Interview: Stephen Elliott - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

STEPHEN ELLIOTT
Interview by Megan Foley
W HEN I FOUND HIM for our interview,
Stephen Elliott was eating
hummus with pita, sitting alone at a table
in the Marriott bar. I introduced myself,
and he blinked up at me, folding a scoop
into his mouth. “Want some?” he asked.
He had a professional recorder up in his room, he said, glancing at
the one I was fidgeting with, better than mine. Did I want to use it? By
then I’d whipped myself into a frenzy of nervousness and agreed like a
cooped-up dog being offered a walk. I trotted after him to the elevator,
spilling admiration down my shirt.
“I’m such a big fan,” I said as we stepped into the elevator. He took
another bite of his pita, which he’d brought with him, and watched me
carefully.
Stephen Elliott had been my writing idol for half a decade, ever since
my friend lent me her copy of his novel Happy Baby. He was already
an accomplished author by the time I discovered him. He’d written
Jones Inn, a book about doing heroin with his friends; A Life Without
Consequences, about growing up in a group home; and What It Means
to Love You, a story about three Chicago sex workers. In he wrote
a campaign trail chronicle called Looking Forward to It, followed by a
collection of short erotica titled My Girlfriend Comes to the City and
Beats Me Up. In he published The Adderall Diaries, a combination
of true crime narrative and memoir.
During that time he also founded The Rumpus, a major literary
website, and started a daily email project called “The Daily Rumpus,”
which delivered diary-like musings — on loneliness, fame, sex, women
he was in love with or attracted to — into thousands of inboxes, includ-

ing mine, every morning. His writing in “The Daily Rumpus” was like
that in his books: raw, a little scattered, occasionally gorgeous, with a
tender balance of egotism and fragility. Mostly, as far as I was concerned,
it was brave. I wanted to write intimately about my life but was scared
of exposing myself to my conservative family and potential bosses. Elliott
didn’t have my hang-ups: he wrote about being tied up and beaten,
bruised for days. Anything I felt timid about admitting was vanilla compared
to his admissions, and I looked up to him like a trailblazer.
When we reached his door, he slid his card key into the lock and
waved me in — there was an open suitcase on the floor with a stick of
deodorant next to it. Heavy mauve curtains, a generic bedside table,
white walls. I’m in his room, I thought.
We sat on separate beds facing each other, and I looked over my
questions. I smoothed my dress and crossed my legs.
The interview went fine at first; we were speaking brightly and professionally
to each other, and he was answering my questions thoughtfully.
But something else was stirring. We started smiling at each other. He
would lean in towards me to answer, and I would lean back, away. Ponder
him from a distance. Then I’d move forward, resting my elbows on my
knees, and he’d lean back. Tug of war.
I was asking him about the idea of reciprocity when he held out his
hand for my water bottle. I’d just sipped from it, and my spit was on its
mouth. I gave it over and watched his neck jump when he swallowed.
We were talking about screenplays when he reached out a socked
foot and touched the toe of my boot.
Oh, I thought. This is where we are.
Eventually he asked if I wanted to come sit next to him.
✺
INTERVIEW

MEGAN FOLEY
Can you tell me about how you started writing?
I started writing when I was ten years old. It was an abusive household
and there was a lot of screaming, and my mother was dying. I was paralyzed.
I didn’t have an outlet from my unhappiness. And so I started
writing poetry. I couldn’t go to my father and say, “It makes me unhappy
when you scream all the time,” because that would not have gone over
well. So I started writing poems about it, like coded messages. I taped
them up all over my walls. My walls were covered floor to ceiling in this
poetry. But I was the only one who understood what the code meant.
What did the code mean?
The code meant that I didn’t like my father, and I didn’t like my sister,
and I didn’t like all the chores that I had to do for my mom, and I didn’t
like the way my mom was dying. I had a lot of anger and resentment
towards my father, and I had a lot of fear. I was a very scared person and
still am; that never changed.
I didn’t have anywhere to cry. I didn’t have anybody that I could
cry to or get frustrated with. You see kids getting angry and yelling at
their parents? I didn’t have that outlet. That was not a possibility. I remember
my father coming in at four in the morning and tripping on
the ice, waking up me and my sister and dragging us outside to chip ice
off the steps, screaming. That was so typical. Endless screaming. There
were always glasses being broken and things being thrown. He was like
a tornado. He never hit my sister, but he was a violent person, especially
when confronted.
Did he hit you?
Yeah. He shaved my head twice, handcuffed me to a pipe and left me
there, stuff like that. Your basic abusive household. I wouldn’t say it
was particularly abusive, just your standard “garden variety” abusive
household.
I started going to my friend’s house when I was twelve and reading
my poems to his mom. We’d smoke pot together. His mom would get

