FINNABLOG

"Lame"

2011-07-17T14:32:00.009-04:00

Lame
By Suzanne Finnamore

By the time you realize you are for all practical purposes lame, a year has gone by, a year marked by all the stages of loss. It begins with daily discomfort (denial) moving on to daily but manageable pain (bargaining) proceeding to near total immobility (depression, rage). When you eventually consult the experts and are shown the X-ray that proves that your hip has no cartilage left to cushion the constant friction of bone against bone, you would think that would be the turning point. It is not.

While the orthopedic surgeon describes total hip replacement surgery, you look at him as though he is a bad psychic, and you feel the beginnings of hatred for him and his implacable kind. Shock has nullified the diagnosis; you begin to cast about for ways of avoiding the surgery. You know there is no avoiding it but you make the attempt, at least in your mind. You hobble away with the first inkling of an awful truth (grief); you see that the line between middle age and seniority has been crossed, not at a run but at a halting, grotesque pace.

Luckily, the pain gets worse and even light housework or a trip to the supermarket becomes mild agony. You schedule the surgery. But it's not going to happen right away; there is a process involved, and humiliation to absorb before you go under the knife. There is the overwhelming fear of getting old that is now more than a fear; it is a presence knocking at your door. Banging with the pain stick. "LET ME IN, BABY!," it cries. And of course you do. For people like me- the weak and the egotistical - pain is the only teacher. We will not listen to reason, but pain gets our attention, in the fullness of time it wins.

The fact that I resisted my lameness for so long points to pathology, neurosis, and the fear of not just becoming old, but the fear of being grouped with old people themselves. Prior to becoming lame I had dealt, I thought, rather brilliantly with my phobia with the use of hair color, a breast lift that was a nightmare of pain but which I brooked voluntarily and with real vigor, and social media.

But that was all over now.

The term for this fear is Gerontophobia; I know because I Googled it. Much like the system that my right hip relied upon for getting around, the belief system that purported the theory that if I could Google things I was still young is a broken system.
There was information on my phobia; I found the following at a site called FearOfStuff.com
“For those who are aging the phobia is expressed in resisting the natural process of life. This could be expressed in multiple cosmetic surgeries and hair dyes or simply expressed in anger that life is unfair. They may seem bitter and may review their past with regret.
Ken Dychtwald identifies seven signs that seem to be true of both those who fear the elderly and the elderly who fear aging.
If young is good, then old is bad
If the young have it all, the old are losing it
If the young are creative, the old are dull
If the young are beautiful then the old are unattractive
If the young are stimulating, then the old are boring
If the young are full of passion, then the old are beyond caring
If the children are tomorrow, the old represent yesterday”

Was I bitter? Did I view my past with regret? Yes and no. I was bitter that I was in chronic pain just shy of my fiftieth birthday; I felt the warranty on my hip should have covered this well into my seventies. I felt bitter that at the half-century mark I had not become Madonna, I had become Richard The Third. Did I view my past with regret? Oh hell no. I viewed my past with nostalgia, which is nothing like regret, although they are kissing cousins. I looked back fondly at a time – just a year ago -- when I could take stairs two at a time and outrun every child (three) in my house. When I could swagger down the street in high heels, instead of clutching a banister as though my life depended on it. When the term “walker” referred, in my mind, to someone who walked.

The first person to politely ask me if I needed a walker was at a spa in California. My inner response was to contemplate swift ways to kill myself before lunch, my outer response was a calm, equally polite " No thank you." It was then that I decided that it was time to avail myself of painkillers, coupled that very afternoon with a frosty Piña Colada, a drink I'd not ordered since the eighties. In a way, I surrendered to the inevitable, which was a necessary saving grace; yet in another way I gave up. I stopped acting as though I could walk: no one had been fooled, but I'd needed time to absorb the psychic blow that lameness delivers. Temporary lameness is nothing like chronic lameness-- one can thoughtlessly limp around for days on blistered feet that danced all day in tight shoes at a wedding. One can, while pregnant, accept sciatica: people expect a hugely pregnant woman to look in pain and to lurch around. This is nothing like that.

You begin to contemplate major surgery, which is going to make things dramatically worse before they get better. The surgeon’s office calls with bright, vital details regarding a tri-level portable potty (bedpan) a wheeled walker, a raised toilet seat, a cane, and support hosiery. Pain Management is discussed: a euphemism for Torture You Can Rely On. You realize that you are going to have to rely on your husband and son to help you defecate and urinate; you're going to have to rely on them to feed you and dress you. Like someone who has suffered a massive stroke. You can't stand it but you are going to have to stand it. Well meaning friends say it's nothing, that you'll be up and around in no time, but not one of them would trade places with you for even an hour. They are silently relieved that this is not their hip replacement surgery, it's yours.

In a semifinal blow, someone tells you that Jane Fonda has had both her hips replaced. Your humiliation is now complete. You are, therefore, ready to be cut. You begin to look forward to surgery, because it's better than everything that had been leading up to the surgery. By now the muscles surrounding your diseased hip are weak and flabby, you gave gained several pounds from inactivity, and you feel like Marlon Brando, not Jane Fonda. You are ready for the surgery, now.

But first, a few more weeks of hearing your own stumpy uneven footsteps on the hardwood floors, a few more weeks of degeneration. You still can't believe this is happening to you; physical strength and independence were your bywords until just last summer. Or was it the summer before. You ignored the pain, you walked slower, you lied, you got depressed and became sedentary -- so the exact time you could walk normally is hazy. In your Vicodin miasma and your chronic pain and shame, you decided you would rather be considered lazy than crippled. (You only start taking Vicodin at the very end, after you can't get out of the car without anguish, and even then you limit yourself to one a day, because you don't want to become a drug addict on top of being lame. That seems more than you can stand. But of course, if you want more, there is always more.)

At the Pre Op appointments, you sign many disclaimers, in case you die on the table. Blood clots are a particular concern. You are asked if you have a living will. You sign away all rights while your husband, outside the hospital, strides around shouting into his cell phone at people in offices, far away. You see that the two of you live in completely separate worlds: the abled and the disabled. He will come to the hospital for the surgery; they have WiFi. This will be very helpful. Once you emerge from the surgery suite, you plan to send him home. He will be relieved but he will make sure not to show that he is relieved. And you will be relieved: You won't have to act as though everything's stupendous. For the first time in a long time, you will be able to just be broken, without the soft shoe and the small talk and the very real impression that -- exactly like childbirth, menopause, and other such procedures -- you are completely alone except for the nurses. Nurses understand, they never rush off to take a call and instead of hurriedly asking "Do you need anything?" Nurses simply bring you what you need.

You can't wait for the surgery now. If only to be around people who inhabit and understand the world of the-- temporarily or otherwise -- disabled. You are ready to enter the magician's box, not in a sequined tight dress but naked , and be sawed in half at the pelvis. It shouldn't be possible, but thankfully it is. In six months, the whole grisly act will probably be over.

You decide that having a handicap placard for your car will be lovely, just the right accessory to go with your walker and raised toilet seat. In a time that seems very long ago you thought that you couldn't bear any of this because you're still very young, very hale, but you're not. You're having a hip replaced; osteoarthritis is a disease of the elderly. No one can stop it, you can't pay someone to take care of it for you nor can you put it off any longer. You know you are lucky to arrive with health insurance and the benefit of such complicated surgery -- and a complimentary tri level porta poddy.

You are officially elderly. Welcome to total joint replacement.

*

Unfortunately, surgery does not fade with time, although all bromides about Feeling Better When It's Just Done quickly fade when anyone sees your scar, which looks like a long malevolent zipper, much bigger than a C Section, except a baby doesn't come out. Your bones come out.

Nor is it like riding a bike, because one does forget, and it's a blanket of forgetting; I've forgotten everything good or important I ever knew, and meanwhile I recall even the most childish or tedious slight from childhood. Also, I've lost plenty of blood and bone, I have no appetite -- yet I am gaining weight steadily. Each morning at a wee hour, I wake myself up laughing; nonetheless, a steady sense of ennui surrounds me like a thin candy shell. I can't quite believe they removed a diseased hip and femur but I know they did: there are exactly 26 steel staples closing the incision, one for each letter of the alphabet. When they're extracted on the 18th, I will have no desire to do something creative with them. I hope to forget them altogether but pain is so persuasive, so compelling and specific. The feeling of having crumbly bones sawed off and then cemented back together, I can assure you , is completely unique and will never be confused with a different event.

However, all major surgeries , in my lookout, have one thing in common: Upon emerging from anesthesia, you will need to beg to receive anything but the most cursory pain medication. Asking is not enough: they need you to beg, and then some time has to pass before anything approaching relief will occur. Meanwhile, you may struggle to understand why masochists and sadists conspire to create these daily hospital scenarios- why, in a time when so many forms of medication are at our generation's fingertips, why must these agonizing dramas be enacted with such zeal and regularity? I don;t know, but suspect it has to do with Liability and money.

Even more strange is the pride that certain tough minded individuals take in their personal pain events, how they cherish their own levels of pain tolerance while exuding a plumed sanctimonious contempt for the pain of other, lesser beings. They will often equate it with being associated with a Farm at some point in their life, but not always...sometimes it is simply their physical (read: psychic) superiority that trumps all, that enables these protean beings to have an appendectomy done Au Natural in a Chinese food delivery cab, or to walk briskly away from a bone marrow transplant with a plastic baggie of Tylenol..."just in case." (Be assured that they will have no Period of Recovery, they will simply resume covering without an interruption. And by all means go on removing those pesky wisdom teeth with a sledge hammer but as for our anesthesiologists, we'd prefer less Clark Kent and more Woody Allen.)

So: if I could give but two pieces of advice to anyone having surgery it would be 1. When asked, the pain is always a Ten. 2. It's never too early to beg.

"In The Beginning, There Was The Word: 'You Can.'"

2010-09-29T09:05:00.001-04:00

Before going to press with my third book....Split: A Memoir of Divorce, there was a divorce. And before there was a divorce, there was the Word. The Word, for those not privy to this particular Tower of Babel moment in my little tarbox house? The word(s) was, "You Can." As in:...."You Can Write About This, Suzanne."

My ex-husband said these six empowering words as he was leaving me, along with advance suggestions about Child Custody and when I should expect a Petition To Divorce Subpoena to slide into my visage.

He had known me for ten years as a copywriter, columnist, journalist and creative writer, for Knopf and Grove/Atlantic. So he'd already considered that I might find this particular divorce a compelling subject. Some men might be fearful or even in some confusion over what would happen in future. Yet in an exuberant, free spirited moment, he selflessly extended his blessing to a memoir, a novel, or even a Press Release, should that suit my purpose. It is all worth repeating, now that Split has been lauded as an international bestseller, has been named a Best of 2008 Book by Library Journal, has had an entire chapter published in The New York Times as well as The London Times, and is available worldwide via Barnes and Noble Booksellers, Amazon.com - and on its Kindle.

Yes, as he sashayed out the front door of our home, he sang out: "You Can Write About This!"

It may be difficult and a long road to publication, I thought to myself...I may not be able to finish it, say, in the next few years (it turned out to be 7 years and 400 revisions before Penguin USA graciously stepped in to bring it to press), what with diapers and single parenthood and the relentless mortgage debt on this ridiculous house? But who cares, I reasoned. Let creditors cool their collective heels! Art is in motion. I Can Write About It. I resolved to do so.

As I think I make plain in Split, he has always had a great "joie de vivre", giving of himself freely and constantly. I suppose he felt that as a bonus consolation prize to his walkout, he would grant me intellectual rights to my own experience. It was extraordinarily large of him. He gave it away freely, without a care in the world: He was moving on to a better place -- in fact he was leaving that very night to the 42 celebrated hills of San Francisco -- but I could write about the space where he had been.

It was all going to be all right.

True to form, he also went farther than was strictly necessary, on the same night. He made a bold optimistic proclamation as he stood with his hands outstretched to me, as I lay on the floor in a tragically humiliating stupor of shock, grief and horror. Yes. He delved into the subject of the good fresh money to be earned, now that I could write about it. He said, twiddling his long elegant fingers in the air in front of his body...

"All you have to do is sit down to your keyboard, Suzanne, and you will make three hundred thousand dollars."

It is a mark of his exaggerated belief in my skill as a writer and his confidence in a strong economy that he was so generous with this figure. Nonetheless, the oral estimation of the exact dollar amount I would certainly earn based on this little domestic fracas seemed to make him seem taller and richer, himself. He glowed with the benevolence of a giving patron of the arts, he exhaled an intangible aura of abundance and optimism. Then he walked.

To his credit, back on that spring night in 2000, he looked excited for me. There appeared a gleam in his eye that had been previously absent. It was a Whole Community Moment. He gave me his permission to write about my own divorce, as he delivered the news of the divorce itself to me. This was adroit, he saved all manner of question and answer periods that would have come later, he blocked my writing permission into the overall information news bulletin that night -- the primary news being the fact that he was leaving our family.

Yes I cried, yes I railed, but to no avail. It was not important, as I had failed miserably in my job as a wife to him, he had found a better candidate and he was history, good people. Our 15-month year old son and I were on our own, although he did pay the amount of court ordered child support, delivered on time, along with affectionate and frequent visitation. As for his forecast amount of $300K for the memoir of our divorce, it proved to be far less than that. I forgive him, though. How could he have known what a drastic turn our national economy would take, and how gas prices would go straight through the very roof of Heaven? How did he know there would be the unthinkable holocaust of 9/11 and then on the heels of that cataclysm, a complete travesty of a war and a national Recession to contend with? He is only human. He didn't know.

None of us knew anything. That's why writing - memoirs in particular -- became so important. And memoirs poured from the orifices of America.

We draw a curtain upon this time. We hope for better times.

And speaking of hope? A scant four days after my ex husband left, I had an emotional seizure. It was a dark, lonely weekend morning and I was unable to breast-feed and I became very sad. Not only could I not retain a husband or make the mortgage payment alone without plunging into an irretrievable abyss of debt? I could not express enough milk to wet a stamp. Sobbing, I gave my son a bottle of Enfamil. I picked up my telephone and I called Information and traced down the phone number of a favorite writer who lives in my area, Anne Lamott. After at least ten rings, she answered her phone, although we were mere acquaintances. And when I told her of how my husband had left, but! But that he'd said I could write about my divorce, she said - and I'll never forget the grace of the moment --" YOU'RE GODDAMNED RIGHT YOU CAN."

Ms Annie Lamott was on her way to church, it was a Sunday, and she talked to me the whole way. She is a marvelous writer and has not suffered divorce, to her ultimate credit as a human being. I feel instinctively that the great ones manage to avoid it, along with marriage as well. We need look no farther than dogs, horses, lions, lambs, Katherine Hepburn and Jesus as prime, unassailable examples.

Finally i would posit that if we don't learn from the past, we are doomed to repeat it.

Cut the cake.

THE MATCH.COM INTERVIEW "Add To Cart!" HOW I FOUND MY SECOND HUSBAND ONLINE

2010-09-14T14:24:00.024-04:00

http://www.match.com/magazine/article0.aspx?articleid=12096

Suzanne Finnamore, the best-selling author of Otherwise Engaged and Split: A Memoir of Divorce has found love again — online! Here, we speak with her about the search for love, writing and life with a new fiancé.

By Theo Pauline Nestor

Charming, brilliant and highly attractive men without a scrap of integrity need not apply; I am looking for a sincere and genuinely available man...a grown man. I am a grown woman. Think how well these two things go together. This, after all, is why cats don’t date dogs. They don’t match, they never will. It’s the way nature intended; I am just following the higher order of things. -- From author Suzanne Finnamore’s (now-extinct) online dating profile

Captivated readers have loyally followed Suzanne Finnamore’s most intimate moments since the publication of Otherwise Engaged, her hilarious novel about a nervous bride’s crazy trip to the altar. And when Suzanne’s marriage
dissolved, readers followed her romantic adventures once more — this time, with the veil of fiction lifted — through the pages of Split: A Memoir of Divorce. Here, Suzanne is giving Happen magazine the straight scoop on how she met her fiancé (hint: online, through Match.com!) and how her past experiences with love, marriage, divorce, and planning for her second wedding have made her a wiser romantic.

Did you do much dating after your divorce? Did you take a break or jump right in? How’d it go out there? Was it scary?

I took a break for five years as I raised my son and wrote Split. Then one Sunday my single-mom friend, Cora, announced she had just been on an Italian cuisine bay cruise the night before, whereas I had watched my eleven-thousandth episode of Entertainment Tonight. “Try Match.com,” she advised. We walked right over to my computer together and signed me up. I immediately found several men to fall in love with and who seemed to love me. Now I realize that, looking back, it was like when you think the moon is following you, but it’s not — rather, it’s following everyone and it’s following no one; it’s a giant planet and is oblivious to fantasy or desire. You can even land on the moon, but that’s unlikely, isn’t it? But in a way, I did. It only took four years to take “…that trip to the moon on gossamer wings” and meet my fiancé.

I became something of an expert at Internet dating — which can be a gold mine if done properly. But in the beginning, these men were all wrong… for me. They were dead right for someone else; i.e., one had just lost 100 pounds, and that scared the heck out of me. It was too close to shape-shifting, I suppose. One laughed at everything I said — literally. I’d say “hello” and he’d laugh. I’d say, “There’s a woodpecker outside my window” and he’d laugh. Then I said, “Can you call me later; I’m busy writing,” which was an obvious excuse to get off the phone, and he laughed. I guess the short answer is: I had tons of flings and a few boyfriends after my husband and I split. It was scarier for them, I suspect. Internet dating got me back into the pool of life. I swam and was better off for having done it.

Tell us about meeting your fiancé. How did you meet? Did you know right away that he was special — or even The One?

What’s so strange is that I almost didn’t meet him. Both of us had kept our profiles hidden for months. I’d let my subscription lapse. Then I got an email that said in the subject line, “30 Days of Match.com for Only $20.” A little voice within said, “Do it.” Two days later, I met the love of my life — a ferociously smart man with the body of a Rodin. Match.com suggested I use a new feature: “The Daily 5 ...5 Matches We Chose Just For You!” It’s a brilliant feature, because you just check one box: “Interested,” “Not Interested,” or “Maybe.” I looked at Tom and thought, hot picture. I read his basic statistics: 49, divorced, Chapel Hill, NC, two kids. And then, without thinking, I checked the “Interested” box. And that was just it: the ultimate in one-click shopping for my second husband — “add to cart!” (I guess the moral of my story is this: with online dating, don’t give up; follow your own small voice inside and trust your gut.) I clicked the “Interested” button, my life changed forever.

I have to give some credit to pheromones and superb timing; also, our values and personalities are very, very similar. Of course, being only human, Tom and I had both been dastardly fiendish in our profiles: I lied about my age and he lied about something else pretty big. Once we’d roped each other into our digital webs of inequity, we told each other the truth. Today, we are still telling the truth. You can only meet someone online; the rest of the process of dating should be — and, marvelously, usually is — completely live and analog in nature. Within a month, Tom made the ridiculous proposition of marriage and I accepted.

Now, I salute the power of Match.com, a service without which I believe I can say with absolute certainty I would not have met my fiancé (whose large, shiny shoes I would willingly drink champagne from).

Is Tom different from your ex-husband in ways that are important to you because of your experience with your first marriage ending in divorce?

Well, my ex is a wonderful man, but he has never been a slave to monogamy. Conversely, Tom has a history of fidelity; we spoke candidly on the phone for two hours, after which I expressly cut him off until we met for a mildly expensive and highly civilized, protracted lunch. Brisk coffee dates, in my opinion, are overrated when it comes to romance. And from the first date, Tom has been a completely open book. He’s patient to the extreme versus being moody and fiery.

My first husband was dark and swarthy; Tom is blond and fair-skinned. My ex had a black thumb. As I type this, Tom is busy landscaping our yard, liberating the gardenia bush from the hyacinth and cutting the crepe myrtle tree back and killing the poison ivy with some spray, all while he holds a conference call to Silicon Valley on his Bluetooth. He also mops floors… without my asking him to do it. And no, they don’t have any more at home like him.

What do you think you learned from your first marriage and its demise that have helped you in this relationship?

I have learned that not just sexual fidelity, but also fiscal fidelity is possible: Tom and I opened a joint checking account yesterday. It was poignant for me, almost sensational. I can book a solo passage to Paris, run rampant through Pottery Barn — but Tom trusts that I won’t. I find this kind of union to be on par with a bone marrow transplant; my ex and I never had joint accounts. Long before the affair that ended my first marriage, there was no essential, foundational trust; I see that now. I learned that I could let a man just be himself, because there is no controlling someone — and I don’t want to be controlled, either.

Are you approaching the planning of this wedding any differently than you did the first time?

Our respective families want us to have a proper wedding — a wedding that, we feel, would shave a full decade off our lives. So we’re having a stealth wedding, then a brief honeymoon in Charleston followed by our apologies all around.

How are your expectations for this marriage different than they were 10 years ago, with your first marriage?

I honestly never expected to re-marry. (I also thought I was done filling sippy cups and weeping at school plays… it just goes to show how wrong you can be.) And I know what marriage is, now. I know it can, frankly, wreck a lot of things. We won’t be new anymore. But honestly, it’s like we are already married. We’ve been living together since December of 2009. We’re a blended family; we have his two kids (ages two and eight) every weekend, plus Mondays. My son, Pablo, and Tom are so good together; he is the day-to-day father figure and parent that my ex can’t be, because he hasn’t lived in the same state since forever ago. My ex is my son’s father, and they have a great bond — and to me, he’s like a really old friend whom I happen to have a son with.

Marriage and children essentially strip off the veneer, all the protective layers people hide behind; it can be petrifying. But far worse is imagining what my life would be like had I not met Tom. In some slim but important ways, emotionally, I was amongst the walking dead. Even though I had a good time with friends and with dating, and although I adored my son, I don’t know how I managed before Tom. I think I had just flown on automatic pilot for the whole past decade. Leaving California and every single person and place I knew behind was hard. Four months later, I walked into Rue Cler in downtown Durham, North Carolina and met Tom. And I thought, “Dear God, is this it? Have I really found someone who can love me? Really love me?” I was worried. But my friend, Augusten Burroughs (who happens to be a much, much better memoirist than I), said: “Focus on how he makes you feel. The rest is bullshit from a smaller era.” And he was right. I believe the trick is to take the egregious mistakes you made during your first marriage and try not to repeat them. With Tom, I notice how tender and careful we both are with each other. It may be simply a matter of paying attention.

What are you up to now?

These days I’m writing a novel about love, the second time around. The first sentence, if it gets beyond the fragile opening stage of all books (and romances), may read like this: “I was still paying for my past when my future burst into flower on a tree I thought past fecundity, whose branches held the seed of a small miracle.”

And with that, we’ll leave you with the last stanza of a poem Suzanne wrote for her fiancé:

The decades have not brought me here.
The way was unmarked. No amount of signs
would guide me to this place — well, why not just say it
— to you. I am all in. You are what I’ve come for.

Suzanne Finnamore is the author of the best-selling books, Otherwise Engaged and The Zygote Chronicles (a Washington Post Book of the Year in 2002), and Split: A Memoir of Divorce. A novelist and journalist, Finnamore is a frequent contributor for publications such as O, Marie Claire, Redbook, Glamour and online at Salon.com. Her novels have been translated into 12 languages. Visit Suzanne at Suzannefinnamore.com.

Theo Pauline Nestor is the author of How to Sleep in a King-Size Bed: A Memoir of Starting Over and a regular contributor to Happen.

"Crush Me" - soon to be in 'Crush: An Anthology of Love's Puppy

2010-05-01T16:01:00.011-04:00

In its most literal interpretation, to crush (squash/ squeeze/ mash/ pound / devastate) - is to be forced into a compressed position, a position of submission to a greater force. It its context as a romantic state, the literal meaning of crush has not, to my mind, been sufficiently remarked upon. I intend to clarify this in as explicit a manner as I can manage, hopefully without becoming impossibly strident, circumspect, diffident or bitter. However, I make no promises. If you are a romantic and sentimental sort of person expecting gossamer prose that makes you well up with tears and dash off to scribe meaningful and warm phrases in your journal, I suggest you cease reading this and move on to the fictional works of Danielle Steel, Nicolas Sparks or Robert James Waller.

If your quest is for unfettered sentiment, in particular, Robert James Waller pours rapt, boundless energy into all that capers and wafts down a rose petal path; he will not cause you a moment’s doubt in the Heart’s Desire and Soulmate aisle, replete with claw foot bathtubs and handwritten notes pinned on quaint, covered bridges in the slanting evening sun. In exchange for an exploration of the romantic crush, Waller will give you that marvelous oxymoron: a Good Cry; I freely admit he gave one to me. Indeed, The Bridges of Madison County is highly recommended for anyone who lusts for high-concept pastoral romance, especially Dear Readers pining for escape...those mature bipeds hopelessly laden with responsibilities, meetings, taxes, and a ballast of children weighing down their beautiful, pea-green boat.

The Bridges of Madison County was a runaway bestseller, instantly made into a blockbuster film with Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood (Although no one I knew claimed to have read a single page or seen the movie; what notorious liars people are.) Watch the movie, it’s impossibly wrenching and poignant, even though one suspects that in the modern world, our barefoot curvaceous heroine, Francesca the Farm Wife With Italian Sex Appeal, would have paired off with her paramour, Robert Kincaid the Dashing Photographer/Cowboy With An Excellent Position At National Geographic. Francesca would have, one intuits, procured a nice sensible divorce, and probably kept a few acres of the farm in the bargain. Trips to Venice and the Uffizi would have ensued, and her children would have visited the happy couple at their villa in Tuscany. (Prices were still modest, then.) Everyone would have worked things out for the sake of the children and Francesca’s Farmer Man husband would have understood, grateful for the time he had managed to have with Francesca, who was wistful to the point of suicide for most of their marriage. Farmer Man would have remarried a local girl and in time the humiliation would have been borne. You know it would have.

Yet the film, set in 1962, holds the Family Value line, rejecting the idea that Robert Kincaid and Francesca’s extreme crush, their four-day love affair, could see them safely through the rest of their lives; it shuns the sudden and potent crush of impromptu love as a serious contender. During the climactic Great Sacrifice scene when Francesca almost but not quite flings open the passenger’s side door of her husbands’ pickup truck to run toward her lover, I myself nearly collapsed a lung weeping. The red light that Francesca and Farmer Man are stopped at, just behind Eastwood’s truck, goes on being red for what seems like a full eternity while Francesca kneads, rubs and grapples the door handle; she almost pulls it out of the goddamned car door. (Eastwood, who is standing in the rain looking bereft as a clubbed baby seal, straddles a very fine line between masterfully tender and puerile.) But it is 1962, and so I notice Francesca does not get out of her warm, dry vehicle. I notice she understands that what she and the flinty-eyed, roving shutterbug have is not a serious love, but a rather serious crush...one that might crush her and her entire family if she gets out of that rickety ass truck – it seems she suspects that if she plays it through, her crush on photographer Robert Kincaid might flourish, throw out seed and then inadvertently choke her bucolic life’s well tended, deeply rooted garden.

As if to confirm its lack of weightiness, the word crush in a romantic sense is not recognized in traditional dictionaries -- in their expert opinion it is an ethereal thing and cannot be pinned down to a fact or definition. So I turned to the Urban Dictionary, which traffics heavily in cultural catch phrases and ineffable matter of all kinds.

In the Urban Dictionary, the second definition of crush is “A painful experience, very common among middle schoolers (and high schooler's and even adults to a lesser degree) that involves being obsessed with a member of the opposite sex (or the same sex, if u (sic) prefer), being attracted to them physically (most common), or emotionally- also called 'puppy love'.”

At the ripe age of eight, had I known what crush was when it entered my bloodstream – and blood it was, make no mistake – I might have opted for a more supine position in the general scheme of things. Instead I ran to embrace it like a trusted ally. I thought, "Well, this is a good feeling, what a glory, what a marvelous sensation, tingling and engulfing body and mind. I intend to please the object of my crush as hard and as convincingly as I can, even if it means giving up a few afternoons of going to the library, jettisoning girl friends, disobeying my parents and teachers, keeping dangerous secrets, or giving up my own soul. And if I am very, very lucky, I will be crushed back. Oh, yes, what a glory, what a marvelous sensation, was traversing my body to the ends of my hair. My toes are involved, my breast is alight, and I have no thought for anything except this very moment, and perhaps the one after.

To be in the moment may very well be the best thing the average crush has to recommend for it. Let us not confuse it with love. It doesn’t want love’s duties, its complexities. It is the soft drink of emotions.

To confirm my point, I see where in its fourth definition, the Urban Dictionary defines crush as: "A kick-ass bottled soda pop made in orange, grape, and strawberry flavors. Comes in six-packs. Example: I drank nine bottles of Crush today.

Soft, perhaps, but with undeniable merits. Certainly it has pleasure going for it, and some importance; a cold soft drink can be delicious and even life saving, if one is in the desert without the benefit of a canteen.

Then again, there are nefarious, darker meanings to the act of a crush-- see definition six in the Urban Dictionary: Verb. The process by which people are killed when thrown beneath a steamroller or placed in between two solid surfaces with force being applied toward them that the body cannot withstand.
Sumbuddy: Hey, hao es your familie?
Guy: They got crushed by a bus and died.
Sumbuddy: Daz so sad...wanna get iscreem?

