Erin Hosier - Don’t Let Me Down: A Memoir

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An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Copyright 2019 by Erin Hosier

Most names and certain identifying details have been changed.

Photographs are from the authors personal collection.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Atria Books hardcover edition February 2019

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Interior design by Amy Trombat

Jacket design by Laywan Kwan

Photograph of father and daughter by Peter Cade/Getty Images

Author photograph by Andrew Joseph Segreti

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hosier, Erin, author.

Title: Dont let me down : a memoir / Erin Hosier.

Description: First hardcover edition. | New York : Atria Books, [2019]

Identifiers: LCCN 2018016389 (print) | LCCN 2018016918 (ebook) | ISBN 9781451644975 (ebook) | ISBN 9781451644951 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781451644968 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Hosier, Erin. | Fathers and daughtersOhioGeauga CountyBiography. | Rock musicOhioCleveland RegionInfluence. | BeatlesInfluence. | Coming of age. | Young womenUnited States Biography. | Literary agentsNew York (State)New YorkBiography. | Baby boom generationOhioGeauga CountyBiography. | Fundamentalists OhioGeauga CountyBiography. | Geauga County (Ohio)Social life and customs20th century.

Classification: LCC F497.G2 (ebook) | LCC F497.G2 H67 2019 (print) | DDC 977.1/336043dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018016389

ISBN 978-1-4516-4495-1

ISBN 978-1-4516-4497-5 (ebook)

For Erin Flaherty and Joshua Lyon

Chris Farley to Paul McCartney: Remember when you were in the Beatles and you did that album Abbey Road and at the very end of the song it goes, And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make? You remember that?

Paul McCartney: Yes, Chris.

Chris Farley: Is that true?

Saturday Night Live

THREE DEJECTED-LOOKING BOXES WERE STACKED on a modest utility trailer in my parents old garage. I contemplated them with dread. Mom was moving, cleaning out the house; she said I needed to find room for anything I wanted to keep. The trunk of my borrowed 91 Corolla was already brimming with stuff I was taking back to Brooklyn. The small back seat was already filled with boxes, two fur coats, and some battered artwork, along with laundry, loose paper, and books I was planning to donate.

I had to make room for these last three boxes. Inside were years and years worth of photographs Id never been able to part withand every letter anyone had ever written me, at least through 2001.

That was the year my dad died. Now here I was, in Ohio, eleven years later, on a break from the city after another failed love affair, dusting off the cobwebs from a lifetime of memories before my mom sold our childhood home. At my fathers memorial service, we had sainted him, praised his boundless generosity, his heroism, his heart. When the minister reminded us that Jack hadnt been a perfect personno one could bewe all laughed knowingly, on cue, secure in the knowledge that hed certainly come close. All these things were true, but hidden beneath idyllic childhood remembrances was something much more complicated, a darker, truer truth... If daddies defined love for their daughters, and all you needed was love, why was I still alone?

Dad was a mass of contradictions: a pacifist and a tyrant, an optimist with demons, a hippie and a conservative, a proud father and a jerk, a boy and a man. A businessman with a closet full of elegant suits, he preferred the ease and comfort of khaki golf shorts paired with white socks that hit just above the ankle: Don Draper meets Clark Griswold. He exposed me to the great art and music the world had to offer and had an extensive knowledge of history, geography, and culture (he always won at Trivial Pursuit ). But he was a world explorer with no passport, and his international travel was limited to Canada and the Caribbean. For all his communication savvy, for all the sparkling copy he wrote, all the client meetings he aced, all the accounts he won, he was a spectacular failure when it came to consistency of message with his family, with me. He was both hero and villain; he was both sides of a record.

The term daddy issues often refers to the baggage of a woman who dates significantly older men, men who can take care of her. But I went for the boy-man every time. I was chasing my own childhood dream of love. My dad had done the same thing. Jack Hosier never grew up, and before I could, he died. And thats where I got stuck.

When I think about my father now, I hear only the music that was my legacy: rock n roll. I remember the times he pushed me to fight back, to question authority, to tell him he was full of shit and I wasnt gonna take it anymore. He was the Man I grrrl-ed against. Back then, he was cool. But as I got older and lived the kind of life I thought might make him proud, I realized that I wasnt done with him.

I looked through the boxes. Why had I hung on to this stuff? Assorted Valentines from third-grade classmates (Snoopy, DC Comics, Care Bears). Random elementary school report cards. A dingy woven friendship bracelet from no one I remembered having as a friend. My senior term paper, meant to be a kind of memoir at forty pagesId gotten a B for saying it in thirty. Well-written, but incomplete. (Apt.) A too-small T-shirt from Record Revolution circa 1992 emblazoned with two pharaoh heads and the words DONT TOUCH MY TUTS. A stack of fanzines from the early nineties Franklin Zine , Rollerderby , ANSWER Me! , Asshole Weekly , The Severed Cow , The Debaser , The Bob Ross Counterculture , and Forced Exposure . A diary of high school acid trips, some poems torn from loose-leaf notebooks, amethyst crystals and fortunes culled from the centers of cookies: You are free to invent your life.