Bad Habits: A Love Story [Paperback]

Cristy C. Road (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2008

Twenty-five-year-old graphic artist Cristy Road embarks on an uncensored and largely autobiographical tour of an underground world, one full of wild characters and personal revolutions. In her circle, drugs are cheap, ubiquitous, and sometimes feel like the only way out, and Road’s street psychopharmacology results in experiences that are both revelatory and tragic. Writing in a tradition of some of the finest transgressive authors, such as Jean Genet, William S. Burroughs, and Kathy Acker, Road depicts the damaged soul and psyche of her young protagonist with language as violent as the street and sex as raw as the language. Somewhere along this hyperreal tour, our heroine learns to leave her bad habits behind and emerge stronger and more independent, clean and open to love.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Illustrator Road's overwrought debut novel chronicles the life of Carmencita Gutierrez Alonzo, a young bisexual Cuban-American punk rocker living a life of grungy hedonism in New York City, who traffics in head-scratching asides like, The world as we knew it tried our toxicity, but in our loose pockets we often broke out a malevolent champagne. The plot is sparse; instead, readers are hit with a barrage of vignettes of bar life, parties, drug binges and mostly ill-fated romances. Far better than the text are Road's illustrations, found on nearly every page. Displaying a cinematic eye for composition, Road adorns her novel with memorable illustrations, including a Miami sky full of gun-shaped clouds, and Carmencita and a lover embracing, a tattoo of Elizabeth Taylor visible on his arm. Less happily, the more than a dozen portraits of Carmencita reinforce the text's navel-gazing aspects. Regardless of whether Carmencita is hopelessly shallow or a wounded soul, Road's drawings deserve a better vehicle. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Cristy Road's burgeoning multi-media empire really speaks to me....I think the universality of Road's stories is a testament to her writing ability and the proof that the more we think our situation is unique, the more we should realize we have a network of support available." -- Punknews.org

"Cristy Road's work makes me so happy. Where else can you see drawings of a black genderqueer boy flashing his top surgery scars and grinning, or two girls hitchiking in the desert holding a sign that reads `Indigenous Soverrignty or Bust,' all drawn with love, color, and punk rock grit?" -- Bitch Magazine

Indestructible explores the toxic impact gender bias and proscribed norms have on questioning youth, while encouraging inquiry and protest against social constraints. So powerful is Road's candid portrayal of growing pains, it provides the perfect comfort for angsty, self-loathing youth and sends older readers back down memory lane. -- CURVE Magazine

Road's narrative has an emotional immediacy, a social relevance that makes you believe her voice, makes you belong to her world. You forget how old you are, you are with her--drinking a 32 ounce of beer (`because forties were illegal in Florida'), going to punk shows, listening to a two-minute song for empowerment....The artwork has the same level of immediacy. Road's black and white illustrations are cinematic frames which include vivid action scenes--a sexual encounter, a fist-fight--as well as intimate, candid portraits of Road and her ....Road's novel is a testimony of survival--a powerful reminder of how we must create (and re-create) our identities--whether the mainstream is with us, or not. -- Feminist Review

"Cristy Road's burgeoning multi-media empire really speaks to me....I think the universality of Road's stories is a testament to her writing ability and the proof that the more we think our situation is unique, the more we should realize we have a network of support available." --Punknews.org

Bad Habits: A Love Story by Cubana artist Christy C. Road...[is] a mostly autobiographical graphical novel about her "personal revolution" from bad habit-prone, self-punishing punk wanderer to independently-minded, self-protecting punk philosopher. You can't help but sort of fall in love with the angsty, gritty drama of it all...The book is filled with feminist polemic brought down to the palpable level of everyday reflection. It's most searing when she contrasts traditional power structure's perspective of her versus her own gorgeously drawn, deeply felt reality: "According to the law, I'm just some bipolar junky who happened to have been sexually assaulted once or twice, and later mind-fucked by some crass romantic I shouldn't have trusted anyway...the the conservative many, I was the scum of the earth, and my allies were just numbers. To me, we were the things that went bump, rack, and hump, in the night."

