Wedding and Honeymoon
This is post 8 of Section II. To begin at the beginning, go here. Section II begins here.
Then she committed the supreme uncoolness of getting pregnant. Fortunately, Gregory was charmed by the notion of self-propagation, and by Chloe’s new vulnerability. By this time he was bored with academia and despaired of getting around to writing a book that would clinch tenure for him, so he had taken a lucrative job as a technical writer for a software company near Atlanta. Chloe was shocked at the easy way in which he threw over literature, but impressed by the sacrifice she knew he must be making. They were married by a Justice of the Peace and then went to a sophisticated party in the City, where Chloe knew no one and spent most of her time on the fire escape to avoid the thick pall of cigarette, cigar, and other smoke.
There was no time for a real honeymoon, and besides Chloe was beginning to feel sick a lot, so they stayed at a bed and breakfast near her parents’. Chloe’s mother was taken with Gregory, who displayed, in addition to his sculpted profile, a depth of commitment to anti-globalization and gay rights that Chloe had never imagined he possessed. Robert, who came out for dinner, distrusted Gregory, but then he distrusted straight men in general. Mr. Bennett, however, was, if possible, cooler than Gregory. Chloe had forewarned him about Gregory’s vegetarianism, which struck him as hypocritical, given the young man’s obvious fondness for leather. But Gregory’s view of Western Civilization as a blind alley of capitalist-imperialist exploitation, though predictable, was so repugnant that Bennett lowered himself far enough to ask which of the many pacifist and egalitarian alternative civilizations Gregory wished to belong to, whereupon the groom smiled tolerantly and murmured that such utopianism was merely the product of the cesspool from which it pretended to escape, and that he, like Foucault, favored random acts of subversion and rebellion. Bennett was on the point of heatedly suggesting that Gregory strike a blow for the cause by freeing himself from the bourgeois conventions of marriage and fatherhood forthwith, but he happened to catch sight of Chloe’s face silently appealing to him, and so contented himself with serving Gregory a very large steak and taking most of the bread and salad for himself (Robert never ate much at home).
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Then she committed the supreme uncoolness of getting pregnant. Fortunately, Gregory was charmed by the notion of self-propagation, and by Chloe’s new vulnerability. By this time he was bored with academia and despaired of getting around to writing a book that would clinch tenure for him, so he had taken a lucrative job as a technical writer for a software company near Atlanta. Chloe was shocked at the easy way in which he threw over literature, but impressed by the sacrifice she knew he must be making. They were married by a Justice of the Peace and then went to a sophisticated party in the City, where Chloe knew no one and spent most of her time on the fire escape to avoid the thick pall of cigarette, cigar, and other smoke.
There was no time for a real honeymoon, and besides Chloe was beginning to feel sick a lot, so they stayed at a bed and breakfast near her parents’. Chloe’s mother was taken with Gregory, who displayed, in addition to his sculpted profile, a depth of commitment to anti-globalization and gay rights that Chloe had never imagined he possessed. Robert, who came out for dinner, distrusted Gregory, but then he distrusted straight men in general. Mr. Bennett, however, was, if possible, cooler than Gregory. Chloe had forewarned him about Gregory’s vegetarianism, which struck him as hypocritical, given the young man’s obvious fondness for leather. But Gregory’s view of Western Civilization as a blind alley of capitalist-imperialist exploitation, though predictable, was so repugnant that Bennett lowered himself far enough to ask which of the many pacifist and egalitarian alternative civilizations Gregory wished to belong to, whereupon the groom smiled tolerantly and murmured that such utopianism was merely the product of the cesspool from which it pretended to escape, and that he, like Foucault, favored random acts of subversion and rebellion. Bennett was on the point of heatedly suggesting that Gregory strike a blow for the cause by freeing himself from the bourgeois conventions of marriage and fatherhood forthwith, but he happened to catch sight of Chloe’s face silently appealing to him, and so contented himself with serving Gregory a very large steak and taking most of the bread and salad for himself (Robert never ate much at home).
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posted by Hobbes at 8:06 PM
3 Comments:
I need to think about this and read it a few more times. It looks like everyone is hypocritical but accusing everyone else of hypocracy. Except maybe Chloe who seemed to have fallen in love with a guy she really didn't know much about.
Wow, Icy. That's a great summary. I think the Cliff's Notes should be written by you. I have nothing to add, except I'm not sure I'd have left Chloe out.
My verifier: phuucx
No, really.
I don't think either of the women is consciously hypocritical, but I could be missing something. They are, of course, responding to superficial attributes while believing they are affected by profound ones. So deluded might be the right word for them.
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