#mothwork

Concepts within concepts within concepts...

The phrase "Harry's son" originally appeared in the first draft of the chapter 2 bathroom scene. In that draft, Harrison told his mother, "Harry's son? I'm nobody's son," THOUGH I eventually revised it so this became internal narrative instead after a critique I agreed with.

The meaning of the name Harrison is quite literally "son of Harry" and I was intrigued by what Harrison thinks of that, considering his strained relationship with his dad. While his father's name is not literally Harry, I was interested by what it meant for him to be named, in a sense, after his own sonhood.

During my chapter 2 revision, I removed the “Harry's son" dialogue, however there was something deeply vulnerable about Harrison admitting he felt disconnected from sonhood to me, and I wanted to emphasize that more in the draft. That's how I settled on naming the final chapter!

Theme informs plot

Thematically this chapter explores sonhood and naturally, fatherhood. The relationship between father and son wasn't a theme I'd explored previously in BB, but the chapter title of course warranted that exploration.

It was therefore most natural to start with a flashback between Harrison and his father (who is no longer in his life), and I LOVED seeing how this single theme alone informed the rest of the plot. We get to see how sonhood informs how Harrison interacts with himself, particularly in his relationship with intimacy (in adolescence and now also in his 20s RIPPP JEREMIAH).

The writing process

I lowkey struggledddd with this chapter, which is strange because it turned out pretty much exactly the way I wanted it to! Endings are always weird for me, no matter how clear of an idea I have for them. I had to edit and tweak MANY scenes in order for them to feel whole, and I didn't think I liked this chapter until I gave it a long, long rest.

The plot

CW: abuse, drug use, bullying, assault, homophobia, trauma

Harry's son starts in flashback, but the timeline is technically shortly after the end of No Christ!

Scene A:

In a teenage flashback, Harrison recalls his last memory of his father.

Scene B:

In the fictive present, Harrison lies next to a sleeping Jeremiah. Angry at himself, he plans on leaving but on his way out steals Jeremiah's magic mushrooms (which he takes lol bruh).

Scene Ca:

Tripping, Harrison ends up at a house party in need of release. He meets a man he instantly clicks with but who rejects him upon recognizing Harrison's frenzied state. Offended, Harrison and the man argue and the experience is oddly paternalistic.

Scene Cb:

Startled by what the man has said, Harrison recalls an early relationship he had with a boy named Valentine. Breaking out of the flashback, the man asks Harrison about shame to which he runs away (lol so real).

Scene D:

Frantically looking for a way out of the party, Harrison ends up in a bathroom where he runs into a man he quickly realizes is his own reflection.

Scene E:

On the lawn outside, Jeremiah wakes a dazed Harrison up. Biyu who is with him convinces him to leave and he eventually does (aka Haremiah breakup!!).

Scene F:

Sober and alone the next day, Harrison, with nowhere else to go, heads to a church.

Excerpts:

The full first scene! Also his childhood home being a bungalow makes no sense but like <3 I love that word <3 CW: implications of physical abuse.

The last memory Harrison has of his father is blurry, a moment shaken like a snow globe. He could’ve been nine. He could’ve been fifteen. But he’s sitting on the curb of his childhood home—a mid-century bungalow on the corner lot. His nose is bleeding. He’s not sure why. If he walked into a wall. If he asked for orange juice the wrong way. Sun glazes the neighbourhood and he’s there, legs outstretched on the resealed driveway, holding a palm to his upper lip. His dad mows the sparse grass behind him, but it’s been so long that he can’t see his face, or maybe it’s too vague to process as he weaves between the lawn’s birch trees. A neighbour blasts the radio up the road—Mariah, maybe Oasis. His father waves at a passing woman. Her hair is redder than Suz’s, her crow’s feet sharper, like knives. She delivers the neighbourhood’s papers. Sandra? Kristen? She lives three houses up, gives out full-sized Kit-Kats on Halloween. Nice weather, she might say—all he remembers is her smile. Every single tooth visible and narrow like rosary beads. Blood drips into his mouth. He’s not sure where to find tissues. He should get up now. Wash his hands. Run north. Find his mother.

His father turns off the mower and leans on the handle. Want to come inside for lemonade? he might ask, fingering his shirt collar, the line from his wedding band long tanned over. Whether the woman says yes or no doesn’t matter. The moment she rounds the sidewalk, she spots Harrison and is so startled she clutches her chest and breathless, asks, “Is that a ghost?”

Harrison analyzes Jeremiah in the dark:

Harrison listens to Jeremiah’s heartbeat. In the moon’s silken light, he traces his chest, fingers absorbing each thud, thud, thud. Asleep, his breaths are lighter than usual and it dawns on Harrison that he’s aware of this difference—how he inhales when awake, how he inhales when he laughs, how he inhales on Mondays before an early shift at Greta, how he inhales when he’s winning at Scrabble, how he inhales when he’s losing at Scrabble, how he inhales when he’s on a karaoke stage, how he inhales the moment he walks off, how he inhales before saying grace, how he inhales when kissed.

Harrison considers his own vulnerability (CW: descriptions of a dead animal):

When he was younger, he and Suzanna watched a nature documentary about hyenas. A group of cubs feasted on the head of a giraffe, left its body hollow. He’s not sure why he thinks of it now. Perhaps the look in his eye. Something dead, or perhaps startled. He leans forward, grips his jaw until he’s wincing. Jeremiah just touched him here, kiss satiny, elegant. He hadn’t commented on the bruise around Harrison’s throat except to blow on it like a mother might blow on a busted knee and say, almost inaudibly, “I’m so sorry this happened to you.” Harrison hadn’t considered that anything had happened to him. He happens to other people. He’s not that oblivious. But still. He wasn’t sure what motivated Jeremiah to kiss his eyelids, tell him he was angelic, a beautiful boy. He couldn’t tell if he deserved that grace. Why he’d ended up next to a man so willing to soothe his faults he forgot to guard his own. Harrison held him like he was an hourglass losing and gaining sand simultaneously.