Bump on Road, bump on. -- Courtney, Feministing.org

Carmencita Gutierrez Alonzo (Car), the narrator of Cristy C. Road's ingenious debut novel, Bad Habits, is out to find love and clarity -- two abstractions, she's well aware, that do not always fit together in a tidy package. Largely autobiographical, Bad Habits chronicles the year Car moved up north, away from her Cuban roots and hometown of Miami, Fla. Road uses New York City with all of its grit and glamour, history and gentrification, as a metaphor for Car's own transformation: "As the clocks ticked timelessly and the humans aged blindly, every antique corner of New York City was in danger of destruction." What makes Car such an engaging and ultimately sympathetic character is she is at once intelligent, compassionate and witty, but also extremely destructive. Many elements distract or -- depending upon how you look at it -- further her journey, from her manic depression and history of sexual abuse to her drug binges ("You have to accept any chemically altered state of mind as a legitimate human feeling") and pervious heart. Though her intentions are good, old habits, especially bad ones, are hard to break. At one point, Car reflects, "Slouching the carpet, a desire to construct happiness envelopes me, and I forget that true love exists (somewhere, with whomever, and whatever caliber of love it may be) while I sat here, nose burning in surrender." Car considers the "potential for love" with many characters, but three haunt her throughout the narrative: Sally, a one-night stand that leaves Car bewildered, just a little bit in love, and with a bloody left nipple; her former lover, the beautiful and unattainable Tatiana; and the adorable train wreck, Ashby, whose decision to leave in order to "find himself" only makes Car's heart beat faster. Car's roommate and friends help her navigate this thorny path by providing the right amount of support (or drugs) and the occasional voice of reason to challenge her attempts to justify these relationships. So you're addicted to love, they seem to say, who isn't? And in the end, Car does begin to move forward, if only in baby steps, rather than repeating yet another circle. Road's prose is edgy and her social critique razor sharp. Appropriately compared to other transgressive writers like Michelle Tea and William S. Burroughs, her deft illustrations help distinguish her voice. Her work has been published in a variety of collections, including We Don't Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists, Baby Remember My Name, and Live Through This. She has given readings and showings of her art throughout the country, and joined Sister Spit's national tour last spring. --Heather A O'Neill, Afterellen.com

Bad Habits roams in fits and starts and with many detours through a slice of a young woman's life dominated by drama, drugs, sex, and identity musings. Our protagonist, Cristy Road, is Cuban-American punk from Florida who finds herself in New York City's underground queer punk community as the city struggles to maintain its character in the face of gentrification. The struggles of NYC against development provides a fitting backdrop for Road's struggles to overcome the injuries inflicted by an absentee father, damaging early encounters, and the struggle to hold on to a strong sense of self and identity in the face of a homophobic, white supremacist, pro-conformity world.
The characters who populate this book, from the tarot card reading hippy, to the fabulous drag queens, fags, and mysterious German queer girls, each carry a bit of damage, chaos, and harsh reality, as well as magic and tenacity that mirrors the magic, tenacity, damage, chaos, and harsh realities that Road embodies and works to over come. Hampered in her efforts to find true love and healthy sexual relationships and bad sex, she attempts to find authenticity through heavy drug use, but the experiences and connections that feel authentic on a mushroom trip or jacked up on cocaine lose their luster when the drugs wear off, and often end up inflicting that much more damage. Ultimately, our protagonist ends up with a broken heart, but a cleanly broken heart, a genuine and authentic experience of heartbreak that makes it clear that love- and authenticity- is possible even without drugs. Road's illustrations fill the book, sometimes offering of the direct visual of the story, and at other times, offering a parallel narrative. The people in Road's illustrations are vibrant, crusty, beautifully drawn, and so familiar. Many of the drawings are beautiful and ugly at the same time, adding a gritty realism to each page. A common thread of the illustrations shows internal organs and removed body parts in cringe-worthy, gory graphics that manage to be repulsive even as they evoke stronger and deeper emotions. However, none are quite so poignant as the one showing our protagonist walking away from her breakup, her heart torn from her chest, bloody and dangling, but still attached. Where Road's words describe what happened, her illustrations show how it felt. --Rahula Janowski, Left Turn Magazine

Bad Habits is a semi-autobiographical, illustrated tale of sex, drug abuse, and drama (with a big D) by zine publisher and illustrator Cristy C. Road. Set within the grungy confines of multiple Brooklyn locales and even a brief drug-fueled return to the shores of Florida, the book follows Road's alter-ego as she dives headfirst into strained romantic dalliances with both sexes, snorts pounds of cocaine, and tries to come to grips with who she ultimately is, leaving everything in a wake of tears and bitter recriminations in the meantime.
A colorful collection of outcasts fills the pages -- like the train-jumper Smith or cross-dressing roommate Rhonda -- but the focus of Bad Habits never strays far from unnecessarily dense first-person complaints and cries stuffed in draining, heart-damaged purple prose that all too often strays into melodramatic-teenage-diary territory.
Road gets big ups for creatively dealing with her story with undeniable verve and energy, but after awhile, the self-pitying prose wears thin. There's nothing wrong with loving a little drama, but the characters in Bad Habits need to get a grip. --Adam Schragin, Venus Zine

