The Story
From the psych ward to a cult-like “therapeutic” boarding school for troubled youth, to the Ivy League, to rehab, I spent my adolescence and early adulthood moving through the full spectrum of American institutions.
At fifteen, I pawned my mom’s fur coat, ran away from home on the Upper East Side to live with my best friend Joanie in Colorado, and somehow took up with a family of Pentecostal born-agains in Houston along the way. In my quest for freedom, I unwittingly set off a chain of events that would imprison me— literally and figuratively—for decades to come. From the psych ward to a cult-like “therapeutic” boarding school for troubled youth, to the Ivy League, to rehab, I spent my adolescence and early adulthood moving through the full spectrum of American institutions. Narrated through the context of a psychedelic cabaret, The Elephant in the Room, outlines this revelatory experience in brutally honest and often hilarious detail.