Harley Loco

December 24, 2012
You know you’re in for a memoir of dysfunction, depression, drugs, drink, and despair when Elias declares that as a child “being bad was what I did best.” By the time she was seven, she and her family had left Syria because of increasing political and religious tensions and moved to Detroit, because of its large Arabic community, to start a new life. Elias soon discovers that there will never be a better life, for her parents were more interested in using America for what they can get from it than in Americanizing. Bullied at school and failing to fit in at home or at school, Elias remains an outsider trying to find a way into a circle of friends and into this new world; soon enough, she has rejected so much that there is a void inside her, and she starts to fill that void with drugs, sex, and punk rock, hardening herself against the pain. In this compulsively page-turning memoir of her search for herself, Elias takes us on a tour of her hell as she moves from Detroit to New York’s Lower East Side; once in New York, she sells drugs, does drugs, discovers new and more powerful drugs, falls in and out of love, becomes an award-winning hair stylist, performs with punk when she can, goes to jail, and eventually hits bottom and goes straight. Haunting and mesmerizing, Elias’s story captures powerfully the vulnerability of being an outsider and the deep yearnings to be a part of something, to fit in.

January 15, 2013
A junkie's-eye view of three decades of addiction in Detroit and on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. First-time author Elias, who has been clean since 1997, has enough distance to speak on her past unashamedly, with cleareyed intelligence and without judging her younger self too harshly. The youngest child of a prosperous Syrian family that immigrated to the suburbs of Detroit in the 1960s when she was 8, the author suggests her addictions were a response to the disruption that alienated her from her happy childhood in Syria. Her perspective remained that of the feisty little girl who fought back against bullies and earned the respect of her peers through a kind of reckless experimentation and a constant need to prove herself. "I always knew I couldn't be 'the best of the best, ' " she writes. "I think at a very young age I decided to become 'the best of the worst, ' which seemed to attract even more attention." Rather than take the path toward bourgeois security taken by her older siblings, Elias started a post-punk band, earning a living as a hairdresser. In New York, her dual careers seemed ready to take off, but her personal life was more complicated. While living unhappily with an adoring boyfriend, she fell deeply in love with a married woman who declined to leave her husband. Elias self-medicated with ecstasy, cocaine, heroin and Valium--anything to ease the pain--and soon found herself helplessly addicted. When snorting heroin became too expensive, a punk-scene friend reluctantly introduced her to mainlining. Thus began a descent into street life, homelessness, petty crime and jail time, alternating with temporary spans of redemption and health followed by heart-breaking relapse. Though slow to get going, the second half of this memoir is strong stuff, with some truly amazing stories well-told.

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November 1, 2012

Syrian-born Elias reports on four decades absorbed first in the punk movement on New York's Lower East Side and then as a drug addict who finally achieved redemption.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 1, 2013
This is not easy reading. In fact, quite often the author's behavior is so stupidly self-destructiveand blatantly selfishthat one is tempted to give up on her. And yet you read on. In a memoir of darkness and, ultimately, redemption written by a gay ex-junkie, ex-con, musician, hairdresser, and filmmaker, Elias offers a unique literary voice (the title refers to the nickname she was given in Rikers prison). In 1967, at the age of seven, she emigrated from Syria to the U.S. with her family. While growing up in the Detroit area, she was bullied by her American classmates; she felt alienated and like a prisoner in her own skin. But there was one thing that made her feel tough and cool in people's eyes: drugs. Hers is a violent and humiliating tale of time in rehab and detox centers and prison stints as well as numerous love affairs with both men and women, followed by eviction after eviction until, homeless, she had no place to go. Elias paints an indelible portrait of New York City, especially the East Village, during the bad old days of the 1980s, when every street corner seemed to be inhabited by hookers and drug dealers. A memoir few readers will soon forget.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)