#dont cry
When I was maybe twelve, my mom told me that I wasn’t allowed to read her copy of Two Girls, Fat and Thin. I snuck it into my room and stayed up all night so I could finish it in time to put it back in the morning.
There’s the obvious thing about the way Gaitskill writes female sexuality. I used to worry that I was not only a sexual deviant but also the only person in the world whose darkest fantasies didn’t involve touch or even any straightforward kind of conversation.
My first year of art school, I was assigned some stories from Bad Behavior for a class on forbidden love for which we also readLolitaandGiovanni’s Room. I was sexually inexperienced in a way, but I just GOT Bad Behavior because the sex as a stand-in for something else and something else as a stand-in for sex was already so clear to me.
It’s not just a sex thing. Gaitskill’s characters are angry about the same things that I am angry about, and she writes bodies the way I see bodies. My relationship with my body has been so tumultuous and nearly fatal and I’ve moved through some of these sick body moments of my life with a strength that came from rage (vs. hunger or pride).
Her women are hungry: hungry for sex, hungry for pain, stiff from actual stomach hunger.
I don’t think I’ve met many women who aren’t hungry.
The movie version of Secretary was a mess. I actually loved it, but they missed the whole point by making the protagonist overtly mentally ill. That was a shit move, because her sexual deviance ends up pathologized. It’s not like the character in the story isn’t pathological, but it’s subtle. She isn’t seeking out some sort of replacement for the pain she can cause herself, because that pain and the terror of love barely are so unalike.
Recommended Reading: Check out Mirrorball, a story from Don’t Cry. It’s about souls (ghosts?), fucking, and the guy in that one band who will ruin you forever.
I’d recommend all of Don’t Cry. The stories are a little more experimental than her earlier work. I love everything she’s written and would recommend all of her work. Because They Wanted To is a good starting place, maybe. Veronica is stunning. There are a lot of adjectives in Veronica but it doesn’t bother me at all because they all need to be there.
Another good thing to read is this interview of Kim Gordon that Gaitskill did for Interview. I love them together.
Amy Silbergeld is the author of the auto-collaborative novel Rainn (Freke Räihä Förlag, 2014) and the chapbook Rape Joke (Tired Hearts, 2013).
Is he hot, rich, or tall…..no? Then don’t cry lol.
Who am I?
What have I become?
How should I do it?
Pills? A rope? A gun?
I’m laying under the blankets,
In my cold, dark room.
The depression is back. Stronger.
What in the hell do I do?
My friends notice my mood,
They try to get me to go out.
“stay inside, you’ll only bother them”
The inner demons shout.
I tell them that I’m sick
And don’t have the gas anyway.
But I have a full tank and feel fine,
I can’t keep pushing them away.
I have a bottle or vodka in one hand,
And a pistol in the other.
I write a note “I’m sorry.. I love you..”
“please forgive me, mother. ”
Everything goes dark
A small voice screams inside my head
“ Please wake up! Oh God! ”
“ No! No! We can’t be dead! ”
I hear the sirens outside,
I assume they’re here for me.
I go further into the darkness,
Please don’t cry, I’m free.
-Brittany Bonar
Papa Merk is back at it. (Check out the very first Family Merkin comic right here.)
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