Brenda and the F Word

I’ve been mulling over thoughts on the Dutch and skating. It occured to me that skating is a solitary pursuit. Like biking. This may explan why the Dutch are so addicted to both pastimes. They’re not team players. But ah! The joys of biking in Holland. On our visit last summer, our host suggested a “short ride and lunch.”
“There’s a lovely little restaurant,” he added. “And it’s not far at all.”

The words “short” and “not far at all” should have set off that internal siren of mine, especially when they were coming from the mouth a man who skates 120 kilometers in five hours. I mean, I do know how to ride a bike. I peddle over the river and back once every couple of years. But I also smoke. And I’m old.

Anyway, after minor adjustments to my seat, we head off towards a nearby canal. It’s a beautiful day. Clouds skudding across a grey sky with a bit of sun peeking through. I’m enjoying it.  The whole country seems to have been scrubbed so clean, it sparkles. (Uhho! Not cleaning, again???) What a view. The everlastingly flat green landscape, the barges that occasionally pass by, the kids fishing. And I’m just the tiniest bit out of breath. Fifteen minutes into our ride, my husband and our host have totally disappeared. Which is quite a feat considering I can see practically as far as FUCKING Sweden. Because Holland really is flat. You have no idea how flat it is until you’re peddling, and peddling, and peddling some more to get across it. There is no coasting in Holland. There is no coasting, whatsover. 

Over an hour into our ride, I’m chatting–more like wheezing– with my hostess and sweating like a pig. There’s also a voice inside, shrieking. “Make it stop! Make it stop!” But no. We’re nowhere near stopping. My hostess is smart and gracious enough not to tell me EXACTLY how much longer we have to go. Because like a toddler stuck in the back of a car, I might start whining and crying. She’s helping me save face.Of course, at this point, I couldn’t care less about saving face. I just want to get off. I just want to get off and smoke a cigarette. 

Two years later, we pull into town. My husband and our host are seated at a small table, smirking and checking out the menu. I am as white as a sheet and my legs are wobbly. Like Gumby. I collapse in the chair,  humiliated, embarassed. I attempt to smile.
“So how far was that?” I ask our host. Our host who has barely broken a sweat and is already talking enthusiastically about visiting a gypsy camp on the way back.
“BACK?”The voice inside shrieks. ”Is he out of his f’ing Dutch mind? There is no way I am peddling BACK!” Ends up, I catch a ride home with my bike in the back of an ice cream truck. 

But this coasting thing. It’s another metaphor that works for the Dutch. They do not coast. Ever. Not in any sense of the word. In fact, they probably built this entire country flat on purpose. So it would be impossible to coast. Coasting is for the indolent and the weak. It’s for those who lack stamina and character. In short, coasting is for people like me. 

I think you’re going to laugh tomorrow. I think you’re going to laugh very hard.

Just when I wonder what the FUCK I’m doing, wasting my time down here, talking to myself like Joe the homeless man, the Mighty James Wolcott plugs me again. No. Not with a snub nosed pistol but with another mention in his Vanity Fair blog. (And if I knew how to underline that and create a link or hyperlink or whatever the F it’s called, I would do it,  pronto.) Cheers, Mr. Wolcott. And many thanks for your words. All your words. The world would be a much poorer place without them.

Yesterday, I mentioned skating. The context was cleaning. Today, I’m talking about the real thing. About a Dutch friend and his family who’ve flown into New York for the holidays but plan to fly right back home the moment the temperatures drop low enough to freeze the canals.Because this man skates. I mean, he skates with the fervour, the fanatical devotion, I associate with jihadists. The last time the canals froze in the ’90’s, he skated 120 kilometers in five hours. FIVE HOURS! Slight of build, he sits and stands so straight, it seems as if his bones would break when forced to bend.  But then I see him on the ice, hands clasped lightly behind his back, skimming, no swooping  low, so low and so fast, across the frozen surface, he looks like some bird on blades. Silver blades that shoot sparks and reflect that silvery pearl grey light one sees in the paintings of Vermeer. Like a fairy tale. The rituals that accompany this once annual hejira, this pilgrimage on ice, are magical, too. Imagine bonfires and shelters built on frozen meadows where hot pea soup, cider, beer and mulled wine are served up for those who are hungry and cold. And hundreds of towns, medieval some of them, laying out miles of red carpets. Carpets that cover the space between the canals and restaurants. So skaters can get off the ice without removing their blades, sit down, and enjoy a meal. His stories remind me of that marvelous scene in Virgina Woolf’s Orlando when the river Thames freezes over and women cocooned in  layers of velvet and lace and sable skate and sled across this vast expanse of white, looking back at a city shrouded in blankets of snow. 