Jeremiah tries to comfort Harrison because he's actually a really nice person:

Harrison cried when Jeremiah kissed the gash on his forehead, told him he was safe here. What had he done to warrant protection? Jeremiah kissed his stomach and said he was warm, worthy. Jeremiah twirled one of his curls and said he had a good heart—strong, covered with daisies. That was what, a few hours ago? How fast can goodness wear off in a man? In the dim mirror, Harrison should see that person Jeremiah described—worthy like a knight to valour, romantic as a damask rose. But he’s just someone’s son, a copy-and-pasted scattering of his mother’s nose, his father’s eyes.

Harrison thinks about identity and a future with Lonan:

The last time he knew who he was, he’d been wrestling with Lonan in a tent, his smile so wide it hurt. He’d been so sure of everything back then—he would drive Lonan from Oregon back to Boston, or Brooklyn, or wherever he wanted to go. They’d rent a brownstone in Sunset Park, spend half of move-in day making out in a scarred bathroom. Screen Lang’s Die Nibelungen on a projector in the kitchen. Adopt a cat. Buy each other the same socks year after year for Christmas. But Lonan’s not here, disappeared in some inaccessible plane. And if that is true, then Harrison must also be gone.

Harrison robs Jeremiah (the last line is on the BB dust jacket! - CW: drug mention):

He stoops to Jeremiah’s jacket at the foot of the bed—terra cotta suede. He pockets a loose nickel and a strip of gum, then yanks out his wallet from the breast pocket. He tells himself he’s going through it only for that baggie of Tylenol Jeremiah had pulled out at the restaurant. Even when his fingers brush up against twenties, fifties, he’s committed only to the painkillers. But the instant he touches something else—a different baggie bulging with mushrooms, there’s no doubt he’s going to break that promise. What other choice does he have? He’s just a man after all, and who sins better?

In Harrison's head, this is the Haremiah breakup:

In the dark motel room, Harrison looks up at Jeremiah. He’s a good guy. A good friend. Looks even younger when asleep and even less aware. “I love you,” Harrison whispers to the still air. He doesn’t even mean it. “I love you.” One day, he hopes he’s nothing but a story Jeremiah tells. Someone to laugh at over mimosas, to curse while knee-to-knee with an improved lover. Jeremiah, this world doesn’t know what it has. Jeremiah, hold yourself dearly. Jeremiah, I’m not coming back. Jeremiah, forgive me when you’re older.

Harrison again thinks about Jesus... fondly lol:

The house’s walls whorl like a spinning top. Suzanna bought him one of those when he was a kid, wooden, painted rainbow. He should call her. Find a phone in someone’s throat. Beg to go to voicemail, to be picked up, to be kicked out of her place where he can rot on the side of the road. He passes a room with two couches stacked on top of each other, or perhaps those are just people, mewing against bare skin like cats. His jaw is slack, hungry for something—Jesus? Or any other man?

Harrison seeks vengeance against his father and also thinks about Lonan again:

He needs to find his father right now. He couldn’t have gone far—perhaps he’s still in that suburban fever dream, mowing the lawn. Harrison could find out. Once, he was so motivated to drive a man back east with much less than eight hours of sleep and he could do the same for himself now. He needs to crouch in a musty closet. Pray to a god he doesn’t believe in. Kill his father with his bare hands.

Harrison bumps into "the man" and needs to chill! Also the "one man show" dialogue is parroted from Perry in chapter 3:

Maybe they kiss on their way to the kitchen. Maybe Harrison bites the man’s jewelry off with his teeth, chews, swallows. He’s starving. Why does it matter? The air is florid and gelatinous—like walking through a vat of women’s body wash. On the kitchen counter, Harrison finds a cyan punch bowl. He loads up another glass as the man watches him, downs one, then another. Under a bar light, the man is easier to see—brown-skinned, hazel-eyed, the stud on his upper lip shaped like a star. He could be beautiful. He could be the kind of man Harrison would’ve drooled over as a teenager. Older. Harder. Wiser. “You’re like a one man show,” Harrison says, then yanks him closer by the elbow. Maybe he’s hiding God in his mouth.

Harrison being embarrassing in narrative:

Harrison swipes at his lips, breathless. “What are you doing?” His eyes feel like the centre of an optical illusion, eternal even if you know exactly where the end is. “How old are you?” asks the man. His stare is resinous. Unyielding. Harrison pushes forward, but the man is too strong. He feels like a child when he tries again to no avail, his body thin, useless, and even younger when the best thing he can think to say is, “Guess.” “Look,” the man says, already turning his back. “Does someone know you’re here? A friend or something?”

14-year-old Harrison flashback when his father disappears for a couple days ft. Valentine!! (CW: self-harm mention):

It was June, the air so humid it was like walking through a spider’s web. The most Harrison could do to entertain himself was read the same copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer his father kept on the dining room table. He’d tried solving the 1000-piece puzzle of Big Ben that Suz had bought his father years before but gave up before he even finished the frame. By Tuesday, he was so bored he considered slitting his own palms to at least keep himself busy for a few hours while staunching the bleeding. He went on a walk instead. A five-dollar bill he’d pocketed a year before from his dad’s wallet crinkled in his pocket. It doesn’t matter where he was trying to go or what he meant to find—if he meant to find anything. Who he ran into was Valentine, a scrawny, towheaded boy who’d had a growth spurt that year and frequently smelled of bleach. They were in the same grade. Hadn’t ever said hello to each other. Valentine stood at the intersection near the high school, probably on his way to the convenience store for a packet of Cry Babies. He wore a red fleece vest—too hot for the weather. His chin was pocked with acne scars. One moment, Harrison was staring, shielding his eyes from the sun, and the next, he and Valentine were crouched against a dumpster, their mouths hot and wet like a winter glove chucked into the dryer and taken out too early.

