I love this new novel by Camille Bordas:
* How “rape” used to mean someone being dragged into an alley by a stranger, gagged, beaten up, savagely penetrated, and left for dead behind a trash can. How “rape” had now come to encompass any sexual act performed without obtaining verbal consent. He was okay with that, in principle: words taking on larger meanings, larger responsibilities over time — language was a living entity, it adapted to its speakers. But then it seemed to him that when that happened, other words had to step in to fill the vacuum left by the bigger word’s promotion. He felt there should be a word for what “rape” used to mean. He wondered how women who had been left for dead in alleys felt about it. The new meaning.
* “I still haven’t fucked anyone in the city of Chicago,” Olivia said. “Chicago virgin.”
* “Because our stepfather molested Sally when she was a kid and my mother took a little too long to believe her.”
* “And all this stuff about comedians killing themselves in such high numbers because they’re so sensi tive, because they feel everything so strongly …last I checked, dentists were still killing themselves more than us, and construction workers had the leading suicide rate by profession. Does that mean they’re the better artists? That they should be the ones onstage instead of us?”
“Seriously. What did your stepfather do?”
“Who cares what he does?”
“He still works?”
“Yes. He’s a forester.”
“He molested a child and he’s still allowed around people?”
“It’s not the kind of forest where people go,” Olivia said. “And Sally never pressed charges.”“That bitch has been getting all the attention,” she said.
“Exactly!” Olivia said. “I mean, right? No one ever asks about me. We’re identical, but my stepfather molested her and not me. How do you think that makes me feel?”* “Why would I come after you?”
“Because I was mean to you in class the other day.”
Dorothy wasn’t supposed to say things like that. Never question your teaching methods in front of your students was the rule. If you were not proud of how a class had gone, you either forgot about it or found a way to tell yourself the kids had learned something from the fiasco. In that way, teaching was different from performing. The audience shared part of the responsibility.* “after the constant stress of your twenties, the self – doubt of your thirties, and the anguish of your forties, it’s nice to relax a little bit. It’s like biking down a hill now.”
* his job as a comedian was to grab onto the most horrible of these thoughts and shape them right in order to serve them back to those who’d run away from them. He was in the business of finishing people’s horrible thoughts so they didn’t have to go there themselves.
