“Rejection”

I usually enjoy short story collections, and I did enjoy this one too. The author surgically describes a range of characters — often misfits — who often appears in each others' stories. It's very raw and "vulgar": nothing is left for the imagination, so to speak. And it's amazing. I was especially touched by all the references to internet culture in the 2000s-2010s in one story. It's a lot of negativity and dark bits, kinda like A Little Life, but not that extreme. I felt a bit weird enjoying reading about the characters' meander deep into the abyss, but what the hell.

Annotations

Those nights you wake in the dark full of fear with no one to talk to. Every unshared bed. Every expired condom.

From The Feminist

Lying around afterward, she configures herself in Neil's negative spaces, back-to-chest, nose-to-neck, mindless and snug as a martini in its glass.

From Pics

If he's going to be a doormat, he should at least be a welcome mat.

From Ahegao, Or, The Ballad Of Sexual Repression

Back then I'd thought social justice drama was a college phenomenon, but here I learned everyone was doing it, politicizing in bad faith what were obviously just bad manners.

From Main Character

The shitpost is the opposite of self-expression, it is expression minus the self.

From Main Character