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“Lonely, understated, and heartbreaking, Once You Go Back will haunt you like a familiar face that has emerged and then fallen back into a dream.” —Mary Gaitskill Praise for Douglas A. Martin: “There is a reverence in Douglas Martin’s writing composed of equal parts language and love. Outline of My Lover strips away the dross, leaving you with the pure mood of youth.” —Dale Peck “Douglas Martin has a very beautiful voice. It’s a thing of grace.” —Dennis Cooper “[Outline of My Lover] is full of hard-won, fraught, unsparing emotional truth. It is a love story between a raw and damaged boy-narrator and a famously mysterious rock star. But more than that, it is a piece of stylish and ferociously sharp prose. I love its fierce concentration and levels of obsession.” —Colm Tóibín “How sentences that look so unassuming could still agitate and exhilarate and break my fucking heart, I do not know. What I’ve learned from Douglas A. Martin is that the sentence is an essay.” — John D’Agata
DOUGLAS A. MARTIN burst onto the American literary scene in 2000 with his sexy debut novel, Outline of My Lover, which would go on to be selected by Colm Tóibín as International Book of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement. He is also the author of Branwell, a novel of the Brontë brother; They Change the Subject, a book of stories; In the Time of Assignments, a book of poetry; and Your Body Figured, an experimental narrative. Born in Virginia in 1973, and raised in Georgia, he now lives in New York City.
Douglas A. Martin
Douglas A. Martin’s distinctive American voice finds its stride in his new semi-autobiographical novel. Once You Go Back describes growing up in a strained working-class household transplanted to the South. In his elliptical and evocative style, Martin skillfully expresses the curiosity of children on the verge of becoming sexual, and their confusion in the midst of family violence.
ONCE YOU GO BACK
“In Once You Go Back, Douglas A. Martin lays out the details of childhood, vibrant and fearing, with a sure hand and a big heart, inside a family nuanced by both love and violence.” —Darcey Steinke
“Lonely, understated, and heartbreaking.” —Mary Gaitskill
ONCE YOU GO BACK a novel
Seven Stories Press www.sevenstories.com Cover design by Tae Won Yu Author photo © Bobby Abate
Logo for use at smaller sizes. Type is heavier by .3 of a point.
isbn 9 78-1-5 83 22-878-4 Logo for use at smaller sizes. Type is heavier by .3 of a point.
Douglas A. Martin
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ONCE YOU GO BACK
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ONCE YOU GO BACK Douglas A. Martin
Seven Stories Press
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Copyright © by Douglas A. Martin A Seven Stories Press First Edition All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electric, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Seven Stories Press Watts Street New York, NY www.sevenstories.com In Canada: Publishers Group Canada, College Street, Suite , Toronto, ON In the UK: Turnaround Publisher Services Ltd., Unit , Olympia Trading Estate, Coburg Road, Wood Green, London In Australia: Palgrave Macmillan, – Claremont Street, South Yarra, VIC College professors may order examination copies of Seven Stories Press titles for a free six-month trial period. To order, visit www.sevenstories.com/textbook or send a fax on school letterhead to () -. Book design by Jon Gilbert Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Martin, Douglas A. Once you go back / Douglas A. Martin. -- st ed. p. cm. ---- (pbk.) . Broken homes--Fiction. . Problem families--Fiction. . Brothers and sisters--Fiction. . Stepfathers--Fiction. . Gay teenagers--Fiction. I. Title. . .--dc Printed in the United States of America
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Leoma Katherine Benseman, February , –August , Arthur Wayland Krick, April , –March ,
To escape from horror bury yourself in it.
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A Tall One
. There are silos in the distance, in the sky above the house out in the country, where our real dad’s parents live. Our noses run from the wind that turns our skin red. We are where he was raised as a boy, in a house of two stories. It is before he is taken away. The fields are full. Inside, I hide in a small closet under the staircase for the coats, calling this my room. Skyrockets in flight, afternoon delight, a song on the radio. It drifts through the house, a low, lilting melody. The man then our grandfather sits in a stuffed armchair, yellow, resting. The air outside is cold but bright and clear. You can’t find me. My lips pursed in a hum. He once chased us with his hands. You are bound not to remember much of this, like later there will be things you’ll try not to. But there was him, and there were others who came after him. One is the tallest man ever, barely fitting into the new house that’s an apartment in a brick triplex he is so tall. He’d have to duck to get inside the door the ceilings are so low. He is almost
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as skinny as me, though. Our mom won’t marry this one, when she marries again. It’s too soon after our real dad left, our last names still beginning with almost the end of the alphabet. Every time he came over, that one lifted me up, and I’d perch on his shoulders, touching the ceiling. He’d ride me around the house like this. He’s sick, always, from when we first know him, and later our mom will cry when he does die. He must have been one of those men, even back then. There’s always been something wrong with him. He’d be the last man she invites into our house for a while. Then she goes quiet, not knowing what to say in the wake of his death. She’d reached out, to him, and then there was a period of none.