Petition for Adoption: An Open Letter to Ms. Abigail Birkenhouse

Dear Ms. Birkenhouse,

Having spent an absolutely wonderful day with you and your daughter this past Saturday, I feel compelled (and as those who know me know, once I feel even remotely compelled about anything I immediately take action on it, even when such spontaneity results in disastrous consequences albeit absorbing journal entries) to write you and make my feelings known in the only way I can, which is to boil it down to its most simplistic and simply say:

Please adopt me.

Immediately, if not sooner.

My logic behind this, while it may seem convoluted, twisted, esoteric, unfounded, and everything else you’d naturally presume to emit from a native of Berkeley, is, and I give you my word on this – absolutely sound. True, I came to this conclusion after spending just one afternoon with you strolling the aisles of an antique show, spending inordinate amounts of time debating the purchase of brooches and rings and commenting on the durability of furniture made in the day when wood was wood not particleboard (read: all those old brown paper lunch bags we threw aside as kids, peanut butter on wheat bread scrunched inside, recycled endlessly and now held together with cheap staples and covered in 2 thread count fabric) and books had actual storylines and Cosmopolitan Magazine contained actual articles, articles on travel, interviews with authors, scientific musings about new medicines and not just article upon article about how to achieve orgasm with a feather duster, true, this may not seem enough time or experience together to have come to this conclusion, but trust me: It is.

You are, quite frankly, one of the most delightful women I have ever met in my life. Sitting with you at the concession stand while your daughter disappeared into the ruckus of soon-to-be-closing booths frantically hacking out last minute bargains (she’s like me, I swear. If I ever purchased a Christmas tree, it was at 11pm on Christmas Eve. I know a bargain when I see one) and listening as you shared story after story of your growing up years, and actually, all the years of your life – was like a homecoming to me. It was, actually, like sitting down with my dad, every time I ever sit down with my dad. No conversation has ever started that a story didn’t come out of it, and until that absolutely delightful afternoon, I hadn’t had that experience for a while.

Now, truly, the adoption of another child is a serious matter. You may ask yourself why you should bother.

Well, in all honesty, I’m not quite convinced, at this point, that your own daughter and I weren’t separated at birth. There’s just too many similarities. Number one, she’s as articulate as the day is long and we share the same rather if not twisted, at least extremely pliable, sense of humor. Number two, we both have more furniture and belongings than will ever fit into our respective residences and yet we will be the last people on earth to ever: a):admit to that or b): part with any of it and you have only to set our respective dogs next to each other (both rescues, need I say more?) to open yourself to the possibility that even they were probably separated at birth. Number three, we’re both more than a little independent and have the audacity to absolutely enjoy our lives.

So you see?
It’s like I’m your daughter already.

So I hope you will give this serious consideration. I have not had the wonderful opportunity of sitting down with anyone with your particular brand of humor, grace, and gift of expression since, as I said, the last time I sat down with my dad, and most certainly not since my grandmother ‘passed away’ (although she would hate that term. “I didn’t pass anything,” I can hear her saying now, just knowing I wrote that. “I died, I got cremated, and I went to live at the base of the old pine tree in the Berkeley hills, just left of center of the greenhouse, next to your grandpa, in the house we built together. And frankly, I’m just fine with that.”) and that was a huge and wonderful gift to me.

It’s something to be appreciated in life, when you have the opportunity to be around people whose company you truly enjoy, and I certainly enjoyed yours. And while I understand that, given the fact that I’m already rather grown and really don’t require adoption, this whole idea might not be feasible for you, I completely understand.

However, should you ever want to go antiquing again, or estate sale-ing, or consignment store hopping, I’m in.

With sincere thanks for a most wonderful day,
Madeleine Beringer

Men Are From Mars, Women Aren’t

In the timeless and eternal struggle between men and women in trying valiantly to understand each other, to reach that point where you were both ‘on the same page’ and could be there through at least half a chapter, better women than myself have just flat given up. I take my hat off to them, for they had the right idea. I say that without, believe it or not, the lightest dollop of rancor or the slightest dash of sarcasm. I say it merely because it’s what I feel, right now. In addition, that is, to feeling relieved, relaxed, and more than slightly less overwhelmed than I felt when I was engaged in the Samsonific struggle (and I mean to reference there the battle of the biblical character, not at all the durability of a popular brand of luggage) of trying to see eye to eye with a man for more than 72 hours with any kind of consistency.

