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The First Bad Man: A Novel
The First Bad Man: A Novel
The First Bad Man: A Novel
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The First Bad Man: A Novel

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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About this ebook

*New York Times Bestseller*

The “brilliant, hilarious, irreverent, piercing” (O, The Oprah Magazine) debut novel from Miranda July, acclaimed filmmaker, artist, and writer.


Cheryl Glickman believes in romances that span centuries and a soul that migrates between babies. She works at a women’s self-defense nonprofit and lives alone. When her bosses ask if their twenty-year-old daughter, Clee, can move into her house for a while, Cheryl’s eccentrically ordered world explodes. And yet it is Clee—the selfish, cruel blond bombshell—who bullies Cheryl into reality and, unexpectedly, leads her to the love of a lifetime.

Tender, gripping, slyly hilarious, infused with raging sexual fantasies and fierce maternal love, Miranda July’s first novel confirms her as a spectacularly original, iconic, and important voice today, and a writer for all time.

Editor's Note

A lovely disruption…

The rigid life of an uptight woman in her 40s gets interrupted by romantic fantasies and a young houseguest. What follows is an intriguing look into sexuality, human interaction, and what it means to love and be loved.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherScribner
Release dateJan 13, 2015
ISBN9781439172605
Author

Miranda July

Miranda July is a writer, filmmaker, and artist. Her debut novel, The First Bad Man, was an instant New York Times bestseller, and her collection of stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You, won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and has been published in twenty-three countries. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s, and The New Yorker, and she is also the author of the novel All Fours. July lives in Los Angeles. 

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Rating: 3.973913043478261 out of 5 stars
4/5

115 ratings26 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I've never read anything quite like this. At the beginning I was sure Cheryl was certifiable. Almost should be locked up kind of crazy. By the end she had grown on me, but she definitely still wasn't anywhere near normal.

    I didn't love this, but it was interesting and different and I didn't hate it either.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book kept me guessing and also kept me intrigued to the type of book I was actually reading. Overall, I liked it. I'm still sitting with how I felt about Cheryl and her overall meekness. Many times I wanted to shout, "You can't sit there! Ignore! Rage! Tell them how you feel!". What does this say about the first bad man in every woman's life?
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Still not sure what I have just read. This book did not speak to me they way it clearly does to other people.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book comes with a massive burden of hype, from the breathless jacket copy to the rave reviews on the back. There are very few books that can live up to a "best book you'll ever read" level of hype and unsurprisingly this one doesn't, either. It's not entirely fair to Miranda July that I had to work against inflated expectations because this is a good book; it just didn't change my life. The problem is that contrary to the jacket copy, it isn't terribly daring or audacious or unique. It's not shocking, though it tries to be. It's well written; the language has verve and the descriptions are accurate and witty, but the targets are predictable. Chromotherapy, Western cultural appropriation, home birth, pretending to be a nonprofit. About the only false note was the narrator doing her shopping in Ralphs. Instead of feeling like a knowing satire, a joke shared between author and audience, it felt stale. The sex tried too hard to be shocking--though again this is a problem of expectations; if you tell the reader it's going to be dirty, the reader is only going to be disappointed it wasn't as dirty as she thought it would be.

    If you're going to read this book, which isn't a bad idea, don't read any reviews or jacket copy. You'll probably enjoy it more.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I love Miranda July's movies: Back and forth forever, you know? If you don't know what I'm talking about, you should get on that, because Me You and Everyone We Know is one of the most bizarre, sweet, lovely, horrifying movies I've ever seen. Do you need a white guy's opinion to believe me? Okay - Roger Ebert named it one of the top five movies of the decade. So she's a great filmmaker, but is she a great novelist? Oh holy cow is she ever! The audience for The First Bad Man is the exact audience for her movies so if you like her movies, you're in luck. If you don't, you should skip this.The story is super bizarre from the beginning and just gets weirder. Our protagonist is a woman who's lonely but doesn't seem to know it yet. She has a lot of weird, complicated "systems" (re: rituals) and lives her life in a very specific and bizarre way, so when her bosses convince her (re: bully her) into allowing their daughter to live with her, well, things get interesting.And by interesting I mean that this shit is FUCKED UP. At first it's cutely weird. Then sort of puzzlingly weird. And then there came a point when I was like, "Holy shit, Miranda, really? This is FUCKED UP." But I kept reading anyway because it's not beautiful and lovely in spite of this fucked-upedness, it's beautiful and lovely because of it. If you want to read a book that will really get in your head, that will make you uncomfortable, and will make you look at the world just a little bit differently, then this is a book to pick up.

