Barrelhouse Reviews: All the Wrong Places by Ruth Crossman

Reviewed by LD Green

Naked Bulb Press / January 2022 / 101 pp

First, All the Wrong Places, a flash memoir collection, is compulsively readable. Gulpable. I don’t know if it’s just because I can relate so much to this bi+ narrator struggling to find her way into her own body, and delighting so much when she does arrive there, or if it’s the wit or cultural touchpoints which were also so familiar to me (The X Files and Tom Petty, to name just a couple), or the narrative’s implicit arc toward sobriety and recovery, but I found a fun mirror here. Yet, just realizing traits in common with a narrator does not compel a reader to gulp on, and on, as eagerly as I did. What makes this book so successful is the writer’s fearless excavation of her story in bite-sized chunks, and her careful crafting of mic drop after mic drop at the end of each urgent missive.  

The book—tender, funny, and occasionally explosive—is mostly a catalog of ex-lovers. Crossman dedicates the book to “all those I lost along the way,” which offers an early rendering of the author’s wayward heart. Tarot-esque art from Kiki Petiford Ontiveros peppers the volume. The images and text together and separately speak of prophecy, sex, and death, but not in any theological way. More esoterically, in occult-lite fashion (hence the illustrations). But Crossman offers the sense that while her narrator certainly danced in such darkness for a long time, she’s much more settled now. Compellingly, the collection eschews a tidy “recovery” story arc. Just a few mentions of AA made this reader breathe a sigh of relief. More importantly, Crossman draws a wide angle of discovery between the narrator and the author-self. That critical distance, that safe cushion, an aesthetic airbag to let you know that yes, there was damage after each collision with each lover, but she (the narrator, Crossman herself) survived. Careful voice crafting assures us that she thrived. But again, Crossman refrains from building this story into an easy plot arc. 

“The Smell” is a bold declaration of the sensual aromas and sexual stench of the body—unabashed and celebratory:

I get why it scares them. That’s why they make jokes about it…The one about the vampire who walks into a bar, pulls out a tampon, and asks for a cup of hot water. I would be scared too if it wasn’t a part of me. Meat is dangerous. It doesn’t decompose like vegetable matter. You can’t compost with it. It used to have a heartbeat.

While the book overall maintains a rather gritty, sardonic realism, it does take a dark fabulist turn. In “The Shoes (A Fairytale),” a dazzling spin on Cinderella, “Drizella” actually lives out the more grisly reality of the Grimm text. She cuts off her toes to fit into the glass shoe, and finds this violence cannot be buried. She shows how the body can betray us, spilling over, as undeniable and indelible as its dark red blood.

The expression of desire with a woman lover in “Sky” is winsome and plays with gender in a simple, unabashed way—“If I had a dick it would be hard right now.” It ends with a fun and tender homo-gaze: “I notice she’s chopped her hair short and dyed it black. Just like mine.”  

The collection’s narrative shape, as it gestures toward the narrator’s recovery, ultimately puts the urgency of romantic obsession in the background. Further, traumas begin to eclipse the rhythms and movements of romantic connection. We relive the local trauma of the Oakland house party Ghost Ship fire and the collective trauma of the 2016 election. Finally, in “Five Endings,” Crossman imagines dying dramatically through several different kinds of apocalypses with a lover who, unlike those in the rest of the book, is sticking around. He is not “the wrong place.” He is the right place, but the world is no longer right. The panic at losing lovers is replaced by the panic of losing the world, and self, and partner: “The wave sweeps us into it like a hand cleaning the table. The current is pulling us apart and our clothes weigh us down. We fight, but the water is stronger than us, and cold. It’s so very cold.”

I appreciated the choice to refrain from a decidedly happy ending, and I respect Crossman’s resistance of “I’m all better now” as a device. Recovery is a process, not a destination, and the persistence of narrative can oversimplify that reality. Crossman doesn’t want to put a bow on things--the fear of loss persists; it’s merely taken new shape. And this ambiguity begs the question--how can one end the memoir of a still-living author? It’s a smarter move to offer five possibilities, like five tarot cards spread before the reader, to meditate on. This kind of closure leaves open a possible future for the living body behind this powerful, lyrical, and charming narrative voice. 

I am eager to see what cards turn up next for Ruth Crossman.

Lyo Demi ('LD') Green is an SF Bay Area based writer and community college educator. They have been published on Salon, The Body is Not an Apology, Foglifter, and elsewhere. They co-edited and contributed to We've Been Too Patient: Voices from Radical Mental Health with Kelechi Ubozoh. LD also wrote Phoenix Song, a book of poetry and creative non-fiction. An alum of Stowe Story Labs, Lambda, and Tin House, they are an emerging screenwriter and graphic novelist. Learn more at  ldgreen.org