LOVE BLOG II: THE TALENT DOES NOT WANT TO GO DOWN THE MOUNTAIN

I was, as I reported, recently in Denver, visiting my agent and her human companions with my friends J. Krimble and Pixie Potpie. During this time, I was informed that I would “enjoy” a little trip up to the mountains.

When I suffer duress in the presence of my agent, I will sometimes refer to myself in the third person as “the talent.” This is not a commentary on my abilities, but a common term in many entertainment-based industries, used to refer to the actor/performer/writer/artist of whatever ilk. I feel when I refer to myself as a moneymaking property, my agent will take care better care to preserve my life. I am worth more alive than dead (I THINK).

I used the term at the Jersey beach, for example, when Daphne and Rexroth wanted me to “enjoy a little walk into the ocean.” The Talent did not want to do into the water. The water is where the jellyfish and the sea monsters live. Rexroth did not understand the extent to which the talent did not want to get into the water, until he was more or less carrying me. The talent did not want to be carried. The talent wanted to be put down so she could run away. The talent may have started flailing.

Let’s get back to the Rockies. So, my agent has taken me to the top of a FRIGGIN MOUNTAIN, and I was put into a line. I was asked to produce seventeen dollars, which I was happy to do. In return, I was given a large inflatable tube. I said thank you. Everyone likes a nice inflatable tube. I took it outside and happily sat in it and started eating peanut M&Ms.

“Come on,” Daphne said, catching hold of the cord on my tube and dragging me.

“Where are we going?” I asked, pleasantly.

“Here.”

She stopped me on the edge of a HUGE FRIGGIN MOUNTAIN. I dug my heels in.

“We go down,” she said.

“What?”

“In the tube.”

“What?”

She started pulling me again, and I jumped out of the tube and pulled it away from her, clutching my M&Ms to my chest.

“Betrayal!” I said. “You have brought me here to kill me!”

“No, I brought you here to go tubing.”

We were soon joined by the others, who all seemed aware of this “going down the mountain in a tube” thing. Included in the party was Trixie Implausible, who is three and a half years old. Even she, in her fuzzy pink coat of LIES, was in on it.

Which is when I snapped into self-preservation, talent mode.

“The talent does not want to go down the mountain,” I mumbled.

Rexroth thought it would be best just to get a handle on me and place me in the tube and give me a push. Rexroth thought because he was bigger than me, that this would be possible. Rexroth does not know the power of my donwanna-fu.

“THE TALENT DOES NOT WANT TO GET IN THE TUBE!” Claw, claw, claw. “GET OFF THE TALENT!”

“It’s fine!” Daphne said. “You’ll like it!”

“TALENT CANNOT WRITE BOOK IF TALENT IS DEAD AND BROKEN!”

Little Trixie sailed down the mountain on her tube with a wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

“Did you see that?” Daphne asked.

“The talent is smarter than the child,” I said calmly. “I have a college degree. I have TWO college degrees! The child can’t even read! Who are you going to listen to, me, or the one who just scribbled some lines on a piece of paper and referred to the result as ‘a picture of Dr. Freaky and his Refrigerator’? I liked the picture, but my point is . . .”

“She’s braver than you.”

“But I am rich!” I said. “She has no money! Look! I have purchased these M&Ms for myself. The child could not afford such fine things, fine things which I am going to eat while you go down and I watch.”

It took them a half hour to convince me, but I did eventually go down. Trixie (age 3 ½) told me I did a good job.

Later, I heard Daphne on the phone with a friend of ours, and she was saying, “Yeah, so, she was really brave, and she went down a few times. We’re just finishing up now and we’re all going to lunch . . . no, she’s fine. She seemed to like it. It got a little cold, but . . .”

Please, I thought, please be talking about Trixie (age 3 ½). Please be talking about Trixie and not about me. Please be talking about Trixie and not me.

She was talking about me.

Now, this is going to make you believe that I am afraid of winter sports! I am not! I just don’t like to be pushed off mountains by my agent. Have I mentioned how I learned how to ski? HAVE I? (It’s possible that I have, so feel free to SKIP TO THE END. Or, read on, in case I TELL IT DIFFERENTLY.)

