A DISPATCH FROM THE UNDERWORLD
by Lasara Firefox Allen
On a cheerfully bright corner in San Miguel de Allende, in the heart of Guanajuato, Mexico, amongst the Friday afternoon bustle of locals going about their business and the occasional well-appointed tourist, I stumble onto a scene that stands out against the background hum: two iconic American expat trust-fund junkies. They carve out space with equal parts numbed-out ease and oblivious discomfort, standing in the ancient, cobbled street near La Parroquia.
Their bodies loose-limbed and awkward, they appear spectral; their own glamorized daydream of the 1980s.
The chosen aesthetic is so intensely, off-handedly curated that they have bent themselves into near-caricature. Their hair–fucked up, matted, spiky–looks like it hasn’t been washed in weeks. Disheveled, minimally buttoned long-sleeved shirts—one with blue pinstripes, the other likely once belonging to a ranking officer of some nautical military branch—hang loose and gaping over gaunt, undernourished bodies. Messy, once-white a-shirts, knee-length dark trousers, and dress shoes (worn, but clearly high quality) with no socks complete the heroin-chic aesthetic of New York in the ‘80s.
To drive it all home, one of the two drifters looks hauntingly like a taller, thinner, even more androgynous young Laurie Anderson. In what has to be an intentionally referential nod, the other–gold-tone aviator sunglasses striking a contrast with his unkempt mop of dark hair–looks like a less-haggard Lou Reed. The two of them are fully enmeshed in a heroin-infused underworld dream.
Lou Reed, all awkward arms and sharp angles, leans into the window of a taxi and asks the driver something. Limbs languid and mechanical at the same time, Laurie Anderson brings her smoke to her lips and drags hard on the cigarette, pain etching lines into her forehead as she surveys the surroundings–searching for something, though she can’t seem to remember what. The copious smoke haloing her head curls toward the cerulean February sky, a cloud of incense wafting off an altar to the forgotten.
I attempt eye contact, wanting to make sure all is well. My gaze bounces off Laurie’s darkened eyes, her desultory abnegation the only answer I’ll get. To my later regret, I don’t stop and ask if I can take a picture of the apparitional pair, but keep walking briskly up the hill toward the retreat space; I want to arrive in time for sunset and our evening reading session.
In the writing workshop I’m here for we’ve been working with the myth of Persephone. A day earlier, the question of choice was raised; did Persephone choose Her own descent? As we discussed ways that a descent may happen–by choice or otherwise–we talked about addiction, love, and other ambivalent themes.
My own experiences of substance use as an underworld expedition lasted years, though my use—modulated as it was—allowed me time above ground and under. Season upon season, year after year, I traversed the road between, acquiring an array of scars–both literal and figurative–as tokens of my continual descent and reemergence. Until the path between started losing purchase under my feet, and I decided to forgo future iterations of the journey.
This being the case, these denizens of the modern underworld stand out to me—not that they wouldn’t have stood out against the surroundings anyway, but within the context of the myth of the descent, and the familiarity garnered by my own time spent in a similar space, Laurie and Lou feel more like messengers, my own romanticized and deleterious relationship with substances appearing boldly in the rearview mirror.
Of all the lives they could be living, they chose this one, I muse upon reflection, my brow momentarily riddled with throw-away consternation. As is their right, I quickly add, a shadow of an afterthought, navigating myself as free as possible of the vestiges of judgement I carry with me related to chaotic drug use and how others choose to live.
This I know; choice is not always what it’s cracked up to be. Sometimes what passes as choice is reactivity. Is compunction. Is baked into our cells before birth. Sometimes it’s making the most of the lot we’ve been handed by design or circumstance. Sometimes it’s a downhill trend that isn’t apparent until the way back has been absolutely obliterated.
I know this, also: sometimes the slide into hell feels all too much like a homecoming. Sometimes the way back to the surface seems too steep, and too long, the path too slippery to find purchase.
I made it out. Some never do. Whether by choice or compulsion, some wander the underworld for lifetimes–appearing, dissolving, appearing again, insubstantial and dreamlike–a shade among shades.
Lasara Firefox Allen, MSW (they/them/Mx), is the author of Jailbreaking the Goddess (Llewellyn, 2016) and Sexy Witch (Llewellyn, 2005), as well as the chapbooks The Pussy Poems and Disjointed (as contributor and editor). They have four forthcoming prescriptive nonfiction titles, including Genderqueer Menopause, slated for release between 2025–2027. Enjoying a side-focus of micro-memoir and poetry, their work has appeared in Sledgehammer Lit, LiteraryKitchen.net, Spooky Gaze, Tangled Locks Journal, Spillwords, Mountain Bluebird Magazine, Guilt Scar Zine, and Pulp Lit Magazine. Lasara is a Witch, nonprofit CEO, menopause and life coach, and a co-conspirator for collective liberation.Subscribe to their Substack: substack.com/lasarafirefoxallen.
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