In the meantime: this book, The Bigger, The Better, The Tighter the Sweater: 21 Funny Women On Beauty, Body Image & Other Hazards of Being Female, is now available for purchase. If you buy it through that link, I get about seven cents. So, if all of you buy it, I will be able to feed not only myself but my/TB's pet monkey, Squirrel/Rocinante. Squirrel's not a real monkey, he's a stuffed monkey. Still, we all get a little hungry sometimes. Hungry for life, love, and literature, as well as all other things, like Metrocards and games-for-the-thief's-new-cell-phone.
Seriously though, clearly you like to read, and it's like supporting meeeeee AND getting a free gift. It's been in the sidebar forevs, 'cause of viral marketing.
Here's a review from BUST magazine. I've highlighted, in yellow, the part where they say my essay specifically is one of the highlights of the book. If you can't read it, just trust me.
Also, my essay from this book'll be printed, condensed, in August's Marie Claire magazine, the women's magazine devoted to women named Marie. This won't be like last year, when the photo/misquote combo in September's MC inspired me to cry/wail violently and hurl the magazine at the wall like a psycho. 'Cause this time I'm not just IN the article, I sorta wrote it, and there's no photo! [Read: Essay needed to be cut in half for magazine, I said: Do whatever you want to it, I trust you. See that? I BELIEVE, forgive, etc.]
AND if you live in New York City, we're reading at the KGB Bar on July 24th. Put it on your calendars now, 'cause you're all clearly very busy, and if you've gotta work there's still time to quit your job. Also, I'm not actually listed as being a reader, 'cause clearly whomever's in charge hasn't checked her email in forever-ever, 'cause then she woulda gotten the publicist's email about how I was somehow left out of this listing and subsequently added me to that page linked above. I assure you I am indeed reading.
I just re-read my contract, and I'm pretty sure I'm allowed to do this ... hmmm ... okay, I'm posting, below, the first graf of my essay, "Feels Like Teen Spirit." I learned this technique from RKB, obvs, who entices readers to buy the book by printing excerpts on her blog. Probs most authors do this. But I'm weird, so I don't. Actually, based on the last few posts, you might think I'm a real writer with a booming career. I assure you this's not the case. I am still Marie from the Block, eating Ramen. Seriously, I just had some Ramen. I'm still hungry, oh, how we are HUNGRY!
Excerpt from "Feels Like Teen Spirit," by Marie Lyn Bernard. The essay's about hyperhidrosis:
I started sweating during the summer of 1994, between seventh and eighth grades. This development, which was clearly an Adult Thing, was entirely incongruous with the rest of my Ascent to Womanhood. I was sweating but I did not have my period or breasts or a boyfriend.
“Is this like when you said you needed a bra?” my mom asked when I added deodorant to our K-Mart shopping list.
“I wanted a bra just for under white shirts, Mom,” I reminded her. “So that no one can, you know—see through—when it rains —”
“When I was your age, I was already a B cup,” she told me. “It was terrible.”
One of my favorite things about being thirteen was comments such as that one. Other favorite things: boys who were three to four inches shorter than I was, passing notes, spreading rumors, braces with rubber bands, Kurt Cobain and his big fat flannel shirts, Lurlene McDaniel novels about girls who were dying of fatal illnesses, Christopher Pike novels about girls and boys being chased by dead people. And sweating.
Also, speaking of books I'm in, I'd like to share a quote with you from a piece of fan mail I received IN THE MAIL (Yeah, the postal kind! Sent to my agent! Crafty fellow!), re: my story in The Best American Erotica 2007:
"It wasn't simply a hot, sensuous tale--instead it seemed to contain an emptiness--a void that yearned for intimacy--that longing for acceptance and with it, love. If he loved her, why didn't he eat her before he entered her? Why didn't he [sic] her with his lips and tongue and accompany her into the realm of ecstatic bliss?"
Since he asked where he can find more of my work, obvs I'll be mailing him a Bigger the Better postcard. While (obvs) reading this letter out loud to Cameron, the line printed above required me to stop reading: "Doesn't he know talking about sex makes me squeamish? Ack! I can't read this, let alone answer that question! Can't handle!"
