Tracing the Shadows of Intimacy: Helen Chau Bradley’s Personal Attention Roleplay
I’m writing this review in the middle of self-isolation. My roommate has recently tested positive for COVID-19, and for the past week, we’ve both been sequestered to our respective rooms, wearing masks during short excursions to make food or go to the bathroom. On rare occasions, these outings intersect, and we scurry by each other, six feet apart, with ghostly faces masked by white KN95s. Yesterday, I was on the verge of sleep when I was reminded of their unseen presence, making tea like a spectre in the night.
The relationships ... are magnified through a lens of liminal intimacy—of touch and its loss—of being haunted by old relationships—real or imagined.
Perhaps it is this, the fact of being alive during an era marked by strange, new camaraderie, amidst and inside isolation, which makes Personal Attention Roleplay so poignant. Published in 2021, Helen Chau Bradley’s debut short story collection takes up contemporary modes of intimacy and queerness. Though most of its stories are set in periods unmarked by contagion, the relationships it describes are magnified through a lens of liminal intimacy—of touch and its loss—of being haunted by old relationships—real or imagined.
In “Maverick,” the opening story, Hannah recounts her brief pre-teen career in competitive gymnastics. With breathtaking pathos, Chau Bradley weaves memory with the emotional clarity of recollection. Hannah has graduated to Level 3, and the disappointments of growing older begin to emerge: the discrepancy between her real and desired skill level, overwhelming parental and peer pressures, and her status as a social pariah. What undergirds these attempts to negotiate pervasive homophobia and the complex hierarchies of girls though, is her first time falling in love. The object of Hannah’s affection is Larisa, a fellow gymnast in Level 4, confident and in possession of an ineffable poise, who Hannah daydreams about but scarcely has the confidence to speak to. Eventually, Larisa approaches Hannah for the first time during a break while at practice. Here, Hannah reminisces on Ghost Arm, a game from her childhood.
A shiver ran along my calves, as if her leg hairs were touching my leg hairs. I was too afraid to look, so I focussed on the sensation loosely, the way I would when my cousin and I played Ghost Arm. One person closed their eyes while the other person slowly ran their fingers up the first person’s forearm, towards the soft crook of the elbow—the one with the closed eyes had to guess when the fingers had reached their destination. That little pit of feeling. The fun of the game was that we always guessed wrong, called out too early, due to the confusion of slow anticipation.
There’s no one for me to try it with right now, but Chau Bradley’s description still gives me shivers, the same way I remember I’m breathing after a jog, salivate when I think about my next meal, or feel a phantom itch after looking at pictures of bugs.
Ghost Arm is a game which seems strangely familiar, despite my inability to recall having ever played it. There’s no one for me to try it with right now, but Chau Bradley’s description still gives me shivers, the same way I remember I’m breathing after a jog, salivate when I think about my next meal, or feel a phantom itch after looking at pictures of bugs. The intimation of closeness is enough to conjure attachment.
Chau Bradley captures with visceral clarity the uncomfortable equivocations of youthful unknowns: who am I? Who will I become? Who do I love? Who could love me? These cannot be disentangled. To invoke José Esteban Muñoz, queer utopia is always on the horizon. Lesbian yearning is always not here yet.
On the next page, Larisa asks Hannah, “What’s there to be afraid of? Attention?”
Where Personal Attention Roleplay shines, touches a nerve as in a game of Ghost Arm, is in character transformations out of loneliness—losses which are felt acutely but resist mourning.
“Personal Attention Roleplay,” the eponymous story, introduces the protagonist, Justine, as she reckons with her roommate’s refusal to continue in their codependent relationship. They’ve become “too entangled.” Chau Bradley narrates Justine’s ensuing psychological collapse in second person; we, as a reader, are implicated as a witness. We’re unable to look away from the aftermath, as intoxicating as it is difficult to encounter. Unable to cope, Justine withdraws from family, friendships, work, bills. Outside of the relationship, she loses her sense of self and identity: “Your features are already dissolving, your body evaporating. You are melding with the ether, where you will never again be alone.”
Deepening the intricacy of the characters, Chau Bradley adeptly writes their queerness and marginalization, often encoded subtly while remaining pervasive. When Justine laments about their parents, her brother attempts to comfort her: “Mom and Dad weren’t even that kind of Asian parents.”
