My Darkest and Deepest Thoughts.

lancinatedmind @ 2005-12-11T22:42:00

2005-12-12T03:42:28Z

New journal, StoicDesires!

Go Ask Alice

2005-10-07T03:42:32Z

Drugs
were on the minds of everyone in the late 1960s and early 1970s, even those who weren't partaking of illegal substances or harboring plans to ever do so. Paternalistic concern about the burgeoning drug culture led to the youth of that day being heavily indoctrinated with anti-drug propaganda at almost every turn — particularly in school, where they were subjected to health classes which were little more than "don't get high" lectures. Even the selection of recreational reading materials intended for them was booby-trapped with literary offerings purporting to be true life stories of real kids yet which were no more than "This is what could happen to you" sermonizings.

The most famous of these literary works was 1971's Go Ask Alice, presented as the diary of an anonymous teen girl who began her career as a stoner at age 15 and died of an overdose just weeks after her 17th birthday. Through the diary entries we see this girl quickly escalate from her first drug experience (LSD was surreptitiously slipped into her Coke at a party) to all manner of disaster, including:

Indulging in a wide variety of illegal drugs.

While high, losing her virginity to a boy she didn't much care about (rather than the one she was in love with).

Becoming casually promiscuous, then deeply regretting almost every sexual escapade she engages in.

Running away from home (twice).

Being sexually abused by people she falls in with while on the road.

Upon returning to her family, being ostracized by the nice kids and targeted for abuse by the stoners (who have decided she is a "squealer").

After deciding to go straight, being slipped dangerous drugs by the stoner kids and then going on a horrifically bad trip, during which she tries to scratch off her face.

Being committed to a psychiatric hospital.
(The "Alice" of the book's title refers to the druggie girl of that name in the 1967 Jefferson Airplane hit White Rabbit, a song that expounds upon a drug theme its lyricist found in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. There is an "Alice" in the book Go Ask Alice, but she's a minor character mentioned in only one paragraph. The name of the teen diarist is never given.)
The unnamed girl's descent into the horrors of the drug world culminates with her death. The book closes with this epilogue:

The subject of this book died three weeks after her decision not to keep another diary.
Her parents came home from a movie and found her dead. They called the police and the hospital but there was nothing anyone could do.

Was it an accidental overdose? A premeditated overdose? No one knows, and in some ways that question isn't important. What must be of concern is that she died, and that she was only one of thousands of drug deaths that year.

Did she commit suicide? Did she take an accidental overdose? Did vengeful stoner kids return one more time to slip her a deadly dose? Or was the unnamed deceased teen who supposedly kept a diary detailing the drug-strewn path she followed to her own destruction merely a figment of a moralizing writer's imagination?

Go Ask Alice was the product of Beatrice Sparks, an author who has come out with a number of "teens who saw their lives ruined by their bad choices" offerings, each one presented as a true story, often in the form of a diary of an anonymous teen:
It Happened to Nancy (she's dying of AIDS)

Annie's Baby: The Diary of Anonymous, a Pregnant Teenager

Treacherous Love: The Diary of an Anonymous Teenager (teen girl is sexually taken advantage of by a teacher)

Jay's Journal (yet another diary, this one of a teen boy who turns to satan worship and drug use)

Almost Lost: The True Story of an Anonymous Teenager's Life on the Streets

Kim: Empty Inside: The Diary of an Anonymous Teenager (eating disorders)
The precise authorship of Go Ask Alice is still a bit of a mystery. Beatrice Sparks is presented as its editor rather than its author, and one tantalizing mention in a 1998 New York Times book review indicates the book might have been the work of several people:

Linda Glovach, since exposed as one of the "preparers" — let's call them forgers — of Go Ask Alice, has just written Beauty Queen, about a girl who flees her alcoholic mother, becomes a stripper and dies of heroin addiction.
Our best guess is that a number of folks work at churning out these cautionary tales, which are then presented to an overly accepting public as real diaries of anonymous teens. Yet on the question of authorship, one thing is startlingly clear: whoever wrote the Go Ask Alice "diary" was not a 15-year-old girl.
Girls of that age do not write the way the journal entries of Go Ask Alice are penned — both in terms of structure and content, it fails the adolescent test. For example, our doomed teen goes on for more than four pages about her first LSD experience, describing what happened and how, yet diary entries dealing with her broken heart over the loss of her one true love are given only two short paragraphs, barely a third of a page. Similarly, school, teachers, the casual gossip of the day, and ordinary "He said; she said" chit-chat which make up the bulk of teen girl chatter go almost unmentioned in this book, even though it's hard to imagine a real teenager's diary in which these topics wouldn't account for the greater number of the entries. Meanwhile, the "diary" is filled with sizeable words one would hardly expect to find in a teen's private account of her life. Polysyllabic terms such as "gregarious," "impregnable," "conscientious," and "ecstatic" turn up within four pages of each other, yet we'd be surprised to find any one of these words in a real teen's diary. It's not that teens don't use large words in conversation or include them in written work meant to be handed in at school, but they certainly do not record their deepest, darkest secrets in words they'd be hard-pressed to spell. Remember, a diary is not meant for the eyes of anyone other than the diarist, so the writing style used tends to be far more casual than that employed in pieces intended to be read by others.

