"The Weirdos" - Ottessa Moshfegh - Homesick for Another World

There were people I could have called, of course. It wasn't like I was in prison.

On our first date, he bought me a taco, talked at length about the ancients’ theories of light, how it streams at angles to align events in space and time, that it is the source of all information, determines every outcome, how we can reflect it to summon aliens using mirrored bowls of water. […] He told me I was the sign he’d been waiting for and, like looking into a crystal ball, he’d just read a private message from God in the silvery vortex of my left pupil. I disregarded this and was impressed instead by the ease with which he rolled on top of me and slid his hands down the back of my jeans. . .

~ “The Weirdos,” by Ottessa Moshfegh

This weekend I declared my 133,000-word satirical “upmarket” esports novel complete.¹ Or rather, I declared the manuscript complete; now I get to submit 50 query letters over the course of the year to see if it actually goes anywhere.

I mention my novel-in-progress only because I read Homesick for Another World toward the beginning of writing it, back in March 2018. (My Goodreads review: “This is my favorite short story collection since Jesus' Son!!! Ahhhh”) Moshfegh was a huge influence on the novel and everything else I’ve written since. I talked about that a little bit last week.

One thing I didn’t realize until today though was how the narrative structure of Moshfegh stories like “The Weirdos” infiltrated my brain and started popping up in my own work. “The Weirdos” is what I am going to call a “stuck story” in that the protagonist is stuck in a bad situation; the drama revolves around how & whether she will make it out. Moshfegh writes a lot of these stories; it’s an appropriate vibe for our present day, because we are, as a species, stuck in a bad situation—an array of bad situations, in fact—wondering how & whether we will make it out. That was true before the coronavirus pandemic and it is extremely true now.

In “The Weirdos” the narrator is stuck in a relationship with a guy she despises. He doesn’t mistreat her per se, but she hates herself for dating him. Before proceeding you might want to read at least the first (pre-paywall) half of the story via the Paris Review.

I hated my boyfriend but I liked the neighborhood. It was a shadowy, crumbling collection of bungalows and auto-body shops. The apartment complex rose a few stories above it all, and from our bedroom window I could look out and down into the valley, which was always covered in orange haze.

Reading this paragraph is like watching a stock ticker spazz out. She hates her boyfriend… but likes the neighborhood… but the neighborhood sucks… but she has a nice view… but there’s a nasty haze blocking the view…

The battle within this paragraph between positive and negative details matches the narrator’s internal battle, trying to figure out whether she should still be in her relationship or not. On the whole she’s pretty sure she shouldn’t be but there’s some self-destructive urge or willful misery that keeps her involved.

“When I get paid,” he said, dusting the mantel, “I’m going to wear my yellow sports jacket and take you out on the town. Did I show you my yellow sports jacket? I bought it at a vintage boutique,” he said. “It was really expensive. It’s awesome.”

I’d seen it in the closet. It was a contemporary, size 8 woman’s blazer, according to the label.

“Show me,” I said.

He ran, tucking his shirt in, licking his palms to slick his hair back, and came back with it on. His fingers barely poked out from the cuffs. The shoulder pads nearly hit his ears, as he had basically no neck. “What do you think?” he asked.

“You look very nice,” I said, masking my lie with a yawn.

This is funny and sad. Throughout the story Moshfegh keeps cranking up the absurdity, testing what her character will endure. Finally when she applies enough pressure, something snaps. Build up all that energy, it has to escape somewhere.

I keep doing the same thing to my characters in whatever dumb thing I’m working on, and I’m realizing that instinct may have come from this collection! Because a lot of characters in Homesick for Another World (which by the way is worth buying) are trapped in one self-inflicted prison or another… and it’s difficult to forget the atmosphere of rueful absurd misery that accompanies that imprisonment.

“We’re stuck here so we might as well tell jokes.” That’s how it feels to be on Twitter in 2021. That’s how it feels to be one year into a half-hearted national lockdown. In that way Moshfegh captured, in the years leading up to this collection’s 2017 publication, a global moment that seems likely to remain until we at least, like, overthrow capitalism.

There were people I could have called, of course. It wasn’t like I was in prison. I could have walked to the park or the coffee shop or gone to the movies or church. I could have gone to get a cheap massage or my fortune told. But I didn’t feel like calling anyone or leaving the apartment complex. So I sat and watched my boyfriend clip his toenails.

Thanks for reading haha . . . is this post even good? IDK. But it exists and that’s something!!~!

1. I’ve been working on this thing since late 2016, when Miguel Lopez, my editor at Rolling Stone’s extremely short-lived videogame vertical Glixel, told me he couldn’t publish my dumbass floating-eye account of some Atlanta E-LEAGUE event, and that I should instead use it as inspiration for some fiction.