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Muff penetrates another Book Club and gets “Sex in a Pan”
Book clubs can be cliquey. I know, I’m in one—even though I wouldn’t call “The Muffia” an uber cliquey group by a long stretch. Still, anything with the word “club” in it suggests the reason it’s a club (and not a class or block association) is there’s some exclusivity. In other words, not just anyone can join. So last week as I was heading to a book club gathering in a pocket of LA a few over from mine, I had some trepidation. There was only one woman in the club whom I knew and, that said, I didn’t know her all that well. However, I’d always found her to be a lovely woman—kind and generous and not the type of person to point me into an ambush. Karen is a mom and yoga teacher with a great sense of humor—Muff material for sure. So I hoped her club would be as welcoming as she was. This was to be my first appearance at a book club for my new, eponymously named book, The Muffia, about my own book club, whose members get themselves into more than a few compromising positions so I was extremely curious about how a different, non-Muff club, would relate to the story.
Shortly after arriving, a glass of wine thrust into my hand and already feeling comfortable with this group of attractive, well-dressed women, I decided to address the circling elephant and announced that I wanted total honesty about how the members felt about The Muffia. The real life Muffs disagree on books quite regularly. In fact, there’s never a meeting where one of us doesn’t like something about our latest read. So that’s what I expected from Karen’s club. Actually I can’t really call it Karen’s club because the members defer to a smoldering dark redhead named Dana (who reminded me of Blaze Star) as the “Boss.” Why she was the boss was unclear but I didn’t ask; internal book club machinations being beyond my purview. The point is, I expected a few of the women to have some “constructive criticism” and I wanted them to speak freely—just as they would if I hadn’t been there. This seemed to put them at ease and set off an immediate rant about a prior book club selection, Patty Smith’s Just Friends, which as it happens the Muffs read too. But whereas we (in general) loved it, Karen/Dana’s club pretty much reviled it except for Karen who had selected it and who had constructed a small shrine for Patty in her living room. The fact that Karen had picked the hated Just Friends as well as The Muffia suffused me with dread. Was Karen the book club member who chose the books nobody liked?
I smiled, come what may, reasoning that as an author—hell, as a person—I will never please everybody, so I shouldn’t bother trying. But knowing that The Muffia is a planned series of books, and that I’ve only completed Book I, I was in the singular position of having this (and other book clubs I speak to) help me as I write books II-VII. There’s a saying I generally detest, “It’s All Good,” but in this situation, it was true. Anything they told me would be grist for the mill of my mind. Not only did I want to know what they really thought, I also wanted to mine them for material.
This group didn’t disappoint on any level. As Karen served a delicious meal, the group told me they wanted more of Vicki, less of Lila with Madeline’s vibrator and details about Nate’s affair. Most enjoyed the read and found more similarities with their counterparts in the book, than differences. Somewhere between dinner and Karen’s decadent dessert dubbed “Sex in a Pan” (destined to be a Muff favorite), we left The Muffia behind and segued into the stories women who are comfortable with each other share. There was a member’s recent trip to Hawaii and an incident in which she was encouraged to behave like a big cat, brought on by her husband’s positive response to one little blue pill. All appeared shocked that one hit of Viagra was $50 but it seemed too many of them knew where to get it at a discount not to have had personal experience. I’ll stop there to spare the group any possible repercussions but suffice it to say, these ladies talk about all the stuff the Muffs talk about and they made me feel included and comfortable. The evening was over way too quickly—each of the women needing to get home to take care of children, husbands, pets and hearths. Each of the women had come, given, and received the jolt of energy, support, and encouragement that we get from each other and, just as in The Muffia, whatever book they read is beside the point. We come together to share life. Affirmed. Thank you, Karen, and thank you to her club, for having me.
Karen has graciously provided the recipe for “Sex in a Pan” and I print it here.
Sex in a Pan
Combine: 1 cup flour, ½ cup chopped pecans, 1 stick softened butter.
Pack this into a 9 x 13 inch pan and bake 15-25 minutes at 350 degrees until light brown. Cool. Then:
Combine: 8 oz. cream cheese, 1 cup powdered sugar, 1 cup Cool Whip and spread onto the cooled crust. Then:
Combine: 2 boxes of instant chocolate pudding* with 3 cups of milk. Beat for 2 minutes and spread on top of the cream cheese mixture, then spread 1 cup Cool Whip on top and if desired, decorate the top. (Karen said she ran out of time but she was going to put a big pink M on it.)