INTERVIEW: STEPHEN ELLIOTT
me high and listen to me read the poems, and tell me how much she
liked them. It was all I wanted. She wasn’t necessarily that pretty but my
sexuality was just starting to blossom. She wore tight jeans, she was cool,
and she would get me high. It was all I wanted from writing.
So writing has always been intersected with attraction and sex?
It’s desire. It’s very maternal. What I was getting in exchange for the
poetry was the mom. Even though it was a sexualized mom, it was still
maternal — approval and attention.
Do you still feel like you write for those reasons on any level?
Yeah, most levels. Something like that. My primary reason for writing is
still to get things off my chest, still self-expression, to communicate in
a way that somebody else might be interested in hearing. On the other
hand, after all these years, it’s so automatic and part of who I am, that
it’s no longer a question of “what am I getting out of it?” It’s just what
I do.
Can you talk about how The Rumpus got started and why you did it?
When I was done with The Adderall Diaries, I couldn’t imagine writing
another book. I wanted to get into editing. I was talking to Arianna Huffington
about joining The Huffington Post as a books editor and local
editor for San Francisco, and I had sheets of ideas. But she wasn’t going
to do the things I wanted to do. And I just realized, if I have all these
ideas, why would I give them to her anyway? So I started my own website.
[At first] it was like writing a novel, where you start doing it and you
don’t know if anyone’s going to read it or what it’s going to be about. You
just keep working on it. I think everything I approach is like that.
But you must have had some idea of the type of content you wanted.
I did know it was going to be a friendly place, and that there was going to
be a lot of literary content. I wanted a site that you would go to instead
of Gawker or The Huffington Post, where it was updated enough to keep
you coming back, but it wasn’t junk food. It was like carrots you could

MEGAN FOLEY
snack on. Gawker was so mean, and The Huffington Post was so stupid,
so I thought we could create something like that but nice and smart.
How did “The Daily Rumpus” emails start?
In December “The Daily Rumpus” was just an email I was sending
out with links to The Rumpus. Then I started adding personal notes,
and they became really long. For a while I would feel guilty that I wasn’t
working on a book and was putting all my creative energy into emails,
but then I stopped worrying about it. I thought, “This feels good and
creative, and it’s where my energy wants to go, so why fight that?” If
something’s coming easily, you should keep doing that. Because it should
be easy and fun, ideally.
A lot of times in the emails you’ll have passages about conversations you’ve
had or encounters you’re having with people. How do you think about doing
that? What are the ethics when you’re talking about other people?
I’m not really sure. A lot of times I’ll say, “That reminds me of this guy,”
and I’ll start telling a story about “some guy.” It’s usually me, but I don’t
want to take credit for it yet. Or if I said it was me, then somebody else
would know it was them.
But obviously the person that’s in it is going to recognize himself.
No.
You don’t think so?
Not if the point is that they don’t. Because it would be re-written in
a way specifically so that they wouldn’t, and their identity would be
protected.
A lot of times people think something’s about them, and it’s not.
That’s way more common than somebody recognizing themselves in
something I don’t want them to. That happens all the time — people
think you’re writing about them, and it’s hard to explain to someone,
“I’ve never even thought about you.” That’s mean, but that’s hugely the
truth: “I’m not writing about you. I’m not thinking about you.”

Why do you think people see themselves in your work?
I don’t think it’s me. People just read themselves into stuff. They look
at themselves differently from the way you look at them. Your fictional
character might be exactly how they perceive themselves, even if it’s
something that you’ve made up.
Do you feel responsibility toward the people you write about?
I feel responsibility to be kind, to give people the benefit of the doubt,
to really give people a fair shot. I generally hide people’s identities unless
either they’re a public figure or if they’ve seen the writing and agreed to
being named. Hiding people’s identities is pretty easy, though like you
said they’ll recognize themselves.
But you said they don’t recognize themselves.
If I don’t want someone to recognize themselves in one of my emails,
they won’t. But in a book or a memoir they will.
Do you think that you offer a false promise of intimacy in “The Daily
Rumpus”?
Yeah, I kind of do. Because a lot of times when I’m feeling small and
petty and impatient, that’s not in there.
No, you set yourself up as a benevolent sage.
Yeah.
“The flawed sage.”
INTERVIEW: STEPHEN ELLIOTT
Yeah. I try to be honest, but [my writing] doesn’t really present all my
imperfections. I don’t want to say mean things about people; I want to
be a nice person. But I’m not, really. I’m pretty impatient.
That sort of contradicts your stance on honesty and writing, doesn’t it?
Being honest in your writing is not “sharing everything.” It means giving
the reader everything that they need to understand the story you’re trying
to tell. So if it’s necessary for your story to talk about your relationship
with your mother, then you have to talk about that relationship with