Having come to the conclusion that this whole optical symmetry thing is just not in the particular cards I was dealt nearly half a year ago, I’ve waived the white flag better women than myself have waved before me and life, for some reason I can’t fathom (or maybe I can, and that’s why I’m writing this) has settled back into a comfortable, non-upsy-downsy rhythm in which, perhaps, the greatest joy of my day is an early morning walk with my dog, but it beats the buckets out of the slept-through-the-alarm-because-I-was-trying-to-figure-out-a-man so-called sleep I had before now which left, at a minimum, me with less than stellar hair days and my dog entirely frustrated at a morning jog versus a joyous, leisurely sunrise stroll, at a maximum.

Here’s the thing – and this thing won’t make any more sense to those who read this blog (I still believe there may be some, maybe at least one, if you don’t count Sam the Mailman and my Avon Lead) than to those who don’t, but perhaps will, to anyone who’s ever been a single female engaged in a relationship that’s had more rough spots than your basic Contra Costa County roadway – but there’s a certain point you get to when you’ve said all the same things over and over again, and had all the same disagreements and make-ups, and ‘let’s put this behind us’s, and you’ve had, even more memorably, all the good times and the great times and the times when you were so happy it was like Christmas every day – and then been blindsided by something so trivial (when looked at in light of the big picture, and all that) and that thing, or things which had been completely dissected, discussed, analyzed, and ‘moved past’ totally derailed the relationship. And then the relationship came to life again, and you trusted it again….and this thing, or things, came up again…and one day, or night, or one morning commercial break during the Today Show, it finally dawned on you with all the intensity and surety of the first ear piercing clangs of the alarm clock the morning you accidentally set it an hour too early: I’m doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

It was Albert Einstein himself who categorized that as the definition of insanity.
No dummy, Einstein. I never quite caught on to the whole E equals MC squared thing, but this….this, I get.

Sometimes the best part of life, I’m realizing, is to accept it for what it is. Having been raised in middle to upper middle class America (I had many Barbie dolls), I always believed in the ‘Happily Ever After’ thing, and I’m not saying I’m not a believer in that now. I’m just seeing, more clearly, perhaps, than I have in a long time, that it’s not always given to you in one person. Sometimes the whole ‘happily’ thing is a mishmash of many things, and many people. And sometimes – and this really clashes with the core beliefs of someone who actually watched The Wizard of Oz and believed in those red shoes – it’s OK to come that close, and yet not be quite close enough.

Men are from Mars, and Women are Not. I said that myself. It doesn’t mean you don’t love someone. It doesn’t mean you won’t always. It just means, sometimes, that you wake up and inventory your own stuff, as it were, and realize you are such good solid friends with someone you were married to for a long time, and someone else you dated for a long time, and someone else you went for coffee with but it just didn’t pan out. Not knowing if you’ll ever have that with the person you really love (but just can’t seem to get it ‘right’ with, ‘right’ being said in the same vein as what my Grandmother once told me when I used the word ‘Normal’. “Normal,” she said, “is a setting on a washing machine, period. Don’t kid yourself otherwise.”) is unsettling, but it’s not, not in reality, the end of the world.

Maybe it’s just the beginning of something. Like realizing you’re not the first one who finally became so exhausted by something that you just had to let it go. As my Conservative Ohio Matron Turned California Hippie Mother observed (ad nauseum): “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.”

And that is, I suppose, all I have to say about that…whatever it was I was saying.

Remedial Survival Skills, 101: How To Survive An Earthquake When All You Really Want To Do Is Continue Shopping

Having grown up in Northern California, I’m no stranger to emergency preparedness, it’s just that having lived away from Northern California for so many years, I’m not very good at it. Well do I remember the earthquake drills in kindergarten, when we’d all dive beneath our desks to ‘duck and cover’, which come to think of it was a waste of time because those desks weren’t bolted to the floor so the more likely result had a tremor of any force hit would have been thirty or so five year olds pretty badly run over by heavy metal desks. Still, should the need arise to dive under a desk, I’m pretty sure I still could. I may not to this day know what the proper tire inflation is for my car, but I do know it’s a darned good idea to have a radio with batteries somewhere in your house at all times. Likewise with candles, waterproof matches, and some semblance of a seventy-two hour kit (My own 72 hour kit is woefully inadequate at the present time as it consists merely of a butane lighter, a pocket sized package of Kleenex, a tube of lipstick, three granola bars, an expired mascara and last month’s issue of Cosmo. I really need to do something about that). Finally, I doubt there’s been a single minute in my life that I didn’t know without having to think about it that should I ever feel the earth shake, I’d immediately stop what I was doing and go stand in a doorway.

I did very well with that at 4:45a.m. yesterday, all except for the ‘immediately’ part, mainly because what I was doing when my bed started to shake was sleeping incredibly well and having a wonderful dream that had something to do with a miscalculation on a bonus check that worked out incredibly in my favor and coincided neatly with a fabulous 75% off sale in the Petite Suit department of Macy’s. Much as I was enjoying loading an extremely large clothing rack, the increased shaking of the bed nudged awake some basic Native Californian survival instinct, and I woke up.