    2 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Miranda July has gone and done it again - this is not simply a book, it is a whole new region filled with something in shape of a book. The words she uses are the very same we all use, but the way she looks at things and shows them is so much more different than most people's. I was horrified by some parts (this is where I deduct half a start, simply because I could not take it) and delighted by others, and I laughed - quite a lot - but most of all I liked that she got me not only thinking, but also feeling - possibly even some very real thoughts and feelings, based on the completely unbelievably over the top goings on in the book. It worked wonderfully. July is a skilled, smart writer and she delighted throughout. I would very much recommend anyone reading the book, just to see how they react and what it does to them. For me it worked like a visual piece of art works, not literature. Sadly, I cannot elaborate on this, but maybe you will see what I mean once you start reading it. It is not an easy reading piece, oh no - but life is actually too precious to be reading those anyway.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This one is pretty weird. Filled (like, brimming) with difficult, painful, awkward dysfunction. Most of the characters' behavior was so strange (Cheryl's bosses, Cheryl's therapist, Phillip, even Clee for the first third of the book) that I started to imagine them being distorted as our perception of them passed through Cheryl's own crazy lens. I don't know. Pretty chaotic.I rate it three Kubelko Bondys. Triplets. Whatever.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I'd describe this as The Diary of Adrian Mole (13 1/2) meets Bridget Jones Diary meets The Diary Of A Nobody. If that sounds too much it probably is. It would have been so easy to give up on this in the first part of the book. But I am so glad I didn't.

    What a surpising book this is, it goes from complete crap to a really good read in one smooth easy read.

    Try it!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "Then I realized that we all think we might be terrible people. But we only reveal this before we ask someone to love us."

    In this first novel, Miranda July takes us by the heart and hand at race car speed to places you may never want to visit but you don't want to miss.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It takes an extraordinary amount of honesty and observation to write something this weird and surrealist. Really enjoyed it.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The writing style here reminded me a bit of Sally Rooney, where the characters experience major dramatic events with absolutely no suspense or lead-in, and you get taken for an emotional ride. But I also would say what's unique about this title is the difficulty in pinning it down in one genre; it has elements of dystopian science fiction but also thriller/mystery components, all while having an unconventional sort of romance come out of nowhere for a character in a very run-of-the-mill life very much in contemporary America. If you ever watched Me and You and Everyone We Know (also written by July), the fantasy in reality may seem familiar. When I saw it in 2007, I described it as "more about crazy people in everyday life than any sort of plot," which fits this book as well.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I wasn't sure how Miranda July's quirky characters would be sustained into a full novel since so many of her stories are just a few pages long -- and there's more than enough weirdness in those pages. But I thought this novel was very well paced and balanced peculiar character details with relatable ones. I never felt like the strangeness of the story derailed the book, and its beating heart sustained a kind of warmth for the length of the novel.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This novel almost lost me in the beginning because I could not figure out what was going on. I'm glad I hung in there for this strange but beguiling story. Kind of saw the ending coming but I enjoyed the path to get there.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    A very strange novel. Initially the strangeness was intriguing but towards the middle it got a little too weird and disturbing. I stuck with it and it did getter better towards the end but not enough for me to recommend this as a must read.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Warning: Spoilers. And very long. Our narrator is Cheryl. She is middle-aged management at an organization that teaches self-defense,but which has expanded to include a popular self-defense workout regimen. Cheryl is the steady background in the lives of her coworkers. She is largely invisible to them, and she doesn't seem to mind. When they do see her, they see her as a profound neutral: neither here nor there. The man she fantasizes about in reality tells her that she is neither masculine nor feminine. Her halves are (appear to be?) "balanced." She receives this blankly. In the world Cheryl occupies, of dojos (and eventually of chromatologists, play therapists and rebirthing therapies) this is perhaps a compliment (I almost wrote "complement" which is more to the point): she is both yin and yang. Cheryl never seems to assert herself one way or the other. She understands herself as heterosexual, but she is so accustomed to not being looked at that it seems she's mostly forgotten it. She lives mostly in her head and in her very ordered and quiet home. She is not so much asexual as a result of her invisibility as she is auto-sexual. But "auto-sexual" doesn't quite capture her. She is no mere onanist; she is metasexual. Take her "thing." The thing she likes to do (or imagine doing) during sex. She imagines the sex she is having and imagines the order of the room, and then she receives permission for her to "think about her thing" which allows her to imagine the order of the room and the sex, and then she receives permission to "think about her thing" anew, and so on. Her thing is a fantasy within a fantasy within a fantasy; her sexuality is the endless imagining the scene, but not the scene itself. She seems to know that even when she is flesh-and-bones in the scene she is not.Clee, the imposing houseguest who disturbs the special order of Cheryl's tidy life, is the only person who looks at Cheryl. She sees her, but more rightly, she glares at her. Clee looks at Cheryl and doesn't like what she sees, and isn't afraid to tell her so. She tells Cheryl she is pathetic and sad, and, pathetically and sadly, Cheryl agrees.But where the reader might expect the arc of the book to be Cheryl's undoing at the hands of an unlikely and churlish guest (and in many ways it IS that), Cheryl rallies. She turns the real aggression into a game. They allow themselves to fight. They discuss a fighting contract. They explore the game together. They memorize the lines and moves from Cheryl's self-defense videos. This is a kind of romance because playing WITH someone else is a joint and titillating exploration of boundaries.I expected the relationship between Clee and Cheryl to turn sexual, but was still surprised by how and when it did. The first sexual thoughts Cheryl has about Clee come when Cheryl metasexually imagines herself as Phillip, the crush that forsook her for a 16-year-old. She imagines herself as Phillip, imagines his cock & then imagines fucking Clee, her own stand-in too-young-lover. She is Phillip everywhere and fucking everywhere. Even the garden snails become a part of her fantasy.Clee senses all this, but then knows. Cheryl has crossed a boundary; she violates Clee in her fantasies. In truth, the real Phillip was fucking Clee after an encounter in the chromatologist's waiting room. (Did they recognize one another? Does Clee sleep with Phillip to secretly harm Cheryl? To punish her in action for what Cheryl violated in thought?) The affair between Clee and Phillip happens for Clee the way Cheryl had imagined it would happen for her. The chromatologist began as a pretext. Cheryl wrote the story, but it happened for someone else. I jump ahead. Cheryl's initial sexual impulse for Clee is metasexual and indirect. Cheryl is never herself. She interpolates Phillip's desires. She violates Clee by making her a stand in for the "young lover." This is a game that Clee doesn't want to play. Clee's pregnancy brings a halt to their aggressive relationship and ushers in a new era of platonic friendship. Cheryl "shapes" the baby by announcing biological developments. They hum Gregorian syllables to Clee's belly (which will eventually return as "their song"). Pregnancy becomes birth, and Cheryl recognizes the child as a Kubelko Bondy--a primordial baby that knows her, that has been reaching out to her since she was 9. Insofar as Clee planned to give the (unwanted) child up for adoption, the baby is truly more connected to Cheryl. Time & things alter in the post-labor hours; Clee's aggression has transformed to affection, & this is when the turn to sexuality finally happens, on the hospital bed. Once again Cheryl makes a surprising decision and accepts it. Openly. She becomes proud of it, even though her relationship is alienating to her co-board members. She is willing to change her life for the promise of those kisses (sex hasn't happened yet). Despite her fastidiousness, Cheryl is most to most everything. As for actual sex, despite her rah-rah public enthusiasm, Cheryl is still trying to do "her thing." But she can't quite do it, because Clee is there with her body. So she tries her other "thing" (being Phillip), and that helps, but there is still Clee's body & its responses that make it impossible for Cheryl to reach climax (can Cheryl EVER reach climax?). In her fantasies it is an impossibly receding horizon.Cheryl leaves Clee. Or asks her to leave. Clee is 20, Clee needs her space, Clee is too much to take care of in addition to a baby. The baby is Kubelko Bondy, truly; Cheryl has become its mother. Jack is connected to her, and it is right, to everyone, that she remain connected. She becomes legal guardian and Clee disappears. A reciprocal exchange. Clee gets her freedom and Cheryl is united, alone, with Kubelko Bondy. Even the grandparents refuse the title: "Let him come to us in the spirit of friendship and community later on in life."Cheryl resumes her orderly life insofar as it can be orderly with a baby around. The "grandparents" note the silence. 7 months have passed since the birth and she's only non-verbally spoken with Kubelko Bondy. She begins to speak aloud, and the baby becomes Jack. Then Phillip arrives at her door with all of his INFORMATION. He is done with the young. He is ready to settle down. It is not Cheryl's and Phillip's baby, but it could be *like* it is. It could come full circle. She could do her thing. She could stop being Phillip's penis and feel Phillip's penis instead.But Phillip has his own thing. She lets him do his thing, and then she tries to do her thing, but ends incompletely, as a metasexual encounter inevitably must. Cheryl cannot be satisfied, this much is clear. Her sexuality is boundless. When Phillip says she is both mother & father she pricks: I am mother.Her satisfaction is in this, we suppose, but cannot know. She invites Phillip to leave. So that she can be everything.She gets what she always wanted. A Kubelko Bondy. Clee gets what she wants: freedom. Phillip has come too little, too late. Whatever happens in the interim, when we finally see them it is as in the first story she told Jack--a running to greet each other after presumably much time and space. And Clee is there. How, and in what capacity, we are left to wonder. Did they reunite or do they continually reunite throughout history to see the child? Is it as Cheryl imagined, or has it happened in spite of all her imaginings?

