SOPHIA JUNE RECOMMENDS
Guest Editor 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
