Five Uneasy Pieces

Book excerpt: You Will Not Want to Miss this Memoir! An Intimate and Honest Look into the Life of an Addicted, Depressed, Obsessive-Compulsive, Gay Stutterer Larry Lindstrom, born on Groundhog Day 1955, grew up in suburban northern New Jersey. Read about Larry's childhood living in a "house on the corner" in Pequannock, NJ growing up in the 1960s. He encounters a new world at the age of 18 when he loses his father, and at the age of 29, his mother. Eighteen years later he would lose his younger brother. Larry seems to drive in the fast lane, discovering addictions to sex, alcohol, marijuana, and food. Depression takes hold and puts up many roadblocks to growth. The road ahead is looking impassable. He discovers a strange set of obsessions and rituals that begin to control his thinking and his behavior. It feels like his car is out of control. He labels this as OCD. Larry makes many friends, but fears betraying them with his secret life of homosexuality. Unable to fully embrace the gay community, he suffers in silence trying to fit in. The outcome is inevitable, failure, and frustration. As a final pothole in the road of life, Larry is plagued with a stutter, a speech disability, that seems to draw the spotlight to his inadequacies. It seems Larry is forever driving to the gay and exciting life of the city, or clinging to his comfortable memories of his hometown. A passion develops for driving that mirrors his search for his true identity. He likes adventure and finds it, all while discovering who he really is and where he will eventually wind up. It is a blinding road at times but Larry perseveres. Larry wrote his memoirs over a ten-year period that reveals the challenges and growth he experienced as he was writing. This is a book that shows how one man endures a life of addiction, depression, OCD, gay identity, and stuttering. Different from all the rest, Larry gives it his best, to find peace, within his "Five Uneasy Pieces."