"Sexy" - Jhumpa Lahiri - Interpreter of Maladies
Most of the men in Interpreter of Dreams, Jhumpa Lahiri’s wonderful 1999 debut collection, are losers. This tracks. Here’s a scene in the story “Sexy” where 22 y/o protagonist Miranda is out on a romantic afternoon w/ a guy named Dev, who is in his 40s and married w/ kids, and who first approached her at that most “definitely a spot to pick up chicks” of locations, a department store cosmetics counter:
In the middle of the room was a transparent bridge, so that they felt as if they were standing in the center of the world.
[…]
Even though they were thirty apart, Dev said, they’d be able to hear each other whisper.
“I don’t believe you,” Miranda said.
[…]
“Go ahead,” he urged, walking backward to his end of the bridge. “Say something.” She watched his lips forming the words; at the same time she heard them so clearly that she felt them under her skin, under her winter coat, so near and full of warmth that she felt herself go hot.
“Hi,” she whispered, unsure of what else to say.
“You’re sexy,” he whispered back.
Sometimes when I write these posts I have some Element of Craft or w/e in mind to talk about. Not the case here. I just think this is hilarious.
Dirty talk is hard. Saying something romantic is hard. We have all messed this up at one point or another. Funniest story I heard recently: Girl tells guy that she likes to be called a “bad girl” during sex, stuff along those lines. Next time they have sex: Guy says “I am disappointed in you.” Very close!! Very close, not quite there, but points for effort my guy!!
“You’re sexy” is not actually a sexy thing to say when you’re whispering across a magic bridge into somebody else’s ear. But “you’re sexy” is what Dev says in this story, and though we the reader know that this is a comically underwhelming thing to say, Miranda does not feel that way. She’s entranced. She goes out and buys lingerie, a cocktail dress, all the trappings of filmic romance. The divergence between how she feels and how we feel creates an expectation or a tension that is eventually resolved when she’s babysitting a friend’s seven-year-old nephew, Rohin.
By this point in the story, Miranda’s relationship with Dev has lost much of its magic; something’s beginning to feel off. And then this babysitting scene:
Rohin put down the almanac. “You’re sexy,” he declared.
“What did you say?”
“You’re sexy.”
Miranda sat down again . . . Rohin probably referred to all women as sexy. He’d probably heard the word on television, or seen it on the cover of a magazine. She remembered the day in the Mapparium, standing across the bridge from Dev. At the time she’d thought she knew what his words meant.
Hearing the same words in the voice of a seven-year-old brings Miranda’s understanding of Dev in line with our own. Dev is a child, selfishly grabbing everything he can from the world, giving nothing back, regurgitating phrases like “you’re sexy” in a callous impersonation of true feeling. Basically, he’s basic. He’s not a hunk or a catch; what seemed like a fascinating personality was just a couple decades of gap. Dev is a loser. He’s deceiving his wife, he has the emotional intelligence and eloquence of a seven-year-old, and—this is the worst part—Miranda fell for it. She’s still grappling with that pain when the story ends—and, because it’s a phenomenal story, so are we.
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