Barbara the Slut and Other People
Description
A fresh, honest, and darkly funny debut collection about family, friends, and lovers, and the flaws that make us most human.
Fearless, candid, and incredibly funny, Lauren Holmes is a newcomer who writes like a master. She tackles eros and intimacy with a deceptively light touch, a keen awareness of how their nervous systems tangle and sometimes short-circuit, and a genius for revealing our most vulnerable, spirited selves.
In “Desert Hearts,” a woman takes a job selling sex toys in San Francisco rather than embark on the law career she pursued only for the sake of her father. In “Pearl and the Swiss Guy Fall in Love,” a woman realizes she much prefers the company of her pit bull—and herself—to the neurotic foreign fling who won’t decamp from her apartment. In “How Am I Supposed to Talk to You?” a daughter hauls a suitcase of lingerie to Mexico for her flighty, estranged mother to resell there, wondering whether her personal mission—to come out—is worth the same effort. And in “Barbara the Slut,” a young woman with an autistic brother, a Princeton acceptance letter, and a love of sex navigates her high school’s toxic, slut-shaming culture with open eyes.
With heart, sass, and pitch-perfect characters, Barbara the Slut is a head-turning debut from a writer with a limitless career before her. | Praise for Lauren Holmes:
Named "A Book You Need to Read in 2015" by the Village Voice and a Best Book of the Spring and Summer by Buzzfeed, Esquire, Bustle, L Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Ploughshares, iBooks, and WBUR
Named "A Best Book of the Year" by Publisher's Weekly
“There isn't a bad part of Barbara the Slut… The stories in this book are sometimes painful, sometimes brilliantly funny, and most often both; Holmes can find the humor in the worst situations, and the tragedy in the most glorious moments. But it's her characters that carry the stories — imperfect, difficult and defiantly human.”—NPR
“Like the best work of Mary Gaitskill, Barbara the Slut turns our obsession with sex on its head in order to study it, dissect it, weaponize it. Case in point: the promiscuous high school student who finds the word slut painted on her locker. Where other young women might buckle at the slur, she likes the color of paint the vandals used. She refuses to be shamed, and her refusal is empowering, rare, and well, pretty sexy.” —Esquire, Summer Reading List
"Thank God someone is writing like this." —Jezebel
“Holmes trains a precise lens on the millennial generation’s mixed bag of manners, mores, and machinations… In [these] beautifully brazen stories, worlds collide in fresh, imaginative ways.” —Elle
“[Holmes’] narrators are often women who are funny, imaginative, and yes, a little slutty. But like in the case of Amy Schumer’s comedic persona, sluttiness isn’t necessarily a bad thing… And in a time when most women don’t truly own the word ‘slut’, much less claim it, the book is a rallying cry… as Holmes’s Barbara quickly figures out, ‘slut’ is only a word. And Holmes’s collection dares us to treat it that way: in the pages of her book and beyond.” —The Washington Post
“Holmes writes poignant stories about imperfect people in her debut collection…Living can be a distressingly solitary activity and Holmes…explores this hard truth with unexpected poignancy, subtlety and humor… [She] could write from the point of view of a Tupperware bowl and it would be compelling.” —Chicago Tribune
“Excellent…Holmes’s is a welcome, refreshing new voice in American fiction.” —Boston Globe
“Holmes’ stories are powerful, sweet, tenderhearted and honest depictions of contemporary experience. She navigates the thresholds of relationships, sex and life-changing choices with poignancy and authenticity, bringing lovably imperfect characters to life.” —Columbus Dispatch
"Holmes brings a cool, stripped-down wit to Slut’s 10 shaggy-dog stories…loopy, deadpan and accidentally-on-purpose profound” —Entertainment Weekly
“With polished prose and a wry dash of Miranda July-esque humor, Holmes has created a normcore cast of characters who stumble to communicate, withhold their true identities, and soldier through the slow letdowns of life…Like a shot of espresso, these tales awaken the senses and invigorate the daily grind.”—O, The Oprah Magazine
"[Barbara] comically skewer[s] contemporary culture." -Time
“Lauren Holmes’s characters are so recognizable, you’ll forget it’s fiction.” —Marie Claire
“Simultaneously hilarious and deeply insightful. Written with honesty and heart, Holmes’s characters are delightfully real.” —Buzzfeed, "Awesome New Books to Read This Summer"