    3 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    There are very few books that I would classify as “weird,” but Miranda July’s The First Bad Man is one of them. My partner, to whom I read this book aloud, was over it by the time we were halfway through; it was too strange for her. I, on the other hand, found it absolutely hilarious and oddly touching, so I finished it by myself.Our main character is Cheryl Glickman, a middle-aged woman who works for a nonprofit that produces self-defense “exercise” videos for women. She lives alone. Her days have an extremely ordered, almost ascetic routine. She consistently has a lump in her throat. She has a huge crush on her coworker, Phillip, although as it turns out, he is pursuing an underage girl and seeking Cheryl’s permission to consummate the relationship. She believes that she has a special connection with a baby she has named Kubelko Bondy, whose spirit occasionally appears in other people’s babies to commune with her. Cheryl seemed to me to be unapologetically weird. While I loved her for this, I also despised her a little bit.When Cheryl is “forced” to provide lodging in her home for her boss’s 20-year-old daughter, Clee, life becomes messy. Clee, while beautiful, is messy—and dirty, and downright mean, and soon she begins to beat Cheryl up. Cheryl unexpectedly fight back, and she finds that she enjoys it. Her therapist (who pees in Chinese takeout containers in her office to avoid making the long trek to the bathroom) introduces her to the idea of adult games. Inspired, Cheryl studies self-defense videos so that she and Clee can recreate the scenarios in her house. Soon, of course, the relationship becomes sexual, and Cheryl’s life is turned even further upside down.I loved this novel because nothing happened as I expected, yet it all seemed to fit in the context of the universe that July created. Cheryl, while very strange, is also incredibly human in a way that I have never found another character to be. I found myself mentally mocking her quirks, while secretly thinking, I could see myself doing that. And, above all, the entire novel is just plain funny.If you’ve got any appreciation at all for the strange and hilarious, I highly recommend The First Bad Man. It’s a unique and highly enjoyable reading experience.

