She's So the One!

It's resolution time--again!
One should be wary of speaking for others, but I think that it's safe to say that resolutions universally smack of instant guilt. Just look at that list of yours. Whether it's actually written down or culled from memory, which is to say, from decades of utter shame and remorse, what does it tell you? What, exactly, is supposed to happen? What would accomplishing each and every resolution require of you? 

    It would require a complete metamorphosis, a rearranging of your entire genome. There are, you must admit, people who make resolutions and stick to them. They resolve to be a better friend, drive less, walk more, get organized, write down--as opposed to "reset"-- passwords, be a more conscientious correspondent, be on time, answer all their e-mails, shave their legs, even in winter, just in case they should require an ambulance and have to face a handsome doctor half their age. You know some of those people personally, perhaps even admire them, but honestly, is this you?

     Are you, like them, in constant contact? Are you incontrovertibly terribly important? Does your iPhone go off during lunch with a series of Bings? Bing! Do you have an e-mail? Bing! do you have a text? Bing! Do you have a reminder?

     Do you pay immediate attention to it? Do you interrupt your luncheon companion in mid-bite of her pesto linguine to say, "Excuse me, I know this is rude, but I have to take this?" Do you not even know that it's rude? Are you not even aware that right this minute, you deserve to be beaten over the head with a plate full of pasta?

     Or do you ignore it? Is your phone actually turned off? Have you forgotten to bring your phone with you? Are you absolutely certain that you know where it is? NO???

   Are you prepared to let what happens happen and make something out of it? Can you turn a potential set-back into an opportunity? Possibly even a great story? 

     Yes??? 

   OMG!  as Angel, a main character in our story, would say, you are just like me, Belle! You are one of my people. I love you. And so will your friends. Call them. Go have lunch.   

     And have a Very Happy Guilt, Shame and Remorse-Free New Year!!! 



     



    

    

She's So the One!

Well, I'm Anonymous #2, and have a little bit to say about yesterday's blog, by Anon.#1.
You might not have read this, but she said she that at one time, she was living in (gasp) sin! I think that now we can all finally relax. As my own mother put it, my mother, a proper lady who refused to recognize certain body parts in much the same way that the United States once refused to recognize China, "Now, dear, we don't have sin anymore."

   She was living with my father at the time, and though that might  sound rather conventional, it wasn't. It wasn't just that they were no longer married. My father had left her, married someone else, and moved with her to Spain. Thirteen years later, that woman died. 
        
   At which point, my father sold his house, packed up his belongings, got on a plane, and moved in with my mother. What could she say, anyway? In addition to there being no sin anymore, she said, of those astonished to see her suddenly on the arm of a man, "Oh, tongues are wagging around here!"  

She's So the One

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I did say I'd let all the Anonymouses speak for themselves, so here is Anonymous #1 weighing in on an early jobs before she went pro:

When I turned 16, I had my first summer job, doing credit checks for the father of a classmate who owned a small loan agency (Both the agency and the loans were small.) It was a window into the lives of people struggling to make ends meet and an industry preyed on their poverty. 
     The next summer, I worked for a print shop that put out a magazine for the construction industry, and counted the days till I could leave for college. There I snared whatever odd job was posted on the bulletin board. Once, I read The New York Times to a blind woman, and another time I modeled, but only once, when a sweater manufacturer decided to use real college girls in a fashion show. I stuck out my meager chest and strutted up and down the aisle, imagining a new and lucrative sideline for myself, but I lacked the poise that somehow came naturally to my colleagues. That was the end of that.
     My first college summer, I enlisted in the legions of students working as waiters and waitresses at summer resorts. I was hired by one of those grand old lakeside places in the Adirondacks where families once came for weeks at a time, but now hosted conventions where drunk insurance agents thought it was hilarious to run their fingers over the rims of wine glasses, marveling at the squeaky sounds they created.
     To learn to balance on one upraised arm a large, oval, metal try filled with plates topped with metal covers, stacked atop one another, and other waitressing skills such as flashing big smiles at those insurance agents in hopes of big tips. For three days, I trailed a veteran of two previous summers. And movie buffs might be interested to know that the waitress I trailed was a young Floridian named Faye Dunaway. Of course, she wasn't THE Faye Dunaway at that point, merely a theater arts student. But several years later, she was on Broadway. When I knew her, she was a broad-shouldered brunette, and I have always marveled at how she morphed into the slim, fragile blonde of "Bonnie and Clyde" fame.
    My roommate that year in the Adirondacks was petite and cute, and for those reasons, and also because she could never have managed those heavy trays, she was appointed "jelly girl," a cushy post because all she had to do was serve jellies and relish. She had a summer romance with a counselor she met at a nearby boys camp named John Lahr. That would be THE John Lahr, drama critic for The New Yorker, and the son of the famous Cowardly Lion. One morning he sent a canoe for us and his kids cooked us breakfast.
     I see I have gone on too long here. I didn't even get to my two summers working at Howard Johnsons on Long Island, living in sin with my husband-to-be in a moist garage apartment where a mushroom grew up through the bathroom floor. Every evening I would come home with the pockets of my grungy green and white uniform weighed down with quarters, and we would count my tips. I looked forward to each day at work to my free scoop of ice cream. My favorite was Swiss Chocolate Almond.