See, my English friend Oscar Gingersnort comes from a very fancy and lovely family. (He has two SIRS in his family! Two SIRS! He is not excited by this, but I am. I had no idea that “Uncle Bob” who once gave me lovely bath salts for Christmas is in fact SIR BOB. These are the kinds of things the English keep from you.)

Anyway, one of Oscar’s cousins lives in Geneva, and they invited me to come along for a Gingersnort Family New Years, in which all of the cousins would go to Switzerland and hang out on or around Alps for a week. I said yes, and off I went to Switzland. I was well informed that the intention was to ski, so I went out and got some pants and a jacket and showed up all ready to go gently down a bunny slope with children.

But see . . . the Gingersnorts? They all ski. Well. And they don’t go to bunny slopes. They go to the tops of mountains and use terms like “off piste” and “black diamond.”



A picture I took of the town where we were skiing. Pretty. Also, HIGH UP.

It was decided that after a day of trying to teach me, I really belonged in the hands of a professional. A call was made. I had a little trouble following the rapid-fire French, catching only words like “American,” “beginner,” and “not very good.” I was informed that it was all set! An English-speaking teacher would meet me at the top of the mountain the next morning, and I would spend the next few days with him. His name was Jean-Claude.

And so, I did. Jean-Claude was there, a tall man, maybe around 60.

“Do you teach a lot of beginners?” I asked, to make conversation.

“No,” he said. “I teach mostly rrrrracerz.”

He paused for a moment, then added, almost as an afterthought: “I used to coach the French downhill rrrrrrracing team.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh . . . that’s good.”

“You will learn to ski,” he told me, matter-of-factly. “Everyone I teach learns to ski. Now, allez, you will come with me, like this.”

No, Jean-Claude didn’t spend a lot of time with beginners. This much became clear at once. “Allez” was the word I heard most often over those two days. “You fall down, Maureen. Get up. Allez. Now you do just like this.” Nothing stopped Jean-Claude, and he felt that nothing should stop me. I would go down the hill. And now I would learn the turn, yes? I would do the turn? I would do the turn.

At the end of the last day, Jean-Claude decided that I needed to go Higher Up The Mountain. See, this town and all the Alps around it were criss-crossed with a network of cable cars. You started down on the street, and ran like a train with several stops. You could get off on this point, or a higher one, or a higher one, or a higher one . . . whatever you wanted. I had started two stops up the mountain.

“We go up,” said Jean-Claude. “Allez.”

It also happened to be snowing that day, which is pretty common in the Alps in the dead of winter. But we went up directly into a whiteout, which I had never experienced before.

“Okay,” he said, smiling at the almost-deserted slope. “Good. Now, you grab the bar, and up we go. Allez.”

It was snowing so hard and the cloud cover was so low that I couldn’t even see the next pole on the t-bar. It was White. Everything was white. And when we got to the end (I didn’t even know we had arrived, except that I could see Jean-Claude’s red jacket. When I got right up to him, I could see his face, and he was content. I looked around. I had no idea where the slope was. I had no idea where the ground was. I had no idea where the sky was, or what left was or what right was. It was like one of those scenes in a sci-fi movie that takes place on a different planet, or in some representation of heaven or hell or the inner world of the brain.

“Okay!” he said cheerfully. “I go. You follow! Allez!”

And then, he went. He just . . . went. Off into the whatever. I had two choices: stay in marshmallow nowhereland and die, or follow. So I followed. Apparently, when you think you are going to die, and you have no idea how steep the slope is, or how fast you are going, you can ski. Because I skied. And my only thought was never to lose sight of that red jacket. I skied and skied and skied. And eventually, we were back, all the way at the bottom, and there was Oscar, waiting. He took off his goggles and shook his head.

“Bloody hell,” he said, “that was . . . amazing. That was really well done. You didn’t look like someone who’s been on skis for three days. You looked like someone who’s been skiing for . . . years, actually. That was incredible!”

“AHhhHHHhHHhhhhhhhhhHHhhhhhhhhHHHHHHhhh,” I explained.

“And that was an excellent turn at the end. You did it perfectly.”

“AHHhHHhhhhhHHhhhhhhHhhh,” I continued.

“Either he’s an amazing teacher or you’re a natural. Or both.”

