Read Online Don't Cry: Stories by Mary Gaitskill - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Mary Gaitskill
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happened to the mother? Where was the injured girl? The voice of the author was still lilting and girlish, but her words were hard and sharp, the kind of words that think everything is funny. The middle-aged woman invites the young man to her home, gives him a drink, and then pulls his pants off while he lies there gaping.-For the next several pages, she alternates between fellating him and chattering cleverly while he tries to leave.
This was the feminist author we had heard about, all right. Her readers smiled knowingly, while the readers of the Canadian and Vietnamese authors looked baffled—baffled, then angry. And I was feeling angry, too.
I am not really a feminist, probably because, at forty, I am too young to have fully experienced the kinetic surge of feminism that occurred in the seventies, that half-synthetic, half-organic creature with its smart, dry little mouth issuing books, speeches, TV shows, and pop songs. None of it is stylish anymore, and, in fact, feminists have come in for a lot of criticism from female pundits. Some of these pundits say that feminists have made girls think they have to have sex all the time, which, by going against their girlish nature, has destroyed their self-esteem, and made them anorexic and depressed. Feminists have made girls into sluts! Others, equally angry, say that feminists have imposed restrictive rules on nubile teens, making them into morbid neurasthenics who think they’re being raped, when they’re actually just having sex. Feminists have neutered girls by overprotecting them! I don’t know what I think of any of it; it’s mostly something I hear coming out of my radio on my way to work. But I do know this: When I hear that feminism is overprotecting girls, I am very sympathetic to it. When I see my fashion-conscious ten-year-old in her nylon nightie, peering spellbound before the beguiling screen at the fleeting queendom of some twelve-year-old manufactured pop star with the wardrobe of a hooker, a jerry-rigged personality, and bulimia, it seems to me that she has a protection deficit that I may not be able to compensate for. When she comes home wild with tears because she lost the spelling contest, or her ex-best friend called her fat, or a boy said she’s not the prettiest girl in class, and I press her to me, comforting her, even as that day’s AMBER Alert flashes in my brain, it is hard for me to imagine this girl as “overprotected.”
Which is, in some indirect way, why the feminist author was so affecting and so disappointing. She was a girl who needed to be protected, and a woman standing to protect the girl. But then she became the other thing—the feminist who made girls into sluts. She sprouted three heads and asked that we accept them all! She said she had been a prostitute, a mental patient, that she had tried to stab her father. She said it in a soft, reasonable voice—but these are not soft or reasonable things. These are terrible things. Anyone who has seen a street prostitute and looked into her face knows that. For her to admit these things, without describing the pain she had suffered, gave her dignity—because really, she didn’t have to
talk about it. We could imagine it. But the story she read made what had seemed like dignity look silly and obscene. Because the voice of the story was not soft. It was dry and smart as a dance step—but what it told of was neither dry nor smart. While the voice danced, making scenes that described the woman and the youth, an image slowly formed, taking subtle shape under the picture created by the scenes. It was like an advertisement for cigarettes where beautiful people are smoking in lounge chairs, and suddenly you see in the cobalt blue backdrop the subliminal image of a skull. Except the image behind the feminist author’s words was stranger than the image of a skull, and less clear. It made you strain to see what it was, and in the straining you found yourself picturing! things you did not want
This was the feminist author we had heard about, all right. Her readers smiled knowingly, while the readers of the Canadian and Vietnamese authors looked baffled—baffled, then angry. And I was feeling angry, too.
I am not really a feminist, probably because, at forty, I am too young to have fully experienced the kinetic surge of feminism that occurred in the seventies, that half-synthetic, half-organic creature with its smart, dry little mouth issuing books, speeches, TV shows, and pop songs. None of it is stylish anymore, and, in fact, feminists have come in for a lot of criticism from female pundits. Some of these pundits say that feminists have made girls think they have to have sex all the time, which, by going against their girlish nature, has destroyed their self-esteem, and made them anorexic and depressed. Feminists have made girls into sluts! Others, equally angry, say that feminists have imposed restrictive rules on nubile teens, making them into morbid neurasthenics who think they’re being raped, when they’re actually just having sex. Feminists have neutered girls by overprotecting them! I don’t know what I think of any of it; it’s mostly something I hear coming out of my radio on my way to work. But I do know this: When I hear that feminism is overprotecting girls, I am very sympathetic to it. When I see my fashion-conscious ten-year-old in her nylon nightie, peering spellbound before the beguiling screen at the fleeting queendom of some twelve-year-old manufactured pop star with the wardrobe of a hooker, a jerry-rigged personality, and bulimia, it seems to me that she has a protection deficit that I may not be able to compensate for. When she comes home wild with tears because she lost the spelling contest, or her ex-best friend called her fat, or a boy said she’s not the prettiest girl in class, and I press her to me, comforting her, even as that day’s AMBER Alert flashes in my brain, it is hard for me to imagine this girl as “overprotected.”
Which is, in some indirect way, why the feminist author was so affecting and so disappointing. She was a girl who needed to be protected, and a woman standing to protect the girl. But then she became the other thing—the feminist who made girls into sluts. She sprouted three heads and asked that we accept them all! She said she had been a prostitute, a mental patient, that she had tried to stab her father. She said it in a soft, reasonable voice—but these are not soft or reasonable things. These are terrible things. Anyone who has seen a street prostitute and looked into her face knows that. For her to admit these things, without describing the pain she had suffered, gave her dignity—because really, she didn’t have to
talk about it. We could imagine it. But the story she read made what had seemed like dignity look silly and obscene. Because the voice of the story was not soft. It was dry and smart as a dance step—but what it told of was neither dry nor smart. While the voice danced, making scenes that described the woman and the youth, an image slowly formed, taking subtle shape under the picture created by the scenes. It was like an advertisement for cigarettes where beautiful people are smoking in lounge chairs, and suddenly you see in the cobalt blue backdrop the subliminal image of a skull. Except the image behind the feminist author’s words was stranger than the image of a skull, and less clear. It made you strain to see what it was, and in the straining you found yourself picturing! things you did not want
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