show me your face

‘show me your face’ is an explicit navigation of ambiguous sexual relationships in teenage years. Danielle Chelosky threads together a voyeuristic catalog of boys with detailed experiences and screenshots of messages. There’s the pitiable 24-year-old Reed who plants painful hickeys on her bottom lip and babbles about his ex-girlfriend in between makeout sessions. There’s Jack, who’s only a year her senior yet seems to have a powerful hold over her, calling her pet names like ‘angel’ and ‘baby’ while posting photos of other girls online. This becomes more complicated as she goes from 16 to 17—the age of consent in New York—and the expectations of her begin to change. “I never knew what men wanted me to be: a dirty slut or a pure virgin.”

”Addiction memoirs are only boring if you can’t relate to them and I can always relate. ‘show me your face’ by Danielle Chelosky isn’t an addiction memoir, per se (tbh I’m not sure what it is, which is the best way to read a book, not knowing or understanding if it’s fiction or memoir or something else entirely), but it reads like one. By which I mean, I related to it, even when I didn’t want to relate.”
—Elizabeth Ellen, author of Person/a, editor of Hobart and SF/LD Books

“Unflinching excavation paired with a refusal to be polite, disaffected, or disinterested. Lightning in a bottle.”
—Lindsay Lerman, author of I’m From Nowhere and What Are You

“Chatter bait kisses, Walmart blowjobs & rubber wrappers: I <3 Danielle Chelosky’s angsty sweet memoir.”
—Jack Skelley, author of The Complete Fear of Kathy Acker