Cristy Road is infamous for her gender queer, sex positive drawings and her rowdy narratives about the dingy underground. Bad Habits is no exception. This is her second novel, following 2006's Indestructible, with about twice the content - closing in on nearly 200 pages of heavy analogies and gritty illustrations. Through the protagonist Carmencita, a Cuban-American Miami transplant living in New York, Road weaves a story about surviving in an ever-changing city. Often using the cityscape as a metaphor, she explores the connections between race, class, gender, and madness. Cristy Road's unique voice creates vibrant scenery and equally vibrant characters. Her fluorescent descriptions of the simultaneously tattered, decaying, yet magical atmosphere of New York City evoke likeness to the otherworldly narratives of Francesca Lia Block. Bad Habits is a circus of our favorite freaks: the punks, the drag queens, the queers, the assholes, the drunks, and the junkies. It's about trauma and depression, vulnerability and isolation. Road explores the bipolar nature of a dilapidated city and a decaying Coney Island. Actually, bipolar nature seems to be a theme - between Carmencita's drug-ridden ups and downs, self-assurance and self-doubt, decay vs. gentrification - the concrete world of New York City easily becomes a mirror for the contradictions of the human heart. Particularly exciting is Cristy Road's dip into magical realism, acknowledging drug-induced trips and Carmencita's own internalized psyche as valid, actual, experience. Carmencita says, "You have to accept any chemically altered state of mind as a legitimate human feeling." Carmencita's troubled existence emphasizes the simultaneous necessity of community support, family and friend-style, as well as the shortcomings of said communities. Through brutal vulgarity and brutal honesty, Carmencita will not let us forget that in order to love each other, we must love ourselves first.
It is nearly impossible not to identify with one of the characters in Bad Habits, as each of them struggles with the pangs of every day existence on the fringes. What is the connection between capitalism and madness? How do we navigate the schizophrenic lifestyle of working to live, and creating a world that we can feel safe in? What happens when our desires are cast aside? The carnage is palpable in Bad Habits, as we enter a world where the answer to these questions often results in self-medication, self-destruction, and addiction. Cristy Road's salty language and unabashed enthusiasm to talk about booze, sex, and drugs often leads to immediate comparison with male authors. Road's work may involve a lot of traditionally male subject matter, however, her voice has a lot more to do with weaving reality and fantasy together, creating a fresh, contemporary take on magic realist tradition. Bad Habits is a large step in defining the author's narrative voice, and left me waiting for the next big thing from Cristy Road. -- Kate Wadkins, Maximumrocknroll

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Soft Skull Press; First Printing edition (October 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593762151
• ISBN-13: 978-1593762155
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,163,547 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars sometimes we fall in love with our bad habits, March 3, 2011

By 

jazz - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Bad Habits: A Love Story (Paperback)

this book was an enjoyable and illuminating exploration of drugs, love, and depression. cristy road does an excellent job guiding the reader through a tumultuous period where one knows what they should be doing, but continues not doing it. i found honesty and meaning pouring from the pages. the illustrations are also well done and give nice visual accents to a well written book. i recommend this book to anyone who has met depression and who keeps going back to their bad habits, while knowing all along the key to inner growth and happiness lyes elsewhere.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bold and energetic, February 18, 2009

By 

Mark Budman "The author of "My Life at Fi... (vestal, usa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bad Habits: A Love Story (Paperback)

This is a bold and energetic undertaking. I was thrown head first into an unfamiliar world. A trip worth taking.

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars please., April 3, 2009

By 

Dunlap (Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bad Habits: A Love Story (Paperback)

While the artwork is spectacular, the plot of this book is just down right BAD. The main character is self-obsessed and surprisingly adolescent even through her 20's. As a reader, you never discover just exactly why she is so tortured. On top of that, she is unlikable making it difficult to care what happens to her. It is the same old, same old typical over used for 25 plus years punk-rock "cool kids feel MORE, hate MORE and love MORE than squares" story. boo hoo. You just want to slap her and tell her to get over herself. Road should stick with her beautiful artwork and leave the written word alone until she matures.