Bad Behavior: Stories

by Mary Gaitskill

Maybe it would be better to hold her winglike shadow safe in the lock of his memory than to touch the breathing girl and lose her.

“Sometimes I have this fantasy that the opera house is suddenly taken over by psychos or terrorists or something, and that I save everybody.” She stopped sucking her mint and turned to look at him. “How?” “I jump from the balcony railing and scale down the curtain until I’m parallel with the cord. Then I jump for the cord, swing through the air—” “That’s impossible.” “Well, yes, I know. It’s a fantasy.”

“I think it’s because you feel estranged from people. You want something extreme to happen so you can show that you love them, and that you deserve love from them.”

she was tormented by the feeling that she looked inadequate. Perhaps her body tilted too far forward as she walked, perhaps her jacket made her torso look bulky in contrast to her calves and ankles, which were probably skinny. She felt like an object unraveling in every direction.

There were only a few customers in the bar; most of them were men in suits who sat there seemingly enmeshed in a web of habit and accumulated rancor that they called their personalities, so utterly unaware of their entanglement that they clearly considered themselves men of the world, even though they had long ago stopped noticing it.

It was the same image of him holding her and gazing into her eyes with bone-dislodging intent,

He must be so pathologically insecure that his perception of his own behavior was thoroughly distorted.

He realized what had been disturbing him about her. With other women whom he had been with in similar situations, he had experienced a relaxing sense of emptiness within them that had made it easy for him to get inside them and, once there, smear himself all over their innermost territory until it was no longer theirs but his. His wife did not have this empty quality, yet the gracious way in which she emptied herself for him made her submission, as far as it went, all the more poignant. This exasperating girl, on the other hand, contained a tangible somethingness that she not only refused to expunge, but that seemed to willfully expand itself so that he banged into it with every attempt to invade her. He didn’t mind the somethingness; he rather liked it, in fact, and had looked forward to seeing it demolished. But she refused to let him do it.

“Sometimes when I look at you, I feel like I’m seeing a tank of small, quick fish, the bright darting kind that go every which way.”

“I don’t think you’re capable of being as nice as you’d have to be to interest me at this point.”

She stretched up and kissed his neck. “We just had the wrong idea about each other,” she said. “It’s nobody’s fault that we’re incompatible.” “Well, soon we’ll be in Manhattan, and it’ll be all over. You’ll never have to see me again.” He hoped she would dispute this, but she didn’t. They continued to talk in the car, about the nature of time, their parents and the injustice of racism.

He was enjoying himself now. He was beginning to see her as a locked garden that he could sneak into and sit in for days, tearing the heads off the flowers.

He anticipated Lisette as he imagined her,

She came in with a white sheet under her arm. She clipped across the floor, sharp heels clacking. She turned off the radio. The silence was as disorienting as a sudden roomful of fluorescent light.

When he touched her hips, he thought he could feel her innermost life on the sensitive surface of her body.

Her nonchalant reaction to his efforts to impress her sexually made him believe that her excitement, when it did occur, was real, that she wanted him.

The longest conversation they ever had on a single subject was about a cat that she’d had for fifteen years, until the fat, asthmatic thing finally keeled over. “He had all black fur except for his paws and his throat patch. He looked like he was wearing a tuxedo with a white cravat and gloves, and he was more of a gentleman than any human being I’ve ever known. I saw him protect a female cat from a dog once.”

Jane was being mauled by a fat oaf who didn’t care that you could feel her innermost life on her skin.

mentally feeling over the events of the day, like a blind person groping through a drawer of personal effects.

It had been such a brief, disturbing affair that he didn’t even think of her as an old girlfriend. His memory of her was like a filmy scrap of dream discovered on the floor during the drowsy journey from bed to toilet,

He had always been very good at it, but now he had to fend off the idea that it might be depressing.

They ate their corned beef on rye and cream cheese with lox in a diner peopled by waiters who looked like they’d met with utter disappointment and became attached to it.

She’d had one showcase, a string of auditions and then spent the next few years wringing her hands, seeing therapists and going into debt on her charge cards.

Susan had quite a reputation in Ann Arbor herself, thanks to their mutual boyfriend. “She’s nothing like she looks,” he’d say to anyone who’d listen. “She’s kinky as hell.” Then he’d generously explain how and in what ways, somehow managing to leave his kinkiness out.

It seemed as though her friendship with Leisha had never been what she would now call a friendship at all, but a complex system of reassurance and support for self-involved fantasies that they had propped up between them and reflected back and forth.

But even worse, it seemed as if our most intimate conversations were based on what we were supposed to be saying, and what we were supposed to be. Nothing seemed to come directly from us. Do you know what I mean? I sound like a hippie, I know.”

She was dropped by most of her Michigan friends, who said that she was too self-indulgent and theatrical to cope with. Susan didn’t know if what they said was true or not, but it seemed unkind. She wanted to remain loyal to Leisha, but she was floundering so thoroughly herself that when they talked they seemed like drowning people clinging to each other for life.

“I feel drained by you,” said Leisha. “Every time I’m around you I feel like you’re hanging on to me, that there’s something you want and I don’t know what it is, and I can’t stand it.”

She wanted to talk to her, and tomorrow she would try again. She sat in the living area for almost an hour thinking about what she might say to her, and what Leisha might say back.

You don’t seem that interested in sex here, anyway. So why do you come?” “To meet fascinating creatures I’d never meet in the usual course of my life. Like you.”

course, she realized what he liked about her. He loved the idea of kooky, arty girls who lives “bohemian” lives and broke all the rules.

