Johnny Truant

**Johnny Truant** (Lude: **Hoss**)

Truant was good friends with Lude.

Prior to his discovery of The Navidson Record, Truant used to enjoy going to bars and music venues like La Poubelle and Bar Deluxe, taking large-chested women met at the House of Blues to dinner dates at Jones, and sleeping.

## 1996.

During 1996, Truant was an apprentice at tattoo shop. He lived in an apartment community that he described as "a nuthouse." Truant dated Clara English until she broke up with him to pursue "someone at the top of the food chain." He then developed a "heavy crush" on a stripper named Thumper.

In December, Truant's landlord "woke up one morning convinced he was Charles de Gaulle;" Truant quipped that he did not look like an airport, and the landlord evicted him, forcing Truant to couch-surf around Santa Monica and Silverlake, California while shopping for apartments. It was around this time Lude told Truant about Zampanò. Truant moved into a studio apartment in Hollywood by the end of the month. (*See also* Johnny Truant's apartments.)

On December 31, 1996, Lude and Truant spent the last few hours driving aimlessly "through the canyons" and looking for new bars and people.

## 1997.

Zampanò died on January 6, 1997. A week later, Lude invited Truant over and the two robbed Zampanò's apartment, the contents of which were to be given over to a charity. Truant was disturbed to find four long gouges in the apartment floor next to where Zampanò's corpse was discovered, and he touched the splinters. Lude, however, drew his attention to the scattered pages of The Navidson Record, a disorganized pile of writing that both disturbed and intrigued him. He took The Navidson Record home.

## Early work on The Navidson Record.

In the early days of 1997, Truant was only mildly interested in Zampanò's work. He read only a few sentences at a time, and days would pass without reading at all, and he never read more than an hour at a time. However, Truant's curiosity deepened as he discovered narrative threads and learned the mess of pages represented a single book.

One day Truant realized he had read for seven straight hours, even missing a phone call from Lude. It was the first time he lost a sense of time while reading The Navidson Record, and such lapses began to occur more frequently and in greater duration as he studied the writings. Eventually "dozens of hours just blinked by" with each reading session.

Truant planned an annotated copy of The Navidson Record, possibly intending publication though this is not certain, and began extensively researching Zampanò and his text. He continued to work at the tattoo shop and developed strong feelings for Thumper.

In the ensuing months of research, Truant's already impressive vocabulary grew as he studied Zampanò's work and absorbed new words like *deracinated*. Flaze and Lude tipped Truant off to women who had served as readers to blind Zampanò towards the end of his life, helping him write The Navidson Record. Truant managed to track down a number of Zampanò's volunteers, though none knew him well enough to offer more than a handful of anecdotes and opinions.

## Later work and preparing for publication.

As Truant became increasingly obsessed with reading The Navidson Record, he "slowly but surely" detached from the world and grew disoriented. He believed something strained at the edges of his mouth and surfaced in his eyes. His social life suffered, and he no longer went out at night. Neither Thumper nor Lude could contact him.

Propelled by a sense of impending doom, Truant nailed his windows shut, removed his closet and bathroom doors, and storm-proofed "everything." He bought many locks, chains, and measuring tapes and nailed them to the floor and the walls. Truant's obsessive behavior resembled Zampanò's before he died, but Truant disavowed the comparison: "[T]his wasn't about the smell, this was about space. I wanted a closed, inviolate, and most of all immutable space." Unfortunately, none of this did anything to fix his emerging obsessive-compulsive and anxiety disorders.

Truant began experiencing intense nightmares. A newfound "fear" made sleeping increasingly difficult, and Truant turned to "every pill imaginable" to "curb" it: Excedrin PM, melatonin, L-tryptophan, Valium, Vicodin, barbiturates; often mixing them with bourbon, marijuana, or cocaine. His experiments to treat insomnia were unsuccessful.

### Writing the Introduction.

On October 31, 1998 - the day Truant penned his infamous Introduction to The Navidson Record - he reported that he lost his appetite and could no longer keep food down. His studio apartment was "history," he could no longer keep food down, and he lived out of a hotel.

Truant wrote the Introduction covered in blood, not all of it his. Truant had purchased and loaded a gun by this date, though it is not clear if he had used it or whether the blood is related to using the gun. Truant also states that he threw up "in my closet instead [of shooting other people or automobiles from his hotel room]."

Truant blamed himself for ignoring a warning within a letter composed by Zampanò one day before his death.

## Women of Interest

* Crowd of girls at a joint on Pico (p.13-15)
* Amber Rightacre (p.34-37)
* Christina (Amber's friend) (p.36-37)
* Lucy (p. 50-51)
* Thumper (p. 51-54, 69, 76-)
* Kyrie (p. 87)

## Commentary.

1. ↑ The nickname is popular in the American south for men, especially larger, surlier men, synonymous with "dude" or "guy." *See, e.g.*, **Johnny Truant**, "Introduction" in House of Leaves xiv (2000).
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Wherever Truant lived, the studio apartment was *not* on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood, as Truant had to go to Franklin from his apartment to meet Lude. **Johnny Truant**, "Introduction" in House of Leaves xii (2000).
3. ↑ My cousin Amy asks: Could Truant have lived in an actual nuthouse? Considering his landlord was crazy... how farfetched could the theory be? (*See also* Insanity*.*)
4. ↑ Oddly enough, Truant says that Lude "whispered" thing to him while entering the apartment that he paid little attention to at the time, but now ruin his sleep. Truant never describes the susurrations that haunt him. Johnny Truant, "Introduction" in House of Leaves xiv (2000).
5. ↑ According to Truant in his Introduction, page xvi. What a liar. *Deracinated* doesn't appear anywhere in The Navidson Record.
6. ↑ And then there was his best friend Lude, which everyone knows is short for Quaalude, a drug originally used to treat insomnia.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Johnny Truant, "Introduction" in House of Leaves xviii (2000).
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Johnny Truant, "Introduction" in House of Leaves xi (2000).
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 **Johnny Truant**, "Introduction" in House of Leaves xiv (2000).
4. ↑ **Johnny Truant**, "Introduction" in House of Leaves xvi (2000).
5. ↑ Johnny Truant, "Introduction" in House of Leaves xxi-xxii (2000).
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Johnny Truant, "Introduction" in House of Leaves xix, xxiii (2000).