Being A Person The Kid I Was Is Proud Of

The Body, Brain, and Books: Eleven Questions with writer Lauren Hough

Welcome to another edition of The Body, Brain, & Books. If you enjoy reading these quick, insightful interviews brimming with wisdom and hope, please subscribe to Beyond!

Lauren and Woody/photo @ Suzanne Pressman

Lauren Hough

is the NYT bestselling author of Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Granta, Huffpost, Texas Highways, and Harpers. Her next book, Monster of a Land, is forthcoming, from Pantheon. She writes

Badreads

on Substack. 

1. What are you reading now? 

“Less is Lost.” I met Andy Greer at the Texas book festival, which is how I know he prefers "Andy." I got a little drunk and a lot earnest and told him all about the book I’m working on, my dog and a van and a road trip. My problems writing it. A lot about my dog. He was too polite to tell me that was his last book, a dog and a road trip. I wanted to die a little when I found out. But he's so goddamn kind. I figured the least I could do was read his book about a road trip with a dog. I feel like it's important to support up and coming Pulitzer Prize winners. 

2. What are your most beloved books from your youth? Did you ever hide any from your parents?

My grandma sent me White Fang when I was maybe 12. Of course it was immediately my favorite book. I grew up in communes, and any outside literature was forbidden. So my grandmother would send me books and my mom always let me hide them in her room. Later on, there were more than a few books that I hid from them. Or rather, I hid my reading. My stepdad thought teenagers should be playing outside, or have friends. So I'd climb up on the roof to read or I'd say I was going jogging and I'd jog to the library. I was such a regular, the librarians allowed me to use the microwave. I'd find an author I liked, Agatha Christie or Jack London, and tear through everything they had. They'd see me check out the eighth Agatha Christie and turn me on to books they thought I might like, graduate me from Christie to Stephen King and from Stephen King to Ursula Le Guin. I felt extremely cool, being friends with librarians. 

3. What’s your favorite book to reread? Any that helped you through a dark time? 

I’ve stopped rereading books I love, for the most part. I still reread short pieces. Recently I'm back on Amy Hempel, just flipping through the collection I have and choosing one at random. I like the sentences. I think they feel more like songs to me. They make me want to write, even one good sentence. 

Sometimes I go back to a book that meant something, and it's not there anymore, whatever I needed. Or maybe I don't need that anymore. I’m afraid to ruin any others. I think maybe books that meant something in a time belong in that time. I don’t even like to talk about my old loves. They belong in a different place or time when I needed them. I can be grateful I found them when I did. But maybe they're best left in that time.

4. What’s an article of clothing that makes you feel most like you?

I used to buy everything from thrift stores or whatever was on sale at a discount store. I didn't know what I liked enough to know what feels like me. It's one of those things. When you grow up poor, wearing hand-me-downs or something your aunt found for you at a garage sale, when your parents can't afford to buy you glasses, much less the shoes you like, you learn that wanting things is wrong. It's not just clothes. I didn't know what food I liked. I ate what was available. Anything to not be seen as a burden. Then a few years ago, I'd just broken up with someone, because she was a dick. But one of my complaints was she'd always ask me if I wanted coffee in the morning. And I thought it was a shitty thing, to make me ask, or even agree that yes I want coffee. I didn't realize how fucked up that was until I was relaying a list of complaints to a friend (who agreed the ex was a dick. I need that on the record). But she said, "Hold up. What's wrong with asking if you want coffee?" 

I didn't have an answer. Or I didn't want to answer. Because the answer was that wanting something made me feel like a burden, a person who wants things, a bad person. I had learned to be a person who doesn't want things, certainly doesn't need things. It's how you survive. If you never have any wants or needs, you never have to worry about those wants or needs being left unmet. You can't be disappointed. Disappointed seems like the wrong word for the weight of knowing your needs don't matter, the constant reinforcement every time you allow yourself to want something, a little thing, and being denied. But it also meant I didn't even know what I like. I'd never fucking considered the question. How could I? Some part of me thought wanting things made me a bad person.

It’s funny, I’ve heard a lot of people who grew up in poverty talk about this. And turns out Ashley Ford recently said something similar. There’s a reason we’re friends. So I started with clothes. All my t-shirts had liquor logos on them because I worked at a bar. Some of them fit. I went out and actually bought t-shirts I like. I did jeans next. Went to a store and asked a twink who worked there to help and make sure the jeans fit right and were right on my frame. Thank fuck for twinks, and maybe a long history of working in gay bars, knowing I can ask and that they fucking live for that shit. I'm still no good at shopping. I own 12 black t-shirts and 4 pairs of the exact same jeans. But I feel good in them, because one thing you can trust is that a twink will tell you, "Honey, no." I figured out I like boots. I've had a couple ankle surgeries and boots just feel better walking around. But I wanted something nice, something that would last, and something I thought looked good. Lucky for me I live in Austin, where any coffee shop or bar, if the temp's under 100, every guy is modeling a sweet pair of boots. Turns out when you ask a guy what boots he's wearing, he's more than happy to talk about them. 