* If desired, you can use butterscotch or lemon or some other concoction of your choice in place of the chocolate pudding
The House Next Door #7
As cars upon cars continued to invade our quiet residential street, the neighbors started convening at the plastic storage bin down the block, well out of view of the occupants of the house next door. Actually, I shouldn’t call it a plastic storage bin, even if that’s what it is. Someone had slapped a laminated picture on the front and started calling it “Lily’s Library.” In reality, it was a place for people to drop their discarded books, while out walking Tank or Buster, rather than troubling to take them to Goodwill.
I probably shouldn’t be so negative. It’s true one might find something to read in the bin while getting pulled around the block by her canine companion but up ‘til now, all I’ve ever found inside were four month old issues of Westways Magazine and dog-eared copies of Dianetics. I picked up “Don’t Say Yes Until I Finish Talking,” one afternoon, thinking it might be a mediation book along the lines of “Getting to ‘Yes’” or “When ‘No’ is NOT an Option”—you know, something relevant to my alleged line of work. Though, at this stage of the game, work has been so intermittent I’m more aptly called an Unmediator rather than an actual Mediator.
The book, as it happened, turned out to be not a mediation book, but Mel Gussow’s biography of Darryl Zanuck—an early king pin of the movie business and if not exactly a purveyor of porn, as were the residents of the house next door, certainly a keen observer on the finer points of using sexual innuendo to sell movie tickets. For those of us who look for signs in life, I took it as a sign. Of what? This was as yet unclear.
Soon after the comings and goings of the multiplicity of cars, a pattern began to form. The cars that appeared every weekday appeared to be the same cars and they remained parked from 11 a.m. until roughly 7 p.m. We all took this as a sign that whatever was going on at the house next door had reached the next step. There was the black mustang, the beat up Nissan and the brand new Toyota in a peculiar shade of green—the very shade one might select for a duvet on a round bed on a porno set. All tolled, there were upwards of 22 cars on our residential street every day.
Some of the neighbors who had real jobs (and were therefore never able to join us at Lily’s library) liked the cars. They felt their presence gave the street a “happy feeling” where “people wanted to be,” and that burglars would therefore be less likely to come around while they were not at home. Others, namely Buddy, hated the cars. He began patrolling the street in front of the house next door glaring as the occupants got out of their cars and disappeared inside. Often he would make it appear as though he was simply out doing yard work, and so assumed it looked natural for him to be wielding a large stick. And as Buddy had a job that took him away from the street for long periods of time, his patrolling seemed to consist of these intense weeklong vigils where most of us indifferent types thought he was going bonkers.
He tried to get us all on board with the idea that whatever was going on in there, must be stopped! He warned us all that our property values would be negatively affected. “There’s a business going on in there—porno, illegal gaming; doesn’t matter—and that’s against zoning laws!” he said with fervor to several of us who nodded our heads in agreement as we scanned the old People Magazines, noting (some of us) that Lindsay Lohan was arrested for drunk driving—again—and that Elizabeth Taylor had died. But wait, wasn’t that years ago? Then we looked at the cover dates. Anyway, Buddy said we had to do something. He told us he would come up with a plan. Then he snapped his stick in two and put it in somebody else’s recycle bin.
The Muffia Gives
It’s no secret there’s a huge income and wealth gap in the U.S. and the ongoing stalemate in Congress suggests it’s not going to change any time soon. In addition, there doesn’t seem to be much political will to close the gap.
According to Wikipedia’s sources, a person needs to make at least $500,000 to be considered in the top 1% of wage earners and a very large percentage of those folks make significantly more than that. I cannot speak for all the members of the Muffia but I don’t make anything near $5oo,ooo. What I earn in a year not only puts me squarely in the 99%, it puts me in the bottom 50%. Still, I make more than a lot of people do.
When the Occupy movement began, I hadn’t yet finished writing The Muffia but I’d already had the thought, that if the book ever found a publisher—Thank you Water Street Press—that I would tithe, that is give, 10% of whatever the book made to charitable causes. I brought the idea to the members of the real life Muffia and they loved it. Tithing originated with the Old English practice of giving one tenth of one’s cattle sales, baked goods, whatever– to a religious entity. These days, tithes are generally voluntary and include many different kinds of giving. The Muffia wants to give to groups helping girls and women.
