real moments where then we have a question mark, and then, “My dear precious friend, I am so grateful that they would let mom bring me to you in your battered padlocked little case. I was terribly embarrassed when the nurse made me use the combination and dump both of you out and my extra pencils and pens, but I guess they were just being careful in checking to see that you weren't filled with drugs of one sort or another. The window is filled with heavy wires. I guess that's better than bars, but I still know I'm in some kind of hospital jail. I have tried to piece the whole thing together, but I can't. The nurses and doctors keep telling me I will feel better, but I still can't get straight. I can't close my eyes because the worms are still crawling on me. They are eating me. They are crawling through my nose and gnawing in my mouth and, oh God. I must get you back in case because the maggots are crawling off my bleeding, writhing hands into your pages. I will lock you in. You will be safe. The worms are eating away my female parts first, they've almost entirely eaten away my vagina and my breasts. And now they're working on my mouth and throat. I wish the doctors and nurses would let my soul die, but they're still experimenting with trying to reunite the body and spirit.”
Sarah: Yeah. What do you make of that?
Carmen: I find this section about the idea of having her quote, ‘female parts eaten away’ this ambiguous material about sexuality and then also material about the body, right? Because you know, before she was just like, I'm so glad to be a girl. I'm glad to have my period. By extension, I'm glad to be definitely heterosexual. And now here she's broken so thoroughly that the things about her that feel like she allegedly loves are just being consumed.
Sarah: Yeah. Like drugs will consume your femininity, literally.
Carmen: Yes! Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
Sarah: And then we just get these entries where they won't give her a mirror, but we know that her hands and her feet are all screwed up. Her hands, her fingers.
Carmen: Yeah. She says, “the ends of my fingers look like hamburger cooking under the lamp, and they've given me a spray to use to ease the pain.” And you're just like, what the fuck happened?
Sarah: She finally gets to see herself. She says, “I hardly recognize myself. My face is puffed and swollen and black and blue and scratched. And my hair has been pulled out in big patches till I have completely bald areas. Maybe it isn't really me.”
Carmen: And then pretty soon after that we begin to get some exposition. “I found out how I got the acid. Dad says that someone put it on the chocolate covered peanuts and I guess that's right, because I remember eating the peanuts after I'd washed the baby. I guess I tried to call mom to ask her to come over and get me and the baby. When I realized that somebody somehow had tripped me, it's all very unclear because when I try to think back, it's like I'm looking through fuzzy colored lights, but I do remember trying to dial home and taking eternities to get each number to the end. I think the line was busy, but I don't really remember what happened. Except that I was screaming, and gramps was there to help me, but his body was dripping with blazing multicolored worms and maggots which fell to the floor behind him. They were eating and they wouldn't stop. His two eye sockets were teeming with white, soft bodied, creeping animals, which were burrowing in and out of his flesh and which were phosphorescent and swirled into one another. The worms in parasites started creeping and crawling and running toward the baby's room. And I tried to stomp on them and beat them to death with my hands, but they multiplied faster than I could kill them. And they began crawling onto my own hands and arms and face and body. They were in my nose and my mouth and my throat, choking me, strangling me, tapeworms, larva, grubs, disintegrating, my flesh crawling on me, consuming me.”
Sarah: I got to say, this is good writing.
Carmen: When people talk about this book, I feel like worms and things choking you and being on you is like what people always talk about. And I'm like, yeah, this is really horrifying. I would also remember this for the rest of my life. You know what I mean?
Sarah: All the creative energy has been saved for this final entry or not a final entry, but this late in the game entry. Yeah. And I remember because I read this for the first time as an adult for these episodes and just getting to that part, I was just fully in for the ride, no ironic distance. I was just like, Ugh, it's just, yeah, this book works. I don't know what its goals are in many ways, but like it's doing what it's set out to do here.
Carmen: And the parents have told Joel that she's had some kind of mental breakdown, but I guess have not told him that this was like a drug-induced whatever it was.
Sarah: Yeah. Oh, here's okay. So July 22nd. “I could tell mom had been crying when she came to see me today, so I tried to be very strong and put on a really happy face. It's a good thing I did because they are sending me to an insane asylum, a Looney bin, a crazy house, freak Wharf, where I can wander around with the other idiots and lunatics. I am so scared I cannot even take a full breath.” And it turns out that the freak wharf is a really pretty good place. So that's nice.
Carmen: And then she says, “I know now that I could resist drugs if I were drowning in them, but how will I ever convince anyone other than mom and dad and Tim and Joel? I hope that I didn't really take anything knowingly this last time. It sounds incredible that the first time I took drugs and the last time, which landed me in an insane asylum, were both given to me without my knowledge. Nobody would believe anyone could be that dumb. I could hardly believe it myself, even when I know it's true.”
There is just like this thread of being dosed against her will. And that being the actual danger is just super interesting. And then she gets to go home, but so she realizes she's going to be able to get out. She feels bad because she's leaving people behind.