The sky, as much as I could see of it without benefit of contacts or eyeglasses (not much), was suitably gray, ominous, and what the heck, probably (from what I could remember from all those film strips in science class) indicative of ‘earthquake weather’. The shaking continued, and I was just about to bolt for the doorway when I realized it couldn’t be an earthquake. It couldn’t be, because both cats were sleeping soundly, undisturbed, in the midst of all of it. No animal will sleep through an earthquake. They’ll generally run and hide well before it even gets started.

There had to be another explanation, and I quickly uncovered it from beneath an extra blanket at the foot of the bed. It was Basil. Shaking uncontrollably. I immediately checked her nose and it was cold, a universal sign that told me (much faster and more infallibly than any $80 vet visit) that she wasn’t sick. Which could only mean….

The thunder and lightning weren’t two minutes behind my realization, and it was then that I realized it was no earthquake I had to survive, just another heart rending case of my best friend’s biggest fears: Thunder. Lightning. They have always set her off in shaking fits that are impossible to quell, no matter I did then what I have always done, the only thing I can think of doing, which really does tend to make her feel better. I wrapped her in the blanket, pulled her onto my lap, and hugged her until the storm passed, or at least the louder parts of it, which turned out to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 6:30a.m.

Which is fine, and it did give me a jump start to the day.

I suppose, if the weather forecast is any indication, I’ve got a lot of this to look forward to. There’s no real cure for it, unless you want to tranquilize your pet (I don’t, although I once allowed Gerdie, who’s long since gone to dog heaven, to have ½ of a light beer pre-fireworks in Colorado, when the local demonstration was set up in what appeared to be the very edge of our front lawn. She happily went to sleep before the first firecracker was lit). There are two ‘suggested remedies’ if you believe Ask The Country Vet in Country Living Magazine, and I’m not big on either of them.

The first, he said, is to play, on a daily basis, recorded storm sounds for your dog.
Gradually increase the volume until your dog becomes acclimated to these sounds and they no longer bother them. This to me sounds like cruel and unwarranted punishment. If she’s going to shake herself almost sick during an actual storm, why in the world would I want to play recorded storm sounds all day when I’m gone? That’s like saying, to train your dog not to chase cars, simply tie them down in the driveway and back over them once or twice until they get the message.

The second sounded more feasible, albeit not at 4:45 in the morning. Engage your dog, the vet writes, during these storms, in her favorite playtime activities. Reward with treats, and eventually she will associate storms with good times.
Somehow the idea of tossing stuffed animals around my place as she barked in excitement, her feet making a wonderful racket on the floor, didn’t seem like anything that would win me high marks at the next HOA meeting.

Never, under any circumstances, the vet writes, should you hold, coddle, console or otherwise be anything other than business as usual with your pet during a storm. This will only reinforce their fear. Disregard them, and act as if everything is normal.

That last darned near cost Country Living a subscriber, and convinced me The Country Vet had never shared space of any kind with a dog, and certainly not one of my Basil’s caliber. I’ll ignore her when she’s hurting when the day ever comes that she doesn’t immediately intuit when I am, and stops either crawling outright into my lap or at a minimum not letting me get too far out of her reach. The very idea is heartless.

So I will continue to coddle, console, and comfort.

At least until I can teach her how to brace herself in a doorway until the storm passes.

Stuff On The Steps: Is He or Isn’t He?

I suppose it’s happened to every woman at one time or another as she wound her way through the often turbulent world of Building Relationships, and it probably hasn’t been any more fun for any of them than it is for my friend right now, which is to say not at all.

Let’s just look objectively at it, I said, and I said that because she’s been thinking about it all day (probably longer than that) and hadn’t been able to get it out of her mind since we talked about it last night during one of our regular sessions on the front step where we attempt to collectively figure out the universe (or at a minimum, our own current and individual status therein) when we should be doing laundry instead. Sometimes you have to verbalize something in order to clearly see how large a space it has been inhabiting rent-free in your head up to that point.

For my part, hearing it proved true something I’ve heard over and over and over again (and once lived as a shining example of for fifteen years): Everybody has Stuff. Even in the most perfect (viewed from the outside) relationship, there’s Stuff. Nothing is as perfect as it seems and you can count on that like you can count on the perfect Kasper size four navy blue suit advertised at 60% off being out of stock by the time you get to the store. So she and The One She’s Been Dating for Six Months have Stuff, and it more or less got shaken out to dry there on the front step last night. Just when I thought if there were two people in the cosmos who didn’t have Stuff it was them, there it was all over the steps.

