cat person

yeah I would think the specifics of the story mitigate a bit against reacting to it as some kind of universal takedown of men/masculinity, though obv aspects of it have larger resonance. idk maybe I am sheltered but 20-yr old college student meets mid-30s sad sack is not something I imagine happens too too often.

if anything the part that didn't ring true for me was her fantasy of seeing herself as young-and-beautiful-with-flawless-skin through his eyes--not impossible I suppose but young people are more insecure than that ime. that said, perhaps I've just hit the limits of being able to imagine myself as the object of the male gaze?

I don't think gendered slurs are anywhere near the level of taboo in current society that racial slurs are. Like they should be but.

xposts

he's not -- i think it's supposed to show that if they feel shitty enough, or are drunk enough, or feel rejected enough, even the guy who seems to have it all together could lash out and say something like that. it's not beyond the pale for a drunk lonely pissed off dude to lash out and say something he will likely regret but be unable to retract. in the past, people could just think it. maybe say it to their friends. now they both have to live with him having actually expressed it.

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Monday, December 11, 2017 7:58 AM (thirty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is extremely true, and your other point about kindness not being rewarded is also true. lots of guys i've known over time, there's this expectation i think that the kindness they show (that no one asked to be shown!) is deserving of some prize or acknowledgement or having someone in your debt.

truth bomb

men who call women they've slept with whores are not ime some negligible subspecies of obvious monster and the story ending on that word highlights what's underneath "everyman" condescension waiting to be brought forth by rejection+frustration (as LL says). that's like why it's a problem.

lotta redundant xposts.

idk maybe I am sheltered but 20-yr old college student meets mid-30s sad sack is not something I imagine happens too too often.
yes, you are sheltered. ime one of the only truly powerful instruments a 20 year old woman wields is her ability to charm easily charmed men*, of which he was one. not a sad sack, but vulnerable. i might say that in some ways she took advantage of him too -- his attentiveness, his worship. she knew this, and it's why she was worried she would come across as a tease iirc.

I don't think gendered slurs are anywhere near the level of taboo in current society that racial slurs are. Like they should be but.
OTM x1000

*needy men

feel like tinder and the like (tho they meet irl in the story) have led to a lot of relationships with big age differences. i see this a lot now.

it has always happened? very much like the way it happened in the story! you flirt with some dude, he seems alright, you hang out, and then things go south faster and faster until whatever was there is definitely over.

ahem i am unfamiliar with this dynamic (pulls at collar)

i also think ^^^ is part of the point of the story

in some ways it seems to me a comment on the dark side of assuming sexual agency for all people when we are still playing on a field that is not just uneven, but full of landmines.

men who call women they've slept with whores are not ime some negligible subspecies of obvious monster and the story ending on that word highlights what's underneath "everyman" condescension waiting to be brought forth by rejection+frustration (as LL says)

it isn't underneath if he straight out calls her a whore, imo. it's overt. if you're trying to talk about what lies underneath a veneer then you need to show that it lies underneath, which is actually more insidious and interesting. there's a diff between thinking a thing, or having it emerge in your mind, and saying it which would also be p good territory for this story, whatever way it was explored.

xp
good points, thanks LL

it's underneath if it comes out only at the dead end of the relationship, after like a dozen unanswered texts, as the last line of the story.

also i think the fact that it connects, at the last possible second, the nuanced and pathetic image you have in your head and the image of an alt-right shitposter, is pretty deliberate.

ime one of the only truly powerful instruments a 20 year old woman wields is her ability to charm easily charmed men*

this is rly otm and i liked the stuff w her job at the art theatre: the way he blows up its sophistication first in flattery but gradually in anxious bitterness and insecurity was v true to the usual dynamic between older lonely men w what they think of as taste and younger women whose intelligence they praise until the day it stops working.

(the praise, not the intelligence)

it IS underneath!! he is hiding it, even from himself. it only comes out and breaks his veneer of decency when he knows she is no longer interested (again, her decision) he is robbed/"robbed" of his control over the situation and he lashes out (drunkenly) with what is buried beneath the flirting and jokes and attentive question asking and his urbane apartment and everything. anger at having his control taken away by a young woman he slept with, a person with whom he assumed (incorrectly) that he had the upper hand.

he is not an MRA shitposter -- he is a regular guy. otherwise she wouldn't have spent as much time with him as she did.

it's also a fairly difficult technical problem to have this mentality submerged but not overt when the story is first-person from her perspective

"Later, the bartender told me that he'd written 'whore' to me into the text window, but decided to erase it."

i dunno, i just think him saying that stops him being a regular guy. you don't just call someone a "whore". even thinking "she is a fucking whore" or whatever would be p strange. guess we're going round in circles.

if he's texting women calling them whores he is an mra shitposter, de facto.

i guess i just disagree with that

i think it's important to note that i don't think the author is portraying either of the characters as predatory; it's worse than that. this is business as usual.

