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

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction

Because They Wanted to: Stories – – by Mary Gaitskill. This excerpt is from the last four-part story in the book (I could read a novel about this character – she’s so well-drawn and touching and weird): “The Wrong Stuff”. For the most part, Gaitskill does third-person narration – there are definitely exceptions, but the majority of her stuff has that distant voice. This one is first-person narration – and so much of first-person narration depends on the VOICE. And man, is the voice in this story arresting. I can’t stop reading. It’s a sad sad story – but it’s not a sad voice (as you will see in the excerpt). The sadness comes unexpectedly – I don’t mean to say that the character is unaware of her own sadness, and we, the reader, feel sad when she doesn’t. No. She has her moments, moments of total blankness – when a guy she just screwed has left the apartment – and she says something about how it took her an hour to calm down. Not because of the sex but because of the loneliness in his wake. That kind of stuff. I’m going to excerpt the beginning of the story, just so you can see how the voice launches itself at us. It’s funny, it’s startling – almost scary in its aggression … I am in love with the voice.

EXCERPT FROM Because They Wanted to: Stories – – by Mary Gaitskill – ‘The Wrong Stuff’

Today the clerk in the fancy deli next door asked me how I was and I said, “I have deep longings that will never be satisfied.” I go in there all the time, so I thought it was okay. But she frowned slightly and said, “Is it the weather that does it to you?” “No,” I said, “it’s just my personality.” She aughed.

It’s the kind of thing that I enjoy saying at the moment but that has a nasty reverb. I want it to be a joke, but I’m afraid it’s not.

Last week a woman I have not spoken to for years called to tell me that someone I used to have sex with had died of a drug overdose. I was shocked to hear it, but not especially sorry. He’d had a certain fey glamour and a knack for erotic chaos that was both entertaining and horrible, but he was essentially an absurdly cruel, absurdly unhappy person, and I thought that, in the end, he was probably quite relieved to go. I had not seen him in ten years, and our association had been pornographic, loveless, and stupid. We had had certain bright moments of camaraderie and high jinks, but none of it justified the feelings I’d had for him. Even now he occasionally appears in my dreams – loving and tender, smiling as he hands me, variously, a candy bar, a brightly striped glass ball, a strawberry-scented candle. In one dream he grew wings and flew to South America with me clinging to his back, ribbons flying from our hair and feet.

“I know he hurt you,” my friend said. “But I think he hurt himself a lot more.”

“Yeah,” I said. “He did.”

When I got off the phone, I sat still for some moments. Then I got up and dressed for the party I was about to attend. It was a birthday party for an acquaintance, a self-described pro-sex feminist who had created a public niche for herself as a pornographer and talk-show guest. I put on a see-through blouse, a black bra, a tiny black skirt, high-heeled boots, and a ratty black wig i had found in the bargain bin of a used-clothing store.

I took a taxi to the party, and the driver, whom I had engaged in conversation, commented on my clothes. “I just wondered,” he said, “why you’re dressed so, well, so … I mean …”

“You mean like a slut?”

“Uh, yeah.” He glanced in his rearview. “Not that I’m saying anything.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s because I think it’s fun. It’s not a big scary sex thing. It’s an enthusiastic, participatory kind of thing. Besides, I’m thirty-nine, and pretty soon I won’t be able to do it anymore, because I’ll be an old bag.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Well, that’s cool,” he said. “It’s just that you don’t seem like the type who needs the attention.”

His comment was so touching that it made me feel maudlin, and feeling maudlin made me feel belligerent. “A guy I used to be involved with used to criticize me for not dressing slutty enough,” I said. “He said I wasn’t much of a girl. He’d probably like what I’ve got on, but the little jerk is dead now.” I dug around in my bag for the fare. The driver’s eyes flashed urgently in his rearview.