Greasy Lake

Content Warning: This section references violence, attempted rape, and drug use.

“There was a time when courtesy and winning ways went out of style, when it was good to be bad, when you cultivated decadence like a taste.”

The opening line sets a bleak tone for the rest of the story, asserting that courtesy is merely a performance that no longer “wins” results. By saying it is “good to be bad,” the narrator foreshadows that he and the other characters in this story are engaging in learned behavior that yields rewards and introduces the theme of Nature Versus Nurture and Male Violence. The mention of decadence exaggerates the characters’ badness but also establishes the sense of excess conveyed by the story’s setting.

“On the far side of the lot, like the exoskeleton of some gaunt chrome insect, a chopper leaned against its kickstand.”

This simile describing a motorcycle in the lake’s parking lot symbolizes rebirth or personal change. Insects commonly shed their own skin, or exoskeleton. By referencing this process, the narrator foreshadows that he and/or the other characters will shed former iterations of self.

“He merely backed off a step, his face like a Toltec mask, and laid Digby out with a single whistling roundhouse blow […] a tinny compound of shock, rage, and impotence wadded in my throat.”

The narrator describes the boys’ fight with the unknown men in vivid detail, exaggerating hits as “whistling,” as if they are acting out their anger in a cartoon. In this way, the narrator creates ironic distance between himself and the fight and keeps the severity of the situation at bay.