I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies) (7 page)

“God,” even my Nana commented. “Her lentils look like they’re bolted to her rib cage. No wonder she was paddling so fast. She’s not afraid of tipping over. She’ll never drown with those lifeboats under her chin!”

“I don’t know how you can watch this stuff,” I said blankly. “There must be something better on TV than this. You have almost a thousand stations!”

“This story wasn’t too good, I agree,” Nana relented. “Tori Spelling was much better in
Coed Call Girl,
even though she was a real slut then. She’d go with anybody, she wasn’t picky. She should get together with that Partridge Family girl. Slut, meet slut!”

“I mean this station, Lifetime,” I said, getting a little frustrated. “It’s like the Wounded Woman’s Channel. Everyone gets chased, stalked, hit, becomes pregnant mysteriously, chased with an ax, or gets lured into a ring of prostitution. This isn’t real. Just how many prostitutes have you known?”

“Um,” Nana thought. “One.”

“You have not,” I replied. “You’re talking about that one girl who dated your brother Frank before World War Two. She wasn’t a hooker, she just wore red lipstick!”

“He met her in a bar,” Nana said adamantly. “Pop Pop didn’t meet
me
in a bar!”

“She was a
singer with the band,
” I said. “That didn’t make her a midnight cowgirl! What I’m trying to tell you is that this channel is crap. Can’t you watch something else, like on the History Channel or Discovery?”

“Listen,” Nana said sharply. “I’m eighty-six years old. I
am
the History Channel, and if there’s anything on the Discovery Channel that I haven’t already found out, I’ve been doing just fine without it. Believe me. Lifetime is television for women. They say it’s empowering!”

“You’re watching Tori Spelling paddling down a river with traffic pylons for knockers in
Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?,
Nana,” I had no choice but to say. “If these women were empowered, they’d be making better movies!”

But really, there was no talking to Nana about upgrading her viewing choices to something palatable, or at least something that didn’t have a “Chinese menu title,” one choice from Group A (Deadly, Dangerous, or Betrayed) teamed with one choice from Group B (Lies, Kisses, or Love), for a name. I simply could not change her mind.

And now, as I stood in Nana’s living room after getting her panicked message, I listened when she explained that her channel was gone.

“I tried to turn the TV on after the electricity came back, but all I get is this fuzzy stuff,” she said as she pushed random buttons on her remote control as the screen went from one color of fuzzy to the next. “It’s gone! It’s gone! All of it is gone! Now I’ll never know what happened to Marty Graw’s party or if the mayor told James Garner he’s sorry!”

“Oh,” I said, understanding what happened. “Your cable has to be reprogrammed. I think all we need to do is turn your actual television to channel four and it should be fine.”

Miraculously, the picture returned to Nana’s TV, and she breathed an audible sigh of relief.

“Oh, thank God,” she said. “I didn’t know what I was going to do! I thought if my TV didn’t come back on I might have to go to your mother’s but that wouldn’t work because she doesn’t watch anything but QVC. And frankly, I can’t stand that show. If I want to buy a blender, no one’s going to force me to do it by putting a stopwatch next to it and yelling every five seconds that my time is running out! And the people that call in, oh my God, to talk about things they’ve bought. I think to myself, how boring does your life have to be before you want to have a conversation about a blender? ‘You know,’ I want to tell them, ‘you know how stupid you look calling a stranger and talking about your pants on TV? “Oh, Kathy, I love my Bob Mackie stretch pants, they’re so nice, they stretch when I sit down, and they dry so fast! I bought a pair in every color!”’ What would make someone do that, I ask you?!”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Maybe her Lifetime TV went out, too.”

“And your mother,” my Nana went on, “You know, sometimes when I’m over there and she’s watching that stupid show, I’ll glance over at her and I can tell. She wants to call in. She has that certain look in her eye. She wants to call in and talk about her pants or her blender, too!”

Nana looked at me and shook her head.

“And last week, I asked her to lunch on Tuesday, and do you know what she said? She said, ‘I can’t go on Tuesday at noon. Kathy is having a show on Diamonique, the world’s finest simulated gemstone.’ I wanted to tell her, ‘simulated’ and ‘gemstone’ in the same sentence kind of cancel each other out. It’s fake diamonds! Can you believe that? Can you believe that I raised a daughter who spends most of her time in front of the idiot box watching idiots and believing in fake stuff?”

“Who would have thought?” I simply answered. “Who would have thought?”

It’s an Idiot Girl!!!

W
hen I called my parents to tell them that after seven years of trying, I had sold my book to a publishing house, my mother reacted like I had just told her I had saved fifteen dollars off my grocery bill by using double coupons and a Fresh Value card.

“Well,” she said. “That’s very nice.”