Like many of Chau Bradley’s characters, I am all too used to navigating a world where I cannot anticipate the next instance of aggression. Will I pretend to be unaffected? Will I let the world happen to me?
In “Only the Lonely,” the protagonist encounters a Meals on Wheels client who “refuses to call me anything other than ‘La Japonaise,’ which is especially annoying because I am Chinese and tell him so every time, even though it isn’t like I want to be called ‘La Chinoise’ either.”
Like many of Chau Bradley’s characters, I am all too used to navigating a world where I cannot anticipate the next instance of aggression. Will I pretend to be unaffected? Will I let the world happen to me?
The only story which explicitly refers to the pandemic, “The Queue,” is a complexly woven simulacrum of political differences and information overload. The idea of the political as personal, a concept which reverberates throughout the collection, has room to breathe here.
Throughout the collection, the stories alternate fluidly between first, second, and third-person narration, forcing the reader to inhabit the interiority of the characters, rather than watch from outside. In contrast, “The Queue” is written solely in dialogue, disembodied voices drifting in and out of the narrative. As characters wait—the implication being that they are in line for COVID-19 tests—they debate epidemiology, partisanship, police brutality. The arguments quickly become heated as people become defensive.
“We’re noticing things we didn’t notice before.”
“Like police brutality, like injustice!”
“Oh come on, none of that’s new! It was just easier to ignore for some of you.”
“Some of us, what do you mean? I’m a woman. I know about oppression!”
“I’m sure you do…”
“I do!”
“But tell me these: when did you ever stand up for your Black and brown sisters? Have you made phone calls? Have you marched? Have you supported us?”
“I’m not a racist! Don’t go calling me a racist”
Later, two of the voices are extricated to a location outside the queue—a quick smoke break—and they end up having a sexual encounter in the bushes. Again, queerness and relation happen in a separate, safe space; even within intimacy, Chau Bradley’s stories enact a kind of isolation. Afterwards, one asks the other whether they should “trade numbers or IG handles or—?” Whether the connection extends past the narration is unclear. The story ends, and we leave them, still waiting in line.
“We may be staying in the queue for a lot longer, anyhow.”
“We may in fact be living in the queue from now on.”
“Who even knows if it’s a queue anymore, it could be anything at this point. The whole situation is pretty amorphous.”
“Maybe it’s more of a blob now.”
“A sphere.”
“An ouroboros.”
“A five-dimensional rhomboid.”
“A two-dimensional line.”
Though the haunting invocations are at once soft and sharp enough to draw blood, many of the stories linger on the sharpness, returning to a narrative of queer not here yet, of characters in the middle of loss and longing.
Even as Personal Attention Roleplay is deeply invested in examining relationships, each occurs outside of compulsory heterosexuality and nuclear family units. These depictions of queerness explode outside of social efforts to contain it, and they challenge our understanding of what it means to be intimate in the here and now. Though the haunting invocations are at once soft and sharp enough to draw blood, many of the stories linger on the sharpness, returning to a narrative of queer not here yet, of characters in the middle of loss and longing. As I read, I wished, perhaps selfishly, for a future for the characters after the confines of the story. For more reminders of joy—the vibrancy and belonging which also define queerness. The final story ends on a note which embraces this, culminating in a swelling underscoring of queer friendship. Personal Attention Roleplay is an ambitious collection which takes up characters who refuse categorization and easy identification, and Chau Bradley inscribes them with compelling compassion and perceptive critiques of contemporary social life.
I was reminded of how painful loneliness can be—and that I am not alone in my loneliness.
I have never been good at being alone, whether or not it’s been justified. Without someone else to tether me, I become too aware of my pulpy body and gelatinous brain. Feeling lonely becomes a personal failing. Still, I’m lucky; it’s likely that I haven’t caught COVID from my roommate, and if I have, it’s an extremely mild case. I’m lucky that, for me, this pandemic hasn’t been worse than being alone. But while reading Personal Attention Roleplay, with its incisive prose and unflinching depictions of personal tragedy, I was reminded of how painful loneliness can be—and that I am not alone in my loneliness.
