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ME AND MR BOOKER BY CORY TAYLOR

 * Conner Habib
 * July 4, 2013

Though left, by the author, to our own devices, I suspect that any reader
venturing into Cory Taylor’s novel of intergenerational love will find his or
her direction quite early on, when its sixteen year-old protagonist, Martha,
abruptly describes licking her twice-her-age lover’s balls, “the way he liked me
to.”

Martha, who lives a small life in what feels like an unlucky Australian town,
falls in love with Mr. Booker — initially a friend of her mother’s. Martha’s
mother is passive. Her father is a miserable maniac (echoing the father in
Bukowski’s Ham on Rye so closely, one wonders if Taylor took inspiration from
that book). Martha is also clever in a way that makes her world even more
painful. She knows that thing aren’t all all right. When Mr. and the unfortunate
Mrs. Booker walk in all witty and worldly, just in from England and in their
thirties, their presence signals a way of life outside Martha’s own. Sensing her
boredom and feeling theirs, the Bookers take Martha in, spending what could
either seem to be too much time with her or just enough; rescuing her or using
her.

When Mr. Booker kisses Martha one evening (or does she kiss him?), and when the
kiss inevitably leads to more and more with each meeting, we know things won’t
end well. But are we repulsed or sympathetic?

Since, when I was sixteen, I wanted to sleep with plenty of men in their
thirties, the aforementioned scene of ball-licking holds an erotic charge not
overwhelmed by other feelings, namely that something wrong and hopeless is
happening. If you didn’t have any such proclivities in your late teens, you
might think she’s merely been manipulated, that she’s being taken advantage of,
and that she can’t know what she’s getting herself into.

The difference between seduction and manipulation is really a difference between
uncertainty and innocence: When we’re being seduced, we’re not, in general,
unaware of the seduction itself, but we are often uncertain as to whether or not
we’ll give into it. Manipulation, on the other hand, generally requires a party
wholly innocent of the motivations of the manipulator. The book hovers just
above that difference. Martha is knowing, but is she knowing enough to be
seduced and not just manipulated? And if she is being seduced — or seducing for
that matter — how far will she and Mr. Booker go with it?

Cory Taylor

The characters themselves all seem lost when it comes to controlling their
lives, but they are, at least dimly aware of what sustains them. Martha’s mother
is sustained by her inactivity; Martha’s father, Victor, by his misery. Kicked
out of the house before the book begins, Victor returns again and again, asking
for money, thinking he’ll reunite with his family, all the while berating them,
bemoaning the state of the world, and laughing at his own wisecracks. Mr. Booker
sustains Martha against her dad; something to look forward to between his visits
and general boredom. As for Mr. Booker, Martha infuses his life against a drunk
and sometimes absent wife (and my one real complaint against the book is that
Mrs. Booker is too drunk, too absent — she conveniently disappears whenever
action needs to happen, too often to become a full character). But their lives
are merely sustained, and so, feel precarious. Precariously built structures
sway in the wind, and so we know everyone’s life will have to come crashing down
sooner or later. The questions for us as readers are, how long until these lives
unravel, and how will it happen?

This all paints a darker picture of the book, perhaps, than it deserves — it is
dark, but darkly funny. From Victor likening his love of his family to the love
of God because no one ever feels it to Martha’s quip when he tells her he has a
chemical imbalance in his brain, “That’s a relief… I thought you were crazy.”

Part of the pleasure and sadness of the book is that everyone dances around
their real feelings with humor, and if they don’t, they are — like Martha’s
mother and Mrs. Booker — taken advantage of and duped. Of course, everyone’s
duping themselves too.

“You’ve saved my life,” Mr. Booker says to Martha, in a rare moment of
non-sexual earnestness. “I bet you say that to all the girls,” she replies.

The novel does not expect or exactly foster understanding of Martha’s
relationship with Mr. Booker. The pair hide their romance from everyone — a
hiding which admits its guilt and can even appear mean-spirited when Mrs. Booker
comes around. Yet we may admire their passion amidst the pains of life; they
make us laugh, and for awhile, at least, deftly skip past their sorrows
together. So Me and Mr. Booker is a book of wavering, hesitant in its
sympathies, welcoming readers to find their own allegiances however they please,
which is a mark of its confidence, as well as Cory Taylor’s impressive talents.

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CONNER HABIB

Conner Habib is a writer, lecturer, gay porn star, and former college English
instructor. He runs a Rudolf Steiner spiritual science discussion group at his
home in San Francisco. He recently finished his first play, The Contradiction,
which is in rewrites for production. He's pretty sure he's the only person who's
ever won awards for teaching, porn performance, and writing. He's currently
working on a podcast series featuring discussions with leading thinkers in
science, art, cultural criticism, and spirituality. Contact him for lectures,
more information, or just to say hello at: connerhabibsocial@gmail.com. Or visit
his blog connerhabib.wordpress.com (his adult site is connerhabib.com - ages 21+
only please). Find him on twitter: @ConnerHabib.

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