MEGAN FOLEY
your mother, because the reader has to be the most important person.
But you don’t have to expose things just because they’re salacious. You
only have to write about them because they’re relevant to the story. I’m so
impatient, and I’m wound very tight, and my feelings get hurt very easily.
My mean little thoughts or my moments of frustration over nothing are
not usually necessary to the story I’m telling in “The Daily Rumpus.”
I have occasionally written “Daily Rumpus” emails that are just about
this. Where I’m like, “what you don’t understand is how small I am.” But
the problem is that people just think that I’m being modest. They don’t
understand that I’m not looking for false praise. If I say I’m a coward,
it’s because I know for a fact I’m a coward. It’s not because I’m looking
for you to say, “Oh, you’re not, really.” What I want, actually, is for you
to accept me as a coward. Because that’s the real me.
You probably get a lot of responses to your “Daily Rumpus” emails. I imagine
it must create pressure to have people who don’t know you, and whom you
don’t know, feel like they have relationships with you.
Sometimes I want to walk away from it. Originally I would respond to
everybody, but now I don’t. I like getting the emails, but I can’t be in a
position where I’m supposed to respond to them.
It’s a false intimacy. I don’t know what to do with that. It is a little
weird. If you were going to a blog and reading it you might feel like a
voyeur, but instead you’re getting an email, so it feels like direct communication.
Do people try to tell their stories to you a lot?
Yeah, I get these long emails from people with their whole story; I mean
all of it.
It’s misplaced. I’m not the person to tell your story to, necessarily.
I am if I’m asking, but if you’re sending me this giant email, you should
probably be sending this to someone in your life instead.
But I think people don’t always have someone that they can feel comfortable
giving that to.

If I’m really busy, I don’t necessarily read it.
That’s awful.
INTERVIEW: STEPHEN ELLIOTT
Yeah. I’m just probably not the right person, you know? Maybe I’m
good at baring my soul; that doesn’t mean I’m good at listening. I can
be blunt, also. I give good advice, but I’m not cuddly. I cut to the chase.
And if someone’s baring their soul to you, they don’t want that. They
don’t want you to say, “It’s fairly obvious that the problem here is you.”
The stranger writing me just wants me to listen, the way that they listen
to me. They don’t give me advice. And they’re sending me notes, and
they’re not asking for advice either, they just want me to listen to them.
But I’m not necessarily the best person for that.
But there’s this idea of reciprocity, because you’ve given your story.
I’m telling you all these things, and a lot of them seem very intimate.
I think there’s an assumption, then, that there’s a two-way street. That
maybe you can share with me.
Because that’s the form of email.
Yeah. And I like getting emails from people, but chances of me responding
are almost zero.
Do you feel spread thin by all the different projects you’re working on?
Sometimes, yeah. Right now in particular I feel like I work without a net
a lot. I don’t have a good foundation.
What do you mean?
I don’t have a family; I don’t have a foundation that I can go back to. I
don’t really have a “fall back,” so I feel like I’m out there emotionally. It’s
hard to describe. I have really good friends — I have great taste in friends
— but I’m not married, I don’t have kids. I’m kind of dating somebody,
but it’s an unusual situation. Until six months ago I was living in a shitty
one-bedroom apartment with two guys, and had been doing that for
years. I don’t feel really settled down. I don’t have a place to retreat to.

