This story stands out from the rest as daring in content: the first person narrator, a Thalidomide baby now grown, who has his first sexual experience with an overpainted, boozing, drug-loving, epileptic midget (little person), with a twist of humor and sad loneliness that’s presented in a fine voice and style by Alicia Gifford.
Oh, and did I mention a bitten-off penis?
It takes a good writer to throw all this together and pull it off, and Gifford, I believe, has done it. I remember in one of my CW classes that one of the first student stories offered for workshopping was of the accident occuring just as the driver’s getting a blow job and the expected result. But it was the usual amateur mistake of making that moment the climax (no pun intended) of the story, when it was so obviously built up to that particular focus as a shocker. In Gorgeous World, the scenario is but a moment on the way down the arc, a confirmation of a decision already made, so well used by the author.
There’s also a nice contrast in what the narrator is saying to what we think he feels, and not in the usual sarcastically flippant manner. In the opening line, "I’ve forgiven my mother, she didn’t know what she was doing," we are pulled in and interested as he relates the circumstances of his birth. There is delicate subject matter here, in describing what surely is the heartbreaking reality caused by the drug, as well as the fact of his girlfriend, and Gifford handles it in a very down-to-earth, politically incorrect, and yet open and honest manner. Humor is a healer, and the narrator’s nickname of Penguin is just the beginning of acceptance and a road to normalcy. Open honesty may hurt, but it is better than proper words that offend even more by their attempted masquerade.
Entertaining, provocative, and one story that’ll stick with you.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology