Sex and the Cities

Leaving the Neighborhood and Other Stories
Lucy Ferriss '75
Mid-List Press, 2001 • 163 pages • $14.00

If she weren't wary of being sued by HBO, Lucy Ferriss might have named her first short story collection (and sixth book) "Sex and the Cities ... Villages and Hamlets." Like the popular TV series, Ferriss' collection Leaving the Neighborhood tracks the meaning of sex, love, and belonging at the turn of the 20th century. However, while the characters in HBO's hit show are rooted in Manhattan, Ferriss' stories spread out across the nation, from Atlanta to Connecticut to the coastline of Malibu. Wherever you go, it seems, sex is plentiful--but it's never quite the point. "Sex and the City" purports to be about finding hot sex in the glamorous city (or is it glamorous sex in the hot city?), yet the show actually gets its dramatic energy from the romantic longings and the consolations of friendship among its four female protagonists. Similarly, the stories in this collection track vigorously adulterous characters, but their real mission is to address what Ferriss calls "the challenge of marriage"--the ongoing struggle to maintain faith and find happiness within permanent commitment.

Nearly every story involves women and men who say yes to quick affairs. The protagonist in "The Vortex" muses on the appeal of such transgressions as she approaches her lover: "It was fantasy, after all. Since marrying Jeremy she had learned a lot about fantasy. How good it was to indulge in, how dangerous to believe in." A great line, and the best stories in the collection revolve around this insight. Ferriss' characters struggle both with the sweet temptations of sexual fantasy and with the dangers and inevitable disappointments of indulgence in actual adultery.

The most successful stories--"Stampede," "Bones," and "Leaving the Neighborhood"--involve characters whose failed search for romantic closeness is interwoven with longings for deeper connection to place, community, and self. In these stories, the theme of fidelity fruitfully fragments into various forms: from faithfulness to one's spouse or partner, to loyalty to one's friends, to sustained connection to one's own deeply held values and dreams. In the title story, Eddie, an appealing substitute teacher who is gay, searches for permanence through "nesting" in his new neighborhood. When the romantic home of his imagination opens up into the more difficult negotiations of real loyalty, Eddie is tempted to fly: "He tried to think of the mallards, the ones who'd left his back yard despite rice cakes and the wading pool. They must have figured it out at last--wrong place--and flown off to the pond in Arlington. But when he opened his eyes, his feet were already heading back to the lunchroom." Through Eddie's struggles to find a home, Ferriss reveals the true implications of "leaving the neighborhood"--of what it really means to dream, to commit, to flee, and to return to love.

--Cynthia Dobbs '87,
Assistant Professor of English, University of the Pacific