Skull City is one of the most intriguing short novels any reader will encounter. Our narrator is nineteen-year-old Larson, who ran away to Alphabet City in the early 1980s when he was a lad of thirteen—exactly the time when this section of New York City looked like a gutted, sprawling rattrap for tattooed, Mohawk-haired drug addicts.
At one drug den, waiting for his fix of heroin, Larson spots a familiar shivering druggie by the name of Cooge—forty-something, stringy gray hair, pocked, caved-in cheeks, and a reputation as a weird-ass music genius. A Puerto Rican kid busts into the ramshackle room pointing a gun and robs Larson and Cooge of their drug money. Cooge pleads with the dealer to front him his needed fix. Nope. They kick a shaking Cooge out. Since Larson needs to get his skinny ass off the street, he runs after Cooge and lends him the money with the understanding that Cooge will give him a place to sleep and let him help with everyday chores. The deal is struck, and Larson moves in.
What happens when Larson eventually takes on the role of assistant in Cooge’s mysterious music project propels this singular tale into the realm of the fabulous. Allow me to share a few Skull City themes and keynotes.
Mind Games — Having a history of heroin addiction prepares Larson for the story’s most harrowing, mind-bending episodes. Shepard appears to be suggesting that continual use of hard drugs rewires one’s perception so completely that reality, so-called, becomes as pliable and elastic as Silly Putty. “Nothing I had witnessed…had impressed me as being as potentially tormenting as the ordinary terrors that I faced every day. Hell, it seemed, was a piece of cake compared to life in New York.” Larson’s sustained calm gives the narrative an undeniable eeriness.
Manhattan Metamorphosis — Larson takes a stroll and can detect that the city is recognizable but darker, more extreme, and much more sinister, as if all varieties of twisted human subconscious urges are made manifest. “The citizens of Skull City were human, but embodied a wider physical spectrum than did the citizens of the Big Apple, and their dress and activities, too, ran the gamut of extremes. During a brief stroll, I saw a hunchback wearing what would have passed in New York for bondage gear; I saw a tall beautiful woman with black hair down to her ass and solid white eyes dressed in a mesh of gold wires set with flickering gems; I saw a Neanderthal type in what might have been a wetsuit; I saw a dwarf in red lace trousers; I saw someone in a sleek suit of silvery armor without any openings for eyes or mouth—or maybe it was a robot; I saw several children wrapped in barbed wire, bleeding and ecstatic, lifting their piping voices in mad song; I saw a group of naked dancers, male and female, whirling through the crowd.” How and why this transformation takes place is for Lucius Shepard to tell.
All You Need Is Love — “I replayed the kiss in my head. How her eyes had looked, the lights in the irises appearing to swarm as she moved close, how her lips had parted to show a sliver of teeth, vaguely predatory. The freshness of her mouth, the firmness of her breasts. It had been a great kiss, a tremendous kiss, Hall of Fame material. I could still taste it, and I thought I could taste as well the quality of those lost hours, and sense their promise. I’d never been as disoriented, as alarmed, as I was then. It was as if one of my fundamental conceptions had been abolished, or rather, as if an important idea to which I had long given lip service had suddenly and to my complete surprise proven to be real and fraught with imminent consequences.” Imminent consequences for sure. Larson can hardly believe it. Among other fascinating possibilities, Skull City can be read as a tale of love.
Words, Words, Words — One of the most perceptive features of Lucius Shepard’s writing is his keen observation of how language can shift from a more sophisticated, rich vocabulary to clipped regional lingo, especially when one finds oneself in danger. Here’s Larson reverting back to his Southern rural upbringing when he’s in emotional crisis: “Nothin’s wrong. It’s just I gotta commitment. But it ain’t gonna be hangin’ me up no more after tonight, I promise ya.”
As with his many other tales, ranging from the forests of Borneo to the plains of the American Northwest, Skull City refuses simple answers and lingers in ambiguity. Is adulthood a matter of choosing the chains by which we are bound? On one level, Larson has achieved what many would judge as the Great American Dream. But—but—but… he knows he must answer to another master and figures it is only a matter of time before he rebels. He reflects: “I stared with something akin to longing at the junkies, the bag lady, and the homeless man twitching beneath his cardboard blanket. They seemed like angels who dwelled at the bottom of my sky. Cracked, frightened, damaged, in pain. Yet accomplished in their ignorance, capable of experiencing the surcease of thoughtlessness, the void emptiness of bottles and needles.”
In Skull City, survival is never free, love is never safe, and adulthood means learning which darkness you can live with.
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