Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:
Bad Behavior: Stories
Classic Gaitskill. This story is told from the point of view of the male – a kind of shlubby average guy – married – who frequents a certain house of prostitution in Manhattan about once a month. Gaitskill’s rendering of what such places are like have such a stamp of reality that anything else pales in comparison. She KNOWS these places. We all have ideas about what prostitutes are, and who they are on their off-days – but Gaitskill actually KNOWS … Then – the narrator’s wife goes away for a month – and there is no longer a compulsion for him to go home – so he starts to go to the sex house every night. He’s a veterinarian (although he lies to the prostitute, for some reason – and says he’s a lawyer – very interesting: he’s a sad guy – he makes me sad, anyway)- he’s got money, so it’s no issue. And he requests the same girl every time. The interesting thing about this story is that Jane – the prostitute that the narrator likes best, and requests over and over … is, objectified by him – but not in the way that you would think. You don’t get the sense that he goes to whores for the hot kinky sex that his wife won’t do with him. You get the sense that he is lonely, and he feels protective towards this young girl who has sex with him once a month – and that he wants to talk to someone. A friend of mine was a prostitute and she said that that was overwhelmingly the case. That sometimes the guy would just want to talk. Be listened to. It’s kind of pathetic, but again – Gaitskill doesn’t overtly JUDGE this man … but I gotta say: he’s hauntingly awful. You just know he’s living in a fantasy world – which turns the whole event on its ear. Our expectations of what prostitutes are like are not fulfilled by this sad pathetic little story. Jane, the prostitute, doesn’t seem to have the hard edges yet – the true “professional” vibe – she’s young, and still kind of fresh. Our narrator fantasizes about her – but not sexually – He is filled with yearning towards her, he wants to give her things, he wants to take her out to dinner (he’ll pay for her time, of course) – he wants to know who she is (but then when she reveals things – like what she does on her days off – and it doesn’t fit with his perception of her, he kind of doesn’t know what to say). It is another way of objectifying a human being: to fall in love with an IDEA of them, and not really be able to deal with the reality. Gaitskill doesn’t take the simplistic view, though. Jane is not an awesome sex goddess, in charge of what she’s doing. And he is not a sad sack of a loser. Jane is rather unpleasant. Indifferent, event. She’s a prostitute because she wants to go to art school. She’s a painter. She’s cut off so much from what she is actually doing that nothing matters to her. Not really. And she is baffled – and kind of cold – towards this lonely man who just wants to do something nice for her. It’s a love story, in Gaitskill’s universe. Based on ideals and misunderstanding. If we only see prostitutes as victims who need to be saved … we are missing a vast WORLD of people who do it for all KINDS of reasons. (Same thing with porn stars and exotic dancers and all that stuff.) And it’s very dangerous, anyway, to romanticize ANYONE out of their humanity. I’ve had it done to me. I can tell that whatever the dude is in love with – it’s not really ME. It’s an IDEA of me. He’s made up his mind who I am, from the bat … and that is what he goes for … and anything that doesn’t really fit in is treated with confusion – as opposed to interest. That’s really what this story is all about. It’s very very sad. And the ending is AWESOME. Jane disappears from the house o’ prostitution. It is disorienting for the narrator. You really get, through Gaitskill’s prose, how much space Jane took up in his mind. In a funny way, you ache for him. But it’s a cold world out there – and you best not mess with prostitutes if you’re looking for anything other than sexual release with no commitment. Know what you’re doing before you start doing it. Anyway – months pass. Jane recedes from memory. And then one day – in a cafe in New York – he sees her sitting at a table with some friends. He is stunned to see her out of context. He eavesdrops – and it’s obvious that she is now in art school, and her and her friends are sitting there gossiping (uncharitably) towards another friend. They’re self-righteous, in the way that gossips can be about other people’s “bad behavior”. Anyway, I can’t describe how Gaitskill does it in this last moment … but you are left with the feeling of the lost-ness of everyone, that everyone is looking for … something … sometimes we intersect – and all along the narrator thought, sadly, that Jane might have looked up to him, or looked to him for protection. Like: he had a fantasy of himself that he was a “nice guy”, as opposed to all the other assholes who go to prostitutes. But that’s the big lie – that you are different, somehow unique – special.