There are a few odd things she would like explained. My thought was simply to ask him outright about them, the most expeditious way of getting an answer and putting the whole thing to rest, but the difficulty with that – the boulder standing in the way of clearing the road, so to speak – is that she doesn’t want to ask him outright because doing that would make her appear: a) needy, b): possibly somewhat insecure, and c) : really interested in the future of the relationship (not a good one, incidentally, to put out there because she isn’t sure where he ‘is’ in the relationship because he never says anything outright about how he feels which could indicate he is either: a) emotionally reticent or b): your basic guy). So, in order to build and develop this relationship she’s really committed to but doesn’t want yet to be rendered vulnerable by admitting directly that she’s probably already committed to, she’d like a few things explained.

Having heard them, I would, too.

First, there’s the little matter of accommodations. Sometimes in every adult relationship you share an alarm clock, which is fine. The problem in this case is that the alarm clock is always at her house, never at his. While he’s hit her snooze alarm many times over the last six months, she’s never once even seen his.

Second, when questioned about this, he comes back with a nonchalant, “It’s just easier to come to you.” Note: I will admit I’ve said this one myself, but will recuse myself by saying it is simply the truth. My dog has been to my significant other’s house. It has a yard. A big yard. With a more comfy couch and much bigger window the better for guarding, and a bigger bed with more room for her to stretch out on so in the rare case we don’t go over there, I have to put up with her just plain being mad at me because that’s where she’d rather be.

Third, the cell phone. It’s never set on ring, just on vibrate. Which is fine if you’re sitting in a business meeting, odd if you’re spending a weekend together (which they’ve done, but again, never at his house – always camping, which still does not entail access to his snooze alarm and which leads me to wonder where they’ll spend their weekends once the snow flies). On one trip together, driving along, she had her hand on his leg and felt his phone vibrate. He pretended it hadn’t, and was vague about why he didn’t answer it or even look to see who’d called, which segues rather oddly into…

Fourth, on a recent visit (yes, to her house again) she stepped out of the shower and he made a far too animated show of pretending he hadn’t just been texting someone and this would seem even more suspect because…

Fifth, there was an occasion when her cell phone had a dead battery and when she grabbed his phone to send a text, he was inordinately concerned about the fact that she had his phone in her hand and might actually see whatever information was on it. Not that she was going to go scrolling through his contact list but it did seem a little strange.

Sixth, although many opportunities have arisen where she could meet members of his family, he’s staunchly refused to make the introduction. Note: while this seems odd to me again, I have to admit I can see where it might make sense. There are certain members of my family I wouldn’t introduce to anybody and not especially someone I cared for, mainly because I wouldn’t want to potentially scare them away by leaving them wondering if perhaps such blatant strangeness might somehow be genetic.

There’s more, but I’ll leave it at:

Seventh: When asked in all sincerity, “Are you here for just a good time, or for a long time?” his answer was a blithe, “Can’t I have a good time for a long time?” which might have been a nice answer under different circumstances, it’s just that it was spoken a little cavalierly and not too many hours before he once again hit her snooze alarm.

I’d like to say none of the above means anything at all and she should blindly follow her heart, but I know better. Sometimes following your heart gets you into all kinds of uncomfortable situations, to put it mildly. My cousin was married for seven years and had a five year old daughter with a man who’d convinced her his parents were deceased. It was only when she accidentally encountered a woman in a department store her daughter ran to and called “Grandma!” did it come to light that her husband had been secretly seeing his very much alive and living across town parents, and dragging his daughter into the secrecy, for years – simply because his parents refused to accept his marriage to someone who once worked in a Vegas casino (and, OK, OK, as a dancer in San Diego). Interestingly enough, the name he’d given her, the last name they both carried, was as phony as the deceased parents story (Yes, dating was tough in the years before Google).

I once, years ago when I was twenty-something and maybe that excuses my ignorance, dated someone exclusively for five months only to have the relationship end when he announced out of the blue one Friday night that he couldn’t see me any more because the other woman he was seeing was pregnant and he thought he ought to get married.

People aren’t always what they seem to be.

Don’t get me started on all those ‘6’ tall’ Match.com people who were 4’6 if they were anything, and who actually thought if they got through the majority of the date without standing up, I’d probably not care anyway after that second cup of coffee. Likewise the ‘single’ who evolved to be ‘separated’ and not even that, really, more just ‘temporarily dating while I work things out with my wife’. There are good people out there, it’s just that they’re so randomly mixed in with other people whose intentions are about as clear as algae-ridden pond water.

No, all things considered, I can’t blame her for wondering. And while she wants me to promise that as soon as I get home tonight I’ll knock on her door and we can talk this through, I really don’t know what I can say except to say when all else fails, ask the person outright. If you care about the relationship, the worst thing that can happen is you’ll have your doubts cleared up, one way or another.
Regardless, that’s got to be easier than walking around with them.

