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the
current
Monday
Report
below!
This week's report by Tim "Nasdijj" Barrus
Delusions:
The Man Behind the Curtain
I was more than a little deluded.
I was not fair to the people at Esquire Magazine (and more
than a few other people in publishing). Their issue featuring me
(May, 2006) and my work paints a portrait of sadness I was not
really aware of. I knew it but I did not know it. Frankly, I have
worked in so many places saturated with so much sadness, I am
not conscious of it anymore.
I struggle to fight that sadness. The sadness can be
overwhelming. So can the subsequent anger that attempts to hide
behind the sadness.
I was less than truthful.
I lied.
Not all that much to you. The person I lie to all the time is me.
I do it every day. Please don't tell me I shouldn't lie to myself
because if I don't I'll put a gun in my mouth and get the
inevitable over with. I lie to myself to survive.
I lie to myself that I am a writer.
I lie to myself that writing is worth it.
I was the writer "Nasdijj" for a decade. My real name is Tim
Barrus. There is no Nasdijj. There never was. He was nothing
more than a literary voice, a device, a contrivance, and a stage I
felt compelled to walk out on because -- I was told time and time
again by the folks who work in publishing -- unless you go out
there, unless you try to interest people in your books at
bookstores, conferences, book fairs, universities, on the Internet,
unless you do things like put your work in magazines and
newspapers and on the radio -- no publisher will want to publish
you. Writing lies is not enough. You have to sell them.
Nasdijj was a nice guy. He was infinitely hopeful.
He worked with children who faced enormously difficult odds.
Kids with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Kids with HIV/AIDS. Kids
who had been sexually abused. Nasdijj saved them.
The truth is that I have, indeed, worked with just such
children.
The truth is that no one saves them. Not me. Not you. And they
do not save themselves. What we want are stories of snatching
triumph from the jaws of adversity. We are no different from the
ancient Greeks. We are no different from the Elizabethans who
wept at the romance of Romeo and Juliet even when Juliet was
assuredly played by a boy. You see what you want to see. I do.
While "us saviors" do, indeed, work with disadvantaged and
disabled children, we delude ourselves we are making a
difference. I don't know that we could really face the reality of it
on a day-by-day basis. We might keep some kid's head above
water temporarily but the reality is that they go to jail, they go to
prison, they drop out of school, they stay addicted, they fail at
school, they fail at marriages, they fail at parenting, they remain
poor and destitute, they remain relatively illiterate no matter
what we do to educate them, they get sick and they die and not
romantically. Some of them murder other people and they get
murdered. Some sell drugs in neighborhoods of hopelessness no
one writes about anymore. Many of them leave systems designed
for children, and as adults they enter the institution of cyclical
homelessness. Mostly "us saviors" fail. We do not want to face it.
If we did, we would throw in the towel.
Nasdijj never failed. He took a kid with AIDS and he gave the
boy a life. I was lying to you when I was telling you there was
such a thing as hope. Now that I have been (gleefully) outed, I
understand that hope is an illusion. I didn't quite get the fact
while writing my books that what I was writing about was
delusion. But that is what it was.
The only thing about Nasdijj that surprised me was that he
lived so long before he was outed as a fraud. Nasdijj was outed by
a student wannabe journalist who was a friend of a guy who had
taken out a movie option on one of my books and he was angry
with me. I found this odd (at the time) because I always used to
think that Nasdijj's work could have been portrayed as fiction
but no one wanted to hear that. They wanted the illusion to be
real. Outing me wasn't too hard. Lots of people in both
Hollywood and New York had my social security number. And
most knew my real name. Certainly, the publicist who put me on
flights knew my name. I never lied about that. All the publishers
had my real name no matter what lie they tell the press. I told
them all who I really was. This fact is always neglected in the
uproar about "us liars," JT LeRoy, James Frey, and myself. This
goes to the lie that our lies were only perpetrated by ourselves.
Ask any publicist who ever put me on an airline flight. They
have to have your name (and you will need photo ID) to get on
the plane.
Nasdijj could do things rather like Superman (except fly to
bookstores). You wanted to believe it.