She pictured herself in the future, so successful that she could talk about being a hooker without anyone minding. “I didn’t do much writing then,” she’d say to her circle of successful friends as they stood around smiling and holding their drinks. “I spent most of my time just trying to re-form my personality.” And they’d all laugh at this adorable admission of her female vulnerability.

Stephanie suspected that Babette’s consternation had little to do with self-respect and a lot to do with Babette’s discomfort at discovering that she was friends with a prostitute instead of a writer.

She laughed. “It’s too corny, isn’t it? Girl has heart broken by callous swine and turns to prostitution.” “Your life is very dramatic,” he said pleasantly.

I thought about how she must look to someone like you, despite her nasty personality—like this cute little beast who can be swept up and fondled and experienced and then put down.” “That’s fabulous.” He looked deeply entertained. “You have such a wonderful way of expressing things.” She thought: If he says “fabulous” one more time tonight, I may punch him in the nose.

She told him about the time her sister’s boyfriend had tried to seduce her in the middle of their breakup. “What happened?” He smiled. “Nothing. I didn’t want to. I mean, I wasn’t attracted to him and he was obviously doing it out of hostility to my sister.” “Oh, no. That probably had nothing to do with it.” “Well, maybe not. I think part of it was that he was intrigued by me as a variation of her.” “Exactly!” He said this with great emphasis, as though she’d hit upon something important. “I almost seduced my wife’s sister the first time we separated, but we both balked at the last minute, mostly her. We were at the kitchen table, drinking gin.” He smiled. “Of course your sister’s boyfriend wanted you. One wants them all.”

She couldn’t have said what she was crying about. Christine’s, Brett, Jackson, her first miserable, lonely year in New York and Bernard the lawyer all seemed to have something to do with it, although she couldn’t tell if she was just pulling anything available into her sadness.

“Do you ever loosen up?” The corners of my mouth jerked, smilelike. “I don’t know.”

The elegant old armchairs and puffy upholstered couch were themselves disoriented in the stiff modernity of the waiting room. My heavy oak desk was an idiot standing against a wall covered with beige plaster. The brooding plants before me gave the appearance of weighing a lot for plants, even though one of them was a slight, frondy thing.

I looked at my father and felt a sickening sensation of love nailed to contempt and panic.

At first he didn’t seem to be doing anything. Then I became aware of a small frenzy of expended energy behind me. I had an impression of a vicious little animal frantically burrowing dirt with its tiny claws and teeth.

For some reason, I remembered the time, a few years before, when my mother had taken me to see a psychiatrist. One of the more obvious questions he had asked me was, “Debby, do you ever have the sensation of being outside yourself, almost as if you can actually watch yourself from another place?” I hadn’t at the time, but I did now. And it wasn’t such a bad feeling at all.

“God,” he said, hunching over his tiny brown cup of espresso, “it’s good to see a new face. For weeks I’ve seen nobody but friends of Emily’s who’ve come in from Dallas—these really incredible women who’re all painters, all in their forties, incredibly intelligent and—would you believe it?—all single. They’re great, but I feel like I have to constantly be telling them how attractive and talented they are—and they are attractive! They’re incredibly attractive!—because they’re in their forties, and they’re not married, and they’re not successful.” “What makes you think you always have to tell them how great they are?” “You just do. It’s obvious.” He lifted the little brown cup in his big hands and delicately inserted the tip of his tongue, put it down and played with his napkin. “You wouldn’t have to tell me that if I was forty.”

“So, whose heart are you laying waste to now?”

“Actually, I have a girlfriend.” She picked up her croissant as if she were going to bat her eyelashes from behind it. “We’ve been together for a year and a half. We live together.” “Connie, that’s great. That’s really super. Is this a new predilection?” “No, it’s always been there. This is just more serious than usual.” “You know, if she were a boy, I think I’d be jealous. Where’d you meet her?”

They burrowed into a conversation that skimmed over the present, then tunneled back through the five years since they’d met

A grotesquely beautiful girl in pink leather seemed to be staring at them. Did they look like pathetic aging hipsters? Was her hair wrong? Was their conversation too loud? Franklin was talking very loudly about a nasty exchange he’d had with another critic at some club. She winced, then took shelter in his apparently inexhaustible confidence and burrowed again.

“Here.” Franklin looked at her as he pressed the paper into her hand. “And Connie, I want you to know”—his eyes got that vague yet sincere and noble look they took on when he was about to talk about art or something—“I’ve thought about you a lot in the last year or so. I’ve really wanted to see you.” “Yeah?” “Yeah. Really.” His eyes looked so intensely vague, yet so sincere and so noble, she had the sense that the brown orbs could detach from their centers and wander all over his eyeball, slowly, with a certain majesty, each movement expressing the depth of his sincerity.

They squeezed each other’s hands, communicated some sexual comradery and goodwill, and then walked away.

“The last time Alice and I talked was three years ago. It was when I was doing horribly, everything was going wrong, my writing was a disaster, I couldn’t breathe, and I got so depressed that I couldn’t eat. I was afraid to say anything about it to anyone and finally I decided to trust Alice enough to talk to her. Franklin kept saying ‘Connie, Alice loves you,’ in that stupid way he has, and I thought, Well, we’ve been friends for two years, so I told her. And she said, ‘Connie, nobody wants to be around somebody who’s unhappy.’ She told me I should see a therapist, and never called me again. She didn’t return my calls either.” “Why didn’t you call her and yell at her?” “I don’t know. I didn’t have the spirit, I guess. I felt pretty ravaged.” “It sounds like she was afraid of being unhappy herself,” said Deana.