“Love Saves the Day”: Exploring Emily in Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

In Nick Flynn’s memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, we meet Emily, a love interest of the story’s protagonist, Nick. From the time she is introduced as a character in the book, she is constantly shown to have a very specific function. Through Emily’s actions as she cares for Nick, Nick is brought to a spiritual and physical place conducive for a repaired father-son relationship. Through her efforts to be with Nick, and keep their relationship alive, we see how Emily works in the narrative. Emily and Nick’s love shows up only to help Nick get to a place where he can speak and learn about his estranged father.

Emily captures the respect and love of Nick as is evident throughout the memoir. It is this relationship that causes Nick to want to heal as opposed to continue to hate his father. Their relationship, in fact, is largely based on the fact that Emily knows Jonathon, Nick’s father. In November of 1981, Nick and Emily find themselves at the same party. The party is hosted by Emily’s current romantic interest, though she does not stray from Nick long. At the party, Emily tells a story about a homeless man, who apparently once hit on his ex-wife, as if she were a stranger. As the story unravels, Nick recognizes the old, confused man. Flynn writes,

“Emily and I had gotten together over a year before, had stayed together for a while, and were still close. And now my father, who I don’t think about much at all, aside from the frequent letter, turns out to be a close friend of Emily’s family. Her parents, I will later learn, are Ray and Clare, whose names I’ve never heard before, though they remember me. After a few minutes I tap Emily’s shoulder. That guy you were talking about, I say, that’s my father. I’m known to not always speak the truth, but still she stares at me in horror. I’m serious, I say.”(148)

This excerpt is extremely important because it illustrates how key Emily is in bringing Nick and his father together. Her function in the novel is clear as she is introduced as someone who reenters Nick’s life, only because she knows his father. The party is at her new boyfriend’s house and Nick and Emily appear to be moving on from one another in different directions. However, the two get back together as they discover their relationship to Nick’s father. Flynn also states this fact when he writes, “It’s a year since we found out who we were, and we’ve been together ever since.” (153-154) This shows how important Emily’s relationship to his father is to Nick. The allure of this knowledge of his father, is so strong that it reignites their love and launches them on an extended affair. Emily surely brings Nick closer to his father, as her knowledge of him is what brings them together.

The above excerpt is also important because it states clearly that Nick no longer thinks about his father. Psychologist Philip Browning Helsel explains how important it was for Nick to protect his identity and consciousness from his father before he met Emily. Helsel says, “Nick vacillates between feeling responsible for his father and wanting to protect his own identity; the rage he must have felt at his father is hardly spoken.” (364) Before Emily, Nick was ready to never think about his Dad. After Emily, his father creeps into his consciousness, and eventually his life.

Emily brings Nick closer to his father by enabling him to make positive changes in his life. Unfortunately, this is only after a traumatic event in which Nick is unfaithful to Emily. Nick describes himself as being in a “river of forgetfulness,” (229) like a “hungry ghost.” (229) He tries to fill the void in himself by being with another woman. Emily is does not leave in an anger fueled scene. Instead she offers Nick her love, and a way to salvage their relationship. She says that Nick must get therapy or end their relationship. Nick makes an appointment with a therapist for the next week. He stays in therapy for a year before he is sent to the Dharma tent. His therapist tells Nick he is an alcoholic, and that he must attend 12 step meetings and discontinue any drug use. Nick agrees that he is an alcoholic and begins to attend the meetings. He hates them, as the make him feel horrible, however he still goes. The 12 steps require you to dig up things that bother you about your past and try to make them into peaceful resolutions. It is through this process that Nick begins to truly care about learning who his father is and opens up to having a relationship with him. There is a direct line between Nick’s love for Emily, and his reuniting with his father. Her love continuously causes Nick to try harder, to be a better person. He only goes to therapy because he cannot lose Emily. He only goes to 12 step meetings because his therapists requires is of him. He only finds peace with his father through sobriety and 12 step programs. It is clear that Emily acts as a lighthouse to Nick. She constantly brings Nick in from rough situations, passively guiding him to a place where he can have a relationship with his father.

We also see how Nick’s therapy, which only occurs because of Emily, leads him to his father as his therapist continues to teach Nick about certain Buddhist principles. We learn that Buddhism states that we can know the entire cosmos if we only know our own bodies. Nick’s therapists goes on to say that Nick’s body is only a continuation of his father’s body. Therefore, in order for Nick to be a successful Buddhist, he must know his father, the continuation of his own body. Psychologist Phillip Browning Helsel writes about Nick’s Buddhist efforts, and their relationship to he and his father. He writes, “He embodies a particular thematic knowledge of the suffering self-moving from the experience of being lost to the realization of new insight and the cultivation of spiritual practices that bring more conscious engagement with one’s wounds.” (Helsel, 365) Again we see the direct path from Emily’s words and actions to Nick’s new thought process concerning his father. She continually points him towards the level of consciousness that allows him to be with his Dad.

Another way Emily helps Nick toward his Dad is her relationship to the boat that she and Nick share. The two live on a houseboat in Boston and share a life together. We learn later, that the boat directly leads Nick to a job at a homeless shelter, where he will eventually become closer with his father. It is Emily’s constant companionship that keeps Nick on the boat, and on the path. We learn, in fact, that the boat may not even exist if it were not for Emily. As Nick tries to repair the old boat to a habitable condition, his friends come to help whenever they can. Flynn notes that Emily, “puts in hour upon heroic hour” (159) fixing the boat and making it a home. They eventually do make the boat livable, and they begin a life together both on and off the boat. It is during one of these on the boat phases that Nick is dealt a fate that will help him reunite with his father. Emily and Nick are docked for a while, living in Boston. It is at this time that a neighbor introduces herself and explains to Nick that she works at a certain homeless shelter. The neighbor convinces Nick that he could substitute for people who work at the shelter. Nick and Emily eventually both work full time at the shelter. The shelter happens to be one that Nick’s father frequents. It is here that Emily continues to nurture Nick, and his tattered relationship with his father. Emily works well at the shelter and is continually a positive influence on Nick. However, the two would have not even worked at the shelter if not for the boathouse that they shared. Emily’s love manifests itself in various ways and almost all of them lead Nick to his father in some fashion. In this instance, Emily showed her love and support for Nick by putting in hours, and hours of manual labor to help make the boat a place where they could live. The boat allowed their love to grow, and also allowed them to meet a neighbor. The neighbor allowed the two to work at the very shelter that Nick’s father frequents. The boat and Emily lead Nick directly to his Dad.

As Emily is introduced in Nick Flynn’s memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, we see how much Emily means to Nick. He kisses her and consoles her after her first experience taking acid. As Emily’s character develops, we see how she functions as a guiding light for Nick. Her love constantly forces Nick to reevaluate himself, and to make him want to be better. Her hard work gives them a boat to live on. The boat leads the two to Nick’s father. Emily herself only stays in the story once it is revealed how well she knows Nick’s dad. Nick and Emily were over before Nick knew the nature of her relationship to his father. Emily’s love sends Nick to behavior therapy, where he continues to reach a spiritual and physical place where he can meet his estranged father. At almost every mention of Emily’s name in the memoir, we see the way she works throughout the whole. Emily is a conduit, allowing Nick to flow through her and to his father.

Works Cited

Flynn, Nick. Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. 1st. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company, 2004.

Helsel, P.B. "Writing Autobiography as Desperate Spiritual Art: A Narrative Psychological

Approach to Nick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night in Suck City.” Pastoral Psychology. Vol. 60. (2011): 363-375.