fwriction

Thanks to the delightful Fictionaut, an early Mary Gaitskill story is available for viewing. I cannot believe she was twenty-two when she wrote this piece. I feel incredibly inadequate; she’s so, so good:

“In the midst of all these Friday night leftovers, a newcomer emerges from the bowels of the subway, a girl named Susan with pale, oniony skin, long brown hair and wide hips in new sand-papery jeans. She’s holding two Rexall plastic jewelry cases on top of two pieces of chip board, which are apparently very heavy judging from the way she’s bent backwards, glaring at the sky. The heads of the boys in front of Mr. Submarine all spin around and watch her, eagerly bursting into cat calls and gleeful adenoidal whistles as she hurries past. Silently, she curses them. Surely she was made for something better than this! At least something better than clobbering down to this humming, clicking neon nuthouse of a street. Something better than carrying Rexall jewelry cases (the damn things are heavy and the drawers in them always come open when she carries them across streets, dumping their shiny jewelry all over the place), better than those pimple-mouthed forms of low-life clinging around Mr. Submarine like fungus.”