Nasdijj was successful with children who had been failed by
teachers, social workers, doctors, a whole plethora of
professionals and adults. Nasdijj could even perpetuate the
complete illusion that someone from the lower class (Nasdijj)
with no education could get published and win literary awards.
We do not want to look at a reality (versus the notion that success
in American culture is not based on class) that suggests success in
publishing is not always based simply on hard work and talent.
We do not want to believe that success at writing books is, in fact,
like winning the lottery or playing craps. No editor will tell you
this. It is a roll of the dice by those who come from the
appropriate class -- they know how to put strings of words
together -- and they know how to bluff at the poker table. They
love roulette and sometimes Russian roulette. People loved
Nasdijj because he could perform magic tricks. He loved the
blackjack of it.
Frey and LeRoy are playing silent. I never did. Ask anyone in
publishing. Part of the lie was that Nasdijj was successful at
writing books. If I was successful, then why am I selling my only
vehicle for food.
The lie was so outrageous I was kept on my toes with
amazement that "the show" must go on.
I was beginning to feel like a Las Vegas chorus girl who could
be kept on as long as she could still kick. The lie I regret the most
is the lie that the little boy with AIDS I wrote about had such a
great life and after suffering found love.
This lie won a PEN Book of the Year Award.
The lie about how a child with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
bonded with his father was a New York Times Notable Book of
the Year. A lie is not always a lie is not always a lie. It's a little
bit more abstract than that.
I H-A-V-E worked with boys with HIV/AIDS as have many,
many other people who have worked with kids, and the reality
we don't want to have to face is that anyone in an environment
such as a classroom crowded with such culturally and
economically diverse children is very definitely working with
children who are infected and don't know it. Such children are
infectious and untreated. I know their parents all too well and
their substitute parents and both groups are overwhelmed with
life much less life with HIV. They are barely hanging on and I
have heard them say: I do not want to know.
I know this: We can't face that and continue to believe the lie
that education itself is a level playing field as is health care. We
can't take responsibility for the fact that health care really is a
crisis -- those with access to it are no longer typically middle-
class Americans -- because we don't want to. In fact, we don't
take responsibility for wars we start. We look for and we find the
lie somewhere in the thing because it's convenient and meets our
purpose.
Another reality we don't like looking at is the fact that there
are children just like there are adults who became infected with
HIV from sexual activity and IV drug use. Children are not
supposed to have sex or do drugs therefore we find children with
HIV/AIDS to be "disturbing" which is the word the New York
Times Book Review used to describe my book about the little boy
I wrote about with AIDS. It wasn't AIDS they found disturbing.
It was my imbuing a twelve-year-old with a sexuality. I have
found these children to be compelling. But they usually die
horrible deaths after having been tortured by the medical
community, and they usually die alone and unloved in hospitals,
not in some parent's grieving arms the way my book portrayed it.
Nasdijj was the parent we all wanted to be but we are not. He
was a lie. Hope usually is. I feel freed not having to be Nasdijj.
Now, as a writer I can address reality.
You don't want reality. You want Nasdijj.
I am told (daily) I will never be published again. I must be
punished for bringing you illusions not so much as Nasdijj but as
Tim Barrus I was bringing you the illusion and the magic trick of
hope by hiding in the skin of a storyteller you wanted to believe
was real like Santa Claus will arrive with presents. We want the
myth. We want the message that we can beat drug addiction on
our own. We want Christmas carols at Macy's where we buy
things we do not need. We want marketing to dazzle us. We want
the message that a child called JT LeRoy can survive being
pimped out by his mother at truck stops. We don't want to look
at the fact we have constructed a culture that destroys children
every day. Especially children of poverty and color. We want the
delusion. We want emotional truth. Not truth. We want to remain
in denial because if we don't have at least some denial about how
bad things really are, I honestly don't know how we would get up
in the morning.
I did adopt a little boy whose name really was Tommy Nothing
Fancy and Tom was profoundly disabled. Esquire to their credit
did investigate that. Attempting to meet Tommy's needs tore my
family apart and resulted in divorce. I had to return Tommy to
the State. I did not save him. The real Tom was unable to bond
with anyone. The Tom I wrote about had hope. It was a lie. It was
a lie I wanted to believe in, too. Nasdijj was fundamentally a
falsehood I wanted to BE and believe in. But he was doomed and
I knew he was doomed. It would only be a matter of time. My
daughter wanted to be Wonder Woman. She had a secret plane
and she could make you tell the truth. It was power.