"From start to finish, this funny debut collection slyly shines a light on taboo without taking itself too seriously. Holmes’ frank prose sings with simplicity… Each story swells with the possibility of youth, and together these stories question whether that possibility can coexist alongside an authenticity of the heart." —Ploughshares
"A highly entertaining short story collection with just a killer cover." —Bookriot
"[Barbara] might be the literary answer to certain HBO shows... [but] Holmes’s voice—at once sharp and empathetic—is all her own.” —Conde Nast Traveler
“This is not your typical English professor-curated collection of short stories…Holmes’s writing is sharp but not scathing, and she captures her story’s sympathetic underdogs with humor, wit and heart.”—Skidmore News
“Holmes hits it out of the park with her first short-story collection, a modern and funny look at the world through the eyes of everyone.”—Pure Wow
“Youthful and vibrant, each one of these 10 short stories crackles with energy and a love of language that never descends into navel-gazing indulgence… If someone uses the word 'millennial' as a negative when discussing this collection, ignore him: Holmes is a writer you’re going to be hearing about for decades to come.” —Barnes & Noble
"Super funny...honest [and] open" —Bustle
"A funny, thoughtful debut." —LitHub
“Smart and funny and startlingly poignant, this book does an especially good job of highlighting how underwhelming reality can be compared with one’s imagination.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“In these 10 stories, Holmes shows she is uninterested in what people think of her, and more interested in painting portraits of very different women who all have one thing in common: they just want to be loved… It turns out the old saying is wrong; some books you can judge by their covers.” – BUST, “OMG AMAZING” rating
“The best short story collection we’ve read all summer.” -PureWow
“Holmes, with an admirable balance of humor and poignancy, tackles the choices we make in love, work, family and friendships… The characters in Barbara the Slut are likable, believable people, struggling to find themselves and the key to happiness…a fresh and thought-provoking read.” -Bookbrowse, Editor's Choice
"Hilarious and insightful." -Metro
“A dark, hilarious, and refreshingly honest collection of stories about love, intimacy, family, sex, coming out, and the slut-shaming culture that makes these experiences all the more difficult. Lauren Holmes's genius debut exposes the vulnerabilities of women, as well as their bravery and relatability.”—Pop Sugar
“These stories delight… Holmes has a sharp eye for the complexities of family dynamics...[and] captures something real and beautiful in this book.” -Mediander
“At times funny, at times crushingly sad, Holmes’s book proves her to be a talented writer of fiction, asking readers to engage not only with who they are as individuals but also the world they live in together." -Shelf Awareness
“First-time author Lauren Holmes has an uncanny way of breathing life into the fictional characters in her debut." — "21 New Authors You Need to Know," Refinery 29
"Holmes has delivered an intelligent and humorous alternative to the standard summer romance novel.” – Seattle Refined
"The stories are freaking fantastic. Holmes has this way of capturing truths that make you feel a little uncomfortable but they are so compelling and so funny… Absolutely brilliant.”—Bookriot
“Holmes’ deceptively breezy stories focus on women grappling with sexual politics and make important observations about challenges faced by millennials…Holmes…has a keen ear for dialogue and a sharp memory for the high school life." —Book Page
"Easy-to-like stories about subjects you'd encounter on the Cut — teenage girls, dogs, relationships, sex." —NYMag's The Cut, "A Book We're Reading Right Now"
“This sharp, sensitive…unwaveringly perceptive debut collection…is eminently sympathetic, insightful, and revealing, never regarding its characters with ridicule or derision, always with respect and compassion…The people limned here are people we know. They may even be the people we are. A first-rate first collection from a young writer you'll want to hear more from.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“Holmes’ 10 tales smartly explore her characters’ varied internalizations and vulnerabilities in light of the heavy influence of appearances and unwise attachments.”—Booklist
"An eminently readable debut from a fresh voice…Holmes writes with ease and humor…wonderful."—Publisher's Weekly (starred)
