Someone call a masseuse for me...

... Because this story has me super tense!

I knew Oates’s “Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?” was supposed to be scary, but I had no idea exactly what kind of scare I was in for. I honestly have never been more terrified by words on a page. This probably has something to do with the fact that I; not unlike Connie; was home alone while reading the work. And it was dark. And storming outside.

Yet, even though the atmosphere definitely helped, it was Oates’s pacing and creation of tension in the story that made me terrified of Arnold For-Sure-Not-A-Friend. Oates’s first introduction of the antagonist already puts you on edge; he isn’t described as particularly terrifying or intimidating, but it still works. It’s something about the commonality of his appearance- the unappealing black hair and the creepy grin- that truly already adds to the tension created between Connie and her family. We know something bad is going to happen to our heroine, we’re poised and ready for conflict between her and somebody, and bam! Oates gives him to us in a gold jalopy in the form of someone pretty much everyone has seen or experienced at one point in their lives. He even explicitly says, “Gonna get you, baby,” and we know exactly who to look out for.

Unfortunately, Connie does not have the same idea that her audience has when the creep-to-end-all-creeps appears at her doorstep in his SkeeveMobile. She starts off having a morbid curiosity about these strangers in her driveway; she wants their attention, but she does not want to encourage them, so she acts like a cat by lingering by the screen door without going in or out. Meanwhile, the audience is already thinking “no no no no no!” The tension is already rising to maximum capacity at this point, Arnold Please-Don’t-Ever-Be-My-Friend’s languid and informal dialogue makes one’s skin crawl, and somehow his drawl even manages to draw the exchange between him and Connie out over eight pages. The entire terrifying exchange between him and Connie probably takes less than ten minutes in real time, but because Oates plots every twist and realization on Connie’s part so carefully and concisely, it feels like an hour before Connie ultimately meets her doom. I didn’t even realize I was clenching my muscles until I put the story down (and then triple-locked my front door soon after).