Historically there is the Witch Crush: The medieval process of laying one flagstone upon another and another, until the alleged sorceress’ body held beneath the stones is unable to draw breath, and her bones broken like so much peanut brittle -- often performed to the recitation of religious passages, and with many capering, excited onlookers – with the end result of pressing alleged witches into the ground until they are dead. This reinforces my feeling that crushes and crushing may not be the harmless, gay concepts they parade as.

Much later -- sometime around the nineteen nineties, crush became a verb; in the same way many nouns that had no business being animated became verbs. "Network” became a verb, and this was vastly troubling. And crush became a verb, the better to toss from here to there. Grown people took on the term…and in so doing, it was ruined for children and teenagers, in the same way that Facebook was ruined for them when their parents took to it. (A complete travesty of justice but not an unprecedented one…the uninspired have always stolen with great entitlement and treachery from the inspired. Whites stole jazz from blacks, as they did rock and roll, urban fashion, modern dance and everything they could get their pasty mitts on. "Inner City Minority Crimes” -- when juxtaposed with multitudinous centuries of slavery, lynching, Native American genocide, the ruthless and bloody snatching of California and much of the Southwest from Mexico, and the stealing of vast and sweeping cultural and intellectual property from non-Caucasians into the hands and pockets of Caucasians -- is a drop in a vast ocean, as crime goes.)

And yes I do stray from the original point of this essay; I digress in the most widespread and egregious fashion from the topic of the simple crush. Perhaps I dance and flit around the subject because I am overwhelmed by the (greedy, fleeting and petulant) conviction that all crushes and giddy emotions have passed me by, like an express train headed for a fine metropolitan center, while I – awash in children, stepchildren and the quotidian of being past twelve, in a time when our economy and our country is anything but buoyant and youthful - stand at the doorway of my home holding a frying pan and a spatula with which to pry the daily egg.

Disclaimer: Let me explain my outlook on the crush, in the present moment. This week in my shared household with my fiancé, Tom, 49, we are horribly short on time and adequate childcare or slow dancing; our ratio of children to adults is 16,000 to one. And so the eggs and cooking utensils and laundry loads of my life as an engaged divorced mother have become overwhelming, the relentless homework and crying toddlers and Mac and Cheese encrusted meals of my life have taken seniority over the niceties of bubbling feelings; therefore I am hard pressed to feel the proper ebullient outlook toward crushes and gay, insouciant states of being…the right tone has not been set. I admit this.

But let the record state that despite all this, I absolutely do want to crush on a regular basis, to - like Francesca and Robert Kincaid - have my hair washed by Tom and make love for hours at a time while a big band station plays on an old radio and brandy is drunk from thin snifters around a Formica table, all children tucked away with a responsible farmer at a 4-H meeting in Kansas. I want to continuously crush. Although, it must be noted, Tom and my sharing a massive crush and parlaying it into love and commitment and a blended family is absolutely what led me to this very position in the doorway, with the spatula and the frying pan. I don’t see how it could have been avoided, as we both came into relationship with past crushes and so forth under our belts, we entered this undertaking as adults with children, some of them small.

Why don’t I just say it: Crushes lead to love lead to marriage lead to children, which lead to the grave. Yes. Here, I – quite waspish, wracked with fatigue, and without the proper perspective - state this without the frill of political correctness or the maternal yoke of everlasting gratitude, grace and feminine forbearance around my neck.

In my defense, I look to self-honesty and truth telling as a pressure release valve, so that I can within this venue consider the topic of the sweet, deep, uncomplicated crush without being bitter and preemptive. In fact, I would posit that this essay’s (rather horrifying, I admit) honest and confessional tone is a kind of inner crush…a crush on myself, on my past and perhaps the childfree future, a crush on my own freedom. The time when I was a girl and could let loose the infatuation dogs, the time I could, with no thought of consequence or Right or Wrongdoing, indulge a flood of sensual feeling, release the emotion love dogs willy nilly, could walk home at a leisurely pace, at age eight, with thoughts of Jimmy Duke and his way of riding his stingray bike with real abandon.

Now I will tell about my first crush, which I believe was the original objective.

Jimmy Duke was my first crush. I meant to say this in the beginning, here, but other things took over. (In my life as a grown woman with children, and in the year 2010, other things take over with a relentless and firm hand. This is why my first crush is so slippery to describe and buckle down to.)
But here goes: On the school yard of Allendale elementary in Oakland, California, on a short fifty yard asphalt race course painted with five white lanes, abandoned after school and unmonitored by adults or men with starting guns or girls holding up gaily colored flags or sportscasters with strident tones, Jimmy Duke and I raced, just the two of us, while Roy Campbell looked on in mild interest on his Schwinn bike with the playing cards stuck in the spokes. Jimmy Duke won, although I tried my fierce best and almost lost a shoe. He won and he said nothing, because for Jimmy Duke, winning was a given. (This says it all, crush-wise. In my time, most women – even girls not on the brink of becoming women – want men who win and say nothing. We do not want to triumph over men in any physical way, it is not sexy and it goes against the biological imperatives which keep human beings from being wiped off the earth by insects and crabgrass.)

Jimmy Duke had a crooked smile, the flaw being the very entry point of the crush knife. Historically, I have always spent my crushes on males with elemental good looks but an array of interesting flaws that distinguish them from the other, more perfect and some would say pretty boys, the plethora of narcissistic man child that grow thick on the ground in California - especially San Francisco, Marin County, San Diego and the greater Los Angeles area.

Jimmy’s hair was sandy and straight, with body. A boy with body in his straight hair is not to be trifled with; he has an advantage over the stingy haired boys who are constantly peering out from a curtain of hair. Curtains of hair are a plus for girls but for boys, a curtain of hair is a liability. It suggests femininity and perhaps a lack of stiffness, a bit less confidence, which may in fact lead to impotence in his later years. (No one wants to admit it, but a mostly reliable and stiff penis is sometimes all that stands between a successful union and a lackluster and grim union of potentially obese individuals. Without sex, heterosexual men and women would never have anything to do with one another beyond procreation, the impromptu rearrangement of furniture and – well, I can’t think of another activity they might share willingly and with benefit to anyone.)

Roy Campbell had a Moe Howard hairstyle and Roy Campbell hung around Jimmy Duke, looking to scoop up his leftover girls. This worked well until Roy Campbell developed acute acne and was summarily shunned by girls of all ages. Later, he developed a fondness for controlled substances. So that’s it. My first crush.

My own fiancé, Tom’s, hair sticks straight up and don’t I know it. It stands at attention and is ready for what happens next. It never falls into his eyes or threatens to conceal or flop on his face in ways that could only mean a weakness in character. Tom is unquestionably the biggest crush of my life, arriving - to my chagrin - after I had already married and divorced and given up on anything like crushes, secretly feeling that love, perhaps, was “an affliction curable by marriage” to crib from Ambrose Bierce.

So it is lovely that the Urban Dictionary nails and also validates my at-first-sight crush on Tom, in its Definition number three:

1. The act of falling hard for someone even though it isn't love yet
2. A precursor to love
3. An amazing thing that gives you feelings of nerves and excitement whenever you see them

Since the day we met, I seem to have been stripped of all knowledge save emotional and carnal knowledge. (Surely the way this essay meanders is proof positive of this theory) In my “nerves and excitement”, I am very close to being a mildly retarded adult, happy almost 100 percent of the time. The difference is that I am happy approximately 80 percent of the time; the rest of the time I am fearful and anxious that my happiness will be snatched from me. Other differences include the fact that mildly retarded, even some Down Syndrome, adults are genetically plump and puffy all round. Conversely, I am not plump, but, in the right light and clothing, could actually pass for willowy and smooth, something that surely cannot last but which this great and perplexing love has brought out. (Tom, being under the influence of crush, thinks this is my natural state.) While it’s all happening nicely and in a lovely manner now, I fear I will eventually be hard pressed to keep the pace. I mistrust this makeover from crushing new love, and feel it is only a matter of time before my somewhat frowsy self reappears and I am catapulted from my crush afterglow, back to a thickened waist and uneven skin tones. But Tom is very close to being an evolved and perfect mate for me. This is why I have agreed to marry him, despite my suspicion that all crushes are doomed, and that marriage is a conspiracy from Tiffany’s, the Diamond Industry, and Christian Fundamentalists. Whenever I try to sabotage our union, or wax jaded and pessimistic about our love, Tom deftly and summarily quashes my dissent in firm and absolute terms. He will not brook dissent in the ranks; like many fine and good German Americans he has his fascistic, impeccable standards and they will not be chipped at. He is the most Teutonic man I have ever known, unassailable and zealous in his ability to work, to be perennially practical and patient, and take me into hand when I run amuck and begin to be crazy, which is my default setting. Having fallen in the greatest and most solid love of my life, I am fully and with emphasis carried away from my shabby notion of independence and intellectual distinction.

Tom, while doing his fulltime job impeccably and caring for his children and my own, is also taking on infatuation side effects; he is exhibiting mildly retarded or brain damaged characteristics. For example, yesterday he ran full force into a seven foot metal pole in his backyard, in broad daylight and while under the influence of this deceptively innocuous thing, the crush. He is being crushed under the wheels of infatuation that became infected with Love and is, at this very moment, headed toward the gully of Marriage, where much will be lost but much will be gained. We will be wed. What will become of us? Whatever happens, the ubiquitous crush was the genesis of – to quote from Zorba the Greek – The Full Catastrophe. Let us lobby for it to have its own place in Webster’s, if not a sacred nook in our lives. Amen.

Deep In The Amazon - One Writer's Pathology

2010-02-10T20:27:00.003-05:00

Deep In The Amazon

By Suzanne Finnamore

This is what happened. I wrote a book, submitted it to several publishers, and was sprayed with a buckshot of rejection. I wrote another book, found a New York agent and a New York publisher. Within a week I had sold the film rights to 20th Century Fox, quit my job, and settled into what felt like an extended dream world, one in which I was able to go to sleep and wake up without the scenery changing. This is it, I thought, my beginning of a writer’s life. I bought a new car and each time I went outside I expected to find it gone, with a note that read Terrible Mistake Now Rectified.

Several weeks before my actual publication date, a friend informs me that my book is listed on Amazon.com. Already? I said, the faintest suggestion of coy surprise in my voice. I attempt to sound casual but inside I am hula dancing naked with Viggo Mortensen and he is saying, "Baby, I didn’t know you were a writer!"

After a period of insensate glee at my book simply being for sale on the Internet, the first Amazon customer review is posted. Five stars, from my mother, cleverly disguised as A Reader. “Suzanne Finnamore is the spokeswoman for the nineties.” A couple more people write reviews, either four or five stars. In a quasar of accolade, my Amazon sales rank number soars from 1,439,003 to 707. I begin thinking about a new house, something with an extra bathroom and a pool. Perhaps an Olympic-sized pool for the staff to enjoy while I am in Aix choosing a villa.

Then it happens. My first bad Amazon customer review. It floats into view on my laptop computer. As in tornadoes, there is no warning. One star. A Reader From DC wishes I would catapult myself from a tall building. Then I should be chopped into tiny pieces, like a vampire. Pieces, which are then mailed separately to different continents, so that I won’t reconstitute myself and start looking for a pencil.

I cry for an hour: Why me? Why?

I then call ten friends and insist they write Amazon reviews. Five stars, I mumble, I need five.

But I haven’t read it yet, one friend says. It doesn’t matter, I say. He laughs, not realizing I am dead serious.

Eventually the good friend reviews are posted, knocking mister one star off the top. Then a Reader From New York writes an even worse review -- for some reason giving me two stars. He loathes my writing, my characters, my plot and my publisher; it is the grand slam of reviews. What would merit one star to this person, I muse. A grease trap?

More friends (and acquaintances who have been upgraded to friends) are encouraged to write five star reviews. Oddly, I even get a few great reviews from strangers. I write to thank them but also to ferret them out: I secretly feel they must be my mother, who has become dangerously proficient on her computer. I also believe that the bad reviews are from my enemies. I will never be able to prove it, of course.

Later, a blinding flash of lucidity reveals that the bad reviews are in fact from friends, jealous alcoholic friends who write bad reviews on Amazon and then black out. I log on every hour, to monitor my triumph/debacle. It is all I can do to keep myself from setting the alarm for 3 AM so I can properly stay abreast. As part of my system, I regularly cross reference numbers with other books on Amazon.com that I feel are like mine.

After three weeks of this my Knopf editor forbids me to log onto Amazon.com. I agree, sensing this is what’s best; the healthy response to what has perhaps become a fixation. I haven’t put on a bra since this whole thing started. I have however lost nine pounds. Soon breasts won’t be an issue.

I tell everyone I am not going to check any more. Then I check. 659. I am in the sixes. So I feel good, am able to have coffee and write and even leave the house for milk. When I return, I log on but I don’t check my own sales rank. In an inspired flurry, I try to spread the good sales rank number karma around. I start looking up books I admire and writing five star reviews. It is then that I realize the gross inequity of the system.

Eudora Welty has received two stars for The Ponder Heart. I write a review for her. Since there is only the one other review, I am able to boost her average from two to four stars. One person can make a difference. I’m sure she’s appreciative. I also write a five star review for Anne Lamott, whose new book I haven’t read yet but have ordered from Amazon (40% off) and will certainly enjoy.

At five till midnight I log on. (Amazon updates not just every day but every hour, a fact that a writer friend has been kind enough to point out.) 666. This is significant; I file it away, under Coincidences That Involve Satan. Exactly fifty-eight minutes later as I am landing with a sad frenzied thud on my book site, I notice that it says Linda Hamilton is the co author if my book, instead of the reader of my audio cassette version. This does not worry me, but the fact that I am 1311 does. It makes me feel homely. I look in the bathroom mirror. Uh huh. Definitely in the thirteens.

Additionally, a Reader From Albuquerque suggests that the best use for my book would be as a doorstop. I am finally drifting off when I just check one more time, wondering whether my numbers rise at night. #8,810. The sales rank of a high school yearbook.

It’s not checking my Amazon sales rank and customer reviews, it’s checking to see if I am licit. The mentally intact need not apply. I do not write any more, of course. That would take me away from my real work, which is checking my sales rank on Amazon.com.

I consider calling Anne Lamott and offering to be her Amazon eyes for her new book, Plan B. I could give her a status report at the end of the day (5:57 PM: Anne 29, me 922. 6:59 PM: Anne 41, me 2,004.) I don’t call her, though. I already phoned her for reassurance after the savage Kirkus review came out, and I have only two wishes left with the magic flying monkey cap. If you don’t get this monkey cap reference, then you have never read:

The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.
Amazon Sales Rank: 35,623

Five stars from
Anisha Zaveri (apunisha@hotmail.com) from Bombay,India. , November 14, 1998

I THINK IT IS A VERY INTERESTING BOOK.
I LIKE THIS BOOK VERY MUCH. I ESPECIALLY LIKE THE PART IN WHICH DOROTHY MEETS THE WICKED WITCH OF THE EAST.I ALSO LIKE THE 'TIN-MAN' AND THE 'WINKIES'.

Three stars from
A reader from Bountiful, UT , October 21, 1998
A Classic Satire on the Populist Party
Most people look at L. Frank Baum's classic novel as a simple children's story, but it has a deeper significance. Baum lived in the Great Plains of the American West during the Populist uprising of the 1890s, and the characters and events of the Wizard of Oz are based upon what he observed. For example, Dorothy represents the innocent Midwesterner who must contend with the wild nature of the West (the Wicked Witch of the West) and the deceptive idea that all solutions can be found with money (following the path of gold, or the Yellow Brick Road). The Scarecrow represents American farmers, the Tin Woodsman represents American workers (his transformation from human to tin man represents industrial accidents), and the Cowardly Lion represents Populist presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan (a great orator but a pacifist, hence the cowardly lion). Following the path of gold leads Dorothy and her companions to the Emerald City, which represents Washington, DC, and the corrupt influence that money has on the city. The Wizard is the President of the U.S.--a weak and powerless humbug who nevertheless manages to convince the innocent Dorothy that it is he and not the moneyed special interests that control the land. Anyway, there is much more, but in the end Dorothy conquers nature (the Witch of the West), and with the help of the Silver Slippers (the Populist Party's Free Silver issue), finally finds her way home to truth and happiness. A wonderful book when read in the proper context.

Phew. I am finally able to have a context, something I feel I have previously been lacking by only looking up my own book. I look up a few more, just to get a sense of where I stand.

Angle of Repose The Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Wallace Stegner
Amazon Sales rank: 3,331

One star from
A reader from Minnesota, April 4, 1999
Waste of 600 pages
I was required to read this book for school. It was probably the slowest book I have ever read. Don't waste your time. The only reason I gave it one star was that I don't have the option of giving it less.

Rabbit, Run, by John Updike
Amazon Sales rank: 73,122

One star from:
jeffman38@aol.com from Chicago, IL, January 28, 1999
Thumbs Down!
I agree with the reader for New York City. This Book was a total waste of time and I dreaded every turn of the page.

One star from:
A reader from New York City, September 15, 1997
Junk
Uggh!!! Updike can't write worth spit! This is just pure junk. Not only is it dull, but it's about nobodies. A total waste!

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Amazon Sales rank: 3,585

A reader from New York City, September 17, 1997
Very bad.
“Bad reading; the descriptions are okay, but the characters stink. The heroin doesn't seem lovable and great, she's crazy and stupid. It's bad. The drawing on the cover is as good as it gets.”

A reader, July 2, 1997
Hemingway rode on the coat tails of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
None of Hemingway's work including A Farewell To Arms should be touted as "Classic". Hemingway caught a ride on the coat tails of F. Scott Fitzgerald and without him as a predecessor Hemingway's body of work would have died the timely death it deserved. A Farewell To Arms is yet another example of Hemingway's inability to forward narrative in an interesting manner or to develop characters that anybody could care a whit about.

A closer look confirms that Hemingway’s not doing well on his Amazon Customer Review Average. This is doubtless because he is dead, and can’t get people to write reviews for him. Mental email: Stay alive.

I log onto my site again. 1,590. Re-read my Kirkus review. They’ve placed it right up front so strangers can read it without breaking a sweat in the magazine aisle. Realize suddenly that the reviewer didn’t compare me to Nora Ephron, as my editor had said -- he compared me to Erma Bombeck. In abject horror, I call my friend Augusten Burroughs and read it to him, and as I hear the words spoken out loud, I laugh for about a minute. It feels like surfacing for air. Kirkus doesn’t matter, according to Augusten. “Who matters?” I say. “I don’t know”, he admits. “ The New York Times Book Review, I guess.”

I wonder what my therapist is doing right now. I call him to see. I leave a message saying that I am having some “popularity issues.” Would it be a conflict of interest to ask him to write an Amazon review, I wonder as I hit the Search key.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
Sales rank 2,130 (Unabridged hardcover)

A reader from USA, February 24, 1999
Shakespeare is highly overated
Not to deny Shakespeare’s incredible talent, but he is certainly overcredited in the creativity area. if you're looking for a true, unique and original read, i reccomend any famous ancient greek playwrite, such as aristophanes, euripides or sophacles. you'll find thier style a little less decorative, and little more simple, but still very similar (afterall, shakespeare did have the works of these men to study and emulate.

A reader from Japan, July 5, 1998
Shoddy Binding

I admire the brevity of the Japanese reviewer. There is simply no room in Japan for the verbose. I go to the front menu of the Amazon site to glean the overall view. In Amazon’s Hot 100, Number one is Body For Life, by Bill Phillips -- a man with biceps the size of Virginia hams. Sugar Busters! Cut Sugar To Trim Fat is number 11

Apparently I have made a grave error in writing a novel. Mental Email: Stop trying to write fiction. I’m sure the Reader From DC would applaud this decision, and the Reader From NY would crack champagne. Meanwhile I write emails to my friends and sign off with my Amazon sales rank number of the moment.

“Hope your liver tumor isn’t malignant. I’m sure it’s not. 704.”

I log on at 5:45 and again at 6:01. In less than twenty minutes my sales rank went from 636 to 4501. 4501. I mentally affix a cleft palate to my lip. Dinner is out of the question now. I will be sucking horse tranquilizers.

It occurs to me, not for the first time, that getting published isn’t exactly the way I pictured it. Yet there is still time to make it right. There is still time to burst into Amazon’s Hot 100. If not, I will marinate in shame and defeat, along with Stegner and Welty. And John Updike. Let’s not forget that popsickle stand loser.

EPILOGUE: While on her book tour in Chicago, Suzanne Finnamore’s Otherwise Engaged hit Amazon’s Hot 100, going as high as 44. She is still crazy.

poem for Tom 12.6.09

2009-12-06T03:37:00.005-05:00

On Discovering My Tattoo Means Not Love, But The Act of Trusting

I wanted to be sure to find you
Though I lost my way it seemed
There would be you, a test, an open door
A chasm to jump over. Just beyond

The doorjamb I caught a slice
Of what I thought was you
Or something close enough
To pass for love, devotion. I thought children

Would be enough to pass for you.
But I watch my son fan away from me,
His creamy bones spread out to
His own life. Even now he is

On his way to his own portal, his own
Way of passing through the air, he will
See someone; I hope she will meet
Him at the place where hinges touch. I hope

For him a round window that leads to
Sea and not to ground, where we must
Bury what is gone. I want for him what
I had never known, the kind of entrance

Into the curved room without doors, where
No one leaves, yet none are moribund
And the world circular. Me, I’ve held the edge. I am
Known for it. I have that slim distinction. But oh,

Roundels are what I craved, surely
At some point these merging and snags might stop
Pushing from the earth, there would be fullness.
A place not to rest; I have done with resting, with

Making do with the act itself and not the art. I
Am done marking time, I wish to pass
From nostalgia to grace, one grand jeté, one arcing,
Pendant, trusting leap. And landing, I see now

The decades have not brought me here. The way
Was unmarked. No amount of signs would guide
Me to this place - well, why not just say it - to
You. I am all in. You are what I’ve come for.

Suzanne Finnamore

jeté: A leap in ballet in which one leg is extended forward and the other backward. (French jeté: “thrown”)

What I Know For Now

2009-08-16T14:53:00.001-04:00

I regret to say I cannot do a cartwheel; I've always felt bad about that. Nor can i stand on my head or touch the tip of my nose with my tongue or ride a unicycle. i have other useful and exhilarating skills; offhand i can't imagine one.

I don't play the bagpipes but just the sound of them is liable to make me weep, especially at a funeral or wake or wedding. i come unglued.

i know how to write, how to cook arroz con pollo and coq au vin, how to read really fast, how to bait a hook with a live worm without squirming, how to snorkel or hike or swim or stare into space for hours - mentally plotting out my latest novel or article - and forget Time and the outside world. i know how to raise a son, how to be friends with an ex, how to listen and how to survive in the business world without stabbing anyone in the back or swan diving off a high building. i know how to laugh really well, in fact i have a highly infectious laugh but not a cackle laugh or a nasal laugh. i know how to live, and not just survive. i consider living an art.

so i know about the existence of art as well, and its extreme importance. i believe love is an art as well. it may be that i see the god and the art in everything. therefore, i know how to be happy.

I think it's possible to be happy, it's impossible to be right. i choose happy: roller coaster jibe, warm rain Baptisms, irascible Eros, the sudden deluge, white lightning, the deadly fleet step of time at my back, screams and all. choosing now.

unhappy people are problematic: you can't take people's suffering away. that's the last thing i know, for now.

"X" Previously Published in 2002 by Three Rivers Press, The Dictionary of Failed Relationships

2009-07-23T13:18:00.001-04:00

X
\‘eks\ often capitalized, often attributive
noun (before 12th century) 1a: the 24th letter of the English alphabet. b: a graphic representation of this letter. 2: an unknown quantity. 3 : A former lover, also ex.
transitive verb (circa 1849) 1 : to mark with an x. 2: to cancel or obliterate with a series of x’s—usually used with out.

X: A Wholly Fictional Essay by Suzanne Finnamore

“One should never know too precisely whom one has married.” Friedrich Nietzsche

This is, as they say, a long story, but one with undeniably entertaining moments—some of which informed my workings as a functioning adult, one who has recently turned two hundred. Actually, thirty-six. I just feel two hundred.

I am soon to be divorced, for the second time. I should be ashamed, but I’m not. I’m inconvenienced mostly. Sometimes sad, sometimes grateful, as though I have been untied from the train tracks of life. You can be sad and grateful at the same time; that’s one thing I’ve learned. Also, property is everything. Buy the bastards out if necessary.

As always with a major breakup, and particularly divorce, I feel devastated yet freed, much like one of Lincoln’s slaves: I don’t know quite what to do with myself, but I am aware that a pressure has been lifted; constraints broken. For example, I am writing this while eating an individually wrapped Ding Dong, a small detail that I can’t help but include. Could I do that while married? Interesting. Like a photographer at the scene of a crime, I am intent on documenting everything, so that it may lessen the blow of actual firsthand reality, which assaults me daily.

I suppose I should start with Ex#2—also known as Soon-To-Be-Ex #2, or S2BX2—my currently estranged husband, age forty-two years, of five years. (Estranged is a perfect word; it efficiently includes the word strange.) I have recently been forced to acknowledge that ever since my second trimester last year, when I began to look like a gourd with legs, S2BX2 has been having affairs, even though he is, on the surface, remarkably trustworthy and likable. Perhaps that has been the problem. He has been too well liked, mostly by people with large breasts and an i at the end of their first name. He sells luxury cars for a living and is strikingly good looking, in that eventually you want to strike him. He cannot pass a mirror without doing the Sears-model half-turn, with that hand-in-pants-pocket-and-one-eyebrow-cocked move.

Historically, there is X1—my first husband, who is convinced that we should have stayed together, even though he tried to poison me with Snail Death after an argument concerning joint checking. He sprinkled some on my English muffin. “Just a little,” he said. “I didn’t mean it. If I had meant it, you’d be dead now. I always follow through on the things that are important to me.” So it was just a gesture. A shot across the bow. I ate half and was fine, if you don’t count the vomiting and headaches that persisted for a month, too long for X1 to suppress the brilliance of his plan. I did not press charges. Instead, I filed for crucifixion (his), otherwise known as divorce.

X1 has never remarried. He is far too busy making my life a living hell and going through mental scrapbooks of our sordid years together in the eighties (Reagan was president; a lot of bad shit went down). He will call and say, “Do you remember the time we made spinach lasagna in the middle of the night?” We were stoned, I say. I don’t remember. “Well, it was raining,” he said. “We were watching Bewitched on Nick At Nite, the episode where Dr. Bombay cures Darren from telling the truth.”

X1 is like a damn elephant. He never forgets anything, except the small detail of the SnailDeath incident. “Why can’t you forgive me?” he says. He says I need to work on my doubts, jealousies, and insecurities before I can rediscover our love.
X1 says we will always love each other, and that it’s because of my Karma that my marriage to S2BX2 is breaking up. He generally feels that the fact that I got married and had a child with X2 was just a minor passage. He will not validate any portion of my life that took place after October 11, 1990, which is the day we divorced. Every wedding anniversary, he still sends flowers, and on the anniversary of our divorce too, with a card that says We Are Mean to Be Together. I don’t know whether he means to leave out the T in Meant or not. It’s the kind of joke he would enjoy, especially the not explaining part. He is about an inch away from being one of R. Crumb’s brothers—the one that’s a street person, who swallows string and then pulls it back out his ass and starts over.

Then there’s the Crazy-Ass Bitch (CAB). CAB is the woman my temporarily still husband (S2BX2) sold a pre-owned automobile to and with whom he had his most recent affair; CAB turned out to be a bit of a psychotic—sewing his boxers shut and Krazy-gluing the pockets of his suits shut when he had the temerity to suggest that perhaps this was a “transitional relationship.” So whereas once he was proffering yellowfin tuna down her lily-white throat and knocking back sake as if it were oxygen, now he wishes she would fall down a cement stairwell. She turned out to have quite the stamina and imagination. I will give her that. She has taken the job of torturing S2BX2 right out of my hands. It’s really too delightful. The irony is that now that he wants to get rid of her, he attempts to hide out at my place. I almost never allow it, except for when he comes to see our daughter. There’s a grease spot where his car used to be, and I like seeing it. I don’t want his car covering it up again.

“I told her we reconciled,” he says. “Can I just park my car here in the driveway?”

“I don’t even want your toothpicks here.” I say. The multi-colored toothpicks that I packed up along with his martini shaker in the large cardboard box of his belongings, which he was loading into his car as he asked for sanctuary. Imbecile.

The silver martini shaker should have been my first clue that there was serious trouble, at the instant that he brought it home from Restoration Hardware. Its “James Bond time in the suburbs” vibe should have been my clue. James Bond never married, and was an international spy. He never gets old, either; he is just recast. S2BX2 was trying to be James Bond. I was in the way, like someone standing in front of the television. It is possible that CAB was originally cast as Pussy Galore.

CAB calls me on the phone, making heavily nuanced statements (for example, “You need to let him go, you bitch!”) CAB sends me chihuahua turds wrapped in heart-embossed tissue, a dozen clam pizzas, and nasty notes in her childish scrawl. Like Glenn Close, CAB will not be ignored. She is the artist formerly known as Small-Foot Bitch, because while we were still together, I found a charge on S2BX2’s credit card from Neiman’s, and he swore it was a gift for me and that it was in his office. So he brought it home that night, and it was a pair of Manolo Blahniks—size four. He said he was going to just give me the sample size, and then I could exchange it for my own size, which is nine. And I believed him. That was during the time when I wanted to believe, was desperate to believe. If he had said that the earth is flat, I would have said, “As a fucking pancake.”

