Lust (& other stories)

(Random House--Vintage Contemporaries 1989, 2000)

I came across Susan Minot two years ago through the film Evening. Then I found a short story by her tucked away in one of the literature anthologies (I keep hoarding). Sold!

"Lust"
--------
It was different for a girl.

An unnamed narrator tells the story of 16 men. They come across in snapshots and short paragraphs. There is a focus mostly on the sights and sounds--the perception of them, as she looks back on the events of her youth.

The surrender would be forgetting yourself...

The men are events. They have names (all but one)...and the details get jumbled or left out as she revisits and remembers in a stream of consciousness ode to, well, Lust--which becomes a sort of cautionary tale (sections told in second person).

They're all different...But it's like faces; you're never really surprised.
Still, you're not sure what to expect.

But she's not talking about faces here.

"The Break-up"
----------------
Meet Liz and Owen. They have been together for 8 months and seem to be living together in a small apartment in the city. It's hot. The air, the darkness, it is a Friday night in July.

Roused from their bed by a ringing phone--Liz answers and then lets Owen know that Tim is coming over.

Tim is Owen's best friend and is apparently in the throngs of a bad break-up. He's drunk and walking the streets. When he finally makes it there the snatches of a story begin about Sonia.

Sonia and Tim and there not so perfectness but "Nothing's perfect." (Thanks, Tim)

Liz listens as they sit in the dark. Owen doesn't really pay attention to the bleeding drunk heart of his best friend.

She was trying to keep him talking.
One of her theories was that people should talk all the time.

We find out that Tim was ready to propose, and he puts his anger squarely on Liz. This is how things go. After Own walks Tim out we find out that he is going to try to get Sonia back and had a warning for Owen:

"He also told me to watch out with you."

"What do you think he meant by that?"

"The Knot"
-----------
Told in four tiny sections we get to follow a couple as they are Happy (delusional), Fighting (facing reality), Apart (still mad), then finally Recovering.

Peter and Cynthia do a great job at representing a lot in just five pages. It's heavy in dialogue and realizations. It may be my favorite of the ones I've read by Susan Minot.

Sparse but filled with truth.

"The Man Who Would Not Go Away"
-------------------------------------------
Rounding out her collection, is a story that seems to happen mostly in the head of our narrator. She is not crazy, her thoughts are based on reality. She's coping. She is trying to "get over" a man.

Still, traces of him remained. At first, it was his name. I avoided the people he knew.

Very relate-able. I would say. Kinda gave me the same feeling as that episode of Sex and the City when Carrie keeps seeing Big after their first break-up. My heart was saying, "I hear ya, sister."

She seems him everywhere. Or the energy of him is everywhere. The restaurant--she feels she is sitting in the same chair she sat in one time with "the man." He materializes in other people when she goes to the movies (to escape).

When she meets a guy at a club, he happens to be a guy she only knew through "the man." So when he taps her on the shoulder she feels herself blush as she realizes who he is.

This is not what I expected. This is not what I thought he'd leave behind.

When she is finally able to find some time alone, not bombarded by the ghosts of "him" she realizes that she really never knew him at all.

My favorite lines come near the beginning of the story: Uncertainty is like a drug. It quickens the blood, wears on the nerves.

~~J