Another Bad-Dog Book

by Joni Cole

  “I’m a writer,” I announced. This came out the way a four-year-old might say, “I’m a big girl.”

  “What do you write?” Marion inquired. This was a perfectly reasonable response, no different from when somebody introduces herself as a teacher, which elicits the natural follow-up, “What do you teach?” Or when someone claims to be a prisoner, prompting the obvious, “What did you do?” Still, I usually dread this question because whatever confidence I am feeling in my career at that moment is almost always dashed when it becomes clear the person has never heard of me or read any of my work.

  “Well, I created a book series that invited hundreds of women across the country to record what they were doing and thinking and feeling on a single day.”

  “What an interesting idea,” Marion gracefully sipped from her spoon.

  Yes, it was an interesting idea, I thought, but I wasn’t entirely convinced of her sincerity. I felt compelled to prove myself to her.

  “The women in the project came from all walks of life,” I elaborated. “Celebrities, funeral directors, nuns, mothers with twelve children. . . .” Then, like a geyser, my words kept erupting, until I had detailed every trial and triumph over the six years and fifteen hundred participants it took to complete the three volumes in the book series.

  This happens sometimes when I’m feeling awkward or insecure, or even when I’m just being my normal self. I start talking and can’t seem to stop, even though I can hear myself going on and on. Sometimes before leaving my house, I’ll ink the word hush in tiny letters on the crook of my hand, in the hopes this will remind me to shut up. Today, unfortunately, my hands were unmarked, except for some chipped, mauve nail polish.

  “I also run a Writer’s Center,” I continued with my résumé. “It’s just one room with orange walls and comfy furniture, but we’ve seen some fabulous writing come out of it. In fact, I wrote a book for writers . . .”

  I have been in the position Marion finds herself in now, held hostage by the nonstop talker. First, you are transfixed by the torrent of words, the cluelessness, the solipsism of the speaker. Then you begin to attend to small, previously overlooked details: the number of times she blinks per minute, the pull of her earrings on her earlobes, how that dark freckle on her chest is shaped like Oklahoma. Eventually, her words blur together. You continue to feign attention, but your mind wanders: Do my bottom teeth show when I talk? Is that ceiling fan powerful enough to decapitate someone? Finally, you grow angry, first at yourself: Why am I still listening to this person? Then at the speaker, Will you just shut the hell up! You know you should say something, do something, but by this point you don’t trust your own judgment. Did I actually make that hanging motion, or just think it?

  The soup has given way to herb-encrusted salmon and warm goat cheese salad. When the server brought my plate, this time I barely acknowledged her, partly because I was too busy talking, partly because I had appropriated more airs. Here was a member of the invisible working class, from which I was trying desperately to distinguish myself.

  “Did you know Louise is a new grandmother?” Marion abruptly changed the subject.

  No, I did not know Louise is a new grandmother, I thought, feeling rebuffed. In fact, I didn’t even know Louise, not that this mattered because Marion had turned her attention back to Amanda. “The baby’s name is Harrison,” she added. “Louise told me she practically has to pry him out of his mother’s hands just to get a chance to hold him.”

  “I knew Amy and Stu have been trying for years,” Amanda said.

  I ate my salmon while the two women gossiped. Louise. Amy. Stu. Baby Harrison. Whoever these people were, they clearly had no use for me.

  “Louise calls Harrison her miracle grandbaby,” Marion added.

  Ah, an opening.

  “Last year I helped a doctor write a book about women who can’t have sex,” I piped up, thinking this was a good opportunity to sound in on the topic of miracle babies, and show that I was a serious writer. “These women want to have intercourse, but they have this condition called vaginismus . . .”

  It’s funny how particular words in certain social settings seem to project at a higher acoustic intensity, vaginismus being the perfect example. As soon as the word left my mouth, it seemed to catch the ear of my seatmates across the table, none of whom had been paying any attention to me before.

  “The incidence rate is actually quite high.” I decided to forge ahead because, really, what choice did I have? Once a train has derailed, you just have to ride it out. “In fact, vaginismus is as common as erectile dysfunction!”

