Once You Go Back - Excerpt

Douglas A. Martin

a novel

ONCE YOU GO BACK

ONCE YOU GO BACKD

ouglas A. M

artin

Fic t ion $16.95 US

“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, 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’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.

Seven Stories Presswww.sevenstories.comCover design by Tae Won YuAuthor photo © Bobby Abate

isbn 978-1-58322-878-4

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Logo for use at smaller sizes.

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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.

“Lonely, understated,

and heartbreaking.”

—Mary Gaitskill

ONCE YOU GO BACK

OYGB_text:Layout 1 6/15/09 8:33 AM Page 1


ONCE YOU GO BACK

Douglas A. Martin

Seven Stories Press


Copyright © by Douglas A. Martin

A Seven Stories Press First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in aretrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, includingmechanical, electric, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the priorwritten permission of the publisher.

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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 andsisters--Fiction. . Stepfathers--Fiction. . Gay teenagers--Fiction. I. Title.. .--dc

Printed in the United States of America


Leoma Katherine Benseman,February , –August ,

Arthur Wayland Krick,April , –March ,

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To escape from horror bury yourself in it.



1

A Tall One

. There are silos in thedistance, in the sky above the house out in the country,where our real dad’s parents live. Our noses run from thewind that turns our skin red. We are where he was raisedas a boy, in a house of two stories. It is before he is takenaway. The fields are full. Inside, I hide in a small closetunder 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 manthen our grandfather sits in a stuffed armchair, yellow,resting. The air outside is cold but bright and clear. Youcan’t find me.My lips pursed in a hum.He once chased uswith 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 thetallest man ever, barely fitting into the new house that’s anapartment in a brick triplex he is so tall. He’d have to duckto get inside the door the ceilings are so low. He is almost


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 thealphabet. Every time he came over, that one lifted me up,and I’d perch on his shoulders, touching the ceiling. He’dride me around the house like this. He’s sick, always, fromwhen we first know him, and later our mom will cry whenhe does die. He must have been one of those men, evenback then. There’s always been something wrong withhim. He’d be the last man she invites into our house for awhile.Then she goes quiet, not knowing what to say in thewake of his death. She’d reached out, to him, and thenthere was a period of none.


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Once You Go Back - Excerpt