But that’s all over now. We’re in the vortex of uncoupling. Working on the legal settlement, alternately hating each other’s guts and waxing nostalgic, still having occasional sex. It’s incredibly complex, and you can’t explain it to people. They either make you feel pitiful or guilty. Neither are emotions that I covet. I mean, no one got this excited when we got married. They just showed up and drank too much, ate the roast beef and poached salmon. Plus, it was over in a day. Divorce is much slower, more protracted. It’s like LSD time. Not that I would know. I mean, I don’t even take Tylenol, not after they killed those people. (It’s not like I’m lucky, either. I mean, look. Take a good look. Maybe you can avoid my life. Maybe you can steer around it.)
Divorce, unlike marriage, has a crazy schemata of its own. It’s like the soapbox derby that they have at the top of twin peaks every third Sunday in San Francisco: There are no rules. You can put a 1950s stove on wheels and wear a chef’s hat, and that can be your soapbox derby racer. Or, you can make a ratmobile with a long, hairless tail made of licorice. Mine would be a Pottery Barn couch on wheels with me and the baby and no husband, careening down the hill, screaming. CAB would be right behind on a Ninja bike. X1 would be on a huge, Styrofoam English muffin that’s embroidered with live snails spelling out COME BACK, BABY!

S2BX2 is always saying he loves me, too. The way he expresses it is through filing for divorce and screwing the Crazy-Ass Bitch. “And that’s just the ones we know about,” my best friend, Sarina, says. Yeah. Right, I say. She would like his penis to fall off, the way a baby’s umbilical cord does, in the middle of the night. Noooo, I’m still using it, I say thoughtfully.
“What would Gloria Steinem say?” Sarina asks, mildly reproachful. I don’t know, I reply. “What would Camille Paglia say?” she asks. I don’t know, I say annoyed. Let the lesbians duke it out among themselves. This is my divorce. I can do it however I want. I can have a party if I want to. I can frame the divorce petition, in a silver frame. I can do that. In fact, I have done that. It’s in my office. It makes a fantastic conversation piece.

S2BX2, although admittedly great in bed, is a lifetime-achievement cheater. He was the kid who always insisted on being the banker in Monopoly games and then won, pulling five-hundreds out of thin air. But it’s all he knows how to do. He’s never been faithful to anyone. He’s like an epileptic pilot that way and should not be working for Air Monogamy. Here’s something interesting. Since we separated, we are having more sex than ever. I have become the Other Woman. Plus, I get checks now. I never got checks before. So there’s that. It’s called Spousal Support monies. It should be called Keep Quiet, Bitch monies. Stay Away from My Lexus with That Icepick monies. Why don’t they call things what they are?

I’ve decided I am through with clever, charming men. I want someone simple, maybe even slightly retarded. I’m thinking one ear. A simpleton, anyway. I call my girlfriends for talk. Men don’t want to talk after the first year; they just want you to do their laundry and screw doggy style. Men are nice, but they are not strictly necessary, the way ketchup is to French fries. You can do without. I will do without. For at least the next few hours. God, this celibacy is grueling. I mean, divorce. Divorce is grueling. But I will keep doing it until I get it right. Either marriage or divorce. One of them I must perfect. Clearly, this is my life plan.
Tomorrow, I will see S2BX2. He’s coming over to visit our daughter. What should I wear? I must look fantastic. I must harm him in at least one aspect. Even though he filed for divorce, winning still seems possible. I will meditate on it. I will go to the closet and exclude mercy from my selection of attire. This is war.

I decide on the outfit from Bebe, a store I formerly eschewed because its clothes would perfectly attire a prostitute on Nob Hill. And yet, last week I could not resist the blatant allure of the flimsy and the stringy and the clothes that say, “Come get me, you great big hunk of a man.”

Bebe. The saleswomen all appear to be from an alternate planet, where there are no pores or breasts. Not a menstrual period among them. They twirl about like skeletal tops and pay no attention whatsoever to me, and for this I commend them. I need none of their attention, I am more than capable of humiliating myself on my own and prefer it thus. One of the girls is on the store telephone to her boyfriend, telling him that she hates him and then laughing maniacally, putting the phone down for a minute to her bony chest, and then bringing it back up to trill, “I do. I do hate you!” She has a diamond in her nose, a precious rock fastened onto her very nose. I have nothing fastened anywhere and resolve to keep it that way, for aerodynamic speed and efficiency. Also, I feel no urge to have tiny metal spikes rammed through my body tissue so that I may look like gay Zulu.

I choose a pair of capri pants that are a Gucci knockoff, bright sixties paisley against black background, side zipper. My blouse is silk chiffon and terrifyingly expensive; it matches the pants perfectly in that let’s-kill-all-the-homeless kind of aplomb. These clothes are the opposite of actual clothing. For this, I am thankful, because actual clothing has gotten me into my current situation. I need costuming—the more inappropriate and scanty, the better.

S2BX2 calls from his cellular telephone to say he will be late because he thinks—no, he is certain—that CAB is following him in a red Ford Escort GT. I ask him how he knows it is her, and he says she has a pink garter belt hanging from her rearview mirror. I wonder aloud how far one has to search to find her exact blend of intelligence, wit, and style. S2BX2 screeches around a corner, announcing that he has lost her, breathing heavily. It is entirely possible that he is masturbating. I put nothing past him.

When he finally arrives, he is red faced and somehow icy at the same time. He seems to feel a sense of effrontery that I have kept the connubial home. He wanders around, picking up cigar ashtrays and candlesticks and coasters, his lips curled tightly. He is taking a mental inventory of everything I have bought since he left. It all seems to insult his memory, his legacy. I am certain he felt that after he left, I would transform our home into a museum, along with my vagina. He is so often mistaken about the most basic truths of life.

“When did you get this?” he asks, holding up the edge of a pumpkin silk chenille throw.

Oh that, I say brightly, walking past him just close enough so he can smell me. I have taken the liberty of daubing Jil Sander No. 4 behind each ear. I have spent perfume on him, and it is not in vain. I can see by the way he shoves his hands into his pants pockets that he is nervous and excited. He wants to discuss CAB, but I wave my hand in the air, as if to dry my fingernails. My work is done here. I escort him to the door, kissing our daughter and telling her to have a wonderful time with Daddy. I am channeling Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame, only younger. I shut the door behind him and twirl the deadbolt shut, so that he can hear its sound. So that it is the last sound. Not only have I had the last word, I have had the last sound.

After he has gone, and upon checking my e-mail, I am horrified to discover that yes, the whole world has gone mad and is calling this madness spiritualism. I am in receipt of an electronic Tantra Nepalese Totem. I am instructed to send copies to whomever I think is in need of good fortune. In my mind, of course, I choose both my husbands, past and present, and their respective mistresses. The Tantra Nepalese Totem includes vital advice, such as “Eat plenty of whole rice,” and “Don’t believe anything you hear” and “Do not sleep as much as you would like to.” It’s just this kind of thing that keeps me believing that computers are black holes and should be avoided.

In continuation of intestinal self-destructive mode, I drive through Burger King for lunch. Waxing maternal, I decide I am a growing girl just as my daughter is, and that I need protein. I order a five-piece chicken nugget pack. After nearly maiming a pedestrian who has stepped out into traffic—as if it is his right as a United States citizen—I grab the paper bag, take one bite and am startled. It turns out that the food handlers had temporarily lapsed in their blinding efficiency. It is a jalapeño cheese nugget pack. Outraged, I take another bite: terrifyingly delicious. I save the rest for cocktail hour, reheating them in the microwave—even better than I had originally estimated.

Meanwhile, S2BX2 is coming on Saturday with cheap, Irish movers to get his furniture and boxes. Arguments loom over who gets the pewter pepper grinder, electric pencil sharpener, weather vane, et cetera. I think this will be the last horrible thing we have to go through, until he moves in with a size-zero receptionist and the whole travesty begins again. I myself have an invisible sign that reads DON’T DATE ME, I CHAIN-SMOKE, I’M BITTER, AND I INCLUDE A GRABBY TODDLER; this has dramatically decreased my social life. Have now resigned myself to a lifetime of jalapeño cheese bites, midrange wine, and Seinfeld reruns. Why has no one proposed yet? I feel bad about that. I should have been asked by now; divorce will be final Tuesday. Lowering standards by the minute, but still nothing. Recently decided that the contractor working on the construction site down the street looked like Robert Downy Jr.. Slowed car down and tried to look available, despite toddler seat in the back and Elmo sunshade. Then, today, he looked like Edward Norton. I know my vision is impaired and cannot be trusted with even the simplest tasks, much less dating. Not that I have come within talon distance of a man.

I would have to run over the Downy/Norton contractor to meet him: jump the curb, ruin German car, chance arrest. Even running him over may not ensure an introduction. Maybe I could just clip him as he crosses the street? This would require keener eyesight than I apparently have. I would probably clip him into a coma.

I’m just not sending out the right vibe lately. Perhaps the fact that I frequently wear stained sweatpants and free, editing-house, XL T-shirts is holding me back. Save for the recent escapade with the Bebe attire, I just can’t seem to get back into the daily donning of intelligent-slut-for-hire outfits that lure men. Even shoes with laces evade me. Plus, my hair is Fran Lebowitz-esque. I think my eyes are getting closer together. I don’t know. Judgment clouded.

To make matters exceptionally worse, my brother is getting married next month. It’s all I can do to keep from chopping his foot off to deter this obvious mistake. Still, I feign happiness for him. His wedding should be interesting. They’re doing it in a Catholic church and I plan to wear something smart, like army fatigues. I may accessorize with an assault rifle. I don’t want anyone to get married right now. Why can’t people consider my feelings? Selfishness of world continues to astound me.

Mail order shopping is shaping up as an issue. Bought a floor lamp last night, plaid cashmere pajamas, and twelve pairs of cotton raglan socks. This should fill out my divorce wardrobe nicely. New lines on my face are popping up with hideous regularity. The beginnings of a mustache intrigue me—surely, this is not the right response. One leg seems longer than the other. Where will it end? Yet, just now, I am unexpectedly cheered by a news item appearing on my computer screen:

Chronic work stress and divorce can be a deadly combination for men, a new study has found.
Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the State University of New York-Oswego studied data from 12,366 patients who participated in the seven-year Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial.
Of 10,904 men who were married at the beginning of the trial, the researchers found that those who stayed married were less likely to die from a number of causes than those who divorced. Of those who divorced during the trial, 1,332 died from various causes, including some 663 from cardiovascular causes. (Reuters)

Information is so invigorating. So much of it on how to get a man, so little of it on how to get rid of one. To this end, I proffer a handy list, which I have been compiling for my divorcing girlfriends, some of whom have clearly been born yesterday and need my advice as well as physical intervention. One of them actually had moved out from her home after she caught her rabbi husband with his hand up the nanny. I immediately alerted said girlfriend to the folly of her actions, installed her back in her home, and changed the locks myself. As for the mezuzah on the doorframe, I bashed it off with a sledgehammer and mailed it to his temple, along with the Polaroids (one needn’t ask what was within the photos; Polaroids are never lucky, I am afraid, unless properly dealt with). She looked on as I sealed the envelope, tears frozen on her once-blossoming cheeks, which had turned the color of ash.

Yes. It is sad what ignorance does to women without resources who have been struck with an infidelity. It can and will render them childlike, like palsied Shirley Temples, throwing themselves on the floor and crying about the general unfairness of life, et cetera. I try to be kind but firm, and in the end they all thank me. It looks like a hothouse here come Christmas, so numerous are my bouquets of thanks from women who have lost neither their minds nor their shirts.

I hope that no one reading this will ever be faced with the travesty of divorce. It should not happen to any good woman. But if it does? If you fall in with the wrong kind, the way I did? Be glad for divorce. It is God’s way of telling you Girl? You have fucked up again! Now, here I’m going to give you a chance to start over. Go out there and please, please, please show some sense. Don’t make me come down there again and bail your ass out.

Ten Simple Yet Elegant Keys To Divorce

1. Change the locks.

2. Make him pay for the divorce—and anything else you can.

3. Keep everything beginning with consonants (children, money, house, cars, furniture, real estate, medical benefits, retirement funds, linens).

4. Allow him to keep everything beginning with vowels (armoires, umbrellas).

5. Sequester precious items at a friend’s house. Men never remember what they have—if they did, they would not have ruined their lives by running around with whores.

6. Don’t fight in front of the children.

7. …“Children” includes your X/STBX. Fighting only adds gasoline to the fire. He won’t care how angry you are, because he exists wholly in his own tiny birdcage of a brain.

8. Take lots of baths; get manicures and pedicures; have your hair expensively cut.

9. Everything, no matter how ludicrous and squalid it seems at the time of the split, will get better and better, until you will wonder why you cared so much in the first place.

10. When confronted with a question regarding fairness to your ex, err on the side of Lifetime Vendetta. That way, you will never feel a fool, and you will also have kept everything of worth in your rightful possession. In short: You may have once been in love, or you may still be in love—but you are not crazy.

Pablo Neruda, After Whom I Named My Son

2009-07-17T17:20:00.001-04:00

Are You A Big Deal?

2009-06-21T15:26:00.000-04:00

i am not a big deal. my friend Augusten Burroughs is a big deal. I am a medium deal. i am the product of persistence and an education that i lucked into. Berkeley made me. most of my writing professors went on to win Pulitzer prizes. they were astonishing. they gave me encouragement and told me: you will be a writer, you may experience fame. i have no idea how they knew this -- looking back on the poetry i wrote at Cal i wince, mostly. yet they gave me that gift; i was not too crazy for them, because they were all crazier than i was and had permission, as erudite white men, to be that crazy. Phillip Levine. Thom Gunn. Robert Pinsky. Peter Dale Scott. i will always be grateful for these men.

i left college in the eighties, Gordon Gekko was a hero, i had no idea what to do with an English major. it honestly didn't occur to me what i would do after college. and so i waitressed, secretaried, cleaned houses... oh my, the shitty jobs. then i realized most of my funny interesting friends had gone into Advertising, and were well compensated. i decided i would do this as well. it took me 5 years of rejections and constant, humilating self-promotion with various ad agencies to get my first job as an advertising creative/copywriter in SF. again - persistence, mistakes, luck. eventually the money came, and the dubious advertising quasifame. i worked on Levis at FCB/SF for 8 years - glorious, posh, crazy, fun. traveled the world shooting tv campaigns. all of my art director partners were brilliant, all were men, and all 3 are like brothers to me, still. it's beautiful. i still do free lance ad gigs, my dirty little secret (they continue to save me. writing books isn't a get rich quick scheme. not the way i do it). these literary-free jobs saved my house when my husband ran off with another woman. pablo was 15 months old.

i wanted to die. instead i wrote a book. i thought SPLIT would be savaged my the reviewers, instead it was praised. shocking. i get heartfelt, grateful emails and letters from women who were abandoned, they say the book saved them -- and that is so gratifying and good. i ended up giving back to the world in that odd way. so i'm a medium deal with an odd way. it suits me. if i were a big deal, i would be expected to be on time for things, i would be taken away from my writing and fucking around routine, my son would see little of me, i would miss him terribly, and i would feel an enormous pressure to top every book i write. when really, there is no predicting these things. like a violinist, i just want to play my violin, barefoot, in my own house: a medium deal with an odd way.

Waiting For The Movie Of Your Life

2009-06-20T20:52:00.000-04:00

Pictured at left is a Victorian era painting of Circe. Circe was a goddess, and a damned good one - she has withstood the test of time, not unlike the wheel. Like the wheel, Circe did one thing and she did it impeccably: screwing sailors, and in more ways than one that leaps to mind.

Circle had style, it went hand in glove with her professional calling; she understood that successful women always, always dress the part. She wore diaphanous gowns in rich, chocolate shades, and she saw no percentage in wearing a bra or even nipple guards, which makes her unique in her category of Highly Effective Businesswomen and Icons. Circe was a style force; she created trends of both gowns and behavior.

Her second expertise was this: she would send out a siren song, something along the lines of a "sex foghorn." Sailors would be drawn to her cozy private island, where she would seduce them and then -- wait for it -- turn them into swine. In this painting, you can see some of her ex-lovers strewn around her pretty feet, as she drinks to them. If you can't do shit like Circe, then I don't know why anyone would want to study you or witness your experiences- chockfull of failures. I certainly can’t fathom why they would pay good money to see a film about any lesser style icon. But Hollywood continues to try to make silk purses out of sow's ears, to portray weaker, primarily fully clad women who proffer just BITS of wisdom - and that is why Hollywood, rather than do a really enthralling film or musical like "Circe!', or a Blair Witch knockoff of "Night of the Swine" - falls back on a movie like Sex and the City.

The Sex and the City movie. Sweet Mother of Odysseus, how its fans poured forth, giggling like teens in brightly colored patent leather raincoats, raising a manicured fist to "eclectic” fashion-- queuing for a movie that is an extension of a television show. Not even a real movie, although I don't claim to know what that is; I lost track.

In movies and in reality, the most important thing a woman can do in this culture is...get married. Stay married no matter what; if your husband strays , you do not ask any pointed questions and you forgive him. if you can, you pay him back and he forgives you as well. Take good physical care of yourself and don’t 'let yourself go', which implies someone whose appendix and bladder and ire has burst all at once in a grisly display of overage. Keep a nice house. Love God and be Spiritual and open yourself up to Abundance. Ardently strive not just to age gracefully, but also to stand in one fantastic place despite the movement of time in a Chronological Sense. Better still, keep exercising and hold back the barge. You can improve upon the past: gain years, lose a bit of weight. Gain, lose, gain, and lose. Do not muck it up. Set out briskly in all directions, as indicated by culture and fashion magazines.

I'm no exception; I think...what if I lose my job and downsize, or move to the South and write in Crude Sheds -- can I sell my house? Do I have enough equity? And, are these jeans too loose, now? Is size ten Gap Slim Cut really a size ten? What about my arms? I once was told, "The arms are the first thing to go." I was about five years old; I kept it in mind. It seems to me they are going; they are moving on without me. Deny it I might, yet I feel real hostility toward the intention of my upper arms.

Unbelievably, in a time of a war and economic disaster...I still have questions. Can I wear cork wedge sandals, since I wore them the first time around? Am I embarrassing myself? How badly? Which rudimentary cosmetics are best, let's say, which three products at bare minimum? If I had to choose just three. I pore over splashy fashion books by gay authors on the subject; the gay men know. I know they know, and for a pittance they are willing to divulge their transsexual derived beauty tips. An entire subculture of men who wanted to be girls have secrets on how to look like women who are not girls but want to be.

Another subsection of Americans claim not to think about aging, they say they are not focused there. I worship them, in this case. Sadly, many of us are still twisting our rear view mirrors in heavy traffic and checking our look, glossing our lips. Madly and with small cunning we're dying our hair every six weeks and slathering on grapefruit Olalla product and buying pricey accessories we can't afford. Adorn, adorn, adorn. Dammit, if I can't fix the inside, put something sparkly on top.

I memorized my Life Script and tracked the screenplay word for word. I got married, we had a baby, the millennium came, my husband left, and I couldn't really afford a sitter. Ironically, movies came to a slamming finish. I didn't miss them; it turned out it was my husband who loved the movies. Huh. Yetin older magazines at my hair stylist's I see the Ny movie theater line for Sex And The City wending its way down a boulevard in Manhattan. And I feel like -- What? You can;t make a movie about a TV show unless there are spaceships or cartoons or death involved.

What is this? Some kind of twisted coda? I was more than comfortable with the way the show ended, or the way I though it ended... somewhere in between the grizzled Parisian (a Russian ballet dancer, in reality) and the Chris Noth man, Bradshaw twirls offstage, spinning and glistening like a rexie top. The pratfall in the pool, the chance meeting in Paris - all the things that never happen in real life - had happened; and I'd fucking well suspended my disbelief. They pulled it off, a masterful ensemble.

But a movie? A two-hour plus film extravaganza with relentless designer gowns and a London Premiere hat that made Sara Jessica Parker look like she had a SHELLACKED Victorian birdcage pinned unto her skull?? Christ in a hand basket. The greed, the push push push. It got panned; all the actresses were savaged in the press, the New York Times had a field day. And naturally the film made a fortune. Is there a sequel in the works? A prequel? A quelling of the maddening tide of newer, brighter more false imagery for us "girls"? No, babe.

We're Americans, our culture wants our faces tight as Hopi drums, our sequins bright, our metallic shiny, and our teeth whiter than white. Happy beginnings, happy middles, happy endings. And gayer-than-gay high fashion travesty birdcage hats in London, that too. Everything in a size zero please, with botox on top and a re-virginated cherry. In movies as well as life. Otherwise, it won't test well. Life, I suspect - aging in particular - would not test well. Life's a long, slow plot with a disastrous ending in which everyone dies. Except our heroine, Circe.

All the things that happen in stories, myths and the movies and not in real life? We are raised on them, as women. We wait to be married, to be on television or to look like we are, to be adored by perfect husbands…or at least to be some kind of mature, wise, graceful earth mother role models for the young.

But I know this one thing: If you wait for all this to happen, you will be old before your time; you will miss childbirth, you will miss love or even a semblance of love. You will be waiting for that brawny dimple-chinned movie star to round the corner, for that impossible coincidence that changes everything into shimmering perfection. And the credits will neatly roll.

You could miss your life, waiting for the movie of your life.

"Women just want to be engaged,” said Sarah Jessica Parker, executive producer of the Sex And The City Movie, in a national entertainment magazine. "They're not that complicated."

I am shaking my head in a circle at this, part vigorous nod, part Hell To The No.

"Killing John Updike" by Augusten Burroughs, "Possible Side Effects", St. Martins Press

2009-06-20T19:33:00.000-04:00

SPEAKING OF JOHN UPDIKE SIGNING ALL MY UPDIKE 1ST EDITION HARDCOVER BOOKS in 1998 - even his early work and the universally acclaimed Rabbit Run teratology (!) ? Well, fast-forward two years…and now I’m deeper into collecting signed first editions, which are worth substantially more immediately after the author DIES. Which is morbid but true, almost natural…not to mention lucrative for the living. SO.000000ooooooooooooooooo…. Augusten Burroughs and I wrote this little essay together - he wrote 90% of it, i added the inhuman bits.

it’s a true account of one night a few years ago…when we were ALL still drinking. The essay, Killing John Updike, appears in his book, POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS , which is screamingly funny. All need to read DRY and MAGICAL THINKING as well. he somehow manages to be funnier than David Sedaris.

“Killing John Updike’ by Augusten Burroughs, from Possible Side Effects", St Martins Press

Tonight, my lunatic writer friend, Suzanne, worked me into a frenzy. “Baby,” she said, “John Updike is pushing eighty! He could die at any moment. Buy his first editions, NOW.” She was calling from California -land of the vineyards- and her voice contained a Chardonnay edge. “I don't know,” I said. First editions are expensive. Did I really want to spend a couple of hundred dollars on a book I couldn't even read, because it had to remain perfect? “I'm telling you, this man could drop dead any minute,” she said. “And he's the most famous writer in the world. My God. Whatever you buy will double, triple in value. Possibly overnight. BUY NOW!” Now that was an interesting point. If Updike died tonight, my two hundred dollars could be worth four hundred dollars tomorrow. I could stick his book on eBay, and with the profit, I could buy a slew of novels at Barnes and Noble. I would pre-order whatever Elizabeth Berg had coming out. I would buy every Joyce Carol Oates, because it's time to read her. Or maybe only every fifth book of hers. I would buy multiple copies of Kathryn Harrison's The Kiss in paperback and give them as gifts. Maybe she was right. So I went online and found a bunch of Updikes. But they were horrifyingly expensive. One of them was two thousand dollars. And he wasn't even dead yet. Some of them were signed, which made them much more valuable. But the fucker could still sign. If you forced him to sign, put a pen in his hand and a gun to his head, he could still sign his name. So imagine how much these would be worth when he could no longer sign at all, even at gunpoint, due to death. If I was going to spend two thousand dollars on a book about a rabbit, that old man better well be dead soon, or I was going to be furious. I selected a signed first edition from the list. A moderate first, in the five hundred dollar price range. Then I emailed Suzanne back. “Okay, baby. DONE. Bought Updike. Now what?” She wrote back immediately. “FANTASTIC. XOXOXOXOX. BUY MORE NOW. I JUST HAVE A FEELING. I KNOW THESE THINGS.” She was crazy, and tonight she was crazed. We allowed that since she and I had both been published through sheer greed and willpower, surely we could do this one little...coup. Using just our minds. Finnamore has been collecting Updike first editions since she was 14. When she published Otherwise Engaged with Knopf, John Updike, who’s been with Knopf since he was born, had very kindly signed them all and shipped them back to her in California. “It’s ironic,” she wrote, “Because his innate generosity and kindness in the past, now makes him doubly worth killing.” It was uncanny. She seemed certain of the great novelist's impending death. Was there even a remote possibility that she would have something to do with it? If so, was it wrong of me to then buy these first editions? The last thing I wanted was to get myself involved in some sort of “insider trading” nightmare. Then she sent another email. “The thing is, I worship John Updike. I'd crumple from awe if I saw him alive and in person. I think he is the greatest male writer of the twentieth century. I would drink his bath water and shine his little Yankee shoes. But I still hoard those first edition as though they were a very life insurance policy on the man, and I am his nineteen-year-old wife. It's just awful. I blame money and the fact of its usefulness in every single situation except death.” And I was the same way, just as hateful and greedy. So couldn't I buy more? It wasn't like I was throwing money away on particleboard nightstands at Wal-Mart. These were enduring classics. In Extra, Extra Fine condition, no rips, stains or price clips. So I went back online and bought two more books. Now, I had purchased three books which cost me more money than some people spend on their first cars. I emailed Suzanne. “Okay, now I'm broke. I bought two more, so have three. He better die.” She said, “Okay, let's do it. Let's kill him.” I said, “Okay. How?” She said, “Let's constantly think of him as dying. Let's concentrate very hard. And in the morning, we'll watch CNN. I bet you anything they'll announce that he died in his sleep. And nobody will be able to trace it to us. Because who even knows where he lives, and we're all the way over here, where we live.” Suzanne is a diabolical genius, which is why I adore her. She then said “BUY SIGNED FIRST EDITIONS OR NOT AT ALL. Check out ALIBRIS.COM AND POWELL’S.” So for the remainder of the night, we exchanged emails. I bought Couples. $495 signed by author, with light wear to dust jacket. She wrote: "HE'LL BE DEAD BY MORNING. “How do you think he'll die?” I wrote. “Do you think he might choke? I could see him choking. I was just looking at a picture of his neck and he has a slender, graceful neck. The perfect neck for a corn chip to get lodged in. I bet he chokes.” She wrote back, “Maybe. But I’m thinking stroke. Flip a switch, nothing. He's gone. Clean and simple. In his sleep. He is the greatest living American writer so we can't have him suffer. At least not very much.” She was right. Whatever killed him, had to kill him fast. And then I realized: someday, this will be me. Some horrible, selfish, greedy bald writer will buy my early books online and then will await my immediate demise. In fact, it was probably happening right this very minute. I decided to check. I'd never looked up my own name on a used bookstore website before. It never occurred to me that I could be collectable, like a cup from Burger King. So I went back to the website where I bought the Updike books and typed in my own name. Running with Scissors. First edition. © 2002 Augusten Burroughs. St. Martin's Press, New York, New York. Memoir about author's unusual childhood. Unread. As new. In dust-wrappers. Signed on title page. $200.00. I was shocked. It was already happening. People were selling my books online, collecting them, waiting for me to relapse with alcohol and then die. I'd make Page Six, “Scissors Author Dead, apparent alcohol-overdose.” Then that two hundred dollar book would be worth four hundred, five hundred dollars. About the same price as a damaged Updike, non-dead. What else were people selling? I wondered. I decided to log onto eBay. There, I typed my name into the little box and hit, Search. A moment later, listings appeared. Books, books, books, and then MY WATCH. I looked at my computer screen in utter disbelief. I clicked on the link next to the Picture of the watch and was taken to a page. “Rolex GMT Master. Stainless Steel, black face. Watch worn for publicity during promotion of # 1 Bestselling book, RUNNING WITH SCISSORS. Watch appears on author's wrist in many magazine photographs, including ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, PEOPLE.” The ad gave the name of the seller. The name of the seller was my brother. I called him immediately. “What the fuck are you doing, you Ass Burger?” As usual, he was unmoved. “Huh? What are you talking about?” “I just saw my watch on eBay. What are you doing?” My brother said, “What do you mean, what am I doing? I'm selling the watch. You said you wanted me to sell it and you gave it to me to sell. So I'm selling it.” He was correct, of course. I had given him the watch to sell. I wanted to buy a new watch. One that was even flashier and more pretentious. Even though that watch was nearly new, I needed to sell it and use the money toward the purchase of one costing ten times as much. I had reached a point in my life and career where I was allowed one lavish, ridiculous thing. And I'd decided it had to be the flashiest watch Dennis would be seen next to me wearing. Which meant no diamonds, as I originally wanted, but lots of gold. So I'd given it to my brother, assuming he'd sell it to his friend, who owns a jewelry store. I never expected him to sell it on eBay. With all those…words. “Well, it's weird,” I said. “What's weird about it?” he asked. “We already have three bids.” The whole thing reeked of Billy Beer II. I recall in the nineteen seventies when Jimmy Carter was elected president, his trailer trash brother launched a line of beer. Billy Beer. Mortifying the president. Another thing came to mind: Demi Moore's mother posing nude, beaver flashing, for a porn magazine. But my brother thought there was nothing strange about selling my watch on eBay. “Look, you gave me the watch to sell. I'm selling it. You want me to take the ad down, I can take the ad down.” “No,” I said. “Keep it up. Sell it. Get rid of it.” My greed was far more powerful than my pride. I wanted my new watch. And then I had an idea. What if I gave him more stuff to sell? What else would people buy? Just how crazy were people, anyway? “Do you think people would buy other things?” I asked him. He didn't have to think about this for very long. “Oh, sure. People will buy all sorts of things. What else do you want to sell?” Well, hmm. I could sell my silver keychain. I hated it. It was worth maybe twenty-five cents. But would somebody pay fifty bucks for it? “Sure,” my brother said. “I bet somebody'd pay a hundred for it.” Shit. Maybe people would buy my empty Blenheim Ginger Ale bottles. If I packaged them in a tasteful brown cloth sack and said, “Blenheim Ginger Ale bottles -empty. Consumed by # 1 Bestselling Author Augusten Burroughs while writing essay collection. $ 1,000.” Maybe I could email my writer friend, Haven. We email every single day, all day, constantly. Perhaps I could gather together a dozen of our emails and sell these as a package. Say for three hundred dollars. Then I could send her half. And we could each go out to Red Lobster. I thought of John Updike. Surely when he dies, somebody will be riffling through his home, looking for things to sell. It was unlikely that his own children, if he had any, would sell his nail clippers, underwear or Chapstick. But certainly cousins would do this. Nieces and nephews would absolutely offer his pens, unused pads of paper, bookends for sale. Probably, other things. John Updike -legendary American author. For auction: Chair cushion, blue toile fabric. Cushion from desk chair, used daily by celebrated author. Distinctive impressions in pillow, from correlating anatomical features of author. Condition is described as 'well enjoyed.' Cushion manufactured circa 1940. Believed to be from Sears Roebuck & Co. This is an authentic piece of Americana, from the personal estate of one of the countries most famous and widely read authors. Truly a unique collectable. One of a kind. Minimum bid: $3,500.00 But that's what happens when you die. The vultures come. Sometimes, even before you die. Long before my grandmother passed away, her other vulture grandchildren carted Persian carpets, Ming Vases, expensive Italian fruitwood tables out of her house. They used vans, these cousins of mine. And they did this years before the woman was in a wheelchair and on a breathing machine, let alone dead. She had simply slowed down, is all. And there they were, greedy little hands outstretched, gimme, gimme, gimme. When my friend Pighead died, his mother had his entire apartment packed up, boxed and cleaned within twenty-four hours. She was asking, “Do you want that print?” And I told her, “That print, that you hate because it's of a naked man, is worth far more than this apartment. Maybe you better keep that for yourself.” Bitch, I didn't say. But wanted to. If one were to watch us from a great distance, with the sound off and in fast-motion, one would see an individual begin to limp, and then dozens of other individuals invade the territory of the infirm individual, carting away belongings, clinging near the deathbed, waiting. We were animals, true. But we were also like insects. And here I was, with my three new John Updike novels, checking the CNN homepage every five minutes for BREAKING NEWS. John Updike -dead at 76. Story to follow. Well, I decided, if he was dead by morning, there would be nobody to blame but me. If John Updike was dead when I woke up, then I had killed him with my hateful greed. Suzanne, too, would be guilty. But somehow, I was most guilty because I got the most excited. After all, she had merely suggested I buy his books. I'm the one who actually spent the money. That shows true pathology. If anybody deserved to die in his sleep tonight, or choke on a tortilla chip, it was me. I turned off my computer and climbed into bed. Dennis would be home in an hour. And he would find me in bed, as though sick I tucked into Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby, which was swiftly proving to be the finest, most elegant book ever written. And then I thought, hey. Wait a fucking minute. And I got back out of bed and went back online. Where I found a first edition, signed. I clicked, ADD TO CART. And then I said out loud, “Okay, Ira. You're number's up.”