  The old woman across the table raised her scribbled eyebrows.

  “Fortunately,” I reassured her, “with new treatment options, there is a cure.”

  Our hostess, thank goodness, chose that moment to tap a hand-held microphone. All chairs turned to face her standing at her table. How had I gotten myself into this mess? I thought. All I had wanted to do was to convince Marion and the others that I was a somebody, yet somehow I had ended up talking about erectile dysfunction.

  The hostess gave a short speech, thanking us for our contribution to the arts. “Through your individual and collective efforts, you have made our community a better place to create, to work, and to live,” she raised her glass. We followed suit in a toast to ourselves. While it should have been obvious all along, I understood now that I had not been invited to this luncheon because I was a writer, a realm in which I constantly sought validation, but because I rented a single room with orange walls.

  Chairs scraped again and we turned our attention to dessert. I vowed to focus on my Crème Brule and make only short, appropriate remarks. Or maybe just keep my mouth shut altogether.

  Someone at the table raised the topic of quilts, specifically quilts that could be donated for a silent auction to raise money for an after-school arts program. Quilts were an easy subject for me to remain silent, having grown up in Amish farm country. Since childhood, I have associated quilts with the smell of manure, and no amount of craftsmanship can change that.

  “Any other fund-raising ideas?” Amanda raised the question.

  “How about a bake sale?”

  “Or we could do a community spelling bee.”

  My experience with fund-raising was nil, given I avoided committee work like the plague. But then I realized I did have a suggestion, a good one, and best of all it involved my best celebrity author story. Here was a chance to redeem myself and name drop at the same time.

  “A few years ago,” I started, “I was invited to participate in a library fundraiser in Florida. Patrons of the library organized dinner parties where donors could mingle with well known writers . . .”

  Marion touched my arm lightly.

  “Excuse me,” she placed her napkin on the table. “I’m afraid I need to run to another appointment.” As if on cue, the others quickly followed suit. One of the women made a point to help our hundred-year-old seatmate from her chair, lest her infirmity inhibit her escape. In what seemed like seconds, the table was cleared.

  But wait! Wait! I wanted to cry out. I hadn’t even gotten to the good part of my story, the part about Khaled Hosseini, the best-selling author of The Kite Runner. Khaled and I had been assigned to the same dinner party for the fund-raiser. After we had mingled with donors, we wandered to the far side of the swimming pool to smoke and chat. Who would have thought, I would have smiled with self-deprecation, me bumming a cigarette from Khaled Hosseini. And I don’t even smoke!

  If Marion had stuck around, she would have found this last comment amusing. Then I would have assured her that Khaled was as good looking in person as he is on his book jackets. He was also very nice and we got along well, and even stayed in touch for a while after the event. We’re not super good friends, I would have confessed, given that he had probably forgotten me by now, but I do have his private home number.

  But I never got the chance to say any of this because the luncheon was over. My table was deserted,
with no one left to impress but me and the fucking No Show.

  I gathered my purse and gym bag, and then headed to the ladies’ room to change for the gym. If I hurried, I could still make it to my exercise class just two blocks away. I was half changed when I realized I had forgotten to bring a tee-shirt and packed only one sneaker. Oh well. I would go anyway, clearly in need of endorphins now more than ever.

  Outside the restaurant, a woman called my name.

  “Yes?” Her face was vaguely familiar, though I had no idea who she was.

  “I went to your reading at the bookstore last month,” she said. “I just wanted to say how much I enjoy your work.”

  “Thank you. Really, thank you.” This was exactly the kind of attention I lived for, a total stranger stopping me in the street to say how much she appreciated my writing. But not now, I thought. Not when I was wearing a stained bib with calf-length sweatpants and strappy sandals.

  She headed off in the opposite direction, while I continued to totter my way to my exercise class. So that was that, I thought. My one and only fan would forever assume I dressed like a crazy person. Meanwhile Marion didn’t even know my Khaled Hosseini story. But of course now Marion had an author story of her own.