But they’re a mysterious bunch, the Dutch. Opaque. This skating–a national passion versus mere sport–says a great deal about how they’ve managed not simply to survive but to thrive throughout the centuries. All while laying low, while skating beneath the world’s radar. We took a trip to visit our friends at their farm in Freisland last summer. It wasn’t the cows or the canals or even that hallucinagenic glimpse of the sea hovering over the landscape that seemed as surreal as the news that many people here still had no credit cards. So while the rest of us  tiptoe across a thinner and thinner layer of ice, weighted down by the burden of  debt, the Dutch will just continue to skate. Like birds on blades. 

“Motha fucka!” the guy screams up from the street. “ What the fuck ya trying to do, lady?”
(OK. That’s two fucks, sorry three fucks today)
“Oh my God. I am so so sorry! I didn’t see you”
I’ve just hoisted a 6 ft. Christmas tree off the edge of our fire escape.
“How ya supposta see me with a tree in your face, asshole?”
The guy walks away, swearing, while his girl friend sweeps a forest’s worth of pine needles and sticky sap off his tiger stripe faux fur parka.
 
Usually, my family bets on how long it takes me to strip off the bulbs and dump it. The tree, I mean. This year, it took a little longer as we went up the country, a/k/a the money pit, on Friday where I took a two mile speedwalk, cleaned, took another speedwalk, and rode a train back to the city. Where I promptly cleaned, speedwalked, and threw the tree out of the window. Other than that, it was a very relaxing holiday. No. Really. It was wonderful. The first family reunion in years, an extraordinary meal cooked by my husband, and a night at the movies with Benjamin Button. (Which i slithered out of half way through to go home and …. Yes, you guessed it. Clean. The rest of the audience sat in their seats waiting for this guy, Button, to turn into Brad Pitt which he did fifteen minutes before the end. All to the sounds of howling females in the audience. God! How I love New York. And how I hated boring Button. Anyway, gotta  prepare for New Year’s. So I’m off to speedwalk and clean. Ha! Ha! 
Oh. And apologies to the vision impaired for the minscule typeface on Wednesday. Even I needed a magnifying glass to read it. But I made up for with the GIGANTIC typeface on Thursday. Hopefully, these glitches will work themselves out after I finish… No, I’m not going to repeat that word. 
But seriously….About this thing women have for cleaning. It isn’t always a symptom of our neuroses (sp?) of some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder. Cleaning–weilding mops, dusting, washing floors–creates a complicity between the animate and the inanimate. It brings a house alive. When we long for the dazzle, the brightness of fresh beginnings, cleaning becomes a pleasure. A pleasure surrounded by that aura of promise. Maybe my family will keep that in mind the next time they see me strap a sponge onto to my right foot and a towel onto to my left and start skating across the floor with a Dustbuster in hand. Then again… Maybe they won’t. 

Afternoon: The publisher has just pulled the plug on the paperback. It’s been a bit more than eight weeks since I was up at Barnes and Noble, hovering around that plinth and guffawing at my own blurbs. I’m no longer guffawing. I’m sobbing. I’m absolutely, totally, out of my mind. It’s impossible, I keep  repeating. Absurd.

 

 

July 1-4^th  Amazon: 38,485

 

I still have two 30-minute radio interviews scheduled: The Lori & Julia Show in Minneapolis and another one out at some university in Michigan. What I’d like to do is go on the air and verbally eviscerate, pulverize everyone from my publisher and agent to my editor and the entire motherless “parent” company that spawned them. What I do instead is launch an e mail campaign. The goal? To flood my publisher’s mailbox with notes from fans (and friends) and change his mind.