"The Layers" By Stanley Kunitz, Our Poet Laureate

2009-06-20T15:04:00.003-04:00

The Layers

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

Stanley Kunitz

The Buddha Pablo At An Away Meal

2009-06-12T16:02:00.000-04:00

In the Beginning, There Was The Word: "You Can"

2009-06-04T00:39:00.001-04:00

Before going to press with my third book....Split: A Memoir of Divorce, there was a divorce. And before there was a divorce, there was the Word. The Word, for those not privy to this particular Tower of Babel moment in my little house in California? The word(s) was, "You Can." As in:...."You Can Write About This, Suzanne."

My ex-husband said these six empowering words as he was leaving me, along with advance suggestions about Child Custody and when I should expect a Petition To Divorce Subpoena to slide into my visage.

He had known me for ten years as a copywriter and working novelist, for Knopf and Grove/Atlantic. So he'd already considered that I might find this particular divorce a compelling subject. Some men might be fearful or even in some confusion over what would happen in future. Yet in an exuberant, free spirited moment, he selflessly extended his blessing to a memoir, a novel, or even a Press Release, should that suit my purpose. It is all worth repeating, now that Split is an international bestseller, has been named a Best of 2008 Book by Library Journal, had an entire chapter published in The New York Times as well as The London Times, and is available worldwide via Barnes and Noble Booksellers, Amazon.com - and on its Kindle.

Yes, as he sashayed out the front door of our home, he sang out: "You Can Write About This!"

It may be difficult and a long road to publication, I thought to myself...I may not be able to finish it, say, in the next few years (it turned out to be 7 years and 400 revisions before Penguin USA graciously stepped in to bring it to press), what with diapers and single parenthood and the relentless mortgage debt of $600K on this fucking toybox house? But who cares, I reasoned. Let creditors cool their collective heels! Art is in motion. I Can Write About It. I resolved to do so.

As I think I make plain in Split, he has always had a great "joie de vivre", giving of himself freely and constantly. I suppose he felt that as a bonus consolation prize to his walkout, he would grant me intellectual rights to my own experience. It was extraordinarily large of him. He gave it away freely, without a care in the world: He was moving on to a better place -- in fact he was leaving that very night to the 42 celebrated hills of San Francisco -- but I could write about the space where he had been.

It was all going to be all right.

True to form, he also went farther than was strictly necessary, on the same night. He made a bold optimistic proclamation as he stood with his hands outstretched to me, as I lay on the floor in a tragically humiliating stupor of shock, grief and horror. Yes. He delved into the subject of the good fresh money to be earned, now that I could write about it. He said, twiddling his long elegant fingers in the air in front of his body...

"All you have to do is sit down to your keyboard, Suzanne, and you will make three hundred thousand dollars."

It is a mark of his exaggerated belief in my skill as a writer and his confidence in a strong economy that he was so generous with this figure. Nonetheless, the oral estimation of the exact dollar amount I would certainly earn based on this little domestic fracas seemed to make him seem taller and richer, himself. He glowed with the benevolence of a giving patron of the arts, he exhaled an intangible aura of abundance and optimism. Then he walked.

To his credit, back on that spring night in 2000, he looked excited for me. There appeared a gleam in his eye that had been previously absent. It was a Whole Community Moment. He gave me his permission to write about my own divorce, as he delivered the news of the divorce itself to me. This was adroit, he saved all manner of question and answer periods that would have come later, he blocked my writing permission into the overall information news bulletin that night -- the primary news being the fact that he was leaving our family.

Yes I cried, yes I railed, but to no avail. It was not important, as I had failed miserably in my job as a wife to him, he had found a better candidate and he was history, good people. Our 15-month year old son and I were on our own, although he did pay the amount of court ordered child support, delivered on time, along with affectionate and frequent visitation. As for his forecast amount of $300K for the memoir of our divorce, it proved to be far less than that. I forgive him, though. How could he have known what a drastic turn our national economy would take, and how gas prices would go straight through the very roof of Heaven? How did he know there would be the unthinkable holocaust of 9/11 and then on the heels of that cataclysm, a complete travesty of a war and a national Recession to contend with? He is only human. He didn't know.

None of us knew anything. That's why writing - memoirs in particular -- became so important. And memoirs poured from the orifices of America.

We draw a curtain upon this time. We hope for better times.

And speaking of hope? A scant four days after my ex husband left, I had an emotional seizure. It was a dark, lonely weekend morning and I was unable to breast-feed and I became very sad. Not only could I not retain a husband or make the mortgage payment alone without plunging into an irretrievable abyss of debt? I could not express enough milk to wet a stamp. Sobbing, I gave my son a bottle of Enfamil. I picked up my telephone and I called Information and traced down the phone number of a favorite writer who lives in my area, Anne Lamott. After at least ten rings, she answered her phone, although we were mere acquaintances. And when I told her of how my husband had left, but! But that he'd said I could write about my divorce, she said - and I'll never forget the grace of the moment --" YOU'RE GODDAMNED RIGHT YOU CAN."

Ms Annie Lamott was on her way to church, it was a Sunday, and she talked to me the whole way. She is a marvelous writer and has not suffered divorce, to her ultimate credit as a human being. I feel instinctively that the great ones manage to avoid it, along with marriage as well. We need look no farther than dogs, horses, lions, lambs, Katherine Hepburn and Jesus as prime, unassailable examples.

Finally i would posit that if we don't learn from the past, we are doomed to repeat it.

Cut the cake.

"Icarus Reborn" by Simon Sherry. (film, below, in last post.

2009-06-03T23:28:00.001-04:00

OH MY GOD. COPY THIS LINK AND WATCH THE MEN WHO FLY

2009-06-03T23:28:00.000-04:00

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1778399&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

To Find Love, Abandon Standards

2009-06-01T21:13:00.001-04:00

Picture at right, is Augusten Burroughs. Pictured below are my parents on their wedding day in 1956 (see bookjacket). This was a great day; I wanted to make it into a fine, ironic dustjacket for my divorce memoir, but Fate and PenguinUSA would have none of it. Fourteen years later they were divorced. They went on to marry a total of three other people and they never stopped loving each other; divorce is a tight cornered game without explicit rules.)

I grudgingly admit that for the kind of attendance and service I desire, marriage is the only game in town. I want to learn about true commitment and connections. I honestly do. I think most men are full of grace and heart, beneath their hard, shiny armor. I think love fills their workman's boots, I think it seeps from their lock-box hearts into the atmosphere as they sleep.

So I asked Augusten Burroughs, a fiercely candid man who is happily coupled and also gay, which gives him an objectiveness impossible to find elsewhere. I pry hard for valuable, insider trading tips. Here are his edicts on mating, fresh from the information highway.

Re: Standards
BWABEE, STANDARDS get in the way of finding TRUE LOVE. Because you know what? The man who is RIGHT for you is going to look nothing like what you imagine. I, for example, always knew I would end up with an Iranian physician -somebody with chiseled, masculine features, a 5 o'clock shadow that began to appear at noon; a man who wore Armani suits and just reeked of brilliance and utter competence. Somebody who would surprise me with a gold Rolex Daytona just "because it's Tuesday and I love you."

Instead, I landed a guy who, the year before last, gave me shampoo for my birthday. And who has no interest in physics or cosmology and no matter HOW MUCH I SCREAM AT HIM or try to explain it WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND these things which matter most to me. But? he cooks. If somebody is mean to me he withdraws a meat cleaver from his back pocket. And even though he's about as romantic as a shoebox, he's perfect for me. And he's ten years older. I mean, when he's sixty? I'll be ONLY 50. So no, throw all your expectations and lists and MUST-HAVES directly into the trash and start over.

Here are the ONLY requirements:

1. Must have own source of income.
2. Must not be a criminal
3. Must not be married
4. NEED not be handsome but you MUST find him attractive, more so on each date.
5. Reads
6. Is patient, non judgemental and has no history of mental illness -especially manic depression, chronic depression, treatment-resistant depression or any other fucking flavor of incurable depression.

and that's really it.

AB

Split, Now Available in Paperback...and my interview with Carrie Link..

2009-03-31T12:49:00.000-04:00

AN INTERVIEW WITH SUZANNE FINNAMORE

As many of you already know, I have a love that borders on obsessive with the book Split. What many of you may not know, is why. I have loved Suzanne Finnamore's writing since I first read Otherwise Engaged and later The Zygote Chronicles. She is a masterful, dead-on writer, and mercifully FUNNY.

And therein lies the major reason I love Split, she takes on a subject so not funny - being unceremoniously dumped - and makes you pee your pants while you're wiping your eyes with the deep truths and profound insights she has. Deep and funny. What's better than that? Nothing. Not if you ask me.

So, I was able to convince Suzanne to do a blog interview with me in honor of the fact that SPLIT is now available to order (paperback) on Amazon!

Get a cuppa, sit back and enjoy a funny and deep interview with SUZANNE FINNAMORE! The first part is a previous interview she did, then my questions immediately follow:

Q: ARE YOU WORKING ON A BOOK?

A: always and never. i cling to freelance advertising copywriting because
it's so much easier than writing, and i get to work with a partner in crime: my art director sean mullens or ken woodard.

Q: DO YOU WRITE AT THE SAME TIME EACH DAY?

A: yes. morning. in front of the computer. coffee with cream, no food.
digesting food requires energy and makes one sleepy.

Q: DO YOU HAVE WRITING ROUTINES, OR DO YOU AVOID THEM?

A: no. routines are necessary. writing is a habit. a vice.

Q: DO YOU EDIT AS YOU GO?

A: never, ever. just spew it all onto the page. the more flawed and
outrageous, the better. there's always time later to organize and
edit. in fact, rewriting is the real work of writing. i may rewrite a
single page 60 times. but that comes later. after i've got, say, 400
pages of messy, senseless bile.

the only thing necessary is to spell check at morning's end, after
you've spewed. otherwise, you'll forget what you meant to say when you
wrote "trghdllty ghyry tkissk"

Q: DO YOU WORK FROM NOTES?

A: yes. i write down everything as it occurs to me, or as i witness it. i slap it into files
on my desktop. i generally have 3 or 4 books cooking at once. the
strongest one will emerge in time. DIALOGUE is the most important
thing, i believe, it’s the engine of a book. inner dialogue or
caught-from-the-air dialogue. eudora welty knew this, updike knew
this. dialogue, if you overhear it or say it , must be captured word perfect
immediately. dialogue is never rewritten; dialogue is only cut or filled
in to capture meaning or further the plot. if i’m in a meeting and the
dialogue is fantastically perverse, i'll write down everything everyone
is saying. it's priceless; the best opportunities are always agency- wide
meetings or "brainstorm" meetings. really, all organized meetings are breeding
grounds for perverse and often hilarious dialogue. i also use dialogue
from my own emails... write
to a close friend and in the process you discover what you know or
feel about an issue or event. some meat of my books comes from emails
or phone conversations or meetings, and then i write the book AROUND
the dialogue; i include body language and gestures, the smaller the better. you must use what you know.
writers: we're vampires and grave robbers, is what we are. "journalists of
the human condition" is a nicer way to put it.

Q: WHAT ABOUT OUTLINES?

A: never, ever, ever. that presumes i know what will happen or what is
best at the beginning of the process, which i don’t. what i know is
nothing, except the subject matter of the book. it's best to retain
that innocence as long as possible. it's easier for me to deliver a
manuscript than an outline. even the word Outline smacks of fascism.

Q: WHAT ABOUT INDEX CARDS, ALA ANNIE LAMOTT?

A: sure. keep some around. always carry a pen and some paper of some
kind. ALWAYS. in the car is especially important. while driving, the
body is occupied and creative thoughts are free to roam exactly where
they should. keep a pen at hand, write things down at the red lights, or pull
over. never attempt to talk into a small hand held tape recorder: again, fascism and
pretense lives there, in those little machines: you will never transcribe them and if
you do, you've lost the gist. it’s blather and a lot of pipe dreams spoken aloud. it's
gaseous babble of the pissant.

Q: WHERE DO YOUR IDEAS FROM WRITING COME FROM?

A: i only write about what i know, what happens, and
what is making us live or die in the era we're currently in. i'd like
to be another kind of writer, but I’m not. if you're like me..and i desperately hope you're not, you have to know what kind of
writer you are; are you a storyteller, or are you a chronicler? decide.

And my questions:

1) For whom did you write this book? (You already told me, and it's written in your dedication, but I want that in the interview, because I love your answer, and don't hold back!)

When my husband left me and I was caring for our baby, I felt totally alone and depressed and there was NOTHING TO READ about divorce that would lift me or make me laugh. (There were only clinical, dry self-help books and impossibly silly novels about divorce, where the heroine is swept away by her Portuguese gardener, etc. It wouldn’t do). I decided within 2 weeks I would write Split: A Memoir of Divorce for all the abandoned wives and mothers, because it was a necessary tool for them to survive. And I’ve gotten a lot of mail from women who say I accomplished this, that it saved them. It’s a tremendous honor.

2) The raw honesty and pain in the book, is so noteworthy because so many books lack that. Was writing the book cathartic, re-traumatizing, or a mix of both?

It was mildly cathartic but it was much more work than anything else. I wrote the entire book as a novel and then was asked to rewrite it as a memoir. It was a long process and yes – many days writing the memoir felt like going back into a dark cave and excavating the past and then coming out feeling traumatize, ridiculous and spent.

3) Sorry, but I got to have you weigh in on the "memoir debate." What's your philosophy of what to tell, what to leave out, and "subjective truth?"

My philosophy is that you own your experience, as a writer. I left a great deal out of my memoir so as not rock the boat more than I had to in order to tell my story with emotional honesty. As far as I’m concerned, all truth is subjective where writing and even remembering are concerned. The moment you try to pin an experience down on paper, it becomes fiction, because you’re only telling your side of things and some of that will necessarily be subjective. Also, once a memoir is accepted for publication, the publisher’s lawyer will usually legally vet the entire manuscript, to avoid issues of slander and liable.

4) And in that same vein, do you wish you could go back and re-classify your first two books, Otherwise Engaged and The Zygote Chronicles "memoir," and/or Split as fiction? Having written both ways, which do you recommend?

Oh I much prefer fiction. One has so much more leeway with fiction, and there is no second-guessing involved. Otherwise Engaged contains a lot of fiction, it is primarily fiction, and based on my emotional truth of that year I was engaged. But apparently in terms of the prose and the dialogue, I wrote it so well/close to the bone, that everyone assumes it’s completely autobiographical. It is not. Nor is The Zygote Chronicles a memoir. It’s a novel about a woman who happens to be having a baby close to forty, as was I. There are some autobiographical elements, certainly. But the only “true” part is the delivery scene at the end of the novel – that was pretty much exactly how it happened for the birth of my son.

5) How did you decide to structure the book around the Five Stages of Grief, and do you find yourself still moving back, in and around all five, or are you pretty much staunchly placed in Acceptance?

My friend and mentor, Fay Weldon, told me that divorce is certainly like a death. That’s when I decided to section off the book into 5 chapters corresponding to the Kubler Ross Five stages of loss and death. It also gave the book some structure. And the arc of the 5 chapters/stages happily suggests the fact that divorce is a multi-stage process that passes… that its attendant grief and trauma is finite and can be quantified.

I’ve been blessed with Acceptance for many years, now. I talk to my ex almost daily; we’re good friends. And as far as romance, I’ve moved on. Boy have I.

5) In your Anger section you say you'll never marry again - still feel that way?

Of course not. That why it’s in the Anger section. People think and decide all sorts of radical things when they’re angry. It passes.

6) What's the one piece of advice you give to women in the grieving process - regardless of what they're grieving?

Find a grief counselor. I found a great one; she’s in Split and so is her advice to me. So if you read Split, you’ll get all the advice I paid $100/hour for, and you can get it in your bathrobe.

7) I know you said earlier that you are always and never working on other books, like four. I get that. Can you just give us a hint what you think your next (published) book will likely be about?

The Little Black Book Of Signals:
A Neanderthal's Guide To Knowing She Wants You

It’s a guide for men who have no clue as to the signals women send out, Also, women can read it and see what their signals are telling men, A hand-sized book.
After that? A novel about finding love after 40—via the Internet and so on. The heroine will be a cross between a Cyclop and Pollyanna.

To Find Love, Abandon Standards

2009-03-15T12:20:00.000-04:00

The Tower: A Bad Sign That Appeared in My Gmail Inbox and Resonated

2009-03-10T16:28:00.001-04:00

"The Tower card suggests that your alter ego today is the Survivor, whose superpower for revolution lies in your epiphany for change, brought on with the aid of a serious reality check. Today you have reached a turning point. It may be all over but the crying -- but you have the strength to move on and create a better situation for yourself. One may say that you never saw it coming or learned the hard way, but with profound change comes new opportunity. One door closes -- another opens. So tear down the wall, and rebuild anew!" In other words: you will lose everything, every fucking dime and teaspoon, but find the pair of hoop earrings you lost in college. Your face is falling but not so fast that it can be detected by overnight time lapse photography...rejoice, for you are not worm food yet, but a rather splayed yet vertical person who rarely has an occasion for shoes. Debbils will very likely dance and sing as the door to Bitch Hell swings wide for you. Don't make any long-term plans, just dig the free fall. We'll be letting you know if it's going to end badly by sending the Death card to your email inbox within the next seven days, babe.

What Fay Weldon Knows About Men

2009-03-10T16:09:00.000-04:00

What I know about men
Fay Weldon, writer, 78, married for the third time, four sons
Interview by Eva Wiseman
The Observer / Sunday 8 March 2009

When I was five my parents divorced, so at home there was just my mother, my grandmother, my sister and me. I went to an all-girls school and I lived in a male-free world. All this femaleness moulded me. I assumed women ruled the world, and even when I got to college and discovered otherwise, men still seemed romantic rarities, rich, exciting and strange, a feeling I've never quite recovered from. Back then fathers didn't have much to do with their daughters anyway - it was women who brought the children up. Now the genders have blurred, but in a world of domestic slavery, before washing machines, vacuum cleaners, central heating, microwaves, and when potatoes took more than an hour to cook, home was where the women had to be. Men left the house to earn, work, go to patriotic wars, come back heroes. Boys and girls were kept apart. We went in one school entrance, they went in another. We might as well have been Muslims. Girls weren't sexualised the way they are today. We wore gym slips and were discouraged from looking in mirrors. So I had very little to do with boys. Mainly I just fell in love with girls. There was no eroticism there, just obsession and adoration. We were so innocent.
So of course when I got a grant to go to university, I fell in love with every man in sight. My ambition, quickly realised, was to lose my virginity as soon as possible. Many of the students were ex-servicemen who'd been to war: it seemed ill-mannered to thwart them. The idea that men had emotions the same as women never occurred to me. That a man could be hurt or upset by something I did, or feel rejected or humiliated? Surely not! I would fall hopelessly in love with impossible men, but if men fell in love with me, how I would despise them! A good therapist would have sorted me out, but there were no therapists. And no contraception, so sex was thrilling and dangerous.
I got pregnant when I was 22, when it really wasn't the thing to do. I thought I could manage, and didn't marry my baby's father because I didn't think we were suited. But things got more and more difficult until in order to keep a roof over the baby's head I married a man 25 years older than me, with a house and an income. Of course I didn't love him, but it was a fair trade - I needed the security and he needed a wife. It didn't last long.
Monogamy is nice work if you can get it, but who can, in these days of serial partners? Patterns of living change. There's no way one can say that way was more desirable than this. Falling in love is a kind of madness, which you don't even recognise until you wake from the delightful dream. Or he meets someone else. Heartbreak is the other side of love's exhilaration. The sense of rejection is overwhelming. But it's all part of the natural selection process. The only cure for one man is another. You keep on searching for love until something sticks. And I would suppose that I'm there now, stuck.
Today's young women do seem to want men to be made in their image, and spurn them if they're not, but girls are for chattering, men are for grunting. That's what they do. They're a different species. Women can only be happy for 10 minutes at a time, while men can stay happy for the duration of a whole football match. Some people, either gender, are just born better at being happy than others. Men like reassurance and love and flattery, but mostly what makes men happy is sex and dinner.
• In Bed With (Little, Brown, £7.99), a collection of erotic stories, includes a contribution from Fay Weldon.

I Am In My Happy Place

2009-03-06T12:56:00.001-05:00

The Sun card suggests that my alter ego is the Golden Child, whose superpower for celebration lies in expressing my love, joy and pride. I will be happy today, reclining in a jetlagged stupor on the deck, reflecting on the simple joys in life and my glory days, including the bottle of white Bordeaux Kate Christensen thrust upon me at Balthazar only hours ago in Manhatten. It's all good! You are in your happy place -- shining brightly for all to see. It may seem too good to be true, but don't worry and enjoy the experience while it lasts. Karma and a cruel God will doubtless lower the cosmic boom shortly.

Word.

The Barnes and Noble Discovery Award for 2008 Just Went Down, Yall

2009-03-04T17:25:00.000-05:00

Dateline: March 4, 2009.

I JUST gave a speech at the Barnes and Noble event when I awarded the grand prize
for fiction to Gin Phillips, author of The Well and the Mine. She’s
from Alabama. No more than 30 years old. SHOCKING. A NATURAL.

FIRST I said that I didn’t have a written speech and that didn’t
believe in them. Which is true; I just talk into the microphone and
see what truths float up.

I read the first sentence from the book, which says that Tess has just
seen a woman throw a baby down the well.

I said, Not only did the author put
Chekhov’s rifle over the mantle, she FIRED it in the first sentence of
the book. Who does that? I asked. NO ONE.

After a pause, I said that the jurors and I had had a fist fight over the
winner but in the end I prevailed because they had BOTH used the word LOVE
in ALL CAPS when they emailed me about her book. Which they had. And I
said, SO. That’s how it went down, butter bean.

Then I said that all her characters were real people and that the town
exists, the coalmines exist, and the baby is in that fucking well.
And I named every character from the book. Then I softly sang a chorus
from the Union song
from the Depression (it's in her book). Then I said that I was not a
good enough writer to judge Gin Phillips, and that my books weren’t fit
to be embossed on Bounty paper towels.

I quoted how Updike said that you had to write 300 pages to be taken
seriously and 500 to win an award. Gin Phillips is the exception that
proves the rule.

Then I said that I was really still VERY sad that john Updike had died
and that I missed him terribly.
I asked if anyone else missed john Updike, RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU DO
I said. A few people raised their hands. COME ON, GET EM UP THERE, I
said.

A few more people in suits raised their hands.

And I got straight back around to the author, Gin Phillips. I said she was
obviously a liar because this could not be anyone’s first book. I
asked about her secret life in Mumbai. WHERE ARE THE OTHER BOOKS? I
demanded to know. Who are you REALLY?

Then I read snatches from her book. I channeled Eudora Welty. I pulled ALL THE STOPS. Ms Phillips was openly weeping by the time I said that Harper Lee has met her match.

Afterward I talked to David Sheff, a lovely man who won for BEAUTIFUL
BOY. I was delighted to hear that his equally talented son, Nic Sheff, is doing great and working on a novel, now. David Sheff and I live in the same county. During his acceptance speech he quoted Obama on how to fight druigs through healthcare reform and not through law enforcement. Yay.

My agent Kim and i met for coffee
this morning and read her the 3 pages I have from my next book. Kim was SUPER
EXCITED. Which for Kim means she said, Yes, paperback, moleskin jacket,
deadline of March 31.

Even The Greats Have No Pleasure In It

2009-03-01T13:57:00.000-05:00

Colm Tóibín: No Pleasure in Writing.

With a touch of Irish gloom perhaps, but without self pity, Colm
Tóibín tells the Manchester Review that he writes at least 355 days a
year and says -- three different times -- that he takes no pleasure in
it.

Oh there’s no pleasure. Except that I don’t have to work for anyone
who bullies me. I write with a sort of grim determination to deal with
things that are hidden and difficult and this means, I think, that
pleasure is out of the question. I would associate this with
narcissism anyway and I would disapprove of it.

...

Which of your books did you most enjoy writing?

No enjoyment. No, none.

If there’s no pleasure in it, why not quit?

Because I have things that will not go away. Some of them are true,
some slowly become imagined. They do not disappear just because I
write them. If I don’t write them, I find that suddenly I am writing
them. They make their way into sentences and I feel a need to finish
what I began, to formalise it and then publicise it. I emphasise that
it heals nothing. Quitting would be like deciding never to listen to
music again. It would be mad, unnecessary. I also have sought fame as
a novelist – the phrase is V.S. Naipaul’s - and I presume that the
urge for that is essentially neurotic. I don’t think we have a right
to enjoy our neuroses; in fact I believe that we have a duty not to.
But we cannot walk away from ourselves. Who else is there to become?

In Hell, Every Day Is Your Birthday

2009-02-13T19:17:00.000-05:00

On Turning 40

Editor's Note: This essay was previously published in Redbook a few years ago.

Coco Chanel claimed that Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty. This says nothing of forty, an age which has yet to be defined, except by the hair dye companies, who quite understandably think forty is the best darned age of all. This leaves a large informational gap, one which I will attempt to fill in with the least amount of fractious and impossible-to-follow advice. (At forty, one does not need advice, one needs cash.)