Why do I want to do this? There are lots of reasons. In a society where what and how much we have often seems to matter more than the content of our characters, I feel like I have enough. Sure, there’s a lot of stuff I want, but not much I truly need. Why it’s necessary for the über rich to have 17 homes and 2 private jets escapes me. Beyond a certain point, I can’t spend any more money. I only need one car and I want it to be a car I’m not worried about somebody stealing or keying; I only need one house, though I concede it could be fun to have a vacation home; I don’t need more jewelry or to throw “show me the money” parties. To me, these things are extravagances that add complication and worry even if a few people might look at me and say, “Wow, look what she has!” I’d much rather they admire me for what I’ve accomplished, not purchased.
It seems to me that no matter how much a person makes, there are many reasons to give some of it away: There are charitable deductions; there is feeling good for being generous; there’s the thanks one gets at having helped. I also don’t understand why more of those people in the top 1% of earners can’t seem to acknowledge—this is a big one you CEO’s: You would not have a salary at all if the 99% weren’t buying your phones, cereal, adult diapers and financial products. The 99% put you there so why not pay them back? An individual’s long-term self-interest could almost mandate giving some of one’s income back. History even tells us this. Cultures far older than ours have learned that when income disparity grows too great, the 99% may revolt.
The wealthy, benevolent few and those planning to give a large portion of their estates away—Bill Gates, George Soros, Warren Buffet, among them—cannot make up for all the heads of banks, brokerage firms and corporations who avoid taxes and are loathe to give unless they get naming rights. When you make $19 million a year, what do you do with all that money?
I’m just one middle class, middle age woman and I’m probably getting too political. I’m realistic enough to know I cannot fix anything but I can do my part to try to improve whatever tiny corner of the world I’m operating in. If The Muffia and I do well in the marketplace, it’s because people have bought my book. Some of those people might be wealthier than I am and others less. But either way, I would not have 10% of anything to tithe without people and that’s why it’s important to give something back.
The Muffia will therefore tithe and do what it can to help girls and women in the bottom of the 99% have a chance for more. Currently, we are concentrating on organizations in the U.S., which provide education, job and mentoring opportunities. Some of the groups we are looking at are Project Return in Connecticut, Women in Recovery in Los Angeles, and Catapult/Women Deliver for International efforts. If you know of some other groups we might add to our list, please feel free to comment here and thanks for reading.
Book Clubs: The Muffia v. Oprah
The Muffia is a very successful book club. We began reading books as a group in 2001 and we still have most of our original members; we’ve also added a few. Of course there’s more than one type of book club and when I started researching what makes a club work, I discovered a lot of suggestions that I didn’t think very helpful–starting with Oprah’s. But giving “O” the benefit of the doubt, I’ve listed each of her suggestions below, followed by a comment. Take a look and then send me your responses, along with your own Do’s and Don’ts for book club success (200 words or less) by posting on my Facebook page: facebook.com/annroyalnicholas I’ll select a few of the submissions for an upcoming book club post. “Like” my page and you’ll be entered in a drawing to receive a free, signed copy of The Muffia (that’s the book, not us).
Oprah’s Rules Re-muffed:
1. Think Outside The Book
Liven up the discussion by reading plays or literary magazines that feature essays, art and short stories.
Muffcomment: If you’ve selected your members wisely, you’ll never be short of things to talk about, even when no one likes the book. One of the best, most fun and hilarious book club gatherings we ever had was talking about LAY OF THE LAND, which most of us hated! Actually we didn’t hate it, we just decided it was written for men experiencing prostrate cancer.
2. Share The Busywork
Leaving one person in charge for too long will lead to her burning out. Instead, every few months, rotate the responsibility of hosting and setting the date for the meeting.
Muffcomment: Huh? I don’t even understand this one. The Muffia rotates every gathering. We’ve never had any issues with burning out and we all clamor to host because hosting means we get to pick the book and don’t have to drive. Whenever we finish a meeting, we all chime in with “Who’s next?” “ Am I next?” “I haven’t gone in a long time…”
3. Seduce With Food
A juicy three-cheese lasagna can help the discussion of the driest novel.
Muffcomment: Food and drink are mightily important to the Muffs and we all make an effort to have delicious dishes and yummy desserts. Some of us like potluck but others prepare every course and only ask the other Muffs to bring wine. And Oprah, come on, every novel has sections that aren’t dry. But this doesn’t mean lasagna won’t help those too.