Besides, winter is coming and once we can’t sit on the steps anymore, I’m not sure how we’ll figure out the universe so it would be a good idea to wrap it up as soon as possible.

A Short Walk Through The Absolutely Random

I recently received an email that cracked me up. It was a long list of observations by an anonymous author, little things this person found ridiculous. The gamut had pretty much been covered, but it started me considering a few ridiculous things myself.

Such as:

I’ve never understood those ubiquitous instructions on the shampoo bottle, “lather, rinse, and repeat”. If the stuff was any good, shouldn’t it have gotten my hair clean on the first try? Conditioner only needs to be applied once, so I say whoever’s making the conditioner should take over making the shampoo, too.

I can understand a child proof cap on a bottle of aspirin. What I can’t understand are the lids on glass jars in general, and particularly on those little jars of crushed garlic I absolutely can’t make a decent spaghetti sauce without. I couldn’t get one of those off with a pipe wrench (I know, I’ve tried) and I find them discriminatory against females who live alone because unless you’re willing to traipse over to your neighbor’s and ask her husband to pry it off in the way he only can because he goes to the gym to actually work out, not just to ogle the Women Only Advanced Yoga class in progress, you’re pretty much out of luck when it comes to ever getting that jar open.

Why is it that men get such a bad rap for staring at women, ‘objectifying’ them, when women are, if not just as bad, actually worse? I was sitting outside with Lainie last night when the new tenant in the condo across from mine came strolling through the courtyard. Not strolling, exactly, more like --- displaying himself for the enjoyment of the female portion of the world – and we openly ogled, absolutely ‘objectified’, certainly enjoyed, and never once did it cross either of our minds that, “I’m sure there’s so much more to him than his looks!” or, “We should be ashamed of ourselves for being so shallow.” Yet we think for some reason men should think these things and we get all bent out of shape at them when they don’t.

There should be an immediate and eternal ban on television commercials for any kind of feminine hygiene product. There’s just no way to discuss them, present them, or explain them that’s not intrinsically stupid and vaguely offending. We all know what they are, what they’re for, and where to find them when we need them. We don’t need fields of flowers/classical music/volleyball games on the beach/candlelight/moonlit rides in a gondola, etc. to illustrate the need.

Ditto the above for birth control. No matter how cinematic the ad, the fact remains that birth control isn’t going to change your life. It’s just going to prevent you from creating one.

If it was a requirement for membership in Match.com that you possess the ability to exchange ten literate emails before requesting a personal meeting, Match.com would have no members at all. If it was a violation of Match.com policies to use the word ‘cuddle’, about half of all profiles for men over forty would disappear. If you were ineligible for membership if you used the phrase, “I prefer meeting face to face, it’s so much more personal” in an email, there would be no profiles for men over fifty.

It’s unjust that a broken heart will kill your appetite but when you’re happy you can’t seem to get enough pasta, popcorn, ice cream and French fries. The only way to stay thin when you fall in love is to give up lunch completely and convince yourself that solitary Triscuit is honestly all you wanted for breakfast.

I try not to think too much about what on earth ‘chicken by-products’ might be every time I refill my cats’ food dish.

I once went through a four month phase where I would eat a frosted cinnamon Pop Tart every morning for breakfast, and actually looked forward to it. I can’t imagine eating a Pop Tart today. Not even if I was really, really hungry.

The biggest reason I don’t buy a new television is that I can’t figure out how to unhook the cable/stereo sound and reconnect it to a new set without having to ask someone else to do it for me, and I’d rather not have to ask for help with something that should be so basic.

I don’t understand where that universal ‘dog smell’ comes from, creeping up about two weeks after the last trip to the self-service dog wash, especially on an indoor dog. She should smell like cinnamon-pumpkin candles and Clean Linen Airwick spray, not like the inside of an old tennis shoe, but that’s not the way it works.

I regularly pull so much hair from my brushes I am amazed I have so much hair on my head, and am convinced it either regenerates itself every night when I’m sleeping, or someone is secretly entering my bathroom and using my brush when I’m not around.

I’m perfectly aware that my $28 eye cream is no more effective in the long run than a $4 bottle of Oil of Olay, but somehow the fact that it’s more expensive makes me feel like it’s also more effective.

I still prefer my sandwiches without the crust but have resigned myself to not cutting them off any more because at some point you have to become an adult about lunch.

I have never seen the need to care one way or another whether my purse matches my shoes. What I care about in a purse is whether or not the strap works and does it have a pocket where I can throw my wallet so I don’t have to let it share space with a lipstick that will, inevitably, come open and get rose colored streaks all over it.

About a year ago someone left an anonymous white basket of pink flowers on my doorstep. I never found out who it was, but it was one of the nicest things that’s ever happened to me.

