Balls Jr. #4: Running with Scissors - Augusten Burroughs

Jesus fucking shit, man. I do not know how Augusten Burroughs managed to survive his childhood. If Running with Scissors is true, that is. There's Controversy, which isn't surprising, because if I was a member of a family written up in this way, I'd be crying Liar! too. 13-year-old Augusten gets dropped off at his mother's insane psychiatrist's house one day, and from then on essentially lives there because his mother goes insane and his father is an uninvolved alocholic and his older brother's on the road with KISS.

This family. I don't even know where to start. All the kids think their dad, Dr. Finch, is "spiritually evolved," even though he 1) keeps some of his patients in their house for years, just locked up in a room upstairs, eating bathroom caulking, 2) thinks God is speaking to him through his shit and directs his daughter to scoop them out and dry them in the backyard,* 3) passes out drug samples like they're candy and he's Pedobear on Halloween, 4) has a MASTURBATORIUM in his goddamn office, 5) masturbates to Golda Meir in there, 6) basically sold his preteen daughter into sexual slavery to a rich old man who became her legal guardian, 7) "treats" patients by taking them to motels for day, 8) allows his adopted, 33-year-old son to have a sexual relationship with 13-year-old Augusten, 9) adopted a guy in his freaking thirties, 10) thinks violently expressing anger is the best route to mental health, the more violent and angry the better, 11) has "spiritual wives" whom he brings over to have Christmas dinner with his kids and pesky "legal wife," and on and on and on.

Even the "sane" family member kills her goddamn cat because she thinks the cat spoke to her in a dream, telling her that she, that cat, was dying. Hope reacts to this by locking the cat up in a laundry basket for days without food or water. Then the cat dies. The feline prophecy was real! That's the only explanation I see.

And yet, when I wasn't covering my face with my hands to get the images out of my head, I was laughing. Burroughs has an incredible ability to find the humor in a horribly traumatic period of his life.

If it's true, that is. I have doubts. I mean, honestly, am I expected to believe that someone seriously jacked off to a photo of Golda Meir?

*I knew a girl in high school who said that she and her brother, whenever one of them had a particularly large or aesthetically pleasing poop, would run to get the other and take a picture. Weirdos and poop, man.