“Baby Doll”–coming of age differently

Dementiuk, Mykola. “Baby Doll”, Synergy Press, 2010.

Coming-of-Age Differently

Amos Lassen

All of us are familiar with the old saying that great things come in small packages and that is obviously true for literature as well. I have recently reviewed several of Mykola Dementiuk’s books and yesterday I read his chapbook, “Baby Doll”, a small book with a lot to say and it may be Dementiuk’s best work. It is about a young guy who discovers something about himself that will change his life forever. Our unnamed main character is fourteen years old and doesn’t care much for school so instead of attending it, he hangs around East River Park in Manhattan where he finds a pair of pink women’s underwear. The story then moves on to the boy being seduced by an older man (older than he is) and his eventual role as a servant to his seducer.

We get a completely different look at sex and love here as Dementiuk goes into the mind of the boy and relates back to us what he finds. Our boy wants to feel something but he doesn’t. His “lover” used him for sex and he felt nothing of the feelings that usually come with love. He realized that he did have some kind of sexual power over the man and he could have left him if he chose to but he didn’t. There was something there that kept the two together. He felt something when he pleased someone else and for him this was important. Even though he was just being used for sex, he did not really understand that and he stayed because his staying filled a need to be desired. We see this differently because we have been taught that this kind of relationship is one of sexual abuse and predatory in nature but was it? As I said our boy could have walked but did not and the reason is probably because the attachment—as predatory as it was—gave him a sense of being wanted. Is a relationship predatory if both gain something from it? And are not all relationships a bit predatory by nature? Did we become a victim or did he allow himself to be handled by this older man?

Many questions are raised and to me this is the sign of a good writer. I do not want to close the covers of a book and walk away perhaps forgetting what I read. Instead of this, “Baby Doll” gave me a lot to think about and this is a credit to Dementiuk. He looks at important issues such as sexuality, relationships, older/younger, cross dressing and he does not moralize. He presents his ideas and leaves them to us to reach our conclusions.

I found it amazing that a book—or rather a story—of 42 pages could provoke so much to think about. There is no playing here. Dementiuk gives us this tale as if he slaps across the face and then says, “Deal with it”.