Ordinary Nudes by Stuart Dybek

Calypso.

Stuart Dybek seems to have this remarkable ability to write about sensuality in a way that is both poetic and deeply evocative without resorting to explicit detail. Ordinary Nudes is an impressive display of brevity. Despite being just a single paragraph, it manages to distill some complex themes into a few elegant sentences: memory, perception, gender dynamics and the ephemeral nature of beauty. Dybek’s storytelling here is reminiscent of Hemingway’s minimalist style, stripping the story down to its bare essence while still maintaining its lyricism.

The imagery in the piece is especially striking. The woman's body, as seen through the mirror, is described with a dreamlike fluidity. Dybek draws a contrast between the woman’s physical characteristics and the idealized depictions of female beauty (nymphs, goddesses, and ballerinas). By doing so, he challenges the way women are often sexualized by the male gaze. Here, the woman is frozen in time through the photograph but she exists beyond this static representation where she will get older and beauty fades.

The woman's internalized feelings about her own body remain ambiguous and is juxtaposed with the male's voyeuristic perception of her beauty. His perception of her has been altered by time and secrecy with the tantalizing photograph being hidden away in a drawer “beneath his underwear.”  Dybek captures this impermanence of beauty in a way that feels both sensual and deeply melancholic, making Ordinary Nudes a memorable meditation on memory and the nature of desire.

You can read this story HERE.