Running With Scissors: A Memoir

At age 10, Augusten’s favorite outfit is a navy blazer paired with a white shirt and red bow tie. He insists that he developed a fondness for formal wear in the womb when his mother played opera music. His hair must be perfect for school, and when school is out, Augusten is at home listening to records or polishing his rings. Sometimes, Augusten’s mother asks for his opinion on a poem she’s writing, especially if she feels confident it could be published, and Augusten is always encouraging. Like Augusten, his mother is certain that she’ll be famous one day. When Augusten tries to gain attention from his father (Norman), who works as a math professor, his father usually rejects his requests. Fraught with several health conditions and a busy schedule, he’s usually exhausted. Augusten and his father do take the garbage to the dump together, and both enjoy the smell of garbage.

Augusten’s parents despise one another and argue harshly; Dierdre often blames her husband for her lack of success and unhappiness in life. Norman drinks, worsening the arguments. On one such occasion, he attempts to choke Dierdre as she screams at him, and Augusten begs them to stop. Dierdre shoves Norman off her, and he hits his head on the dishwasher, falling unconscious and bleeding. Dierdre kicks him until he wakes up. Augusten reasons that his desire to control his appearance so strictly results from his inability to control anything about his family life. Augusten’s parents soon get divorced, and Augusten is optimistic that the future will be brighter.

Augusten’s other passions in life are doctors and celebrities, and he hopes to be one of the two when he grows up. He pretends that the pine trees in the woods he lives in are a film set and often tricks his mother into thinking he’s sick so that he can see a doctor. Doctors seem privileged and clean to Augusten. One of these doctors, Dr. Finch, is a psychiatrist that Augusten’s parents seek out to help with their violent marriage. He has “a shock of thick white hair, a full white beard and eyebrows that resembled toothbrush bristles” (21). Augusten first meets Dr. Finch one night when Dierdre calls him during an especially bad fight with Norman. Dr. Finch gives Augusten a button and some balloons to seem friendly, and Augusten thinks he looks like Santa Claus. Dr. Finch tries to calm Dierdre, reminding her not to frighten Augusten, and then invites himself to a cold hot dog from the fridge. Augusten is suspicious of Dr. Finch because he doesn’t fit Augusten’s vision of a doctor. During their appointments, Augusten talks to Hope, Dr. Finch’s daughter and the office receptionist. She has long black hair and a penance for jewelry, like Augusten. They have similar rings, and Augusten offers to polish Hope’s for her. Hope explains that she has five biological siblings and one adopted brother, most of whom live elsewhere. She tells Augusten that he should come over someday.

A year has passed since the divorce, and Augusten is 12 but feels much older. His mother now sees Dr. Finch for several hours a day. She occasionally drags Augusten to a session, worried about his refusal to attend school and his having no friends. He blames his mother for scaring away the friends he had. During a session with Dr. Finch, the doctor and Dierdre joke about how much of a “bitch” Dierdre is and how that’s healthy for her. Augusten disagrees, seeing his mother as a “rare psychotic-confessional-poet strain of salmonella” (32). Dr. Finch confesses that between patients or sometimes even during a session, he escapes to “the Masturbatorium” (32) to address his manly needs. He offers to give them a tour, and Augusten agrees, despite Hope’s having shown it to him months earlier. Inside, Hope is asleep on a couch and is wrapped in Dr. Finch’s blanket. He yells at her, telling her to nap elsewhere, and then demands that Dierdre yell at her too. Dierdre feels uncomfortable about lecturing someone else’s daughter, but Hope takes Augusten out of the room and explains that it was all an act to help Dierdre express her anger. Augusten admits that he finds it strange and disgusting that Dr. Finch has a room designated for masturbating, but Hope sees it as normal and shrugs it off.

After hearing from Hope that the Finch home is an interesting place to visit, Augusten is thrilled to be going there with his mother, even if it’s for a session. Driving up, he notices that the houses are huge and stately, and it reinforces his desire to be a doctor. To his dismay, however, the Finch home is small and sullen. Agnes, Dr. Finch’s wife, answers the door, and Augusten refers to her as “the hunchback” (40) because of her terrible posture. The house is a mess, and Augusten can’t believe a doctor lives there.

Augusten meets two of Hope’s sisters, Natalie and Vickie, who are just slightly older than him. They suggest playing with an old electroshock machine of their father’s, and Augusten gives in. Natalie plays the patient (who has “paranoid schizophrenia”), Augusten the nurse, and Vickie the doctor. The girls’ six-year-old brother, Poo Bear, runs in at that moment, curious about what his sisters are doing, and they invite him to watch. Vickie hooks the wires up to Natalie’s head and pretends to plug in the machine, and then Augusten turns the dial. Natalie pretends to convulse and scream, rolling her eyes and shaking violently. This scares her brother, who runs from the room and then poops on the floor under the piano as his sisters congratulate him. Augusten is uncomfortable at this point and finds his mother, asking to leave, but notices that she seems distant and wide-eyed. Dr. Finch comes in, and explains to Augusten that his father is “homicidal” and may want to kill Dierdre. He plans to take her to a hotel and have Augusten stay at the house. Dierdre tries to tell Augusten that Norman harbors rage about his mother, which he takes out on Dierdre. When Augusten hears that he might be apart from his mother for an entire week and stuck in a house he finds disturbing at best, he becomes frantic. Dierdre tells her son that she’ll visit him in her dreams, and Augusten is frightened at the sight of his mother’s distant eyes. In this moment, he hates her for leaving him there.

The next afternoon, Augusten is sitting in the kitchen of the Finch house when he hears a sound like a young wolf moaning from upstairs, calling for Agnes. Agnes goes upstairs to attend to it, and Hope explains that the sound came from Joranne, one of Dr. Finch’s patients who has been living there for two years. She has obsessive-compulsive disorder and never leaves her room except to use the bathroom. Augusten wonders how Joranne would react to the roaches, overwhelming mess, and chaos downstairs. He’s fascinated by what he hears about Joranne and wants to meet her, so Hope takes him upstairs to do so. Joranne hesitantly opens the door and politely says hello to Augusten, who marvels at the bright, clean state of her room. Joranne is upset because Agnes served her a spoon with a spot on it, so Hope goes downstairs to wash her a new one. Augusten wonders to himself how long he’ll have to stay here and realizes that it’s “getting more and more difficult for [his mother] to have [him] even for a day” (65). He feels alone and wonders if he’ll end up living here for years like Joranne. Dierdre returns to pick Augusten up a week later but seems completely underwhelmed and emotionally absent. Augusten asks her where she went and what she did, but she says nothing, staring blankly ahead.