“So are you,” she shoots back. And we know she’s right. We’ve seen R-rated movies dozens of times, and somehow Grace guesses this, and we feel like hypocrites, and we can’t say no.
This is honestly getting a bit uncomfortable.
14 Matching Annotations
- Oct 2020
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blreview.org blreview.org
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We are the fallen women of Lakeview Heights Middle.
This phrase just sounds odd, but so real. Like young girls who experience sexual power or anyone really for that matter might see themselves with some more responsibility and hence pushing themselves to think like a full blown adult, when that rational is so far from the truth.
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After a minute she’ll follow him and meet him under the bleachers, far down the field, where the teachers can’t see.
Oh jeeze how old are these poor kids...
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pink means kissing; red means tongue. Green means up your shirt; blue means down his pants. Purple means in your mouth. Black means all the way.
This is starting off to sound rather proactively?
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- Sep 2020
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granta.com granta.com
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If you are reading this story out loud, you may be wondering if that place my ribbon protected was wet with blood and openings, or smooth and neutered like the nexus between the legs of a doll. I’m afraid I can’t tell you, because I don’t know. For these questions and others, and their lack of resolution, I am sorry.
I really don't like the author apologizing to me. It sounds like a mopy ex who is trying to talk to you about their sob story. But with this in mind, it sounds like the Ribbon is a metaphorical thing that people wear. People who have shame specifically, like people who were taken advantage of at a young age sexually or through other malicious means. Not being able to cope or talk to someone about it, which she was clearly afraid of. Led to the ribbon staying on late in life. It made her rather sexualized and at the same time shameless in a sense. Sexuality liberated her but as from what she knew growing up, this further sent her into a spiral of shame until she waited until decades after being with this man to reveal her ultimate secret and sin. She herself is the antagonist and the protagonist as the only person in the end beginning of the conflict and the end is her and her fear of being accepted or being rejected. To her living in a world who truly embodies what she thinks is okay is somewhat scary and unsettling, and by hiding in conformity finds safety. It was honestly a frustrating read but this and how it dodged action by throwing in odd wives tales really solidified this point too. That our main character is probably alive and doing the context of living in the story between 1970 and 1980 I'd say. Because there is no mention of men and war, but also because it references parents marrying even young for their generation. So when I think of the green ribbon I think of like an old Victorian style ribbon that is old and almost out of date, not something slick and shinny but something that is fashionably strange and in many ways objectified like a gift or a present. In this context it's the opposite. You are the present that's opened decades later and frankly, emotionally it's the same thing. You wait too long to deal with your own emotional turmoil and it just doesn't feel the same when you waited so long to find your solution.
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My body rebels wildly, still throbbing with the memories of pleasure but bucking hard against betrayal.
I'm so confused as to what the ribbon is or does, it really makes getting this far not feel rewarding.
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They do have to make a cut, but not across my stomach as I had feared. The doctor cuts down, and I feel little, just tugging, though perhaps it is what they have given me.
This writing is honestly getting a little frustrating. "They do not have to make a cut..." and then they make the cut. It's just frustrating because it's written in past tense as if she is trying to tell us what happened but as if it's happening at the same time and the flow of the story just isn't right - right now for this to sound good, and this is a trend of the overall story that I can't get past.
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The bow is still tight. * There is a story I love about a pioneer husband and wife killed by wolves.
Okay now I'm a bit lost, does the bow stand for this sex crazed person's sanity? Because topics just got switched up really quickly.
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Please, I say. Please don’t.
Does this woman actually ever take off her bow? I get it, its symbolic but it feels a little drawn out at this point. They're literally having sex at this point and I can't wrap my head around the further meaning of the ribbon, as if it's like the reverse of unraveling a gift?
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The moral of that story, I think, is that being poor will kill you.
Sounds like an American short story to me!
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She told me to sit in my chair – a child-sized thing, only built for me – until my father returned. But no, I had seen the toes, pale and bloody stumps, mixed in among those russet tubers. One of them, the one that I had poked with the tip of my index finger, was cold as ice, and yielded beneath my touch the way a blister did. When I repeated this detail to my mother, the liquid of her eyes shifted quick as a startled cat.
As a person with ADHD its interesting when I get a little lost and fly to a new section where you think the father is interrogating the couple but then the context is easy to fall back to and find. I like that, makes having to read the same passage like 4x over much simpler.
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– No. Something in the lake muscles and writhes out of the water, and then lands with a splash. He turns at the sound. – A fish, he says. – Sometime, I tell him, I will tell you the stories about this lake and her creatures. He smiles at me, and rubs his jaw. A little of my blood smears across his skin, but he doesn’t notice, and I don’t say anything.
I feel like something absolutely bad is about to happen. The remarks about removing the ribbon and asking for more but not doing anything creates a sense of tension. As the tension concludes a new stirring event takes shape and that is how horror can be produced.
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paramour that he told her family and they had her hauled her off to a sanitarium.
Am I reading this right? A sanatorium, like where people were quarantined for Tuberculosis and treated?
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I am beautiful. I have a pretty mouth. I have a breast that heaves out of my dresses in a way that seems innocent and perverse all at the same time. I am a good girl, from a good family.
All I can say is, "Sure you are!"
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