 

 

July 6^th

Another brainstorm. I know that famous people like Graydon Carter, Susan Sarandon, Oliver Platt and Uma Thurman all live in my neighborhood. I know this because I spend my life politely ignoring them. No longer. It’s time for what I call The Celebrity-Drop-Off-Campaign. The campaign consists of dumping my book on their front door steps, ringing the bell, and running like hell. I then proceed to hide behind the nearest tree, truck, or bush and wait till someone opens the door. If this were anywhere else on earth, a giggling, 52 year old woman, crouched down and peeking out from behind trees, trucks, and bushes, would probably incite a curious look or two. But the only people more studiously ignored in New York than celebs are people behaving like me. The problem, of course, is that no one’s home. It’s July. Most of these celebrities are applying heavy-duty sun block or experiencing road rage on Route #27 in the Hamptons. Which is precisely what I imagined I might be doing had the book become another Seabiscuit.

 

 

July 9^th

Friends continue to forward me their responses from the publisher. He’s nice but non-committal in terms of my ultimate goal. That being to resurrect the paperback and/or remain in print. I wonder if people can borrow my book from the Library of Congress.

 

 

July 15^th  Amazon: 42,505

My agent has a great idea. Hire Planned Television Arts, a well established and highly regarded public relations firm that devotes itself to getting exposure for the work of known and unknown authors. The man in charge thinks my book would be perfect for the MDRT a/k/a, The Morning Drive Radio Tour.

Being interviewed by radio personalities as thousands of people listen to me while commuting to work sounds promising, especially when I can do it all from the comfort of my own home via satellite. This kind of talk isn’t cheap, however. (The fee for the bookings is around $4,000.00.) But it beats playing hide and seek on the street.

 

July 16^th

 

 

I suddenly remember this great story Martin Amis told before his last reading. He had this good friend, a critically acclaimed, aged female author, who showed up for a reading at a large bookstore in the Midwest.  A total of five people sat in the audience, four of whom looked not just out of place but downright dubious. Disheveled, reeking of booze, fidgety. Half way through the reading, the police arrived and dragged them away in handcuffs. They were hiding in the bookstore after robbing a nearby convenience store. 

 

 

July 17^th  Amazon: 40,111

 

Radio Tour

Nineteen, eight minute interviews, beginning at 6 50 am and ending at 1 20 pm. I have not been awake at 6 50 am since I was pulled, shrieking, from my mother’s womb. But aside from small mistakes like calling my radio hosts Bob instead of Rob and Chet and Beth, Jim, I survive.

 

 

July 18^th Amazon: 4,205

 

Wow!

 

July 20^th

 

I depart for small Italian island where there is no telephone and no computer. Here, I suffer brief symptoms of withdrawal from Googling and checking numbers at Amazon. Symptoms subside. On the last night at dinner, I vow to my family that I will never, ever again check my numbers at Amazon or write anything longer than a post card.

 

 

               THREE MONTHS LATER

  

October 13^th

Amazon 130,625

32 Used&New from $12.25

 

 

Well, I’m not just checking my own numbers now at Amazon, I’m checking the numbers of every writer I’ve ever heard of, including dead writers. The good news? The only success that really annoys is the dead guys. I mean, does Tolstoy really need the money? (Anna Kerenina is at 596.) Or how ‘bout Dickens? (Great Expectations: 5,315.) Then there’s the resurrection of Oprah’s book club and the work of literary corpses like John Steinbeck. East of Eden is at 1,341. 

 

Why doesn’t somebody start up Writers Anonymous. So what, if it sounds like an oxymoron.  Every time, I felt like Googling myself or checking Amazon, I could call my sponsor or go to a meeting. “Hi, my name is Brenda. And I’m a writer. (sound of muted applause) Instead, I’m just going to delete Amazon from my Favorite Files on AOL—

I’m not even going to look at it for two weeks. 