  The other day I was at a luncheon for women in the arts, I could just hear her saying this to her friends, all of them wearing tortoiseshell headbands. There was this dreadful writer seated next to me with soup spilled down her front. Here, Marion would dismiss me with a wave of her blue-blooded hand. I really can’t remember her name, but what I do remember is that she just went on and on about some kind of sexual dysfunction . . .

  The Secret

  Several years ago a book came out called The Secret and, thanks to Oprah, it went straight to the number one spot on the New York Times bestseller lists. Then it went on to spawn DVDs, sequels, and cults. The book is about something called the Law of Attraction, and the secret is that you can get whatever you want—from fame to fortune to a passing grade in Algebra II—by following three required steps: ask; believe; receive. According to the book’s author, Rhonda Byrne, folks like the Buddha, Beethoven, and the creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series all knew the secret. That’s how the Buddha got to be the Buddha, explains Rhonda, a former television producer from Australia; that’s why a book like Chicken Soup for the Golfer’s Soul can become an international best-seller.

  For most of my life I didn’t know the secret. In fact, I didn’t even know there was a secret until the book came out, and even then I might have overlooked this news, given that my taste in reading doesn’t usually run toward self-help. But the publisher of The Secret is the same boutique publishing house that acquired my first book, so I grew curious. How can one of the publisher’s titles (not mine) be the fastest-selling book of all time, and another title (mine) be the opposite, or at least feel that way? I suspect this discrepancy might have something to do with the fact that my book has a lot of pages, while Rhonda Byrne’s text—as sleek and compact as a pocket pet—is not only a fast read, but promises the key to obtaining health, wealth, and wisdom. But that’s just a wild guess.

  Thankfully, even before reading The Secret, I did know enough to do some things to attract good fortune, or at least ward off the Evil Eye. For example, after I complete my bi-weekly jog down a stretch of Route 14 and back, I always tap my mailbox three times while I am still gasping for breath.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  One time I forgot to do this, so I trudged back up our steep driveway and tapped the mailbox six times.

  Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

  I even considered backtracking down our street and jogging toward the mailbox again, because retro-tapping isn’t the same as tapping immediately after the last step of a grueling 2.9-mile run. But by then I was too exhausted to carry through with this idea, and I’m not really that superstitious anyway. Knock on wood.

  I’ve also made a point not to indulge in self-defeating behavior, a lesson ingrained in me since childhood, after years of hearing my mother’s refrain, “If you don’t stop that crying, I’ll give you something to cry about.” Ever mindful, even all these years later, I try not to throw tantrums in public, even when people make me do things I don’t want to do, like earn a living or recycle, or when the barista at my coffee shop forgets to substitute soy in my latte, despite my lengthy explanation about how I am seriously lactose intolerant. I also make a point to get out of bed most mornings. I bathe on a semi-regular basis. I practice pronouncing words like “gravitas” and “arugula” so that I can drop them into conversations. I do these things because I know that not doing them could be perceived as self-defeating, and I want to come across as a winner!

  But now, thanks to The Secret, I realize that compulsive tapping and passable hygiene are not enough, or at least not enough to attract all the things that I want out of life, specifically easy money, and an online affair with that lanky Latino guy who said hello to me once at the bagel shop in an accent that made me forget that I’m almost old enough to be his mother. You have to think positive, Rhonda Byrne asserts; you have to really believe that you are going to get that check in the mail without lifting a finger; you have to truly convince yourself that the date on your birth certificate couldn’t possibly be so long ago that you actually owned a Peter Frampton poster and hung it in your college dorm room.

  Most people (not my husband or children, of course) actually see me as a positive person. If someone comes up to me and asks, Do you think I could be a Navy SEAL? I’m likely to respond, Sure, if that’s what you want, go for it! My philosophy—at least when it comes to other people—is the same as the message on the voicemail of that effeminate figure skater in the movie Blades of Glory—“If you can dream it, you can do it.” I have no problem believing that everybody else can achieve their dreams, even if that somebody is middle-aged and has bad knees. But when it comes to feeling positive about my own aspirations, let’s just say that my internal monologue is a screed of negativity— I’ll never get another book contract . . . I’m never going to write a bestseller . . . I’ll never make this light ...

