UNCENSORED // 04:17 AM
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//
buckle up motherfucker.
— this is not a normal book announcement
I'm venus. I'm fourteen. I wrote a novel. I illustrated it. I coded every single page by hand. I did this instead of sleeping, instead of being normal, instead of doing whatever it is fourteen year olds are supposed to be doing which I genuinely could not tell you because I have been doing this. and now it's done. and now you're here. and I need you to understand what you just walked into before you go any further because I am not responsible for what happens to you after page three.
here's the thing about persona-lity.
it started as a story about a boxer and it became something I cannot fully explain without sounding insane so I'm just going to sound insane: it became a document of everything I love and everyone I love and every thought I've had at 2 AM that felt too true to throw away. there are references in here that will only make sense to approximately six people on earth and those six people know who they are and they know which parts are theirs and everyone else is just going to have to sit with the feeling that they're missing something because they are. that's fine. that's the point. I made something for specific people and the specific people will know it and the rest of you are welcome to come along for the ride but you don't get the decoder ring. sorry.
what you're going to get instead:
a boxer who is disappearing in pieces and doesn't have a name I'm willing to put on this page because his name is his and I'm not handing it to strangers.
a sister who has been angry since she was seven years old in ways that are completely reasonable if you know the history and the history is in here.
a french guy who cooks when he doesn't know what else to do which is constantly.
a journalist who is going insane — like actually going insane, you'll see, her hair gets curlier as the novel progresses, I did that on purpose — who decided that loving someone means controlling how their story ends and has been building toward something terrible for two years and is so close now that she can't stop even when she looks in the mirror and doesn't recognise herself.
a fourteen year old boy who notices everything and has been treated like furniture and is done with it.
a girl with one leg and box braids and a deadline and a cheque on her nightstand that is going to change her life.
her brother who is spending money that isn't his and has no idea what is coming.
a man who hated his job for four years and then someone's voice on a phone made him feel awake and now he's in it up to his neck and the voice on the phone was delaney schulz's voice and delaney schulz is the journalist who is going insane and he knows this and he's in it anyway because going back to fine is not something he's willing to do.
these people are going to do things to each other.
some of the things are good. most of the things are not. none of them are going to be punished or redeemed in the ways you're expecting because I don't believe in punishment or redemption as narrative devices, I believe in consequences and I believe in people being exactly who they are even when who they are is a disaster, and I believe that sometimes the disaster is inevitable not because of fate or destiny or any of that but simply because everyone involved made choices and the choices added up and at some point the addition was done and you had to live with the sum.
the sum in this novel is not comfortable.
I want to be very clear about that.
there is a chapter written in the style of house of leaves. there is a chapter that is a published article that is also a confession that also has footnotes that fall apart increasingly toward the end. I wrote it at 2 AM and I would write it again. there is a chapter from the point of view of a man who is in love with a woman who is actively destroying someone's life and he knows it and is turned on by it and I wrote that chapter with complete sincerity because that's what the character does and I'm not going to flinch away from what my characters do just because it's uncomfortable. the uncomfortable parts are the parts I worked hardest on. the uncomfortable parts are the point.
the ending is going to hurt.
I am telling you this now so that when it happens you cannot say you weren't warned. I knew it was going to hurt when I wrote it. I wrote it anyway because the story needed it and I am not in the business of giving stories what they want instead of what they need. the story needed this ending. you're going to get this ending. I'm sorry and I'm not sorry and honestly you should have known when you started reading a novel with a house of leaves chapter that you were not in safe hands.
you are not in safe hands.
you are in the hands of a fourteen year old who stayed up until 4 AM for six months building something she could not not build, who handcoded every page, who reached out to independent bands and asked to use their music and one of them gave her a band shirt at a festival and she is still not over it, who made this for her friends first and for everyone else second and if you are not one of the friends then welcome, genuinely, you are welcome here, but understand that you are a guest in something that was built for someone specific and the love in it is specific and some of it is going to feel like it's not for you and that's because it isn't.
the parts that are for you are the parts about being seen. those are for everyone.
the cost of being seen, the terror of it, the specific vulnerability of being known and not being able to take it back — those parts are for you.
the parts about doing something you can't undo and having to keep living after — those are for you.
the parts about loving people in ways that are inconvenient and wrong-shaped and don't resolve — for you.
the parts about being a body that doesn't always do what you need it to do, about the specific horror of yourself becoming unfamiliar — for you.
everything else is for my friends.
✱ they know who they are ✱
— venus, 14
written instead of sleeping
for the six people who will find themselves in here
and everyone else who needs to
this was written at 4:17 AM. I did not edit it. I am not going to edit it. this is what it is.