She remembered that he’d talked a lot about his cats and yet she hadn’t seen any cats in the house, and she wondered if he’d made them up. — story
I feel like him calling her a whore, at the end, is a cheap narrative trick to drain all the ambiguity and frustration and moral failings that they both feel... — csalisbury
Margot collapsed on the table, laying her head in her hands. She felt as though a leech, grown heavy and swollen with her blood, had at last popped off her skin, leaving a tender, bruised spot behind. But why should she feel that way? Perhaps she was being unfair to Robert, who really had done nothing wrong, except like her, and be bad in bed, and maybe lie about having cats, although probably they had just been in another room.
But then, a month later, she saw him in the bar—her bar, the one in the student ghetto, where, on their date, she’d suggested they go. He was alone, at a table in the back, and he wasn’t reading or looking at his phone; he was just sitting there silently, hunched over a beer.
One of the common memes or tropes or zeitgeisty thing you see floating around a lot (one which I think has a lot of truth to it) is that the quintessential 'nice guy', who caters to what he believes a woman wants and appeals soft and emotional and understanding - is sitting atop a volcano of misogynistic rage. The idea is that the 'nice guy' isn't really 'nice', but has this idea that if you do the right things, then you deserve sex and affection. When their routine fails, and they don't get what they think they've earned, the true self emerges. — csalisbury
↪La Cuentista One of the common memes or tropes or zeitgeisty thing you see floating around a lot (one which I think has a lot of truth to it) is that the quintessential 'nice guy', who caters to what he believes a woman wants and appears soft and emotional and understanding - that this sort of guy is often sitting atop a volcano of misogynistic rage. The idea is that the 'nice guy' isn't really 'nice', but has this idea that if you do the right things, then you deserve sex and affection. When their routine fails, and they don't get what they think they've earned, the true self emerges. (See also: the moral valence of the term 'Friendzoning')
The way this plays out on social media is that examples of this kind of behavior in texts, on tinder, etc are posted and so a character emerges: The Evil "nice" guy. The story makes implicit use of this cultural awareness in order to communicate to its knowing readership what sort of thing Robert actually is. I think its true what Robert does in the end is good evidence he's a pretty shitty dude, and the reader should lose any lingering sympathy they might have. But I also feel like the author is 'sealing' off the story in a certain way, by making Robert fit into this stereotypical figure. There's so much going on in the story, it seems like the end basically gives license to not think too much about what's going on.
The story effectively ended at the end of the first paragraph below. The second paragraph begins the redefinition of the older (32) male character in the story who had previously been only an unsuccessful date. By the end of the piece, not many words later, he has been recast as something menacing.
It was a terrible kiss, shockingly bad; Margot had trouble believing that a grown man could possibly be so bad at kissing. It seemed awful, yet somehow it also gave her that tender feeling toward him again, the sense that even though he was older than her, she knew something he didn’t. — story
She was starting to think that she understood him—how sensitive he was, how easily he could be wounded—and that made her feel closer to him, and also powerful, because once she knew how to hurt him she also knew how he could be soothed. — story
By her third beer, she was thinking about what it would be like to have sex with Robert. Probably it would be like that bad kiss, clumsy and excessive, but imagining how excited he would be, how hungry and eager to impress her, she felt a twinge of desire pluck at her belly, as distinct and painful as the snap of an elastic band against her skin. — story
She pushed her body against his, feeling tiny beside him, and he let out a great shuddering sigh, as if she were something too bright and painful to look at, and that was sexy, too, being made to feel like a kind of irresistible temptation. — story
As they kissed, she found herself carried away by a fantasy of such pure ego that she could hardly admit even to herself that she was having it. Look at this beautiful girl, she imagined him thinking. She’s so perfect, her body is perfect, everything about her is perfect, she’s only twenty years old, her skin is flawless, I want her so badly, I want her more than I’ve ever wanted anyone else, I want her so bad I might die.
The more she imagined his arousal, the more turned-on she got
I don't think there's alot more 'going on' with either Margot or Robert than what's described in the story; or at least, what's going on is that neither has any idea of why they do what they do beyond the fact that they 'know what they feel'. — StreetlightX
What I want to emphasise is that we all have the capacity to be Robert, we can all see ourselves doing the Right Thing, playing the Correct Role ('she asked me to come home with her!), without still knowing what it is we are doing. — StreetlightX
Both are consistently unsure about what the other is thinking, and you consistently have this weird retroactive confirmation of motivation where each acts decisively only ever based on some expression of vulnerability in the other (with the vulnerability evoked by the other to begin with). — StreetlightX
She was starting to think that she understood him—how sensitive he was, how easily he could be wounded—and that made her feel closer to him, and also powerful, because once she knew how to hurt him she also knew how he could be soothed. She asked him lots of questions about the movies he liked, and she spoke self-deprecatingly about the movies at the artsy theatre that she found boring or incomprehensible; she told him about how much her older co-workers intimidated her, and how she sometimes worried that she wasn’t smart enough to form her own opinions on anything. The effect of this on him was palpable and immediate, and she felt as if she were petting a large, skittish animal, like a horse or a bear, skillfully coaxing it to eat from her hand
When they’d finished that round of drinks, she said, boldly, “Should we get out of here, then?,” and he seemed briefly hurt, as if he thought she was cutting the date short, but she took his hand and pulled him up, and the look on his face when he realized what she was saying, and the obedient way he trailed her out of the bar, gave her that elastic-band snap again, as did, oddly, the fact that his palm was slick beneath hers.
The way he looked at her then was like an exaggerated version of the expression she’d seen on the faces of all the guys she’d been naked with, not that there were that many—six in total, Robert made seven. He looked stunned and stupid with pleasure, like a milk-drunk baby, and she thought that maybe this was what she loved most about sex—a guy revealed like that. Robert showed her more open need than any of the others, even though he was older, and must have seen more breasts, more bodies, than they had—but maybe that was part of it for him, the fact that he was older, and she was young.
As they kissed, she found herself carried away by a fantasy of such pure ego that she could hardly admit even to herself that she was having it. Look at this beautiful girl, she imagined him thinking. She’s so perfect, her body is perfect, everything about her is perfect, she’s only twenty years old, her skin is flawless, I want her so badly, I want her more than I’ve ever wanted anyone else, I want her so bad I might die.
It's not art anyway, that's for sure. — Baden
It reads to me like one of those stories told to a therapist to avoid confronting the real issues. — unenlightened
"So Margot, why did you manipulate your flatmate into taking responsibility for ending the relationship, why did you manipulate your friends into treating Robert as some kind of threat, and why did you contrive to get him to lose his temper with you? You made up that last bit, didn't you? I'm seeing a pattern here." — unenlightened
Be careful. You might have the basis for an interesting story there... — Baden
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