Saturday May 10^th  Amazon: 728

 

The grand tour is about to start. I pack my four shopping bags of books and a nightgown and train it down to Philadelphia with my family. They hide in the Acela bathrooms while I stroll the aisles, hawking my wares like a hot dog vendor at Shea Stadium. After a tour of the Eastern State Penitentiary (the family loves visiting abandoned  prisons) I prepare for my reading. I’m the featured writer at a Mother’s Day event at Barnes and Noble called Misfit Mothers. I imagine an audience consisting of my two children, my husband, and maybe an orphan. I mean, even misfit mothers must have better things to do on mother’s day than attend a bookstore reading. But the reading is a hit.  There are twenty, possibly even thirty, strangers in front of me, howling with laughter, asking questions.  And I sell one book. That’s right. I’ve traveled nine hundred miles, spent $700.00 to stay with my family at the Ritz, and I’ve sold one book. The manager asks me to sign another twenty copies. 

 

May 15^th   Amazon: 1,120

 

The next stop is Chicago. Here, I’m scheduled to read at a run down department store after a fashion show. This is an event sponsored by a leading woman’s magazine and clothing brand. And yes,  it might sound like a peculiar bit of cross promotion. But not as peculiar as later discovering (thank you, Google) that my book is being read aloud on a special radio to blind and movement impaired people in Georgia and Alabama. Even if these people love the book, and God love ‘em for that, how many of them can actually run out and buy it? Anyway, when I see the time allotted for my reading on the program, I assume it’s a typo:

”Latest spring fashions 5: 30 to 6.”

“6 to 6:05 — Author Brenda Cullerton reads from her new memoir, the Nearly Departed.” Huh?

“Hey. Dorothy,” I say to the woman in charge, ”This is a mistake, right? I mean, five minutes?”

“ Well, Brenda,” she explains, “We did this other reading last week in Atlanta. The book was about Sylvia Plath and the audience didn’t  really get it, you know? And they sure weren’t in the mood for shopping after. ”

Right. The “techie” plugs me into a headset like the ones rap stars and the guys at The Gap wear when they’re chatting with friends in the stockroom about D.J’.s at Marquee instead of calling up a pair of size 10 loose fit jeans..

Testing, testing.

The extraordinary and disorienting thing about this particular audience is that most all of them are middle aged black women. My book is about an over privileged, very white family that hits the skids in Fairfield County, Connecticut. Not a lot in common, you think. But as I begin to read, these ladies are laughing so hard, they’re wiping their eyes. Twenty minutes later, I’m still reading. I spend an hour afterwards, signing books that they’ve been given free with their 100.00 clothing purchases.

 

May 16^th Amazon: 2,060

 

A Borders reading on Michigan Avenue. I’ve scoped it out the morning before. It’s pretty cool, seeing these huge posters of myself all over the 1^st and 2^nd floor. The reading area upstairs is set up with at least a hundred chairs and the manager is extremely excited. “I just loved, loved your book,” he says. “And we always get great turn outs.” I’m on a high all day, riding barges down the river, walking by the lake. My father was born in Chicago but his father died when he was six years old. He and his mother left, never to return.  My palms are sweating as I head up the store escalator with my husband. It’s 6 45. The reading starts at 7. There are two women in the front row. “No way, no way,” I shriek to my husband while also whispering. “I’m not going in there. “

“It’s still early,” he says, trying to reassure me.  “Give them some time.” At 7 o clock, I greet the audience.  “Look, I just want to thank each and every one of you for coming. So thank you. And thank you.” Next time I look up, my dead father is looking straight at me from the last row. Sure, I drank a small Martini before the reading. But come on…This guy smiles and winks, he even crosses his legs like my father. I stutter my way through to the end as the apparition slowly moves towards me.

 “Hello, Brenda,” he says with a grin. “My name is Geoff Cullerton. My father was your father’s half brother.” What half brother? It’s moments like this that explain why people write memoirs. I sign thirty copies for the manager.

 

May 19^th     Amazon: 875

 

The big reading at Barnes and Noble in Manhattan. Only the thought of standing up and doing a nude pole dance in front of 80 people I actually know is more terrifying than the thought of standing up there at that podium and baring my soul. Just as I begin to relax, I hear this deafening knocking sound behind me. Six boys outside pull their tee shirts up and stick their nipples up against the window. “More fans”, I say to the audience before moving on. I sell a lot of copies. To friends. And just before leaving, I invite everyone over to my editor’s house for margaritas. Unfortunately,  the mike is still on. So I end up inviting the entire store over for margaritas. 