I did a little better or a little worse on boots, depends on your feelings about spending I guess. I splurged on a pair of Lucchese cowboy boots, then a pair of Wolverine 1000 mile boots and now I've got a pair of Redwing iron rangers. It's the most ridiculous thing to me, how much I love my little boot collection. And I really fucking love my boot collection. I'm proud of myself for having a few pairs of boots. It feels so extravagant. Three pairs of boots. And I'm okay with that now. I can be extravagant. I can buy a thing just because I want to. And I now know a few things that I like. They go well with my jeans and black t-shirts. Maybe next I'll get into watches. I do like my one watch. Maybe I'll buy another. Something with a leather band. Anything could happen. Maybe next time someone asks if I want coffee, I'll be able to say yes, and not feel like a burden. 

5. What’s the best piece of wisdom you've encountered recently?

"Don't fuck with small towns out there. If it says 35, they mean 30." My dad. 

Teddy and Lauren

6. Tell me about any special relationship you’ve had with an animal, domestic or wild?

Since I'm currently writing about the dog who's sleeping with his head on my foot, I feel it would be a little unfair to not talk about my last dog, Teddy. He was the neighborhood stray where I lived in Maryland. The neighbors said he'd been living in the woods for six months or a year, depends on the neighbor. He'd been the scourge of the neighborhood cat population. I coaxed him inside one night during a thunderstorm. Could never find an owner. Which was strange. He was a Japanese akita, they're not exactly common, especially not on the east coast. But I ended up getting to live my baby dyke White Fang fantasy of taming a wolf, or close enough. It took a week to gain his trust enough that I could pet him. It didn't take long before he turned into this giant cuddly goof. But he never lost this thing about him, this wisdom beyond his years and beyond his species. He knew what I needed before I did and better than I did. I was fucking obsessed with him. But I'd like to think it was mutual. 

I had him for ten years. Everyone wants to think their dog is special. But he was truly special. He was a perfect creature. The only way I understand the word "soulmate." When he died during the lockdowns, I really didn't think I could love a dog again. I was wrong, of course. That's the thing about grief. It's just love that doesn't have a place to go anymore. You get another dog and some of that love goes to him. You find new love you didn't know you had. But some of that love, it's still there, but it only ever had one soul it spoke to. 

It's strange. I'm supposed to be writing a book that's not about dogs, but it's about dogs. And I cannot write about him without bawling. I usually know that means I should write about a thing. The things I've written while weeping onto my keys are some of the best things I've written. But I can't do it. I put his face as my lockscreen on my phone to try to inoculate myself with his memory. Take some of the sting out of it. I keep trying and I can't finish a paragraph. Not because I'm overcome with emotion, but because I know the emotion will come and I don't want to feel it. I'm probably saying this now as a way to soft launch the subject to my psyche. Goddamn I loved that dog. 

7. What's one thing you are happy worked out differently than you expected?

That's one of those things that keep me up nights--how many times, just a little step in the wrong direction, and I'd have gone off the edge. So many little steps, accidents or otherwise. Even in writing, I might've had a very different career, or no career at all if I'd found success earlier. I didn't suffer the years of rejection most writers have to contend with. I got the first agent I queried. The first story I sent anyone was published. And we went to submission with a book that I was certain would sell. Why wouldn't it. I truly didn't know I could fail. I hadn't yet. But the book didn't sell. No one wanted it. I was pretty sure every editor in New York had turned it down. When this happens, your well-meaning friends will tell you JK Rowling was rejected by 17 or 27 agents or editors, depends which friend is telling you this and how confused they are. It makes you want to scream because that is a nothing number. (Please stop telling writers this. We are begging you. It's meaningless.)  I went on a solid two week bender and gave up. 

I moved to Austin and got a job at a bar, signed up for some classes at a community college. I was pretty sure I was done as a writer, but I didn't want to go back to being a cable guy. I told my agent I'd look for a new agent when I was ready to try again. I wasted a lot of time on Twitter because I didn't really have friends or time to make them. Making friends as an adult is hard as shit. But I worked at a bar so I had that. During the day, I'd fuck around on Twitter. Maybe I could get a job doing social media. I didn't know how that worked. I didn't know how anything worked. 