I’m terrible with names. I don’t like to admit it but I remember most of my neighbor’s dogs names and very seldom their names and sometimes I feel really bad when they call me by my first name because it reminds me I should pay more attention.

I have never understood why it matters so much what picture goes on a postage stamp. I don’t look at postage stamps. Postmarks, yes. I think we should have a picture on a postmark, if it’s so important to put a picture on something.

Yesterday I received a special email offer from my bank to ‘personalize’ my debit card by uploading my favorite photo. I deleted it. It would seem wrong to me on many levels to want to show someone a picture of my dog and have to pull out my Visa to do it.

I always say I would like to learn to change a tire, but that’s not true. What I really want is never to find myself in a situation where I would have to.

It’s supremely unjust that the only cures for PMS are pregnancy and menopause.

I miss the sound of a typewriter, but I could never miss changing the ribbon.

I think everyone in a crosswalk should move faster than they do. Those three seconds I have to wait for them to cross far enough that I can make my turn feel like hours.

The last time I got a speeding ticket I had to fight back tears. The one time I got a ticket for letting my dogs off leash, I did cry. It seems I’ve been through an awful lot bigger things in my life, but somehow those were the ones that made me feel the most that I’d failed at something I really didn’t ever want to fail at.

And finally:

Few things make me happier than the feeling I get when I’ve just finished an absolutely incredible book and realize I have three more by the same author I haven’t read yet sitting in my bookcase.

One of the nicest things about growing up and leaving home was knowing I would never have to eat another poached egg unless I chose to. I’ve never chosen to.

Duped: Thoughts On A Lie

I believed every word.

Every single word.

I trusted every paragraph, every nuance, every scene, every second of every minute of every one of almost five hundred pages and I was so touched, so moved, so impressed I recommended the book to someone with one of those “You’ve got to read this, you’ll love it”s I don’t put out there unless I mean them.

Like Oprah before me, I remove that recommendation.

Turns out “My Friend Leonard” is no friend of mine and I’d never have known if I hadn’t enjoyed it enough to Google the author, James Frey. Which led me to the Smoking Gun article, “The Man Who Conned Oprah”, a highly detailed piece of investigative journalism thoroughly and completely shooting down (no pun intended but I’m leaving it) pretty much everything he wrote in his first book, ‘A Million Tiny Pieces’ and by default, it’s sequel, the book I’d just finished. In a nutshell, virtually nothing recounted in this ‘nonfiction, memoir’ ever happened. To put it another way, the stuff that did happen would fit in a nutshell with space left over and never required five and certainly not nearly five hundred pages.

The Smoking Gun article brought me to a link to the Oprah show in 2006 where Oprah had Mr. Frey back as a guest, basically to thrash him on national television for lying to her (she’d recommended the book in her book club, and we all know what that means. The book sat on the New York Times Bestseller list for over three months), misleading her fans and casting aspersions by default on the credibility of her book club. Turns out the publishing house was forced into a class action lawsuit of over two million dollars, refunding money to people who’d purchased the book and felt ‘cheated’.

I try not to be completely black and white on things, but certain things I stand firmly on. Very near the top of that list is this: If it’s fiction, say so. If it’s a fictionalized memoir, it’s creative nonfiction and I’m fine with that if it’s labeled as such. If it’s just flat made up every step of the way, it should never be touted as a memoir and never say ‘nonfiction’ on the inside cover. This is because people trust those designations, they put some faith in their allocation, and that trust is placed because it makes it easy for them to know what they’re reading, and to find out that designation is a lie does not leave a good impression of the author in the reader’s mind.

It leaves merely a visual of the reader bashing the author over the head with the book, several times.

If you miss on the designation, or you’re just not sure, throw in a disclaimer. What’s one more paragraph? Something helpful, something along the lines of, “…parts of this story have been altered to protect the identities of it’s characters…”, or, “…I was kind of hungover when I wrote it so I’m not sure a lot of this stuff happened exactly as I said it did…”

From the Oprah site I pulled up a Vanity Fair article, this from 2008, two years after Oprah basically ruined the man. His agent fired him, his publisher fired him, his friends deserted him, and the press pulverized him and continues to do so to this day. The movie deal he had in the works was canned. Pretty rough stuff but at the time I read it, having just been moved, drawn in, and in awe of his ‘true’ story, I felt almost, and as sad as it is to admit this, vindicated (If it’s fiction, just say so. When nonfiction books start lying to you, there’s a problem).

Turns out he’s written another book, and more links, to reviews of that one. The LA Times slaughtered it, the NY Review of Books called it something along the lines of a duffle bag of dog doo, and the excerpt I read didn’t move me to anything but a desire to stop reading. Ironically, Mr. Frey commented that with this new book, he was ready to ‘show the world that I can write fiction’, yet it was some of the worst writing I’d ever read. The best ‘fiction’ came out of his keyboard when he was writing ‘the truth’.

