The Books: “Because They Wanted to” – ‘Blanket’ (Mary Gaitskill)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction

Because They Wanted to: Stories – – by Mary Gaitskill. This excerpt is from the story ‘Blanket’.

Only Mary Gaitskill could write a story with a happy ending and have it FEEL like a sad ending. To some people in this life, happiness is not the easy choice. Happiness is as foreign as going to Mars for some people. It is easier to stay cautious, guarded, narrow … because what the hell will happen if … something actually works out?? Gaitskill does not write about the “winners” of the world. Other writers focus on them – and whether or not they are really “winners”, blah blah blah. Gaitskill is all about those who try to fly under the radar … who try to just get out of this life alive … dodging emotional bullets … behaving in what would seem to be incomprehensible ways to those who are more traditional or “normal” … But again, to many many people – being “happy” is not all that great shakes. It’s terrifying. Especially if you are the type of person who has made it to adulthood without ever experiencing it. It’s like that searing moment at the end of Tess of the D’Urbevilles where Hardy says (and I’m paraphrasing): When happiness eventually arrives, life has already damaged her so much that she is unable to accept it. Bah. I’ll find the exact quote. Perhaps the circumstances for contentment and happiness are present … but there is such a thing as being made to wait too long. There is such a thing as having something come “too late”.

‘Blanket’ is a story about a relationship that almost comes “too late”. And to be honest, who knows what will happen with these two, long-term. It’s too shaky to know.

But this is probably Gaitskill’s only story with a “happy” ending. And because she doles out “happiness” so sparingly, it was 500 times more effective. I really get what the COST is to some people to accept contentment, intimacy, love. It is NOT easy. Maybe it is for some, but Gaitskill sure as hell ain’t writing about them. Who knows. Valerie – the “lead” of this story – An overly serious damaged woman – 36 years old – finds herself in a relationship with Michael, 24. Because it’s Gaitskill there are dark undertones to everything. Valerie has been alone for too long to have anything even CLOSE to a “normal” reaction to having a boyfriend. Loneliness marks a person. Loneliness impacts how a person behaves. Loneliness can make happiness feel stressful. Trust me. It can.

I’ll excerpt from the beginning of the story. I find it intensely moving. I also like how it’s told from both points of view. ‘Blanket’ is my favorite story in the whole collection.

EXCERPT FROM Because They Wanted to: Stories – – by Mary Gaitskill – ‘Blanket’.

Valerie had been celibate for two years when she met Michael, and sex with Michael was like a solid left hook; she reeled and cartoon stars burst about her head. The second time he came to her San Francisco apartment, he walked in with two plastic bags of fruit, extending a fat red tomato in one outstretched hand, his smile leaping off his face. “I brought you things,” he said. “I brought you fruit to put on your windowsill, and this.” He handed her the tomato and said, “I’m a provider.” His voice was full of ridiculous happiness. He was wearing shorts, and one of his graceful legs was scuffed at the knee. He was twenty-four years old.

Valerie was thirty-six. Michael couldn’t actually provide for her, but she didn’t need him to do that. She loved that he’d gone to the grocery store and roamed the aisles of abundant, slightly tatty and unripe fruit so that he could bring her bags of it. His impulse seemed both generous and slightly inept, which she found sweeter than generosity straight.

Michael himself was a little surprised by his beneficient urges, surprised and pleased by their novelty. It occurred to him that it had something to do with her physicality, although he didn’t know quite what. Valerie was pretty, but she was not beautiful. Her arms and neck were fine-boned and elegant, while her hips and legs were curvy, fatty, almost crudely female. She embraced him confidently but her fingers sought his more delicate places – the base of his head, the knobs of his spine – with a tactile urgency that was needy and uncertain. After their first time together, on the floor of her living room, she’d put on her underpants and stood over him, posing with her hands on her hips, chin lifted, one hip tilted bossily – but she held her legs close together, and her one bent inturned knee had the tremulous look of a cowed animal. “Woman of the year,” he’d said, and he’d meant it.

It was only their second time together when she suggested that they “role play.” “You know,” she said. “Act out fantasies.”

“Fantasies?” The idea was a little embarrassing, yet it also intrigued him; under the cheesy assurance of it, he felt her vulnerability, hidden and palpitant. Besides, the fantasies were fun. She would be a slutty teenager who’s secretly hoping for love, and he would be the smug prick who exploits her. He would be the coarse little gym teacher trying to persuade the svelte English teacher to let him go down on her after the PTA cocktail party. She would be a rude girl with no panties flaunting herself before an anxious student in the library. Feverishly, they’d nose around in each situational nuance before giving in to dumb physicality. Then she’d make them a dinner of meat and salad and a pot of grains, and they’d eat it with their feet on the table.

When he left her apartment, Michael felt as if the entire world loved him. He walked down the street, experiencing everything – scraps of trash, traffic, trotting pets, complex, lumbering pedestrians – as a kind of visual embrace. Once, immediately after leaving her, he went into a bookstore and sat down on a little stepladder to peruse a book, and he was assailed with a carnal memory so pungent that he opened his mouth and dropped a wrinkled wad of gray chewing gum on the page. He stared at it, embarrassed and excited by his foolishness. Then he closed the book on the wad.

For the first week she wouldn’t let him spend the night with her, because that was too intimate for her. But he would get in bed with her and hold her, cupping her head against his chest and stroking the invisible little hairs at the base of her spine. “My girlfriend,” he would say. “My girlfriend.” His chest was big and solid, but under her ear, his heart beat with naked, helpless enthusiasm.

When he held her that way, she felt so happy that it disturbed her. After he left, it would take her hours to fall asleep, and then when she woke up she would feel another onrush of agitated happiness, which was a lot like panic. She wished she could grab the happiness and mash it into a ball and hoard it and gloat over it, but she couldn’t. It just ran around all the place, disrupting everything.