Sarah: And she's gotten a letter from Joel while she's at the freak wharf. She writes “Joel's letter was great. I was really afraid to read it, but now I'm happy that I did. He is the most warm, compassionate, forgiving, loving, most understanding person in the world. And I can't wait for fall when we can be together again.”
Carmen: So Joel just is a rock, is the rock that's like taking the place of her father.
Sarah: Daddy junior
Carmen: Daddy Reams.
Sarah: Oh my, okay.
Carmen: All right. And then there's also this really weird thing later in the same entry where she says, “I don't think many girls did things like that when mom and gran were young, I wish things were still like that. I think it would be much easier to be a virgin, marry someone and then find out what life is all about. I wonder how it will be for me. It might be great because I'm practically a virgin in the sense that I've never had sex except when I've been stoned and I'm sure that without drugs I'll be scared out of my mind. I just hope I can forget everything that's happened when I finally get married to someone I love. That's a nice secure thought, isn't it? Going to bed with someone you love?” When you can only have sex with men when you're stoned, do you know what that also means? Do you know that also is like a symptom of, it's you're not attracted.
Sarah: Possibly, yeah.
Carmen: You're like not attracted to them. You want to be having sex with someone else? It's just another weird moment where I feel like it's the author telling on herself a little.
Sarah: Well, and it's just, it's one of the hallmarks of compulsory heterosexuality to agree that no, we don't really like having sex with men obviously. And it's oh, you don't?
Carmen: I remember talking to somebody once and she was just like, yeah, I'm really kissing the first boyfriend and being like, oh, I guess kissing is really boring. I didn't realize kissing was so boring. And maybe it's boring or maybe because you're just not kissing the right person.
Sarah: So she's reaching toward this beautiful, boring future with the perfect Joel Reams. So, something is going to intervene, but let's just enjoy what we have while it lasts.
Carmen: Alright. September 18th. “I looked at the sky this morning and realized that summer is almost gone, which really made me sad because it doesn't seem as though it's been here at all. Oh, I don't want it to be over. I don't want to get old. I have this very silly fear, dear friend, that one day I'll be old without ever having really been young. I wonder if it could happen that quickly or if I've ruined my life already, do you think life can get by you without you even seeing it? Christ, it gives me chills just thinking about it.”
Sarah: And that feels very authentic. I think I feel that way every September.
Carmen: Yes. Oh my God.
Sarah: Yeah. And then she gets a special surprise.
Carmen: Yeah. “You'll never, ever guess what happened. Joel was here. I knew he was registering late because of his job, but while I still can't believe it, the meany, he's been here four whole days and he was actually down in the living room when I came home this afternoon, wearing my old cutoffs and daddy's oldest sweatshirt covered with white paint. Anyway, when Joel saw me, he kissed me right on the lips in front of my whole family and hugged me till I thought my insides and backbone were crunching like potato chips. It was lovely, even though it was a little embarrassing.” And then where he gives her a friendship ring. I do like the book kind of acknowledging that it would not be super appropriate for them to get engaged at this very moment as she is. Yeah. She is 17.
Sarah: They’re not vampires.
Carmen: No. “I only got to see Joel alone for about 10 minutes when we sat on the porch steps before dad drove him back to wherever he's staying. I even forgot to ask. We had so much to talk about, but I'm sure he likes me in a quiet, soft, gentle, permanent lasting way. Well, if I'm going to get up and practice at six and face tomorrow, I'd better get some sleep. Besides, I want to dream about lovely today and how much more lovely every day after today is going to be.” And then the next morning she gets up and it's just, do you want to talk about this? Because this is the final-
Sarah: This is her final entry. Yeah. She writes, “I woke up even before the alarm went off. It's only five minutes after five and I doubt that anyone else on this block is up, but I am so wide awake I can barely stand it. Frankly, I think I'm scared witless inside about going back to school. But in my head, I know it's going to be alright, because I have Joel and my new super straight friends and they'll help me. Besides, I'm much stronger than I used to be. I know I am.”
And then she kind of says goodbye to her diary and by extension to us, which is really, I find this genuinely emotional. She writes, “I used to think I would get another diary after you are filled, or even that I would keep a diary or journal through my whole life. But now I don't really think I will. Diaries are great when you're young, in fact, you've saved my sanity a hundred thousand million times, but I think when a person gets older, she should be able to discuss her problems and thoughts with other people instead of just with another part of herself, as you have been to me, don't you agree? I hope so.” I love how she's like, you're just a part of myself, but do you agree with that? “I hope, so for you or my dearest friend and I shall thank you always for sharing my tears and heartaches and my struggles and stripes and my joys and happiness’s, it's all been good in its own special way, I guess. See ya.” And then the next page.
Carmen: Then the epilogue, “The subject of this book died three weeks after her decision not to keep another diary. Her parents came home from a movie and found her dead. They called the police and the hospital, but there was nothing anyone could do. Was it an accidental overdose, a premeditated overdose? No one knows. And in some ways that question isn't important. What must be of concern is that she died and that she was only one of thousands of drug deaths that year.”
