A wry literary masterpiece, God Hates Us All is a coming-of-age tale for the apathetic generation. Hank Moody's self-loathing yet darkly like able narrator is a college drop-out-turned-accidental-drug-dealer enveloped in a world of contradictions. His boss — a bong-hitting, dread locked Pontiff figure — runs a remarkably organized and ingenious illegal trade patronized by, among others, a sweater-set-wearing Upper East Sider, a Wall Street hotshot, and a wannabe rock star with a hard-to-resist model girlfriend. The lonely narrator yearns for more than the tenuous but intimate thread he shares with his clients. To escape his mother's desperate expectations, his father's endless disappointments, and his certifiably insane ex-girlfriend, he moves to the city's mecca of ambitious slackers — the Chelsea Hotel — where the pursuit of lust (and the rock star's girlfriend) sends him on a series of well-intentioned misadventures that lead him right back where he started. Told in a unique and subtle voice, God Hates Us All is ironic, optimistic, and unforgettable.
To Mom, for taking me to work.
DAPHNE LOVED SPEED.
Not in the traditional sense: she rarely pushed her weathered Honda Civic past third gear. The race for Daphne lay in the corridors of her mind, long and labyrinthine, and the girl needed her getup-and-go. Cocaine, when she could afford it; ephedrine-powered nasal decongestants when she couldn’t. But she was never happier than the couple of times I’d seen her receive a shipment of
I met Daphne when I returned to the U, a broke sophomore in need of a part-time job. My summer plans to bus tables for the snobs at the Hempstead Golf and Country Club had collapsed when I’d tried to drive a fully airborne golf cart through a plateglass window. My passenger — a bridesmaid with Stevie Nicks hair who minutes earlier I’d been finger-fucking behind the Pro Shop — was late for her scheduled toast at the wedding on the other side of the window. The ensuing explosion of glass delivered a thrilling end to what had been, up until that point, a brilliantly executed shortcut across the bunkers on Hole 13, improvised with the help of a half-bottle of Stoli, an angry golf marshal in hot pursuit, and the bridesmaid’s reciprocating fingers down the front of my pants. We escaped mostly unscratched, thanks to vodka’s armorplating effects, and the talk of pressing charges turned out to be just that. But the job was history. I spent the rest of the summer as an unemployed thorn in my parents’ collective ass.
Back at school, I responded to an ad in the student paper: banquet catering. I began the interview with a heavily edited account of my country club experience, but at the urging of my interviewer — a twenty-something peroxide blonde punk rocker and weekend college radio DJ with a killer smile — I kept adding details until we were both rolling on the floor. I won both the job and an initiation into the strange and wonderful world of Daphne Robichaux, a crash course in alternative music, pharmaceuticals, and a lot of sex, with the occasional light bondage. I let her pierce my left ear and learned to play a few chords on the guitar.
When I returned home for Christmas, I announced that I was dropping out of school to write music and shack up with my new soulmate. My mother wept and refused to talk to me for the rest of the break.
My father just shrugged. “Save us some money, anyway,” he said.
Whether by miracle or cosmic joke, Daphne and I survived a seemingly endless cycle of dustups and were still together the following Thanksgiving.
Neither of us wanted to spend it with family — mine was still sore at me, while Daphne claimed to be an orphan — so instead we planned a Long Weekend of Glorious Ingratitude: four days and three nights in Niagara Falls, where we planned to make a point of never using the word “thanks,” preferably while doing a lot of fucking in the tackiest honeymoon suite we could afford.
We packed the Civic and backed out of her snowy drive-way, Daphne nearly guiding the car into the mailman. He sneered at us as he handed her a small white box with an Italian postmark.
“Thank you,” she blurted at the mailman. He gave her the finger and walked away.
“I’d just like to point out,” I said, looking at the shitty Timex my father hilariously called my inheritance, “that it took you under thirty seconds to violate our only rule for the weekend.”
“You’re driving,” she said, already scampering over me. In the time it took me to get behind the wheel and pull the car into the street, she’d ripped through several layers of tape, cardboard, Bubble Wrap, and child-proofing to liberate a handful of the Italians. Her eyes lit up as they traced the pill’s familiar contours: one half painted a sinister black, the other half transparent to reveal the timedrelease payload of tiny orange and white spansules. “A salut,” she toasted, swallowing one dry.
An hour later we pulled into an abandoned drivein movie theater near Seneca Falls. She’d already removed her pants and unzipped mine. I barely had time to shut off the ignition before she climbed over the console, sprung my cock from my fly, and pulled her panties aside far enough to take me in. She slid slowly down to the point where our pelvises met.
That was the end of the slow — from then on we were moving to Simpamina time. Using one hand to buffer her head against the Civic’s low ceiling, I reached down with the other to recline my chair.