  In The Secret, Rhonda explains that this kind of negativity doesn’t just bring you (and everybody else around you) down; it also can work like magical thinking, actually causing bad things to happen, including very, very, very bad things. Terminal disease! Poverty! Widespread disaster! Apparently, the energy you put into the world is exactly what comes back to you. Like attracts like, is how Rhonda puts it, so even fleeting negative thoughts—a.k.a. “incorrect thinking”—can spell big trouble.

  As soon as I learned this, I couldn’t help but wonder how far back to apply this “like-attracts-like” concept. Was the Law of Attraction relevant to my childhood, for example? God forbid, did that explain why Benny Mundorf, a former classmate of mine, had a crush on me from first through fifth grade? Benny Mundorf inexplicably had lime-green pee, and clearly didn’t care who knew it since he never flushed the toilet in the class bathroom. Was I like Benny Mundorf, if not in the color of my urine, than in other, equally unpleasant ways? Was that why he was attracted to me?

  And if the Law of Attraction applies as far back as childhood, I wondered, who’s to say it doesn’t transcend lifetimes? Who’s to say it doesn’t affect the very circumstances and geography of our birth? Are there souls, right now, floating around in the ether, waiting to be reconstituted, who have yet to learn the secret? Yeah, like I’m going to be the next Donald Trump, thinks one uninformed sad-sack of a soul who never bothered to watch Oprah. Then boof! Off his spirit goes, implanted in the womb of some poor woman in Darfur, a country devastated by war, drought, genocide, and apparently a lot of negative thinking.

  In The Secret, Rhonda also stresses the importance of visualization. You need to make it your intention to look for and admire what you want, thus summoning that positive energy to you. Just as importantly, you need to avoid visualizing what you don’t want, she instructs. And if you do see something negative? Refocus your
mind’s eye immediately on a more pleasant image! Say you’re trying to lose a few pounds. If you see people who are overweight, writes Rhonda, do not observe them, but immediately switch your mind to the picture of you in your perfect body and feel it. Applying this concept more broadly, I presume the same advice holds for sick people—don’t look at them! If negative images beget negative outcomes, then clearly cancer is contagious.

  Ask. Believe. Receive. I hear you Rhonda, just like the millions of other book buyers and DVD owners who want in on the secret; just like Oprah and the Buddha who—call me crazy—I’m beginning to believe may be one and the same. I want to be a positive person. I want to attract fame and fortune. I want a cushy life, now and for many lifetimes to come. I’m not just asking, Rhonda, I’m begging—“Please don’t send my soul to Darfur. Please don’t send my soul to Darfur.” But now, thanks to The Secret, I understand that my pleading may not be enough. In fact, I suspect I’m in big trouble. Because now that I’m thinking about war, drought, and genocide, it’s just too hard to erase those negative images.

  Water, Water Everywhere

  Saturday started off with pouring rain and the downstairs toilet not flushing. Just what I need, I thought, or maybe I yelled it at my husband and kids. Luckily, toilets—and basically everything related to household maintenance—are not my problem. They’re my husband’s purview, so the flushing problem could have been a minor inconvenience (after all, our other two toilets seemed to be working just fine) except for the fact that it put my husband in a bad mood.

  “This house if falling apart.” Steve swatted aside the little wicker basket of potpourri and wrenched off the lid to the toilet tank. Where had I heard that before? I thought, as I volumized my lashes with Maybelline Thick Lash. As usual, Steve was catastrophizing. Probably all that was needed was to do something with that little ball and chain thingy in the tank that I refused to touch, let alone learn how to reattach, but Steve tends to over-react about all things septic. According to him, our waste disposal challenges were beyond dire at this point, and boiled down to two choices. One: have the septic system drained every month to buy us time before a shit-storm obliterates our front yard. Or, two: Come up with a million dollars to buy a brand new septic system.