I don't even know what to title this its so depressing.

The next story in The Best American Nonrequired Reading I would like to comment on is called Where I Slept, by Stephen Elliott from the Tin House magazine. Its more or less a list of places the author (the narrator in this case) slept while he was homeless at the age of 13. What I found interesting about this, is he basically portrayed this timeline of his life (from 1985-86) by telling us the different places he went while he and his father (who was abusive) were not on good terms…well, they never really resolve their conflict…Anyhow, Elliott keeps writing throughout his short piece that the piece isn’t about love or hate or compassion or the people he met, that its simply about where he slept. He says this every time he wanders off into the emotions and characters of the story, to bring the reader back to the topic. But he obviously wants us to get a glimpse into those emotions and what it was like to be out in the world alone. Otherwise he wouldn’t have written it. Right? This is what is unique about this writer. He doesn’t just say who he met, what they did, and why he left for the next place, he relates every stage of his ‘journey’ to something those stages all have in common: finding a place to sleep. I think that’s rather brilliantly creative. It also makes sense to do this because the places he went make a structure for the storyline. It puts the facts in order from where he started off, to where he ended. Along with the writing style, I found the actual story very intriguing and amazing. Yet disgusting and somewhat unbelievable. Can you imagine a boy of 13 years old, living on the streets of Chicago alone? Okay, maybe. But encountering molesters, prostitutes and German drunks? Smoking weed, drinking, and doing pills-regularly? I mean, he was in eighth grade! I know it exists and is an unpleasant problem, but I’ve never seen/read true, first hand accounts of homeless children and what they’re up against…to this extent anyway. The others I’ve read, very much unlike this one, cut out the sex, self-mutilation, and the drugs, and ended with the reuniting of the family. (YAY!…not so much) It’s not like I didn’t know about these things (I’m not that naïve), I just can’t get it through my head how young he was.


*sigh*


It’s very depressing…


I think I’ll go write a song.