a few years ago just turned thirty i hooked up with a girl that was i believe 19 maybe 20 at a and this is a creepy detail a 17 year old girl's birthday party that i went to with friends from work NOT KNOWING it was a 17 year old girl's birthday party. driving home the next morning, she asked how old i was and i couldn't even say it and had to shakingly pull out my drivers license wordlessly pass it to her. she said, comfortingly: no, it's cool, my friend is dating a guy who's like 42. i was smitten with her, got her phone number, texted once, got no response and agonized for a few days about sending a follow up but never did. about a week later? she said she was in the mountains skiing and hadn't gotten my message but she wasn't interested, and i never saw her again.

i can relate, folks. tbf this guy does seem like an mra shitposter right off the bat. story was okay.

xp So many details were true to life and experience imo. I want to use the words "gross" and "banal" somehow but both already seem cliched.

he should have used them about the student bar she suggested

he seemed insecure for sure -- would not extrapolate that to "MRA shitposter"

yeah clearly insecure and i definitely understand that part of it. i dunno, the slightly manipulative exchange at the counter starts it off, the way he suggests jokingly that she insulted him, referring to her as "concession-stand girl."

those were the parts that to me are creepy and more strongly so if the ending isn't as overt

i enjoyed this story. guy seems like a dickhead from the get-go but that isn't a flaw in the story to me

seems cool that a piece of fiction went viral. although obviously i had a quick look on twitter and saw some of the worst takes ever. someone who found it fatphobic. chuds arguing that the girl is "the baddy".

The way he withholds recognition and respect, uses small denigrations, pretends to take offense to stay on the offensive, is textbook. Seen it, lived it, dated it. Also struck by, on her part, the multiple times she's aware that she's smarter, abler than him but gets nervous or retreats into imagining the fantasy/image instead of taking control of the situation and being done with him. That she's almost afraid? to expose him, or to find out what could happen if she lets him down.

Her instincts here are probably good, which is what the end is telling us, but even without the literalness of the last lines it's just the water we swim in. Seeing someone be sure that they're better than you and know that they're wrong but keeping that secret for reasons of your own...protection, politeness, or finding a tiny sliver of power in being underestimated. Not realizing that you had so much power at your fingertips all along if you just claimed it instead of settling for the tiny bit that you had to deal with all their shit for.

yeah this story stings both ways

lots of good posts on this thread!

i really liked the story. i think it speaks to a transactional sense of entitlement commonly found among Nice Guys that is rooted in misogyny.

posts on this thread more interesting (to me) than the original story tbh

a good writing exercise would be to write this same story w the male as the narrator

^^ or have the same author alternate woman & male narrators

i feel like i've read this story a thousand times from the man's perspective

La Lech otm throughout this thread.

I saw this story was going viral because of the ending and was expecting some sort of Shirley Jackson/Alan Moore futureshock twist - like, maybe it's called Cat Person because it turns out that he is **literally a half cat half person** - and sou was relieved by the actual ending.

I'm 40 and have been in a relationship for 15 years - and I totally saw this guy as the nightmare alternative me if I'd stayed single. We might not be that guy right now, but everyone has the potential to be that guy.

Aside from that I thought it was a funny and super-relatable piece, OTM about bad one night stands and how crushes can suddenly curdle in an instant. And I'm not sure it's fair to ascribe gimickiness to a piece that never sought its virality.

That said - I thought the last couple Curtis Sittenfeld stories (also about bad one night stands) were better.

Certainly have read this story quite a bit from a man's perspective - not sure texting would be adding (too much) of a new angle on it either.

xpost

even so, comparing/contrasting two voices sheds new light on both. reading the male side of the story from the (female) author's perspective could be unpredictable, revealing. just the kind of imaginative leap that fiction (as opposed to straight autobiography or memoir) not only allows but requires.

talking form not content here

as a single dude with a cat I feel I should weigh in and say ... my cat rules

I don't need to see the guy's side of the story, I've read and seen that countless times before (and not just from make writers)

Wanting to see this from the guy's side seems like a subconscious desire to excuse the guy's behaviour. But it's ok for him to remain an unknowable asshole. Ambiguity is also a thing fiction does.

(Male writers, I mean, sorry)

You don't seem very ambiguous about it

genuinely curious, where are the countless stories like this by a male narrator

m coleman is right i suggested it more as to form, not at all to defend/justify the actions by either party.

how abt if this female writer herself wrote a vers from the male narrators pov, would everyone still be as dismissive / not want to read it?

while i agree that i haven't read countless examples of this scenario from a male perspective the idea that someone's reaction to this story would be "i would like to read this from the man's perspective" seems beyond banal and wrong as a reaction to this story

“When u laguehd when I asked if you were a virgin was it because youd fucked so many guys”
“Are you fucking that guy right now”
“Is someone getting the best"
"the best"
"the best"
"the best"
"of you."

i like it fine on its own terms & think its well-observed and engaging fwiw

i speculated it might be *interesting* to read from multiple points of view. and that's "beyond banal" or "wrong" or jesus subconsciously excusing this creep's behavior?

bidding ILX a fond adieu

imo the male perspective is p much already there. for instance by the end you are as aware of the emotion induced in him by her laugh as you are of the emotion in her that caused it. so is she. having read this version of the story i felt pretty clear on what had happened to both the characters. the reverse however would not be true: he does not know even at the end what she is feeling and a story from his pov would not incorporate hers. huh.

very good post

Oh that is very neat.