Literary Analysis Of Stuart Dybek's 'We Didn T'

In Stuart Dybek’s short story “We Didn’t” he portrays a vivid picture of a teenage boy at the peak of his first sexual encounter. The story seems to be built around what doesn’t happen for the narrator and his girlfriend but it also tells us things that do happen at failed attempts to have sex. He uses tension between the said and unsaid to build tension through unsatisfied desires. The tension is elevated through the step by step memories leading up to the encounter.
Stuart Dybek alludes to the reader that something did not happen to the narrator. The narrator starts his monologue by saying, “We didn’t in the light; we didn’t in the darkness…We didn’t in your room…or in the backseat of my father’s rusted Rambler…” (43). We do not find out until the second paragraph that what may not happen for the narrator

Dybek doesn’t clearly state what the two characters didn’t do but he is clear about everything they do do like, “…the pinch that springs a bra strap; behind the lilac bushes…where you first touched me through my jeans…we’d been kissing all day-all summer-kisses tasting of different shades of lip gloss…(43).” Dybek draws the reader in by creating a tension in the story that keeps the reader and the narrator wondering when or if the “act” is going to happen. The tension in the story illustrates to the reader the struggle the narrator is having by almost but not quite being able to have sex with his girlfriend. The step by step encounters create even more tension when the narrator and his girlfriend attempt to have sex at the beach because at this point both the reader and the narrator are convinced what’s going to happen there. The narrator yearns for something he cannot obtain. Dybek uses “We didn’t”, at the beginning of the story, after every described scene, to initiate the tension between his narrator’s unfulfilled desires. The narrator