Sarah: That is the end of the book. Oh my God.
Carmen: Was it accidental or premeditated? No one knows. And it isn't important. It's like she has been dosed multiple times. That was actually a super relevant question.
Sarah: I love how the epilogue is playing dumb about the book's own contents.
Carmen: It also, I don't know, for some reason I thought I remembered that she died from LSD, but we don't even know what drugs she died from. It's just not clear. They don't say. So her parents came home and found her dead sounds like a heroin overdose, but like the drug that's been escalating in drama the entire book is LSD.
Sarah: That's a nice thing about this epilogue being able to be so incredibly vague. It's able to imply she died of LSD without actually saying that, because if it said that you could be like, hey, wait a minute. That's not really a thing that happens.
Carmen: Totally. Totally. It's just so annoyingly cynical. And it's just, it's so annoying how, it's just well, what's important is that she was just one of thousands of drug deaths this year. And we're not going to look into this or even talk about it and you're right, if they said LSD, it would require a level of abandoning everything we know about LSD. If the book were about heroin use, the escalation into death would make a little more sense. It would make more sense sort of logically.
Sarah: No, but this bitch can try heroin one time and just be like, well, no, not really into it.
Carmen: Totally. But like LSD is so much scarier to describe in terms of the hallucinations and the vivid imagery. So the necessity of LSD as a literary device is at odds with the necessity of heroin as a plot or something similar as a plot device? This ending kind of just manages to hand wave away those things.
Sarah: It also feels like LSD makes sense as a culprit to fixate on at this time, because it's a new class of drugs, it's not a narcotic, it's not something that is used for institutionally approved purposes in medicine or anything like that. It's just its own thing that kind of appeared recently in human life. And it feels like you can demonize that and then continue using pharmaceuticals for other stuff without challenging that concept in any way.
Carmen: Oh my God.
Sarah: I guess my overwhelming feeling, coming to the end of this story both times, I'm just like, for as fake as this was, for as cheesy as this was, for as hilarious as the language often is, I have been won over by this character because somehow despite all of this, she feels like an authentic rendering of what it's like to be a teenager, specifically, a teenage girl in my experience. And it makes me sad. I wish that this book could have allowed her to live. I want to imagine her running off with daddy Reams making more orange yeast rolls.
Carmen: Maybe this was like a shared quality of hoax books. I was thinking about this when you did the episode about the Amityville Horror. Where you have all these books that are hoaxes and there's intention behind the way they're being written, but they're always telling on themself and they're always accidentally illustrating something different than they think they're illustrating. So Amityville Horror was domestic violence, where you're just like getting this accidental plot that if you read it, you're like, oh, it's not even meant to be anything, but the subtext of the book, or even the text of the book is about domestic violence.
And here ostensibly, this is a book about drugs, but like this isn't actually a book about drugs. It's about being a depressed queer teen. Despite yourself, you can still have this authentic, literary sort of response to what is actually quite like a cynical project. Which, I think, is really fascinating. And I feel like probably every hoax book that's ever been written, this would be true of it. It would just actually accidentally be illustrating something much more profound and interesting than ostensibly the project of the book.
Sarah: Yeah. Which I think is a great endorsement for studying hoaxes. Especially the ones that gain some kind of following, they're not just representing something like some kind of authenticity that the author is producing, but something that is resonating with people and how many households at the time the Amityville Horror came out, were dealing with domestic abuse, with violence, with shitty father figures, and we're able to find something that both didn't and did validate that trauma by being like, well, of course the dad was awful, but it was because of the ghosts and that's why it was bad. But what you end up with is a book validating the fact that having an abusive stepfather is bad, actually.
And maybe the gateway to that is saying it's bad because the ghosts are making him do it. And in this one, we're validating the fact that it is painful to be a teenage girl, because especially in this era, there's like some degree of pretending that you're something you're not, and that's exacerbated if you are having all these feelings for your female friends. And then the best thing you can say about a guy is that he kisses you softly. It feels like this book is trying so hard to be fake, and yet reality keeps sneaking in the back door. I mean, there are so many beautifully written, wonderfully crafted, amazing, sometimes genius books published around this time that nobody reads anymore, but this book, it's never fallen out of favor. It's always sold. It's always been in print. It's always made money. Yeah. And we're going to come back and talk about how it was made and why we're talking about it today. Yeah. And don't eat the chocolate covered peanuts.
Carmen: Oh my God. Do not eat the chocolate covered peanut.
Sarah: And that is the end of the story. I know, it's a lot to process. Thank you, as always, to Carolyn Kendrick, our amazing producer. Thank you to Miranda Zickler, for amazing editing. And thank you to Carmen Maria Machado, who will be back in part three, along with our super-secret special guests. It's not really a secret. You can already see who it is, but maybe you haven't seen yet, in which case it's a secret and they are going to show us the pie that is already baked and waiting for us. So we can find out a little bit about who the heck wrote this thing and why. See you over there.