Things take a saddddd turn w/ Valentine (mini ramble here to say I'd never thought much of Harrison's EARLY experiences w/ his sexuality/the joys and difficulties he encountered in his explorations and this section of the chapter almost killed me lol THIS MAN NEEDS LOVE):

It didn’t seem possible, then, how Harrison had invited Valentine back to his house, both aware his father had been gone that day and the day before and the day before, both sweaty, doe-eyed, panting, young. How they should’ve walked past Gingerbread House in Bay Ridge on the long way home, chatted about who they were backing in the ’98 NBA Finals. How Harrison knew there was a half-eaten packet of Schneider’s hot dogs in the fridge he could doctor into something more substantial with a single frozen TV dinner. How as they approached his house, he didn’t even need to see his father’s pickup to know he was there. From twenty feet away, he heard the radio—the Sean Hannity Show. He should’ve run. Everything buzzed inside him to, and he could’ve, scooped Valentine’s hand within his own and sprinted down the sweltering sidewalk until the sun went down. They could’ve gone anywhere, hitchhiked all the way to east Indiana, or west Texas. They could’ve spent the rest of their teenage years eyelash to eyelash, sour mouthed and in love on Sunday mornings.

CW: Physical abuse - Baby Harrison contemplates faith (sooo interesting considering he was raised an atheist):

Days later, when Harrison lay on his bed with a bag of frozen peas on his eyes, he’d considered the possibility of divine intervention. A god had tipped his father off. A ghost—perhaps the ghost of his mother. It was nonsensical. He couldn’t see through that eye until the end of July.

CW: assault - Baby Harrison is jumped by Valentine's older brother:

After a half hour, he was so dizzy, he thought he was dying. He wouldn’t see his mother again, would he? He’d tallied every day she’d been gone on sticky notes—he’d already gone through an entire pad. Suz would’ve known exactly what to do if she’d seen him like this, bound to the ground like a tacked butterfly. Her jeans muddying with dust as she crouched to her son, her hands warm, gripping his face, her saying he was beautiful just the way he was, he was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. He wanted to believe that vision into reality. But no one was coming for him.

CW: implied homophobia - Baby Harrison hopes for help in an adult who happens upon the above scene. && WHO SHAMED YOU:

He stood over Harrison, who’d started to cry. His mustache was woolly, belly round. A cigarette dangled between his fingers. There was something soft in his eyes. Harrison thought it was pity at first. Then he said, “Up now, boy. What did you expect?” and he knew it was disgust. Now, the man from the party stands in front of Harrison. For a second, he has to blink to ensure he’s not still there in that lot, staring up at a man he hopes will help him. His head’s falling off. His eyes are on fire. What had they been talking about? There’s something about shame. The man steps forward. Harrison recoils even though no one has touched him. Some partygoers have entered the kitchen now, all congregating around the punch bowl like Harrison had. The bang of music from outside follows them as they chatter and the noise is like an ice pick to the brain and Harrison wants to tell them all to leave, Harrison wants to bolt from this city, Harrison wants to be someone else’s son for a day just to see if that might fix him. “Who shamed you?” asks the man. Harrison inhales, aware he feels like a deer just about to be shot. He glances at the others here with them—their golf ball eyes, their pearl necklaces, then glances at the door. He can’t look at the man again. If wisdom is a weapon, Harrison’s a prey animal, so gullible, death a requirement of his life. The man opens his mouth again. Harrison runs.

Harrison's "excuse me while I run I really gotta get out of here" moment (FUN FACT is this first sentence is an exact mirror of the first sentence of the book!):

Harrison doesn’t need a god so much as he needs a way out. He parts glittering people with his elbows, his heart a pendulum ticking. He needs an exit sign bleeding in neon letters. He needs to cab back to Brooklyn—not to find his father, but to hide. He needs to go back to Eliza’s apartment and sit in the parking lot for hours until someone—anyone, a shadow of a man with cold hands, a phantom who sins as much as he prays—comes out. It doesn’t matter who he nudges, if one is a woman who looks vaguely like Biyu, if she curses when he shoves her out of the way, if one is a man with a shiny upper lip who says Harrison’s kind of cute and would he like to kiss him? He’s no Jacob fleeing Laban, he’s just a man trapped in a party, his vision pooling pink, orange, neon green. Who shamed you? He hates the shape of that question. His mother is disappointed in him, his father too—this is their white flag. A failure with Jeremiah, a failure at this party, a failure in sonhood. As he moves, that question bleats. Down a set of stairs. Who shamed you? Back up two. Who shamed you?

He's kinda going through it? (CW: violence) this is one of my favourite parts of the whole book!

He’s too aware when he’s high but worse when he’s not, the losing player in his own zero-sum game. He’s a loser—he is lost here, the walls around him shaped like a mouth, two mouths, three, all slick and shouting the same words—who shamed you? Who shamed you? Who shamed you? Harrison gapes, unable to escape. Someone tells him to watch where he’s going. Someone grabs him by the throat. Someone helps him up the stairs, and someone else kicks him back down. Someone reads his fortune on a daybed, tells him he’s been dead since yesterday. Someone holds his face and says he’s the most gutless person they’ve ever met. He’s going to die here. He’s already dead. He’d like to die in the starlight. He’d like to take his last breath to the pulse of Take On Me. He’s laughing. He’s crying. When he splits a joint with someone on the roof, he’s naked but so clothed he could suffocate. He’s under the earth. He’s hovering above it. He’s lost in a glut of bodies. No one is here. Someone could be. He screams for a mother. Mourns a father. Chews his nails on the landing. Begs for forgiveness with his eyes spread open.