It’s a great story about loneliness and isolation. Here’s an excerpt.
EXCERPT FROM Bad Behavior: Stories
The minute she came into the room, he went to her and put his arms around her hips. “Hello, Jane.”
“Hi.”
“It was strange not seeing you out there waiting for me.”
She looked puzzled.
“I guess I somehow got used to thinking of you as my own little girl. I didn’t like the idea that you were with some other guy. Silly, huh?”
“Yes.” She broke away and snapped the sheet out over the bed. “Do you say things like that because you think I like to hear them?”
“Maybe. Some of the girls do, you know.”
He could feel the sarcasm of her silence.
He watched her pull her dress off over her head and drop it on the aluminum chair. “I guess it’s only natural that you’ve begun to get jaded.”
She snorted. “I wouldn’t call it that.”
“What would you call it?”
She didn’t answer. She sat on the bed and bent to take off her heels, leaving her socks on. When she looked at him again she said, “Do you really think it’s a good idea for you to come to see me every night? It’s awfully expensive. I know lawyers make a lot of money, but still. Won’t your wife wonder where it’s going?”
He sat next to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t you see how special you are? No other girl I’ve seen like this would ever have thought to say something like that. All they can think of is how to get more money out of me and here you are worrying about how much I’m spending. I’m not trying to flatter you, you are different.”
“Aren’t you worried about getting AIDS?”
“From a girl like you? C’mon, don’t put yourself down.”
She smiled, sad and strained, but sort of affectionate, and put her hands on his shoulders. She felt to him like one of his puppy patients embracing him as he carried it across the room for a shot.
“I’m sorry I’m being so shitty,” she said. “I just hate this job and this place.”
“Here,” he said. “I’m going to buy two hours, so we can just relax and unwind. You just lie down and get snuggled up in the sheet.” He got up and turned off the light. He found a romantic jazz station on the radio. He undressed and got under the sheet with her, wrapping them both in a ball. He held her neck and felt her forehead against his shoulder. Her limbs were nestled and docile, as if all her stiff, pony-trot energy had vanished. The dim light of the gurgling fish tank cast an orangy glow over the room. “This is so nice and glamorous,” he said.
“When is your wife coming back?” asked a voice from the nuzzling bundle on his arm.
“In three days.” He sighed and stared at the stupid, lovely slivers of fish darting around their ugly castle.
I have never read any of Gaitskill’s writing. Your description of this story sounds like something that I would like reading, and thinking about. Recently, my wife and I went to a wedding of the daughter of a close friend. We had a long conversation about how the bride had an idealized fantasy vision of marriage and parenthood. As if David, the coke dealer, is going to be magically transformed by the ceremony, and the bride’s dreams, into David, devoted and responsible husband and father. This is a track that I have seen repeated many times by friends, relatives, and acquaintances. It’s so human to yearn for meaning and connection, but it’s also human to try to construct that meaning out of ribbons of self-delusion. I guess it’s all part of the mystery of our short little lives. The older one gets, the more you figure out some of these things, but, sometimes, what you figure out is that you probably are never going to get a concrete answer. We are left to find an answer that suffices, or the maturity to accept that there might not be an answer.
Reminds me of the end of the Santaland Diaries by Sedaris, where he basically says (paraphrasing) that we all think we’re so unique, but at the core, we are basically the same. Nothing special, even if we become deluded now and then.
I think this is why highly successful, famous, and/or celebrated individuals often become depressed and have trouble coping. We’d like to believe we can achieve some sort of heightened reality, but no matter what we do, life continues to flow onward, pulling us up and down through a seemingly random human experience..