Stud City

Stud City is a short story written by Gordon Lachance, first published in the college literary magazine Greenspun Quarterly in 1970, and later included in the novel The Body. It is a first-person narrative about a teenage boy named Chico, who grapples with grief, guilt, and a fraught family life in a small Maine town. The story is notable for its raw, Hemingway-influenced style and its exploration of themes that resonate with the larger narrative of The Body, including the death of a brother, the weight of memory, and the struggle for masculine identity.

Publication and Context

Stud City was originally published in Greenspun Quarterly, Issue 45, Fall, 1970. Gordon Lachance, the narrator of The Body, wrote it as an undergraduate, and he later reflects on it with a mixture of embarrassment and pride. He describes it as "pretty fucking melodramatic" and notes that it "ought to have THIS IS A PRODUCT OF AN UNDERGRADUATE CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP stamped on every page." The story was the first he ever wrote that felt like his own, the first that felt "whole" after five years of trying. He also notes that it was the first story he never showed to his mother and father, because there was "too much Denny in it. Too much Castle Rock. And most of all, too much 1960."

Plot and Characters

The story is set in March, in a small Maine town. The protagonist, Chico, stands naked at a window, looking out at the rain. He is with a girl named Jane, who has just lost her virginity to him. The room he is in used to belong to his brother Johnny, who died in a car accident at a racetrack the previous summer. Chico's real name is Edward May; he is called Chico because of his black hair and his greaser style. He wears a St. Christopher medal, though he is not Catholic. The narrative shifts between the present moment with Jane and Chico's memories of Johnny, including the accident: a Ford Mustang skidded across the infield at Oxford Plains Speedway, striking Johnny as he changed a tire on a Chevy. Chico witnessed the crash and the subsequent fire.

Themes and Style

Gordon Lachance, looking back, criticizes the story's style as derivative: "style by Hemingway (except we've got the whole thing in the present tense for some reason—how too fucking trendy), theme by Faulkner." He also notes its attitude toward women is "beyond hostility and to a point which verges on actual ugliness." Despite these flaws, he finds genuine power in certain images, such as "the shadows on Johnny's white tee-shirt" and "the rain-ripples on Jane's naked body." The story's title, "Stud City," is a phrase Chico uses to describe a man driving a new car, a symbol of masculine aspiration and escape. The story ends with Chico driving home, having been kicked out by his father after a violent argument, and thinking about Johnny's death and his stepmother Virginia's role in it.

Connection to The Body

Stud City functions as a story-within-a-story in The Body, revealing Gordon Lachance's early attempts to process his own grief over his brother Dennis's death through fiction. The parallels are clear: both Chico and Gordon have lost an older brother, both feel invisible in their families, and both struggle with the legacy of that loss. The story also contains a direct echo of Gordon's own childhood fear: the image of Johnny's charred body emerging from the closet mirrors Gordon's recurring nightmare of Dennis's corpse in the closet of his preserved room. Gordon acknowledges that the story allowed him to "control" these troubling memories, transforming them into a form over which he had imposed control.