‘Secretary’ by Mary Gaitskill

I recently witnessed a bizarre dogpile in the comments of an Instagram post. A teenage girl had admitted that she didn’t entirely hate being catcalled; adult women pounced on her as if she were a reactionary sleeper agent. Mary Gaitskill would never. ‘Secretary’ recognizes that all too often, young women are forced to reckon with sexuality and subjectivity under less than ideal circumstances. The plot is simple, even archetypal: a lawyer makes advances upon his young secretary; she responds with alternating desire and disgust. While the 2002 film adaptation concludes with a wish fulfilment fantasy, Gaitskill refuses to give her teen protagonist a happy ending; yet she treats her kindly by refusing to castigate or categorize her. James Spader’s movie-star smirk is nowhere to be seen here; we hear more about the lawyer’s hands than we do his face.

Published in Bad Behavior, Simon & Schuster, 1988

‘A Romantic Weekend’ by Mary Gaitskill

“Despite their mutual ill humor, they fornicated again, mostly because they could more easily ignore each other while doing so.”

There’s coruscating irony in Gaitskill’s title, which dawns on the reader as her two characters indulge in a pre-arranged union of consensual sexual violence. Roles and power, however, soon shift, their weekend of sado-masochism rapidly unravelling into discomforting incompatibility. It’s an uncomfortable read at times, with Gaitskill holding a mirror to the reader, forcing us to squirm as we contemplate what it means to offer and take pleasure from sexual encounters when desires are misaligned.

First published in Bad Behavior, Simon & Schuster, 1998; collected in The Granta Book of the American Short Story, Granta Books, 2007

‘A Romantic Weekend’ by Mary Gaitskill

Nobody writes about sex – its passion, pathos and comedy – better than Gaitskill. A man and a woman set off for a planned weekend of sado-masochistic lovemaking. But they barely know each other, and everything goes wrong. They can’t stick to their pre-assigned roles: the supposedly dominant man is needy and petulant, and the supposedly submissive woman is inconveniently assertive. Gaitskill’s wry, benevolent gaze captures every nuance of the shifting power dynamic as the couple fumble towards each other through the exchange of several different kinds of pleasure and pain.

Collected in Bad Behavior, Simon & Schuster, 1998

‘Orchid’ by Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill is one of the best writers alive today and way ahead of her time. I have no doubt if she were a man she’d be as venerated as Philip Roth or Don Delillo. She’s best known for ‘Secretary’ and Bad Behaviour, and she writes about sexual and emotional politics with a bruise-eyed, wary incisiveness like no other. She’s sharp, but tender-hearted. This story stands out because it’s about a not-quite sexual, not-quite romantic relationship between a queer woman and a once-beautiful boy. The scenes between them glow and ache with unspoken regrets and inchoate longing – not for each other, but for the promise of past selves.

First published in Because They Wanted To, Simon & Schuster, 1997

‘A Romantic Weekend’ by Mary Gaitskill

There’s something so human about the brutality in Gaitskill’s short fiction. It’s never cruel for cruelty’s sake, but rather manages to touch at something vulnerable, easily bruised. ‘A Romantic Weekend’ tends to get the short shrift when compared to the collection’s other BDSM-themed story, ‘Secretary’ which was made into a so-so movie with Maggie Gyllenhaal, but it’s ‘Weekend’ that gets to the heart of how we try to please one another, without really knowing why we want them in the first place.

I remember this bit of dialogue so vividly, when the pair are still on the plane, yet to commence the weekend that will be everything but romantic:

“Some old people are beautiful in an unearthly way,” she continued. “I saw this old lady in the drugstore the other day who must’ve been in her nineties. She was so fragile and pretty, she was like a little elf.”

He looked at her and said, “Are you going to start being fun to be around or are you going to be a big drag?”

She didn’t answer right away. She didn’t see how this followed her comment about the old lady. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t think you’re very sexual,” he said. “You’re not the way I thought you were when I first met you.”

She was so hurt by this that she had difficulty answering. Finally, she said, “I can be very sexual or unsexual depending on who I’m with an in what situation. It has to be the right kind of thing. I’m sort of a cerebral person. I think I respond to things in a cerebral way, mostly.”

“That’s what I mean.”

Collected in Bad Behavior, Simon & Schuster, 1998

‘Secretary’, by Mary Gaitskill

Everyone familiar with the film of the same name should read the original story by Mary Gaitskill, whose tense accounts of New York in the 1980s are some of the best I’ve read, the written equivalent of photographer Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency series. Instead of the Hollywood version of ‘Secretary’ with shy but sexy Maggie Gyllenhaal and remote but irresistible James Spader hooking up in a BDSM happy-ever-after, this is entirely more grubby, unfulfilling and realistic. Introverted Debby is persuaded by her despairing family to take a dull job as typist for an unassuming, not particularly successful lawyer, who remains unnamed. When Debby makes a typing mistake, the spanking begins, to her terror and delight. It’s a study in social awkwardness and mutual loneliness with faultless sentences such as this: ‘It felt like he could have put his hand through my rib cage, grabbed my heart, squeezed it a little to see how it felt, then let go’.

(From Bad Behavior, Sceptre, 1988)