Bleeding material

Right now I’m reading Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. It’s listed as a national bestseller, so it’s supposed to be great. But I’m having some serious trouble with it. As I’m writing this, I have a small knot in my stomach from some of the stuff I read this morning on the bus.

The book is the author’s memoir, basically recanting his childhood. But it does so in such a brash, flip way, it’s hard to believe. This is due to the enormity of his experiences, and often times how he writes about them. The first sentence in one of the chapters is: “I’m lying on Neil’s bed, the top of my head knocking against the headboard because his cock is inexplicably down my throat.” If I were against gays or terrified of homosexuality, this wood jar me to the core. I’m not, but it still did. See, the thing is that at this point in time, the author is 13 years old. The aforementioned Neil is in his 30s. That’s what bothers me – the guy is getting worked over by a pedophile, and he recants his memory in such a flip, nonchalant way, it upsets me. It’s as if this stuff is perfectly normal. Regardless of what gender is involved, 30 going on 13 is not right.

I don’t know. I guess that’s what people love about it, the way Burroughs casually refers to his strange childhood living at an off-kilter psychiatrist’s home and how he deals with his lifestyle. I don’t know if I believe it all, though; it seems forced, as if the author is making up or exaggerating (as most authors do anyway, to a certain extent) what happened as he was growing up. But maybe that’s how he needs to remember it in order to deal with it.

Some stuff is actually pretty funny, especially when the subject is so strange that Burroughs’ flippant style accentuates its absurdity perfectly. But these times are contrasted so steeply against more brutal occasions (like the “headboard” incident above), that I come away (no pun intended) feeling like I need to take an Oxycontin and lie down.