“A Granta 2014 New Voice, Holmes explores a range of intriguing scenarios in this first collection… a writer to watch” —Library Journal
“It’s been a long time since I’ve read a collection of stories in one sitting—but this is a book I couldn’t put down. . . . An outstanding debut, refreshing and exciting, complex and really funny.” —Nathan Englander, author of What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank
“A wonderful debut from a profound and sassy new voice . . . Lauren Holmes is a young writer of great talent, and Barbara the Slut is a book that marks the beginning of a long literary career.” —Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin
“Lauren Holmes's stories are hilarious and moving and powerful and all that other stuff people seem to like in books, but that's not why they stay with you. They stay with you because she's articulating with devastating precision something unique about the strange times we live in, something unique about who we are and who we become as we navigate our way through the demands of our friends, our families, our culture, and the wild, unreasonable desires that well up within us.” —Phil Klay, author of Redeployment
"An astonishing collection—one of those rare books that manages to be both poignant and hilarious. The last time we had a debut this big was Junot Díaz with Drown. Holmes is a major talent." —Philipp Meyer, author of The Son
“Without so much as a beat out of place, Barbara the Slut and Other People is a collection of piercing insight, sublime wit and powerful depth. These stories will make you fall in love, break your heart, and build you up again. Lauren Holmes's writing is taut and scalpel-like and like the best practitioners, sends pulses into the dark underwaters of the human psyche while we sit at the page and listen for the echo.” —Bill Cheng, author of Southern Cross the Dog
“Lauren Holmes writes my all-time favorite brand of fiction: Deceptively Simple. These are stories that you can't help but inhale, then trouble over gloriously after they've ended.” —Alicia Erian, author of Towelhead
HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO TALK TO YOU?
In Mexico City the customs light lit up green, which was lucky because I had fifty pairs of underwear with tags on them in my suitcase. They were from Victoria’s Secret and they were for my mom to sell to the teenagers in her town for a markup of three hundred percent. She managed a hotel in Pie de la Cuesta, a fishing town six miles west of Acapulco, and she said the kids there wanted this underwear more than marijuana. I thought this sounded like a second grader’s plan, but I said I would do it because I hadn’t visited her in three years.
In addition to bringing my mom the underwear, I was supposed to use this trip to tell her I was gay, to ask her to start talking to Grandpa again so I didn’t have to feel bad about taking his tuition checks, and to generally make up for the ten years I was in California, in middle school and high school and college, and she was in Mexico, in the city and then at the beach.
She was supposed to meet me at the airport, but at the last minute she told me it was safer to take buses than cars late at night. She said I had taken buses in Mexico before but I was pretty sure I hadn’t. All the other times I’d visited my mom in Mexico, she’d been living at her parents’ house in Mexico City, and Grandpa’s driver would come and get me at the airport.
My mom told me to take a taxi from the airport to the south bus station, a bus from there to Acapulco, and another bus from Acapulco to Pie de la Cuesta. In Mexico City, the taxi passed the exit for Río Piedad, and I wished I were going to Grandpa’s house. My mom had told me not to tell him I was coming, but now I wondered if it would be a good way to get her to talk to him, to tell her she had to come to his house if she wanted to see me. In the meantime I could go to sleep right away, and swim in Grandpa’s pool, and have his driver go get me tacos.
I slept on the bus to Acapulco, and when we got there it was still dark. I was half awake waiting for the bus to Pie de la Cuesta and when it came it wasn’t a bus with air-conditioning and a stewardess and soda and chips like the one I’d just taken. It was a city bus that wound along the coast at what felt like a hundred miles an hour, but when the bus wasn’t turning and I wasn’t looking off the dark cliff, I realized it was probably more like twenty. The five other passengers were asleep. Only the bus driver and I were awake and listening to the staticky radio.
