I had a difficult time getting into Minot’s “Lust”. I re-read the first page a couple times, but once I really did concentrate on the story I found that it became an interesting read. It hurt my heart to feel what the character was putting herself through. This character reminded me of my best friend in High School and her desperate need to have a boyfriend or her inability to say “no” to them even if she wanted to. I found myself shaking my head when I read “I thought the worst thing anyone could call you was a cock-teaser”. If only young woman really understood how much power they possessed. This girl obviously didn’t know her own worth.
The symbolism that Minot used throughout the story to describe the boy she was with at the time or the relationship she was in made this short story speak volumes about what the character was going through. When Minot writes “Roger was fast. In his illegal car” I instantly knew that this was a typical young bad boy that everyone eventually takes for a spin. Music was used for symbolism as well. The line in the story “By the time the band got around to playing “Wild Horses,” I had tasted Bruce’s tongue.” described a wild and fast romance. When the story began you could feel the rush of new loves and lusts, but as the story continues Minot takes us down into the self loathing that the character feels. When she speaks of being good in school but then losing all direction because she becomes centered on a boy or when she looks in a boy’s face and wants to know who he is but he gets angry. All these parts of the story bring you down and down, spiraling into the person she eventually becomes. She becomes the girl who “gets swept away” during sex, but then disappears when they look into her eyes.
I think that the character has been damaged by so many men that emotionally she shuts off at the end of sex so that the men can’t reach her to hurt her. She is so disconnected that the love she has been so desperately looking for in all these rendezvous wouldn’t be able to get through to her even if she found it. What do you think the last line of the story means? Why do you think “the girl they were fucking is not there anymore.”?
In my opinion the last line of the story represents the girl's feelings after having sex with these men. I think it was meant to capture the idea that once it is all over and she is no longer caught up in the moment she becomes the girl that she really is. For the men that she slept with this could have seemed odd, all of the sudden the flirty and suggestive attitude of the girl would disappear and she would become quiet and withdrawn in hopes of not getting hurt.
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