Once Ms. Bomer was profiled in PW, I immediately got a hold of Jackie Corley who runs Word Riot (right here in NJ!) and got my hands on this book. It sat around, like everything else I get from publishers.
“The Mother of His Children”, the first story in Baby & Other Stories is a gem that will kick anyone in the crotch who has had kids, and is still married. Ted and Laura met at a party, fucked, and were quickly pregnant, shortly there after they paid a visit to city hall. Bomer has been cited for laying marriage and parenthood on the table, warts and all, real realism, which is refreshing, since no one seems to be writing that way anymore. If they are, it’s not getting published.
Ted and Laura are going through the pains of being married, he’s getting fat, and she’s getting boring, plus she brings him ice cream each night, and longs for him, she rubs his crotch with her foot while they watch TV. Ted is a computer programmer, and on a trip to San Francisco he longs to get a blow job from the stewardess, and even thinks of leaving Laura. It’s a common thought, all men think this way, and if I get one email saying otherwise, I call bullshit. Ted recounts the days before he became a father, having sex with Laura, her vagina swollen and filled with mucus, she gave birth the next week. He is sickened by the site of his son slithering out of Laura, and needs countless hours of therapy to get over it. The flight is filled with drunken regret, mostly that he’s left his noisy, bothersome family for two days, and then sadness as he misses them. Ted can’t figure out why his wife loves him, even longs for him. Ted sounds like every married man I know. And that’s not a knock. It’s extremely difficult for a woman to know these things about a man. How Bomer knows, is a mystery to me.
This is a great story, and the book is proving to be a real ass whipping affair.
In “The Shitty Handshake”, the second story from Baby & Other Stories, it’s unclear where I can start to describe Karen, a character who refuses to believe life can be lived sober, even when she ruins her marriage by fucking another man. Her husband works constantly and expects dinner on the table when he comes home. They have small children, and live in a nice apartment in Brooklyn. Her husband is just another child to be taken care of, and they share no intimacy; the relationship is more mother/son than husband/wife. Karen gives her true feelings to anyone that will listen while she tries to maintain sobriety. She even attends AA meetings, where she instantly mocks and insults the other members of the group. She talks about the burdens of parenthood – how drinking is such a glorious release – how nice it feels to be drunk, especially in the face of family life. Bomer manages to deliver a severe case of not so silent desperation, with Karen, and the world she’s stuck in.
This story is one thousand percent more brutal than the first one, which hinted at a collection which is really kicking the lid of motherhood, marriage and life with a family. There are no edges to these characters, each one is totally unhinged in their own special way.
Why these stories were overlooked by a mainstream publisher is beyond me.
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