The Girl Next Door: Pot Docs and Loss on the California Coast
[A]s with any documentary, every one of our stories eventually becomes a ghost story. On a long enough timeline, that is.
Posts by tag
overdose
27 posts
A Love Letter to Fuckhead
If you’re judging your characters, you’re not doing it right. I’ll always be grateful to [Denis] Johnson for teaching me that.
Voices on Addiction: A Bad Night
Trying to protect him from himself is like trying to protect atmosphere from weather.
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Ladies Lazarus
For Mother, two worlds—earth we inhabit together, then the hot, heavenly body of euphoria and speed. Often, Mother exists in the tear between these worlds, belonging nowhere, to no one.
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #55: Donald Ray Pollock
Donald Ray Pollock has been steadily serving up plates of mild horror since his first book of short stories, Knockemstiff, appeared in 2008. Pollock followed the explosion of Knockemstiff with…
Voices on Addiction: Mother’s Day
I will always feel a little broken. Intellectually, I know her disease is “not my fault.” But I’m her mother. I will always partially feel the blame.
My Life with Annie Lennox: A Christmas Cornucopia
Perhaps part of what prompted me to get clean and sober was the fact I kept making myself uncomfortable.
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: A Brief History of a Bad Heart
She studies you, still panting with an energy that consumes the room, and whispers in a reedy voice: “They say you fucked up your heart.”
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: All The Time Every Minute
I lost a best friend and that means something, but you cannot deny that to go on the grief has to stop killing you, eventually.
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: An Enemy to No Man but Himself
Jennifer Steil reflects on the death and life of her ex and comes to an unexpected understanding of addiction and the limits of responsibility.
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Crushed
He’s a cute mensch, I gathered, a cuddly fellow with a well- groomed beard, sad eyes, and, most importantly, a comforting voice that sounded like he was about to either cry or laugh.