Harrison breaking point fr:

He runs into a man. The stranger’s eyes are wide and peeled back like a sardine can, his hair so mussed it looks less like a style and more like electrocuted sunrays. He can’t be any older than him—the look in his eye is searing, mildly reckless. Perhaps he’s got a mother at home waiting on him like Harrison does. Perhaps his memories of his own father are buried within the scars that loop his hairline, easy to write off as accidents. His upper lip is shiny, the barest fuzz of a mustache growing. He looks like he’s fated to die too, something sad in his face when he blinks. Harrison reaches, and the man does too. When his fingers knock into a cold surface, it takes him a minute longer to realize he’s not staring at another man, but himself. He stumbles backward and narrowly steadies himself on the bathroom’s locked door. He squints at his reflection again, deluged in déjà vu. Bloodshot eyes, purple throat, split lip. He takes a careful step forward and then another and then another until he’s bolting right back to his face, pressing his palm to his cheek. What had Jeremiah asked him when he’d arrived at his apartment yesterday? What happened to you? And what did happen? He’s a man mid-bruise, a man mid-death, a man mid-funeral, a man mid-afterlife. Something’s fallen out of his face. His fingers tighten against the mirror. Will he claw it out of his eyeballs? He tries. He’s desperate to, in need of unravelling something. But no matter how insistently his fingernails scrape, nothing changes—he looks the same. Bloodshot eyes, purple throat, split lip. He doesn’t recognize himself. It feels like he won’t again. And why would he? In August, he abandoned a part of himself thinking he could find it again on his own, and how wrong was he? He’s not brave. How foolish to think he could be.

Saddest part of the book probably (resurrecting badly is one of my favourite phrases EVERRR):

His eyes swerve like Halley’s comet. He’s not the man he once was. No Christ, no Jacob, no Jeremiah, but something much worse. He’s sprouting something evil, his face glitching right ahead of him. Panic lurches up his throat and he reaches for himself to say he’s fine, someone’s here for him, someone loves him, nothing’s going to make him vanish here, he’s here, he’s happy, he’s going to be, he’s worthy of gentleness, he’s really not, he’s got an ugly smile, he’s nobody here, he’s losing himself, he’s better than ever, he’s dismantling no matter how hard he tries to keep himself together, he’s wearing another man’s earring because he’s over him, he’s not, he’s never going to love someone else again, he’s in chrysalis, he’s in autopsy, he’s got someone else’s nose, eyes, hair, he’s resurrecting badly, he’s turning blue and nothing can stop him, he’s Jesus when he wants to be and Lonan right now. The mirror shatters before he realizes he’s punched it. Fractals of glass starburst off his fist, splay across the counter. He’s not Lonan. He’s kinder than that. He doesn’t lift people by the chin and then twist off their heads. He drives a man across the country out of his own volition. When his mother calls him generous he understands why. He does not leave the man who sees something soft in him. He’s a good person. He’s a good person. He’s crying as his own face splits into a million pieces.

Haremiah breakup starts now...... !!!

He wakes dazed under starlight. What he knows for certain: a honeysuckle flutes behind his ear and man hovers over him. If these two things are related, he doesn’t know why—if the flower’s a gift from the man, if the man is a gift from the flower. How beautiful is that idea? Man not a duplicate of himself but birthed from a petal like a pearl from a clam. He could be a glorious by-product, couldn’t he? This question matters less than the throbbing light ahead of him. He squints at its blurred edges. Gabriel coming for him? The headlights of Suz’s car? Perhaps just a streetlamp. Or, God doesn’t have a face—this could be his arrival.

This is a direct continuation of that (JEREMIAH IS NOT HAPPY)!!! ft. the iconic drawing:

“Harrison?” He blinks. Someone’s shaking his shoulder. He’d like for them to stop—each movement is like being hulled out of his skin. “Harrison?” the voice repeats. Harrison. who is that? Harrison. He should know. Harrison. He’s heard that name called on velvet midnights. He’s heard that name aimed like a gunshot. Uttered like a prayer. Harrison. “Can you hear me? You stole my shit.”

You ever wake up high in the grass and then call your current bf who's a hair away from breaking up with u the name of ur ex bf bc you actually for a second see your ex who is literally not there:

He’s in the grass. Staring at a face now that’s getting closer, closer, attached to a neck that’s attached to a shoulder that’s attached to an arm that’s attached to a hand that’s nudging him. He could stay here forever. That face is pretty as the silverbells he and Suz used to hang on their Christmas tree. Prussian blue eyes. Oil spill hair. The last time he’d seen this face, he was amazed at how delicate it could look in dappled light. Features sculpted precariously like a China doll. Harrison used to imagine a future with that face. Harrison used to see himself reflected back in his pupils. “Lonan?” he asks, eyes lolling. His heart’s racing. He needs to tell the truth. He wants to hold him but his hands aren’t moving on command. What if he misses this shot? What if he’s a set of full fingers and this man is sand sifting right through them? Please don’t leave, he wants to say. Please don’t let me go.

(^^^ I'M HURTTTTTTTTT)

Harrison thinks about Jeremiah fondly AND THE ILY DROP (also biyu in the bg like HOLD MY POPCORN):

Harrison’s gotten used to him—how he hums Lionel Richie hits in the shower, how he softens his vowels when talking to his seven-year-old cousin on the phone, how he’s wise but still young—how he’s lost nothing from knowledge. And maybe that’s the problem. It’s impossible to keep a good thing that’s been around for too long. Harrison finds a face, his fingers clammy, clumsy. The moment he contacts skin, Jeremiah’s face clarifies as if emerging from a cloud. Soft skin, his brows waved in worry, mouth taut with what might be anger, or what might be devastation. He should be angry. He should be devastated. Harrison would be angry. Harrison is angry. Devastated too. He’s a good person. He keeps being dealt bad cards, keeps getting paper cuts on the way. It’s not fair. None of this has ever been fair. “Listen to me,” Harrison says, gripping Jeremiah’s cheek harder. His eyes flare at the blood dripping down his knuckles and the specks of glass that glitter off them like rhinestones. “Are you listening?” “JJ,” comes the voice as a car door slams. “He’s not worth it.” Jeremiah’s jaw trembles. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t suffer. “I’m here.” “You’re a good person,” Harrison says. He drags his fingers down to Jeremiah’s mouth, digs miniature ships into his bottom lip. In another life, he could’ve gone anywhere with this man. A private tour of a glass museum. Griffith Park. A supermarket cereal aisle. Bora Bora. The fabric-softened sheets of his double bed. “I love you,” he says, ignoring the second voice that again suggests they leave. He tries to get onto his elbow to get closer to him, to kiss him, to stare till his eyes tumble out like marbles, to take his chin and say I find the best parts of me in you, but the farthest he gets is a weak buck of his chin. “I love you, I love you.” “JJ. We need to go.” Jeremiah’s staring right at him. He’s never seen his eyes like this before—so focused it’s like they’ve pressurized and could crack like amber at any moment. He looks like he wants to say something. Harrison, stay with me. Harrison, you’re not your past. Harrison, you’re surviving. Instead, he shakes his head, then starts to rise.

