SOPHIA JUNE RECOMMENDS
Guest Editor
SOPHIA JUNE RECOMMENDS
Jane’s Hair Is The Only Thing That Matters in Laurie Weeks’ Zippermouth
“Obsessions,” wrote Patricia Highsmith, “are the only thing that matter.” I came across this quote for the first time in the acknowledgements of Anna Dorn’s Perfume & Pain, a fragrance-obsessed lesbian pulp novel that I compulsively inhaled in two days.
It’s from Anna that I first heard about Zippermouth, Laurie Weeks’ canonical lesbian novel, that is nothing if not a book about obsession. The 2010 debut novel by the ‘80s and ‘90s downtown superstar follows a lesbian heroin addict in ‘90s NYC and her obsession with getting high, writing letters to Sylvia Plath, and most desperately with Jane, a straight girl who flirts with just enough ambiguity to keep her addicted. In ranting, self-possessed prose that stirs your skin like a dull razor, we read about how her obsessions leave her jobless, broke, in and out of detox and periodically reading a copy of Living Without A Goal. For me, Jane is the only obsession that matters. More specifically – Jane’s hair.
You have to understand, Weeks is cool. Weeks was a contributing writer for the Boys Don’t Cry screenplay. Weeks is named in a Le Tigre lyric. But that impenetrable It factor is undercut by her yearning prose about the humiliating, life-affirming obsession of a crush – my most favorite of obsessions – which is manifested in Jane’s hair, of which all of page 60 is dedicated to.
“Jane’s hair was my lost adolescence,” Weeks writes. “ Jane’s hair was a bottle of Suave Wildflower Shampoo, delicious at $1.99. Jane’s hair was a photograph of my mother holding me the day I was born, it was the sun just visible from a streaky window of a gas-station restroom, Jane’s hair was a starfish, the stars, Jane’s hair had a mind of its own.”
Zippermouth is a book about heroin, psychosis, and desperate loneliness, but for Weeks, obsession is the most intoxicating drug of all.
Sophia June is a culture writer covering books, music, fashion, nightlife & trends, based in New York City.
www.sophiajune.party
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