Elizabeth McCracken, who lives in Austin, liked my poop jokes I guess. And she invited me out for drinks, listened to my sad ass tell her that I'd failed as a writer and somehow didn't laugh. Or she might've laughed, but she was kind about it. She told me to get a new agent. So I signed with Jamie Chambliss because she'd sent me a kind email after reading something. 

I was fucking around on Twitter one day between classes. And I wrote a thread of cable guy stories. Someone asked if I could write an essay. I didn't know what an essay was. I really didn't. But it didn't matter. No one was going to read it. I was sure of that much. So I thought, as long as we're here, I've got some shit to say. That essay went viral, and I sold a very different book. 

I hated that first book, the one that didn't sell. It was what I thought people wanted to read and what I thought would sell. It wasn't my book. It wasn't the story I wanted to tell. It was a garbage tell-all. Just stories. I wasn't saying anything. The truth of it is, once you write your first memoir, the best thing you can do is put it in a drawer and never look at it again. It may have been helpful to write it down. I don't know. But no one needs to read it. I'd sent that book to an agent who then convinced me to write the sensational tell-all expected of someone like me. I didn't want to. But what did I know? I thought I had to, if I wanted to be a writer. Every draft of it got worse. Frog in water sort of thing. Until it wasn't my book at all. 

I am so fucking grateful it didn't sell. And I'm so fucking grateful to people like Elizabeth who took the time to guide me. That's really the most depressing thing to me. Not that I didn't sell a book. Not selling a book was the best goddamn thing to happen in my career thus far. I mean the end of Twitter. It was a backdoor left open for those of us who didn't go the prescribed route, didn't go to college, didn't get an MFA, didn't make all those connections you make on that route. My friends were bartenders and cable guys. There's no reality without Twitter where I'm having drinks with a literary god like McCracken and she's telling me how to be a writer. There's no place where someone like me gets noticed by people who will buy a story just because they see I'm good at stringing some words together in a way that makes people laugh or think. There's no way that story goes viral. That thing that used to happen on twitter where the entire world was reading or watching or talking about the same thing, that's gone now. So how the fuck is the next writer like me, someone who doesn't know anyone or anything about publishing, how the fuck do they end up on the bestseller list alongside all the ghostwritten celebrity and political memoirs and a few books by highly qualified, well-known writers who regularly appear on CNN? I was a nobody. I was a fucking cable guy and a bouncer. It doesn't happen without Twitter. And now a billionaire got his feelings hurt. So there's no Twitter. How the fuck does the next person get where I am?

I have a lot of hope that substack will provide that boost for someone. I really do. I think our only hope is if people finally get tired of social media and start reading long form again. Maybe it can heal something in our minds that has us so scattered and angry and lost. Maybe someone like me can still have a shot at living this dream. 

8. Singing in the shower or dancing in the kitchen? Or another favorite way your body expresses itself?

I do a little dance when I'm stoned sometimes but only my dog needs to know about that. 

9. What are your hopes for yourself?

I would like to finish writing this goddamn book, and maybe go somewhere. 

10. What’s a kindness that changed your life?

One of my favorite things is an awkward kindness. Maybe it's easier to accept from someone who clearly has no idea what to do but is trying anyway. I've been depressed most of my adult life. And I'm just kind of used to it now. But it does get dark. There was a time I was… We call it suicidal but it's really trying to live when your brain is trying to kill you. I was trying to live. And my brain was trying to kill me. This guy my roommate had brought home. One night stand. He came outside to smoke and I was just sitting there. I think he saw or felt it in me. He must have. He didn't know what to say. We were just sitting there in the dark. He kept reaching his hand out like he wanted to pat me on the shoulder but he wasn't sure how that would go over. I just wanted him to go back inside. Finally he did. Then he popped his head back out and asked, "Do you like milkshakes?" I fucking cracked. One of those sob-laughs that causes way too much snot. We went out for milkshakes at Denny's at like 3am. Sometimes you just have to make it through one more night. It's what I'd been doing sitting outside. But goddamn it was easier with a milkshake and this twink telling me his strangest hookup stories. 

11. What’s a guiding force in your life?

My shrink asked me this recently and completely stumped me. But I have an answer. It's too late for the session but I think the point is to give me things to think about. Or who knows. My answer is I want to be a person the kid I was would be proud of. So far I think I'm doing alright. She'd think it was pretty cool that I'm a writer. But she was always more impressed by what someone did than what they said. So I know, every time I help an animal or pay for someone's diapers or just listen to a kid and talk to them like a human being, she'd think I was alright, for a grown-up. 

Meet me in the comment section

Were you a regular at the library when you were kid? What makes you feel extravagant? Do you have an animal soulmate? What would younger you think of you now?