Two years ago, I was on Twitter in my apartment on a Saturday, trying to leave my place to go grocery shopping, when a tweet about a short story called "Cat Person" caught my attention, and I clicked through and started reading and could not stop. I stayed glued to my couch until I'd read the whole thing. So, apparently, did the rest of the internet.
A similar thing happened this last weekend. Different story, different author, different publication, but for the first time since "Cat Person," I experienced that same couch-lock once I was two or three paragraphs into it. I had planned to be doing something else; those plans went out the window. The story this time was called "The Feminist," and here's the first paragraph:
IF YOU ASK HIM WHERE he went to high school, he likes to boast that, actually, he went to an all-girls school. That was sort of trueâhe was one of five males at a progressive private school that had gone co-ed just before heâd enrolled. People always reply: Ooh la la, lucky guy! You mustâve had your pick. Which irritates him, because it implied women would only date him if there were no other options, and because he hadnât dated anyone in high school. One classmate junior year had a crush on him, but he wasnât attracted to her curvaceous body type so felt justified in rejecting her, just as heâd been rejected many times himself.
Like "Cat Person," this story is about the politics of intimacy, about the weird unspeakabilities of sex in an age when everyone is talking about sex, about the way values and desires can contradict each other in a way that is psychologically warping. It is a story about unfairness and rage in the sexual space, and about the minefield of going to friends for advice, who come at problems with their own damage, their own history of unfairness, their own rage. It's a story about how good people can turn very darkâhow we all have that inside us, that possibility for falling into the abyss.
If it sounds like I'm generalizing because I don't want to give anything away, that's exactly what I'm doing. "The Feminist" hasn't gone viral like "Cat Person" did, but it deserves to. Some people are tweeting about it, at least.
"Yâall if you have not read this story what are you even doing with your life," the author Carmen Maria Machado tweeted. In response, someone who clearly had just read the story said, "WOW......" Someone else said, "I truly canât get over it."
The author of the story is Tony Tulathimutte. After he tweeted it out, he got responses like:
I wasn't expecting this to be a horror story damn
and
this made me feel sickkkkkkkk whew what a good read
and
Thank you for writing this story. I am trying to get all my reading buddies to read this.
Me too. Here I am now trying to get all my Slog buddies to read this. Go fill up your mind and then come back and tell me what you think of it in the comments.