 

June 12^th      Amazon: 6,489

 

 1 P.M. National Public Radio Studios, downtown Manhattan

Oh my God. I’m going on the radio with Leonard Lopate. My knees are shaking as I sit on a plastic chair in the corridor, listening to this incredibly articulate, funny woman talking about the East German Stasi. How can anyone be funny about the Stasi? “Relax,” I shout silently to myself. “You’re always witty. Your book is hilarious. It’ll be fine.” But it’s not. It’s the interview from hell, given by God. And I sound like someone who hasn’t even read my book, never mind, written it.  “So, Brenda. Tell us about the house in your book. What does it represent? “ Dead air. “Ummm… Ahhh.”  My mouth is stuck open like those fish on ice at the old Balducci’s. “ The house, the house… What house?”, screams the tiny little bit that’s left of my brain.  “Well, Leonard. It’s a primal place…”Blah, blah. My house had a cement wall running smack down the middle of it. My mother built it after a fight with my father when he was away on business. I called it Checkpoint Charlie. The house is a metaphor for everything I have to say in the book about divided lives.

As I leave the sound proofed booth,  the producer comes up to  shake my hand. “Brenda. Just a bit of advice,” she says, ”If you ever do radio again, try talking into the mike instead of away from it. That way people might hear you.”

 

 

7 PM Housing Works Reading, Soho

 

I arrive at Housing Works in Soho still reeling from my close encounter with Leonard. Five minutes before I head for the podium, I realize I’ve forgotten my glasses. Even if I have memorized most of the book, how the hell can I do a reading without glasses? A friend heads out in a panic to find a pair at Duane Reade. The good news is that he finds a pair. The bad news is that no one can remove the security tag. Not even with an ice pick from behind the bar. It hangs there in front my eyeballs for the whole reading.

 

 

June 17^th     Amazon: 38,243

 

7 PM My hometown reading at the Ridgefield Public Library. 

If you’ve written a memoir, this may be the moment in time that proves you can never go home again. At least, not without wearing a paper bag over your head. Jesus. Did I really say that in an interview with the local paper? Yes, apparently I did. Because  there it is for all the world to see on the front page of the Ridgefield Press. “The laughs, the tears, the nuts!” shouts the headline above my Tallulah Bankhead-On-A-Bender color photograph. The reading room is full of faces I haven’t seen for years (including my agent.) It’s also full of faces I see all the time: my sister, my mother’s best friends, my niece. The irony, of course, is that my mother, a voracious reader, was persona non grata at this library. She refused to pay fines. “On principle,” she always said. What principle exactly remained a mystery to all but herself. She ended up borrowing books from as far away as Bridgeport.—a city she claimed was “more fascinating than Athens.” Not that she had ever been to Athens. Anyway, this is the longest reading yet—45 minutes and when I finally stop, they ask for more.

 

 

June 20^th-25^th

A blur of Googling. Amazon up to 40,000. Barnes and Noble—steady at 35,000. I’ve just heard that the guy who wrote Life of Pi sells 400 copies a DAY!!!

 

June 30^th

Morning: Message on my machine to call my agent. Hollywood? Second printing? Lunch?

Alot of wrapping to do today. So am resurrecting a v funny piece about my efforts as book seller. (Apologies to those who have already been there.) This will run in two parts.

April 24th – April 30^th

Amazon: 1,778,

My book has finally arrived at Barnes & Noble on Union Square. And it’s not stuck up in that Siberia on the 4^th floor where no one can see it. It’s on a plinth, a pedestal, right there on the first floor where everyone can see it. So why isn’t anyone calling? Every day I go up and hover around the plinth. Security and the guys at information keep staring. Maybe because I’m standing there, reading my own blurbs and guffawing. I open my book. I laugh some more. I exchange a look with browsers nearby, as if to say  “Wow! You gotta read this. It’s hilarious.” Then I buy my own book. I do this not once or twice but three times. Every day the stack dwindles. The book is really moving.

