Afterglow

First Thoughts

I'm a little bit worried that I'm going to be truly out of my depth in book 2. I liked this chapter, but the particulars of Aaron's evolving sexuality made me feel a little bit like I was intruding by reading it, let alone writing about it afterwards.

This chapter, though, is a good microcosm for the best parts of Dorley to date. There's an outside-intrigue/excursion, there's Stef being proactive instead of self-flagellating, Aaron being vulnerable. Paige is involved in any capacity, which is always a plus. These characters do so much to make this book work. I just finished ear-reading Surface Detail again, and it's a fun book with some interesting ideas about the insanity of the carceral state in an age of wonders. But, I half expected a lot of the characters within to be simulations. I think Dorley juxtaposes calm and violent chaos in a way I can't recall reading.

For anyone reading along and/or comparing notes, this time we read "Afterglow".

Recap Notes

The, Titular Afterglow

This train's bound for glory, ain't she?

Hey, dude nipples aren't purely decorative. They're also there to start bleeding at mile 8 or so if you're a frequent runner. This blog post is brought to you by Nexcare Strong Hold Pain-Free Removal Tape for Sensitive Skin. That's completely irrelevant, but I gotta get my beek wet, and that blue tape is legitimately miraculous. I, on occasion, run "very long distance" races and without Nexacare tape I'm pretty sure I'd be dick-wrecked by now.

Ball cancer.

That, makes sense I guess, sure. As far as Aaron's concerned, his body is acting differently all of a sudden, so "deep sickness" is a natural place to look.

Look, turns around chair, puts on baseball cap backwards, I gotta be real, this section made me pretty uncomfortable for both minor personal and social reasons.

Personal

I've described myself as a woke puritan in this blog before, and, tersely as possible, puritans are prudes. I am just not very comfortable writing about sexuality in its more, say, mechanically fundamental forms. The inuendo and double entendre and flirting are fun to write about, the bodily fluids less-so, for me.

Social

Also just, reading this part felt a little bit like I was intruding, frankly. That hasn't been a problem for me reading this story or writing about it yet, but I want to be honest that I'm kind of flinching here. It's just, so not my business, if that makes sense? I'm going to do my best with it, but I, uh, really don't know where to begin. I mean, it just feels really invasive to speculate about trans people's sexual pleasure based on the book. That's not my wheelhouse.

Back to It

I guess, there's maybe an abyss between whatever attenuated pleasure someone pre-transition can have sexually versus what it's like to be comfortable in their body and sexual. Like, I'm working from the assumption that Dorley is better at talking about transition than actual cis men and that might be a flawed assumption. But I'm not any kind of an expert here. Maybe the trans perspective of the novel has something to do with the "Dorley only abducts eggs" theory?

In any case, Aaron's cumming from playing with his nipples, and it's got him a little bit freaked out, especially how much he likes it. Stef does a good job of reassuring him, and throwing up a smokescreen about gynecomastia.

I'm slightly surprised how okay Aaron was with how good he felt doing it. I get the sense that Aaron doesn't have much concern about his own masculinity, at this point. Later on he mentions just binding and/or having his breasts removed, and it was a pleasant surprise that he could already identify with trans men as a self-calming signal of all things. I'm really looking forward to whoever Aaron becomes because I get the sense that Greaves likes him and likes writing him. I wonder if he'll quiet down as he becomes more confident/traumatized or if he'll remain a motormouth.

Aaron takes some time to, ah, explore his body, and doesn't see Stef much for awhile, but in any case, I'm not super worried about him at this point. I think he'll be perfectly fine in the end.

What the Peak Male Athletic Form Looks Like

'Except for the time Aaron needled him about his reduced muscle mass,' Monica points out.

Will, on the other hand, has a bad case of the New Atheist blues. Adam's come to him about the breast swelling they're both experiencing, and he's aware that something like Dorley is happening.

Will attacks Maria, and gives her at least a concussion. The military contractors come in, and she has to go to the hospital. There is much ado, in this case about a serious head injury. Maybe we add the military contractors sitting with the air-gapped PS4 (presumably playing Bloodborne) to the list of good cis men in Dorley, since they squash that nonsense pretty quickly.

Something Stef mentions in the aftermath caught me. The danger of needing medical care in an emergency. Stef cannot have external care without risking the entire Dorley project. Late 2019 you say. In Stef's case it's about being supposedly out of the country, but there's something broader there that sticks I think.

Stef's condition (voluntarily disappeared) is a really odd one, historically. It's not unlike being taken hostage, from what Oathbreakers says on the matter. Except that his parents don't even know. So it's more like, I suppose being in hiding. That's not quite right, but it's close.

