Being timely by not trying: "Biology" by Kevin Wilson, Best American Short Stories 2021

I remarked when looking at Best American Short Stories last year that it's really hard for fiction to be an art form that comments on the issues of the moment. Fiction takes a while to write, a while to get approved for publication, a while to edit, and finally a while to be published. For an annual anthology that then adds its own added selection, editing, and publication time cycles to the process, it often means that fiction responding to an issue of the present is actually responding to an issue of years ago. That's the case in this year's anthology with George Saunders' "Love Letter." While "Love Letter" could still be read years from now with profit for the way it frames difficult questions of how much of one's personal life it makes sense to sacrifice for the general good, it is not responding to a national issue of the present as an artifact of an annual anthology. As an entry in the Best American Short Stories 2021 anthology, it isn't responding to an issue of 2021. Well, not 2021 after January 6th, anyhow. 

It's not anybody's fault that fiction doesn't provide immediate responses to issues of the moment. Social media makes the conversation shift almost daily, if not even faster. One of the reasons it's so hard to accomplish anything politically is that voters are constantly following a new shiny object every day, preventing them from the kind of slow and methodical labor on one issue that's usually necessary for progress. For fiction, that means that if you try to write a story about the issue of the moment, it might not be an issue of much concern by the time your story is published. 

That's why it's so remarkable that Kevin Wilson's "Biology" seems to be commenting on an issue that's come up in the news lately, although it wasn't an issue on anyone's radar back when he wrote this story. It wasn't even on the radar when Best American Short Stories 2021 came out last fall. I'm talking about Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill. I can't even summarize this bill, because it's so full of vague language, nobody agrees on what it says. But what it will probably do is make teachers less likely to discuss issues of sexual identity with students. 

Along comes me with my tardy read-through of BASS 2021, and to my surprise, the next-to-last story is about a teacher who connects with an awkward, troubled, gay 8th grader, partly by discussing sex and sexual identity. You can't get more timely than that, although the timeliness is completely serendipitous. It's a reminder that while you certainly shouldn't avoid writing about the topic du jour as a writer if that's what moves you, you shouldn't feel like writing about other things is somehow escapist. If you write the story that's stuck in your brain and won't come out until you create it, in time, it will be of pressing interest to somebody. 

Why "Biology"?

This story could well have been called "Death Cards," the game that Patrick, the awkward gay kid mentioned above, invents. The game is a compelling and critical element in the story, and thematically relevant. A big part of the theme has to do with the randomness of the cards we get dealt in life. Instead of using the game's name as the name of the story, though, it's called "Biology." The simple reason it's called that might be that Kevin's teacher-guide, Mr. Reynolds, is a biology teacher. But biology itself takes on a meaning in the story that's parallel to that of the death cards.

Patrick's Death Cards game involves a mix of cards he has created. Each card holds a hypothetical life event on it, belonging to one of four stages of life. There are nice things that can happen--first kiss, first job, win a contest--but also "death cards" featuring "people dying in horrible, graphic ways." The game, as such, involves little more than drawing cards to see what kind of life experiences you get before you die. It's all luck. 

Patrick's card game is not unlike the biology Mr. Reynolds teaches, "where the babies fight each other to the death in order to be the one who gets the food from the mother. One time he brought in this weird slug and told us about how its mouth was like sandpaper and it could tear out the eyes of a baby bird, or something like that. He talked about egg wars where different bird species tried to fuck each other over." Or, as Patrick then puts it more succinctly, Mr. Reynolds teaches about "the horrible shit that all living things did just to keep themselves alive." 

Patrick is a boy obsessed with the "horrible shit." It populates his game that he has to play by himself because nobody will play with him. Patrick has nobody to discuss these thoughts with, and he's probably on his way to either hurting himself or someone else. "If I'd had a gun, if I knew how to get a gun, I would have murdered everyone in the classroom," he recalls, thinking back on his junior high school years from his perspective as a grown man. 