(^^ I FIND THE BEST PARTS OF ME IN YOUUUUU STOPP)

WHAT NOT TO SAY WHEN YOU COULD'VE SALVAGED THIS YOU FOOL:

Harrison snatches his wrist so tight his hands shake. “Believe me,” he says. His chest is airy. He’s dying. He’s dead. Falling from a great height. He smooths a hand up Jeremiah’s eyebrows. Beautiful man. A living picture in his own right. Jeremiah glances at his arm wound by Harrison’s fingers, and when he looks back up, his eyes are shimmering. “Why did you go?” he asks. And why had he? He could’ve spent forever against Jeremiah’s ribs. Built a future with him over spiked lemonade and foolish nights at karaoke bars. Jeremiah’s built for movement, late nights, orange sorbet mornings, moonlit swan paddle boats, a thrilling midlife career change, dinner parties with near strangers, weekend hikes of Yosemite, bustling hostels in Amsterdam, desserts with almond liqueur and crème fraîche, sunsets in Montego Bay. “You’re bad for me,” Harrison slurs. Jeremiah’s face slackens.

last image of Jeremiah:

So he doesn’t try when Biyu stands and helps her friend do the same. He doesn’t try as he watches Jeremiah paw off his eyes, as he watches Jeremiah look at him a last time before turning away. He doesn’t try as together, they walk toward the car, mumbling things Harrison can’t hear—that he’ll never find out. He doesn’t try as Jeremiah opens the passenger side door, and before he gets in, takes one glance back at him on the grass. He doesn’t try as Jeremiah’s lip trembles, doesn’t try when he ducks into the car and slams the door shut. After all this time, it feels like the least he can do.

Harrison-Jesus parallels:

The crowd goes mild, focused forward as the processional begins. Harrison looks to Jesus crucified behind the altar. In his last moment, he gave himself to his father. Harrison will never see his father again, unlike Jesus, but both their mothers have been left to weep. And yet they’re both sons. No matter what they’ve done.

AND THE ENDING (the choir's singing Here I am Lord) ft. chapter 1 & 2 parallels (& credit also to @dallonwrites who gave me the idea for this ending months ago literallyyyyy worked out so perfectly):

This morning, he woke on the same grass he’d last seen Jeremiah on. He didn’t need anyone to tell him not to go back. The difference between him yesterday and him today is he’s a man without a place to go. No shepherd to follow. No man to hold. He understands what he is. A failure. A disaster. A sad, bitter person. He doesn’t need anyone to tell him any of this. Not Jeremiah. Not Biyu. Not Suzanna. Not Lonan. The music swells. Harrison’s eyes burn. In August, leaving Lonan was an inevitability as much as it was a new beginning. Now, he knows he’s not going anywhere. After this, he’ll go back to Suzanna who’ll greet him with a plate of papas, twirl his hair while he cries in her lap on the couch. They’ll buy tilapia on sale at the grocery store tomorrow. Adopt a betta fish, wince at the normalized hypocrisy. He won’t think about Lonan. What he’s doing in that apartment. If he remembers what it’s like to hold someone’s hands like they’re your own, what it’s like to mistake someone else’s reflection as yours. He’ll never speak to Jeremiah again out of courtesy, write him a postcard from a Grand Canyon gift shop when he and Suzanna visit like typical mothers and sons, but never send it. He can manage in his forever and ever and ever and ever amen because he’s okay. This horribly pleasant, horribly easy life will be okay. The choir asks who will bear their light. Offers themselves to God just as Jesus did. Harrison gasps. Once, he might’ve convinced himself he could be like them. Someone so committed they’d do anything for the person they love. He’d done that before—given everything in him to a man even if it almost killed him. Now he doesn’t know. Who he is. Where he went. Jesus in the tomb. Body gone. Body gone. He’s missed his chance at glory. When the choir swells, their voices clattering off the domed ceiling, he laughs. He doesn’t mean to. But there he is, virtually alone despite the passionate churchgoers around him. He’s no Christ, no Jacob, no Jeremiah. No Lonan. He’ll never be even if he wanted to. Tears flail down his face. He laughs again, though halfway, it becomes a sob. The woman from earlier glances at him funnily, but it doesn’t matter. He’s not going to heaven. He’s never going to see Jeremiah again. The choir’s heard their calling, but Harrison won’t ever have one. He laughs with his eyes straight on the crucifix. People from other pews begin to turn around, puzzled, even the priest looking up from the altar. The church silences eventually. No one claps. All eyes turn to him. He weeps with his mouth wide open.

AAAAND that's it!!! Thank you SO much if you've been following this project & AN EXTRA THANKS to everybody who sent so much love and support my way. Like no drama, I wouldn't be here if I didn't have all that support earlier this year, so if you've ever said ANYTHING NICE about BODY BACK, please know you literally saved me this year! Thank you!!!! It's really a spectacular feeling to know you have a little village behind a project, and I feel so honoured and grateful that this project resonated with so many people. <3

Beginnings & more beginnings

When I got the original idea for Hallowed Bodies, it was March and I was on the other side of the country at the intersection in front of my old apartment building. It was raining on my walk home from a journalism class and I was listening to My Dying Spirit by Greyson Chance when I had the thought... "okay if Harrison is alone in Las Vegas in BODY BACK, that must mean LONAN is also alone for a while in Las Vegas--so what's he doing?"