The sun rose behind the bus. I started to get nervous when we wound down the cliff. My mom said that when the bus got to town and passed her pink hotel, El Flamenco, I was supposed to yell “¡Bajan!” and get out. As we drove, there were more and more houses on the right side of the road and more and more hotels on the left side, where the beach was. Finally the houses were stuck together, and the hotels were almost stuck together. The hotels looked like motels to me, and there was more than one pink one. Finally I saw El Flamenco and stood up to yell but I couldn’t do it. I sat back down and pretended like, Oh man, I almost got off at the wrong stop again. Five hotels and ten houses later, the teenager in the backseat yelled, “¡Bajan!” and I got off with him. I pulled out the handle of my suitcase and started walking back toward the motel.
My mom was standing outside, under a string of lights.
“Lala!” she said and ran toward me. She was wearing woven shorts and a white tank top and she looked really good. Her boobs were huge and her arms were toned and she was so brown.
She gave me a million kisses all over my face and my hands. She touched my hair, which had always been long but now was short. She started to cry.
“Hi Mama,” I said.
“Hi baby,” she said. “I knew that was your bus. You’re so beautiful.” She took my free hand and I wheeled my suitcase into the courtyard. There was a pool in the middle with strings of lights around it, and the doors to the rooms were around the courtyard in an L shape. The office was separate from the L, between the pool and the street.
She opened the door and we went inside. It was cool in there and I wondered if she was the only person in Pie de la Cuesta with air-conditioning. Her apartment was above the office, and we walked up the stairs. It looked like no one lived there—there were no plants or pictures or glasses of water, just a couch and a wooden chair in the living room, and a square table and two more chairs in the kitchen. In the bedroom she put my suitcase down. There was a bed with no frame and another chair. But the bed had her same white sheets on it, these sheets that cost a million dollars and feel like clouds and smell like clouds.
My mom got into the bed and I got in with her. She traced the spot on my forehead where she said I had a swirl of hair as a baby. Every muscle in my body relaxed. She stroked my head and then I was ten years old and we were lying in the cloud sheets in Los Angeles and I was crying because we had to put our dog Maria von Trapp to sleep. That night my mom had stroked my head until I fell asleep. I don’t know where my dad was—he was there when we put Maria to sleep but then not there later.
After a while my mom said, “Are you hungry, baby?” and it brought me back to the present and being twenty and I felt embarrassed to be in bed with my mom. I wanted to sit up but I was too weak. I tried to open my eyes and my mom laughed at me.
“I’m starving,” I said.
She went to the kitchen and made me an egg sandwich, which is one of my favorite things, with Oaxacan cheese, which is another one of my favorite things. She cut up a papaya and two bananas and she ate the fruit while I ate the sandwich.
After breakfast I asked my mom if I could make a phone call.
“Of course, baby, who do you want to call?”
“I want to tell Dad I got in safe.”
“Oh,” she said. She said that the phone in the office didn’t make long distance calls, but she gave me a phone card and told me there was a pay phone to the left of the hotel.
When I got to the phone I dialed Dana’s number. I had told her I would call her every day but now that I was here I didn’t really feel like it.
“Hey it’s me,” I said when she picked up.
“Hi!” she said. “I was so worried about you.”
“Why?” I said. “I told you I would call you when I got here.”
“I know, but I was worried. How’s your mom?”
“She’s fine. How are you?”
“I’m really great. I haven’t eaten or used an animal product in forty-two days.”
“Oh right,” I said. “That’s good.”
“Did you come out to your mom yet?”
“No. I’ve only been here for like an hour.”
“I can’t wait for you to tell her. I’m so proud of you.”
I told her I would call her the next day and then I hung up by accident.
Then I called my dad and made the mistake of telling him about the buses.
“You got in in the middle of the night,” he said, “and your mother couldn’t pick you up?”
“It’s safer to take the buses at night,” I said.
“This is not what we agreed,” he said. “I’m going to call her.”
“Dad. Please don’t call her. I’m fine. I want to have a good time.”
He said he would wait until I was back to call her, and I said okay and hoped he would forget by then. He told me to call Dana because she had called the house twice. He made me promise to wear sunscreen and to not go swimming. He said he was reading about Pie de la Cuesta on the internet and the undertow was deadly.
• • •
When I got back to the apartment my mom said, “Ready to go to the beach?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Do you have the underwear?” she said.
