Larry Donfrey of Larry Donfrey Realty stood near Roosten in just a
swimsuit. Donfrey was a good guy. Good but flawed. Not that bright.
Always tan. Yeow, what was his Boy of Summer? Surfer? Lifeguard?
Partial Nudist? Was Donfrey attractive? Cute? Would the bidders
consider Donfrey cuter than him, Al Roosten? Oh, how should he know?
Did he like guys? Was he some kind of expert judge on the cuteness of
guys? No, he didn’t like guys and never had. There had been a period in
junior high, yes, when he had been somewhat worried that he might
perhaps like guys, and had constantly lost in wrestling, because,
instead of concentrating on his holds he was always mentally assessing
whether his thing was hurting inside his cup because he was popping a
mild pre-bone or because the tip was sticking out an airhole, and once
he was almost sure he’d popped a mild pre-bone when he found his face
pressed against Tom Reed’s hard abs, which smelled of coconut, but,
after practice, obsessing about this in the woods, he realized that he
sometimes popped a similar mild pre-bone when the cat sat on his groin
in a beam of sun, which proved he didn’t have sexual feelings for Tom,
since he knew for sure he didn’t have sexual feelings for the cat,
since he’d never even heard that described as being possible. And from
that day on, whenever he found himself wondering whether he liked guys
he always remembered walking exultantly in the woods after the
liberating realization that he was no more attracted to guys than to
cats, just happily kicking the tops off mushrooms in a spirit of
tremendous relief.
--George Saunders, in
The New Yorker
read the rest here:
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/02/02/090202fi_fiction_saunders
Comments (4)
Decent read.
Cheater. I think you have lost your confidence that you would post something someone else wrote. Is it at least like something you wish you had written?
I came here happy cause Kyle was posting, and then as I went on reading, a smile came to myself. Funny, Kyle. Very good. And a cat too, "always liked his cat posts" I thought. I can still see you burying that dead cat in the rain. I thought of you recently when I wrote this http://www.xanga.com/andyglasser/694088893/kittens-and-50th-anniversaries/ because of the cat (thought didn't possess the initiative you had). The cat is ok, by the way, I've seen it around since. Then when I told my friend, Lee about the cat he relayed a story to me about pulling a dead cat, that just kept getting pummled by cars, off the road, once while out on a run, and again, I thought about Kyle and his empathy for a dead cat (I don't know whether that story was true, but I liked it anyway).
BAM! George Saunders? I believed in you, man.
Ok. I'm over it. Going to read the rest now. No, seriously, thanks for the recommendation. It should be a compliment to you that in order to get me to read a published author you have to pretend it's yours.
I'm back, and I have to say there is an art to picking an excerpt, and you did a good job. I'm afraid, though, that I suffer from too much of an inclination towards thinking that Al Roosten could be me. It was a good story, just depressing really. But at least I have my daydreams.
Although a good story, I'm also disappointed that StegoKyle did not himself, blog.
Are you married yet?? Divorced? WHAT????