For about two days, I was really consumed with the idea of what this book *could* be--eerie church imagery, a contemplation of faith, an exploration of Lonan's relationship with his dead mother. Then time passed, I moved, life got weird, I finished BODY BACK, and by the time I got back to HB, something in me had changed.

When life changes writing & grieving potentials

I've given that preamble because HB didn't turn into the thing I thought it would turn into on that initial walk back home. I think there's sometimes a tendency in writing advice spaces to be so blasé about how life circumstances impact writing. I don't think there was any possible way June 2023 me could've written the Hallowed Bodies I'd dreamt up back in March 2023. I changed SO much despite staying fundamentally the same and the idea also had to change because *I'm* the one writing it.

With that said, sometimes I wonder what would've happened if I stayed exactly where I was in the spring (which is an extremely Lonan and Harrison-core thing to consider LOL). In a way, a big part of writing this book was grieving what it could've been. I still have a distinct vibe of the early vision which is very similar but adjacent nonetheless to what I actually wrote. I think that's what made writing this project so hard because I didn't understand what I wanted from it--March me was conflicting with June me and in the end, what we got was a mixture of both!

A positive start... for now!!!

I've always heard of writers talk about "shiny new idea syndrome" but I never really understood it. However, drafting Holy Ground completely clarified what shiny new idea syndrome even is which left me feeling perhaps overly confident (honestly which I'm grateful for because I didn't feel that way again until the last chapter LOLLL).

I drafted the first paragraph of this book back in April, and the rest of it only took a day or two in June. It's very short (for me) at 1500 words and illuminated two structural elements for HB: short chapters and "vignette"-like scenes.

Inspiration & vibes:

Okay so SORRY if you already know this but Greyson Chance got me unwise & his music video for My Dying Spirit is MY FAVOURITE THING IN THE WHOLE WORLD. I always thought of MDS as a really solid Lonan song, but the music video's Catholic imagery had me spiraling MORE. I basically wanted to recreate the vibes of that video in the form of a book.

We were really going for THIS as the vibe (from the video)!

Hallowed Bodies as Antithesis

One of the first things I knew about HB was that I wanted it to be a mirror of BODY BACK. I wanted to see how Lonan got to be a better person BEFORE FH in contrast to how Harrison becomes a worse person before FH. Thinking of Hallowed Bodies as the antithesis of BB is really fascinating to me! If BB is loud, HB is quiet. If BB is maximalist, HB is minimalist (as much as I could help it haha).

Internal narratives as a trap

Something I LOVE about this project in general is that it's SO internal. I don't think I've ever been so deeply rooted in Lonan's voice before, but Hallowed Bodies as a project warrants intimacy. Lonan's alone for a week in Las Vegas basically doing nothing, which is a precursor to Feeding Habits (the novel that comes after this) where he's really "settled" into being a completely subordinate person in his own life.

I wanted to use internality as a means to make the narrative feel confined, like Lonan does. Because of that, I focused on adding a LOT of descriptions that directly reflect Lonan's desires and internal conflicts (the excerpt with the couple reflects this the most). What he notices is EXTREMELY important. What do his observations reveal about him?

Listlessness and Lonan

Something that became clear to me early in the drafting process is that Lonan is soooo listless. Like direction? Drive? Passion? He has NOTHINGGGG. He's really living a settled, "domestic" life, and he clearly can't handle it. This is setup for Feeding Habits so it's not as intense as it is there, but this man is BORED and ready to romanticize ANYTHING for some serotonin. This is critical setup for later when we meet "the man" (whose name for efficiency's sake is Dallas bc he looks like Matt Dillon in The Outsiders <3 that was the reason <3).

HB is a really transitional project for Lonan. He comes off Moth Work a better person to others but not quite a better person to himself. We get to see him crave gentleness a LOT in HB, a feeling that seems so foreign to him, which I think also contributes to his feeling of displacement. In a way, it was also transitional for me--it's the first thing I've written in full as a graduate!

The plot

CW: religious trauma (Catholicism)

Scene A:

In a church, Lonan recalls a memory of him and his father praying.

Scene B:

Lonan starts his walk home, aware the route is nonsensical.

Scene C:

Lonan recalls the last time he saw Eliza before she left for her week-long trip.

Scene D:

Lonan considers Las Vegas' warm autumn.

Scene E:

In memory, Eliza finds Lonan's father's rosary in her apartment.

Excerpts:

The first "scene" (aka vignette). This is one of my favourite openings EVER!!! It's just Hallowed Bodies core!

Lonan doesn’t pray anymore. At least not the way he used to. As a child, he and his father prayed everywhere: begging for forgiveness at Crater Lake, repenting in line for an oil change, supplicating in a windstorm. On Sundays, they’d wake before dawn and nestle in front of the bathroom mirror, recite the first chapter of Genesis, Paul’s letters to Timothy, Psalm 22. Lonan preferred the Apostle’s Creed. He’d watch his young mouth repeat I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, and he did believe. After hours of this, sunlight misting the open window, mass a half hour away, their lips would be so numb they’d have to pinch them until they were bloody mouthed and ready, at last, for God. The truth is, Lonan believes in nothing now. He’s as fatherless as he is motherless as he is godless. This should be a good thing. But bowed against a pew, the church around him hollow like Jesus’ empty tomb, his eyes trained on the dangling crucifix ahead of him, he’s certain this is wrong. He needs a mentor, a shepherd, an idol. He needs someone to follow.

This is the second scene/vignette. Something I love here is that we can tell Lonan's a hopeless romantic lol. Like hey you're looking awfully fondly at that couple, why?? You want that?? You want love?? Also! If you read the recent Changing States excerpt, you'll notice I also mention a café in the arts district which is an easter egg to say Lonan and Jeremiah love the same café (they need to be friends):

He takes the long way home. The long way home entails cutting past a wedding chapel near Lewis until he nears a second wedding chapel by a dollar store. He then turns around and retraces his steps back to the church, then walks all the way to a café bakery in the arts district where he stands and watches patrons from across the street. A man always meets a woman. They swipe off milk foam mustaches, lean against each other to fill out a crossword. The sun sometimes hits their faces and pales their eyes till they’re transparent like vapour. They never walk out together. He leaves the moment the first one goes, then continues back to the church where he finally walks ten minutes to Eliza’s place. The walk takes over an hour. It’s inefficient. Nonsensical. He makes this route every day.

