Sometimes, I’m going along and suddenly my brain wants to read something real weird. Usually, nothing that fits that weird shape calls itself to my attention and I can get on with my usual reading. Last night I came across Eris Adderly’s Bass-Ackwards and knew it was the real weird thing I wanted to read.
This one is an approach with caution, your mileage may vary, taboo, boss-employee, age gap romance.
Christina needs to ask her boss for a day off. She thinks of her boss as Asshole Bill. Bill initially says no, but when she says she’ll make it up later, he tells her she can have the day off if she bends over the table. It’s coercion rather than non-consent. Bill makes it weirder when he offers her a pay increase for one hour a week of sex. Christina agrees. At first Bill pushes her to see how far she’ll let him go, and then he tries to figure out how she feels about it. They both know they are in an unsustainable situation. He is her boss, she needs the money very badly. He tells her she can say no, but he never says she can keep the pay raise without the sex. So can she really say no? How do they go from coercive power imbalance sex to a Happily Ever After with each other?
Earlier in the day, I had watched Kazen at Always Doing talk about The Flame and the Flower, the 1972 historical romance classic by Kathleen Woodiwiss which is generally credited with creating the modern romance genre. The early romances were deeply uncomfortable with female sexual agency and rape and coercion were often the first steps on the road to an improbable happily ever after. You can still find a lot of current romances that have not strayed far from that original pattern. Those romances are not my preferred reading material. I am usually not interested in reading about abusive men who somehow become loving husbands and fathers.
While I was still thinking about Kazen’s video, I saw a comment about Bass-Ackwards and knew it was just what I needed to read to process all these thoughts about the road from coercion to happily ever after.
Whether this book works for you is going to depend a lot on how much Bill’s self-awareness mitigates his abuse of power. He knows he has dug his own grave and doesn’t know how to climb out. Heaven forfend he should talk to Christina about what he wants and how he feels. Christina has her own struggle with how she feels about the arrangement and what she wants from Bill. She is slightly better about being willing to talk. Where Bill is emotionally constipated, Christina is emotionally overwhelmed by everything happening in her life.
It was an interesting read and exactly what I wanted at that moment. It was therapeutic. Those romances I read as a teen and in my early 20s did have an impact on me. I had to unpack and unlearn a lot of internalized misogyny as I aged into my 30s and I’m still unpacking and unlearning. The way the sexual relationship in Bass-Ackwards starts is not ok. In the end, to me, the romance in the book stays just on this side of the forgivable/unforgivable line. But, if I had read it at a different moment, I would probably feel differently about it.
Content notes: coercion, sex for money, unprotected sex, anal sex, oral sex, and abuse of power. The characters experience guilt and shame. The word “whore” isn’t spoken aloud, but does come up in thought. Bill was a cop and has some negative feelings about it. There is off page death of a parent, caring for an elderly grandparent, hoarding, and probably a lot of other things that I’ve forgotten about in the avalanche of everything.
My apologies to Kazen for involving her in my insanity.