ambivalence: noun – am·biv·a·lence
1 : simultaneous and contradictory attitudes or feelings (such as attraction and repulsion) toward an object, person, or action
2
a: continual fluctuation (as between one thing and its opposite)
b: uncertainty as to which approach to follow
The words ambivalent and ambivalence entered English during the early 20th century in the field of psychology… The prefix ambi- means “both,” and the -valent and -valence parts ultimately derive from the Latin verb valēre, meaning “to be strong.” Not surprisingly, an ambivalent person is someone who has strong feelings on more than one side of a question or issue.
Yes, I know, it’s considered trite and distinctly high-school-freshman to include a dictionary definition of a word in an essay, particularly when it’s a word that’s commonly understood and requires no particular twist to fit the topic. I still thought it was my best choice in this case for two reasons. One, this idea of having strong feelings pulling towards opposite sides is easily visualized as being caught in the middle between two forces, however they may be labeled: daughter/hooker, father/pig, go/stay, search/ignore, read/avoid.
The other reason for my admittedly less than perfect choice is that it let me avoid starting with the actual opening paragraph of the story, that paragraph being:
On Wednesday mornings the father hoists someone else’s
daughter onto his naked lap
bends someone else’s daughter over the press board motel desk
flips someone else’s daughter onto her skinny back
does not think about his own
will not think about his own.
His own is younger than this one
But not by much
not by enough.
His own is a junior at an all-girls prep school, an honor roll student, a varsity field hockey player. He should be so proud. He should tell this one how proud.
This one likes banana daiquiris and smoking meth off shiny foil squares and giving head.
Upon further reflection.
It’s possible that he shouldn’t, in fact, tell this one. It’s also possible that he is not, in fact, so proud of his own at all. He’ll get around to considering this.
I don’t consider myself a prude, not really, but this seemed to be a tacky way to open this year’s Pushcart anthology. I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it had this been the second piece in the book, but given the (very possibly unwarranted) significance I place on the first piece as a bellwether, and that image of this middle-aged man with a teenage daughter bending someone else’s daughter over a pressboard motel desk struck me as particularly crude. Silly as it may sound, that opening is why I initially hated this story, took a dim view of the next few pieces, and made me ambivalent about continuing this annual Pushcart Read.
It’s a good thing I took some time to think about it, because it’s actually a pretty effective paragraph.
I think of all the times I’ve read about stories that teach us how to read them in their first lines. The typographic setting of some of the lines, mixing lyric with narrative, gives us increased license, beyond the usual scope of literary short fiction, to connect imagery, to read between the lines, to make inferences. To over-read, my favorite pastime.
And of course it introduces the primary ambivalence of the piece: a man caught between images of the teenage hooker he plays with every Wednesday afternoon (in a motel in Pennsylvania Dutch country, a brilliant setting) and the image of his bright and shining teenage daughter who would never, ever be treated in such a way. There are other ambivalences. Dad could have searched harder for his runaway wife, but didn’t; he could be more attentive to his daughter, but isn’t; daughter seems devoted to her boyfriend, but recognizes he’s a dolt.
“But not enough” is a constant refrain of the piece. We could be so much better; we want to be better, but we don’t want it enough. Melanie Safka sang it decades ago: “We’re only putting in a nickel to get rid of a lot that’s wrong.” It seems to me the father is doing a little fake self-absolution by his half-admissions, which lead to no change.
The story intercuts Dad’s narrative POV with the daughter’s, and we find she is the upper-middle-class suburban version of the teenager Dad is bending over the pressboard desk, though Dad is unaware of it:
She has study hall after this, fifty minutes where she could be in any library on campus. Honor system for honor students: the school prides itself on its liberality. It’ll only take her ten to walk down the delivery road behind the cafeteria to the back entrance of the campus, where he’ll be waiting. The interior of his Volvo smells like old beer and dollar-store air freshener and sometimes, now, her. Her father approves of the safety rating.
Notice the names in the piece. There’s Samantha, the “undereducated tweaker who likes sucking cock.” She gets a name. Father doesn’t get a name. Neither does Daughter. Nor the absent, but oh-so-present, Mother. It’s a perverse inversion of importance, who gets names. Or maybe it’s an exact rendition of who is the most honest, the most true to herself. Or an indictment of this family, which could be any family, not unique at all.
The ending paragraph echoes the opening, using the same lyric structure and laying out, one last time, the two-sidedness of both Father and Daughter:
He doesn’t know that just before settling into the front row in Environmental Science his daughter was running from a Volvo where she let a feckless twat hike her skirt above her waist and do the things that girls like her are not supposed to want to do
but do
but do.
If he knew he would care, but not enough. His daughter is smart, his daughter is careful, his daughter is close to disappeared herself.
Not close enough.
Plastic straws and paper bags, horseshoes and hypodermics. Samantha picks her way across the asphalt in what looks, from where he sits, like a pair of bright pink sandals. It’s too cold for her feet to be so bare. If he cared enough he would tell her to be careful of people like him. She’s someone’s daughter, after all.
I’m glad I gave myself time to get over my initial snit and actually read the story before me. I still wish it wasn’t the lead-off piece, but maybe I’m more of a prude than I want to admit.
* * *
- Jake Weber’s post on Workshop Heretic takes a literary look at the story.
A Just Recompense 
I watched ten minutes of the HBO show Euphoria and went running from it. I don’t care that the actors are over 18. They’re playing kids, and highly sexualized kids at that. There’s no justification for it by saying this is what kids are like now or that you’re looking at real social issues. Putting teen girls in sexy situations that appeal to the most lurid drives in older men has a lot of work to do to justify itself. At some point, when it takes up as much real estate in a story as this does, that’s really what the story is about.
I’m going to do a post about it, but from a totally different angle, one that more or less looks past the naked meth-whore teen-ness of the story.
I read your comment via email (which only gives me the name of the post and the first couple of sentences, in this case the definition of ambivalence) and had absolutely no idea what story you were referring to. Naked meth-whore teen-ness? What story was that? It was less than two weeks ago, but I’d completely forgotten the story – despite the fact that it was a big reason I almost passed up on Pushcart this year. That forgetability, in spite of the attempt at sensationalism,says more about the story than any analysis.
I’m looking forward to your other-approach comments with great interest.