Dirty Wedding by Denis Johnson

Sometimes rock bottom has no floor.

Dirty Wedding by Denis Johnson might be one of the most depressing stories I’ve ever read. It’s grimy, unflinching, and soaked in the kind of desperation that gnaws at the edges of your mind long after the final sentence. Johnson doesn’t just write about addiction, self-destruction, and loss. He makes the reader feel them, dragging you down into the filth right alongside these troubled characters.

The story follows a junkie riding the Chicago El train aimlessly, reeling from his girlfriend's recent abortion. He's also reflecting on their intense and absuvie relationship. This is not a neat, linear tragedy. Instead, it lurches between moments of raw, unbearable grief and absurd, almost slapstick comedy. There an underlying dark humor running through it, a kind of deadpan acceptance of just how awful things can get.It's ike laughing at a funeral because what else can you do? Johnson captures the chaos of addiction and grief with such brutal honesty that it almost becomes funny in its sheer bleakness.

What really gets me is how matter-of-fact the narrator is about everything. The way he describes the abortion, his girlfriend’s pain, and his own emotional detachment like he’s floating just outside of his own life. The emotional pain and suffering is just too much and the only way for him to cope with it all is to disassociate or get high.

And then there’s the part with the narrator following a man on the train because well, he doesn't have anything better to do. It's also another distraction from processing his feelings and facing the harsh reality of his current circumstances. He ends up following the man to a laundromat in a Polish neighborhood and is unexpectedly confronted by him. He turns away after noticing he is sexually aroused. This somehow makes perfect sense in the haze of the narrator’s drugged-out existence. It’s one of those moments that’s both bizarre and weirdly hilarious, in that way only Johnson can pull off with such irreverent dark humor.

By the time the story ends, you’re left feeling hollowed out, like you’ve just been on a bender yourself. It’s ugly, it’s painful, and yet, there’s something almost beautiful about its raw honesty. Dirty Wedding doesn’t offer redemption or even a clear resolution. It just leaves you there, staring into the wreckage.