The Books: “Bad Behavior” – ‘An Affair, Edited’ (Mary Gaitskill)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

Bad Behavior: Stories – by Mary Gaitskill – a short story collection – I’ll excerpt from the fourth story today: ‘An Affair, Edited’. Joel lives in New York and works for a film distribution company. One day, on the street, he catches a glimpse of Sara – a woman he had had a “brief disturbing affair” with in Ann Arbor – where they had both gone to college. Nobody had really looked at it as a healthy thing – she was so dramatic and weird and serious – and he didn’t really count Sara as a valid ex-girlfriend. But something about seeing her on the street sparks off all of these weird memories – some of them which he wishes he could bury. Memories of violence – how she would beg him to hit her when they had sex – stuff that he didn’t understand at the time, and that he still doesn’t understand. But something about Sara got to him, stayed with him … and he can’t get her out of his mind suddenly. He can’t imagine her having a regular life – what does she do now? What is her job? She wanted to be a painter back then. But there was such a darkness around Sara – he can’t picture her being happy or complete. Sometimes he had hit her when they had sex – because she asked him to. He doesn’t understand these memories that come. They are strangely erotic to him – he starts to have insane sex dreams the week after seeing her on the street. He wants to find her … he wants to get in touch with Sara … he speaks with a college friend about it, Wilson – and Wilson has heard a bit about what Sara is up to – mentions that her work had been in a small gallery show – but that was a couple of years ago. He tries to dissuade Joel from contacting her. He had thought their relationship back then was bad, unhealthy – even though, of course, he wanted all the details.

What I like about this story is the distance with which we see Sara at all times. We see her only through the gauze of memory -and we see her only through Joel’s eyes. I like stories like that – because it is hard to ever really KNOW someone … there are so many barriers … and also because it just GETS the intensity of relationships in college. When you’re young enough to have not been ruined by dating for 15 years, or jaded, or cynical. The thing about Sara was, though – that even though she was in college like the rest of them … she had something different about her. She was set apart.

As Joel obsesses on her, and the memories – his feelings for her grow. Not in a sentimental way … but in an obsessive way. Like: what was going on back then?? Who WAS that person I let into my life??

The details Gaitskill chooses to give, the details she chooses to leave out … it’s all perfect.

EXCERPT FROM Bad Behavior: Stories – by Mary Gaitskill – : ‘An Affair, Edited’.

Interrupted, static-ridden commercials for memories of Sara flitted mutely through his mind, chopped up and poorly edited – Sara before he knew her, a small slender person walking down State Street with her books, wearing jeans and fawn-colored boots. She had a very stiff walk despite her round hips, a tight sad mouth and wide abstracted eyes. She was always alone whenever he saw her, and always appeared vageuly surprised by everything around her. He saw her propped up in her bed, reading a book about South Africa. He saw her sitting across a table, a sauce-red shrimp in her fingers, chatting about her experience as a hooker, oblivious to stares from the next table. She appeared seated in the dark of the film auditorium, her hand at her jaw, her booted legs tossed over the next few chairs, her tongue snapping sarcastically.

“It’s so dishonest, it’s so middle-class. Who does he think he’s shocking? It’s such a reaction to convention. It’s babyish.”

“You don’t understand the concept of subversion,” he said.

“I know more about subversion than anybody else in this stupid town,” she said.

The clips sped up and blurred into glimpses. Her melancholic paleness in the dark, the sheets rumbled to reveal her gray-tinged mattress. The stark lumpiness of her spine and shoulder blades as she reached across him to snatch a “snot rag” from its box. The dry toughness of her heels. The nervous stickiness of her fingers. “Hurt me,” she said. “Hurt me.”

He could feel his eyes become clouded with privacy as he slipped discreetly into a sheltering cave of sexual fantasy. His focus wobbled, he slipped out again. In Ann Arbor he had pierced his ear, he had worn a beret sometimes. He had written articles in the sstudent paper on labor unions. He had brought Andy Warhol to Cinema I. He saw himself drunk on the curb outside the Del Rio, talking with Wilson and vomiting. They were talking about politics and sex, Wilson mainly talking politics, since he rarely fucked anybody. Joel had just met Sara. “She’s great. She’s every man’s dream. I can’t tell you how, because she made me promise not to.” He turned and barfed.

Everything was so important in Ann Arbor, so fraught with the tension held tight in the bud of fantasy before it bursts into gaily striped attempt. “I have this fantasy of becoming an anarchist on the Left Bank,” he said to Sara. “Throwing bombs and creating a disturbance.”

“I want to become a good painter,” she said. “Or a great painter.”

“Listen,” he said, raising himself above her on his elbow. “I want you to be strong. You’ve come so far in spite of everything. I want you to be successful.”

“I am strong,” she said. Her eyes were serene. “I’m stronger than anyone else I know.”

He cleared his eyes and looked once more at the querulous buildings sweating in the afternoon heat. Of course, she hadn’t been strong at all. He remembered the tremulous whine coming out of the phone during their last conversation. “I’m scared,” she’d wept. “I feel like I don’t exist, I can’t eat, I can’t do anything, I want to kill myself.”

“Look, I grew up in a normal, happy family,” he’d said. “I’m well adjusted. I can’t identify with this self-esteem crisis, or whatever it is you’ve got. Anyway, we’ve only known each other for a few months and I’m not obligated to listen to your problems. You should call a psychiatrist, and anyway I have to take a bath right now.”

He couldn’t stand weak women.