I enjoyed your story! Also just finished Rejection, which I also liked. Your comment that all the characters are basically in hell is interesting. Alienation seems to be a big theme.
"It’s straightforward, brisk, it attempts to tell actual stories" pretty much sums up your approach. I'm here for it! Enjoyed the story, and your insightful afterwords.
Good story Naomi! I really like the way you move through time, I like the chaos of their careers, I like Julia's coldness - how she hits on a certain coldness and that becomes the trajectory of the rest of her life. Look forward to your sharing more stories here!
Wow. This is such a clinical, deadpan piece. You captured them almost perfectly.
When I was young, before I joined the working world I found characters like Julia and her "friends" fascinating.
Then I worked with them, fucked some, dated others, found I was related to some at family gatherings, funerals, Christmas parties, and reunions.
When they bothered to have children, sometimes I sat with them at work late, or on a date, and watched the expressions wash over their faces when the nanny (or sometimes their mother) texted photos--their child's first something, or recital, or birthday.
Surprise first, then joy, vulnerability, before the inevitable shuttering.
Without exception they have been hollow, unhappy, banal, and uninteresting.
How could it be otherwise? They don't have any interests unrelated to career progress or a promotion. They live life like a series of to-do lists. They don't know how to have relationships. They have no idea why they want. As illustrated by this story they don't even know how to make, and more importantly, how to be, friends.
They don't even enjoy their accomplishments. Again how could they? All that effort and at the end to have accomplished nothing. Nothing changes over the course of their lives. They start out hollow and wind up the same way. Unable to fix or improve anything for the people they consider powerless.
Charlie Munger once said he wished everyone could experience what it is like to be rich. So they can see how powerless rich people actually are.
Sometimes when I think about these relationships, I zoom out a little. This story resurfaced familiar musings.
All these powerful people, powerless to improve anything. Education, child hunger, mental health in adolescents and young adults, the orderly operation of our governments, the continuing destruction of our habitats.
How could they be anything other than hollow, unhappy, and depressed? How could they be anything other than prisoners to their soullessness?
It’s been a little while since I read The Feminist, but doesn’t that character go through a phase of hiring sex workers (and feeling predictably miserable about it)?
You're right, he does, but it's just one paragraph. "He tries paying for sex, hoping more experience will give him confidence, and while he is strongly pro–sex workers’ rights, he still resents having to pay for something that someone, somewhere, ought to offer enthusiastically. Even while having sex, it comes freighted with so many expectations, such intense anticipation of disappointment, that he doesn’t enjoy it much. To finish he silently imagines the woman is pregnant and that his more potent semen is killing off the other man’s embryo and displacing it with his own. He tips well."
I don't totally believe this though--like, there's a physicality to being with a woman, even if you're paying them. Sex workers often do a pretty good job of convincing their clients that they're having a good time, too. That's quite literally the job! The experience would make a lot more impact on his psyche than this, I think.
I enjoyed your story! Also just finished Rejection, which I also liked. Your comment that all the characters are basically in hell is interesting. Alienation seems to be a big theme.
I enjoyed this (and although it's cliched, it made me think about my relationships with some of my own female friends.)
Haven’t read yet but excited to see you’re posting stories! Reading shortly.
"It’s straightforward, brisk, it attempts to tell actual stories" pretty much sums up your approach. I'm here for it! Enjoyed the story, and your insightful afterwords.
Good story Naomi! I really like the way you move through time, I like the chaos of their careers, I like Julia's coldness - how she hits on a certain coldness and that becomes the trajectory of the rest of her life. Look forward to your sharing more stories here!
Wow. This is such a clinical, deadpan piece. You captured them almost perfectly.
When I was young, before I joined the working world I found characters like Julia and her "friends" fascinating.
Then I worked with them, fucked some, dated others, found I was related to some at family gatherings, funerals, Christmas parties, and reunions.
When they bothered to have children, sometimes I sat with them at work late, or on a date, and watched the expressions wash over their faces when the nanny (or sometimes their mother) texted photos--their child's first something, or recital, or birthday.
Surprise first, then joy, vulnerability, before the inevitable shuttering.
Without exception they have been hollow, unhappy, banal, and uninteresting.
How could it be otherwise? They don't have any interests unrelated to career progress or a promotion. They live life like a series of to-do lists. They don't know how to have relationships. They have no idea why they want. As illustrated by this story they don't even know how to make, and more importantly, how to be, friends.
They don't even enjoy their accomplishments. Again how could they? All that effort and at the end to have accomplished nothing. Nothing changes over the course of their lives. They start out hollow and wind up the same way. Unable to fix or improve anything for the people they consider powerless.
Charlie Munger once said he wished everyone could experience what it is like to be rich. So they can see how powerless rich people actually are.
Sometimes when I think about these relationships, I zoom out a little. This story resurfaced familiar musings.
All these powerful people, powerless to improve anything. Education, child hunger, mental health in adolescents and young adults, the orderly operation of our governments, the continuing destruction of our habitats.
How could they be anything other than hollow, unhappy, and depressed? How could they be anything other than prisoners to their soullessness?
I used to wonder why we keep making more of them.
And then I read this:
https://www.businessinsider.com/burnout-women-executives-hustle-culture-girlboss-work-life-balance-2024-8
Filling empty souls has always been lucrative.
It’s been a little while since I read The Feminist, but doesn’t that character go through a phase of hiring sex workers (and feeling predictably miserable about it)?
You're right, he does, but it's just one paragraph. "He tries paying for sex, hoping more experience will give him confidence, and while he is strongly pro–sex workers’ rights, he still resents having to pay for something that someone, somewhere, ought to offer enthusiastically. Even while having sex, it comes freighted with so many expectations, such intense anticipation of disappointment, that he doesn’t enjoy it much. To finish he silently imagines the woman is pregnant and that his more potent semen is killing off the other man’s embryo and displacing it with his own. He tips well."
I don't totally believe this though--like, there's a physicality to being with a woman, even if you're paying them. Sex workers often do a pretty good job of convincing their clients that they're having a good time, too. That's quite literally the job! The experience would make a lot more impact on his psyche than this, I think.