Bad Behavior: Stories by Mary Gaitskill Read Free Book Online Page B

awful!”
    He rolled over on his stomach. “See. I told you. You’re not a masochist.”
    “Shit! That wasn’t erotic in the least. I don’t come when I stub my toe either.”
    In the ensuing silence it occurred to her that she was angry, and had been for some time.
    “I’m tired,” she said. “I want to go to bed.” She walked out of the room.
    He sat up. “Well, we’re making decisions, aren’t we?”
    She reentered the room. “Where are we supposed to sleep, anyway?”
    He showed her the guest room and the fold-out couch. She immediately began dismantling the couch with stiff, angry movements. Her body seemed full of unnatural energy and purpose. She had, he decided, ruined the weekend, not only for him but for herself. Her willful, masculine, stupid somethingness had obstructed their mutual pleasure and satisfaction. The only course of action left was hostility. He opened his grandmother’s writing desk and took out a piece of paper and a Magic Marker. He wrote the word “stupid” in thick black letters. He held it first near her chest, like a placard, and then above her crotch. She ignored him.
    “Where are the sheets?” she asked.
    “How’d you get so tough all of a sudden?” He threw the paper on the desk and took a sheet from a dresser drawer.
    “We’ll need a blanket too, if we open the window. And I want to open the window.”
    He regarded her sarcastically. “You’re just keeping yourself from getting what you want by acting like this.”
    “You obviously don’t know what I want.”
    They got undressed. He contemptuously took in the mascular, energetic look of her body. She looked more like a boy than a girl, in spite of her pronounced hips and round breasts. Her short, spiky red hair was more than enough to render her masculine. Even the dark bruise he had inflicted on her breast and the slight burn from his lighter failed to lend her a more feminine quality.
    She opened the window. They got under the blanket on the fold-out couch and lay there, not touching, as though they really were about to sleep. Of course, neither one of them could.
    “Why is this happening?” she asked.
    “You tell me.”
    “I don’t know. I really don’t know.” Her voice was small and pathetic.
    “Part of it is that you don’t talk when you should, and then you talk too much when you shouldn’t be saying anything at all.”
    In confusion, she reviewed the various moments they had spent together, trying to classify them in terms of whether or not it had been appropriate to speak, and to rate her performance accordingly. Her confusion increased. Tears floated on her eyes. She curled her body against his.
    “You’re hurting my feelings,” she said, “but I don’t think you’re doing it on purpose.”
    He was briefly touched. “Accidental pain,” he said musingly. He took her head in both hands and pushed it between his legs. She opened her mouth compliantly. He had hurt her after all, he reflected. She was confused and exhausted, and at this instant, anyway, she was doing what he wanted her to do. Still, it wasn’t enough. He released her and she moved upward to lie on top of him, resting her head on his shoulder. She spoke dreamily. “I would do anything with you.”
    “You would not. You would be disgusted.”
    “Disgusted by what?”
    “You would be disgusted if I even told you.”
    She rolled away from him. “It’s probably nothing.”
    “Have you ever been pissed on?”
    He gloated as he felt her body tighten.
    “No.”
    “Well, that’s what I want to do to you.”
    “On your grandmother’s rug?”
    “I want you to drink it. If any got on the rug, you’d clean it up.”
    “Oh.”
    “I knew you’d be shocked.”
    “I’m not. I just never wanted to do it.”
    “So? That isn’t any good to me.”
    In fact, she was shocked. Then she was humiliated, and not in the way she had planned. Her seductive puffball cloud deflated with a flaccid hiss, leaving two drunken,