The Contours of Trauma

The only way out is through

Me, crewing for my friend, the best sailor at camp.

Part of the reason I’ve been so looking forward to the publication of Who Could Ever Love You is because, even though it’s my third book, the first two were both published at the height of the COVID waves of July 2020 and August 2021, respectively. There was no book tour, there were no in studio interviews, no readings at local bookstores. This time around will be different—at least assuming I recover sufficiently in time.

The other two books are important to me, but this one is more personal. Too Much and Never Enough is what I’ve come to think of as the psychological history of a family rather than a memoir. This time around I got to tell stories that were more focused on me and my parents.

For this book I also had the luxury of time. I submitted the finished manuscript on February 1—two days before my daughter and I went to Iceland for our first trip in two years. Given the September publication date, that meant the book could be reviewed in advance, We could plan promotional appearances and I could get request pre-publication blurbs.

Which brings me to Aimee Mann. I was at Tufts University when ’Til Tuesday, the band she fronted, released its first album Voices Carry. After three albums, the band broke up and she started her extraordinary solo career.

Since Voices Carry, to one degree or another, Aimee’s music has been in my life ever since. When I first listened to her 2017 album Mental Illness, I was in the process of having my own breakdown. A visit to the White House in April of that year to celebrate my aunts’ birthdays had accelerated an unravelling that had begun on November 8, 2016.

Of course, I didn’t experience it as an unravelling—I thought my biggest problem stemmed from the fact I was out of shape. Since the election I had stopped playing tennis, or exercising at all. Mostly I sat on my couch while simultaneously watching MSNBC and reading other peoples’ comments on Twitter. I thought a spa, where I could start to exercise again, eat healthy food, and avoid television and the internet for a while, would be all I needed to get back on track.

A friend recommended a health resort that just happened to be located on property leased from one of my uncle’s golf clubs. I was assured there was no connection between the two facilities. This was technically true—the actual health facility was entirely separate from Donald’s club—but after I checked in they put me and my baggage in a golf cart and drove me straight to a Trump hotel room, complete with a fully-stocked mini bar and drawer full of unhealthy, overpriced snacks. I quickly realized this was not an ideal situation.

The absurdity of it all reached a crescendo on the second day of my stay. I was in the gym being put through a series of grueling tests to determine my baseline fitness level. After completing twenty minutes of intervals on a treadmill, I brought a yoga mat over to the window overlooking the golf course. My face was bright red and I was drenched in sweat and, as I began to stretch, my cousin Eric appeared outside. He had a film crew in tow and it looked like he was walking right toward me.

The contrast between me (as described) and him— dressed in an immaculate and expensive suit holding court simply because his father was living in the White House—brought home a few uncomfortable truths. First, I wanted to be back in NY on my couch doom-scrolling Twitter; second, I never wanted to leave my house again; and third, my problems went far beyond my having been sedentary for a couple of months. My untreated complex post-traumatic stress disorder was wreaking havoc on my life and the lives of those around me.

The song on my headphones at that moment was Aimee Mann’s “Goose Snow Cone.” Maybe it should have been ruined for all time by its association with the awful moment that prompted those realizations. Instead, it resonated in a way that brought me solace at an incredibly challenging time. It still does.

It was a bit of synchronicity when I met Aimee at a small luncheon a couple of years ago when I was out in Los Angeles for a Nerd Avengers event. She was exactly what you would want somebody whose work you’ve admired for decades to be: down to earth, engaged, kind, and so very smart.

Not long after that trip, I retreated again. A year and a half passed before I reached out to ask if she’d read the manuscript of my new book. The hope was that she’d like it enough to write a blurb for the cover. I’m not sure what possessed me to ask—it was entirely uncharacteristic of me—but I knew why I wanted to: I believed Aimee would understand the story I told and she would understand why I told it. And, because of my great good fortune, both turned out to be true.