mgaft1...

Did he really like Cass for her "personality?"

What he says, to me, basically shakes out to Cass' "personality" being some sort of mental situation- from what he says, probably Bi-Polar Disorder. Recall he describes her moods as either up or down, with a wild temper flaring out of nowhere. In fact, he actually calls her "schitzi" (short for "schizophrenic"). Which, in those days (these too, frequently) was how BPD was miss-labeled.

Then, there's the caring, "grieving." artistic "little girl, lost" thing she does. I assume he considers that "personality" as well.

It's impossible to get a read on what she does or says that he uses to interpret what he thinks he knows about her that others don't. Other than her familial history (and her beauty-obsession), he never says what they talk about. Just that they talk a lot. And she moves around a lot, dancing and singing and throwing tantrums, acting out like a child, like a woman, like the Looney Tunes "Tasmanian Devil."

But they also booze a lot, and they sex a lot. As if they were both adults. Which, really, only HE was- considerably older. Grandpa older. So much older (and, at least in the ways of how to live the only occasionally-employed boozer's life) so much wiser- that I honestly cannot imagine he's not heard it all before, Cass' "blah-blah-blah." From every boozy female he's ever sat next to, listening and waiting for them to run out of gas, shut up, and go home with him.

Because I'm sure every one of those "ladies" was, once upon a time, Cass. Maybe not as "beautiful," but just as lost in an unloving Universe. Only they learned to live with it. Learned to not take anything that seriously and, what they couldn't "not take"- they learned how much booze it took to take the edge off and make it all just another tale to tell. To the drunk waiting for them to shut up and go home with him.

All of which says, to ME (drum roll, please): that Narrator isn't, actually, attracted to her "beauty." He's not even attracted to her "personality." He's attracted to her youth. Her "newness." She's not old and wrinkled, smelling of BO and beer.

And, of course, it doesn't hurt that she showers HIM with compliments- verbal, physical, emotional. She wants to be with him. Do things with him. And no one else. And right up in front of all the other drunks, too. Whoopee!

(Speaking of "newness"... Oops! Seems I got me e.e. cummings' amazing "She Being Brand" rattling around in my head, now. Thass ok... plenny rattling room for both Buk AND cummings in the dust-collecting nothingness that is where the grey matter used to be.

Dig-it if you want: https://mseffie.com/assignments/poem-a-day/cummings.html )

Anyway, said my "this" about "that" but, that said... one more thing: I've read this story quite a few times over the years and not till this time did I realize that I, actually, have a bone to pick with it. That it isn't as... deep? as I have always thought it was. That it's, actually, a bit trite. Hackneyed. Melodramatic. The ending, I mean- the fact Cass suicided out.

No, to me, now, I just think it would be better for him to have wandered off again... maybe for a few months, this time... only to come back to find her, still alive but, now, "adjusted" to the street life. Only a few months older, in real years still a child but, now, in what's left of her heart after having learned how to adjust, how to live in a loveless world: a hard, cold woman. Like all the others.

Still beautiful (even with all the new cuts and bruises- from her own pins and razors, from the blades of jealous females, from the fists of men who bought her drinks and weren't mesmerized enough by her looks to take "no" for an answer) but, now, kind of unkempt. Bloated. Slatternly. The "convent girl" ground out of her. Aged and worn and desperate... and not yet even 21.

He sees her in the bar, doing her drunken thing HARD... and, appalled, slinks away before she can see him.

And returns to his room and his wine and the reality he can't shake and the self-hatred that refuses to be drowned out, even in all the wine in the world.

I guess, to me, there's less tragedy in leaving a crippled bird at the bus stop, to hop in front of a bus at any time... than in finding a crippled bird and carrying it to that flock of flea-bittens over there. Where it can be happily, lingeringly, dismantled. Feather-by-feather. By its cold-eyed brethren. In their cold-eyed Universe.

But, still... personal preferences aside: the final paragraph... fantastic. Love it, love it. And that final sentence... sheer poetry. Can't fault him on the verity of the feeling THERE.

Anyway, thanks for posing the question. I hope I didn't make eyes bleed (too much) with my "too much" response but, garsh... it's kinda' nice to chow down on a good hunk of "literature" now and then.

Me shut up, now.
Cam Nine