    2 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is either brilliant or crazy. Or both. July takes you on an intense and loopy journey, but all of it is with the aim of exploring her main character, a lonely and disillusioned middle-aged woman, who unexpectedly finds power and meaning via a series of events that are super strange. July is a lovely, quirky writer with an incredible imagination and an aching sympathy for her characters. Be prepared to be baffled, wowed and exhausted.

    2 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Cheryl is a middle-aged woman who enters into a relationship with a much younger woman. It starts off with violence, turns into a love relationship when the younger woman gets pregnant by an older man who was once Cheryl’s interest, then that relationship ends after the birth. However, Cheryl is left with the baby. Very strange but interesting book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The details here are bizarre but there's an emotional realness and depth that really grounds the story and keeps the weirdness from becoming a gimmick. I would compare it to A Confederacy of Dunces (though the protagonist is far more likable) and even some of Chuck Palahniuk's writing through the more transgressive, sexual passages.

    2 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a difficult book to review. We have a story of a forty-something woman (Cheryl) who believes in past lives and transmigration of souls. We have her roommate Clee,who is foisted upon Cheryl by her bosses, who are Clee's parents. We have seventy-something Philip whom Cheryl seems to love but who is busy pursuing a sixteen-year-old girl. And strange new-age type psychiatrists. And lots of sex. My hesitation in recommending this book is that some of the characters seem totally unbelievable. I like good character development in my fiction. But I have to say that I loved the ending in spite of all the flaws in the characters and the strange plot.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Cheryl is isolated, unconnected to others (even her work colleagues; she works from home), unaccustomed to love and yet she is bursting with potential for sexual and maternal love most of which gets aired only in her imagination. When circumstance puts Cheryl in the way of new actualities (though ones she hasn’t previously imagined), she has the good sense to follow her instincts and let love take its course, whatever that might be. At once tender and tentative, July follows Cheryl through a year of changes, kooky changes you might say, in which Cheryl grows, adapts, and thoroughly transforms, but she still seems very much herself at the close. July’s fictional world is peopled with initially odd but genuinely caring individuals. Almost fancifully so. And that might be consistent with the near fairytale-like quality of this story. What we get here is an ethereal overview of love in a few peculiarly individual instantiations. You can’t help but fear for Cheryl, she seems to fragile and unable to defend herself. Yet July never places obstacles before her that she can’t overcome or that don’t dissolve as soon as she faces up to them. And you can’t help but wish that world were actually like this.Of course, once you catch the cadence of July’s humour, you also find her writing to be immensely witty, indeed delightful. And that will undoubtedly be the impression you take away. Gently recommended.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I was really only reading this book to completion so that I could say with certainty that I did not like it. But then, I started to like it. It took about 2/3 of the book of not liking it before my opinion changed, and that first 2/3 did do some damage, but I actually ended up liking the main character! This may shock some people, as Cheryl is a whacked out kook-ball with a very odd way of interacting with people. She also has some unorthodox methods for sexual gratification, but who am I to judge? Maybe I have too, to some people.The problems I had with the first sections of the book were almost all to do with the manufactured quirkiness of the prose, and the physical-fighting-for-arousal stuff the main character engaged in. But then it turned to a story with a different focus and I became engaged. That surprised me, and I am still quite confused about my overall feelings on the book. But...far from being a waste of my time, it was thought provoking and it kept me reading.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    One of the strangest books I've ever read. Almost gave up at the beginning with all the physical abuse, till it metamorphosed into sexual love; almost gave up when the receptionist turned into a therapist until, surreally, she came out with some wise things; but by the end I sort of wished I had given up - not sure it's exactly my cup of tea. Very inventive cinematic but not quite great writing.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Cheryl Glickman may not know any of Barbara Pym's excellent women, but this protagonist of Miranda July's first novel is one of them. The middle-aged, never-married Cheryl lives on her own in a neatly appointed house that is no home, and works for a self-defense nonprofit organization that is as New Age and California as anything that is New Age and in California can be.This is a woman who thinks she knows herself, but she's as much a stranger to her as everyone else in the world. (Well, all perhaps one, but more of that later.) After all, she's the kind of woman who "strolled through the parking garage and into the elevator, pressing twelve with a casual, fun-loving finger. The kind of finger that was up for anything."In a manner both droll and deft, July lays out Cheryl's sterile life and work. The part where the nonprofit's founders talked her into staying home most of the time, and out of their hair, is magnificent. Cheryl is clueless that her employers don't want her around but keep paying her anyway:"Then he told me my managerial style was more effective from a distance, so my job was now work-from-home though I was welcome to come in one day for a week and for board meetings."Perhaps that's because "Once Carl called me ginjo, which I thought meant 'sister' until he told me it's Japanese for a man, usually an elderly man who lives in isolation while he keeps the fire burning for the whole village". Or something like that.Besides developing a housework system that involves doing no housework, Cheryl has two obsessions. One is a board member of the nonprofit who she thinks has been her great love in past lives. In this life, Phillip is a self-absorbed old man who occasionally texts or talks to her about his new obsession -- a much, much younger woman.Her other obsession is a baby she met when she was a child. Cheryl thinks she had a conversation with this child, Kubelko Bondy, and that, appropriately enough for his last name, they bonded:"I watched him crying and waited for someone to come but no one came so I heaved him onto my small lap and rocked his chubby body. He calmed almost immediately. I kept my arms around him and he looked at me and I looked at him and he looked at me and I knew that he loved me more than his mother and father and that in some very real and permanent way he belonged to me. ..."Seconds later he sailed out into the night, my own dear boy. Never to be seen again."Except I did see him again -- again and again. Sometimes he's a newborn, sometimes he's already toddling along. As I pulled out of my parking spot I got a better look at the baby in the car next to mine. Just some kid."When not doing whatever it is she does for the nonprofit, listening to Phillip dither over his young woman or searching for her dear boy, she deals with her globus. She has trouble swallowing and is nearly as obsessed with spitting discreetly as she is with her other obsessions.Then her employers dump their unemployed daughter, Clee, on her lap. Everyone -- really, everyone -- who puts this young woman up is delighted to see her leave. Clee, of course, upsets Cheryl's world.The novel then takes a wild turn. Then it gets weird. Then something big happens. And then something even bigger happens. There were times I wasn't sure I could keep on reading about Cheryl's interior life and how it was affecting what was going on with her unwelcome houseguest, let alone how life with her unexpected houseguest was affecting her interior life. Cheryl is unreliable not because she sets out to deceive the reader, but because she is so clueless about herself and her world. But she's certainly far more open to experiencing life as it comes to her than the closed-up woman who thinks she has a finger that is up for anything.And then there is one of the sweetest, best realized endings to a novel in some time. It was unexpected, satisfying and exactly right.It's not often an author can turn the course of a novel and have it work. For a debut novelist to do this more than once and still have it all work is unexpected. Reading The First Bad Man is like watching a high-wire artist perform magic tricks while jumping through hoops of fire. And coming out at the other end with everything in place.July has published short stories and is an accomplished actress and filmmaker. Even with all the evidence of a creative free spirit who knows narrative and character, and how well they can work together, this novel is still a remarkable work to behold.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    An unconventional, beautiful love story. Push through the strange parts- it's worth it!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I was really only reading this book to completion so that I could say with certainty that I did not like it. But then, I started to like it. It took about 2/3 of the book of not liking it before my opinion changed, and that first 2/3 did do some damage, but I actually ended up liking the main character! This may shock some people, as Cheryl is a whacked out kook-ball with a very odd way of interacting with people. She also has some unorthodox methods for sexual gratification, but who am I to judge? Maybe I have too, to some people.The problems I had with the first sections of the book were almost all to do with the manufactured quirkiness of the prose, and the physical-fighting-for-arousal stuff the main character engaged in. But then it turned to a story with a different focus and I became engaged. That surprised me, and I am still quite confused about my overall feelings on the book. But...far from being a waste of my time, it was thought provoking and it kept me reading.

