jock librarian

Gaitskill's Veronica is an unsentimental, poignant story about hard people with real hearts. The novel follows Allison Owen, a sick and aging former model, as she reflects on her life in the 1980s international fashion scene and her peculiar friendship with a tough, older and uncomely woman who has contracted AIDS. Allison unapologetically shares her view of the world in this passage of the book:

Yes, we were stupid for disrespecting the limits placed before us; for trying to go everywhere and know everything. Stupid, spoiled, and arrogant. But we were right, too. I was right. How could I do otherwise when the violence of the unsaid things became so great that it kept me awake at night? When I saw my father sitting in a chair, desperate to express what was inside him, making a code out of outdated symbols even his contemporaries could no longer recognize? When I saw him smile because my mother fell on her face and then put the smile away like it was a piece of paper? When I heard him rail against dying men because otherwise he had no form to give his hates and fears? All the meat of truth was hidden under a dry surface, everything revealed and made articulate, everything even our greatest embarrassments and lusts.

"All the meat of truth was hidden" under a wet surface at Huntington Bay this weekend. The currents were unkind. Hoping to complete the 10K distance, I patiently chased after those orange buoys, but was humbled and disappointed by the results. In three and a half hours (which included 1.5 hours of swimming in place), I had only travelled the 5k distance. Orange buoy after orange buoy, "everything [was] revealed and made articulate, everything even our greatest embarrassments and lusts." Sigh. Still, I couldn't be happier for teammates Hannah, Amanda, Colleen and Wiley who deservedly won medals and the folks from CIBBOWS who persevered, managing to avoid (what one of their members fondly calls) the "Ride of Shame."