Maybe closer is being a changeling (duh and/or obviously.) Stef's going to be anointed by this organization, is set up to be anyway. But Stef is also under the threat of being cast aside. I think that might be the most sociologically womanly thing to happen to him yet. My sister and I were talking this weekend a little bit about this (she hasn't read Dorley but she has been, you know, a woman, which I haven't) and she thinks it's maybe a lot like having versus not having children, the rub being that you might end up invisible either way if you don't insist on not so being, and often. Either way, Stef's in a pickle, what else is new?

What it is to be a Scapegoat

Yeah, well, it looks like you fucking deserve it, don’t you?

This is one of the military contractor guys to Aaron during The Kerfuffle.

It works on, let's say several levels. One, in Greaves-satire-land, it's a real "maybe you were asking for it" of a comment from a figure of structural violence.

It reminds me of a quote from The Ministry for the Future. Badim is a climate-oriented UN functionary, sort of, and talking to Mary, a barely-disguised ersatz Mary Robinson. And he says something to the effect of "we're getting killed for getting killed" about the Indian subcontinent during the geopolitical aftermath of a series of heat-waves.

Victims always seem more like they deserve it because they're victims. I'm sure I've read books with worse people in them getting away with it and not thought anything of it at the time. The PMC guy, is he, a tonic, or is he just impractical to "reform?"

It's also just a cool guy cold-as-the-innermost-circle-of-Hell line to say, so, props to Greaves as usual.

Still, the ambiguity of the recruits' folders still nags for me. I'm less worried about it than before, which you can tell because I'm not citing half-remembered Aljube museum notes anymore.

Medical Emergency

Maria ends up in the hospital, where it turns out that Dorley has a nurse well-placed. Christine helps go run interference there in case Maria says anything about the basement, and the short-staffing starts to impinge on other people.

Coercion in Rebel Recruitment

The absurdity of it is enough to completely clear his head. If there’s one thing she’s been clear about, it’s her refusal to even consider ever participating in the sponsor process.

Paige is lending a hand in the basement, and is not pleased about that fact. I forget at times that the Sisters are not a monolith.

Paige's getting dragged in surprised me. I'm in a Discipline and Punish mood I guess, over the seeming-to-deserve-it and the redacted-files. And my takeaway there is, maybe in a system without the admittedly flawed disciplinary system of the modern period, everyone becomes eventually half-guilty and half-punished and half-jailor.

I see it also as a crack between her and Christine, who's moving closer to institutional Dorley of (mostly) her own volition.

Fathers

It was to the roof he escaped after he caught his dad’s hand, practically broke his own wrist in one last desperate attempt to give a fuck, to keep his father’s hands off his mother’s body. He’d had to fight his way out of the man’s grip as the bastard apologised: didn’t mean to hurt his son; didn’t mean to hurt another man.

This echos with Stef's apology to Adam later.

“I’m sorry, Adam. I won’t raise my voice again.”

Stef is still self-identifying as 'he', per the narration. And still very much so playing the role of a man. At some point I'll be curious to see him get to be a woman instead and see what that does to, what I'm imagining as some very tense shoulders. Not that fussing at the boys in the basement is tantamount to abuse, just, the power structures, the ape-interactions, or whatever.

I don't know what happens to most boys with abusive fathers. I think we don't usually ever really talk about it. I didn't at all when I was Adam's age, or Christine's. Once I did, I had a genuinely difficult time talking about anything else for a few months. I don't know that the secrecy and the self-alienation that Christine has undergone will help with that. Her experience, of course, also rhymes with Aaron's. Both of them seeking a woman to redeem them (which, yes actually in both cases but not the women they thought.)

I can't wait for a conversation between Paige and Will or one between Christine and Adam. The echoes between cohorts are really fascinating in this book. Someone online mentioned that the generational turnover is really compressed in trans subcultures because the historical institutions are so tenuous. It's a great asset to this university-centered fiction that that's the case.

Errant Thoughts

Adam

Dorley is saving Adam. In way that makes me feel conflicted. I'm beginning to gather that he's the person in this book I'm most alike (not counting like, random extras and hangers-on.) And that makes me sad for him; there's a life after Dorley for him, sure, but there's a life without the entire kidnapping-mutilation fandango and years spent being, ah, born again. I'll be curious what becomes of him. I'm glad to see a little bit more of him around the book.

Christine

Seriously what did she do to get Dorleyed? I love the dipping in and out of annecdotes we get for the Sisters. That form is almost always a winner for me.