Bizarre, and an experience I’ve never had with a book. I think this bothers me so much because I’ve been mislead and disappointed many times over by movies (I actually thought ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ was going to be worth seeing), television shows (I thought the Seinfeld spin-off with the ‘George’ character, was going to be funny), magazines (Self magazine recently proclaimed I would be ‘Hot by Saturday’ and no matter how much grapefruit juice I inflicted on myself I wasn’t even warm by Sunday and was still in the same dress size) and sales flyers (that’s sort of a given but I’m including it, anyway) . I put a tremendous amount of faith in books, possibly because I’ve done it my entire life and never had it turn on me.

Another new experience for me: I now own a book I don’t want. I put it back in the bookshelf because I’d finished it and that’s where books go once I finish them, unless I loan them out (and how can I loan this one out, knowing to do that is to encourage a lie, to say ‘here’s this great story, it’s non-fiction’ and knowing it’s not) and I’m not quite sure how I feel about that, either, but uneasy is a good start.

I really don’t want the book, yet I’ve never thrown a book away in my life, my dog doesn’t eat books (just eye glasses, especially those with higher end frames) and I can’t imagine donating the book anywhere because again, why pass on a deception.

So I’m stuck with it. I’m half tempted to return it to Quality Paperback Book Club as they’re the ones who sent it to me to begin with, but can’t do that because I would never have received it at all if I’d refused my Main Selections on time so basically it’s my fault, not theirs.

I’m truly bothered by this and had to get it out of my system. What makes it worse is this: It was truly one of the best pieces of fiction I’ve read in a very long time. The author claims he submitted it as fiction but the publisher, knowing memoirs were the ticket at the time, encouraged it to be published as such and actually rejected it unless that’s the form it took. The man wanted his book published, and you can’t fault him entirely for pursuing that. The $50,000 advance alone would have been a lot of temptation to resist.

It’s just that I enjoyed it so much, I wish he’d had a bit more patience and kept following his truth in the marketing of it, holding on for someone who would accept it as fiction. In the final irony, if that had been the case, it would have been loaned out by now, and not sitting on a bookshelf in my place (albeit on a lower shelf where I’m hoping the cat will swipe it to the floor and the dog – maybe if I cut back on her food for a bit and she gets hungry enough – will give paperback a chance).

So I’m stuck with it. Unless, of course, someone crosses my path someday who has an odd fondness for being entertained and blatantly lied to simultaneously, in which case they’re welcome to it.

How Not To Put More Time In Your Life

I’m not apparently doing so well in my campaign against meeting any new neighbors, and time is running out. On October 7th Lainie will be gone (well, not gone, exactly. More like relocated four blocks away and until she gets a washer and dryer installed is planning to continue to bring her laundry by, and depending on whether she likes her new pool better than the pools here I’m sure I’ll see her throughout the summer, too, and there’s always something on HBO she can’t watch unless she’s at my place so no, on second thought she’s going nowhere but my point remains my point) and I need to be more adept at not meeting the new tenant than I was at not meeting her. Which might not be as difficult as I think, Lainie being the type of person who’s going to meet you whether you’re up for that or not simply because that’s the way she is.

Still, my resolve is there. I’ve honestly decided I don’t want to know any more people. It’s too tiring, it takes too much time out of my day (I wasn’t kidding about those nine hours), and it makes it very difficult to pass through the courtyard on any given evening without being stopped for conversation, even when I’m doing my best to ignore people, as I was last night. It had been one of those days where you’ve had enough email, phone calls, conversations, and politely requisite inanity to make you want nothing more than to not have to say another word or speak another greeting until the beginning of another new day (there’s a theory out there that this is something called Hospitality Fatigue, brought about by saying “Good morning”, “Good Evening” and “Good Afternoon” – hopefully not in that order, exactly – to countless strangers you pass in the course of your day. The condition is worsened by repeatedly exclaiming, “That would be my pleasure!” and “Absolutely!” when those are the last sentiments in the world you can imagine, but this person on the other end of your phone has just decided they must take a very important meeting with you on Sunday afternoon no less which means – when you should be in Levi’s and a baseball cap, you will once again be in a suit).

The white-haired woman from the southeast corner unit was standing in the courtyard, watching her poodle sniff the grass, and she smiled and waved as I went by, or rather, as Basil was dragging me by.

“You look far too pretty to be walking a dog,” she said, and that was a very nice thing to hear but also dangerously resembled the beginning of a conversation.

