To be brutally honest, I'm not that much of a fan of short stories. While I love the idea that they're so short and usually skimping on the details which forces the reader to involve themselves by filling in the gaps themselves, their lack of general length and often poetry-esque denseness makes them incredibly tiring to read. It's like attempting to understand an entire story yet condensed into a few sentences, and very few short stories can truly balance their shortened length, and I believe that Kim Addonizio's Survivors is one of these few.
In this short story, it details what seems to be a 3rd person view of a gay couple's situation who are dying of HIV or potentially AIDS. It isn't directly stated that they have a disease, however the usage of the grim implication that they "were down to their last few T cells" attempts to circumnavigate some of the harshness of the reality that they were most likely going to die. I really enjoy the 2nd part of the sentence, being that they were "arguing over who was going to die first", and not in some cutesy lover's quarrel but rather the opposite, however tinges of their romantic feelings seem to come through in the phrasing of it. Rather they are a parody of a lover's quarrel or actual genuine concern for each other despite the acceptance of their mutual deaths, I'm not sure.
Speaking of sentences, something that sticks out to me is the fact that in this short story, there are only 3 entire sentences, the first one being 21 words, the second one being a whole 98 words, and the final sentence being a whopping 152 words, all with the occasional comma or semicolon or dash to separate clauses. The usage of increasingly long sentences is most likely relative to the jumble of thoughts that an individual is having when confronted with such a situation; one thing leads to the next without ever finishing and eventually it just keeps going and going until it's too much for one person to handle. And deciding whether or not you would die and let your lover suffer alone or to let your lover die and have to watch as they perished, that counts as one of those situations. I don't even think that I could solve it, if I was ever confronted with it. Either way, someone is going to be hurting and in a great deal of emotional pain while the other one suffers through a great deal of physical pain.
At the very end of the short story, it changes perspective to 1st person as the narrator decides that he wishes his lover to die before him, and initially I thought that was a very selfish thing to do, however after reflecting, I just think that the narrator is weak emotionally. His lover is stronger than him; he was the one that survived beatings from his father who "had tried to beat his son's sexual orientation out of him with a belt on several occasions during adolescence". (This by the way makes me incredibly upset, and while I was lucky enough to not be physically beaten during my younger years for my sexuality, I still felt a great deal of the emotional belt across my back as I realized the majority of my family did not accept who I was, and still am today.) The amount of detail that is put in the earlier and middle sections of the story are the indirectly stated emotional trauma that the survivor would have to go through. He doesn't want to take care of the parrot because it would be a constant reminder of his lover. He didn't want to survive his lover because he couldn't handle it emotionally, which in a way still seems quite selfish to me, and the narrator even directly states that after his lover's family pushed him to put away all his things and free the parrot, "he would be completely alone then", but it's not my relationship. I would rather, if my lover wished to die first, I would spare him the immense emotional trauma of living on in the world, but at the same time, death is permanent and people's emotional wounds can heal after time, so he could also live if he wanted to. AGGGHHH, Maybe just having a lover in general isn't a good idea for me ahahaha.
Another important detail that I want to discuss is the parrot that the two lovers share. At first, I thought it was just naught but a caged bird, however it is brought up again towards the end where the narrator describes a hypothetical situation postmortem of himself where his lover would free the bird after putting away all the paintings and knickknacks. The parrot would "join the wild ones he'd heart of, that nested in the palm trees on Delores Street, a whole flock of bright tropical birts apparently thriving in spite of the chilly Bay Area weather" and it's the mention of the chilly weather that ticked me off to the parrot being something more than a simple bird but a metaphor. Parrots can survive colder weather as low as 40 degrees Fahrenheit, however most domestic birds cannot. The parrot is not a single bird but a member of the LGBTQ+ community, flying to other members of the LGBTQ+ community that, despite the cold weather/harsh conditions that they live in, they still thrive.
I mildly think it's ironic that the queer kid in the class (there might be more and probably are but I'm the only one I know of so aye) reflects upon the short story all about a queer relationship, but whatever. I appreciate it for more than it's queerness but rather the moral dilemma that exists when faced with death as well as the quiet moments of their relationship that shine through at times. Overall, a grim yet beautifully written short story.
great, well said...
ReplyDelete