But really, I shouldn’t have expected anything more or anything less. In my family, nobody wants to know anything unless you’re fine, and if you’re fine, then we don’t need to talk about it any further. We’re devout, practicing, sixth-generation Avoiders, so if you have any problems, you keep them to yourself because everything else is fine. So don’t ruin it for the rest of us.

“After seven years, Mom!” I cried, trying to push it.

“I know,”
she replied. “That’s what you said! I heard you!”

“
Seven years,
Mom!” I repeated, really trying to force the point.

“ARE YOU ON A CELL PHONE?” she yelled into her receiver. “ARE YOU IN A BAR? WHY CAN’T YOU HEAR ME? HAVE YOU BEEN SMOKING THE POT?”

It didn’t matter, anyway. I knew my mom was happy. For the better part of a decade, she’d borne witness, as all of my family had, to my efforts to get my little book out into the world. Admittedly, I was a nave columnist at my college newspaper when I had collected enough pieces to be considered a book. My book. A finished book. I thought that naturally, I had written a book, now I’ll send it off to the publishing world and get this little book published. After all, why not? I’d gone through all the trouble of writing it! I sat down and printed out my sample chapters, letters of introduction, and contact information on very expensive paper, gently slid the packets into envelopes, addressed them to the seventy book publishing companies across the country, and mailed them off.

Soon, I was sure, I’d be hanging with Susan Sontag and Fran Leibowitz by the pool, chiding my new pals, “Another margarita for you, Miss Skunk? And you can go ahead and put your hand down, Frannie, you’re not getting another gin and tonic until I see you in a skirt, you cuckoo!”

James Lipton’s people would leave a message saying that although it’s not standard protocol, they’d love to have me featured on
Inside the Actors Studio.
I’d start practicing my dramatic looks on cue whenever I heard tragic-sounding music and scribbling a short list of my most adored swear words, accompanied by a coy, shy giggle when I uttered them. In a shocking surprise that reveals just how much in-depth research goes into one of James’s shows, he would demand a serious moment in which he would cock his head slightly to one side and say, “QVC? The first thing you bought with the money from your first bestseller was not a meat preserver, not Bobbi Brown makeup, not a trove of Diamonique, but QVC. All of QVC. And then you gave it to your mother. Tell us.”

“Well, James,” I’d say bashfully, “she just dreamed of having her own show on QVC, but the network said no. I mean, the woman just wanted to talk about her pants—and she’s given me so much. She’s a giver, you know. She gives and gives and gives. And I” interrupted by a swell of emotion—“excuse me, please. Just one moment, one . . .”—lengthy pause during which I look up and blink several times to regain composure—“and I just wanted to give something back to her. She’s a religious pilgrim, you know. A
giver.
”

And then, just when I had narrowed down my favorite profanities to twenty-four in preparation for James’s show, I got to use every last one when I opened a thin envelope and read the letter from a renowned publishing house, one by one.

Each said I sucked.

Each said I was “not right for their needs.”

Each wished me “good luck” in my pursuit to get my book published. And they meant it, the same way my mom meant it when I told her I had finally found a boy that liked me back.

“What does that mean, I ‘don’t fit their needs’?” I yelled into the air at no one. “The boy who likes me back once said the same thing, but a couple of drinks can change all that!”

Then, months later, I got a thick envelope in the mail. I clutched it to my chest, my heart churning, smiled, and raced inside my house to open it. I was ready to be redeemed, ready to tell James Lipton my whole painful story, which I had no doubt would bring him to his feet in a rage never before seen on Bravo. Inside, there was no rejection form letter, only a copy of my sample chapters on expensive paper that now had food stains and what looked like the remnants of a bloody nose covering the first page.

Then, because being a poor, chunky girl with bad skin and Arlo Guthrie hair wasn’t a steep enough incline for a quick slip down my self-esteem slide, I repeated this ritual year after year after year.

And year after year after year, I still wasn’t meeting anybody’s needs except Hostess’s and Marlboro’s.

Finally, after seven years of trying to get my own book, I probably should have given up and adopted someone else’s by changing my name legally to Anne Heche or Rosie O’Donnell, because they didn’t seem to have any problem getting a book deal. All Anne Heche had to do was invent her own crazy-person language, run around a cornfield wearing only her bra, and try to talk people into getting on her spaceship. But then I had an idea. I decided to try my own brand of in vitro—I mean, after all, if no one else was willing to give me a chance, maybe I should just do a Wendy Wasserstein and go it alone.

So I published my own book, sold some copies, and then about nine months later, I got an e-mail from a girl named Jenny. She was a literary agent, had found my DIY book on her own, and was pretty sure she could sell it. I laughed and said I had been trying to do that very thing for seven years. If she wanted to give it a shot, I wasn’t going to stop her, but I issued a supersized helping of “good luck” and didn’t hold my breath.