This is just such a typical Lonan and Eliza interaction:

She’d left groceries in the fridge—no need to go shopping—and if he wanted, she’d also left a fifty-dollar bill on the counter for takeout. As he stared at the ceiling, she kissed him and complained about her mother’s plans to go horseback riding that coming weekend. “I know what a horse looks like,” she said, then explained they’d also be touring Stowe with a gaudy tourism agency. “She’s exhausting me already.” She sighed, having gone completely still. Lonan didn’t notice until she took his face with her hand, squishing his jaw, and asked “Are you okay?” An hour later, she was gone with a pre-packed suitcase, and he was still lying in bed wondering if she’d been there at all, if he’d been there at all, if in actuality they were both dead, or at the very least, both ghosts.

Do you fear bodies of water to the point where you practice holding your breath in full sinks so if you're ever close to drowning at least you're prepared:

It’s September in Las Vegas. The asters that grow outside Eliza’s apartment building have started to bloom, shockingly purple. The severe summer heat has barely faded, weather Lonan isn’t used to. Sometimes he crouches right in front of Eliza’s oscillating fan so it blows right in his face. At other times he ruffles up the freezer until he finds something suitable to drape on his forehead—a bag of peas, a Ziploc of homemade perogies, a hard plastic ice pack Eliza almost always forgets to return after work. Though sometimes, he cranks the bathroom sink all the way to cold and fills it up, sticks his face in there like it’s nothing, waits there for what feels like a few hours.

Lonan examining how fucking weird dating Eliza is lol:

Eliza doesn’t know about his visits to the church. He started his daily trips about two weeks back, ensuring he got home before she did from a shift. As they ate canned beef stew on the couch, as she spoke to him about an irritating coworker, as she rested her hand on his elbow then looked at her bedroom door, he kept this secret from her. He’s not sure why. He knows he doesn’t have to. Eliza already knows his father was devout to something—on the last day of August, she rummaged through a filing cabinet in her bedroom and pulled out a bronze rosary. Lonan didn’t need to look at it to know who it belonged to. He’d learned to identify it by scent alone. “That’s your dad’s,” she said, something sober in her voice. She was essentially providing him a confession—a crime she unknowingly participated in. The rosary dangled like fuzzy dice from a rear-view mirror. When he didn’t move from where he leaned in the doorway, she stood and pocketed it. “I didn’t know. He gave it to me when…” Her voice trailed off when she realized he still hadn’t reacted. What had she expected from him? He’s not wholly illogical—he’d accepted that his father had likely given her things and that she’d kept them. They’d dated. That was normal.

^^ (IS IT NORMAL THO I COULD WRITE A TAG ESSAY ON THIS)

Eliza backtracks (CW: implied abuse, blood mention):

Eliza promised she’d go through all her things—make sure she didn’t have anything else “from Jason.” Hearing his father’s name said aloud like that was a normal thing felt even stranger than having his rosary. Lonan took a step back that was really more a stagger; he narrowly caught himself on the bedroom doorframe. His cheeks were hot—with embarrassment, but also tears, and the tears worsened the embarrassment which worsened the tears. He couldn’t explain to her that when he was too young to memorize a phone number, that rosary had been wrapped around his hand till his fingers turned blue. Or that one silty night, he’d clutched the cross so tight under his pillow that his palms bled. “Sorry,” he said, pawing at his eyes.

The aftermath of that scene:

In the end, he sat on the balcony, silently crying as he stared out over the city. He tried to think of ways to reverse time—perhaps if he pretended nothing happened, Eliza would too. They’d start the afternoon all over again, her kicking off her shoes at the front door, setting her purse down on the small dining table. “You want to grab dinner?” she would’ve shouted through the apartment, already fumbling for the coupons she’d tacked to the refrigerator, knowing he was listening to her. Instead, he stared at his trembling fist.

And the last paragraph of this chapter! (Lonan really said "I don't have thoughts stop bothering me")

He needs to eat something. There’s raw celery in the vegetable crisper. A new pack of whole wheat tortillas atop the toaster. It’s when he’s pulling them out to eat, the low static hum of a radio station left on gritting midair, that he realizes perhaps that’s exactly it—he can’t tell Eliza about the church. Not because she won’t care, but precisely because she will. She’d follow him every time he goes, ask what he was thinking of every time he bowed his head to pray. He doesn’t know what he thinks. Most of the time he isn’t thinking at all. But what he knows for certain is the church and his meandering walk, that couple in the café, the fact that one always leaves, are not just routine for him. This is his holy ground. Luminous, alive. Somewhere to flee, even when he’s not sure what he’s running from.

And that's it! I'm really excited to introduce y'all more officially to Hallowed Bodies! :) And because I vowed to make these updates feel more cozy, here's this Lonancore gif LOL:

CW: drug addiction, mental illness, violence & suicide.

This project is taking over me right now, which might be a way of my brain procrastinating finishing Seventh Virtue (LOL), but I’ve learned to just lean into the hyperfixation so we’re here now!

I really felt drawn to write BB because of this extremely complex thing Harrison goes through in Moth Work that unbeknownst to 17-year-old Rachel who wrote it, she reaaaaaallllly relates to now at 21. I've been unable to stop thinking about this since re-reading MW, because I somehow profoundly represented this experience at 17 that I'm now undergoing at 21.

Harrison is supporting someone who needs a LOT of help (at this point in MW, Lonan’s been an addict for about 3 years, is chronically depressed, is in a constant disocciated state, has attempted suicide twice in less than a year). He feels responsible for this because he loves this person very much--he WANTS to help Lonan. But I don't think he realizes how much effort this will entail and that he himself doesn't have the sole power to "fix" anything. But he’s so young—how long can he handle this before he himself breaks?

