10 February 2018

Nasty Boys


by Libby Cudmore

Nasty, nasty boys, let me see your body groove. — Janet Jackson, “Nasty”

Lester Nygaard
Lester Nygaard
There has to be a word for that moment when you’re watching a TV series, and you’re more than a few episodes in, and you suddenly realize that you are terribly, violently attracted to the absolute worst character on the show. It’s never a slow build; one minute, you’re just toodling along, watching Fargo on the couch with your husband and the next, like a hammer to the skull, you find yourself thinking, “I am ride-or-die for Lester Nygaard.”

There has to be a word for it. And if there isn’t, we should scour world’s languages over to invent one. Because it’s legit. I remember how I felt in the moment I fell for Shane Vendrell, sometime around season two of The Shield, and my heart just started pounding, and I thought, “He is so fine that I am going to literally die from how fine he is.” Then I discovered he was the cast member with the last name Goggins and thought “Well, Mrs. Elizabeth Goggins doesn’t sound that weird….” But through all of it—through the casual racism and the grenade throwing, the violence and the threats, Shane was my One True Love, right to the end. I was there for all of it.

And I thought maybe it was a one-off thing. Nope. A whole series of trash boys followed. Jimmy McGill on Better Call Saul. Lester Nygaard on Fargo. Boyd Crowder on Justified, and on and on and on. There’s one in every series.

I am not really like this. My husband is a well-regarded figure in our community. He is honest and handsome, a sweet man who buys me Donald Fagen records for Christmas. I have never once wanted to date a “bad boy;” in high school and college I happily dated a series of nerds, guys who listened to Billy Joel or watched anime or went to ren faires. I have always been attracted to nice boys. I am a feminist. I demand respect, Ms. Cudmore if you’re nasty.

Shane Vendrell
Shane Vendrell

But I confessed this terrible feeling to my other girlfriends and, as it turns out, they all had their own trash boys. Caleb on Bates Motel. Gus Halper as Erik Menendez. Jax on Sons of Anarchy. They’re the first entry on a game of F•ck/Marry/Kill, but they are down for a good time. And so what if they impregnated their sister or murdered their parents or take sleezy career shortcuts? We love them just the same.

To men, these characters often play as a sort of justification for all their weak impulses. Who hasn’t felt like they’re misunderstood in their work or by their spouse, believed they deserved more, that they had earned what they’d stolen? It’s an outlet, a fantasy that they could get away with being something other than the common human we are all guilty of being.

But to women, they are someone in need of love, of fixing, of understanding, then maybe they wouldn’t do such terrible things. There’s a certain power, at least to me, in loving these sorts of characters. We could keep their secrets. We could help bury the bodies. We are bold and trustworthy broads, and no man would ever think of double-crossing us. We can hold our own in a gunfight or a car chase.

It’s dangerous thinking, in real life, to imagine that you are responsible for fixing someone. But in film and fiction, it’s an addictive thrill. And a good writer knows this. A good writer knows how to make a man desirable and repulsive all at the same time, give him something the audience recognizes as a nearly-palpable need and then twist that into something selfish, the push and pull with the audience. It is almost erotic when done right.

Crime fiction thrives on nasty boys. But a good writer can make even the worst of them somehow charming, to keep the reader turning the page, breathless and, just maybe, slightly in love.

And while you’re working on that, I’ll be trying to create a new word for that stupid-twisted-love feeling. I’ve got another season of Fargo to get through.

4 comments:

  1. When a girlfriend broke up with me, she said, "Why? You changed for the better." (sigh)

    ReplyDelete
  2. BTW, men have their own version of this - the Suicide Blonde fetish. Kathleen Turner in "Body Heat", Sharon Stone in "Basic Instinct". Same thing.

    The farthest I've gone with that is that I fell for Val Kilmer in "Tombstone", but then he did have all the best lines. And I fell for Hawk in the Spenser books, but he never roughed up his women.

    All I can say is, for people who suffer from that syndrome, is get it out of your system young. Date a few. Get treated like s*it for a while. You will (hopefully) get over it. If not, I highly recommend therapy.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh boy. Great topic! I talked to some romance writers about this, and we came to this conclusion: the lure of the bad boy is this (particular one who leans to rebellion and isn't afraid to use his fists against other men): in some primal way, we know that these men will be able to protect our unborn children.

    But we don't live in that sort of society anymore. We don't need the man with fists to protect us, like in the wild west. Yet that primal reaction is still there.

    Eve, you are right on the mark. Leigh, that woman was nuts.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Waylon & Willie recorded a song, "Ladies Love Outlaws" ... had a line about a woman's reaction to seeing a bad boy, "She knew she had to see that look on a child of her own."

    I've dated some terrible men in my life, but the problem wasn't that they raised a hand to me. There was a lot else going on.

    I've actually never watched any of those shows & am not familiar with the actors. I'm planning on Netflixing & chilling this weekend.

    ReplyDelete

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