MEGAN FOLEY
Do you feel scared by that?
I don’t know if I feel scared. I think it’s just a reality. I don’t know. It’s just
complicated. I’ll figure it out one day. I keep thinking that.
The idea of therapy is that you get to know yourself, and I think that
I’ve done that even though I haven’t been in therapy. I’ve worked through
and understand myself, and I understand a lot of my problems now. But
there are things about myself that are not fixable. At least I know what
the problem is. So that’s good, because it helps me communicate with
other people.
I think that’s all from the writing, because in writing you’re just
exploring yourself. And when I write things down I remember them. If
I don’t write it down, I don’t remember anything. A lot of times I wake
up in the morning, and I have to think, like, “Wait — who do I like
again?” You know, “Who am I? What’s my place in the world? What’s
going on?” I almost feel like I’m rebuilding my reality. When I’ve written
things down, those are the things I remember.
Right. There’s a sense in which it’s not a fully lived experience until you sit
down and put it on paper. As if it’s going to float away unless you can tether
it. But there’s also a self-protective element to writing, where if you can create
art out of something it’s a bit less threatening. It’s a way to dismantle and
package and polish an experience and make it your own thing, as opposed to
this uncontrollable terror.
It installs a certain order on your world.
You said something once about there always being another closet to come
out of.
If you’re writing from experience, then every book you write, you’re putting
yourself out there. You’re coming out. A Life Without Consequences is
about being in a group home. Now it’s just this open thing, but I didn’t
mean to tell everybody that I grew up in group homes. Happy Baby is
about BDSM, explaining sexual stuff. I was twenty-nine when I started
writing that, and I was totally in the closet. None of my friends had any
idea what I was into sexually. I was going to clubs and trying to get people

INTERVIEW: STEPHEN ELLIOTT
to tie me up, but I was totally in the closet with my friends.
Every time you’re writing a book, it’s like you’re coming out of the
closet. It’s like a transvestite when they put on a dress for the first time.
They go outside in the dress, and then they go dancing in the dress, and
soon they can’t even remember when that was a big deal. When that
took up all their mental energy. And it’s the same way [with writing]
— you write about this stuff, and you forget why it was even a big deal.
And because of that, you’re able to go into the next thing. You find out
things that you were keeping in the closet even from yourself. You can
explore things that you didn’t have the brain space for before, because
your obsessions were locked up.
The transvestite, before he puts on the dress, he can’t think of anything
else. He can’t think about his sadness. All he can think about is
how badly he wants to wear a dress. And there’s always another closet.
There’s always something you haven’t fully explored about yourself.
Do you have another closet that you want to come out of?
I can’t quite put it into words yet. I’ve thought for a long time that I want
to be in a serious, monogamous relationship, and I’ve thought, “Why am
I never in that relationship?” I haven’t been in a real relationship since I
was twenty-five. That’s a long time.
Recently I think I realized why. I was seeing this girl, and I said to
her, “Look, when you really like me, and I feel responsible for your happiness
and your sadness, I shut down.” And I have a very strange sexual
predilection. I’m into S&M; it’s not foreplay, you know? I’ll be with a
girl, and she’ll think she can just tie me up, and then we’ll have “normal”
sex. But I don’t want to have normal sex. I don’t want to penetrate
anybody.
You can’t find a relationship with someone who’s interested in that?
Well, you can, but you have these two issues, [sex and intimacy], and
the two of them together create something impossible. I can have a good
sexual relationship with someone, and I’ve been lucky to find that. The

MEGAN FOLEY
only reason I’m able to get that is because I’m open about it. But I’m
unable to have serious intimacy in that context.
It’s just so hard. You’re doing this power play; how do you maintain
that? How do you leave that in the bedroom and be normal people?
When I’m in bed with someone, I become childish. I get really small.
Then you’ll be out [in public] and you’ll want to talk about politics, and
you’ll have opinions and get in an argument — and then you can’t go
back into that [erotic] space. I don’t know how to reconcile [the two].
I’ve got issues with intimacy and abandonment, but I don’t know how to
reconcile them with my sexuality, which is also weird. I feel like whomever
I’m going to have that kind of sex with is probably not going to be
the same person I date. That’s the thing that I haven’t found.
Do you think the impossibility of reconciling intimacy and sex is something
you might write about?
If I make some discoveries I’ll probably want to write about it. I find the
answer to intimacy elusive. I know that when I’m alone for long periods
I’m very unhappy. And I also know that when I’m with somebody for a
long enough time I become very unhappy too.
I want to work out something where I’m not going to be lonely but
I’m not going to be crowded. I don’t know if that’s possible. I keep swinging
from one extreme to the other. I have no idea. I always thought that
I would figure that one out. When I was writing The Adderall Diaries,
the one thing I thought I would figure out was, what is my problem
with women? At one point an editor at Norton asked me, “What’s your
problem with women?” And I was like, “I don’t know. I want to know
that too.”
In the book you could clearly see that I had all these girlfriends,
and yet I was always alone. I was unable to make it work romantically.
I couldn’t connect with someone with whom I was also romantic; I
couldn’t make a deeper connection.
I do have deep relationships with my friends, some of whom are

