Perhaps it was this—the privacy—that allowed me to relax and settle into myself. In June of that year, I wrote that gas in four states had reached a dollar a gallon—“A dollar!” I wrote that after our German shepherd, Mädchen II, peed on my parents’ bed, my mother entered a new dimension of cursing by calling the dog, who was female, a “shitty motherfucker.” Finally I was recording my world and writing down things that seemed worth remembering. Then I discovered crystal meth and took two giant steps backward. The following six diaries amount to one jittery run-on sentence, a fever dream as
...more