Book preview

The First Bad Man - Miranda July

CHAPTER ONE

I drove to the doctor’s office as if I was starring in a movie ­Phillip was watching—windows down, hair blowing, just one hand on the wheel. When I stopped at red lights, I kept my eyes mysteriously forward. Who is she? people might have been ­wondering. Who is that middle-aged woman in the blue Honda? I strolled through the parking garage and into the elevator, pressing 12 with a casual, fun-loving finger. The kind of finger that was up for anything. Once the doors had closed, I checked myself in the mirrored ceiling and practiced how my face would go if Phillip was in the waiting room. Surprised but not overly surprised, and he wouldn’t be on the ceiling so my neck wouldn’t be craning up like that. All the way down the hall I did the face. Oh! Oh, hi! There was the door.

DR. JENS BROYARD

CHROMOTHERAPY

I swung it open.

No Phillip.

It took a moment to recover. I almost turned around and went home—but then I wouldn’t be able to call him to say thanks for the referral. The receptionist gave me a new-patient form on a clipboard; I sat in an upholstered chair. There was no line that said referred by, so I just wrote Phillip Bettelheim sent me across the top.

I’m not going to say that he’s the best in the whole world, Phillip had said at the Open Palm fundraiser. He was wearing a gray cashmere sweater that matched his beard. Because there’s a color doctor in Zurich who easily rivals him. But Jens is the best in LA, and definitely the best on the west side. He cured my athlete’s foot. He lifted his foot and then put it down again before I could smell it. He’s in Amsterdam most of the year so he’s very selective about who he sees here. Tell him Phil Bettelheim sent you. He wrote the number on a napkin and began to samba away from me.

Phil Bettelheim sent me.

Exactly! he yelled over his shoulder. He spent the rest of the night on the dance floor.

I stared at the receptionist—she knew Phillip. He might have just left; he might be with the doctor right now. I hadn’t thought of that. I tucked my hair behind my ears and watched the door to the exam room. After a minute a willowy woman with a baby boy came out. The baby was swinging a crystal from a string. I checked to see if he and I had a special connection that was greater than his bond with his mother. We didn’t.

Dr. Broyard had Scandinavian features and wore tiny, judgmental glasses. While he read my new-patient form I sat on a meaty leather couch across from a Japanese paper screen. There weren’t any wands or orbs in sight, but I braced myself for something along those lines. If Phillip believed in chromotherapy that was enough for me. Dr. Broyard lowered his glasses.