The unnamed teen's fall is formulaic as well. The "unsuspecting first time" is a standard plot device used by writers looking to keep their main characters sympathetic. This gal's long slide into a pine box begins not with an actual intent to do drugs to see what all the shouting is about, but with an act of bad companions who introduce her to the world of drugs without her permission. Her fate thus becomes the potential fate of any teen, even one determined to "Just say no." To quote Mark Oppenheimer's musings about the structure of teen morality novels:

I'm going to write a young-adult novel about drug abuse. It's easy. I've read three and think I know how to do it: The narrator must feel oppressed by parents either distant, alcoholic or both; have a "shrink," who does no good whatsoever; get turned on to drugs unsuspectingly; run away from home; descend into prostitution or dealing; and think and write in bad coffee-shop stream-of-consciousness prose. Short, diary-entry chapters should begin or end with references to countercultural artists (Lewis Carroll, Jefferson Airplane, the Buzzcocks). At the end, a minor character assumes the narration to report the death of our previous narrator.
Cynicism aside, that's a relatively fair assessment of how to build one of those works. We noted one further theme that jumped off the pages of Go Ask Alice: with the exception of the diarist, every teen in the book who was heavily involved with drugs and whose home situation was described came from a broken home. It was not difficult to pick out the underlying secondary moralistic message, that divorce is one of the great social evils of our time.

Another point to ponder: In an era when journalistic exposés are the coin of the realm, how is it that after more than thirty years (and "More than 4 million copies sold"), no intrepid reporter has managed to track down the identity of Go Ask Alice's "anonymous" author? That in over three decades, none of the people who knew this poor girl — friends, relatives, teachers, classmates — has ever identified or spoken about her is truly amazing. Our government doesn't keep classified secrets so well.

It's not necessarily wrong to present a cautionary tale in the form of a first-person narrative — that storytelling device has been used effectively as long as folks have been spinning yarns. But it is unfair to maintain that something is a "true story" when in fact it's manufactured hooey. There are enough real teens who lead short, tragic lives that we don't need to invent any more.

lancinatedmind @ 2005-09-28T18:43:00

2005-09-28T22:43:57Z

Come home. Please come home. I miss you so much. I love you so much. Please stay safe.

lancinatedmind @ 2005-09-25T18:50:00

2005-09-25T22:50:20Z

I've been so tired lately. All I do is work and school, work and school. To make it even worse, the first day I have off, I sleep over my Mum's, and i'm up at nine a.m. Fucking kill me!

Patrick and I are doing well. I love that kid so much.

Wooday is a bad mamma jamma.

lancinatedmind @ 2005-09-13T21:21:00

2005-09-14T01:24:24Z

The following is to a friend I hurt. Will I ever get the courage to say I'm sorry?

You with the sad eyes
Don’t be discouraged
Oh I realize
It’s hard to take courage
In a world full of people
You can lose sight of it all
And the darkness inside you
Can make you feel so small

But I see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that’s why I love you
So don’t be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow

Show me a smile then,
Don’t be unhappy, can’t remember
When I last saw you laughing
If this world makes you crazy
And you’ve taken all you can bear
You call me up
Because you know I’ll be there

And I’ll see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that’s why I love you
So don’t be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow

(when I last saw you laughing)
If this world makes you crazy
And you’ve taken all you can bear
You call me up
Because you know I’ll be there

And I’ll see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that’s why I love you
So don’t be afraid to let them show

Your true colors
True colors
True colors
Shining through

I see your true colors
And that’s why I love you
So don’t be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow

lancinatedmind @ 2005-09-12T21:08:00

2005-09-13T01:09:51Z

Mister expensive jewlery strikes again. I am going to buy this for Patrick. What do ya'll think?

This men's diamond accent watch has a black dial in a round case that can be engraved with up to 17 characters and spaces. Once added to the shopping bag, this item may be personalized.

I should have all the money for it on Friday!

Sex Offenders.

