Oh my this was dull. Pointless, too. Also it seemed as if someone who didn’t know anything about a gay person was writing a stereotypical story about a gay person. And not only was this dull and pointless, but it seemed dishonest, too, like bad fan-fiction for an extra in an especially terrible episode of the dreadful series Sex and the City.
It’s been awhile since I’ve done my weekly New Yorker readings because I’ve been back in college working on my English degree (I mean, what ELSE would I be doing), but I also stopped because too many of the New Yorker stories are tepid and filled with overly self-conscious and self-absorbed idiots, like in this story. Nowhere is there any exploration of empathy for another human being, unless we’re supposed to feel something for our narrator here – which we don’t (even the dog just needs the narrator for a floor to sleep on). We even have to deal with the pretentious naming conventions here of N. and Z. By not giving them real names they are just turned into objects, which might be in keeping with how the narrator feels about them, but it does nothing for the reader. Why do we learn next to nothing about N. and Z.?
Give me a story about the disappointed mother who shows up twice, once as the mother, and again as the dog, though I highly doubt the author realized this and it’s a coincidence we have two mothers here. I’m so tired of self-absorbed idiots who have nothing useful tell us about anything except that they were turned on by someone’s uncircumcised dick in an overly bright and dirty club restroom. Who gives a shit? Are we supposed to be impressed that the characters are gay? I’m not. Gay people are human beings and I’m interested in human beings, not stereotypical cardboard cutouts pretending to be gay. How about some real emotion? How about a real, hard look into loss and desire, and passing up an opportunity for fleeting happiness instead of an alcohol fueled journey into Club Banality.
This story is all surface with an ocean of nothingness 1 millimeter below each word. I’d go as far as to say it’s total trash, but not the sort of trash that lingers because it stunk your house up and at least will stick in your memory, but the sort of trash you throw out having never even remembered what it was to begin with. That’s the worst kind because it means absolutely nothing to anybody.