Horror Stories

One

She Lies

We left her there. That s the part that haunts me. We saw her need, and we ignored it. The bathroom was crowded. It was hot. I was waiting for my turn at the mirror to put on lipstick. I don t know why I only see the scene from two angles: looking down out of the corner of my eye while I do my makeup, and waiting with my back against the wall for my friends to finish washing their hands.

I don t know if she was a blonde, a brunette, or a redhead. I know that she was at the party. I think she was wearing an olive-green jacket, but actually, I might have made up that detail. I seem to be assembling her outfit partially from fact and partially from fiction, as if I m trying to dress her the way I used to dress my old Barbie dolls, make her look presentable, give her that dignity. My conscience is a fantastic prosecutor. After so many years, only the damning evidence remains. I was there. I saw it. I did nothing.

Fear is an exhausting emotion, and I was scared so often that first semester in college. It was overwhelming trying to find my classrooms in a maze of unfamiliar buildings. I was afraid to ask the other students what the professor meant when she said our reading was reserved in the library. I was too scared to use my zip card in the cafeteria line, in case there was a trick to it. Trying to look like I knew what I was doing was my constant priority.

Looking back, I feel compassion for my younger self. I was just trying to get by. I was only eighteen, and my brain was still forming. I have to have something to say to the jury in my defense. The truth is, I was happy that night. I had met some girls I liked, finally. They all knew one another from a private school in Manhattan. They smoked clove cigarettes and smelled like patchouli. They had boyfriends and were trying to set me up with a guy from their group. One by one, they each took me aside and whispered something nice he d said about me. They raised their eyebrows when they spoke

Liz Phair is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter whose debut album, Exile in Guyville, has been hailed as a landmark of indie rock. She began her career in the early 1990s in Chicago by self-releasing audiocassettes under the name Girly-Sound. The intense response to these early tracks led to Phair s signing with the independent record label Matador Records. She has been a recording artist and touring performer for over twenty-five years, paving the way for countless music artists, particularly women, who cite her among their major influences. Phair is also a visual artist who majored in studio art and art history at Oberlin College. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times and The Atlantic. Horror Stories is her first book.

Honest, original and absolutely remarkable . . . elegant but unpretentious writing . . . There are so many things to admire about Horror Stories, it s hard to list them all. It s a memoir with an original and fascinating structure. [Phair] mostly avoids writing about her own songs, and while this may seem to be an odd choice, it s actually quite refreshing her music, she seems to indicate, can speak for itself. NPR

[A] uniquely thoughtful, self-aware memoir . . . bracing and refreshing . . . Horror Stories is more an archipelago of intense episodes of unknowing with the implicit understanding that life is a wayward, unresolvable business. . . . [A] rigorously open exploration of negative capability. The New York Times

Like a batch of interrelated Phair songs, each chapter a separate and specific story, all together accumulating into an intimate self-portrait . . . with equal parts elegance, humor, and authenticity. The Boston Globe

Liz Phair s songwriting has always had the rare quality of being short-story-like. Damn good short stories, too. Horror Stories has that unique Liz Phair ability to make you look at something you d rather not, but once you do you re glad you did like any form of honest art. This is why Liz Phair still is, and always will be, a threat. Ben Folds
 
Horror Stories cracks open the idea of fear itself to see what's inside. Liz Phair s stories are heartbreaking and inspiring, galvanizing and contemplative. This memoir is as much about the poignant luminosity of the subjects upon which Phair fixes her gaze as it is about the darkness she shows us. Witnessing her examine the moments that have stayed with her over the years is captivating: a literary triumph by a musical icon. Lily Brooks-Dalton, author of Good Morning, Midnight
 
Horror Stories is a collection of turning points, plucked free of ongoing time and their original settings. Gathered, they sparkle