4. And Yet: Never Serve Vegetarian Pâté
Muffcomment: Sorry Oprah, I don’t know who’s been preparing your veggie pâté but the Muffs can’t abide this rule. We have a vegan in The Muffia and she knows her way around some vegetables. Sometimes she brings her own food, never criticizing the rest of us for consuming animal protein. At our last gathering, the meal was almost entirely vegetarian and we all thought it was stunningly delicious. We discussed THE FAULT IN OUR STARS—meatless—and no one minded.
5. Keep Mortie Out Of It
Your cousin Mortie from Montana may be in town for the week, but that doesn’t mean he should come with you to book club. Members have a relationship with one another that changes when new people enter.
Muffcomment: Our club is all women and we do not permit men. Once we had a male author appearance because we read his book THE TENDER BAR, and one of the Muffs knew him from high school. Occasionally we have a female guest but ONLY if every Muff says yes and ONLY if this guest has read the book! Uncle Mortie would never be allowed to come to a Muff meeting. But Aunt Mildred might be if she read the book.
6. No Books Longer Than 450 Pages
Period.
Muffcomment: Some Muffs are big readers and have chosen weighty tomes with no harmful after effects. But you know what? It’s not the end of the world if people don’t finish the book. There’s still a lot to talk about. But when a Muff shows up without having read the whole thing, there are going to be a few spoiler alerts, which are the penalty for not having finished. The thing is, she KNOWS this so never gets bent outta shape. Also, some big books read fast and some short books read slow, so this Muff thinks this rule’s gotta go, or at least be modified for every club.
7. Set Up An Online Calendar
The crucial reason being to avoid endless group emails from everybody asking really annoying, repetitive, typo-ridden questions about what night they’re supposed to meet and what they’re supposed to read.
Muffcomment: This could actually be a good idea, Oprah, and The Muffia might try it. The problem is, it requires people to remember the website, their passwords, etc. Truthfully, most of us would rather put up with the emails and besides, there’s usually some juicy gossip or news that comes with the emails providing interest, if not outright joy and laughter, never possible from an online calendar.
8. Stay On The Same Page—Literally
When reading classics, plays or foreign translations make sure everyone buys or borrows the same edition. Otherwise, you’ll spend the whole night flipping around trying to locate the paragraph or quote under discussion.
Muffcomment: This could be sensible but our club isn’t anal (doh!). Sometimes one of us will read a passage out loud but the rest don’t “read along.” Only once has a Muff who read the online version been frustrated about finding something a Muff was citing in her hard copy, and that was over her frustration with Kkindle insofar as you don’t have a sense of how deep into a book you are in the same way you do with seeing a book bisected by a book mark.
9. Beware The Book-Talk Tyrant
She’s frequently the most organized and best read of the group, which everybody appreciates, but she’s also the bossiest and, at times, dismissive of others’ ideas. She picks the book. She picks the page of the book to discuss. She picks the chair that’s smack in the middle of the circle and makes everybody feel as if they have to raise their hands to make a comment or go to the bathroom.
Muffcomment: Get her outa there! No one likes a blow hard. With the Muffia, it’s generally the hostess, (who we’ve established changes every time) who “moderates,” and kicks off our discussion however she chooses. No Muff turns into a tyrant when she’s a hostess. Some of us are more vocal than others, true, but we encourage everyone to speak. It just wouldn’t dawn on any of us to monopolize but if someone started to, we are comfortable enough with each other to say. “Done yet?”
10. Once a Year, Select a Book From Childhood
Like CHARLOTTE’S WEB and LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE. Reliving why we began reading in the first place is a great way to get everybody motivated to keep on reading.
Muffcomment: This Muff is a little nugatory on this suggestion. It’s one thing to reread a YA novel like HUNGER GAMES but in The Muffia Book Club, we tend to want to read adult fiction so dredging up NANCY DREW isn’t going to make anyone happy. This concern can be managed by putting your book club together wisely from the get-go and by having a mission statement that defines who you are. Maybe you’re the “Ex-military wives of Ft. Lauderdale who read childhood classics?” If so, then CHARLOTTE’S WEB and LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE are a great fit.
11. Don’t Lose a Member Who Feels Too Stressed Out to Host
The appetizers! The vacuuming! The rounding up of all those chairs! Every now and then, meet at a bar and toast your selection with a literary-themed cocktail like, say, a Great Gatsby.