“Yeah.” I opened my suitcase and took out the underwear and my bathing suit.
“Did you get the bags?” said my mom.
I was supposed to get fifty striped bags to go with the fifty pairs of underwear.
“They would only give me ten,” I said and gave them to her.
“Okay,” said my mom. “I can give them to the girls who buy a lot.”
I went into the bathroom and took off my shorts and T-shirt. My mom came in behind me and snapped my underwear band and said, “You should get yourself some new underwear.”
I imagined myself wearing the pair I had bought that said “Boys Boys Boys” a thousand times in black letters. My mom had said to get as many pairs with English words on them as possible. Another pair said “See you tonight,” and I thought those were really funny, because if someone else was seeing them, wasn’t it already tonight? Unless it was a reminder to yourself, like, see you tonight when I take my pants off again.
“I like my underwear,” I said.
“They’re kind of sturdy,” said my mom. They were gray and boy-style but for girls, and I wondered if she thought they were butch. I wanted her to think so, so that I wouldn’t have to tell her.
“I’m going to put my suit on, okay?” I said.
“Oh, okay,” she said and left the bathroom.
When I was done I went back out to the living room. My mom came out of the bedroom wearing a terry cloth dress. “Do you want to borrow a beach dress?” she said.
“No,” I said.
“We have to sell ourselves if we want to sell the underwear,” she said.
“I don’t want to sell myself,” I said.
“Okay, don’t sell yourself,” said my mom, “sell the American dream.”
“Really?” I said. “This underwear is going to fly people to the U.S. and get them green cards and jobs at hotels and then they’re going to win the lottery?”
“Ha,” said my mom. “Come on, let’s go. I have to be back for checkout at noon.”
“And then they’ll buy forty cars and go bankrupt and have to come back to Mexico?”
“Ha ha. Are you ready?” She had the underwear sorted by size in three of the bags.
“We’re selling the underwear now?” I said.
“Of course,” she said. “It’s Saturday, a lot of kids are going to be at the beach.”
It was starting to get really hot outside. We walked through the row of palm trees that separated the hotels from the beach. On the other side was sand and water, and some sets of tables and chairs under a thatched roof. The sky was almost clear except for thin stripes of clouds. As we made our way to the water I saw that there were already people weaving in and out of the sunbathers and selling things—women with buckets of something, a woman carrying a bottle and calling “Masajes, masajes,” and a man leading a pony and offering rides. I wondered what my mom’s plan was. She was ahead of me at the water.
“Put your feet in,” she said. “It’s nice.”
I went in up to my knees and it was nice. The rest of my body was getting hot and I wanted to go in all the way. There were kids swimming and I wondered if my dad was wrong.
“I can go swimming, right?” I said.
“I wouldn’t, baby, the current is so strong.”
“Those kids are swimming.”
“They’re pros.”
“I really want to go swimming,” I said.
“You can swim in the pool,” she said. “And I’ll take you to the lagoon on Monday, it’s gorgeous.”
We walked along the water toward where it looked more crowded.
“So, are there any boys I should know about?” said my mom. Always her first question.
“Nope,” I said. “Still no boys.” That was always my answer, and she never seemed to think it was weird or some kind of clue, which she shouldn’t have needed anyway. Shouldn’t she have noticed when I was born? Wasn’t there something about me that told her I was going to grow up to cut my hair and wear sturdy underwear and date a girl who brought her leather biker boots to textile recycling and then bought vegan ones? And if not when I was born, she should have noticed in elementary school when I was obsessed with amphibians and reptiles and with my friend Emily. And if still not then, she definitely would have noticed in middle school, when I hit puberty and was really confused and, according to my dad, really weird. But she was already gone.
I followed my mom out of the water and into the crowd of towels and people. She didn’t say anything or approach anyone.
“How do you say ‘underwear’ again?” I said.
“Pantis,” said my mom.
“¡Pantis! ¡Pantis!” I called.
“Lala!” said my mom.
“What?”
“I was going to go up to girls that looked like they would want them.”
“Okay,” I said, “good plan.”
We walked through the people until my mom spotted four girls and an older man together. She went up to them and said she was selling ropa interior from Victoria’s Secret, and would they like to buy any.
