Grade: D+

Ugh, I hate writing reviews for short stories as I always have a hard time finding things to say. Give me a 400 paged book any time. At least there would be a lot for me to tear into. As short as this is–14 pages–I find that I’m more likely to pick on the little things like dialogue tags. Good god, the dialogue tags! There are so many of them. Observe: “he commented,” “he beamed,” “she laughed,” “I explained,” “he pontificated,” “he pleaded”. Sometimes there are two or three of them in one paragraph! Oddly enough, it’s an eye-opener for me. A good friend who edits my work tells me I too use too many dialogue tags, so now I watch for them like a hawk. I’m a lot more aware of them now, where as before, I used to ignore them. Thanks, Good Friend! Well, enough about me. [By Golly, Tim’s right! I do try to make everything about me!] This short story is more in the vein of Shirley Jackson (if she wrote for Penthouse Letters) with a dash of Harold Robbins [written by a fifteen year old girl trying to sound like a grown-up] than an erotic romance. Actually, it’s a straight up erotica. The sex is hot enough, though it took a little too long to get there (and it’s only 14 pages), and I found myself rolling my eyes on more than one occasion, mostly because of the cheesy dialogue or the overwrought prose. It would have been lurid and scandalous if it were written in the 80’s, I’m sure, especially since there is a dated feel to it. Honestly, I was picturing the characters walking around in my head with heavy-duty shoulder pads and overly teased bangs, carrying around fluted glasses of sham-pag-nee. Ironically, this short story’s one saving grace is its very own cheese factor and luckily for the author, I have a high tolerance for cheese.

Our heroine, Mrs. No-Name Farrow, is the bored housewife of a famous cardiologist. She has a part-time job because she “couldn’t bear spending the day with a vaccuum cleaner in one hand and the remote control in the other,” but she is mostly a stay-at-home mom. She takes care of the kids, cooks and cleans, and is expected by her husband to perform her marital duties in the bedroom (this is why rich women hire hot, young gardeners and pool boys). Unfortunately for her husband, she would rather go to sleep than play slap-tickle with him because her sex drive is on the outs. Her appropriately condescending twat of a husband tells her she’s just having “feminine issues” and that she should consult her OB-GYN for a check-up. Her gyno, in turn, refers her to a “special women’s clinic” that specializes in “feminine issues”. The place is called Bella Fiore, which is Italian for “beautiful flower,” and caters to bored rich women who want to feel good about themselves so they can express themselves sexually to their spouses. It’s like a spa, a massage parlor, and a whorehouse rolled into one. There’s a Dr. Ruth type running around, spouting off psycho babble to make this place sound more legit and therapeutic than it really is, but really, it’s just a whorehouse for women. Period. Ain’t nothing wrong with that. Our heroine gets a lot of bang for her buck, then goes home happily to her husband. Oh, and there’s a tweeeeest, which I totally called from a mile away.

My biggest issue with this story after reading it—other than the numerous dialogue tags—is the complete and utter non-hesitation on the part of the wife to cheat on her husband. I’m not one to rail about preserving the sanctity of marriage, as I think marriage is a sham (but that’s my own personal issue), but I am big on commitment. The heroine of this story doesn’t hesitate to cheat on her husband and what bothers me is that she may not think it’s cheating because it’s supposed to be “therapy”. Lady, if you put a man’s penis in your mouth and he’s not your husband, that’s cheating and I don’t care about the circumstances. From what I read, nothing warranted the wife’s blatant disregard of her commitment to her husband. Sure, the dude is dismissive, patronizing, a pontificating dickhead, and has no time whatsoever to pay attention to his wife and children, but that just means you gotta sit him down and say, “Look, if you don’t pay more attention to me, I’m going to hire a hot gardener who will screw my brains out.” What bothers me about these two is the complete and utter lack of communication. Neither of them are sympathetic characters who are vaguely human. They seemed like characters in a bad soap opera who are merely spouting off cheesy dialogue as fed to them by the writer. For example, the wife takes the time to describe the interior of “Bella Fiore,” yet neglects to show us how she felt about the ramifications of her cheating on her husband. We see no hesitation on her part, no internal wrangling, no “Oh my God, what am I doing?,” but she doesn’t hesitate to let us know the play-by-play of what is being done to her sexually. If we were given more insight into her mind instead of overly long descriptions of the clinic as well as a rambling exposition on how the place was built, then perhaps we would have been able to understand this character’s motivations. As it is, eh, I’ve got nothing.

All and all, it is a serviceable piece of erotica, even though it does take its sweet time getting to the “erotic” part. It’s just another bored housewife cliché with a twist. As a whole, it doesn’t quite work for me, although there are some juicy parts. I would have liked to see more of an interaction between the husband and wife, so I could have understood the dynamic between the two of them. Did the husband cheat on his wife? Did he beat her? What would justify the wife cheating on him with no hesitation? In Judy Blume’s Wifey, for example, we understand why the female protagonist Sandy Pressman cheats on her husband with an old high school boyfriend, even though we don’t necessarily condone it. Or maybe I’m just pissed because it’s only 14 pages and there isn’t a lot to dig into. Which brings me to my point (yes, I have one). As short as this story is, it should have packed more of a punch. Make us hunger for more. Make us wonder what will happen to the characters after the story. You don’t want your readers thinking, “Thank God that’s over” after only 14 pages, do you?

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 9th, 2006 at 10:17 am and is filed under Books, Grade: D, Short Pieces: Erotica. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.