Stay Safe - A Book Review

A Dark Comedy About our Divided America

Before Michael Lacoy begins his dark comedy, Stay Safe, he includes a page with two quotes. Both are worth repeating in whole below. They are a perfect intro to the book and the past several years of reality:

Look at the nations and watch — and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.

Habakkuk 1:5

There is a certain class of people, very intelligent indeed, who sometimes have utterly paradoxical ideas. But they have suffered so much for them in their lives, and have paid such a heavy price for them, that it would be too painful, almost impossible, to give them up.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The House of the Dead

On the first page, we meet Cole Perrot-Pudding. He is dutifully wearing his Pq23 respirator behind his N16z plastic face shield, and he is berating the unmasked idiots protesting Dr. Gerbyll’s directives for the ongoing SPAARZ flu pandemic.

In the opening scene, Cole is taking his twelve-year-old daughter Rosa to a vaccination clinic. When they arrive, one of the recently vaccinated patients is wheeled out unresponsively by EMS. Shortly thereafter, we are introduced to the rest of his family.

Cole is a lowly student administrator at Wendover College. His breadwinner wife, Dr. Oona Pudding, is a successful author and professor at the college. Lucas, his eighteen-year-old son, is still a boy becoming a man. We learn he is rebelling against the mask mandates and will not take the vaccine.

The main antagonist of the book is Tyce Creamer. If you think of Andrew Tate, you will recognize Tyce Creamer. Tyce is muscular, dominant, an entrepreneur, successful with the ladies, and everything that Cole is not. He runs an online video channel for men and has written a series of books that inspire masculine growth and independence.

The seeds of several conflicts are already sown. Cole’s wife does not respect him. She didn’t take his last name and hasn’t slept with him for over a year. His son argues with him, his daughter Rosa feels neglected, and a far-right wing masochist-fascist has moved in next door.

The author is an obvious fan of Russian literature. Cole’s descent into madness is reminiscent of several Dostoevsky novels. As Anna Karenina begins an affair with Vronsky, Cole’s wife initiates an affair with Tyce. One of the commenters on Tyce’s livestream uses LanaKarenina as her username. The author mentions the duels that were prominent in Pushkin’s and Lermontov’s novels. Indeed, Cole is an anti-hero in the same style as Lermontov’s Pechorin. Not mentioned, but the fabricated Dr. Gerbyll, Dr. Bumble, Pq23 respirator, N16z plastic face shield, and vulgar T-shirts Cole wears reminded me of Bulgakov - a master of dark comedy.

The author also refers to Nietzsche often. Cole’s abandoned PhD dissertation was titled “Nietzsche’s Last Man and the Totalitarian Impulse.” I found it an interesting take on the concept of the Last Man. Cole believes he is the Nietzschean Superman, but he constantly acts in ways that would befit the Last Man.

Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

As Cole descends into drinking heavily, squandering his career, losing his wife to a far-right wing masochist-fascist, and destroying his family through increasingly despicable actions, I thought to myself, the Last Man must think of himself as the Superman specifically to avoid despising himself.

The story uses the inter-sexual dynamics between Cole, Oona, and Tyce to move the plot forward. It is a parody of romance novels where the innocent woman, Oona, is attracted to the dominant, high-value male, Tyce, and repelled by the needy, submissive, low-value, and feckless Cole. As a result, Oona begins an affair where after years of self-repression and self-pleasuring, she finds joie-de-vivre in Tyce’s masculine presence. Alas, it is short-lived, and the affair’s revelation leads to the ultimate destruction of the Perrot-Pudding family.

I read it as a metaphor to our divided America, and it was difficult to read the passages about Oona’s repulsion to Cole’s sexual advances without thinking of Canada’s Dr. Theresa Tam suggesting couples wear a mask during sex. (Or the BBC, CNN, and NYC DOH)

Is there any doubt that mutually masked up sex would be utterly disappointing and unsatisfactory? What if the protagonist in 50 Shades of Grey insisted on wearing a mask for safety during his and Anastasia’s sessions? Would that have been an exciting read? Or was the inherent danger, dominance, and ultimate tenderness toward Anastasia the foundation of that book’s success?

It is certain that at least some people followed Dr. Tam’s bad advice. Like Cole, they put on their Idiot Gurus T-Shirt, Pq23 respirator, N16z plastic face shield, and quarantined in their basement.

Like Cole, maybe they feel unfulfilled at work. They’ve given up on pursuing their dreams, spend too much time scrolling social media, and as with the Nietzschean Last Man, they are unable to perceive the need for self-reflection and individuation. Individuation being the first step toward self-actualization.

Tyce is also not the answer. He is not a role model. Rather, we find our Nietzschean Superman in Lucas.

Lucas’s story is one of struggle and betrayal. He is betrayed by his own mother and father, his masculine role model, his girlfriend, and his best friend. He is pursuing his own path in life and oscillates between being cocksure and trying new ideas often to comedic effect. The one thing he never wavers on is his love for his sister Rosa.

Lucas’s story is the conquest of this struggle. He individuates himself from society, his parents, and his role model Tyce. He rescues his pure and innocent sister after she suffers a cardiac arrest due to the effects of climate change or anti-vax sentiment, and certainly not an adverse reaction to a vaccine. He leaves the novel on his own terms, the transformation from boy into man complete.

The book has hilarious scenes with the common tropes of the crazy ex-girlfriend and cat-lady, the blonde bimbo, the increasingly absurd T-shirts Cole wears in increasingly inappropriate settings, and finally, at the climax of the book.

Reading about the events of the last three and a half years in a darkly comedic satire was difficult but necessary. I imagined myself as a Soviet citizen reading Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog or The Master and Margarita. As Americans we have the benefit of distance from the society Bulgakov was satirizing, but not so with Lacoy’s Stay Safe.

If you held Cole’s persuasion to the events of COVID, you will not find any comfort or respite to the atrocious ways people behaved. Cole’s inability to escape the atrocity mentally is what drives the events of the book forward. It may be too soon to read about the repressed doubt, envy, hatred, and jealousy Cole harbors and is unable to overcome. You will be exposed again to the selfish, unkind idiots who didn’t follow the rules. You will find humor in the way the far-right wing characters are satirized and maybe even enjoy Cole’s successes.

If you held Lucas’s persuasion, you will re-live all the negative interactions you had with the people of Cole’s persuasion. You will be exposed again to the raw aggression, cruelty, and apathy that you found pervasive during the COVID Pandemic. You will find humor throughout the book for all of the characters. You will laugh out loud at the conclusion.

In our days, we witnessed something we wouldn’t believe even if we were told.

If only we could have read and laughed about it with this darkly comedic satire, rather than living through it ourselves.