Good Vodka Down the Drain is only a Sin if You don't have Xanax

Well, boys and girls, I finished the book I'd mentioned only last night -- or this morning, but it is so this morning, so of course I mean yesterday morning. And I was correct in describing this writer as good. Very good. No, very damn good (never say very anything if you mean to be a serious writer). Well, to hell with serious. The time is now 3:28 in my neck of West Hollywood, and I have just now put down The Book to pick up my Acer (product placement -- like, sure, they're gonna give me some money for plugging their computers!). I had only 30 or so pages to go to finish this one -- entitled Memoirs of A Beautiful Boy -- by a Mr. Robert Leleux. What had appealed to me to begin with was the vivid color picture of him on the cover with his mother. The portrait is of the artist as a very (there I go again) young man. The book chronicles his life in the 'burbs of Texas exiting adolescence as an only child son of a mother who took an entire chapter out of Mame and a father who took a powder to marry a jockey referred to variously in many unkind equine terms the best of which might be Seattle Slew. But I digress. Robert is, was gay, so it is a gay memoir in that sense, but more importantly this book serves up a heaping helping of life lesson's learned. And that, boys and girls, is what made me pour the perfectly good glass of vodka, ice and all, down the drain and make myself a nourishing cheese and turkey sandwich -- some 25 pages before the book ended. I needed to fortify myself, because I knew anyone with Robert's flair was (pardon the Southernism) fixin' to serve up a bell ringer of an ending. I laughed. And then I felt a single tear roll down my right cheek. I do believe this boy can write. More later, boys and girls: it's late, or early, and I may get more maudlin dare I continue.

Humble Pie is Not Square

Well, boys and girls, I like to think of myself as a writer now that I have my shiny new MFA in creative non-fiction. Since I paid quite a chunk of change for said degree and have read and written my over-educated redneck ass off in the pursuit, I figure I can lay claim to, well, being a writer. But there is writing, and there is writing (one should attempt in writing never to begin a sentence using "there" just as one should attempt in writing never to say never). But I have since encountered a book by someone who makes me feel every bit the hack I probably am but, hey, at least self-awareness can be thought of as a virtue if you can find a belt and shoes to match. What brings me to this sudden realization (sudden, as contrasted with, say, the two years and untold thousands of dollars I laid out convincing myself that I might aspire to call myself a writer some day as in the odd moments when I'm sitting at a deli counter with my laptop and some stranger asks, "Oh, are you a writer?" And then I throw up a little bit in my mouth before quickly mustering enough gumption to say, "Why, yes, I am, indeed, a writer." But I digress...) -- what brings me to this sudden realization is the book and the author of said book I am now reading. Yowza. What a talent. I'll share more in my next post. Which will follow shortly after I can find a knife and fork and fetch me some of that humble pie I've been cookin' up in the kitchen where I've yet to turn on the gas for that stove that has not been used in nearly three years' time. Back in a jif.