Better Off Dead, Trailer
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ACTUAL FOOTAGE FROM THAT DAY

Oscar was too busy talking to Jean-Claude* about my progress to notice that I was slip-stumbling toward the restaurant at the base of the slope, arms outstretched. When I got inside, I had an attack of special disorientation—the white out had so confused my brain about the reality of up, down, left, and right, that it was having a hard time making sense of nice, flat, cozy indoors. I was so dizzy that I almost missed the chair and had to stare at one spot on the wall for about five minutes before everything started to get normal again.

“There you go,” Oscar said, plunking down a hot chocolate. I pulled it toward me. I wasn’t ready to drink it yet, as I hadn’t quite mapped out the route from my hand to my mouth. “Now, isn’t skiing fun?”

So! Love questions! Um . . . . I’ve sort of talked about winter sports more than love, haven’t I? I will remember this for next time. But let me answer one question, very quickly.


Stephanie W asks:
Have you ever been out with a guy who TRIES to act all suave and sophisticated, but every time he TRIES to act that way, he messes it up somehow?

Perhaps I can refer you to this story about my first boyfriend?

What other LOVE QUESTIONS can I answer for YOU?





* Jean-Claude really was this good, and that was his real first name. He never offered his last name. So remarkable was Jean-Claude that we became a little obsessed trying to figure out who he was, and it is a minor urban legend around these parts that he might have been . . . might have been . . . Jean-Claude Killy. Now, Jean-Claude Killy is one of the most famous skiers in the world—a six-time Olympic gold medalist, co-president of the 1992 Winter Olympics, subject of the Hunter S. Thompson essay “The Temptations of Jean-Claude Killy,” among many other accomplishments. The age and background are right, as is (I’m told) the general location. He was known to live in the area. It is possible, in some bizarro world, that Jean-Claude Killy (who retired from skiing in 1968 at the age of 24 after winning basically everything there was to win) actually works as a ski instructor in this particular town in the Alps. It makes a kind of sense that he might not want to sit around the house all day. It is possible that I was instructed by one of the greatest skiers in the world. It is the story we choose to believe, and therefore, anyone who accuses me of snow cowardice can just suck it, because Jean-Claude Killy taught me how to ski, and I lived.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE A WRITER

I am constantly amazed by you, readers. Your comments and e-mails are my favorite reading material.

Daphne is thrilled that you are sending in questions for “Ask an agent.” Keep sending them in! This is your chance to have a fancy-pants New York literary agent give you the scoop on the publishing process. And trust me, Daphne is the business. She has the dangerous-looking heels and the impressive view from her office window and everything.

Also, I have been reading your suggestions for my UK challenge with great interest. So far, I have been invited to go to Cambridge to participate in an experiment on autism, to go to the Netherlands, and to run through London with Daphne pretending to be Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. But I think the one I am leaning towards at the moment (and this is not over) is to do a scavenger hunt at Harrods. Harrods is at the center of 13 Little Blue Envelopes, after all.

But I can’t do a scavenger hunt unless I have things to look for or tasks to perform. So what I propose is this: you send in ideas for things to find and do. Harrods is a huge store, and there are plenty of opportunities to do strange things in it.

I leave this to you. There are two more days to get your ideas in for what I am now calling THE GREAT HARRODS CAPER.

Today’s mail brought something that knocked my socks off. Midshipman Tirzah has three pigs, all of which she has made official members of my Pirate Dance Camp crew! Behold, crew members, the Pirate Pigs!



Firstmate Bob, Bosun Arnold, and Captain Fred

But let’s look at a question I get a lot: “Is writing a good career?”

I often dodge and weave around this question, because it is a hard one to answer. But it should be addressed. I would never want you to think that I would avoid a topic just because it is a sticky one.

First of all, writing is not a career in the way that being an accountant or a nurse is a career. It does not have the structure, the hours, the promotions, or anything else associated with a “normal” job. You will also have to go through this conversation a lot:

SOME GUY: Hey, what do you do?

WRITER: I’m a writer.

SOME GUY: No, I mean for your real job.

WRITER: I’m a writer.

SOME GUY: No, I mean for money.

WRITER: Oh. I’m a ditchdigger.

Because you might be. Writers often take other jobs in order to make ends meet. You really shouldn’t consider writing as a career goal if making a lot of money is a priority for you. I’m not saying that writers can’t make a lot of money. I’m just saying, if it’s a requirement, become a banker or a celebutard.

