October 16th, 2023 - The Choc-Ice Woman

Dear TNY,

Monday.  “The Choc-Ice Woman”. 

And I give no fucks.  I feel no empathy for this woman.  In fact, she’s dead to me.  This story is over 8k words and could be cut down to about a thousand that actually matter.  It would be something like “Hills Like White Elephants”.  Hell, I could probably imply the adultery in such a way that we wouldn’t have to read six thousand words about it.  As the editor, do you think that we will care about the infidelity at this point? After you have ground it into us? This is just more “Cat Person”, but a lighter version. Fucking Christ is this shit bad.  Not the writing, per se. That’s clean enough. It’s the whole point of the story that’s the problem.  Um, Frances, maybe go ahead and stop being a fucking martyr and confront a motherfucker already.  Do something about this shit. Stand up for yourself. But no.  Because you didn’t, we have to read this long ass story about how wronged you were and did nothing about it.  Cool cool cool.  Waste of motherfucking time. Also, way to enable your boy to keep hurting you, year after year. You sure showed him.

Victim literature is THE WORST. Validates terrible behavior in the people that read it. Doesn’t create a realistic picture of humanity.

Oh, on the subject of terrible behavior. To be clear, I don’t think it’s Frances’ fault Frank was cheating. That’s him behaving terribly. Her terrible behavior is not doing a goddamn thing about it and complaining to us CONSTANTLY over the course of this shitheap.

Oh, I really appreciated this line:

God knows who he has slept with, whose genitals he has slithered out of.

What I loved about it was how, in true “Cat Person” fashion, it wouldn’t stand if the sexism flipped its role.  As in:

God knows who she has slept with, whose genitals she slurped into herself.

Could you even imagine if someone wrote that into a story?  Fuck, the whole world would collapse.

To be clear, I believe neither sentence is wrong.  But one over the other is wrong.  Equal opportunity slut-shaming, fuckfaces!  Or none at all!

Anyway, I have better shit to do.

I have a whole beautiful life I’m not telling you about right now and it’s wonderful and fluffy and calming and magical and fuck you, bud, because you don’t deserve to know about it.

Nick

P.S. I doodled on a napkin because I forgot my drawing notebook and I don’t want to think about this story ever again so this is what you are getting; whatever I can reach to end this.