I turned forty this year. I had no choice, having turned thirty-nine the previous year. There was no bravery involved, as some of the hardy congratulations I received implied. Nor was it particularly difficult; I just went to bed and the next day, Boom. It had happened without me. I felt shocked. Thirty-nine was an age I had instantly disliked but now felt myself longing for, like a lover I'd jilted, but now realized was perfect for me -- and he didn’t wait, has moved on to another town, to children and a wife somewhere else; I can’t get him back any more than I could (beat) turn back time. The very moment I turned forty I realized thirty-nine was infancy, heaven. This is a pattern I seem to be repeating since 1992. I vow to give it up, to start feeling good about the age I am because in five minutes? It is going to change again, and frankly I can’t sanction all the upset.

Advertising, although I am sure has the very best intentions, does not help. We can easily bring to mind those shiny ads with willowy actresses braying that life begins at forty, but for most of them plastic surgery began at twenty six and so they can afford to be glib. These are genetically mutant spokeswomen in white bikinis with access to constant photo retouching and trainers named Ghee and pharmaceutical grade cocaine; they are women who look nineteen at forty and who also are successful and toned and married to South American movie stars, so they cannot and must not be considered as part of the physical world the rest of us live in. After seeing a four page spread for a cosmetic ad in W, I mention this on the telephone to my best friend Dee, who agrees. And after a moment she adds that Michelle Pffiefer has had work done, and why don’t we just all admit it and move on.

Dee also turned forty this year, or as Bette Davis said so eloquently in All About Eve, “Four – oh.”. I confided that I was compiling notes on an article on forty, and Dee immediately said,

“You know what I miss?” Dee says. “Luster.”

At forty moisture is not an entitlement but a goal, we commiserate. Just moisture.

We have no love of knives, however. Dee and I have a pact that rather than become those woman who perpetually look like startled raccoon and who are constantly having facelifts and fillers and Botox and chemical peels, we would rather just hold hands and walk into the blades of a helicopter. We vow to age gracefully and not get cut, although we have no idea how this is actually done. We will have to wing it.

“I watched Kate Hudson on 20/20 last night.” Dee says. “And all I could do was stare at her skin. She still has luster.”

“She’s twenty-two,” I say.

“They all are,” Dee says briskly. “There are times when I look at a photo of myself.” she says, “and I think there might be luster and then I realize it’s the gloss of the photo.” She explains: “I didn’t got matte finish, I got glossy finish. And of course now I’ll always get glossy…. because I need the luster.”

We discuss the phenomenon of the Good Picture after 40. For example, there’s a recent picture of some friends and I, and it’s not that great of a picture of anyone else, in fact my son looks like a small Middle East terrorist, but it’s pretty good of me. So it’s up on the refrigerator. I look like I have luster. (Film overexposure is not a problem, it is your best friend, according to Dee. Blows your features into a white splay of smooth airbrushed luster.) We agree that instead of hair gloss we need body gloss. We’re mothers and busy people, we need to just dip our whole bodies in gloss. Like on The Jetsons; there should be a machine.

Being able to enjoy a photograph of myself at all is I something that has come to me relatively late in life. At 15, I desperately wished I were petite. As a large-boned 5’8” teenager with breasts that required a bra, I felt monstrous, bovine. I wanted to be diminutive, I wanted to shop in the Petite section of Macy’s and wear size five shoes and have boys be able to pick me up and twirl me like a baton. My mental illness progressed. At 23, I ached to be Jennifer Beal in Flashdance , bony and wan and sultry as an alley cat. To this end, I skulked around in ripped tops and leg warmers, hoping against hope that an alien body transfer would somehow take place, a metamorphosis of the veneer. At 40, I now accept the fact that I am a voluptuous brunette with olive skin, I even prefer it this way. I like the fact that I have long legs, broad shoulders, and that when the sun hits my hair it looks like coffee. I would not trade selves with anyone, now. Too many variables. I would however like to go back in time and bitch slap myself, saying You’re fine! Be happy, for God’s sake.

Things have changed, mostly for the better. I no longer feel bad that I cannot do a pirouette or draw hands. I am able to sing in front of people, something I could not do at thirty. Having a child has also mellowed me, set straight my priorities. I don’t feel the need to run five miles a day in the heat, wear eyeliner or even shoes. This may be the beginning of the regression that often happens to the elderly; if so I welcome it. I will end up around four years of age, which seems just about right. My son and I will be four together, blowing bubbles while Rome burns, while others curl free weights and compete for the title of Miss California.

One tiny and admittedly disquieting phenomena is that suddenly, nearly everyone I deal with is younger than I am -- especially people in New York. I was recently interviewed for an author profile by a woman who sounded just exactly like Tinky Winky. And it’s not just New York, it’s hideously widespread. Young people are everywhere, they’re parachuting straight in from high schools in the sky. Having skipped second grade, I had grown accustomed to being younger than everyone else; now the reverse is true. When did that happen? I don’t mind children, what I mind are children in the bodies of adults. (Here I would suggest that if it is at all convenient, you may want to marry someone a few years older, as I did: No matter what happens, you will always be younger than someone, and they will often be in the same room with you.)

Forty equals knowledge, and knowledge equals power. I know the intricate rhythms of my own body, now. I know that a week before my period I need to take a hot Epson Salt bath with a fudgesickle in hand, and not answer the phone. I know that during this week, my clothes will feel significantly tighter -- I don’t take this as a sign from God that I am worthless. I know it will pass, and that my clothes will loosen within a week. I know most things will pass, that almost everything is just a moment in time. I realize the good moments are precious, I no longer try to sustain them into infinity and wreck what spontaneity has visited me. I am able to watch the tide come in and out without feeling somehow I can control it, or that it is there for me exclusively. A feeling of community flavors my life; I talk to waiters and women in supermarket lines and strange dogs. I am no longer so firmly locked into my own suspense-filled mini drama. I extend myself to others in ways I would not have dreamt of at thirty, when protecting my privacy seemed crucial, when all other adults loomed, somehow frightening and better than I. No one is better than I, I know now. Or everyone is. I’m not sure which.

I recently had a few spider veins on my face zapped with a hot needle of some sort. “Does this hurt?” the dermatologist asked pleasantly. “It doesn’t feel good,” I said. “But after childbirth…it’s a caress.” He laughed the laugh of someone who never has to worry about either. It was a happy, vague laugh. (Men needn't fret about spider veins or turning forty, they hardly need turn a hair at eighty - even then they can father children, they just can’t necessarily lift or recognize them. No one said life was fair.) Examining the multitudinous brochures in my dermatologist’s office, I see that there is also a new cosmetic procedure that severs the nerves around the eyes so that when you smile, you don’t smile all the way, thereby minimizing crow’s feet. I’m sorry but this feels like kicking God in the balls. I just can’t bring myself to do it, no matter how bad of a day I might currently be having, no matter how much luster I am losing at the speed of sound.

In the end, surely the salient benefit to turning forty is that one no longer has to tolerate bullshit in any form. This kicks in immediately. On the morning of my fortieth birthday a woman I had hitherto considered a friend telephoned and immediately said, “You’re over the hill, now!” I laughed gaily and hung up on her; the receiver made satisfying click as it hit the cradle. After forty, one must cleanse one’s life of anyone who suggests that moving past extreme youth is an error, a character flaw. One must deep-cleanse, and I do not mean pores.

Once more I reference Coco Chanel: “Elegance is refusal.”

.

Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses

2009-02-13T16:44:00.000-05:00

Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses
by Mark Twain

"The Pathfinder" and "The Deerslayer" stand at the head of Cooper's
novels as artistic creations. There are others of his works which
contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these, and scenes even
more thrilling. Not one can be compared with either of them as a
finished whole. The defects in both of these tales are comparatively
slight. They were pure works of art.
--Professor Lounsbury

The five tales reveal an extraordinary fullness of invention. ... One
of the very greatest characters in fiction, Natty Bumppo... The craft
of the woodsman, the tricks of the trapper, all the delicate art of
the forest were familiar to Cooper from his youth up.
--Professor Matthews

Cooper is the greatest artist in the domain of romantic fiction in America.
--Wilkie Collins

It seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of English
Literature at Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia,
and Wilkie Collins to deliver opinions on Cooper's literature without
having read some of it. It would have been much more decorous to keep
silent and let persons talk who have read Cooper.

Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in "Deerslayer," and in
the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114
offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the
record.

There are nineteen rules governing literary art in domain of romantic
fiction -- some say twenty-two. In "Deerslayer," Cooper violated
eighteen of them. These eighteen require:

1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But
the "Deerslayer" tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in air.

2. They require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts
of the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the "Deerslayer"
tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the
episodes have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing
for them to develop.

3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except
in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to
tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been
overlooked in the "Deerslayer" tale.

4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive,
shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail
also has been overlooked in the "Deerslayer" tale.

5. The require that when the personages of a tale deal in
conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such
as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances,
and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a
show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at
hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and
stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. But this
requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the "Deerslayer"
tale to the end of it.

6. They require that when the author describes the character of a
personage in the tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage
shall justify said description. But this law gets little or no
attention in the "Deerslayer" tale, as Natty Bumppo's case will amply
prove.

7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated,
gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven- dollar Friendship's
Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a
negro minstrel in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and
danced upon in the "Deerslayer" tale.

8. They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the
reader as "the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest,"
by either the author or the people in the tale. But this rule is
persistently violated in the "Deerslayer" tale.

9. They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves
to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a
miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look
possible and reasonable. But these rules are not respected in the
"Deerslayer" tale.

10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep
interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he
shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the
bad ones. But the reader of the "Deerslayer" tale dislikes the good
people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all
get drowned together.

11. They require that the characters in a tale shall be so clearly
defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a
given emergency. But in the "Deerslayer" tale, this rule is vacated.

In addition to these large rules, there are some little ones. These
require that the author shall:

12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.

13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.

14. Eschew surplusage.

15. Not omit necessary details.

16. Avoid slovenliness of form.

17. Use good grammar.

18. Employ a simple and straightforward style.

Even these seven are coldly and persistently violated in the "Deerslayer" tale.

Cooper's gift in the way of invention was not a rich endowment; but
such as it was he liked to work it, he was pleased with the effects,
and indeed he did some quite sweet things with it. In his little box
of stage-properties he kept six or eight cunning devices, tricks,
artifices for his savages and woodsmen to deceive and circumvent each
other with, and he was never so happy as when he was working these
innocent things and seeing them go. A favorite one was to make a
moccasined person tread in the tracks of a moccasined enemy, and thus
hide his own trail. Cooper wore out barrels and barrels of moccasins
in working that trick. Another stage-property that he pulled out of
his box pretty frequently was the broken twig. He prized his broken
twig above all the rest of his effects, and worked it the hardest. It
is a restful chapter in any book of his when somebody doesn't step on
a dry twig and alarm all the reds and whites for two hundred yards
around. Every time a Cooper person is in peril, and absolute silence
is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure to step on a dry twig.
There may be a hundred other handier things to step on, but that
wouldn't satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and find a
dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one. In fact, the
Leatherstocking Series ought to have been called the Broken Twig
Series.

I am sorry that there is not room to put in a few dozen instances of
the delicate art of the forest, as practiced by Natty Bumppo and some
of the other Cooperian experts. Perhaps we may venture two or three
samples. Cooper was a sailor -- a naval officer; yet he gravely tells
us how a vessel, driving toward a lee shore in a gale, is steered for
a particular spot by her skipper because he knows of an undertow there
which will hold her back against the gale and save her. For just pure
woodcraft, or sailorcraft, or whatever it is, isn't that neat? For
several years, Cooper was daily in the society of artillery, and he
ought to have noticed that when a cannon-ball strikes the ground it
either buries itself or skips a hundred feet or so; skips again a
hundred feet or so -- and so on, till finally it gets tired and rolls.
Now in one place he loses some "females" -- as he always calls women
-- in the edge of a wood near a plain at night in a fog, on purpose to
give Bumppo a chance to show off the delicate art of the forest before
the reader. These mislaid people are hunting for a fort. They hear a
cannon-blast, and a cannon-ball presently comes rolling into the wood
and stops at their feet. To the females this suggests nothing. The
case is very different with the admirable Bumppo. I wish I may never
know peace again if he doesn't strike out promptly and follow the
track of that cannon-ball across the plain in the dense fog and find
the fort. Isn't it a daisy? If Cooper had any real knowledge of
Nature's ways of doing things, he had a most delicate art in
concealing the fact. For instance: one of his acute Indian experts,
Chingachgook (pronounced Chicago, I think), has lost the trail of a
person he is tracking through the forest. Apparently that trail is
hopelessly lost. Neither you nor I could ever have guessed the way to
find it. It was very different with Chicago. Chicago was not stumped
for long. He turned a running stream out of its course, and there, in
the slush in its old bed, were that person's moccasin tracks. The
current did not wash them away, as it would have done in all other
like cases -- no, even the eternal laws of Nature have to vacate when
Cooper wants to put up a delicate job of woodcraft on the reader.

We must be a little wary when Brander Matthews tells us that Cooper's
books "reveal an extraordinary fullness of invention." As a rule, I am
quite willing to accept Brander Matthews's literary judgments and
applaud his lucid and graceful phrasing of them; but that particular
statement needs to be taken with a few tons of salt. Bless you heart,
Cooper hadn't any more invention than a horse; and don't mean a
high-class horse, either; I mean a clothes- horse. It would be very
difficult to find a really clever "situation" in Cooper's books, and
still more difficult to find one of any kind which has failed to
render absurd by his handling of it. Look at the episodes of "the
caves"; and at the celebrated scuffle between Maqua and those others
on the table-land a few days later; and at Hurry Harry's queer
water-transit from the castle to the ark; and at Deerslayer's
half-hour with his first corpse; and at the quarrel between Hurry
Harry and Deerslayer later; and at -- but choose for yourself; you
can't go amiss.

If Cooper had been an observer his inventive faculty would have worked
better; not more interestingly, but more rationally, more plausibly.
Cooper's proudest creations in the way of "situations" suffer
noticeably from the absence of the observer's protecting gift.
Cooper's eye was splendidly inaccurate. Cooper seldom saw anything
correctly. He saw nearly all things as through a glass eye, darkly. Of
course a man who cannot see the commonest little every-day matters
accurately is working at a disadvantage when he is constructing a
"situation." In the "Deerslayer" tale Cooper has a stream which is
fifty feet wide where it flows out of a lake; it presently narrows to
twenty as it meanders along for no given reason, and yet when a stream
acts like that it ought to be required to explain itself. Fourteen
pages later the width of the brook's outlet from the lake has suddenly
shrunk thirty feet, and become "the narrowest part of the stream."
This shrinkage is not accounted for. The stream has bends in it, a
sure indication that it has alluvial banks and cuts them; yet these
bends are only thirty and fifty feet long. If Cooper had been a nice
and punctilious observer he would have noticed that the bends were
often nine hundred feet long than short of it.

Cooper made the exit of that stream fifty feet wide, in the first
place, for no particular reason; in the second place, he narrowed it
to less than twenty to accommodate some Indians. He bends a "sapling"
to form an arch over this narrow passage, and conceals six Indians in
its foliage. They are "laying" for a settler's scow or ark which is
coming up the stream on its way to the lake; it is being hauled
against the stiff current by rope whose stationary end is anchored in
the lake; its rate of progress cannot be more than a mile an hour.
Cooper describes the ark, but pretty obscurely. In the matter of
dimensions "it was little more than a modern canal boat." Let us
guess, then, that it was about one hundred and forty feet long. It was
of "greater breadth than common." Let us guess then that it was about
sixteen feet wide. This leviathon had been prowling down bends which
were but a third as long as itself, and scraping between banks where
it only had two feet of space to spare on each side. We cannot too
much admire this miracle. A low- roofed dwelling occupies "two-thirds
of the ark's length" -- a dwelling ninety feet long and sixteen feet
wide, let us say -- a kind of vestibule train. The dwelling has two
rooms -- each forty- five feet long and sixteen feet wide, let us
guess. One of them is the bedroom of the Hutter girls, Judith and
Hetty; the other is the parlor in the daytime, at night it is papa's
bedchamber. The ark is arriving at the stream's exit now, whose width
has been reduced to less than twenty feet to accommodate the Indians
-- say to eighteen. There is a foot to spare on each side of the boat.
Did the Indians notice that there was going to be a tight squeeze
there? Did they notice that they could make money by climbing down out
of that arched sapling and just stepping aboard when the ark scraped
by? No, other Indians would have noticed these things, but Cooper's
Indian's never notice anything. Cooper thinks they are marvelous
creatures for noticing, but he was almost always in error about his
Indians. There was seldom a sane one among them.

The ark is one hundred and forty-feet long; the dwelling is ninety
feet long. The idea of the Indians is to drop softly and secretly from
the arched sapling to the dwelling as the ark creeps along under it at
the rate of a mile an hour,and butcher the family. It will take the
ark a minute and a half to pass under. It will take the ninety-foot
dwelling a minute to pass under. Now, then, what did the six Indians
do? It would take you thirty years to guess, and even then you would
have to give it up, I believe. Therefore, I will tell you what the
Indians did. Their chief, a person of quite extraordinary intellect
for a Cooper Indian, warily watched the canal-boat as it squeezed
along under him and when he had got his calculations fined down to
exactly the right shade, as he judge, he let go and dropped. And
missed the boat! That is actually what he did. He missed the house,
and landed int he stern of the scow. It was not much of a fall, yet it
knocked him silly. He lay there unconscious. If the house had been
ninety-seven feet long he would have made the trip. The error lay in
the construction of the house. Cooper was no architect.

There still remained in the roost five Indians. The boat has passed
under and is now out of their reach. Let me explain what the five did
-- you would not be able to reason it out for yourself. No. 1 jumped
for the boat, but fell in the water astern of it. Then No. 2 jumped
for the boat, but fell in the water still further astern of it. Then
No. 3 jumped for the boat, and fell a good way astern of it. Then No.
4 jumped for the boat, and fell in the water away astern. Then even
No. 5 made a jump for the boat -- for he was Cooper Indian. In that
matter of intellect, the difference between a Cooper Indian and the
Indian that stands in front of the cigar-shop is not spacious. The
scow episode is really a sublime burst of invention; but it does not
thrill, because the inaccuracy of details throw a sort of air of
fictitiousness and general improbability over it. This comes of
Cooper's inadequacy as observer.

The reader will find some examples of Cooper's high talent for
inaccurate observation in the account of the shooting-match in "The
Pathfinder."

A common wrought nail was driven lightly into the target, its head
having been first touched with paint.

The color of the paint is not stated -- an important omission, but
Cooper deals freely in important omissions. No, after all, it was not
an important omission; for this nail-head is a hundred yards from the
marksmen, and could not be seen at that distance, no matter what its
color might be. How far can the best eyes see a common housefly? A
hundred yards? It is quite impossible. Very well; eyes that cannot see
a house-fly that is a hundred yards away cannot see an ordinary
nail-head at that distance, for the size of the two objects is the
same. It takes a keen eye to see a fly or a nail-head at fifty yards
-- one hundred and fifty-feet. Can the reader do it?

The nail was lightly driven, its head painted, and game called. Then
the Cooper miracles began. The bullet of the first marksman chipped an
edge of the nail-head; the next man's bullet drove the nail a little
way into the target -- and removed all the paint. Haven't the miracles
gone far enough now? Not to suit Cooper; for the purpose of this whole
scheme is to show off his prodigy,
Deerslayer-Hawkeye-Long-Rifle-Leatherstocking-Pathfinder-Bumppo before
the ladies.

"Be all ready to clench it, boys!" cried out Pathfinder, stepping into
his friend's tracks the instant they were vacant. "Never mind a new
nail; I can see that, though the paint is gone, and what I can see I
can hit at a hundred yards, though it were only a mosquito's eye. Be
ready to clench!"
The rifle cracked, the bullet sped its way, and the head of the nail
was buried in the wood, covered by the piece of flattened lead.

There, you see, is a man who could hunt flies with a rifle, and
command a ducal salary in a Wild West show to-day if we had him back
with us.

The recorded feat is certainly surprising just as it stands; but it is
not surprising enough for Cooper. Cooper adds a touch. He has made
Pathfinder do this miracle with another man's rife; and not only that,
but Pathfinder did not have even the advantage of loading it himself.
He had everything against him, and yet he made that impossible shot;
and not only made it, but did it with absolute confidence, saying, "Be
ready to clench." Now a person like that would have undertaken that
same feat with a brickbat, and with Cooper to help he would have
achieved it, too.

Pathfinder showed off handsomely that day before the ladies. His very
first feat a thing which no Wild West show can touch. He was standing
with the group of marksmen, observing -- a hundred yards from the
target, mind; one Jasper rasper raised his rifle and drove the center
of the bull's-eye. Then the Quartermaster fired. The target exhibited
no result this time. There was a laugh. "It's a dead miss," said Major
Lundie. Pathfinder waited an impressive moment or two; then said, in
that calm, indifferent, know-it-all way of his, "No, Major, he has
covered Jasper's bullet, as will be seen if any one will take the
trouble to examine the target."

Wasn't it remarkable! How could he see that little pellet fly through
the air and enter that distant bullet-hole? Yet that is what he did;
for nothing is impossible to a Cooper person. Did any of those people
have any deep-seated doubts about this thing? No; for that would imply
sanity, and these were all Cooper people.

The respect for Pathfinder's skill and for his quickness and accuracy
of sight [the italics are mine] was so profound and general, that the
instant he made this declaration the spectators began to distrust
their own opinions, and a dozen rushed to the target in order to
ascertain the fact. There, sure enough, it was found that the
Quartermaster's bullet had gone through the hole made by Jasper's, and
that, too, so accurately as to require a minute examination to be
certain of the circumstance, which, however, was soon clearly
established by discovering one bullet over the other in the stump
against which the target was placed.

They made a "minute" examination; but never mind, how could they know
that there were two bullets in that hole without digging the latest
one out? for neither probe nor eyesight could prove the presence of
any more than one bullet. Did they dig? No; as we shall see. It is the
Pathfinder's turn now; he steps out before the ladies, takes aim, and
fires.

But, alas! here is a disappointment; in incredible, an unimaginable
disappointment -- for the target's aspect is unchanged; there is
nothing there but that same old bullet hole!

"If one dared to hint at such a thing," cried Major Duncan, "I should
say that the Pathfinder has also missed the target."

As nobody had missed it yet, the "also" was not necessary; but never
mind about that, for the Pathfinder is going to speak.

"No, no, Major," said he, confidently, "that would be a risky
declaration. I didn't load the piece, and can't say what was in it;
but if it was lead, you will find the bullet driving down those of the
Quartermaster and Jasper, else is not my name Pathfinder."
A shout from the target announced the truth of this assertion.

Is the miracle sufficient as it stands? Not for Cooper. The Pathfinder
speaks again, as he "now slowly advances toward the stage occupied by
the females":

"That's not all, boys, that's not all; if you find the target touched
at all, I'll own to a miss. The Quartermaster cut the wood, but you'll
find no wood cut by that last messenger."

The miracle is at last complete. He knew -- doubtless saw -- at the
distance of a hundred yards -- this his bullet had passed into the
hole without fraying the edges. There were now three bullets in that
one hole -- three bullets embedded processionally in the body of the
stump back of the target. Everybody knew this -- somehow or other --
and yet nobody had dug any of them out to make sure. Cooper is not a
close observer, but he is interesting. He is certainly always that, no
matter what happens. And he is more interesting when he is not
noticing what he is about than when he is. This is a considerable
merit.

The conversations in the Cooper books have a curious sound in our
modern ears. To believe that such talk really ever came out of
people's mouths would be to believe that there was a time when time
was of no value to a person who thought he had something to say; when
it was the custom to spread a two-minute remark out to ten; when a
man's mouth was a rolling-mill, and busied itself all day long in
turning four-foot pigs of thought into thirty-foot bars of
conversational railroad iron by attenuation; when subjects were seldom
faithfully stuck to, but the talk wandered all around and arrived
nowhere; when conversations consisted mainly of irrelevancies, with
here and there a relevancy, a relevancy with an embarrassed look, as
not being able to explain how it got there.

Cooper was certainly not a master in the construction of dialogue.
Inaccurate observation defeated him here as it defeated him in so many
other enterprises of his life. He even failed to notice that the man
who talks corrupt English six days in the week must and will talk it
on seventh, and can't help himself. In the "Deerslayer" story, he lets
Deerslayer talk the showiest kind of book-talk sometimes, and at other
times the basest of base dialects. For instance, when some one asks
him if he has a sweetheart, and if so, where she abides, this is his
majestic answer:

"She's in the forest -- hanging from the boughs of the trees, in a
soft rain -- in the dew on the open grass -- the clouds that float
about in the blue heavens -- the birds that sing in the woods -- the
sweet springs where I slake my thirst -- and in all the other glorious
gifts that come from God's Providence!"

And he preceded that, a little before, with this:

"It consarns me as all things that touches a friend consarns a friend."

And this is another of his remarks:

"If I was Injin born, now, I might tell of this, or carry in the scalp
and boast of the expl'ite afore the whole tribe; of if my inimy had
only been a bear" -- [and so on]

We cannot imagine such a thing as a veteran Scotch Commander-in- Chief
comporting himself like a windy melodramatic actor, but Cooper could.
On one occasion, Alice and Cora were being chased by the French
through a fog in the neighborhood of their father's fort:

"Point de quartier aux coquins!" cried an eager pursuer, who seemed to
direct the operations of the enemy.
"Stand firm and be ready, my gallant 60ths!" suddenly exclaimed a
voice above them; "wait to see the enemy, fire low, and sweep the
glacis."

"Father! father" exclaimed a piercing cry from out the mist. "It is I!
Alice! thy own Elsie! spare, O! save your daughters!"
"Hold!" shouted the former speaker, in the awful tones of parental
agony, the sound reaching even to the woods, and rolling back in a
solemn echo. "'Tis she! God has restored me my children! Throw open
the sally- port; to the field, 60ths, to the field! pull not a
trigger, lest ye kill my lambs! Drive off these dogs of France with
your steel!"

Cooper's word-sense was singularly dull. When a person has a poor ear
for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He
keeps near the tune, but is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear
for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you
perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he
does not say it. This is Cooper. He was not a word-musician. His ear
was satisfied with the approximate words. I will furnish some
circumstantial evidence in support of this charge. My instances are
gathered from half a dozen pages of the tale called "Deerslayer." He
uses "Verbal" for "oral"; "precision" for "facility"; "phenomena" for
"marvels"; "necessary" for "predetermined"; "unsophisticated" for
"primitive"; "preparation" for "expectancy"; "rebuked" for "subdued";
"dependent on" for "resulting from"; "fact" for "condition"; "fact"
for "conjecture"; "precaution" for "caution"; "explain" for
"determine"; "mortified" for "disappointed"; "meretricious" for
"factitious"; "materially" for "considerably"; "decreasing" for
"deepening"; "increasing" for "disappearing"; "embedded" for
"inclosed"; "treacherous" for "hostile"; "stood" for "stooped";
"softened" for "replaced"; "rejoined" for "remarked"; "situation" for
"condition"; "different" for "differing"; "insensible" for
"unsentient"; "brevity" for "celerity"; "distrusted" for "suspicious";
"mental imbecility" for "imbecility"; "eyes" for "sight";
"counteracting" for "opposing"; "funeral obsequies" for "obsequies."

There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Cooper
could write English, but they are all dead now -- all dead but
Lounsbury. I don't remember that Lounsbury makes the claim in so many
words, still he makes it, for he says that "Deerslayer" is a "pure
work of art." Pure, in that connection, means faultless -- faultless
in all details -- and language is a detail. If Mr. Lounsbury had only
compared Cooper's English with the English he writes himself -- but it
is plain that he didn't; and so it is likely that he imagines until
this day that Cooper's is as clean and compact as his own. Now I feel
sure, deep down in my heart, that Cooper wrote about the poorest
English that exists in our language, and that the English of
"Deerslayer" is the very worst that even Cooper ever wrote.

I may be mistaken, but it does seem to me that "Deerslayer" is not a
work of art in any sense; it does seem to me that it is destitute of
every detail that goes to the making of a work of art; in truth, it
seems to me that "Deerslayer" is just simply a literary delirium
tremens.

A work of art? It has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence,
or result; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of
reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and
words they prove that they are not the sort of people the author
claims that they are; its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its
conversations are -- oh! indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its
English a crime against the language.

Counting these out, what is left is Art. I think we must all admit that.

John Updike, Our Foremost Man of Letters, Has Passed

2009-01-27T18:36:00.000-05:00

“I would write ads for deodorants or labels for catsup bottles, if I had to,” he told The Paris Review in 1967. “The miracle of turning inklings into thoughts and thoughts into words and words into metal and print and ink never palls for me.”

In Homage to (William) Burroughs: 50 Ways To Kill A Squirrel

2009-01-22T21:51:00.001-05:00

‘No one owns life. But anyone with a frying pan owns death.’
- William Burroughs

William Burroughs killed his beloved wife with an arrow. It was an accident. He lived to shoot arrows and junk again, as well as to write many fine books. I love William Burroughs. I would never kill anyone I was married to, had sex with, or knew in even a passing sense. I would also never harm a stranger. That said, I think I’d be lying if I said I never fantasized about shunning someone who had hurt my feelings or the feelings of others I love. Most people just have quick, fleeting thoughts, like 'I hate that person, I wish he/she would just go away.’

