Alias

 by Lavinia Ludlow

I can tell you all about rock bottom. I’ve choked on the gravel of
rock bottom. Hell, cop it up to fucking rock bottom. And I liked it. I
liked it so much that I let it fuck my brains out for years, and here
I am: its gang-bang on a leash and all its glory. Or maybe faking a
fetish for rock bottom is a shitload easier than taking ownership and
clawing away from it.

I thought rock bottom struck about a little over a year ago, when I
had a substance-addicted ex-con with a court-recognized anger
management problem slapping me around in an insufferable relationship,
when I was fleeing to another state, scraping the bottom of a CD made
up of twenty-five years’ worth of birthday cards because no one would
hire me, not even Starbucks—yeah, I was that desperate for work. But I
know now how that was just a type of rock bottom, because rock bottoms
change with the scenery, they come and go, then they’ll hunt you down,
and never let up, just like the perfect mind-fucking manipulative
boyfriend.

Lavinia Ludlow is a musician and writer from the West Coast. Her novel
alt.punk is forthcoming from Casperian Books in 2011. One of her favorite words is pharmocopeia.