Mary Gaitskill: Don't Cry

“Did you vote for Reagan? That's his whole thing; he's for strength. People despised Carter for being weak.”

“No. No, no. I didn't vote for anybody. I'm not talking about anything political. I don't mean you should despise people for being weak, if it's a kind of weakness they can't help. But when they're weak on purpose, it's another thing. When they don't even try When they let people hurt them and don't fight back. It's gross. It's letting down the whole human race.”

“Oh. I think I see what you mean.” Lily looked out the window for a minute. “It's funny. When Reagan won, I was secretly relieved. Even though I hate him. Secretly, some part of me must feel like he's right. Even though I think Carter is the better one.” She turned to face Dolores. “Tell me again why you think I should dump Patrick.”

“Well, to … to make him see that he could be weak and damaged like anybody else.”

Lily smiled. “That would just make Patrick stronger.”

“Think so?”

“Some people are like that. Patrick is like that. The more he was hurt, the stronger he'd get. It's like Ann Landers says: ‘The same heat that melts butter tempers steel.’”

“If it's that way, maybe you really should dump him.”

Lily made a face. “The thing is, I don't want to hurt his feelings.” She played with the wheat crackers on their plate. “I wonder how many other people feel that way about Reagan? Even if they hate him?”

Dolores had begun to work on her history papers so she could graduate. There were only three weeks left to get them done, and she hadn't even started her research, so she had to get up very early in the morning. She went to the Oasis before many people had a chance to get there and start gossiping. She smoked and drank coffee and read about socialism in England. It was wonderful to be constructive. No wonder Lily clung to it so. Dolores wondered if it would change her appearance the way masturbating had. After Lily and Patrick broke up, she masturbated for the first time in six months. People kept telling her how relaxed she looked all of a sudden. Lily said her “energy” had changed. Maybe doing her history papers would have an even greater effect.

At night, she went to the bar and saw Sasha and her friends. Sasha looked fat and tragic, her eyes bitterly flat and smeared with kohl. Dolores told her about the papers. “Good girl!” said Sasha. “I never did my papers. Is it true that Lily and Patrick broke up?”

“For a few days now. I think they might get back together, though. They're being very seductive at breakfast.”

Dolores was surprised when Sasha didn't say anything nasty She just started telling about how she'd gotten kicked out of her best friend's apartment after a fight, and how she had to stay with George Hammond as a result. “Of course, he'll probably kick me out as soon as he gets tired of me. He loves me most when I start talking about moving to Chicago.”

Lindsay walked in wearing her little black leather jacket. Her large, heavy brown eyes looked smug and almost crossed under her tortoiseshell glasses, and her little nose was in the air. “Sasha!” she cried, advancing toward them. “Hi, you look great.”

“Being an outcast is very becoming,” replied Sasha. “I hear you're going to New York.”

“Yeah, I'm going to become a disc jockey. I know people there who can get me connected. At least I hope they can. Hi, Dolores.”

“Oh, you'll do great. You're the kind of person who's successful.”

“I can just hear her on the radio in New York,” said Sasha after Lindsay had left. “Have you heard her show? It's called ‘No Feelings’ and she reads her poetry on it. All this stuff about splinters of night reaming her eyes. She's retarded. She'll probably get a great job in New York. Every pretentious asshole I know went to New York and got a job in film or publishing.”

“I'm an asshole and I don't have a job in film or publishing.”

“That's because you're not pretentious. You wouldn't even be an asshole except you can't get out of Ann Arbor. And who am I to talk? I've been trying to get out for years.”

“I'm going to get out soon,” said Dolores.

Dolores rolled her car windows down as she drove home, so she could feel the spring air and look at the little residential houses. She drove her car up onto the lawn and almost over the tulips. She heard herself thunder across the porch like an ogre.

As soon as she walked in the door, she knew that Lily and Patrick had gotten back together. She heard their voices coming out of the kitchen in low, intimate sounds, and when she put her head around the corner, she saw them sitting amid their papers. On the table were little dishes with pieces of toast on them and an open package of butter with a knife still in it.

She turned and padded away. She went upstairs and threw her books and papers on the floor. She got into the bed and lay there, swollen and drunk. She reviewed the situation: Her hair was growing out so well, it was almost okay to take the scarf off. She was working on her papers. She was masturbating and having orgasms. Lily was right. Ann Landers was right. She was one of those people who just got stronger and stronger, no matter what you did. Her strength was like the steel structure of a bombed-out building, stripped but imperious and stern. She couldn't feel anything inside herself now but flat metallic strength.

On the same page of the city paper one day:

A confessed murderer awaiting trial for the torture and murder of a woman and her young daughter was a guest on a talk show via satellite. His appearance was facilitated by the mother's parents, who wanted him to tell them exactly what the murder of their daughter and grandchild had been like. “It was horrible,” said the talk-show hostess. “He will go down in history as the lowest of the low.” There was a photograph of the killer, smiling as if he'd won a prize.

A woman in San Francisco announced her intention to have intercourse with one thousand men in a row, breaking the record of a woman in New Mexico who had performed the same feat with a mere 750. “I want to show what women can do,” she said. “I am not doing this as a feminist, but as a human being.”

Two giant turtles belonging to an endangered species were stolen from the Bronx Zoo. “This may ve been an inside job,” said the zoo president. “This person knew what he was doing, and he was very smart. We just hope he keeps them together — they're very attached.” The turtles were valued at three hundred dollars each.

It was in the middle of the paper, a page that you were meant to scan before turning, loading your brain with subliminal messages as you did. How loathsome to turn a sadistic murder into entertainment — and yet how hard not to read about it. What dark comedy to realize that you are scanning for descriptions of torture even as you disapprove. Which of course only makes it more entertaining. “But naturally I was hoping they'd report something grisly” you say to your friends, who chuckle at your lighthearted acknowledgment of hypocrisy.

And they did report something grisly: the grandparents of the murdered girl who wanted to know what only the murderer could tell them. You picture the grandmother's gentle wrinkled chest, a thick strip of flesh pulled away to reveal an unexpected passage to hell in her heart.

Then you have the marathon woman right underneath, smiling like an evangelist, her organs open for a thousand. An especially grotty sort of pie-eating contest, placed right beneath the killer, the pure vulnerability of an open body juxtaposed against the pure force of destruction. Why would a woman do that? What do her inane words really mean? Will she select the thousand? Is there at least a screening process? Or is it just anyone who shows up? If he had not been arrested, could the killer himself have mounted her along with everybody else? If she had discovered who he was, would that have been okay with her? Would she have just swallowed him without a burp?