Connie, dangling: Thoughts on Arnold Friend

Having been warned by Ray Bradbury to “stay away from most modern anthologies of short stories, because they’re slices of life. They don’t go anywhere, they don’t have any metaphor,” I spotted an Anthology - that was misshelved, Best of the Century or something like that - when walking from the bathroom back to the desk at the library. I read the intro by Updike, and because every time I looked out the window that winter I saw Amity Gage’s reference to Joyce Carol Oates’ quote “I spend 90% of my time staring out the window" stuck in the bare tree branches outside the library window, I decided to read Where are you going? Where have you been? by Joyce Carol Oates, dedicated to Bob Dylan.

What a helpless, acquiescent tone she finds here, and what a confusing message the dedication becomes when you reach the end and lost in thought flip back through the pages only to notice the dedication and wonder what it means.

A creepy loss of innocence. #Deflowered #MeToo.

Still wondering what the dedication meant - I was associating Dylan and Friend, wondering which real-life ‘Connie’ Dylan abducted, and how Oates knew about it - I found the answer here, and had I not found that extratextual nugget Dylan would have remained in the ‘accused and silent’ pen of #MeToo predators. But having found the answer so innocent, I proceeded to listen to It’s all over now Baby Blue by Bob Dylan but actually liked the first song on that album (Subterranean Homesick Blues)  way, way better.

Strange how the story threatens to be boring: a familiar and toothless conflict (between the propriety of our mothers and the suggestive sexiness of our daughters) tingles harmlessly in my balls - blue, blue balls baby - and gives the impression it will culminate with the mild disobedience of not watching a movie, and instead having a naughty make out that deserves the mock punishment of a soft smack on the ass and a sultry fake pleading “sorry daddy” sometimes found at the beginning of bad pornography. The entire drive-in scene made me wonder if I would leave this story feeling like I read the inspiration for the movie Grease, but No! Not at all.

This is elaborate, necessary, prologue; the story begins when Connie stays home from the barbeque. Oates quickens the pace of her writing by vacillating between chilling curiosity, and easygoing reassurance; it’s not boring at all, very interesting, unfamiliar and quite toothy.  Her beautifully jagged tension dangles like a bungee cord that isn’t being stretched: dangling on suggestion, stretching into pushy; dangling on flirtation, stretching into horniness; dangling on resistance, pushing into acquiescence; dangling on passion, stretching into rape; dangling on danger, stretching into abduction.