Being a writer- and a writer who spends an inordinate amount of time not writing anything that could even loosely be referred to as ‘literary product’ - I have had the opportunity to embellish my mental fantasies on ways in which murder might be accomplished. If you’ve ever killed a character in a fictional story, you know it is a most exhilarating feeling; certainly the creative process is a fine way of venting any unhealthy or aggressive feelings. I love men, but I do think that throughout history, some of them have frankly wanted killing - women, too, but not as many. Far be it from me to actually harm a hair on the head of anyone. In fact, I have never 'made plans' or written a homicidal checklist of any kind whatsoever.

Yet someone - a crazed individual who is very ill and needs immediate apprehension - has left a many-paged list in my mailbox, and the list was scrawled in a loose, feminine hand. I’m almost certain it was a woman who wrote it. It was balled up, and the final pages were smeared beyond recognition with something that may have been blood, motor oil, or a chemical compound.

As I transcribed it for local police, I found it just horrifying; I'm sure you will, too. In addition to notifying the local authorities, I’m posting it here; if any of these terrible things happen to anyone you know, I would urge you to contact the Twin Cities Police Department in Marin County, California.

50 Ways to Kill a Squirrel

Apparent Suicide

1.Invite him out for a cozy picnic on a sultry night; make sure he drives. During the al fresco meal of home made fried chicken and potato salad, tell him you can’t wait to get him to his house because you are going to ‘blow his mind.’ As he pulls his car into his garage, unbuckle your seatbelt and cuddle close to him, kiss him. Unbutton your blouse and make out with him for a few minutes in his car. Pull on a bottle of tequila as you pass four Nembutals into his mouth. Administer blowjob. When he dozes off, open the car door windows, turn his ignition on, close the garage doors and exit his property. (Leave a typed note in on his windshield that says, “Please forgive me. I can't bear one more day of wingtip shoes, suits and tues, when all i ever wanted was to wear a simple black dress, spectator pumps and a strand of pearls.”

2 Bring him breakfast in bed, having crushed 20 tabs of Ecstasy into his morning coffee. Wait until he comes onto it, and say you’re going to the store for lubricant. Nail him into his bedroom, disconnect the phone. put on a loud, continuous loop of Oklahoma! The Soundtrack on his sound system. hit Shuffle.

Household Tips / Deaths From Heloise!
Recipes for Success

Recipe no 1
For the bachelor with taste

Decaf Coffee
Ten Xanax (1 mg each)
Duct Tape
Lotion
Surprise Handjob

Crush Xanax into his coffee. Slather your hands with lotion, sit in his lap and administer handjob. As he dozes, close and seal all the windows and doors with duct tape. As you‘re leaving his stylish flat, turn on the gas on his Viking stove all the way up .

Recipe no 2
For the simple, everyday man in your life; a gentle Rebuff

1 can red spray paint (permanent)
Dark of night

Go to his studio apartment where he is hidey-holed up. And on the exterior of his front door, paint: Tim G. is gay! He gave me AIDS!!!!

Recipe no. 3
All Occasion: Fun and Run

Ammonia
Bleach

Mix together and put in a bucket perched right above his front door. Ring the bell and run.

Manners of Harm Which Make Even Seasoned Policemen Wonder

1 Fill a condom tip with exploding powder. Reseal carefully and place in nightstand drawer. Break up with him.

2 Using a long, thin surgical tube, inject finely crushed dynamite into his fine Havana cigars.

3 Coat his cigarettes with kerosine (odor free variety)

4 One week before the first of the month, place way too much acid on the sticky part of the envelope of his yet-unpaid mortgage bill. Send one live iguana to his home for the next seven days.

Deaths Of Psyche

1 Enlist him into the war on Iraq. (Get office stationary from local recruiter)

2 Call him under the guise of the IRS and tell him when he can expect a visit to his office. Ask him to gather all his receipts and tax records from the last eight years. Follow up with letter.

3.During sex, in a halting voice, describe a 'really crazy---like, pornstar crazy!' fantasy you know he’ll love. Give him a ‘Safe word’ to say if he gets uncomfortable or scared, i.e., ‘doorknob’. Dress in g-string. Attach regulation police handcuffs to his wrists and lock them securely over his head. Put a Mexican wrestlers mask on his face and tie it tightly. Dance and writhe and sing La Bamba. Tie his ankles to the bedposts with leather straps Tape his mouth shut and leave the room. Re-enter room. Begin to tape his nostrils shut, run out of tape. Send someone for more duct tape. After he’s exhausted and has stopped trying to say “doorknob! Doorknob!” call his immediate family and tell them that Tim needs them to come over, right away.

Cars And Motorcycles: The Handiest Weapons Around

1 One night when you’re leaving his place, ask him to stand behind you, to see if your brake lights work. Put it in reverse and gun it.

2 Cut the brake lines in his motorcycle (most have one). Slice his motorcycle helmet chinstrap and tape it together loosely with Scotch Brand Magic Invisible Tape.

3 Tell him you car’s been leaking oil and ask if he can look underneath. When he does, kick the jack out.

Most Accidents Happen In The Bathroom

1 The Phil Bronstein: At dawn, place one komodo dragon in the small half bath of his home. Leave super fast.

2 Dip his razor in arsenic/hemlock (research)

3 Place Drano in his showerhead. Grease the tiles under the shower with a thick layer of Vaseline or Crisco...be careful not to....

Man Collecting: A Worthwhile and Sustainable Venture

2009-01-22T21:47:00.001-05:00

an unadulterated version of the essay running in More Magazine 08

I’d like to take a minute to discuss - in a sensible yet informed manner - love and lust and friendship and Internet dating. Someone has to.
The fact is we all need love or companionship or a reasonable facsimile. And everyone in America is looking online. It’s no longer something to be ashamed of, although I personally wouldn’t advertise the fact that you’re advertising. (Except to your closest friends, many of who will also be trawling for coffee dates, cocktails, foreign films and - oh yea - their soul mate.)

These days you and your friends can exchange digital photos of 18 to 121-year-old, Athletic and Toned / About Average / Slender/A Few Extra Pounds/Big and Beautiful men of all persuasions. You can choose among Single, Never Married, Currently Separated or Divorced guys who are assiduously sailing, mountain biking, surfing, skiing and staring soulfully into the camera. There are hundreds and hundreds, in your 25-mile radius alone. Worldwide, there are millions. It’s fun and harmless, as long as no one gets hurt.

Of course, people do get hurt, they get their hearts hammered all to shit every day of the year, 24/7. People have their egos stroked, ignored, bounced, caressed, and passed through a thresher. Others go on to marry. Each other.

I, for one, feel I'll not get (seriously) hurt (again), although as you all know I've been dramatically wrong before. I’ve been through a craven divorce, in fact I wrote the book on it...literally. So, that road’s closed. I now know about taking my time, boundaries, realism and how to protect my heart. I now suspect I’m precious and rare and worth loving in a sort of Certified Pre-Owned Vehicle way - of course I do. I live in California, for God’s sake. I can spot a pagan, womanizing, emotionally withholding squirrel in a hot second. (I've already lived with, met, or married most of them; I'm almost completely joking.)

Yet it pleased me when I registered on Match.com and right away, within minutes, all these unique, one-of-a-kind, very collectible men started showing up. Boom boom boom boom BOOM. Eric, Stephen, John, Tony, Kevin. A plethora of Toms, Tommys and Thomases. There were lawyers, contractors, artists, and computer guys. There were policemen and professors and firemen and accountants--oh, my. This was Happy Hour at the buffet of groomed humanity. Suddenly everything from getting a parking ticket written off to having that hideous mauve carpeting ripped up and replaced with hardwood was within reach of my fingertips, so long as I wore a dress, skipped desert, hiked around and did my hair every six weeks...how banal, how glorious. It turns out that men of a certain age who aren’t husbands actually get tired of lying fallow. They want to be needed and adored and, well, used.

In my kid in the candy store phase, I went out with several eligible bachelors (are there two more beautiful words?) and often ran to the phone like a teenager. Everyone I met was somewhat tall and fantastic and interesting enough to date and maybe even make out with. (“Everyone loves everyone for three dates,” my ex husband commented dryly from the sidelines. He always did have a way of nailing a situation.) It was justifiable and even great, that crazed beginning: I hadn’t dated for five years as I raised our son. I was making up for lost time, time I gladly lost, but time nonetheless. I had to reboot my system, and so I did. Booted the system straight up.

In the beginning, I decided not to get too attached to anyone too quickly, nor to send any good men away. Naturally, I did both at once, immediately and with extreme prejudice. I knew what I should do, but I did what I felt like doing. (Something even great men have practiced for centuries.) It was a riotous coda. Yet in time, I settled into a groove. There were two or three men I liked a lot and who liked me. Marriage was out of the question for these particular guys and me, at this stage in our lives (ever) but that was no reason to discard them.

Ninety-nine percent of these men did not meet my son. A great deal can be done in private and without anyone knowing. I don’t have to tell everyone everything, and I don’t have to marry everyone I like the smell of and who makes me laugh really hard. But there’s no reason not to keep them around. You like them, they like you. Nobody asks a lot of questions unless they want to know the truth, and you’d be surprised how few people – myself included – really want to know the truth about anyone (unless it blossoms into a genuine long term relationship. In which case all of this is moot...in fact? None of it ever happened.) I just want to be treated well, respected, kissed and hugged a lot, and taken care of in the ways that are meaningful to me. I don’t expect men to save me or be perfect.

Naturally, I don’t have to have sex with any of these guys. Match does not require this; a woman can simply date and never, ever take a lover. I don’t know why she would, but it is possible and people do. Plus, as a supposedly mature adult, one is not handing out experimental sex vouchers, charity sex or guilt sex. We’ve gotten that out of our collective system; we’re done with all altruism. We're having sex as we see fit, and probably just with one partner. Probably. Mostly. Unless of course, there is overlap, which at times – as men have known forever – can occur. It never lasts long. Like a foot cramp, it swiftly passes. Like a rainbow.

Man collecting sounds mercenary and hedonistic, but it’s not. It’s sensible and practical, like not throwing away vintage clothing or rare prints or giving away one dog because you got another one. There is rarely any real reason to let anyone go. You’re not lying; they all know there are others. Think of Aurora Greenway in Terms of Endearment, only a little more entitled and less frou frou; Aurora would have gathered them all at the dinner table for four sumptuous courses of soup, duck l’orange, salade with cheese, and afterward there would be cake and coffee and brandy. Aurora understood the need to have several men on call, some of them exes and some of them presents and some of them futures. And now I too have the luxury of time, something I did not have while my biological time clock boomed in my head like a massive swinging bell with a hunchback attached.

Basically, I feel - and I still believe - that if you do it right, one month of Internet dating – 30 days - should yield a lifetime supply of men. But – and this is completely essential – when I say one month, I mean 30 days of having your Match.com Profile “up” -- exposing yourself to men’s eyes -- only for 3-day long, 72 hour periods, which are then staggered once a month, for ten months. Listen. Men don’t like anything they can get any old time. You have to parse yourself out to them and then snatch yourself the fuck away. Do it properly, maintain a fighting weight, get your spa appointments, and yes –for certain – this should yield a lifetime supply of men. (Unless you’re greedy and attempt to date everyone all at once. I don’t advise greedy. Get greedy, and pink ogres and gay pixie sprites start showing up as your dates. It’s God’s way of pulling your plug. You'll know it when it happens.) I'm not saying it's worth it,or that you should do it. I'm just saying.

Eventually, I realized that I needed not an endless smorgasbord of men who all have at least one fascinating aspect. So I began to whittle it down. I kept my Profile down. Some moved, some married, they dwindled. It came down to one man, who had evolved into my best friend (!), and then none. I had come full circle, but I was bouyant, serene, and I had kept my house and all my stuff, as well.

In the end, I cancelled Match.com. I was all full up on man collecting -- and dating is super strenuous in its own MataHari way -- I had no needs left unfilled, and just about everything on my romance and fun list was, in a round of high sport and drama, checked off. I felt fulfilled and content within myself. It’s a woman’s dream come true.

I quit Match forever. But I loved it.

Why?

Because it's where the men are, until the right one comes along. The right one being the last one standing.

Therefore, I suggest that collecting men is a fantastic option. Think of them as vintage Italian pottery with wallets and hammers and spatulas. Think of them as friends, which is what men have wanted all long, right? How many men (and husbands, even) broke up with us and then asked if we could be friends? Well, that time is here; my house is now. And it needs a new pedestal sink. Now we know that as a woman I could install a new sink myself, I could hire someone, I can do it all and still juggle plates and sing American Pie. But why? Why, at this stage in life when my son is 10 and I have a break – why would I try to be a hero? I have been taking care of men and children and co-workers and friends and relatives for several consecutive decades. It’s time for a little ease, and a little fun. Why should I volunteer to go without assistance, to go without succor, to go without?

Ladies, I can’t think of a single reason.

The UK's "DAILY RECORD" Runs Erratic Excerpt of Split in its Scottish paper.. Interesting.

2009-01-21T14:26:00.000-05:00

This is the UK / Scottish/ Australian Paperback Edition of "Split." what you see below is the extract the Scottish chose to print.

Divorce Papers
Jan 21 2009

Mum Of One Reveals The Emotional Rollercoaster Of A Journey She Made During Split From Husband
Suzanne Finnamore Turns Diary Of Her Real-Life Marriage Break-Up Into Book About Surviving Betrayal

SUZANNE Finnamore had been married for five years and had a 15-month-old son when her husband suddenly announced he wanted a divorce.

She went from happy family to single mother when he revealed he was leaving.

Then she found out he had a girlfriend, then that they had a baby on the way.

Suzanne kept a diary of the events. The book it became, Split, details - with raw pain and humour - how she recovered from the end of their relationship. Here, she calls him simply "N" and their son "A".

*

At 6.10 precisely, he walks through the door and kisses my cheek. He tells me I look beautiful and walks swiftly to our bedroom to change his shirt, though we have no plans that I am aware of.
And yet here it comes.
"I deserve happiness," N says. I hear him say divorce - and then the word lawyer coming at me like a javelin.
I was being informed and he was leaving at once. I realise with a wave of nausea that this is what his "happiness" meant - a euphemism for my removal.
There were signs but I ignored them. He stopped calling me during the day and went out for long lunches.
When his mobile rang he would say: "I'll call you back." He never told me who it was.
He taught me not to ask.
I found a book of poetry with the inscription "To N x Me."
N calls one night and says he still loves me as a person, as the "mother of his child".
The kiss of death. Demotion. Mothers are not always wives.
"I miss Da Da," I say to A. He hands me his dummy. He always knows what to do.
My mother tries to warn me, asking: "Is there someone else?"
I say: "No, I don't think so, he was home virtually every night and we were still having sex all the time."
She adds: "Well, if I were you, I would prepare yourself. A woman may just pop out of the closet."
At the very next full moon, A tells me that Daddy and a woman took him to the zoo. Signs matter and the most dangerous ones are those you refuse to see coming.
One day, I will have revenge. I understand that I am expected to forgive N and his girlfriend and make this so much easier and more pleasant for all concerned.
However, it's fairly simple, my state of mind. I want N dead. It comes on suddenly, a meteor of repressed anger.
One day, I hope I can stop hating A's father, but not right now. He has betrayed and abandoned me.
I have to look it full in the face and say: "I was left and it's over." Two very hard truths to swallow, but both at once? Ghastly.
I can see why my mind took this long to process it.
My brain was simply waiting for me to be strong enough to bear it, and I can.
I am not going to die. I am far too angry to die.
N has been calling all day, leaving messages about how he wants to take A to Hawaii for Christmas with Her.
"A is too young to be away from home for Christmas. He will be here with my family as usual," I tell him.
"I can make that difficult for you," N says.
"Yes, I am sure you can," I say, "but why not let A have his traditions? After all, he has lost a father this year." I hang up.
I am involved in the biggest bargaining project of all - the very final divorce settlement.
My system is that I keep sending the agreement back to N's lawyer unsigned until I get what I want. I don't have a lawyer.
Why should I pay someone pots of money for something I don't desire?
Is this love? I wonder. Divorce is love's miscarriage, bloody and shot through with loss.
We hold hands. We confide. He spends the night, something he has not done since he left.
"This will never happen again," he says, emerging from the bathroom fully groomed. His mobile is apoplectic with missed calls.
I feel good. I'm kind of winning.
Then, without preamble, N announces that his girlfriend is pregnant. The news hits me like a blast of warm but potentially dangerous air.
I think about what this means. He is 52 and already has one toddler he cannot fully take care of, seemingly.
And I do something that is very unexpected, given my historical preference for tears - I laugh and laugh.
I want the prancing, ugly legalities done.
I grow tired of limbo. I intend to triumph in whatever way possible in such a banal and common situation where I get dumped like a sack of flour.
When I need him, he comes. Yet I notice I am always glad to see him leave.
In a just world, there would be a place where love and marriage go to die. There ought to be a body you can bury. One could visit the grave.
Instead, I am faced with an acidic sense of loss. Grief engulfs me. For the first time in my life, I feel truly spent and uncertain of the future.
Nothing can be done, I know. That desired, mutually conceived baby of theirs is coming. They're coming, three of them.
Now we're going, we're just two left over.
One night, I find a photograph where his whole face emanated an intense and gentle love.
He hasn't looked at me that way in years.
I am seeing a ghost, yet a person who is still alive and available in this fashion to someone else.
I go down to the cellar in search of other photographs, editing our entire marriage down to one box, a small box of memories and the wedding album for A. I drag the rest upstairs and begin to burn them.
I use our marriage certificate for the foundation and put his love letters on top.
All untrue. All trash. All burned into ash.
I gently dismantle my carefully dried wedding bouquet and drop the flowers, piece by piece, on to the blaze.
I walk down the street and realise I can smell leaves again. A simple contentment, not happiness, but a lack of suffering.
N has somehow missed our boat but it's all right for A, now three years old, and me.
It is enough.
N has a new family now and there is no going back for us, even if we wanted to.
N may have a deficient moral sensibility, but most people do.
I am leaving one life and beginning another, trying to take all the good, only that. Becoming whole again, even if some parts are maimed.
N brought firewood up from the cellar and fixed a few things round the house.
Divorce has its upside.
I miss his capabilities when he is unavailable. But those capabilities slew the marriage - as in, capable of anything.
But we are at ease with each other.
We have had an ugly divorce and I can still become angry with him, yet i can't hold onto the grudge for long. I muse on how difficult it is to completely, emotionally and psychically un-marry ... even with divorce ... especially with a child.
Despite the death of the marriage, ours is a blood bond: tenuous, but for life.

THIS IS AN ABRIDGED EXTRACT FROM SPLIT - A STORY OF LOVE, BETRAYAL AND DIVORCE BY SUZANNE FINNAMORE, PUBLISHED BY VIKING, PRICED £7.99

I Saw Mark Strand Read When I Was 19. Later Came His Pulitzer.

2009-01-02T22:52:00.000-05:00

What To Think Of

Think of the jungle,The green stream rising.
It is yours.You are the prince of Paraguay.
Your minions kneel
Deep in the shade of giant leaves
While you drive by
Benevolent as gold. They kiss the air
That moments before
Swept over your skin,
And rise only after you’ve passed.
Think of yourself, almost a god,
Your hair on fire,
The bellows of your heart pumping.
Think of the bats
Rushing out of their caves
Like a dark wind to greet you;
Of the vast nocturnal cities
Of lightning bugs
Floating down
From Minas Gerais;
Of the coral snakes;
Of the crimson birds
With emerald beaks;
Of the tons and tons of morpho butterflies
Filling the air
Like the cold confetti of paradise

—Mark Strand

Letter

Men are running across a field,
pens fall from their pockets.
People out walking will pick them up.
It is one of the ways letters are written.
How things fall to others!
The self no longer belonging to me, but asleep
in a stranger’s shadow, now clothing
the stranger, now leading him off.
It is noon as I write to you.
Someone’s life has come into my hands.
The sun whitens the buildings.
It is all I have. I give it all to you. Yours,

--Mark Strand

Nostalgia

The professors of English have taken their gowns
to the laundry, have taken themselves to the fields.
Dreams of motion circle the Persian rug in a room you were in.
On the beach the sadness of gramophones
deepens the ocean’s folding and falling.
It is yesterday. It is still yesterday.

– Mark Strand

Ruthless and Unkind and A Wonderful Gift (The Zombie Fuck)

2008-12-24T15:32:00.000-05:00

Let us join together and discuss openly what my friends and I have dubbed the Zombie Fuck. Understand that you may need to get past the words, Zombie Fuck. You may need to understand that a Zombie Fuck is more than just words, it’s a philosophy.

For those of you still left hideously in the dark, a Zombie Fuck is having sex with a man without him knowing about it, at all.

I’m not talking about The Fermata here (a brilliant novel). We don’t want to stop time and take a stranger’s clothes off, we want time to continue just as it is. We certainly don’t want to crouch in a hamper watching someone suck a black rubber dildo, no offense to Nicholson Baker or his (simply brilliant) character Arno Strine. I’m talking about zombie fucking. The man would, however, be in a sort of netherworld state. A place, as Dorothy of Kansas said, where there’s no trouble. He would have no remembrance of the event and the woman would also, if she so chooses, have no remembrance of the event. She should be able to walk away glowing, aerobicised, refreshed and yet at the same time psychically immaculate.

Is this ruthless and unkind? Yes. Does it flay all remaining shreds of conventional femininity we as a sex clutch to our Pilates-sculpted busom as we race toward a new day? Of course it does. Yet when we consider how men have historically behaved after having actually coupled with women, it’s tempting to believe that generally speaking and with few exceptions, the Zombie Fuck would perhaps be a better way to go.

Men of course would also like to utilize the Zombie Fuck, but theirs might be different; their egos might still want us to respond, or at least remember them. Women wouldn’t need to have the man remember or even necessarily respond. This will surprise those who believe that women desire sex for intimacy and cuddling and not for the sex itself. Maybe when a girl is seven; of course that raises another debate entirely. But that girl grows up, she experiences I’ll Call You a few times. Maybe she eventually gets married. Maybe she’s married now with a baby and a vice presidency and a parking space with her name on it. She wants a Zombie Fuck. She doesn’t want the memory of you, she doesn’t want have to deal with you later, she definitely does not want to marry you and have to pick up your socks. She just wants to be able to do it and walk away, like a really great manicure pedicure.

And yet, why the Zombie Fuck, when so many regular fucks are presumably available? The reasons are manifold, each more satisfying than the last.

Consider the Zombie Fuck, as a woman, whether you’re married or unmarried, a) you don’t get the Buyers Remorse thing, and, b) you don’t have to deal with the man’s reaction to having had you; i.e. him acting strange and beginning to lie about simply everything, including his name and the time. (Note to Gay Men: The Zombie Fuck is still a valuable commodity, for obvious reasons, the main one being you don’t have to deal with bullshit. Also, there are no condoms in Zombie Fuckland.)

It would seem a shame to stop here, so I will continue to share what my friends and I are thinking about in our spare moments. I will officially open the Pool of Truth. It’s adult swim time and I’m diving in here at the shallow end.

The fuck that got away; we call that the Lost Fuck. The man who didn’t quite have the courage, or conversely the man who had his eye on a blonde across the room who any fool could see would never do him in a million years. Those too religious, too nice to copulate. The wrenchingly beautiful college boys who are going to grow up to be Lutheran ministers and have two little girls and a wife resembling the woman in American Gothic.

The Lost Fuck can be also be the Premature Fuck.

The Premature Fuck is someone who was perhaps a bit too babyfaced or intoxicated or both, and so it didn’t turn out to be a positive sexual experience. Somebody who was a little nauseous or naïve, but you know had you waited they would have been seasoned, and it would have definitely been fantastic. But by the time they’re seasoned, you’re both irrevocably entwined with different people. It’s the wine you drank too early.

The Fuck With History is the man you had before and you liked it and you still would probably like it. Say he was a conceited putz but he was a decent fuck and you would like to zombie fuck him now. To return as the person you are now, and not give him unnecessary strokes, just enjoy yourself and leave him without a clue that you ever came back to slap down for a Fuck With History. So – to clarify -- a Fuck With History can still be a Zombie Fuck, and should be. Because a Fuck With History in real life is something that inevitably leads to a sad place called nostalgia and remembering with terrifying lucidity why it didn’t work out in the first place. It’s a Here Now History Fuck.

The Here Now History Fuck is the man that you had before whom you bring current and reunite with for a night but it’s not a regular fuck because its also a Fuck With History. Unfortunately, and this is why we don’t recommend it, with a Here Now History Fuck the odds are excellent that this man is going to commence lobbing the same odious spitballs as he did in the first place, or you are, and once is frankly enough for most of us. Also, the Here Now History Fuck often leads to the Dangerous High Risk Fuck. There’s a ton of paper work here, so bear with.

Dangerous High Risk Fucks are the rare men from the past (or major celebrities) whom you would cheerfully annihilate your life for. The ones were it to happen you would need to forfeit your marriage, your parents, your house, your precious stones -- your world as you know it would simply splatter against the side of the house next door. It’s Orlando Bloom showing up naked at your door saying, ‘I’m on my way to a shoot, but since I was in the neighborhood I thought I’d stop by and see if you wanted to have sex with me for around four hours.’ And you say Come in. Can I get you anything? Even though your husband is due home five minutes ago. Is in the next room.

Here I cannot help but once again point out the virtues of the Zombie Fuck. The cleanliness of it.

Finally I would suggest that the Zombie Fuck makes a wonderful gift. For a friend who is going through an ugly divorce, or someone who’s feeling a little depressed. You could pick out a Zombie Fuck for your best friend (Justin Timberlake), your son’s kindergarten teacher (Kevin Costner), even your own mother (Sean Connery). Something she would perhaps not buy for herself, but would enjoy nonetheless. It’s that rare delight, the gift that no one ever returns or jams into the back of their closet or rewraps and gives as a gift to someone else. Can you think of a better one? I’m sorry, I just can’t.

Take Courage

2008-12-16T14:12:00.000-05:00

C S Lewis, childhood photo, date unknown

Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.
-- C.S. Lewis

.

"Split: A Memoir of Divorce" , a Library Journal Best Book of 2008

2008-12-13T18:24:00.000-05:00

12.8.08

Library Journal's Best Books of 2008

Split: A Memoir of Divorce. Finnamore, Suzanne. Penguin Group (USA)

Best-selling novelist Finnamore (The Zygote Chronicles) never saw her divorce coming; to make sense of it, she dissects her once-broken heart with an astonishing calm and precision, breathing new life into a tramped genre. Fellow divorcées and connoisseurs of the English language will savor each exquisitely cut piece.

Lucas Cranach And Happy Birthday, Mister Fox

2008-12-09T20:42:00.000-05:00

who are you in this picture? it was mysteriously sent to be by a man turning 60 who said he was the fellow in the wheelbarrow far left. oh who am i kidding? that was no stranger, that was the brilliant nick fox, husband to fay weldon. i replied as well i could:

You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.

-Colette

Telephones: An Instrument of Satan

2008-12-01T14:18:00.001-05:00

I'm not sure when I realized I'd become a zealot for a cell-phone-only existence. Yet not long ago, bit by bit, I reasoned that functioning land lines, cordless phones or answering machines were wholly unnecessary; perhaps such obsequious devices were to be considered actual instruments of self-harm. All these multiple and clingy communication implements were just another way - like email- that crazy people could touch me.

I felt strongly that one reliably sketchy cell phone for a family of two was a perfect, sleek system. It worked well enough (from my viewpoint) until recently, when key persons in my life rose up into a small mob, insisting I arrange for a minimum of one phone to be functional in my life at all times.

Just one phone, they said, faces purple with religion.

I thought and I thought, and then I remembered the 1990 Sanyo Princess.

“Just in case”, I'd long ago retained one "real" landline phone, cached in my garage for Emergencies. It's a quaint, bone-white princess phone with all the modern conveniences of Touch Tone, but it isn't cordless. It's bloody crammed with cords. A vintage electronic, it has a very long cable that plugs right into the wall (!), whereupon something called a Dial Tone always happens; phone calls always go straight through, without going dead, dropping, crackling like an electrical storm, playing hard to get, or coyly dying just at the moment of urgent verbal consummation.

The Princess has a very ornate, curly white cord, which connects the phone itself to the base of the phone. It functions 100% of the time and it is always in plain sight, in the exact same place. Can you imagine? Its very availability and staunch reliance, of course, is what drove it into the garage in the first place. The Princess was too direct, too dangerous and too incriminating to those I was trying to avoid, which was often everyone.

Sadly for the Princess – and for those like me who enjoy frequent, unexpected or expected, passive aggressive and often permanent disconnections - it's not a cell phone, so it has no distorted audio, or go-dead tricks that cell phones delight in doing, at the 'worst possible moment'.

Princess is not a cordless phone, the inexplicable lemon-phone on a worldwide basis.It’s surely no mystery now that cordless phones were designed with profit margins, treachery and ineptitude as Job One. I have two cordless phones, unreliable and moody and useless by design. They need constant electrical charging to function at all - a fact exacerbated by the way they rarely rest in their cradle correctly. They proffer a wheezy, faint and buzzing connection, despite how much one frantically dashes around the house and yard and roof, changing channels. Possessing no cord, they're irresponsible gypsies, malevolent by nature, and are easily misplaced -- being the ideal shape and size to slide between couch cushions, disappear in any garage, drawer, hamper, room or patio, and wedge themselves uncannily into random crevices.