So. Globus hystericus.

I started to explain what it was but he cut me off. I’m a ­doctor.

Sorry. But do real doctors say I’m a doctor?

He calmly examined my cheeks while stabbing a piece of paper with a red pen. There was a face on the paper, a generic face labeled CHERYL GLICKMAN.

Those marks are . . . ?

Your rosacea.

The paper’s eyes were big and round, whereas mine disappear altogether if I smile, and my nose is more potatoey. That said, the spaces between my features are in perfect proportion to each other. So far no one has noticed this. Also my ears: darling little shells. I wear my hair tucked behind them and try to enter crowded rooms ear-first, walking sideways. He drew a circle on the paper’s throat and filled it in with careful cross-hatching.

How long have you had the globus?

On and off for about thirty years. Thirty or forty years.

Have you ever had treatment for it?

I tried to get a referral for surgery.

Surgery.

To have the ball cut out.

You know it’s not a real ball.

That’s what they say.

The usual treatment is psychotherapy.

I know. I didn’t explain that I was single. Therapy is for couples. So is Christmas. So is camping. So is beach camping. Dr. Broyard rattled open a drawer full of tiny glass bottles and picked one labeled RED. I squinted at the perfectly clear liquid. It reminded me a lot of water.

"It’s the essence of red, he said brusquely. He could sense my skepticism. Red is an energy, which only develops a hue in crude form. Take thirty milliliters now and then thirty milliliters each morning before first urination." I swallowed a dropperful.

Why before first urination?

Before you get up and move around—movement raises your basal body temperature.

I considered this. What if a person were to wake up and immediately have sex, before urination? Surely that would raise your basal body temperature too. If I had been in my early thirties instead of my early forties would he have said before first urination or sexual intercourse? That’s the problem with men my age, I’m somehow older than them. Phillip is in his sixties, so he probably thinks of me as a younger woman, a girl almost. Not that he thinks of me yet—I’m just someone who works at Open Palm. But that could change in an instant; it could have happened today, in the waiting room. It still might happen, if I called him. Dr. Broyard handed me a form.

Give this to Ruthie at the front desk. I scheduled a follow-up visit, but if your globus worsens before then you might want to consider some kind of counseling.

Do I get one of those crystals? I pointed to the cluster of them hanging in the window.

A sundrop? Next time.

THE RECEPTIONIST XEROXED MY INSURANCE card while explaining that chromotherapy isn’t covered by insurance.

The next available appointment is June nineteenth. Do you prefer morning or afternoon? Her waist-length gray hair was off-putting. Mine is gray too but I keep it neat.

I don’t know—morning? It was only February. By June Phillip and I might be a couple, we might come to Dr. Broyard’s together, hand in hand.

Is there anything sooner?

The doctor’s in this office only three times a year.

I glanced around the waiting area. Who will water this plant? I leaned over and pushed my finger into the fern’s soil. It was wet.

Another doctor works here. She tapped the Lucite display holding two stacks of cards, Dr. Broyard’s and those of a Dr. Tibbets, LCSW. I tried to take one of each without using my dirty finger.

How’s nine forty-five? she asked, holding out a box of Kleenex.

I RACED THROUGH THE PARKING garage, carrying my phone in both hands. Once the doors were locked and the AC was on, I dialed the first nine digits of Phillip’s number, then paused. I had never called him before; for the last six years it was always him calling me, and only at Open Palm and only in his capacity as a board member. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Suzanne would say it was. She made the first move with Carl. Suzanne and Carl were my bosses.

If you feel a connection, don’t be shy about it, she’d once said.

What’s an example of not being shy about it?

Show him some heat.

I waited four days, to spread out the questions, and then I asked her for an example of showing heat. She looked at me for a long time and then pulled an old envelope out of the trash and drew a pear on it. This is how your body is shaped. See? Teeny tiny on top and not so tiny on the bottom. Then she explained the illusion created by wearing dark colors on the bottom and bright colors on top. When I see other women with this color combination I check to see if they’re a pear too and they always are—two pears can’t fool each other.

Below her drawing she wrote the phone number of someone she thought was more right for me than Phillip—a divorced alcoholic father named Mark Kwon. He took me out to dinner at Mandarette on Beverly. When that didn’t pan out she asked me if she was barking up the wrong tree. Maybe it’s not Mark you don’t like? Maybe it’s men? People sometimes think this because of the way I wear my hair; it happens to be short. I also wear shoes you can actually walk in, Rockports or clean sneakers instead of high-heeled foot jewelry. But would a homosexual woman’s heart leap at the sight of a sixty-five-year-old man in a gray sweater? Mark Kwon remarried a few years ago; Suzanne made a point of telling me. I pressed the last digit of Phillip’s number.

Hello? He sounded asleep.

Hi, it’s Cheryl.

Oh?

From Open Palm.

Oh, hello, hello! Wonderful fundraiser, I had a blast. How can I help you, Cheryl?

I just wanted to tell you I saw Dr. Broyard. There was a long pause. The chromotherapist, I added.

Jens! He’s great, right?

I said I thought he was phenomenal.

