Bad Behavior: Stories

Bad Behavior: Stories by Mary Gaitskill Page B

Book: Bad Behavior: Stories by Mary Gaitskill Read Free Book Online
Authors: Mary Gaitskill
Tags: Fiction, General
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one of them before him in a row, as she had once presented crayon drawings to her father in a neat many-colored sequence. Then he would shift his posture slightly or make a gesture that suddenly made him seem so helpless and frail that she longed to protect him and cosset him away, like a delicate pet in a matchbox filled with cotton. She rested her head on his shoulder and lovingly regarded the legs that bent at the knee and tapered to the booted feet resting on the brakes or the accelerator. This was as good as her original fantasy, possibly even better.
    “Can I abuse you some more now?” he asked sweetly. “In the car?”
    “What do you want to do?”
    “Gag you? That’s all, I’d just like to gag you.”
    “But I want to talk to you.”
    He sighed. “You’re really not a masochist, you know.”
    She shrugged. “Maybe not. It always seemed like I was.”
    “You might have fantasies, but I don’t think you have any concept of a real slave mentality. You have too much ego to be part of another person.”
    “I don’t know, I’ve never had the chance to try it. I’ve never met anyone I wanted to do that with.”
    “If you were a slave, you wouldn’t make the choice.”
    “All right, I’m not a slave. With me it’s more a matter of love.” She was just barely aware that she was pitching her voice higher and softer than it was naturally, so that she sounded like a cartoon girl. “It’s like the highest form of love.”
    He thought this was really cute. Sure it was nauseating, but it was feminine in a radio-song kind of way.
    “You don’t seem interested in love. It’s not about that for you.”
    “That’s not true. That’s not true at all. Why do you think I was so rough back there? Deep down, I’m afraid I’ll fall in love with you, that I’ll need to be with you and fuck you … forever.” He was enjoying himself now. He was beginning to see her as alocked garden that he could sneak into and sit in for days, tearing the heads off the flowers.
    On one hand, she was beside herself with bliss. On the other, she was scrutinizing him carefully from behind an opaque facade as he entered her pasteboard scene of flora and fauna. Could he function as a character in this landscape? She imagined sitting across from him in a Japanese restaurant, talking about anything. He would look intently into her eyes….
    He saw her apartment and then his. He saw them existing a nice distance apart, each of them blocked off by cleanly cut boundaries. Her apartment bloomed with scenes that spiraled toward him in colorful circular motions and then froze suddenly and clearly in place. She was crawling blindfolded across the floor. She was bound and naked in an S&M bar. She was sitting next to him in a taxi, her skirt pulled up, his fingers in her vagina.
    … and then they would go back to her apartment. He would beat her and fuck her mouth.
    Then he would go home to his wife, and she would make dinner for him. It was so well balanced, the mere contemplation of it gave him pleasure.
    The next day he would send her flowers.
    He let go of the wheel with one hand and patted her head. She gripped his shirt frantically.
    He thought: This could work out fine.

Something Nice

W HAT’S YOUR NAME , sir?” The freckled woman wore green stretch pants, and had her red hair tucked under a neat pink scarf. “Fred?” She was making her naturally coarse voice go soft and moist as warm mayonnaise. “I’d like you to meet my girlfriends, Fred.” The four girls stared at him. Two sat up and smiled, holding their purses with tight fingers, their legs pinched together at the knees. A beautiful black-haired girl, with jutting cheekbones and a lush, full mouth, lolled in an orange beanbag chair, her long legs sprawled rudely on the floor, half open and tenting her tight silk dress so you could almost see between her legs. She gawked at him with open disgust.
    “Sit up, Jasmine,” snapped the stretch-pants woman through her smile.

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