Muffcomment: Stress happens and the Muffs are always up for a cocktail. But guess what? There are workarounds. In the Muffia, we accommodate. Hostesses swap order. Some host at another Muff’s house if she has family staying or she’s getting her floors redone or whatever. Not a big deal. Again, it gets back to choosing your group wisely, genuinely liking the people in your book club and having some flexibility because being in a book club is supposed to be fun.
12. Book Club Is Not Group Therapy
A member who loves a memoir about drug addiction because she was a drug addict (and then spends the whole two hours talking about her struggles) or a member who hates a novel about co-workers in a corporation because she works for a corporation (and then spends two hours talking about her boss) have missed the point—and taken over everyone else’s evening.
Muffcomment: OMG, I have to agree with Oprah on this one. The Muffs have read GLASS CASTLE, WHAT REMAINS, DON’T LET’S GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT and a few other memoirs but we do space them out (not that there’s a plan to do this; it’s just worked out that way) and so far no Muff has monopolized the discussion because she was abused, drugged, poor, divorced, bad in school, raped, had an abortion, etc., like the memoirist (even if she’s experienced something similar). Why? Because it would be rude. Pick your book club members wisely and there’ll be no problem.
13. Take December Off
Nobody has time to finish a novel during the holidays. Have everyone bring in a short, memorable piece to read out loud, like a poem, a few paragraphs from a novel or article, or even a meaningful personal letter.
Muffcomment: Or skip the holiday meeting. Book club is not a college course with a set reading list to be completed on a certain date. Usually book club is an excuse for a party. Real life Muff Michelle started us out over our first holiday season together with what she called the BCWBBWSO gathering; that is the Book Club Without Book But With Significant Other—Michelle has a “tendency to make acronyms out of everything” (TMAOE). This gathering happens around the holidays and has nothing to do with any book.) So yes, take time off during the holidays.
14. One Dog Memoir Per Year
We all love dogs. We all even love when the dog dies at the end of the book—as the dogs so often do—which causes us to sob hopelessly all over the final pages. But too many dogs ruin the heartbreak (and joy) we’re after.
Muffcomment: Agreed—we all love dogs and we love dog memoirs BUT they are generally too sad, too short and/or too easy a read to be a legitimate Muffia choice so it wouldn’t dawn on any of us to select one. It’s not that we Muffs must always have subject matter that challenges us (some Muffs don’t like being challenged at all) but we appreciate a book that takes us to a different place and which, stylistically, has some artistic merit (though of course we may disagree on that point). Dog memoirs, cat memoirs and even horse memoirs, are likely to fall short. We did read THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE and that had dogs in it but it was really about the people. That’s our kind of story.
At a time in our world when there is so much divisiveness and conflict, with ad hominem attacks hurled at those who disagree with us, it is wonderful to be in a book club filled with sensitive, involved, caring and intelligent women who make the exchange of ideas–however much we disagree–a joy. We Muffs still love each other when we close the covers of (or switch off) a book that half of us liked and half of us didn’t. Each “side” tries to convince the other of why the book did or didn’t work and at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who’s right because when it comes to art, there is no right. What the Muffia succeeds in doing and what I think might be the goal for any successful book club is that members leave a gathering feeling stimulated, enlightened, validated and, hopefully, well-fed.
Read Oprah’s ideas yourself here: http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/How-to-Have-a-Succesful-Book-Club#ixzz2KBo49rVA
The House Next Door #6
We waited for the first day of shooting. Or maybe it would be night. Well, whenever it happened, we were sure we’d know when the new naughty neighbors started shooting their porn. Living right next door, as I did, I rehearsed my call to the cops:
“Hi, I’d like to report a nuisance?”
“What kind of nuisance, m’am?”
“Well, Officer,” I’d say. “There are about 20 people having unprotected sex in the the back yard next door while filming each other doing it and it’s disturbing the wildlife.”
Actually life getting a little wild in the neighborhood might not be all bad. However, it’s supposed to be a crime now, in LA, to have unprotected sex while shooting a porn film. How they enforce this is anybody’s guess. According to our local paper in the San Fernando Valley, The Daily News, officials have been quoted as saying, “We’d like to say we’re keeping an eye on things but that might give people the wrong idea.” The porn producers are filing a law suit against the city saying the condom law constitutes “prior restraint”—a legal term which basically says the new ordinance is keeping them from doing something in violation of their civil rights. But I would argue, if given the chance, that if a male porn actor puts his condom on after reaching arousal, there’s no restraint at all.
