Wednesday, August 17, 2022

Short Story Wednesday "Girls, at Play, Celeste Ng


 From the Bellevue Literary Review

 “This is how we play the game: 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.”

A group of eighth grade girls, from the working people side of the tracks, play a game at recess where they leave themselves open to the desires of their male classmates. When a new girl, Grace, comes to town, she is a year younger so they abandon the game to help Grace with her new school. She is a willing novice to things like stealing, makeup, sneaking into adult movies. There is a constant acceleration of what they teach her, but most of it at her request. But for a long time, they refuse to show her how to play the "game."When she insists, there is a Lord of the Flies scene where the girls initiate her. This is a fairly brutal story, not so much that anything too frightening happens, but in how badly the girls behave. Ng is the author of LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE which had a fair share of brutality too. Ng is a skilled writer and the story won a Pushcart Prize. 

Jerry House

Kevin Tipple 

TracyK 

George Kelley 

Todd Mason

11 comments:

Todd Mason said...

Thanks! Rood work on Ng's part...I have probably read more tweets-text from her than fiction wordage so far (too easy these days).

This does seem to have taken as its jumping-off point the kind Shock Horror Bad-Girl stories too often floated by "news" organizations for their Shock Horror, such as the rather difficult-to-achieve outside of perfervid fantasy "rainbow parties"...snapping wristlets has been mentioned in similar reports. But teens being people, and what people will Get Up To...

Jerry House said...

Where were all these sexual games when I was a teenager? **sigh**

Margot Kinberg said...

This sounds like a very tough story, Patti, even if it's not what you'd call gruesome. Still, it also sounds, sadly, realistic.

George said...

Diane's Book Club read LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE.

Jeff Meyerson said...

Tough indeed.

I finished the Emma Straub collection and I'm nearly done with the CWA collection of "music" stories, edited by Martin Edwards, MUSIC OF THE NIGHT. Frankly, it's no more than OK and there were no outstanding stories that I'd pass on as a must-read. The Straub was better. Also reading John Varley's 1976 collection of SF stories, THE PERSISTENCE OF VISION. I'm read the time travel story "Air Raid" before, but hadn't read the others before.

One thing - short story collections, new and old, keep coming in here, so I doubt I'll run out of new material to read.

pattinase (abbott) said...

Tried to listen to the Straub but that is not the way to read it. THe stories ran together too much. I will get the print version.
We read Little Fires too.
Very tough indeed.
We did play Post Office at my sixth grade graduation party. My postman turned out to be in fourth grade.

Jeff Meyerson said...

Also Spin the Bottle and Seven Minutes in Heaven.

Really dating myself here.

Todd Mason said...

I guess "Rood" is Too Early In the Morning typing for "good" with a hint of "rude"...

"Air Raid" has always struck me as easily the worst story in THE PERSISTENCE OF VISION...but a very popular one, for reasons I have difficulty fathoming (its simplicity, perhaps? That it's the only story in the book about how The Future Is Even Worse?). Of course, the sex in the stories might've put some off at the time, among other aspects...and the intergenerational affair at the heart of the title story was a lot easier for me to accept without some serious questions at age 13 than it has been since.

Not too much not-quite-sex at semi-public parties till HS for my cohort (no one was too keen on having me join it, either, Jerry), but of course Our Youth Ran Wild and I was among rather wealthy kids in private school by then (one of the least affluent present, as someone solidly of the upper middle class). Hence therefore also not too much of the soul-crushed society-defiance Ng limns in her story. Or, at least, not the same flavor.

TracyK said...

I don't think I would care for this story. Sometimes mental abuse bothers me more than physical violence. I may try LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE someday, although that also sounds challenging.

Todd Mason said...

I'd also suggest the older girls (who are treated in the story at times as if they are a hive mind, part of the point) are trying their best to save the new girl from some of what they've experienced. (One could almost take the POV character for a multiple personality, if one was so inclined.) The details on how a motherless girl raised by a military father (perhaps even more than most stripes of fathers) would not ever have dealt too much with cosmetics or even (though this seems a bit odd it hasn't been addressed at all at home, also believable) menarche (how to cope with the latter, also a tough conversation, due to lack of personal experience among other things, for most fathers, I suspect).

Todd Mason said...

My very late and somewhat eccentric SSW:
https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2022/08/ssw-green-girl-by-mickey-spillane-and.html