This had been my plan, to use the same word that he had used to describe my necklace at the fundraiser. He had lifted the heavy beads off my chest and said, This is phenomenal, where’d you get it? and I said, From a vendor at the farmer’s market, and then he used the beads to pull me toward him. Hey, he said, I like this, this is handy. An outsider, such as Nakako the grant writer, might have thought this moment was degrading, but I knew the degradation was just a joke; he was mocking the kind of man who would do something like that. He’s been doing these things for years; once, during a board meeting, he insisted my blouse wasn’t zipped up in back, and then he unzipped it, laughing. I’d laughed too, immediately reaching around to close it back up. The joke was, Can you believe people? The tacky kinds of things they do? But it had another layer to it, because imitating crass people was kind of liberating—like pretending to be a child or a crazy person. It was something you could do only with someone you really trusted, someone who knew how capable and good you actually were. After he released his hold on my necklace I had a brief coughing fit, which led to a discussion of my globus and the color doctor.

The word phenomenal didn’t seem to trigger anything in him; he was saying Dr. Broyard was expensive but worth it and then his voice began rising toward a polite exit. Well, I guess I’ll see you at the board meeting to— but before he could say morrow, I interrupted.

When in doubt, give a shout!

Excuse me?

I’m here for you. When in doubt, just give me a shout.

What silence. Giant domed cathedrals never held so much emptiness. He cleared his throat. It echoed, bouncing around the dome, startling pigeons.

Cheryl?

Yes?

I think I should go.

I didn’t say anything. He would have to step over my dead body to get off the phone.

Goodbye, he said, and then, after a pause, he hung up.

I put the phone in my purse. If the red was already working then my nose and eyes would now be pierced with that beautiful stinging sensation, a million tiny pins, culminating in a giant salty rush, the shame moving through my tears and out to the gutter. The cry climbed to my throat, swelling it, but instead of surging upward it hunkered down right there, in a belligerent ball. Globus hystericus.

Something hit my car and I jumped. It was the door of the car next to mine; a woman was maneuvering her baby into its car seat. I held my throat and leaned forward to get a look, but her hair blocked its face so there was no way to tell if it was one of the babies I think of as mine. Not mine biologically, just . . . familiar. I call those ones Kubelko Bondy. It only takes a second to check; half the time I don’t even know I’m doing it until I’m already done.

The Bondys were briefly friends with my parents in the early seventies. Mr. and Mrs. Bondy and their little boy, Kubelko. Later, when I asked my mom about him, she said she was sure that wasn’t his name, but what was his name? Kevin? Marco? She couldn’t remember. The parents drank wine in the living room and I was instructed to play with Kubelko. Show him your toys. He sat silently by my bedroom door holding a wooden spoon, sometimes hitting it against the floor. Wide black eyes, fat pink jowls. He was a young boy, very young. Barely more than a year old. After a while he threw his spoon and began to wail. I watched him crying and waited for someone to come but no one came so I heaved him onto my small lap and rocked his chubby body. He calmed almost immediately. I kept my arms around him and he looked at me and I looked at him and he looked at me and I knew that he loved me more than his mother and father and that in some very real and permanent way he belonged to me. Because I was only nine it wasn’t clear if he belonged to me as a child or as a spouse, but it didn’t matter, I felt myself rising up to the challenge of heartache. I pressed my cheek against his cheek and held him for what I hoped would be eternity. He fell asleep and I drifted in and out of consciousness myself, unmoored from time and scale, his warm body huge then tiny—then abruptly seized from my arms by the woman who thought of herself as his mother. As the adults made their way to the door saying tired too-loud thank-yous, Kubelko Bondy looked at me with panicked eyes.

Do something. They’re taking me away.

I will, don’t worry, I’ll do something.

Of course I wouldn’t just let him sail out into the night, not my own dear boy. Halt! Unhand him!

But my voice was too quiet, it didn’t leave my head. Seconds later he sailed out into the night, my own dear boy. Never to be seen again.

Except I did see him again—again and again. Sometimes he’s a newborn, sometimes he’s already toddling along. As I pulled out of my parking spot I got a better look at the baby in the car next to mine. Just some kid.

CHAPTER TWO

I was woken early by the sound of limbs falling in the backyard. I took thirty milliliters of red and listened to the labored sawing. It was Rick, the homeless gardener who came with the house. I would never hire someone to lurk around on my property and invade my privacy, but I didn’t fire him when I moved in, because I didn’t want him to think I was less open-minded than the previous owners, the Goldfarbs. They gave him a key; sometimes he uses the bathroom or leaves lemons in the kitchen. I try to find a reason to leave before he arrives, which is not so easy at seven A.M. Sometimes I just drive around for the whole three hours until he’s gone. Or I drive a few blocks away, park, and sleep in my car. Once he spotted me, on his way back to his tent or box, and pressed his smiling, stubbly face against the window. It had been hard to think of an explanation while still half-asleep.

Today I just went to Open Palm early and got everything ready for the meeting of the board. My plan was to behave so gracefully that the clumsy woman Phillip had spoken with yesterday would be impossible to recall. I wouldn’t use a British accent out loud, but I’d be using one in my head and it would carry over.

Jim and Michelle were already in the office, and so was Sarah the intern. She had her new baby with her; she was trying to keep it under her desk, but obviously we could all hear it. I wiped down the boardroom table and laid out pads of paper and pens. As a manager this is beneath me, but I like to make it nice for Phillip. Jim yelled, Incoming! which meant Carl and Suzanne were about to make their entrance. I grabbed a pair of giant vases full of dead flowers and hurried to the staff kitchen.