I planned to get up on the roof of my house where I could videotape the outdoor portion of the proceedings. Though I might not get enough footage to make my own porn film, I knew I could eventually cut the footage into a larger work, the plot of which I hadn’t yet worked out. Perhaps it would be about a mild mannered stay at home mom helping to rid her neighborhood of porn—well, first things first.
While I looked forward to the day/night of sexual turmoil that would have Al kicking up his crematory dust, other things were happening at the house next door. Bespectacled 20-somethings started arriving, many of them in succession but usually one at a time—midday in the middle of the week; not exactly high time for sexual hi- jinx. These unlikely porn stars got out of their cars—normal cars, not fancy, or even clean—and went into the house. Then they’d come out an hour or so later, get back in their cars and drive away. Unexplainable behavior indeed. After a couple of weeks, nosy neighbor, Buddy, asked one of them what was going on inside and, over the recycle bins one day, Buddy told us. He glanced at the house then whispered: They were interviewing for jobs.
Ah-ha, we were right! Of course! The brothers must need all kinds of people to work behind the scenes on their video porn—and they did look like a film crew. I mean, if you put them all together. Certainly none of them had the obvious physical characteristics of James Deen, the porn hottie whose parents are both engineers at the Jet Propulsion Lab. I realized I hadn’t seen any women job applicants. Could this mean they were preparing to stream gay geek porn from the house next door?
The House Next Door #5
At first, we couldn’t tell who had bought the house next door. The realtor, stopping by to pick up his sign, told me, “He’s a nice guy. You’ll like him.” When questioned about whether the nice guy had a family, no additional information was forthcoming—only a few vague comments: “I think so,” “I didn’t see the family but he seems like the type…” This wasn’t all that helpful. Besides, some family guys turn out to be real creeps.
One neighbor told me it wasn’t just one guy, but that a set of brothers had bought it—two-three-four of them, he couldn’t say. Nor could he pinpoint who had told him this. A few of us surmised that we’d traded in one set of brothers for another. But just what band of brothers were we getting? Would this new set of bad bro’s also be in the porn business? Perhaps Al’s intent for his palazzo of penetration would live on after all.
Soon we watched the first SUV arrive. A chair was taken out and carried inside. Then we watched the second SUV arrive. The guy who got out looked like the first guy. Ipso facto—brothers. This one took out a table and carried it inside.
And so it went. We never saw a moving van, just random bits of furniture being unloaded at different times. No one had a camera positioned so as to capture the entire operation, but we’d meet in the street while walking our dogs or rolling the bins off and on the curb. We’d try not to stare at the house in undisguised dread while we pooled our information. No one had ever seen a moving van but one neighbor had seen a truck from an office supply store in the driveway with two guys unloading a couch that was clearly made in one of those countries that condoned child labor.
About a week after the first SUV arrived, a few of us watched as a high-speed cable installer arrived. One particularly vigilant neighbor—let’s call him Buddy—reported, during one of our klatches over the recycle bins, that he’d had a conversation with the installer who informed him that the cable system being installed was not designed for residential use, but instead was meant for businesses. According to Buddy, when questioned further, the installer could neither confirm nor deny the specific nature of the business or businesses that might require this new cable system, which only left us to speculate further about what the brothers were up to.
In short order, we decided that the new owner-brothers whose names no one had bothered to find out, both of whom drove nice, new luxury-brand SUVs, were planning to live-stream porn from our quiet neighborhood with their brand new big bad bandwidth.
The House Next Door #4
It was immediately clear that the brothers intended to sell Al’s masterpiece as soon as possible so it was no surprise when they put it on the market. But who was going to buy such a behemoth of a house? It had taken years to sell the first time around, after the Indian builder and his unappreciative newlywed wife moved out—and that was before the housing bubble burst, before all of Al’s “beautification” projects, which had only succeeded in reducing its value to an ordinary family. Indeed, the house was completely unsuitable for normal people. There should have been six bedrooms in a structure with the square footage of the monstrosity—estimated at over 8000 square feet. Instead, there were only three. Two of these bedrooms were quite small as contrasted with the master bedroom, which took up half the second floor. And half of that master suite was made up of the oddest collection of closets I have ever seen. I opened a door to what I thought would be an ordinary closet, only to find an empty space with a door at the far side, which opened to another closet space and, once inside that second closet, there was another door to a third. What type of sex act was supposed to go on there, I wondered? It couldn’t be good but something had been planned; the possibilities for laying more endless camera track remained. No, the house was simply not what most people wanted.