Bad teacher, but good for Patrick

We had a good teacher story earlier in BASS 2021 with "A Way with Bea," but Mr. Reynolds isn't a very good teacher, by his own admission. He's kind of mousy, and suffers from Vietnam War-induced PTSD. Patrick discovers, however, that Mr. Reynolds is able to withstand the insults the students throw at him without it affecting his own self-image. "This might help you Patrick," Mr. Reynolds tells him when Patrick starts spending lunch period in Mr. Reynolds' room, "If people think you are strange, different, they can be cruel. They look for instability, and opening. My car, it's not me, is it? It's just this piece of metal that I drive to work every day. But people can look at it and laugh, and they think it hurts me, but it doesn't. Because it's not me." 

Patrick is temporarily turned off to Mr. Reynolds' biology when Mr. Reynolds doesn't affirm his belief in evolution. Evolution had been a consoling theory to Patrick, because it represented the "idea that you could be something but turn into something else." Mr. Reynolds doesn't offer Patrick any great hopes for the future, though. He thinks life is like Death Cards. "You just pick cards and you can't really control it." That might not seem like the inspirational message Patrick needs, but it turns out it's the exact realistic kind of advice he needs. Mr. Reynolds gives more hard truths when Patrick comes to his house to see him: "Life does not always have to be bad, Patrick, but maybe right now it has to be for you. But get out of here, go to college, a college in a big city or with a lot of students, and then maybe you can figure this out. Maybe you can find happiness." When Patrick wonders if he might not ever find happiness, Mr. Reynolds acknowledges that this is possible. "Maybe...but just try, okay?"

Mr. Reynolds doesn't hide the cruelty of the world, not in his lessons nor in his private conversations with Patrick. It's evolution. It's biology. But by allowing Patrick to imagine a world without so much cruelty, without "death cards," he gives Patrick the space to keep breathing long enough to get past the worst of it and survive childhood. 

Mr. Reynolds isn't this bad, but he's probably not winning any teacher of the year awards. 

They talk about sex

Mr. Reynolds does not shy away from Patrick's questions about sex. Although Patrick noted that Mr. Reynolds was somewhat squeamish talking about human bodies, the teacher still delivered answers with scientific precision when asked. He's kind of asexual. He might have been gay once, but that time has kind of passed, and now he's just not interested in sex. He had sex once, with a prostitute in Vietnam, because he was being harassed by members of his unit to, and he hated it. When Patrick says he might be gay, Mr. Reynolds tells him that doesn't mean there is anything wrong with him. 

Patrick got what he needed to survive junior high and high school. It wasn't by much, and all his issues aren't behind him as an adult. But Mr. Reynolds, by his willingness to answer the questions Patrick had and to share what little wisdom he had, likely saved at least one life. That wouldn't have been possible if Mr. Reynolds had thought that he'd get fired for answering Patrick's questions. Mr. Reynolds needed freedom.

Hell, if you think about it, Mr. Reynolds was probably taking an unwise risk when he let Patrick come alone into his bedroom. Patrick asked if he could kiss Mr. Reynolds. That all might have gone south. But it didn't. 

It's hard to change minds. That's my entire lesson in democracy I've learned in the last 30 years. But minds do change. I don't think advocates in Florida will make many inroads by preaching about the dangers LGBTQ youth face when they can't talk about their sexuality with adults, because the people pushing the laws often believe the sexuality of those youth amount to an immoral life choice. But a story about a person, told in intimate detail, might alter the amount of rigidity with which someone holds their views. It might not pop the lid off the jar, but it might loosen it. 

I understand that parents want to prevent outsiders from influencing their children in ways parents object to. But why would parents think they alone can provide all the guidance a child needs? Sometimes, kids are just very different from their parents, and the answers they're looking for aren't at home, they're out in the wide world. That never happened for me, personally. I don't have a teacher I look back on and think they changed everything for me. But I can see how it would happen. This story is a believable, sweet account of a teacher having an unexpected positive impact on a student, and it's also an argument for why teachers should not be muzzled when interacting with students. 

The story's also a great example of how to be timely without trying. 

Other looks:

Karen Carlson looks at the story's envelope structure, something I did not discuss.