The answer is: not long! One could say Harrison’s fatal flaw in MW is not wanting to change. He doesn’t WANT to leave Lonan behind because he doesn't WANT to lose him, he doesn’t WANT a relationship with his mom, Suzanna. At the same time, his life is at this tenuous impasse: things CANNOT sustainably continue in the state they're in, but he's terrified of them changing. And by the end of the book, both of those things happen—it’s his arc. The loose end is the prior point: he's terrified of change, but now the change has happened.

What I want to do in BB is take that loose end and light it on fire. I want to show what happens when that change happens. It's NECESSARY change, but in this moment, feels like the worst decision possible. BB is about the in-between space of being in a destructive relationship & eventually putting yourself first. For Harrison, the experience is extremely messy. He craves intimacy badly but has no idea how to love anyone but Lonan. He craves independence but is also scared of it: how do you start your own life when the last few years have been focused on someone else's?

In Moth Work, he creates the beginnings of a relationship with a man named Jeremiah (to be clear: H&L aren’t dating in MW, they never canonically actually date unlike how I make it sound LOL, only in the Seventh Virtue AU are they a couple!). Jeremiah is a really interesting character in Harrison's life because he represents something "normal." Here's when Harrison meets him in MW:

The motel is named after a dead woman—The Greta Arquette. Harrison discovers this while absently thumbing through a brochure at the empty front desk. The lobby is decorated with vintage clocks and floral wallpaper and it makes sense—the woman it’s dedicated to died at 92. He’s on page six when a young man with an earring and a hair pick appears behind the desk.

Harrison shuts the brochure and slots it back into the display. “Can I get a room?” he asks, already fumbling for his wallet.

“Long ride?”

The clerk—Jeremiah, according to his nametag—smiles. His skin glows amber under the lanterns hung from the ceiling, and his hair looks too good for 2AM. The collar of his uniform pastes underneath his sweater, and it’s almost charming, this unnoticed mistake.

Wait up for my video later today (3PM EST!!) where I literally in-depth analyze a couple scenes with Jeremiah (since I talk more about this there), but essentially, Harrison gets a small taste of what it might be like to be a "typical" 21-year-old here. It entails dancing with people you think are cute, enjoying each other's company without doing anything at all, going to breakfast, etc... All things he and Lonan have never done.

In BB, I want to show the breakdown of this "normal" relationship as Harrison more and more self-destructs to self-preserve. He literally cannot handle this change he's incited--who is he at all without Lonan? He doesn't know, and he can't handle that he doesn't know, so he "goes bad." There's brief mentions of this turn in Feeding Habits where Harrison addresses he was a bit of a disaster when he and his mother lived in Las Vegas, which is why his main goal in FH is to "restart" in NYC (and it's why he also gets destructive again in NYC when his second reboot fails).

I always knew elements of what happened to Harrison in Las Vegas, but didn't know the extent. In FH, the only element we're certain of is when he runs into the same woman Lonan runs into in ch. 6 of Moth Work. He essentially ends up being beat up badly, which for him (mostly his mother, Suz) is the last straw and what makes them pack up to NY.

It was only later, when he stumbled, bloody knuckled, through their front door, stepping over partygoers and martini glasses, that he understood. He hadn’t come to the party thinking about Lonan but managed to attract the same people. He hadn’t drunk the magenta liquid thinking about him but managed to exit the house stumbling, as Lonan did, his knees knotted like a newborn lamb's. There was something inconceivably indissoluble about them—their bond mirror-like, one making a decision, and the other mimicking it with vigour somewhere else, unknowingly inseparable.

But I've been wanting to write what happened BEFORE this, in the time between, which is what BODY BACK is going to be! Here's an excerpt from FH (ft. Jeremiah) that takes place during this timeline:

They saw each other in brief, neon stints. Drinking in his one-bedroom, after Jeremiah’s shifts at The Greta Arquette—a dingy motel—clattering, limb by limb, under his Styrofoam disco ball and calling it dance. They knew each other so little but so well. Where each groove of skin and bone on the other’s body was, what limbs could notch so perfectly together, like nubs of old soap fused together.

The vibes are going to be pretty much the above! Mirror balls, pop music, drugs in misty rooms, eat the rich, etc.

I've been excited to write this story because it shows a side of Harrison I only barely understood when I wrote Feeding Habits. It's actually why Feeding Habits was IMPOSSIBLE for me to write, because I was still seeing Harrison in "caretaker" mode when he actually was rejecting that fully. I wasn't used to seeing him make bad decisions. For all accounts, Harrison is a terrible person in FH. He takes advantage of his mother's kindness, he disappears to scare her, he's self-medicating, he's inviting Reeve to his place under the guise of catching up with an old friend when he actually doesn't care at all about her and only wants to see a glimpse of Lonan's face, he's stealing from the vulnerable, and doesn't want to stop any of it. FH is really Harrison's destruction arc, and BB is going to explore HOW that happened--what triggered those events?

I'd always seen Lonan as the "issue" in their relationship. This was natural in a lot of ways since Lonan started out as a literal villain (lol), but also mostly because I emotionally related to him most back when I was writing him. ALLL my negative emotions and struggles went right to him. It's why Lonan was my favourite character all throughout my teenage years. What I didn't expect is that at the age they're at in this book (21), I'd suddenly understand Harrison on a very, very different level. This is also another reason I want to write this like NOW because I'm 21 and in a similar (albeit wayyyy less dramatic) era. Is this sort of going to be autofiction, maybe!

I think in MW, Harrison doesn't feel much like an "adult" yet. in BODY BACK, he KNOWS he's an adult, and goes a little too hard knowing he can do whatever the hell he wants. If Harrison can do what he wants, it means he can reclaim himself even if it means destruction along the way. What's he willing to do to get his body back?

That's a q to ponder!