With the Princess I may take phone calls without the prescience of Caller ID, as well. In 2008, the all but extinct element of Surprise now has a home within my Princess phone. When the Princess phone rings, I can look straight at it and have no idea who is on the other line. It’s shocking. And, oddly enough, when the Princess rings forth like a regular old-fashioned telephone, it is also completely terrifying.

I don’t like to be shocked. More and more, I see surprises as a form of violence. But the Princess will surprise me in a shrill, insistent manner – she has her plastic white heart set on it. Childlike, I am once again at the mercy of the telephone, unless I turn the ringer off and leave the answering machine detached, which I have just had the foresight to do. The Princess rang once, last night at 8 32 PM; I didn’t know who it was, and the ring sounded like a scream. That was enough.

Telephone conversations, it is safe to conclude, are vastly overrated. More than one telephone conversation has made me feel as if I needed a .12 guage rifle, or a foolproof suicide plan. The telephone is an instrument of Satan; there are plenty of telephones in Hell, on that we can rely. And they are all land lines.

The Genius Bar

2008-12-01T13:47:00.000-05:00

Fate is cruel. I think we can all agree on this one thing, before I move on. Mostly cruel, especially when one considers withering illness, global politics, death and taxes -- all of which are as unavoidable as Fate, and are therefore part of Fate.

I, a writer and a single mother (one son, Pablo, ten), am at this moment sitting atop a barstool at the Genius Bar at my local Mac Store. (The Genius Bar. I wonder how much money someone made to think of that, instead of Customer Service. I'm thinking about a million dollars and a team of six creatives, two of whom were actively disengaged.) My laptop, an iBook G4, is cursed; it is a gypsy curse. It involves a great deal of mystery and importunate timing; that's how I know gypsies were involved. Gypsies or witches.

Within the past ten weeks, my laptop has had everything replaced; it was physically gone for a week in Memphis, Tennessee. And now it refuses to function, despite the fact that literally every part was replaced except the top cover and the plug.

A beige man with short dreads and a seasoned look is manning the Genius Bar. He checks his list of Genius Bar appointments and says,

"Is there a Bud?"

Buds do own computers. This in itself may well be information well worth the trip and time spent, which I am beginning to think may be in vain as far as my computer being fixed before I must pick up my son at school. Every minute the aura of the Genius Bar becomes more jagged; at exactly 2:55 PM, a gaggle of teenagers clutching iphones and ipods rush to the fore.

More people cluster worriedly around the Genius Bar, pressing me forward onto the counter. It's like that scene in It's a Wonderful Life when the Bailey Building and Loan bank is on a run and the whole town becomes an anxious sweaty mob grabbing for what's been promised them. And Jimmy Stewart is running around telling everyone to calm down. Just calm down.

Jimmy Stewart is not at the Genius Bar. He's dead (see: Fate).

Now the man next to me is drumming his fingers. Great, a finger drummer. Next I'll get a whistler. My mother used to attract dwarves with shopping carts. I swear to GOD.

Here comes Bud to the Genius Bar, and people look on him with envy and a kind of hatred. Bud told me earlier that he had an appointment; he came here and immediately signed on a computer for a 2:55 appointment. People named Bud are known to be practical. He doesn't even have his computer with him, that's how efficient Bud is. He has a list of questions.

When Bud told me this, much earlier, I sashayed to the row of computers and I made an appointment for 4:55 with the secret Apple Store clipboard man. I am gleeful. It may even be before then, he said.

Now it’s a good feeling, just sitting at the Genius Bar. They have wisely installed wide barstools. People are used to sitting at bars; bars are safe, bars are good. If you squint, it's a pub. Lots of time can go by inside bars without anything happening. Yes, bars and barstools are an excellent choice.

"Why do they make those little CDs if no one can USE them?" The customer, a man in black turtleneck, is angry. He has a problem they cannot solve. His whole system is out of date, like a dodo bird. He walks the walk of the dejected as he leaves.

So now we all know: it's not really the Genius Bar. It’s the Just Okay bar.

If this were a real Genius Bar, I would have arrived equipped with a list of questions, as did Bud. Let's say there's a limit of ten. Ten questions.

1. Why was I born?

2. What happens when you die? Is there a Hell or is there nothing. Within reason, I would prefer a Hell. Hell I could understand; I’ve waitressed for lunatics, written ads for panty shields, and experienced hours of labor contractions one right the fuck after the other. Nothingness, however, terrifies me. I want to still exist, even if it means Hell. (In real life, I tell my son that I believe in Heaven, but if I am wicked honest, I don't. I feel it has a high probability of being a publicity stunt.)

3. Why did my marriage really end?

4. Can time be moved backward? I'd like that option.

5. Do the people I hate know it? I want them to.

6. Do the people I irrationally love know it? How can I make some of them un-know it?

7. What's the square root of one million?

8. How many holes are there in an average colander?

9. Why did the dinosaurs become extinct?

10. Will I ever have another huge, death-defying love affair, or am I sentenced to an eventual Mojave celibacy, along with its accompanying sense of being a rock-person, and not a really thorough woman.

Meanwhile, back at the Genius Bar, they actually do fix my problem (or what you see now is only my Immediate Problem.) My Genius Bar man wears a plain black long sleeve shirt that may be Helmut Lang, and two very sleek, scientific looking necklaces around his neck; possibly the keys to the entire Mac universe. The key to my deliverance from evil.

Another customer, this one with a short cruel hairdo and big ass diamonds in her ears appears to my right. She bears a look of a nurse at an emergency ward, a mask of concerned fatigue. I sense she has not a computer glitch, but is afflicted with matters of life and death. No little SHIFT keys slightly loose, no slow connections, no -- everything in her vista is crashing into a meteor of destruction and heartache.

God. I’m done, and I am so glad to be free. And I alone was spared -- that's the feeling.

As I slip from my barstool I hear a full-grown man talking in a high, quavery voice.

"It's the blinking question mark." He's practically weeping.

The Genius Bar is open.

'I Been Shattered' for the Daily Telegraph, London

2008-11-24T00:44:00.000-05:00

I BEEN SHATTERED

On the morning of April 1, I woke up naked, a full ashtray in my line of vision. Twenty or thirty twisted butts in a large black cigar ashtray with the word HAVANA on its side in yellow; the word seemed to scream into the stale air. An empty bottle of mandarin flavored vodka stood very tall and close to the ashtray. Strains of an Elton John dirge skittered through my head.

“All the papers had to say was that Marilyn was found in the nude…”

Then it hit me: my husband had jammed the night before. The refreshed information slammed back to me. It was definitive; he’d said to expect a divorce petition in the next week, minutes later he’d swooped out of the house like Dracula. I looked around my bedroom, it was different. There was a person missing.

I saw more. Prescription pill bottles clustered round an empty glass. Effexor XR. Xanax. TylenolPM. And for some inexplicable reason,a bottle of Viagra. I'd puzzle this out later. For the moment, it was all just visual information: Still Life Of An Abandoned Wife, With Depression.

Our baby son was asleep in the next room, he had just turned one. One. Surely age one was too early for a child to learn about loss. A child of one needed a father in the house; it should be law. I was furious with the law. Fathers shouldn’t be allowed to just walk away, as from a cocktail party.

I was in a new life, this was the first day. I fucking hated my new life. I had half the income, all the tending of the baby, all the humiliation, and none of the love from my husband. He’d pulled out of our life. My new life would, however, include him as a horror figure and a betraying devil. That’s how I saw it. I saw no end in sight, no credible resolution. I was blind to the future and the present was a blur.

I don’t remember feeding my son his first bottle of the day, but I did. I bathed him, I read to him, I kissed him. I told him how much his daddy loved him. It felt like a lie, but a very important lie, one I needed to push really hard to keep everyone from imploding into pathos.

I fed myself once a day, tasting nothing. I lost 25 pounds. I spent my nights weeping and drinking and chain smoking on the back deck of my little rachety house. I was a terrible smoker, burning holes in every article of clothing and piece of furniture….a very inept, boozy arsonist-in-training. A small throw rug went up, as did three down comforters and part of my laptop keyboard.

For months, I functioned like a machine. My innards and brain were distinctly ajar, tumbled, dysfunctional. Shattered, like a snappy Mick Jagger lyric. I endlessly babbled to friends and strangers about the divorce. I had a list of 10 people to call; they were my lifelines, as in a game show. I was the walking wounded and a walking cliché. I’d gone from an attractive, successful writer and adwoman to a useless, frowsy windbag in one fell swoop.

“Why?” I asked my friends, over and over.

“Because he’s crazy.’

“Because he’s a rotter”

These answers did not satisfy me. I wanted real, hard answers. Such as: You are too wide. The house is too small. He has been lured away by mermaids.

*

Time passed. Anger came and saved me from depression. I exchanged verbal gunfire with my ex. After a while, it had all been said. I looked up. My son was two, was deeply involved in riding his toy tractor/trailer through the house, loaded with fruit and toy dinosaurs. I refinanced the house, I got a job, went to lunch. I had a party. People came and rearranged the furniture, music blasted. I fell down laughing, and I wasn’t drunk.

In time, I took a lover. I took several.

Dracula and I became friends. I remembered why I’d married him in the first place. Our son was happy. It had come, the miracle…not overnight, like the millennium or the lottery. But it had come.

This was it, my new life. I loved it. It was interesting and fun and hard. I felt gratitude for having loved that hard, for not missing my window of fertility. I felt lucky, a quality I remember feeling as I walked down the aisle, as I held my newborn in my arms. I was shattered but pieced back together, made stronger in the broken places. I was a walking cliché.

Thank God.

'Electric Sky' by Ken Muth oil on wood

2008-11-19T01:10:00.000-05:00

What this gifted gem of an acclaimed artist is doing selling original oil paintings to me, at a discount, I have no idea. this one is 12" by 12". oh my GOD. Well, it just proves he's a artist with a heart, and possibly a saint, living in Florida. Check out his staggering paintings, photographs and storyboards at http://www.kenmuthstoryboards.com

Man-Collecting: A Worthwhile Venture

2008-11-13T23:04:00.001-05:00

good morning mister president

2008-11-04T22:04:00.001-05:00

there he is, number 44, kickin it with a friend. oh, it's good to wake up in OBAMA LAND, CALIFORNIA. USA. PLANET EARTH.

It's Poetry Month, Babies!

2008-10-29T00:38:00.000-04:00

It is difficult to get the news from poems,
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

William Carlos Williams

I can't post all the really good poems here' i am forced to post my own. I am so sorry...but I do love poetry, and agree with WCW.

The Day's On Fire! Roethke Was Right

2008-10-29T00:06:00.000-04:00

In a Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,

I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!

I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--

Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,

Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

Theodore Roethke

maurice at the barbeque / 1980

2008-10-28T22:13:00.000-04:00

maurice at the barbecue,
drunk on gin and offering me
wine-in-a-box, hid his fifth
of Tanquery behind the rhododendrons
and said to me and jim and liz, Women...
turn them upside down, spread their legs and
they all look alike... gesturing with long
black barbeque tongs. we had just met, he didn't
know my people, else he may have waited until i was
tucked in the hot tub, boiling null as a potato, before
opening his goateed, cigar-stuffed mouth. i saw he
was human, saw photos of children who'd slipped away.
i saw the bitter trade he'd made. everyone saw
his furred brown toes, protruding from huarache
sandals bought on his annual mexican slumfest, with
a framed red toreador on black velvet, a clutch of Oui
and Hustler splayed nearby. he was a rotting man,
but a man nonetheless. maurice was my neighbor, my host
to take or not to take. and i heard myself whisper,
Isn't that interesting? and jim and liz sighed, relieved i'd
not done the right thing, the merciful thing, really,
which would have been to kill maurice, to give him
an end, to roast him on the spit with the crispy whole pig,
now being served, along with the terrible
contents of the red wine box. he'd have looked
so natural next to swine, a gravenstein lodged
between his cigar and goatee - for appeal, but
also to stop him commencing on subjects
about which whatever he had once known
was now lost, forgotten, drowned.

suzanne finnamore

the long hall of your leaving

2008-10-28T21:58:00.000-04:00

the hall is before you again and the man
stumbling in his hurry to leave
and the wild voice is saying Wait, come back

you watch stupidly as he takes the stairs
four at a time, silently hurtling down and away,
his head bowed, his mouth stretched shut

like a drum. you panic and begin screaming lies
downwind to him -- how you never loved him,
how much you loved him. you see him cross

the road, moving steadily, his legs
working like scissors, now. in desperation
you race to the roof of the building. you begin

a long, garish striptease, throwing your clothes
as far as your can. you start to gyrate, thinking
he'll feel left out, or disgusted. as a last

resort, you walk to the edge and swear you'll jump.
a crowd gathers halfheartedly, you look out
and see his figure, very small, way

on the horizon. you send up flares, you do
a little jig on the ledge. you hope
the press will send a man out.

suzanne finnamore

bees in the grass

2008-10-28T21:39:00.001-04:00

news of your marriage
arrives calm, delivered
in subpoena fashion by a woman
with a permanent wave

and vows are taken, things bought.
bride like a mother to fix you lunch,
to make a bed with fast hands,
to fill it.

now all your socks sit in tidy balls
and shoes have trees. how
simply you reach this, and after what struggle:
the jaunt to mexico, the drinking.

never having touched you, i am
sour on the marriage
on the pregnant bride resplendent in yellow
on the gifts chosen in good taste.

never having broached the subject, having compared
your eyes to sapphire and done nothing, this news
of marriage brings odd alarm; i had always meant
to reach you: bees in the grass.

suzanne finnamore

autumnal equinox

2008-10-28T21:29:00.001-04:00

there is a line that runs
between the expanse of cheekbone
and mouth, a small, perfect crease
where the skin kisses itself.
all night i watched it.

i wanted to disturb it with my mouth
and tell you something, then, some
wordless thing that had more to do with breath
and mild wishes thrown silent
against the tongue, so soft and
full of mute promise.

that night i had no words,
embarrassed by the hard sounds
which would stumble in the dark. but your eyes
were brilliant, they were light
where there is no light, and all the while
the candles flamed and marked
the summer's last night.

i knew, seeing white disc toss shadows
in long sulphurous waves
against your face,
this was not life as i knew it;
it was some magic we'd conjured,
some trick of the night, arranging
slices of moon as you hovered
above me, shining.

but wait,
now i will tell you something,
my arms across your long back, my heart
racing toward another morning.
i will tell you a secret: this
is not real, none of it is real,
as dreams and sage drenched shadows
are not real,
and this is all there is.

suzanne finnamore

cinderella

2008-10-28T19:10:00.001-04:00

a late bloomer.
sappy, a dupe.
never complained,
missed everything, that's all;

all the Balls, at least.
even the ugly sisters managed
to make an appearance,
however grisly. they

weren't much to look at --
all the same, they had style
and their father
by the balls. but

she was a sly one,
a hoarder,
had the Prince on a string
the whole time. she

was a wizard with props:
the glass slipper, the rags.
he loved it,
don't kid yourself. she

took him for all he had.
the castle, the land, the
works. he never saw it coming.
a hustler. the best.

suzanne finnamore

Eva Peron....and i love Madonna too. Sofuckit.

2008-10-28T18:41:00.000-04:00

eva peron

....died and embalmers
rushed in as her last breath
hung like confetti in the air,
hair stylists waited, combs
poised; flutes may have played
low, adagio as she went
quietly from the house
and hundreds of dresses
ruffled softly in her
closets where luggage sat
where hats waited, where shoes
stood empty all together.
and outside now the people came
and kept coming, in groups
in waves, like fish
down the stream they came,
grieving, for days shouting,
now big with it
those that loved you, 'whore', 'goddess'
aphrodite of the argentines,
knowing, sure; beautiful still
at the hospital bed as you
vote for peron: a good wife,
fainting at inaugurations,
blond, ghost-like
cancer in your womb
like punishment for too much
power, for alarming the military --
or like favor, an exit,
not to see your billboards
burned, your statues lopped off,
your children's' palaces in heaps,
your body
stolen very early one morning,
from your enemies kept whole:
madrid,
lot eighty-six,
grave forty-one,
'maria.'

suzanne finnamore

2008-10-27T13:50:00.000-04:00

Moths At The Window

Some random shape against the light,
Edges lit with odd electricity; this wild
Creature desire and pique and you and I
Have something in common. Evening comes

Then drops into night like red peaches to the ground.
Do we grow old or just set in our ways? The cat is lulled
By the sound of these keys clacking hard and
Uncertain against false paper.

And I think how all Old Good Times sit
Firm and unblinking as pharaohs on a yesterday
Throne. A pink bulb throws light and heresy
On a photograph of me, younger and with short hair

Smiling as if to eat the world. To know you
Ten years is to know you ten minutes
Or less, and words garner silence. Let’s
Pick today like a fruit that cannot wait. Fear

Will visit and perch stern in the hall.
Friends will serve themselves up on a plate.
Personally I cannot grieve or wait
Another day to see what walks toward me, or away.

Love is still the hardest claim to stake, as if to say so would
void freedom, blithe, would cut nonchalance with the bluntest knife.
But when we laugh we touch gingerly on life
And beat against hard glass, winged.

moths at the window

2008-10-27T13:26:00.001-04:00

Moths at the window

Some random shape against the light,
Edges lit with electricity; this wild
Creature desire and pique and you and I
Have something in common. Evening comes

Then drops into night like red peaches
to the ground. Do we grow old or just set in our ways?
The cat is lulled by the sound of keys clacking hard and
Uncertain against false paper.

And I think of how all Good Times sit
Firm and unblinking as pharaohs on a yesterday
Throne. A pink bulb throws light and heresy
On a photograph of me, younger and with more hair

Smiling as if to eat the world. To know you
Ten years is to know you ten minutes
Or less, and words garner silence. Let’s
Pick today like a fruit that cannot wait. Fear

Will visit and perch stern in the hall.
Friends will serve themselves up on a plate.
And personally I cannot grieve or wait
Another day to see what walks toward me, or away.

Love is still the hardest claim to stake, as if to say so would
void freedom, blithe, would cut nonchalance with the bluntest knife.
But when we laugh we touch gingerly on life
And beat against hard glass, winged.

suzanne finnamore

the mover / first poem ever published...

2008-10-27T12:52:00.000-04:00

the mover

He could come without warning,
Swathed in blue, touching the rim of his cap
In greeting. You might be scrambling eggs
Or shaving your legs and he’d turn up –
Smiling, asking where this went.
You could be in the middle of something.
You may have no intention to move at all, but there it is.

He could come without introduction
But for a name randomly sewn on his shirt.
But he can wear any shirt; they could trade shirts.
When you call him Emmett
He could be laughing inside. Joe could be
Dick, Harry, Sean.

But he knows your name,
Knows where you live, has touched
All of your things,
Has pressed himself against your icebox
And slid it outside,
Has taken your lamps by their throats,
Your chairs by their wooden back,
Has wheeled your bed into the street.

Was he careful?
Was he quick?
Was he kind, as promised, or was he
Just perfunctory, visiting each of your rooms
In their appointed turn,
Carrying everything out very quietly:
Something that had to be done.
Something that after all, paid.

suzanne finnamore

Poem For Fall

2008-10-18T10:17:00.000-04:00

Bears

I wanted to write
something fine about men, about
how love bursts like pumpkins
in the fall. Then

I heard about the bears in Alaska
and how to keep them away, and that
seemed more relevant. You sing
or wear bells as you walk; if they

know you're coming they steer clear,
being the prudent fellows they are
(cowards, really). Whistling
may be misconstrued during

mating season. Don't wear perfume,
they find it attractive. Don't smell
of food, they like this, too. If you do
meet up with one, upon your peril

don't run. Bears are funny, and running
will trigger a chase. Although
they seem slow, they can do
forty in a pinch. There is no escape

that way. You are advised to
drop to the ground, without ceremony,
without sound. Drop
to the ground and play dead. Shown

total submission, they will lose interest.
And when he has gone, get up
if you can. Wear the bells, forget the perfume,
sing

(Overheard) BANG, BANG, You're A Whole Different Person aka The Bang Debate 08

2008-10-12T11:02:00.000-04:00

WELL i'm living the questions, again. I'm genuinely TORN about cutting my hair into bangs. it haunts me like Casper the Angry Drag Queen Stylist ghost. this has been a source of anxiety and deep reflection lo these long adult years. and so, here it comes again. the bang sudden death quandary. and as usual, I'm taking a poll. because when bangs go wrong, I'm instantly rendered a LAUGHINGSTOCK for the foreseeable future. I'm not strong enough for this.

so, i think maybe y'all should look at my FACEBOOK PHOTO ALBUM (it's on the left side, once you register, free, on facebook. You have to register just to SEE EVERYONE ON FACEBOOK. but you don't have to have A FACEBOOK yourself.) you can see all Jon Engdahl's guerrilla mosaic street art while you consider the Bang question.

anywho. look at the more recent pics with my bangs LONG and then look at the others w/ bangs short, and then tell me. plus my hair's longer now. won't bangs look weird w/ long hair? kind of like Meatloaf? I CANNOT MAKE A SIMPLE DECISION. this is why I'm staying home tonight and watching books.

October 10, 2008 6:51 PM

polly kahl said...
Hi Suzanne, to me the question is what look you want to go for. The longer bangs (Facebook version) is softer while the shorter blunt bangs are more sophisticated and distinctive looking. I personally like the shorter bangs because to me they are part of what makes you unique. Even though we've never met I might actually recognize you on the street with the shorter bangs, whereas with the longer bangs you look like lots of other people. Plus I think the shorter bangs are kind of sexy. So I vote for the short and sassy Suzanne, and I hope you'll post before and after pix when you decide.

October 10, 2008 9:23 PM

lindac said...
I think you are beautiful either way, but I agree with Polly. But, you are right, you may need to cut some of the length for the short bangs to work like they do in your other photos. You have such lovely and piercing eyes, I think the short bangs frames them in a way the longer hair just doesn't. But, I am a fashion moron, I have no fashion sense at all - so I think you should do whatever feels right for you. After all, you are the one who is going to be looking back in the mirror.

October 11, 2008 10:59 AM

DAMN. bangs are just a MASSIVE decision. i thank you both for your thoughtful and ridiculously complimentary posts. I'm still in a twist about it. I'll prawly take my good scissors to them and just cut a LITTLE BIT off. so i can see. then of course they will be crooked, and i will even them out, more and more, until i look like Friar Tuck. history bears this out: i go all CHARLES MANSON on my bangs, every few months. it's an Issue.

Polly Kahl said...
There are some fun software's which allow you to upload a picture of your face and put all kinds of different hairstyles on it. I think some are probably free online but if not let me know and I'll send you my disk. I'm doing nothing but growing my hair out for at least the next year. It's my last hurrah before I'm so old that it looks completely ridiculous. (Right now it only looks partially ridiculous. In another year it will probably qualify as completely.)

OCTOBER 11, 2008 8:54 PM
FINNABLOG said...
oh yes! I've seen those,. ill try googling a link to one of those on site hair experiments pages. thanks.

although, my friend Mad Augusten Burroughs weighed in on NO bangs. Augusten said that "bangs are SO 90's..."
besides,i DO like hiding one eye behind my hair, sometimes. it feels safe there.

OCTOBER 11, 2008 11:09 PM
Polly Kahl said...
That's true, bangs are so 90s, but we're not talking mall bangs here. Mall bangs are 90s but Bettie Page bangs are timeless. Here's one with long hair and short bangs that's kind of sweet.

I demand before and after pictures.

Caryl sent you a message.
Re: profile

Saw the pics. Here is the verdict.

soft and feminine, longer bangs that sweep to the side to do this you part your hair in the middle. and
when drying the bangs, sweep them to one side, but just the bangs. DO NOT part
your hair on the side.

sexy and sassy, darker hair with short bangs straight across. This is best
done with botox. not for you in particular, but all women of a certain age who
want to pull off short bangs. I know I will probably be kicked out of the club
for saying that, but you can be smart and vain, and still be deep and human.

Please don't underestimate the hair parted in the middle, this came from a very
important stylist who is in the "business" and it is absolutely true.

OCTOBER 12, 2008 7:42 AM
FINNABLOG said...

OH MY GOD. POLLY AND EVERYONE, LOOKY HERE!

OKAY, POLLY? YOU ARE THE HEADMISTRESS QUEEN OF BANG DECISIONS.

THAT WEB PAGE YOU SENT ME FUCKING ROCKS. (see url connect at top of this post) CLICK DIRECTLY ON THE "X" TO SEE THE LINK,

SUCH A MAGIC, MAGIC TIME TO BE ALIVE. all the bangs you can choose from,in fact all the VARIATIONS OF ALL HAIR STYLES, in current and classic shots, celebrity and real people who look like supermodel photographs, not old stock photos or line drawings -- all on one website, it's just HEARTBREAKING and RIGHT.

i feel like when Princess Ariel sang "A WHOLE NEW WORLD" on The Little Mermaid, when she got to grow legs. and yes, i do cry at Disney movies. in fact, ten minutes into Beauty And The Beast, I had COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN i was watching an "animated feature film."

Deep In The Amazon: One Writer's Disease

2008-10-07T00:26:00.000-04:00

This is what happened. I wrote a book, submitted it to several publishers, got rejected. I wrote another book, found a New York agent and a New York publisher. Within a week I had sold the film rights to 20th Century Fox, quit my job, and settled into what felt like an extended dream world, one in which I was able to go to sleep and wake up without the scenery changing. This is it, I thought, my beginning of a writer’s life. I bought a new car and each time I went outside I expected to find it gone, with a note that read Terrible Mistake Now Rectified.

Several weeks before my actual publication date, a friend informs me that my book is listed on Amazon.com. Already? I said, the faintest suggestion of coy surprise in my voice. I attempt to sound casual but inside I am hula dancing naked with George Clooney and he is saying Baby I didn’t know you were a writer.

After a period of insensate glee at my book simply being for sale on the Internet, the first Amazon customer review is posted. Five stars, from my mother, cleverly disguised as A Reader. “Suzanne Finnamore is the spokeswoman for the nineties.” A couple more people write reviews, either four or five stars. In a quasar of accolade, my Amazon sales rank number soars from 1,439,003 to 707. I begin thinking about a new house, something with an extra bathroom and a pool. Perhaps an Olympic-sized pool for the staff to enjoy while I am in Aix choosing a villa.

Then it happens. My first bad Amazon customer review. My husband peers idly over my shoulder as it floats into view on my laptop computer. As in tornadoes, there is no warning. One star. A Reader From DC wishes I would catapult myself from a tall building. Then I should be chopped into tiny pieces, like a vampire. Pieces which are then mailed separately to different continents, so that I won’t reconstitute myself and start looking for a pencil.

My husband pats my arm and goes for vodka. I cry for an hour: Why me? Why?

I then call ten friends and insist they write Amazon reviews. Five stars, I mumble, I need five.

But I haven’t read it yet, my friend says. It doesn’t matter, I say. He laughs, not realizing I'm serious.

Eventually the good friend reviews are posted, knocking mister one star off the top. Then a Reader From New York writes an even worse review -- for some reason giving me two stars. He loathes my writing, my characters, my plot and my publisher; it is the grand slam of reviews. What would merit one star to this person, I muse. A grease trap?

More friends (and acquaintances who have been upgraded to friends) are encouraged to write five star reviews. Oddly, I even get a few great reviews from strangers. I write to thank them but also to ferret them out: I secretly feel they must be my mother, who has become dangerously proficient on her computer. I also believe that the bad reviews are from my enemies. I will never be able to prove it, of course.

Later, a blinding flash of lucidity reveals that the bad reviews are in fact from friends, jealous alcoholic friends who write bad reviews on Amazon and then black out. I log on every hour, to monitor my triumph/debacle. It is all I can do to keep myself from setting the alarm for 3 AM so I can properly stay abreast. As part of my system, I regularly cross reference numbers with Nathan Englander’s For The Relief of Unbearable Urges and John Le Carre’s Single and Single. I also look up Memoirs of a Geisha, which has been out for well over a year and is still in the top 25. Janet Fitch’s debut novel isn’t even out yet and Oprah named it as an Oprah pick, so she’s number 6. I mentally will her under a bus.

After three weeks of this my husband forbids me to log onto Amazon.com. I agree, sensing this is what’s best, the healthy response to what has perhaps become a fixation. I haven’t put on a bra since this whole thing started, and the baby has a bald spot from being laid in his crib so mommy can log on. I have however lost nine pounds. Soon breasts won’t be an issue.

I tell everyone I am not going to check any more. Then I check. 659. I am in the sixes. So I feel good, am able to have coffee and write and even leave the house for milk. When I return, I log on but I don’t check my own sales rank. In an inspired flurry, I try to spread the good sales rank number karma around. I start looking up books I admire and writing five star reviews. It is then that I realize the gross inequity of the system.

Eudora Welty has received two stars for The Ponder Heart. I write a review for her. Since there is only the one other review, I am able to boost her average from two to four stars. One person can make a difference. I’m sure she’s appreciative. I also write a five star review for Germaine Greer, whose new book I haven’t read yet but have ordered from Amazon (40% off) and will certainly enjoy. Probably.