I’ll do that! said Michelle. She was a new employee—not my pick.

Too late now, I said. I’m already holding them.

She ran alongside me and pried a vase out of my hand, too ignorant to understand the system of counter­balances I was using. One was slipping now, thanks to her help, and I let her catch it, which she did not. Carl and Suzanne walked in the door the moment the vase hit the carpet. Phillip was with them.

Greetings, said Carl. Phillip was wearing a gorgeous wine-colored sweater. My breath thinned. I always had to resist the urge to go to him like a wife, as if we’d already been a couple for a hundred thousand lifetimes. Caveman and cavewoman. King and queen. Nuns.

Meet Michelle, our new media coordinator, I said, gesturing downward in a funny way. She was on her hands and knees gathering up slimy brown flowers; now she struggled to stand.

I’m Phillip. Michelle shook his hand from a confused kneeling position, her face a hot circle of tears. I had accidentally been cruel; this only ever happens at times of great stress and my regret is always tremendous. I would bring her something tomorrow, a gift certificate or a Ninja five-cup smoothie maker. I should have already given her a gift, preemptively; I like to do that with new employees. They come home and say, This new job is so great, I can’t even believe it—look at what my manager gave me! Then if they ever come home in tears their spouse will say, But, hon, the smoothie maker? Are you sure? And the new employee will second-guess or perhaps even blame themselves.

Suzanne and Carl ambled away with Phillip, and Sarah the intern hurried over to help clean up the mess. Her baby’s gurgling was insistent and aggressive. Finally I walked over to her desk and peeked under it. He cooed like a mournful dove and smiled up at me with the warmth of total recognition.

I keep getting born to the wrong people, he said.

I nodded regretfully. I know.

What could I do? I wanted to lift him out of his carrier and finally encircle him in my arms again, but this wasn’t an option. I mimed an apology and he accepted it with a slow, wise-eyed blink that made my chest ache with sorrow and my globus swell. I kept getting older while he stayed young, my tiny husband. Or, more likely at this point: my son. Sarah hurried over and swung his baby carrier to the other side of the desk. His foot went wild with kicking.

Don’t give up, don’t give up.

I won’t, I said. Never.

It would be much too painful to see him on a regular basis. I cleared my throat sternly.

I think you know it isn’t appropriate to bring your baby to work.

Suzanne said it was fine. She said she brought Clee to work all the time when she was little.

It was true. Carl and Suzanne’s daughter used to come to the old studio after school and hang out in the classes, running around screaming and distracting everyone. I told Sarah she could finish the day but that this couldn’t become a routine thing. She gave me a betrayed look, because she’s a working mom, feminism, etc. I gave her the same look back, because I’m a woman in a senior position, she’s taking advantage, feminism, etc. She bowed her head slightly. The interns are always women Carl and Suzanne feel sorry for. I was one, twenty-five years ago. Back then Open Palm was really just a women’s self-defense studio; a repurposed tae kwon do dojo.

A man grabs your breast—what do you do? A gang of men surrounds you and knocks you to the ground, then begins unzipping your pants—what do you do? A man you thought you knew presses you against a wall and won’t let you go—what do you do? A man yells a crude comment about a part of your body he’d like you to show him—do you show it to him? No. You turn and look straight at him, point your finger right at his nose, and, drawing from your diaphragm, you make a very loud, guttural Aiaiaiaiaiai! noise. The students always liked that part, making that noise. The mood shifted when the attackers came out in their giant-headed foam pummel suits and began to simulate rape, gang rape, sexual humiliation, and unwanted ­caress. The men inside were actually kind and peaceable—almost to a fault—but they became quite vulgar and heated during the role-plays. It brought up emotions for a lot of the women, which was the point—anyone can fight back when they’re not terrified or humiliated, when they aren’t sobbing and asking for their money back. The feeling of accomplishment in the final class was always very moving. Attackers and students hugged and thanked each other while drinking sparkling cider. All was forgiven.

We still teach a class for teen girls, but that’s just to keep our nonprofit status—all our real business is in fitness DVDs now. Selling self-defense as exercise was my idea. Our line is competitive with other top workout videos; most buyers say they don’t even think about the combat aspect, they just like the up-tempo music and what it does to their shape. Who wants to watch a woman getting accosted in a park? No one. If it weren’t for me, Carl and Suzanne would still be making that type of depressing how-to video. They’ve more or less retired since they moved to Ojai, but they still meddle in employee affairs and attend the board meetings. I’m practically, though not officially, on the board. I take notes.

Phillip sat as far away from me as possible and seemed to avoid looking at my side of the room for the duration of the meeting. I hoped I was just being paranoid, but later Suzanne asked if there was a problem between us. I confessed I had shown him some heat.

What does that mean?

It had been almost five years since she’d suggested it—I guess it wasn’t a phrase she used anymore.

I told him when in doubt . . . It was hard to say it.

What? Suzanne leaned in, her dangly earrings swinging forward.

When in doubt, give a shout, I whispered.

You said that to him? That’s a very provocative phrase.

It is?

For a woman to say to a man? Sure. You’ve definitely shown him—how did you put it?

Some heat.

Carl walked around the office with

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