The Worst Story I Ever Heard

The Davises are like any other family, only they raised a chimpanzee. Then something strange and horrifying happened, though not what you might think. [View in Browser]( [Esquire Sunday Reads]( The Worst Story I Ever Heard St. James Davis is crying. It's a loud, whooping wail of a cry. He's sitting in the driveway of his childhood home, a sprawling, L-shaped ranch house in West Covina, California, on a sun-drenched day last September. Standing next to him is his wife of nearly forty years, LaDonna. On the brink of tears herself, LaDonna grabs a cloth and gently cradles his cheek with her right hand. With her left, she carefully dabs at his mouth. St. James keeps his head still as she tends to him. He doesn't say a word as he calms down. He doesn't have to — LaDonna knows what he wants now that the sun is beating down on him. She grabs the beige bucket hat hanging around his neck and eases it onto his head. LaDonna tends to St. James because he can't tend to himself. St. James, sixty-six, a former high school football star and onetime Nascar driver, is severely disabled and disfigured. There's a two-inch hole in the heel of his swollen left foot, and he is confined to a wheelchair. He has no nose, only a red, raw, exposed septum, surrounded by narrow openings. At the top are three tiny magnets designed to hold in place a crude silicone prosthesis, which is constantly falling off. His right eye is gone, replaced with glass. The skin on his face droops like candle wax because so many bones around his cheeks and eyes were broken. His mouth, which has been completely reconstructed, is stuck in a frown. On his left hand, his index, middle, and ring fingers are stumps. His right hand is much worse. He has a misshapen hunk of flesh for a thumb, which appears as if it were lumped onto his wrist with clay. His index and middle fingers are gone; his ring finger and pinkie are immobile. But St. James's crying has nothing to do with his physical condition. He's crying because of news he and LaDonna recently received about what really can only be called their boy. At first, St. James and LaDonna were reluctant to speak about all that's happened to them. LaDonna prefers not to talk to outsiders about their life because, she says, they are so often misunderstood. [Read the Full Story]( [MORE FROM ESQUIRE]( 20 Extraordinary Books You Can Read in One Sitting The one-sitting novel isn’t just something you can read in one afternoon—it’s something you should read in one afternoon. The one-sitting novel is perfectly structured to be consumed as a complete, transporting experience, whether that’s a breakneck ride through a thrilling narrative, or a slow, dreamy fog that envelops your mind as you page through. The best one-sitting novels sweep you off your feet, whisking you away to another world, only to deposit you back on your doorstep a few hours later, dazed and changed, seared in the fire of something new. For the sake of argument, we capped our choices at 250 pages—just enough to deliver a truly immersive experience, but not so many pages as to bleed over into the next day of reading. From the blisteringly contemporary to the classic, the lighthearted to the weighty, here are our favorite one-sitting novels. Go ahead—get lost in them. [Read the Full Story]( Everyone in Centrist Pundit Gumdrop Land Picked the Same Week to Go On an Acid Trip Did some kind of memo go out to all longtime residents of Happy Centrist Pundit Gumdrop Land? All of a sudden, we are inundated with suggestions that, in the interest of both his re-election and of national unity, the president should pick a prominent member of the fascist-adjacent, half-mad opposition party. In the New York Times, Thomas Friedman proposed a Biden-Liz Cheney ticket. In those same pages, Ross Douthat pitched a Biden-Romney extravaganza. Meanwhile, in the pages of The Week, Damon Linker may well be funnin’ us with the idea of pairing the president with Larry Hogan, the charisma-parched Republican governor of Maryland. [Read the Full Story]( The 35 Best HBO Series of All Time, Ranked Sometimes, you can't help but recognize a show that redefined television with a little story about a coveted Iron Throne. How can you not tip a hat to the great Larry Sanders Show? And then there are newbies, like Euphoria, which has turned the often-melodramatic teen drama category into a cutting edge storytelling device about drug use and social pressures. So here's the rundown, best as we can imagine it: the top 35 HBO shows, including our takes on characters from Tony Soprano to Carrie Bradshaw. We know there are always some capital-o Opinions when it comes to the offerings from this beloved premium network, so sound off in the comments. And don't even come at us with those Westworld takes—you know that show is off its rocker. [Read the Full Story]( Matthew Rhys Is Becoming a Matthew Rhys Character Every Friday night around dinnertime, the actor Matthew Rhys conducts a ritual in which he mixes himself a vodka martini. He prefers it with olives, and sometimes the big hit of salt from making it lousy with olive juice. On the rare occasion that he’s out of vodka, Rhys will opt for gin, but he’s cautious: There’s a reason it’s called “mother’s ruin.” It’s not his first drink of the week. In the past several months, Rhys and his partner, the actor Keri Russell, who joins him for this languid ceremony, have taken to drinking Pomerol, a merlot from the Bordeaux region. But the martini is a mile marker—another week of this god-awful year of turmoil in the books. [Read the Full Story]( The Reluctant Man’s Guide to Starting Therapy By now you know it's okay—healthy!—to talk about your feelings. But do you know it's okay—and encouraged, by us, in this story—to pay someone to listen to a weekly (or twice-monthly or thrice-weekly) spelunking through your psyche? Probably not, if the numbers are any indication: Men are half as likely as women to seek help for their mental well-being. That's true not just here in 'Murica—that's true around the globe, across races and ethnicities and ages. We're emotional escape artists, masters at avoiding our inner discomfort. Some of us hoover drugs and alcohol, seek thrills through bad behavior, withdraw from the world. But the common narrative leaves out a few crucial details. The research shows that men do want to heal, we do accept help, and we do share our fears and doubts and moments of darkness. We just prefer to do it on our own terms, and—here's where it gets tricky—we often don't know how to articulate what those terms are. (More about that below.) So, to all you therapy skeptics, you on-the-fencers, and you true believers alike: Join us as we knuckle-drag our way on this fifteen-step tour across the therapeutic landscape. [Read the Full Story]( Follow Us [Unsubscribe]( | [Privacy Notice/Notice at Collection]( esquire.com ©2022 Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Hearst Magazines, 300 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019