At five till midnight I log on. (Amazon updates not just every day but every hour, a fact that a writer friend has been kind enough to point out.) 666. This is significant; I file it away, under Coincidences That Involve Satan. Exactly fifty-eight minutes later as I am landing with a sad frenzied thud on my book site, I notice that it says Linda Hamilton is the co author if my book, instead of the reader of my audio cassette version. This does not worry me, but the fact that I am 1311 does. It makes me feel homely. I look in the bathroom mirror. Uh huh. Definitely thirteens. Additionally, a Reader From Albuquerque suggests that the best use for my book would be as a doorstop. I am finally drifting off when my infant son Pablo wakes up screaming, about two hours earlier than usual. He is cutting his first tooth -- or maybe he senses my sales rank, which I have just checked, wondering whether my numbers rise at night. 8,810. The sales rank of a high school yearbook.

It’s not checking my Amazon sales rank and customer reviews, it’s checking to see if I am licit. The mentally intact need not apply. I do not write any more, of course. That would take me away from my real work, which is checking my sales rank on Amazon.com.

I consider calling Anne Lamott and offering to be her Amazon eyes for her new book, Travelling Mercies. I could give her a status report at the end of the day (5:57 PM: Anne 29, me 922. 6:59 PM: Anne 41, me 2,004.) I don’t call her, though. I already phoned her for reassurance after the savage Kirkus review came out, and I have only two wishes left with the magic flying monkey cap. If you don’t get this reference, then you have never read:

The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.
Amazon Sales Rank: 35,623

Five stars from
Anisha Zaveri (apunisha@hotmail.com) from Bombay,India. , November 14, 1998

I THINK IT IS A VERY INTERESTING BOOK.
I LIKE THIS BOOK VERY MUCH. I ESPECIALLY LIKE THE PART IN WHICH DOROTHY MEETS THE WICKED WITCH OF THE EAST.I ALSO LIKE THE 'TIN-MAN' AND THE 'WINKIES'.

Three stars from
A reader from Bountiful, UT , October 21, 1998
A Classic Satire on the Populist Party
Most people look at L. Frank Baum's classic novel as a simple children's story, but it has a deeper significance. Baum lived in the Great Plains of the American West during the Populist uprising of the 1890s, and the characters and events of the Wizard of Oz are based upon what he observed. For example, Dorothy represents the innocent Midwesterner who must contend with the wild nature of the West (the Wicked Witch of the West) and the deceptive idea that all solutions can be found with money (following the path of gold, or the Yellow Brick Road). The Scarecrow represents American farmers, the Tin Woodsman represents American workers (his transformation from human to tin man represents industrial accidents), and the Cowardly Lion represents Populist presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan (a great orator but a pacifist, hence the cowardly lion). Following the path of gold leads Dorothy and her companions to the Emerald City, which represents Washington, DC, and the corrupt influence that money has on the city. The Wizard is the President of the U.S.--a weak and powerless humbug who nevertheless manages to convince the innocent Dorothy that it is he and not the moneyed special interests that control the land. Anyway, there is much more, but in the end Dorothy conquers nature (the Witch of the West), and with the help of the Silver Slippers (the Populist Party's Free Silver issue), finally finds her way home to truth and happiness. A wonderful book when read in the proper context.

Phew. I am finally able to have a context, something I feel I have previously been lacking by only looking up my own book. I look up a few more, just to get a sense of where I stand.

Angle of Repose The Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Wallace Stegner
Amazon Sales rank: 3,331

One star from
A reader from Minnesota, April 4, 1999
Waste of 600 pages
I was required to read this book for school. It was probably the slowest book I have ever read. Don't waste your time. The only reason I gave it one star was that I don't have the option of giving it less.

Rabbit, Run, by John Updike
Amazon Sales rank: 73,122

One star from:
jeffman38@aol.com from Chicago, IL, January 28, 1999
Thumbs Down!
I agree with the reader for New York City. This Book was a total waste of time and I dreaded every turn of the page.

One star from:
A reader from New York City, September 15, 1997
Junk
Uggh!!! Updike can't write worth spit! This is just pure junk. Not only is it dull, but it's about nobodies. A total waste!

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Amazon Sales rank: 3,585

A reader from New York City, September 17, 1997
Very bad.
“Bad reading; the descriptions are okay, but the characters stink. The heroin doesn't seem lovable and great, she's crazy and stupid. It's bad. The drawing on the cover is as good as it gets.”

A reader, July 2, 1997
Hemingway rode on the coat tails of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
None of Hemingway's work including A Farewell To Arms should be touted as "Classic". Hemingway caught a ride on the coat tails of F. Scott Fitzgerald and without him as a predecessor Hemingway's body of work would have died the timely death it deserved. A Farewell To Arms is yet another example of Hemingway's inability to forward narrative in an interesting manner or to develop characters that anybody could care a whit about.

A closer look confirms that Hemingway’s not doing well on his Amazon Customer Review Average. This is doubtless because he is dead, and can’t get people to write reviews for him. Mental email: Stay alive.

I log onto my site again. 1,590. Re-read my Kirkus review. They’ve placed it right up front so strangers can read it without breaking a sweat in the magazine aisle. Realize suddenly that the reviewer didn’t compare me to Nora Ephron, as my editor had said -- he compared me to Erma Bombeck. In abject horror, I call my friend Augusten and read it to him, and as I hear the words spoken out loud, I laugh for about a minute. It feels like surfacing for air. Kirkus doesn’t matter, according to Augusten. Who matters? I say. I don’t know, he admits. The New York Times Book Review, I guess.

I wonder what my therapist is doing right now. I call him to see. I leave a message saying that I am having some “popularity issues.” Would it be a conflict of interest to ask him to write an Amazon review, I wonder as I hit the Search key.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
Sales rank 2,130 (Unabridged hardcover)

A reader from USA, February 24, 1999
Shakespeare is highly overated
Not to deny Shakespeare’s incredible talent, but he is certainly overcredited in the creativity area. if you're looking for a true, unique and original read, i reccomend any famous ancient greek playwrite, such as aristophanes, euripides or sophacles. you'll find thier style a little less decorative, and little more simple, but still very similar (afterall, shakespeare did have the works of these men to study and emulate.

A reader from Japan, July 5, 1998
Shoddy Binding
(no review)

I admire the brevity of the Japanese reviewer. There is simply no room in Japan for the verbose. I go to the front menu of the Amazon site to glean the overall view. In Amazon’s Hot 100, Number one is Body For Life, by Bill Phillips -- a man with biceps the size of Virginia hams. Sugar Busters! Cut Sugar To Trim Fat is number 11

Apparently I have made a grave error in writing a novel. Mental Email: Stop trying to write fiction. I’m sure the Reader From DC would applaud this decision, and the Reader From NY would crack champagne. Meanwhile I write emails to my friends and sign off with my Amazon sales rank number of the moment.

“Hope your liver tumor isn’t malignant. I’m sure it’s not. 704.”

I log on at 5:45 and again at 6:01. In less than twenty minutes my sales rank went from 636 to 4501. It’s Mothers Day, I rationalize. Still, 4501. I mentally affix a cleft palate to my lip. Dinner is out of the question now. I will be sucking horse tranquilizers.

It occurs to me, not for the first time, that getting published isn’t exactly the way I pictured it. Yet there is still time to make it right. There is still time to burst into Amazon’s Hot 100. If not, I will marinate in shame and defeat, along with Stegner and Welty. And John Updike. Let’s not forget that popsickle stand loser.

Epilogue: In June of 1999, Otherwise Engaged: A Novel climbed to #35 on The Amazon Hot 100.

Nothing changed.

What We Whine About When We Whine about Writer's Block

2008-10-02T22:59:00.001-04:00

ROBERT FROST, WORKING HARD AT NOT WRITING

Every writer feels it at least once,if not regularly: the not wanting to begin, the dread writer's block, the magnetism of procrastination.every writer one i know, at least, and those whose biographies and memoirs i've read.

it's a very perverse,unnecessary banana peel step on the road to creation. i believe, against my past history, I'm gaining a little bit on it. when approaching a genuine, hard deadline (as in, the check is being printed, or not printed) i no longer wait until the last possible mo. i give myself a small buffer of time to finish writing a piece, just the slimmest wafer of time , to allow for punctuality. an idiotic, exhaustive,useless state of inner affairs, that's what procrastination and its fraternal twin, writers block is.

why do i do it? i ask you. i ask myself. it is because I'm a drama queen? I'm lazy? I'm fearful and anxious regarding both failure and success? I'm on a wholly other planet in my mind, at times, a place without time or money and a place devoid of the greasy noose of the deadline, swaying with tangible menace in front of the mind's eye? am i rebellious? spoiled, immature, narcissistic, thoughtless and glib? possessing an inappropriate sense of entitlement regarding my Creative Process? irreverent and carefree, holding nothing that can be called 'work' sacred? hedonistic, pagan, apathetic, and completely devoid of boundaries whenever the mood strikes? selfish to the BONE? reckless, slipshod, slick, feckless, haughty, distant, rude, shallow, cavalier, flippant, oblivious, arrogant, full of false pride and a shabby bravado i don't possess, but practice nonetheless to the detriment of myself, those around me, and my personal environment?

yes. all that, plus a strange feeling of desertion by any scrap of a muse. the sinking sensation of being alone with the blank page. and the blank page feels like being alone with a bomb.

tick tick tick tick tick tick.

it may be that i am only able to write, to complete, in order to stop the ticking bomb inside.

but oh, then comes a golden silence, a perfect glade of relief and childlike freedom. it doesn't last , but it's a magic time, when the writer's block and the procrastination have withdrawn...the time after one book is done, and just before the next rounds the corner, brandishing a blackjack and smoking with impatience.

'The art of Frida Kahlo is like a ribbon around a bomb" Andre Breton

The Courtesy of Fate -- Back By Popular Demand, Although It Makes Me Look Bad

2008-09-27T22:38:00.001-04:00

Coincidences and the Courtesy of Fate

It was a somewhat jarring coincidence when I first learned that the charming, intellectually fierce and sexy man who’d written me on Match.com was Jewish, 5’9” and a San Francisco divorcee named Rob – a man with the same name and general profile as my ex husband.

I later discovered that this new Rob man, however, spelled his name with an extra ‘b’ at the end. Robb. WELL, I thought. THANK GOD. A SIGN THAT I AM NOT repeating old behavior or suffering from “repetition compulsion”. Plus, this new Robb was a tawny brunette, had hazel eyes, and was 48 years old– and when I met my ex, Rob, he was a hazel-eyed tawny brunette who was 44 years old. Another differentiation.

And ex Rob is 60, now. Another GALAXY of Robs.

Although Robb and Rob had both fast tracked into my life through immediately praising my brain, my writing, my exotic eyes and my swagger, this RANDOM commonality, I knew, was just because they both “got” me. They both gave me the immediate sense of thrilled urbanity. But the resemblances ABSOLUTELY ended there…except I had immediately felt “safe” around both of them. (As it happens, this was a grand, sweeping error, in the case of my ex. To be fair, he wasn’t feeling “safe” around me either.).

Yes, I felt trusting and relaxed talking on the phone and emailing Robb, nonchalant, waiting for a window in his busy schedule as CEO of a non-profit organization, so that we could meet and hang out. This, I reasoned, was now a GOOD thing. Rebuilding Trust In Self.

Now I could hang with a man who GOT me. I could give myself a little rope, some fun. Re-Investment in Self.

I felt I’d done quite a bit of inner work. Now out from the shadow of divorce, I deserved to kick up my heels.

As Robb pursued me and we spoke on the phone and emailed, it became crystal clear that this man was different – maybe even different from all the men I’d known before. He was a breath of fresh air - a CEO, bright, unassuming, and serene and at the top of his game. Certainly, I was an altogether different woman now than the naïf that I was in the nineties, and this was not some new age pinhead karmic “test” of some sort – not a cosmic game of musical electric chairs. I had written a book about the divorce, for God’s sake. It was all cauterized out of my bones.

And since I felt nothing passionate for my ex any longer, I knew I’d fully and truly learned one big lesson: never get with charming sexy Jewish men named Rob who are 5’9” and express love by serial fucking shiksas who will never be quite bright and petite and submissive enough, not even if they manage to be Thumbelina.

I took complete absolution from the curse of the previous, disparate Rob’s.

And imagine my delight when Robb showed up at my door tonight, just as handsome as ever and made me feel like I was walking on air. I mean, just a good, solid, wicked funny and dry non-practicing Jew. (Rob had never practiced either. Who does?)

One hour turned into four, and before I knew it he had charmed the very pants off me. I can’t say I gave him much of a struggle. The man was really, really unique. And yet I felt I kind of knew him, you know? We’d just followed a very civilized and improvised path to this inevitable turning point. We were on the floor of my living room, making out in our
underpants. At some point we decided the couch was too small and had moved to the larger venue. We fell on each other like animals, really, but also very sweet, very comfortable and easy and fun and right. Our bodies just seemed to fit together, since we were both roughly the same size. In fact, you could lay a transparency of me and Robb and Rob on a light board and there would be only a few major differences. Uncanny. I chuckled at the absurdity of the coincidence, as meaningless as it was. Because Robb man was a CEO and he was 48, and…well why belabor it? That was then, this was now.

His iphone rang at one AM. I thought it was my iphone! Boy was I relieved when I realized it was his iphone. Whew. Because, you know, I am dating more than one guy; in fact I have a superglam Sushi Ran Sausalito tryst planned with another man Saturday night. You know, because the really great men need to be kept on their TOES. I’d always felt that way. I’d had another BF when I first got with my ex Rob, too. Not that it mattered, now. Right.

When Robb and I embraced goodbye at the door, it was now 2 AM. And I hadn’t let him have actual intercourse with me. More progress, more growth.

‘Goodbye,” he said. And walked to his luxury car and slipped into the night.

I stood there, frozen with a rictus smile on my face.

GOODBYE?

OH MY GOD.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Instantly, I was transported back to the night in 2000 when my husband Rob had
stood in the same spot, had hit that same mark, and very simply said “Goodbye.”

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK I chanted. I could hear the high, shrill laughter of the gods, and Jesus just tearing his hair out. I had FAILED THE Rob/Robb TEST, AGAIN.

WHEN THE MUSIC STOPPED, I HAD SAT DOWN IN THE ELECTRIC CHAIR AGAIN.

I wrung my own hands, just HORRIFIED at what had happened. And I was sober THE WHOLE TIME. I had nothing to blame this on, except my own blind vanity and my willful ignorance of the same laws, the very same signs that had landed me in the padded bitchhouse slammer eight years ago.

There was nothing to do but pick up my clothes and turn out the upstairs lights. In the morning, it would not seem better, I knew. It would seem dramatically worse. Because I wouldn’t even have the sexual afterglow from the makeout session which I was now enjoying the last remnants of: God hates me, angels fucketh with me, and there is no justice or learning to be had. Ever.

That’s when I saw it, laid out flat and smooth on my dining room table.

A watch.

A man’s watch.

A man’s sapphire crystal Victorinox Swiss Army Maverick II watch.

Robb’s watch. He'd forgotten it. I was filled with spontaneous salvation and a bright, joyous greed.

I walked quickly and with sure instinct to my front door, flipped the deadbolt shut and killed the porch light.

Then, swathed in black lace boys cut hipsters and a silk camisole, I slipped the large, solid Swiss timepiece on my wrist. A wide grin spread across my flushed face. I buckled it.

Then, in the mirror, I went to see it on me. I held my wrist up to my hair, brushing a few strands casually to one side and moistening my lips. It looked fucking amazing.

And suddenly, the whole world was righted again. JUST LIKE THAT.

I logged onto the Swiss Army website, to identify the watch. Model 2451, retail price $350. Available only from Canada and the USA.

Or, by courtesy of Fate.

the woman Orson Welles called "the greatest actress in the world"

2008-09-15T19:22:00.000-04:00

SALON.COM
Jeanne Moreau
When you visit the woman Orson Welles called "the greatest actress in the world," don't try to light her cigarette -- you might get burned.
By Jeff Galipeaux
Dec. 06, 2001 | Actress and director Jeanne Moreau spent half of the 20th century on screen. From one Age of Anxiety to another, she has appeared in more than 110 films and dozens of plays. She is, as she likes to say, "a woman with absolutely no sense of nostalgia." And like a Gaulois-smoking, pouty-lipped Energizer Bunny, she's still going and going. In the last year and a half, Moreau directed her own adaptation of Margaret Edson's "Wit"; purchased the French rights to Marie Jones' "Stones in His Pockets" and Noel Coward's "Fallen Angels"; has been dramaturge to the Opera Bastille's production of Verdi's "Atilla"; and has two films on the way to the festival and art house circuit: "Zaide," inspired by Mozart's unfinished opera; and "Cet amour-là," in which she plays the late novelist and filmmaker Marguerite Duras.
In her four best performances from the '60s, "Moderato Cantible," "Eva," "Mademoiselle" and "La Notte," Moreau demonstrates a broader range than most actresses do in their entire careers. And that's leaving out "Jules and Jim," "The Immortal Story," "Bay of Angels," "Chimes at Midnight," "Diary of a Chambermaid," "The Bride Wore Black" and a half-dozen other films. She is the heavyweight of '60s cinema, and so far, the last of the heavyweights. In the three decades since Moreau's heyday, many fine welterweights have come up through the ranks (Susan Sarandon, Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Kevin Spacey), but no one who could have handled her run of '60s films with the intelligence, wisdom, range and unself-consciousness she conveys with preternatural ease.
And it's not just the upcoming new films that make this a fine time for Moreau fans: Criterion recently brought out "Diary of a Chambermaid," her 1964 collaboration with Luis Buñuel, on DVD; "The Bride Wore Black" has been put back into video circulation; Jacques Demy's "Bay of Angels" will be rereleased in theaters this fall. And distributors have at last atoned for two home-viewing crimes: A shimmering print of "Mademoiselle" is now available on VHS, and "Eva" can at last be found in the United States.
Unavailable for years, Joseph Losey's "Eva" is a famously butchered film. Originally 155 minutes long, it was chopped down to 103 minutes by the producers. The Kino DVD contains a bonus Swedish cut of the film that runs 112 minutes, but the odds of a full version ever reemerging seem dim. And that's a shame, considering "Eva" contains Moreau's riskiest performance. Eva Olivier, as portrayed by Moreau, is probably the best depiction of a case of borderline personality disorder ever put on film. I once watched the movie with a psychiatrist, who was amazed at the intuitive accuracy of Moreau's performance. (I was told Eva would have been diagnosed "a functional schizoid" at the time the film was made.)
"You're fantastic in that film," I said to Moreau when I interviewed her, "even though it doesn't quite hold together as a movie."
"There are scenes missing," she said.
"I've heard that."
"Joe Losey was not able to do his editing."
"The Hakim brothers?" I asked, referring to the film's producers.
"I had to fight with them. I ran after one with a knife," Moreau told me.
"Really?"
"I wanted to open him up."
"I've heard they were really hard to work with."
"He closed a door just in time. Otherwise I would have skinned him," Moreau said as she smiled and lit a cigarette.
Earlier, when I arrive at Moreau's apartment building in Paris, I'm shown in by Madame Oberlin, her gracious personal assistant. She takes the flowers I've brought and urges me to sit down, but I can't. I'm in Jeanne Moreau's living room. All the chairs look important. Duras, Truffuat, Malraux -- who knows what illustrious backsides once warmed these cushions? Instead of sitting, I look around the room.
Labeled in English with blue Dymo tape, the shelves are devoted to literature, psychology and mythology. There is also a shelf holding two Caesar awards, a Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival and a best actress prize from Cannes (in its box, modestly closed). Over the sofa there is a pencil drawing of Moreau lying on what appears to be a chaise, but drawn from an angle and elevation that show off her splendid face, neck and hair; the curves of her body suggested in a few sweeping lines, softened by a blanket or a bedsheet. If I had a drawing like that of me, I'd hang it over my sofa too.
Moreau walks into the room. No trumpets. No nymphs throwing flower petals. I nearly do a double take. Those splendid eyes are not the result of some cinematographer's elaborate setup. They're huge, bronze-colored and bulge just the tiniest bit. Hyperthyroid cute, I guess you'd say.
We shake hands.
She thanks me for the flowers. I apologize for the fact that they had been wrapped in hideous cellophane.
She nods to indicate the cellophane was of questionable taste, but smells one of the roses and says again they are lovely. I ask if she minds if I record our conversation. "Of course not!" she says, "I'd be offended if you didn't." She smiles.
Before we get started, I make the mistake of trying to light one of Moreau's cigarettes. She had been smoking one when she walked in, but it was almost gone. There are four lighters, an ashtray and packs of cigarettes on the table between us. One of her trademarks is the lazy, smoldering cigarette. On screen she may light up with a tropical languor, but in real life Moreau is one of the world's fastest smokers. At least in the top 10. All I see of her hands is a whirl, and a singed filter is out of her mouth and in the ashtray, replaced by a glowing new one before I can fumble for my Zippo. "You know," I say, "I'll be a complete failure as a man and all my testosterone will sludge out onto the floor if I don't light at least one of your cigarettes."
Her pouty lips form a grin and she quickly looks me over. "Don't even try, son," she says, "you'll just get your fingers burned."
We begin by talking about her role in Joseph Losey's film. "When you play a character like Eva, does the anger stay with you? Was it ...?"
"There's no anger."
"No anger?"
"No," Moreau says. "We prepare the suitcase. Orson Welles taught me that. You prepare your suitcase -- meaning the costumes of biography. So the anger comes when it's needed. And even if on the day of the shoot, Orson would say, 'We're not shooting that scene, I don't like it anymore, I wrote another one,' I didn't mind, because being the character is like being in your own life. You know, before you go to bed, you know exactly what are your appointments for the day after ... And suddenly, someone says to you, Jeanne Moreau can't see you at 6, and you have to change gears, and come a little earlier ... Once you are in the character, whatever happens, the scene is now. New scene, new lines, it doesn't matter. If you are the character just bit by bit, then of course, you panic! 'Oh, how am I going to breathe!' and it becomes complicated. But if you have your suitcase, with all your things, bits and pieces, shoes, skirts, coat, cold, rain, heat, happiness, pain, whatever, you're ready.
"When we started shooting 'Jules and Jim,'" Moreau continues, "after three weeks, we stopped; there was no money left. But I had made another film, and had enough money, so I gave it to Francois [Truffaut]. And why did we do 'Jules and Jim' without sound? So we were free to be out, moving. The film is totally post-synched. Entirely post-synched. We only had a sound engineer the day we did the song."
After Orson Welles' European relocation, Moreau fast became his favorite pinch hitter. She appeared in three complete films and one aborted project, which for a Welles collaborator must be some kind of record. First, in 1962, she had the small role of Miss Burstner in his underrated film of Kafka's "The Trial," throwing a tantrum that reduces Anthony Perkins to mush, and finally garnering one of the best close-ups in any Welles film, magnificently framed as she shrieks, "Get out of my room!" Then, in 1965, Moreau played Doll Tearsheet, in all her unexpurgated glory, cuddling with Welles' Falstaff in "Chimes at Midnight." Three years later she was cast as Virginie, wife of Welles' curmudgeonly Mr. Clay in "The Immortal Story," his first film in color; a subdued, perfect 58-minute miniature originally shot for television, but given a European theatrical release. Finally, she was Rae Ingram in his "The Deep," shot intermittently off the coast of Yugoslavia between 1968 and 1973, when the production was aborted, following the death of costar Lawrence Harvey. (Years later, "The Deep" would be made in Australia as "Dead Calm," a terse thriller early in the careers of Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill and Billy Zane).
Welles called Moreau "the greatest actress in the world" and the admiration was mutual. To this day, Welles is a topic Moreau addresses with particular warmth. When she wrote and wanted to direct her first film, "Lumiere" (1975), she consulted many of her director friends, almost all of whom were against the idea. Even Truffaut read her script and returned it with so many pages of notes and suggestions she felt he'd turned it into a Truffaut film. "[Francois] started really not to like me at all when I wanted to direct," Moreau tells me. "The only man who was behind me was Orson." After "Lumiere," Moreau went on to direct "L'Adolescent" in 1979, and a documentary on Lillian Gish for the American Film Institute in 1984.
The experience not only added to her respect for Welles, but also confirmed a broader suspicion. "Nearly all the film directors are macho," she says, flexing her own bicep. "Except Buñuel. He was a crazy man."
At the beginning of her career, when she joined the Comedie Francaise, Moreau "was seeking something traditional, strict; just to prove to my father that being an actress is not being a whore." Moreau, who describes herself as a "woman of the 20th century," and her father as "a man of the 19th century" (and the 19th century in the center of France is basically the 18th century), was motivated through much of her early career by a desire to impress upon her father that acting was hard and serious work. She had been a bright student, and he had hoped she would become a teacher, marry and have children. When she decided to pursue acting, he became violent and threw her out of the house.
At first the rigorous discipline and hard work required by the Comedie Francaise was the perfect antidote to her father's attitude. But, within a few years, as Moreau came into her own as a performer, she began to find that environment too constricting. During this time Moreau was contacted by directors such as Orson Welles and Michelangelo Antonioni, but her contract with the Comedie Francaise prevented her from being away long enough to do anything more than take roles in quickie B-movies. As her star was slowly rising, she was asked by the Comedie Francaise to sign a major deal for more pay, more responsibilities and bigger parts. But in Moreau's words, "The only thing I could see was I would be signing for 16 more years. And I thought, shit! Oh my God!"
Moreau used the opportunity to go freelance. In 1956, she got her biggest theatrical break when she played Maggie the Cat in the French debut of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," under the direction of Peter Brook.
"And then backstage one night came a young man named Louis Malle," she tells me. "At the time I had a very serious agent who managed big stars. And this young man said, 'I've been filming with Cousteau, underwater -- that's all I've done, but I've bought the rights to a book, and I want to make a film, and I'd like you to be the star. And it's called "Elevator to the Gallows."'
"And I liked this group of young men -- young writer, young producer, young director. And I spoke to my agent about that, and he said, 'That's horrible! I've been working like mad to establish a real career [for you], and then you fall in love with these guys just because it's new. You don't know anything! This guy has only been filming fishes underwater! What does he know about a woman! A star?' I said, 'I like them. I'm going to meet them again and he's going to give me a script.'
"So I met them again, and I saw my agent and said, 'I like them. I'm going to make the film.' And he said, 'Well, it's them or me.' I said, 'OK, it's them. I'll find another agent, because I won't find anybody else like these people.' Through Louis Malle, I met Francois Truffaut, then I got in touch again with Orson Welles, then I met Tony Richardson, then I met Buñuel -- I was thinking, in fact, that was the moment in my life where I broke a taboo. It was my father's will power, trying to please him. I still think about it, though he died in 1974.
"But I'd done my best, and I don't regret I worked in a certain discipline. I learned a lot. I respect other people's time. I'm very professional, but that's my nature. I work very deep. I had a knowledge of the cinema hierarchy, with the stars having makeup, hairdo, secretary, a dresser, a car, a trailer and no relationship with the crew. As soon as you finish shooting, somebody would come up and say, 'You can have a rest.' And I said, 'Fuck 'em, I'm not coming here to have a rest, I'm coming here to work.' Then, suddenly, I discovered freedom.
"There was no makeup man, there was a hand camera working in the streets, and no way of hearing somebody tell you 'Go and have a rest, and we'll call you when it's ready.' So from that time on, I've been related to everything. Even the production; I knew how much it cost, I knew where the money went, and it was total freedom. And it was telling stories in another way. It didn't last long, because hierarchy came back again."
As her leading-lady days began to wane, Moreau made a graceful transition to character parts, lending her talents to such enterprising and unusual films as Duras' "Nathalie Granger," Bertrand Blier's neglected anarchist romp "Going Places" and Fassbinder's softcore extravaganza "Querelle," slutting around in ridiculous whorehouse garb, belting out "Every Man Kills the Thing He Loves."
Her cameos are always great unexplored tangents. Watch her in Luc Besson's fine but overpraised "Le Femme Nikita." It is an extended cameo with one glorious scene -- teaching Anne Parillaud to apply makeup -- the kind of moment directors would sell their mothers for, but one that opens a hole in the pacing and depth of the film, offering a glimpse of how a fine thriller might also have been a brilliant character study.
Moreau occupies the full color spectrum. Still, I always think of her in black and white, her face an unparalleled wash of elusive middle-gray tones, a cigarette, defying physics, hanging just off her lower lip, coils of smoke rising up into the darkness where emulsion and reality stop. An image to counterblast the most dire surgeon general's warning.
It's a dirty habit, yes, but some people are exempt. Moreau's cigarette is as much a part of her image as Monroe's blond locks were a part of hers. I don't mind an icon's secondhand smoke. Oh, sure, it kills you just as fast, but it kills you with a certain je ne sais quoi. Legends can do all sorts of things that would only make the rest of us look foolish.
Before I leave her apartment, Moreau and I look at an old press still from Vadim's "Les Liaisons Dangereuses." It's a great shot of her. While holding it she smiles, just a little bit.
"When you see something like that, you have no sense of nostalgia?" I ask.
"What for? My life is very exciting now. Nostalgia for what? No. It's like climbing a staircase. I'm on the top of the staircase, I look behind me and I see the steps. That's where I was. You and I, we're here right now. Tomorrow, we'll be someplace else. So why nostalgia?"

-- By Jeff Galipeaux