Running With Scissors: A Memoir

During the months after the divorce, when Augusten isn’t at the Finch house, he lives with his mother in a basement apartment rented out to them by a woman named Fern Stewart. Fern is a generous and stereotypical minister’s wife who goes out of her way to help others. He and his mother occasionally have dinner at her house, and Augusten is amazed by the seemingly perfect nature of her family. They live in stark contrast to the Finches, and Augusten admits that he feels more like a Finch than a Stewart. Augusten and his mother eventually move into an old house converted into a duplex.

The Finch home becomes like a second home to Augusten, and he develops a close bond with Hope and Natalie as the months go by. Both Natalie and Vickie chose their own guardians, and Augusten cites Dr. Finch’s belief in a person’s right to pick their own parents as the reason for this. Augusten is now 13 and is starting seventh grade but despises the school itself and being surrounded by other students. He rarely attends, noting how “the Finches were showing [him] that you could make your own rules. That your life was your own and no adult should be allowed to shape it for you” (85). He spends most of his time writing, seeing movies, and reading Stephen King.

One afternoon, he decides to stop at home before seeing a movie and finds his mother and Fern engaged in oral sex. Augusten immediately turns to leave and is soon followed by Fern, who rushes to her car in a panic. Inside, Augusten’s mother sits smoking a cigarette, and Augusten is upset by “her breezy attitude” (87). She talks about how she wishes Augusten would attend school more often—and warns him to keep her relationship with Fern a secret. She then enters a dramatic monologue, discussing how she has been oppressed as a woman her entire life and citing the Black caretaker she had as a child. Dierdre warns Augusten against oppressing her further as she explores with Fern, and Augusten agrees, as long as he can have $5 for the movies.

Dr. Finch arranges a balloon parade to celebrate fathers and spread education about the emotional immaturity of most American fathers in his view. Hope and Augusten tie balloons to his hat, and all the women tie a balloon over each of their breasts in what Dr. Finch deems “breastloons” (92). The family walks down the street together with Augusten and Dierdre accompanying them, and Dr. Finch shouts at the passersby. Dierdre confesses that she isn’t getting along with Fern, citing Fern’s husband as the cause of the issue.

On the other hand, “life with the Finches wasn’t all parades” (95). Like at Augusten’s own home while his parents were together, the Finches fight regularly, often resulting in physical altercations. They call each other names, accuse each other of being undeveloped while citing Freudian terms, and Dr. Finch is usually the only one who can quell the fighting. At the same time, Dr. Finch also encourages the children to fight, believing that “anger, unless it was expressed freely, would destroy a person” (98). Agnes and Dr. Finch argue occasionally too, particularly when Dr. Finch brings other women over for holidays. When Agnes screams at Dr. Finch for doing this, he usually laughs at her, even calling the children in to watch. Augusten finds himself mimicking the Finches at home with his own mother, calling her names and screaming at her.

Augusten has an older brother named Troy who moved out at age 16. He distances himself from his parents, dislikes the Finches, and seems unlike anyone else in the family. He has an “uncommonly abrupt nature” (104) and lacks empathy for others but also has an affinity for electrical engineering, even earning himself a job designing guitars for KISS. At one point, Troy invites Augusten out to meet them. The few times that Dr. Finch attempted therapy with Troy, he seemed resistant and complacent, unaffected by the chaos of his home life. Dr. Finch assumes that he’s deeply ill, but Augusten thinks that Troy simply has no interest in the outside world or social interaction, instead turning his attention toward engineering. Augusten envies Troy’s aloofness and misses spending time with him but also finds that he has little to talk to Troy about when they’re together. Augusten reveals that Troy was diagnosed with autism in adulthood and that this explains his specialized intelligence and abrupt nature. Augusten wonders what would have happened to Troy if he’d been receptive to Dr. Finch, noting, “I like to think that my brother wasn’t so much overlooked as he was inadvertently protected” (109).

Augusten goes to visit Neil and look at his photographs, and instead Neil orally rapes him. (Augusten describes the experience in vivid detail, noting how he was crying, trapped, and in pain the entire time.) Augusten is still only 13, and Neil is 33. As Neil drives Augusten home afterward, he asks Augusten if he’s okay; Augusten lies and says that he’s fine. Augusten feels as if everything is different now, and when he reaches the Finch home, he can’t get the vision of Neil out of his mind. He takes comfort in Hope, who through a bible-dip helps him feel optimistic about moving to New York in the future.

Augusten feels that he’s above school and would prefer to spend his time with Neil, who apologized for his previous actions. Augusten still harbors a hatred for Neil yet also hungers for companionship and feels conflicted by this. Augusten is far too young to be involved with an adult man but feels that he’s more mature than his age indicates (a typical delusion of adolescence). Augusten revels in Neil’s attention. When he tells his mother about Neil, she’s happy for him and the fact that he seems unoppressed. Dr. Finch reacts by warning Augusten that Neil has deep problems. However, since Augusten is only 13, he doesn’t really understand yet what Dr. Finch means.

Augusten continues to loathe school, feeling “like a trapped animal” (120) among people he doesn’t relate to. He explodes at his mother, demanding that she do something about his misery at school and find a way to keep him out of it. Dierdre calls Dr. Finch, who tells Augusten that the only way he can avoid school is to attempt death by suicide and go to a psychiatric hospital. Augusten agrees, desperate to get out of school. He thinks about one classmate in particular, who happens to be Bill Cosby’s daughter. Augusten is jealous of her, thinking she must have a perfect, problem-free life. At the same time, Augusten realizes a darker side to himself that seems to be “addicted to crisis” (124) and is only fueled by his mother and the Finches. He wants to want to be normal but knows this isn’t who he is. Dr. Finch takes Augusten and his mother to a farmhouse in the country and then instructs Augusten to take three pills and drink some whiskey, the story being that he tried to end his life through an overdose. Augusten does as he’s told, and soon awakes in a hospital, where a nurse is treating him. Hours later, he awakes again to find a naked man named Kevin standing in front of him, and soon realizes that he’s in the psychiatric hospital. Kevin is there for an attempted death by suicide too, because he feels trapped by his parents’ demands. Augusten realizes that he can’t reveal why he’s there. He spends the coming days faking suicidal thoughts in group therapy and thinking about Neil. After two weeks there, he returns home, and Dr. Finch manages to convince the school to let Augusten off for six months. Augusten’s mother soon tells him that she’s giving custody of him to Dr. Finch, claiming that she’s doing what’s best for everyone involved. Augusten can only react with shock.