     The mere mention of a typewriter has stirred the far reaches of memory. 

     I didn't even have a typewriter for the longest time. And I never learned to touch-type because Typing and Virgil were taught in the same time slot at my high school, so you had to choose.

     In college, I had to borrow other people's to type papers.

    When I worked at Vogue in 1967 and '68, I had a big IBM Selectric, gray, I think. A cherry red Selectric was something to aspire to then.

     Later, when working at the Philadelphia Evening and Sunday Bulletin, which everybody in Philadelphia still read in 1969 and '70, I had a metal desk the color and approximate size of an aircraft carrier, but with chrome trim like a 1950's kitchen table, and a depression in the center front from which one could cause to surface quite majestically--grip, flip, roll, ka-BOOM--an enormous manual typewriter bolted to an impressive mechanism with many moving iron parts. What a gizmo! 

     The Presto! Change-o! of its arrival out of the depths was irresistible, but typing on it took muscle; you had to hit each key hard enough to make an impression on all six of the carbons in the six-copy copy sets we typed our stories on.

    When I bought my first computer in the 1980's--a KayPro II with no modem and no hard drive--I broke three keyboards in a row before I managed to lighten my touch.   

     

That shoe that did not get thrown across the room? It would not have been a Manolo Blahnik. Nor would it have been a Donald Pliner, Taryn Rose, or any other fabulous, and fabulously expensive, designer shoe. Writers, unfortunately, cannot buy them. They can describe them.

They can describe the deliciously scanty, lacy La Perla underwear, too, that our characters have stuffed in their bureau drawers. I can't speak for all of them, but writers don't have that, either. Not that they have the pinkish tan things their grandmothers wore that came up to, and possibly above, their waist. I'm guessing here, but it's possible that we're wearing a more serviceable line, like Jockey, that have come a long way since the men's variety, with the wide elastic band that you still see at a basketball game, say, when the guy in front of you leans wa-ay over, all the better to see the foul shot. And there's also some more that you wish you didn't see....

So our characters have great shoes, clothes, underwear and sex. They also get into some trouble. 

As a matter of fact, we ourselves got into some trouble before we became writers. We were a disparate group before we settled down and got out our typewriters. I should add here that it isn't easy being several people all rolled into one, I mean talk about being schizophrenic, so I'm going to let them tell some of those Early Life stories themselves.

    So, fun, yes, but things started happening quickly. The story almost got away from me at times; I couldn't write fast enough. One main character became two, then a minor cast appeared, and disappeared. There were arguments. But, as been said, there's no meanness in this book, so no one shouted or threw a shoe across the room. Well maybe that's not true. A lot of major events happen in cyberspace. Disagreements tend to be quiet and well tempered in type. I myself hated one of the characters, a bland little guy, who had no personality, no color of any kind, zero. He was sweet, too sweet, but he reminded me of cream of wheat. And this was an artist?! Come on. 
    
    I know artists, well, one or two, not whole towns full of them, but as I recall, color is everything. Not just color, as in the white/off white controversy that I had with one ill-fated boyfriend about wall paint, but color, as in totally neurotic.  All the rooms in our apartment looked exactly the same, except that one had an easel and a small collection of carefully selected tubes of paint. They all had white walls and a plant in them. If I he took my picture when I was wearing a white dress, I had to stand in front of the plant. Otherwise, I couldn't be seen. Maybe that was the point. He wanted me to be invisible. I had dared to step into a pristine scene.

     It didn't take that long to see that I had to step out of it. We hadn't been together for more than a few weeks. At least, I didn't have much to pack. I still had my apartment; I could still go home. I could still go home to my 100% organic, somewhat chaotic room, with its mouse droppings, and its peeling ceiling. It wouldn't be forever. But for now, it was home.

      

She's So the One!

     In addition to a mention in his blog, Frank Wilson, The Philadelphia Inquirer's distinguished Book Review editor, has given us a bonus, and called our book "a remarkably sharp (if slightly satirical) take on a slice of contemporary American Society." He adds, "I say 'slightly satirical' because there is no meanness in it, which is refreshing." 

     This slightly satirical not-mean book has aroused a great deal of curiosity as to how it came to be written in the first place. I'm not sure, exactly, as I wasn't there for the conception. But a great idea doesn't take that long to germinate, and there I was, listening in. One person with one idea shared it with another person, and then there were four people who all liked the idea, but who didn't necessarily agree with how things would evolve. There were disagreements. One day, I was given a name. Then a notebook and a pencil. I took notes. And that's when the fun began.