2005-09-07T20:37:55Z

For those of you who haven't read page six of today's Times Herald Record, a registered sex offender of my area was arrested yet again. This time, he had one hundred CD's of boys posing nude and engaged in sexual acts. Eugene was also arrested in 1998 for molesting his wife's nephew. Those of you might know his wife. She is Mrs. Grecko, who works over at PBE. Mrs. Grecko was a teacher of mine. She also happened to be a close friend of my mother.

Eugene and his wife were close friends of my mother. My mum had trained Eugene to work for Cumberland Farm's. For those of who don't know, my mum was the leading manager for three of those stores, and trained many of the employees. Anyway, she and Eugene became good friends. My mother considered him her best friend. They would go out to bars together, drive together to all the Cumberland Farm's conventions and all that. He was even at her wedding.

But this is what freaks me the fuck out. When my mother was working double shifts and my stepdad was at work, Eugene would pick me up from school and drop me off to my sitter. As did his wife on occasion.

While I was on the phone with Patrick, my mother called. She said hello and all that, then asked me this. "Are you sure Eugene never touched you?" I was taken aback. I went through this whole interigation in 1998, and I didn't need it again. I asked why she would ask this, and she said look at the newspaper.

I just can't help but think what could have happened. I can't help but think about the things he might have wanted to do to me. The things he probably thought about me...the sad thing is...he was my mum's BEST FRIEND. The man's son was a good friend of mine! One of the only friends I had!

I hope they never release him from prison. They probably will, though. It always happens.

Pray for his ex-wife and son. I'm sure this is a hard time for them...

lancinatedmind @ 2005-08-28T21:29:00

2005-08-29T01:29:41Z

My stepmother just won ten thousand dollars on the New York Lottery. Holy shit.

Party With The Animals.

2005-08-03T02:36:35Z

It's been a long day. An interesting day, but long. Mango and I went down to the park for a couple of hours. We leaned on a tree and just talked of good times passed and about some depressing stuff we have both been through. If we were passing around a joint, it would have been something you see in the movies.

I've had a headache for many hours. I don't know why, and I don't know how to get rid of it. I guess blasting music isn't really helping all that much, but hey, such is life. Tonight I was remembering that party of Lauren's. The one where I got really fucked up and mud wrestled. The one where everyone was like OH MY GOD IT'S DAVID GIVE ME A HUG. Let me tell you one thing, after that party, I haven't drank since. Drinking is bad. I'll settle with water.

Alcohol is stunning looking for it's complete lack of merit. I mean, it looks so yummy, but it's not. Although that mud slide shit isn't half bad. Niether is a nice Merlot. Eh, whatever.

Patrick and I are doing mighty fine. I'm going over his house on Thursday to meet a bunch of his hommies. Me? Meet new people? Hahahahaha! Besides my job and Patrick, i've been so isolated. I guess that's how I like it. Anyway...

Everything will be alright. I'm going to a party next weekend. Party with the Animals, man. I can't wait to see all my friends. I Miss them all so much.

Anyway, tis' time for more pictures from the Englishman.

Tis' the nephew.

Tis' me looking funky.

I was really wet from all the rain outside. It's a funny story as to why I was out there.

An old picture of Laury.

An old picture of Kerri.

Another old picture of me.

Awww ish a Trisha!

I wuv my Patrick.

lancinatedmind @ 2005-07-10T20:19:00

2005-07-11T00:19:16Z

lancinatedmind @ 2005-04-15T14:19:00

2005-04-15T18:21:02Z

Ouch! That fuckin' hurts.

I should have kissed him.

Six acres of cars? That's alot of cars!

2005-04-07T20:43:18Z

On the way over to the library, my dad was being the biggest dick in the fucking world. He kept starting fights with me, and calling me a failure and all this shit. He should be one to talk, the dick! His whole life he has had to beg for work if he wasn't selling drugs, he didn't graduate high school, he has a pretty nice car, but it had a giant fucking dent in the side door, and he smells. I fucking HATE living with him. I hate him period.

Rawr. Bad fucking mood. I want to see Chris, or at least talk to the kid. That's like asking for a date with Ben Affleck, though. :-P

Planning a trip to get Josh down here. I hope it works out!

Markous Alexander Berringer.

2005-03-29T06:30:16Z

It's been one year since you passed, and you are forever with me. I'll never forget your last words to me...

"Just smile for me."

I love you, and I will always miss you. I'll be at the memorial service on Wensday. I hope your there with us, too.

Markous Alexander Berringer.
September 19, 1986 - March 28, 2004.

"It won't be long,
we'll meet again.
My love for you is
never ending.'

lancinatedmind @ 2005-03-14T16:21:00

2005-03-14T21:21:20Z

FRIENDS ONLY. COMMENT TO BE ADDED.