I thought that perhaps the exception would be a wealthy one-child couple with a closet fetish. The couple would have no end of fun in the closets while their son had all his friends over to play Lazer tag in the converted garage.
Needless to say, the neighbors were concerned. The desirability of the monstrous house next door was in question. And with an asking price of $4 million in an area where most homes were in the $500,000 range, you’d need to be nuts to plunk down the kind of money required to make it your own. No, the only person or persons we could think might buy the place would be—just like the house’s dead owner had been prior to his death in flagrante—from the porn industry. Between the dramatic possibilities of capturing carnal engagement in every room, and the house’s proximity to Chatsworth—the adult film industry mecca—it seemed ideal.
So it was with great curiosity we watched the new neighbors move in.
Note: This is not a plot in one of my novels; at least not yet. This is the true story of the house next door in my corner of the city of LA.
Resolutions 2013
So, I was thinking about how to introduce my son to the idea of resolutions. Not introduce, really. He’s way ahead of me there; but more, how to go about making resolutions that will stick.
“It’s like you think of ways to be a better person and then tell yourself you’re going to do them.” That’s what I was going to say. And then I thought about all the times I was going to become a better person and didn’t. Generally, I’m pretty disciplined about things—working out, what I eat, how much sleep I get—yeah, it’s boring, I know. But a lot of things are harder to change, like telling myself that this is the year I will confidently walk up to attractive, age-appropriate men and say, “Hi, I’m Anna. You look like you might be kind of nice, so if you’re not attached, gay, diseased, looking for someone rich or 20 years younger, then give me a call!” That was my resolution this year and so far, I haven’t done it. If that makes me a bad person, well, it makes me a bad person. Okay, sure, it’s only January 2 but still… Maybe, so I won’t have to actually say it out loud, I could have cards printed up—like the kind deaf people used to hand out on the subway.
Changing who you are is hard. My son even tells me this and how much life experience does he have? Sheesh, he’s only 16. Then again, he plays tennis and he’s tried to fix things about his game. He’s really good but he often has trouble in those tight matches or when he knows deep down—even when he’s trying not to think about it—that winning means a college scholarship and losing means, well, losing. It’s hard to just stop being nervous because you want to stop being nervous.
So what do you do on your quest to be a better person—more confident, skinnier, nicer? Well, if there’s really something you want to fix, the best thing is probably to find out how others fixed these things by reading books like, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” by Stephen Covey or “It’s Not How Good You Are, but How Good You Want to Be,” by Paul Arden. Next, build a little team around you—friends and family and maybe co-workers—to whom you entrust your mission to change. Get them to remind you how important it is to you so when you feel like slipping, they can help you up. As for my resolution, I’m going to put a graphic designer on my team—someone who can design those little cards I’ll be handing out to men.
The House Next Door #3
I found out Al was dead when his brothers arrived to assess the MacMansion and all of Al’s cars still stored in the garage. The only thing the brothers would tell me about Al’s death was that he’d had a heart attack and that it had been quick. I stood back and considered Al’s girlfriends with the long legs that could easily squeeze a man to death and immediately thought of Nelson Rockefeller. Not only Nelson, that bespectacled politico, but all the many other fine gentlemen who’d expired in the saddle, as it were. I wondered…had Al been happy in his final seconds? It turns out—and we’d all suspected this already, of course—that what Al was doing over at that studio near Pasadena was making porno films. Al’s particular specialty was porn for the Armenian market. I can’t tell you how Armenian porn differs from other kinds of porn but I’m sure sex is completely different there.
With Al’s brothers walking around, pondering how they were going to pay taxes and make the mortgage on the monstrosity until the thing sold, I was finally able to get inside the beasty house and look around. As I did so, the whole sequence of events made perfect sense. Al had been creating the ideal film set on which to shoot porn. Put it this way: A director could lay camera track from the front door, through the “sex-for-twenty” sized kitchen, into the “family” room with the thirty foot bar, out onto the patio, and wind around the Las Vegas resort styled hot tub and pool to settle on a couple engaged in sexual congress on a kidney shaped lounger under the gaze of an Aphrodite knock off. Or maybe it was just a piece of cement.