INTERVIEW: STEPHEN ELLIOTT
women, but romantically that’s just not possible. I feel closer to understanding
it, but I don’t feel closer to solving it.
What are your main tenets of writing? What principles are important to you
when you’re writing?
The willingness to explore. You go on this quest to understand something,
and the reader follows you because it’s an honest exploration.
There’s a lot of tension in that treasure hunt. It’s a detective story; you
don’t know what you’re going to find. You can’t find out something and
then try to present something else. If the reader has followed you on
this quest, you’re obligated to present what you find. One of the keys
to memoir is this kind of honesty, which is about questing to really understand
things you don’t understand yourself. It’s not about arriving.
If you already know what you want to say, who you are, and where the
story ends, it’s going to be a very boring memoir.
There’s some cultural disdain for personal nonfiction and memoir.
There is. I don’t share that disdain. The problem is not people sharing,
the problem is the quality of the art they’re creating. It takes a long time
to become a good writer or a good painter. I think the desire to share
and connect has driven a lot of art. That’s what’s behind On the Road; it’s
what’s behind the Ariel poems. So the over-sharing is not a problem. Bad
writing is a problem. And there’s an abundance of bad writing. There’s
an abundance of writing by people that don’t take writing seriously.
I don’t understand criticizing the form, because I don’t think the
form is the problem. The problem is people not having integrity in
their art. Whatever inspires you to make art — you don’t actually get to
control that.
You wrote an article about Nick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
where you said it was the perfect example of memoir as art, and it did everything
that the form should do.
The main thing that a memoir should do is live up to the standard of
the novel. It shouldn’t matter that it’s a memoir. It’s fine if knowing that

MEGAN FOLEY
it’s true adds something, but you should still be able to read it as fiction
and [have] it work.
How do you do that?
You pay attention to your sentences; you write perfect sentences. You
don’t waste any of the reader’s time. You don’t give the reader any more
or less than exactly what they need. You make sure that you can account
for and justify every single word you use. That can take years. And then
you have to have a certain level of tension. It can’t be boring. And it has
to be honest, because otherwise there’s no experience, there’s nothing
really gained.
I mean, I feel like an idiot, or an asshole, just spouting off. These
are things that I believe, but at the same time I feel didactic.
Yeah, but that’s sort of your voice.
I know, everything’s a hard and fast rule. But these are really just thoughts
for me. These are just my approaches. It’s not how other people are
supposed to approach anything. You’ve got to come up with your own
aesthetic and beliefs. Is it right or wrong to write about other people?
That’s a very personal question. You have to decide if what you’re doing
is okay for you, and if you can live with people being angry at you. You’re
the person who sits in judgment of yourself. There are no rules.
But do you think it’s important for someone to have a set of rules for themself,
even if they’re different from your rules?
I think it’s important to be true to your own aesthetic. To try to write
your own favorite book — the book that people who like what you like
will also like to read. I think it’s important to write for a readership that
you respect, whom you think is at least as intelligent as you — maybe
more intelligent — as opposed to talking down to people, or presuming
that you know more than them.
What do you do when you start feeling like you’re repeating yourself and
getting didactic?

It’s hard. I worry about that moment when you stop learning and engaging
with the world. We have a tendency to go in that direction. I try to
continually break that. But whenever I’m talking about writing, like what
we’re talking about now, I hear myself saying things I’ve said before. You
can’t have entirely new ideas every time you have a conversation. But it’d
be nice if you had a couple.
You’re not finding new ideas?
Well, I don’t know. I’d have to go back through what we’ve talked about
and give it a listen. I’m sure there’s something in there that I’ve never
said before.
I hope so.
✺
INTERVIEW: STEPHEN ELLIOTT
POSTSCRIPT
I turned the tape recorder off. We eased onto our sides and lay across the
bed crosswise, facing each other, our heads propped on our hands and
knees touching. I was hugging a pillow like we were having a slumber
party.
“You should do a whole series of these,” he said, teasingly, gauging
my reaction. “Interviews with writers in bed.”
I laughed, picturing myself slipping in and out of various sheets,
clicking off the recorder with a coy smile on my way out the door.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
He reached over and squeezed the back of my leg, right above the
knee joint. “Is this okay?” he asked.
The phone rang, and he answered. It was his agent in L.A. He’d told
me that he’d been worried about the call all day, had said he felt anxious
because of it. I moved back to the other bed and watched him, stretched
on his back with a strip of stomach showing.