One girl sat straight up and said, “¡Papá, me encanta Victoria’s Secret!”
The dad looked at her and at my mom and frowned. “Huh,” he said.
The other girls sat up too, and soon my mom was spreading out the underwear on one of their towels. The daughter picked out like eight pairs. One of the other girls looked at “See you tonight” and said, “Hubba hubba.”
“Those are my favorite,” I said.
“Su favorito,” said my mom.
I wasn’t sure that they were impressed with me because I was starting to get really sweaty, but the daughter grabbed a pair of the same ones and looked at her dad.
“¿A cuanto?” he asked my mom.
“Ciento cincuenta.”
The dad raised his eyebrows but they bought three pairs. Then we sold some more pairs to another group of girls nearby, and when we were walking away my mom said, “See?”
• • •
Back at the motel my mom checked some Swiss people out and I went swimming in the pool. Later my mom came out and read, and I spent the afternoon sleeping until I was too hot, and then swimming until I was too tired.
At the end of the day we went back to the beach to watch the sunset. My mom said that when the sun set in Pie de la Cuesta, it lit up the backs of the waves, and you could see the silhouettes of kids swimming. Tonight the waves were too small, although they didn’t look small to me. If I were braver I would have gone in and felt the water rush over my body and my head, and I probably would have been fine. But I was scared. My mom wasn’t one to tell me something was dangerous if it wasn’t. And she was sometimes one to tell me something was safe when it wasn’t.
• • •
When the sun went down we went back to the apartment and got ready to go out to dinner. My mom came out of the bathroom with makeup on and said, “My friend is going to meet us at the restaurant. Is that okay?”
“A man?” I said.
“No, a woman. Of course, baby, a man. His name is Martin and he’s from Pah-ree. You’re going to love his accent.” I assumed Pah-ree meant Paris.
“Great,” I said.
The restaurant was ten motels down and when we got close we saw Martin waiting outside. He was tall and skinny and he waved at us.
“Oh shit, I forgot to tell you something,” said my mom. “I only speak Spanish, okay? I’ll explain later.”
“How am I supposed to talk to you?” I said.
“You speak Spanish.”
“I haven’t spoken Spanish since I was five,” I said.
Now Martin was twenty feet from us and he said, “¡Hola!”
“Bonsoir!” called my mom.
“Jesus,” I said.
Martin gave my mom a kiss on the cheek. He shook my hand and gave me a kiss on the cheek too. He had a big nose but he was handsome and he had a lot of hair, which my mom likes. He didn’t have a French mustache or anything. He was wearing a white button-up shirt and gray shorts.
The restaurant was a big patio, and there were folding chairs and folding tables with picnic covers. There were a lot of families with little kids. We sat at a table in the back and it felt like we were right on the beach. It was dark but I could see the waves licking the sand.
I ordered a piña colada and my mom ordered a bottle of wine for her and Martin.
I looked at the menu and didn’t know what any of the fish were except for camarones, and I hate shrimp. “I don’t know what to get,” I said in English.
“The pulpo, it is very good,” said Martin. “This is octopus.”
“A ella no le gusta comer pulpo,” said my mom. “Mija, te encantaría el pargo de piedra.”
“Okay,” I said.
While we were waiting for our food, Martin asked me what I was studying in school. I gave him the speech I give strangers about my research—how there’s so much information about lead poisoning in paint, but almost none about lead in soil, and kids are so much more likely to eat soil, and the community where I’m doing research relies on its gardens for food.
“This is very interesting,” said Martin. “Your mother has not told me about this.”
“Te lo he dicho,” said my mom. “Pero es tan complicado y ella es tan inteligente.”
They talked to each other in
PUBLISHER:
Penguin Publishing Group
ISBN-10:
0399576037
ISBN-13:
9780399576034
BINDING:
Paperback / softback
PUBLICATION YEAR:
2016
NUMBER OF PAGES:
272
BOOK DIMENSIONS:
5.1200(W) x 7.9500(H) x 0.6700(D)
AUDIENCE TYPE:
General/Adult
LANGUAGE:
English