People should be writers if and only if they feel that they have to write, no matter what the consequences. You’ll do it even though you may never, ever get paid for it. You will do it using whatever you have on hand. You prefer a computer or a Moleskin notebook, but you will use napkins if that’s the only thing available. You will probably write when you are supposed to be doing something else, like your German homework or your ditch digging.

I have wanted to be a writer since I was just a tiny mj, and as you can see from this old author photo, I was not the brightest kid in the world. I’m getting my picture taken in a two-foot-by-two-foot photo booth and it seems pretty clear that I can’t even spot the camera.



Look up, Maureen! No, up! Up! At the shiny thing!

I also once ran out of the house to play at my friend’s house, and it was only when I got there and saw her mom that I was informed that I had forgotten to put my pants on. So seriously, don’t base anything on my childhood dreams and desires, because you will be setting yourself up for a world of confusion.

If you are still reading now, you may have your heart set on this idea, so now I will tell you some of the career perks of the writing life.

YOU GET RESPECT

The writing life is a respectapalooza. If you say you are a writer, people will assume you are smart. As I’ve previously said, this is hardly the case, but I never correct this assumption. I get away with it because I have mastered point number nine on my how to be a writer list: I can plaster a smart look on my face for hours and never once will a deep—or even sensible—thought fire across my synapses.

Mostly, I think up sandwich combinations—that’s a big favorite thought of mine when I’m supposed to be being smart.



Reading, or sandwichizing? (Note the touching of the chin. This is key.)

WRITING IS EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

Writing is one of the few careers for which you essentially train yourself, the other two major ones being juggling and pickpocketing. A good education helps—but this is truly one of the cases where you won’t be left behind just because you didn’t go to an expensive school. It also means that people from interesting backgrounds get to work together—doctors, lawyers, ice skaters, chefs, cat burglars. They can all be writers.

Be aware, though: equal opportunity does not mean fair. Very few things are fair.

There is no board of standards to determine who can or cannot be a writer. This means that sometimes bad writers get published and amazing writers get ignored. And if a bad book (or what you think is a bad book) becomes super-successful and gets a huge movie deal and celebrities start coming to the Bad Author’s house to hang out in their tub . . . well, it’s all part of the deal.

If you are the kind of person who thrives on being recognized for your achievements—if you just live for the day when the class rank is announced because you’ve fought tooth and nail to get a 4.3 GPA instead of a normal 4.0 through a clever combination of advanced classwork, alchemy, and kissing up—well, you may find yourself in a near-constant state of frustration.

“Why is Wolves on Skates number #17 on Amazon?” you will ask. “It’s incomprehensible! The narrator DIES in the first chapter. Didn’t anyone NOTICE this?”

You'll probably end up going to some dinner, and you'll be seated next to the author of Wolves on Skates, who will tell you sordid tales of fame, like wild nights of partying at the Amazon mansion and makeout sessions with J.K. Rowling . . . as their assistant sits next to them, cutting up their food into small, triangular pieces because said author is obsessed with pyramids.

Some of these stories will be lies, but not all.



The author of Wolves on Skates may test your patience.

If you really want to be a writer, you will learn not to worry about these kinds of things any more. You will be thinking of new sandwich combinations instead.

READING IS PART OF YOUR JOB

It’s true. You can read pretty much anything you want, and it all counts. Manga. Vampire buddy novels. Phone books. Whatever you want.



The writer at work.

WRITING IS NOT PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS

I watched a show the other night called “Killer Jellyfish,” because that is exactly the kind of thing I have to watch. Did you know that there are people who are professional jellyfish researchers? And that they wade into jellyfish filled waters and pick them up and put them into buckets? In this show, two of the researchers were stung, and they were filmed as they spent the next two days in the hospital, twisting in agony as toxins invaded their system—toxins with no antidote, that produce pain so severe that not even the largest dose of morphine can even dull it?

Writers never have to do that. I mean, some of the rugged ones do it because they want to, but not this writer.



This is one example of a situation a writer is unlikely to end up in, unless they are that kind of writer.

YOU CAN WEAR WHATEVER YOU WANT

Writers laugh at the idea of casual Friday. It’s ALWAYS casual Friday! It’s a “pants optional” profession, which is obviously good for me, considering my history.



Acceptable workwear? YES.

I leave you with that, and I hope that you will be sending in ideas for the GREAT HARRODS CAPER. I put myself in your hands.