“Oh, more like she’s walking me,” I said, but returned her smile and ducked inside to the mailboxes where I was promptly confronted by The Girl Who Lives Below Me and for some reason she very nearly glowed with good will to the entire world and most pointedly toward me. I did a double take at her smile because it’s not something you see terribly often.

“Hi there,” she said, brushing past me on the stairs. “You look really pretty!”

“Thanks,” I said again, and thought it might be time to consider, at least every once in a while, leaving the building sans baseball cap and Levis, in something more dressy. I had a simple suit on, and couldn’t imagine it was worthy of not one but two comments but I suppose it’s a real departure from what I wear when I’d rather just be comfortable, which is just about all the time I’m not in a suit.

I waited until 8:00 to venture to the Designated Dog Area, not wanting to get caught up in the usual ‘dog traffic’ that seems to be there every evening a half hour earlier. Basil could tend to her business, and with any luck I wouldn’t have a single conversation with anybody.

That was my plan, and I intended to stick to it.

For the record, I failed miserably. I was halfway through when I was stopped by The Young Married Couple With The Very Old Red Dog, and we chatted about a recent motorcycle trip they’d taken to Moab. Once free of them, I rounded the corner and stepped literally right into Stephanie, who is best friends with someone I used to work with, lives on the third floor, southwest corner, and has two dogs (a bulldog and a cocker spaniel), so obviously we had to catch up on what was new with That Person I Used To Work With and of course, in the world(s) of our dog(s). That took a while.

Finally, The Designated Dog Area.

Not a soul in sight. I slipped off Basil’s leash and let her begin her nightly prowling around. In about fifteen minutes she seemed ready to return home, so I re-fastened the leash and away we went.

Away about ten steps, anyway. It took just that long for us to encounter a woman I’d never seen before, about my age, with a dog very similar to Basil, just older, and black. Neither of us extended a greeting at first, but when your animal is straining at your leash to get at someone else’s animal likewise about to exhaust the maximum strain capacity of their own leash and sniff out a ‘hello’, you pretty much have to say something.

Which meant, in a nutshell, my campaign failed even further.

There went another ten minutes. I learned her name was Maggie, she lived two buildings over, she’d bought her place the same month and year I bought mine, she was divorced (from an Aquarius, she offered, as if it explained it all), she had two grown kids and just the one dog, worked as a paralegal, thought the pizza at Manetto’s up the street was much better than the pasta around the corner, and gosh it was so great talking with me she hoped we’d run into each other again.

Which, I’m quite sure now, will absolutely happen. She was, after all, really nice. Just as everyone is that I’ve met, and who make my treks across the courtyard that much longer. I suppose it’s time I resigned myself to the fact that unless: a) I move, or b) overcome my almost genetic predisposition to small talk with relative strangers (and I don’t predict either happening any time soon), this is just the way it is and is going to be. So ironically, it seemed, a mere week or so after deciding I was at my limit of people I wanted to know, my limit has expanded to include yet someone else.

I thought about that before I fell asleep last night, especially after spending more minutes with Lainie, and taking two phone calls from Book Club Ladies who just ‘wanted to catch up’, as if anybody had fallen that far behind, our only having cancelled Monday’s meeting due to the holiday. I thought about that and realized, if I could deduct all these minutes from my evening, it would likely be at least an hour and a half earlier, and I could be finishing that Tom Wolfe I started Saturday within minutes of finishing another (the man’s writing is addictive) instead of having to stop reading at the end of a chapter because if I didn’t I wouldn’t get enough sleep.

Tomorrow, I thought.

I’ll just try it again tomorrow.

My resolve restored, I slept somewhat like a rock and had Basil out the door in the morning with enough time that I didn’t have to worry about traffic and as I headed to my car it occurred to me that, much as I like people, it’s nice to have a few minutes coming and going that you just don’t have to deal with them. I’d say enough “Good morning”s at work, I thought, feeling the beginning of Hospitality Fatigue stirring. By the time I’d progressed to the “Good Evening”s, a little silence would be great. Like a tonic.

Just as were the few moments of silence I enjoyed until I was halfway across the parking lot.

“Well good morning, Young Lady!” The familiar booming a.m. greeting from Bill, returning from the work out room, and I suppose, as I’ve observed before, you’d have to be his age to say it so genuinely. “You have a great day!” he said, “and if you need me, I’ll be…”

“On the golf course,” I finished for him, and therein concluded our morning routine.

Of course Maggie was just entering the carports then, too, so we ‘got all caught up’ on whatever it was we hadn’t talked about the night before, and there went a “Good morning!” and a “Have a great day!”, and I wasn’t even at work yet.

Much as I dislike admitting complete defeat, I think it’s time to admit this particular campaign is a lost cause.

Apparently the only way I’m going to put more time in my life is to just talk faster.