- guardian.co.uk, Friday August 11 2000 13.53 BST
"You have to go into hospital, Mom." God. How long before she bleeds to death? "I'm not going." She's terrified she'll never leave as her cancer's end stage. She does leave, though, to go to Dad's funeral. A run-through for her own. A month later we're all back in church for hers. What do you do when both your parents die within 32 days, and you've just become the guardian of your eight-year-old brother, Toph? Play frisbee? Write a book? A cliche, I know, but at least it's not a screenplay. And check out that title. Post-modern or what?
The Chicago 'burbs hold nothing for us, so me and Toph head west to Berkeley. We're free to do whatever. Hang out on the beach, watch TV all hours, fart. No one can stop us. Toph is my laboratory. I can fill his head with my music, my books. He is one lucky, lucky guy. But he's my problem, too. I mean, looking after your eight-year old brother is all very soulful, but how do you find the time to shag? When I'm not with him I worry someone's hacking him to death and when I am, I just wish he'd fucking disappear and let me live my life.
You may not be interested in this next bit, as it's about Brent, Moodie, Jessica and the gang and our grungy low-life existence and our efforts to get Might, our avant-garde literary magazine, into the mainstream. I wouldn't blame you if you weren't, so just skip a few chapters.
I apply to be on the MTV show, The Real World. The interview is awesome; it goes like this - Yeah, you've guessed. It doesn't, but it seemed a neat way of fitting in the autobiographical details that don't slot in elsewhere.
Contrived, but still neat, huh?
Oh, fuck, I'm dying. Who's going to look after Toph? False alarm. Kidney stone. But I do worry about dying a lot. Some of my friends actually do it. Where are my parents? I don't mean this philosophically, I mean it literally. They gave their bodies to research and I've lost track of them.
Hey, my mother's ashes have turned up and I scatter them on Lake Michigan. I go back to California, pull the plug on Might, and me and Toph move east to New York. Free. Finally.
And if you really are pressed - the digested read, digested:
Get past the "I'm so clever" exterior and you'll find a surprisingly moving story of loss, grief and survival