 

May 1^st       Official pub date    Amazon: 5,282

 

My celebration dinner with my editor is cancelled. Her street is blowing up. I can barely hear her on the cell phone. Please, don’t let this be an omen.  

 

May 2^nd

 

The book has disappeared from the plinth. It’s up in that Siberia on the 4^th floor.I go up and surreptitiously sign three copies. (A signed copy can’t be returned to the publisher.)

 

May 4^th

 

I buy a hundred more copies from my publisher. And I begin giving them away. I give them away at French Roast in the Village and at Dean and Deluca and outside PetCo. My son gives them away on the Q train on his way back from school in Brooklyn. I even give them away to Three Lives, my favorite independent bookstore.

 

May 5^th  Amazon: 2,243

 

Slipping into its cozy, womb like space on a Monday morning, I approach the bespectacled, gray haired lady behind the counter.

“Do you have The Nearly Departed?” I ask. “I’ve heard it’s hysterical. It’s been in Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair, O.”

“No, she says. “We’re not carrying it. But I’d be happy to order you a copy. What’s your name?”

 Total panic. Me, who has been making reservations at restaurants under fake names all over Manhattan for over ten years, suddenly draws a complete blank. “Brenda, Brenda Farnham,” I finally spit out. (Farnham is my husband’s last name)

 

May 6^th  

Celebration dinner with editor at Wallse. She brings along a nice review from The Millbrook Round Table. Who knew Millbrook had a round table? Where is Millbrook?

 

May 7^th  Amazon: 1,237

 

The lady from Three Lives calls and leaves a message. “ Brenda Farnham? Your book is in. Listen, I’m just wondering, are you by any chance, related to the author BRENDA Cullerton? Because you look a lot like the author photo on the flap.” She’s chuckling. Oh, the humiliation.  But I go in, sheepishly pay cash for my own book, and give her a free copy with the reviews inside.

 

May 8th

 

On a rare trip into Midtown Manhattan, I drop by another big chain of bookstores.. “I’d like to buy a copy of the Nearly Departed,” I say, oh so casually, to the boy with studs puncturing his lower lip and tongue. He’s manning the computer.

“Could you spell that for me?” he says.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I’m not. Spell nearly, please..” He’s looking at me as if I’m stupid. Then the typing begins, a befuddled second look. “Uhhh. You’re in luck. We bought one copy. It’s downstairs in the basement on the shelf marked Depression.”

I sneak down the escalator, gently remove my life story from oblivion, sign it, and place it prominently, together with two of my own extra copies, on the New Non Fiction table upstairs

 

 

“Look at the bright side,” I say to myself.  “People all over Manhattan are reading your book. Just keep it up, keep buying your own book and pretty soon, you’ll be able to pay for a country place and your kid’s private school tuition. “

“What in hell are you doing?” my husband finally asks, as the stack of The Nearly Departed in the hallway outside the living room door grows like that killer mold in apartment buildings that I read about in the Post. “You’re missing the whole point here, Brenda. Other people are supposed to buy your book.”

“You don’t understand promotion,” I tell him, huffily. “I spent twenty years in advertising. I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“So do I,” he says. “You’re blowing your miniscule retirement fund on a book that took you five years to write and left you totally broke and unemployed. You’re insane.”

 

While counting the days till I take off on a truncated book tour, I discover the new found joys of Googling myself. It’s a form of masturbation, this Googling. And I’m doing it so much, I’m amazed I haven’t gone blind. There are 281 results for Brenda Cullerton after a 0.16 second search. But why is the book sandwiched between Ripley’s Believe It Or Not and 16 different listings for Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader? Another on-line bookstore has me listed under Diet and Health, which is definitely weird, considering the fact that my book is about a severely dysfunctional family of alcoholics who are dying.  

To be Continued…

“Foot Massager Kills Three”  AOL News

Hard to believe, right? Am wondering if this might be the work of that same gang that used breasts to rob men two weeks ago? Seems these guys tried to use the foot massager on their NECKS and got strangled by their own shirts. Huh? What a way to fucking go. According to Japanese authorities,there will by no product recall. Like duh? I mean, like since when is a neck a foot? Or a foot a neck? Whatever.  

Life is ruff! (says my punster husband) More on other things later…