Several days after Jenny sent out the book proposal, she called me and said that I had, indeed, finally fit someone’s needs.

I was going to have a book.

So I called my family and told them the news, not even believing it myself. After my mother contributed her slightly less than stunning reaction, my dad got on the phone.

“Can you ask the fellow who said he’d print your book if he can put it in a spot near the
Auto Trader
at the bookstore?” he asked. “Because if it’s next to the
Auto Trader,
that’s the place to be. If I was a book, I’d demand to be next to the
Auto Trader.
Absolutely. That’s when you know you’ve MADE IT.”

“You know,” I really wanted to tell my father, “retirement-aged men looking for a 1973 Ranchero GT with original paint, no rust, gold with orange/black stripes, 351C 2v, magnum 500’s, AT, AC, PS, PB, new brakes and shocks probably aren’t the typical readers for a book called
Idiot Girls,
” but I refrained when I heard my mom screeching in the background that she just realized something and that she needed to talk to me again.

“Is your book going to be like Rosie’s book?” she questioned. “My God, that woman is such a
giver.
Gives and gives and gives. Just like me. I’m a giver, you know. If it came up for a vote at our church, I’d make her a saint. I told all of my friends to buy that book
and look at how good it did.
Very good. I also want to know if your book will contain the
F
word, because you’d better not use
F.
         ”

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t, Mom,” I tried to reassure her.

“No
F,
you hear me?” she warned. “Because if you do, I will not tell any of my friends to buy your dirty porno book. And
then
where will you be? You’ll be
F
’ed! How do you like that? Rosie didn’t need
F
in her book! That woman is a giver, you know!”

“I know, Mom,” I agreed. “Just like you.”

Prude vs. Nude:
Why I Hate Kate Winslet

I
don’t believe it, but I think I just might actually hate something more on the face of the earth than Kate Winslet.

See, my husband has a big thing for Kate Winslet, so big that I have been forced to watch
Titanic
an unnatural number of times, despite the fact that I have repeatedly suggested that we just fast-forward to the part where she gets naked. Oh, sorry, honey. I meant, “nude.”

Anyway. I’ve seen every Kate Winslet movie ever made, and let me tell you, that was no picnic. Harvey Keitel is in some of them, you know, and he starts losing clothes, too. I had to eventually revoke my husband’s Blockbuster privileges. I mean, you imagine yourself sitting on the couch in your elastic waistband pants while she’s taking off her top AGAIN. I can’t compete with that. There’s only so much tummy sucking you can do before gravity wants its rightful place back. I thought we had found a happy compromise when
Iris
came out; after all, it’s about an old writer dealing with Alzheimer’s. There’s no room for nudity with that plot, I thought, but believe it or not, the title wasn’t even on the screen yet before a pair of nipples made an appearance swimming underwater, and guess who they belonged to? I’ll give you a hint: the smile on my husband’s face could not have been bigger if he had just inhaled an entire tank of nitrous oxide.

In any case, I will put my loathing of Kate Winslet aside to embrace my new object of contempt: the Rapiscan Secure 1000. That’s right. The “virtual strip search machine.” Tested at Florida’s Orlando International Airport, the Rapiscan Secure 1000 is a low-level X-ray machine that zaps just enough radiation at you to scan through your clothes—and stop at your skin. Just enough so that you pop up on the screen NAKED. And I’m sorry, because it’s not nude if you’re not Kate Winslet. It’s NAKED.

I just want to ask, how is this a solution to the security problem? Because all it sounds like is some freaky guy fantasy to me. It’s like this ex-boyfriend of mine who I don’t believe I ever saw sober in the four months we “dated” (translation: I drove him places, like to the bar, to the liquor store, to court), whose answer to every problem was, “Dude, let’s get naked.” It was gross and it was bad and I broke up with him after I drove him to the mall and he got it printed on a T-shirt.

I’ll tell you one thing, and I wanna scream this loud enough so that the airlines will hear this and put up a stink about it: If I have to go through the security checkpoint NAKED, I JUST AIN’T GOING THROUGH. I am not. Anyplace I can’t drive to on vacation I will visit through the magic of cable TV, because if there’s one thing I fear, it’s not talking in front of a large audience, it’s not meeting my maker when it’s time, it is being naked in an airport. I will never fly again if it requires my image—life-size, mind you—popping up on a screen with no panties, no bra, and not even protection from my hands to separate my battle with gravity from the outside world. I’d rather ride to New York in a
stagecoach
than subject myself to that. In fact, I only know of one person who would meander happily into a naked scanner.

And all of you airlines, I really hope you’re listening, because I’ll tell you one more thing: One lone Kate Winslet cannot support an entire industry.