Susan Kirschbaum’s released the cult classic novel, Who Town — a coming of age novel about young artists in New York in the early aughts. You can take our word for it (or Adam Green’s back pocket endorsement), but it’s a 10/10 read to shake you out of your instagram haze and jolt you back to a pseudo reality of yesteryear.
Lola liked the way her vein looked, seaweed green,
hungry, and bulging against her ivory forearm. Unlike her
more noticeable charms, the vein infused Lola with hope.
Since she was a child, people always told her she was
prettier than the baby on the Gerber mashed pears bottle,
the one with the apple cheeks. But for as long as she could
remember Lola wanted to be free of Nabokov’s curse.
“Honey, I’m going to call you Lola instead of Lisa,” her
mother had told her when she was nine and they were
living in San Antonio Texas, where her father was stationed
as an army general and her brothers attended military
academy. “That’s short for Lolita,” Mamma had said. “The
gal so alluring that even a grown man gets tricked.”
“Stick it in,” Lola begged him. She and the bar back
had smoked hash, taken ecstasy, and snorted coke before.
(Lola hated the way people chattered on coke, about
nothing, for hours.) This was the last uncharted territory.
But he had been afraid to give Lola gear.
“You’re not ready yet,” he had said for weeks. But
since she had moved in, she could no longer stand the
temptation, just under her nose.
“Stick it in!” she yelled, as she wrapped the thin white
kitchen towel around her wrist a little tighter. The bar back
dipped the needle into half of an empty can, which he had
washed and filled with water and heroin. The owner of the
bar where he worked kept a steady personal supply and in
the past month, began to share with the staff.
The bar back and Lola sat on the floor of a closeted
space furnished with one mattress. Lola bit her lip. She
breathed heavily through her nostrils, as though it were
sea air she was inhaling rather than the vinegar tinged
dampness from the floor of a bedroom in Williamsburg.
“I don’t know Loles,” the bar back said, as he laid the
needle on the edge of the filling can. Lola grabbed for it,
but he slapped her hand.
“Please, please,” Lola said, and she started to
whimper in a way that her mamma used to call `a false
start,’ as a warning that if Lola didn’t quit, mamma would
really give her something to cry about.
With one hand still wrapped around the syringe, the
bar back rubbed his free palm on Lola’s shoulder. “I just
don’t want to hurt you, Lola. That’s all.”
She recognized the sorry expression on his face, like a
dog who was about to piss in the house. It reminded her of
her brother after he had shown her his penis and asked her
to ride it like a pony when she was in grade school.
“If you don’t stick that needle in my vein in the next
five minutes, I will scream so loud, the cops will show up,”
she threatened. “And I will never talk to you again.”
“Just look the other way,” he said. “Over your
shoulder but not at me. Wrap your arm tightly, but not a
strangle hold. Like this.”
He pushed his fingers into the towel, right below her
elbow.Lola realized that if she gazed back, he’d hesitate
again, but she hated not seeing how he was manipulating
the gear.
“Lola, just look out the window and count to ten,
backwards,” he said. He swabbed her forearm with rubbing
alcohol, as she watched the groups of kids – around
twenty-three, her age—strolling the gray expanse of
Bedford Avenue. They seemed to stride aimlessly, the
same way Lola had when she had abandoned the University
of Texas her freshman year. Lola always heard that in
New York, you could reinvent yourself. So she hitched all
the way to Times Square. The starting ride cost as little as
a laugh for a joke, and ended – six hitches later – with a
blow-job for a john. But she had refused to do more than
that.Lola’s voice assumed a soft lilt as she began to count:
“Ten… nine…eight…. seven… six…”
On five, it pricked, and she felt it cool as he lifted the
edge.“Keep counting to the window.” He instructed. “It
doesn’t burn, does it Loles?”
“No!” she said and shook her head as she
continued:“Four.”
He pushed the needle in further.
She felt the drug burst through her like a meteor. It
bubbled under her skin. It pumped to her heart, descending
and transposing into a sweet wave. And she felt cradled
within an expansive tender womb.
The sensation numbed her. The sides of her lips curled
upward in a smile she could neither resist nor possess. She
froze outwardly, all the while sensing a warm gooey
current lathering within.
“Loles.”
She heard the bar back but she didn’t move.
“Loles?”
Lola perceived him not as being next to her but as an
echo. The sound circled but could not contact her directly.
The beautiful demon spun within. Lola clutched her
abdomen, lurching forward in an attempt to arrest the
burn that churned through her intestines. Her arms and
legs tingled. And, an acidic paste, like pickled tar, covered
her tongue and spewed from her lips into her lap.
“Loles, this always happens the first time,” she heard
him say as she retched. But he sounded even farther away
this time.
Lola threw her palms into her own vomit as she
drooled more paste on the planks beneath her. She crawled
a couple steps forward, then stopped to emit more,
marking a route of speckled yellow that led her to the
bathroom.
The entry to the bathroom was just a foot from
where she shot up. But the line Lola crossed as she pushed
her knees ahead on the floorboards felt like several stages
of enduring death. She had placed herself on Christ’s road
to Calgary willingly.
When Lola gripped the doorknob, her temples seemed
to pulse out of her brain. And, once she maneuvered it
open — twisting to and fro with one sweaty palm from the
unmarked arm — she placed her head against the floor to
temper the vibrations. The tiles sprouted a thin veil of
mossy dust. But they cooled her enough so she could
fasten her arms around the toilet seat. She supported
herself between the cushion and unmopped tiles, wanting
the fickle nausea that prodded every nerve to flood her
organs, explode her into bits on the floor. Then, she could
finally rest in peace.
The glorious thing about heroin, even then, in its
worst moment, was that it didn’t allow Lola to
contemplate. The past, the present, the future didn’t
count: just the moment in which she existed, supine and
boiling upon the dirty floor; then, eradicating — perhaps
purifying her entire insides – into the toilet.
She was spanning the divide between heaven and hell,
up then down again, up then down. She was unaware of
how time passed between jolts, only that the force had
surrendered her will.
The spot where the needle had pierced swelled and
throbbed. A patch of blood had crusted there. And just
when Lola was sure that she was finally ejaculating her
innards – aorta, intestines, spleen, liver, uterus – full into
the porcelain tunnel, it ceased.
She held on to the cushion for several seconds in
anticipation of the next rush, which never arrived.
Gradually, she became aware of the smell of her insides,
skewered and steamed into a noxious vapor. The demon
had calmed and was now scampering under her skin, in
rolling waves.
He whispered in her ear, “Sleep my child. Sleep. I will
cradle you.” Lola caressed him on the tiles. He massaged her
heels, through her soles, inside and around her toes, up
through her calves and thighs. He flattened her stomach
with a firm rolling pin, which kneaded over her breasts. And
he blossomed into furry fat poppies deep within her chest,
that circulated into rays of electric violet, burgundy, and
gold, shooting through the veins of her neck and behind
her ears, to soothe her scalp from the inside.
“Loles, Loles? Are you okay? You’ve been in there for
a day now.”
Lola picked up the sound from outside the door, but
she didn’t move.
She didn’t need anyone.
She was in love.
You can buy Who Town here to read the rest