We want our writers to stop whining about abuse.
We want the whining to stop not necessarily the abuse.
We want a culture that can sweep it under the rug and keep it
there. We don't want to look at how it works and is kept alive.
I lied about an abusive father Nasdijj could stand up to and
survive. You do not want to know the reality of my situation as a
child. The reality was one of suicide attempt after suicide attempt
culminating in what my family still calls "Tim's shot gun
accident."
It was no accident.
Nasdijj could grab his brother and hit the road. He had the
option of escape. As a child, it was my dream. The nightmare of
my life was dominated by a father who fundamentally hated my
guts and was not afraid to say so and who whipped my back with
belts and threw me into a plow and impaled me and did
everything he could do to hide the subsequent infections. I was
not allowed to see a doctor. I spent 7th grade leaking through my
clothes. We lived in a nice house. Or so the press says. Therefore
it could not have happened.
Get real. You keep telling me to get real. Get real yourself.
It did happen. I was there. I wanted to escape.
I did escape.
I became a writer. Here, I could be someone else. Nasdijj did
not have the scars Tim has and Tim's scars are all over Tim's
skin. They are are hardly psychological. You don't want to see
them, you don't want to touch them, and you do not want to know
how much they hurt. There are still 93 pieces of lead inside of me.
You do want to know the reality of living with that. You want the
image of strength and a slaying of dragons.
I started winning literary awards at the age of nine. They
never did mean much to me. It was the lie I wanted to hide in that
mattered. I did not want the truth. As a nine-year-old, I was
writing stories of people who did amazing things. And they
always survived.
In high school, I allowed myself to be sexually abused by other
adolescent boys my age who were living lies themselves and
hiding behind the obfuscation and mythology of football teams
and sports.
You do not want the reality of that. You do not want to know
how that works or that it exists at all. You want the lie. You want
the heterosexual romance. You want the mythology. You do not
want the truth.
I'm not sure I can blame you.
Not when my lies have kept me alive.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. He is no
wizard. Only a man who arrived in a balloon. He lied to you
about who he was and you embraced him.
Writers lie all the time. You know that. It is widely discussed.
It is acknowledged in terminology such as literary license.
I am to be punished. Books that never sold are being pulled
from bookstores. Literary awards are to be returned. The people
in publishing and journalism and who knew my name and who
had my social security number will be allowed to tisk tisk. The
Emperor is stark raving naked but no one wants to see it. The
writers of blogs who themselves can't make it past the solid walls
of mainstream publishing will scream to god they have been
duped. You have been duped. By a hopefulness you wanted
desperately to be true.
So I've been writing fiction lately.
I do try to inject some emotional hopefulness in there. My
heros still do amazing things. Impossible things. They have hope
in the face of evidence that would suggest hope is an illusion. I
want to make the conflicts and connections real. I am deluding
myself again. I know that when I look at it coldly which is a thing
I believe real writers have to do. I am pretending to be a writer.
After thirty years of writing and mainly failure to even get an
editor to read my work at all, I continue to hide in the pretense
that writing is worth the grief. Even the grief of being someone
else. I do not look anything like an Indian. I am screamed at in
print time and time again that my real job is to give you what you
want and you want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth. So I am attempting to find what emotional truth I dare
to touch without becoming totally destroyed and I get up every
day and wage battle with -- not editors, publishers, book critics,
journalists, wannabe journalists addicted to the expose,
publicists, agents, or the writers of blogs -- but with myself, and
the deluded hopefulness I find in the act of putting that
proverbial gun in my mouth. Then, again, no gun is proverbial.
Instead, I try to write it down. It saves me, yet that, too, is my
curse, and I live with it. Truth is never either or. Rhetorical or
true. It has nothing to do with bookstores, the perfect book
proposal, selling your vehicle for food, publishing, or the movies.
What I write are only tales and whatever truth I can wring from
the life I have definitely lived. What I own is nothing. What I
collect are stories.
But I am told you will not read them.
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