MEGAN FOLEY
Should I go? I mouthed.
He frowned and sat up, grabbing his notebook and writing something
in his left-handed crab scrawl. He held it up to me: Do you want
to leave?
I shrugged, pressing my lips together, then shook my head.
Please stay, he wrote.
When he hung up the phone he moved over to me. The light in the
room was changing, paling into evening. Through the sliver between the
curtains I could see the roofs of the city, little brown boxes.
He curled into me like a child, and I wrapped my arms around him.
It was sudden, his closeness, impersonal. It didn’t feel like he wanted to
touch me, just that he needed to be held. He tucked his head under my
chin, snuggling in tighter. I stroked his hair slowly, unnerved.
He talked about his girlfriends, how he could never stay once they
needed him, and I tightened my arms around him, wondering if I felt
comforting. I didn’t talk about my life — he’d looked bored when I’d
tried to earlier. Maybe it was because I’d come to interview him; I was
there to listen. He took my hand and kissed the underside of my wrist.
I’m the woman in his stories, I realized. How many paragraphs had I
read about women winding their bodies around him, beautiful women
in cold bedrooms? I had never considered them before; they had always
seemed beside the point. My limbs were shivering. It occurred to me
that later, when the high of being with him wore off, I would feel sad.
He started to kiss me, and I stiffened. I didn’t want to be that close to
him.
“I should go,” I said.
“Okay,” he said, limply. “I’m sorry.” He lay back on his pillow.
I wasn’t sure if I’d meant it, but then I sat up and straightened my
sweater. I put my hat on and wound my scarf around my neck. He
watched me.

INTERVIEW: STEPHEN ELLIOTT
I packed up my things and he finally got up, changing into a collared
shirt. “Do I look okay?” he asked. There was a dinner he was supposed
to attend, people from his publishing house waiting for him. I smiled
and nodded; he looked like a kid playing dress-up.
We headed down to the lobby and stood next to the elevators, which
I thought were the ones I could take to get to my car. I hesitated and
then said I’d try to make it to his reading the next day. Now that we were
parting I didn’t want it to be over, exactly. He kissed me dryly and left.
I got lost for a while. They were the wrong elevators; I couldn’t recognize
the rooms I walked through, though I’d been through them earlier.
There was the same mauve carpeting everywhere, the same tulip-shaped
sconces. I couldn’t remember how I’d entered the hotel that morning.
What just happened? Finally I asked an attendant for directions.
I felt strung out the next day, like I’d been doing cheap drugs. I went
back to the conference where we’d had our interview. I wandered around
the book fair, watching the desperate last-day sales. The hotel’s entire
basement, two city blocks, had been converted into a maze of tables,
and people were slashing prices, pushing deals. I looked at booths of
chapbooks and cloth-bound novels that good writers had spent ages on,
not really seeing any of it. My stomach felt full of magnets, tugging me
from room to room.
I went to his reading and met him for a drink later that night, but
it was clear that whatever spark had existed the day before was gone. He
held my hand helplessly and then released it, telling me there were people
he had to see.
When I went home that night, I checked my email. In my inbox was one
of his “Daily Rumpus” emails, something he’d written that morning. I
scanned it and then stopped. It was about me.
“It made me think of this guy and girl lying next to each other,” he
began. “He was a musician and she was in love with his music.”

MEGAN FOLEY
In the piece, he was married but I didn’t care. I came back with him
to his hotel room after a show. It was fictionalized, but the details were
ours. “He held up a notebook for her where he’d written, Please stay.
She liked his music. He liked the boots she wore, the way she crossed
her legs.”
He wrote how I’d asked him if these encounters with fans happened
a lot. How he’d kissed me and then apologized when I pulled away. But I
was not discernibly in the piece. I was just an attractive woman, in love
with his work. “He closed his eyes so he could focus on her fingers running
through his hair,” he wrote. “She was as white as a cup of cream.”