Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Our next guest is Cynthia Heimel, talking about her latest book, _Advanced
Sex Tips For Girls:  This Time It's Personal_.  I asked Cynthia for some
bio material to use for her introduction.  Her response was so delightful,
and so evocative of her unique voice that I don't have the heart to
paraphrase, and thus include it here, in its entirety, for your enjoyment:
 
 A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF CYNTHIA HEIMEL
 
 Cynthia Heimel was born on the edge of Philadelphia, her back window 
 looked out at four gas stations, a bowling alley and a Hojo's, her house 
 fronted on a beautiful suburban tree-lined street.  Naturally she is 
 weird.
        Heimel was a brilliant student until the fourth grade, when she 
 invented the practise of passing notes in class.  In the eighth grade she 
 became an honorary African American and hardly hung out with white people 
 at all.  Her parents were horrified.
        She became a writer by accident.  She was working at the Distant 
 Drummer, a hippie newspaper, and one of her jobs was distributing the 
 paper around the city.  She happened upon a student riot!  She called the 
 newspaper office, said "You gotta send somebody down here," and they said 
 "Cover it!"  So she did.  She wrote a rather good pastiche of the students 
 rioting for all they were worth and was immediately given a column in the 
 newspaper.  She never looked back except for getting married and getting 
 pregnant and having a son and moving to England to become a community 
 organizer and moving to New York and going miserably on welfare when she 
 couldn't find daycare for her lovely son, then finding a great daycare 
 center, then getting a job at another counter-cultural newspaper called 
 the Soho Weekley News where she almost immediately got a column!  She also 
 did more movie star profiles than anybody should ever have to.  Jane Fonda 
 told Heimel her hair was frumpy.  Heimel still hates Jane Fonda.
         She went to Penthouse magazine as a staff writer for a few 
 minutes.  She wrote the copy under the girlie pictures and all the boring 
 bits.  She quit when the Soho News could afford to keep her.  Then she 
 went to work as a Features Writer at New York Magazine.  Then she was 
 hired away by the New York Daily News to become a Sunday columnist, where 
 they almost immediately decided they hated her and the editor called her 
 into his office and said, "Our readers are slobs.  You have to write 
 slobbistic."  So she quit and wrote Sex Tips for Girls, which is doing 
 rather well.
        Heimel was always looking for boyfriends but she found hardly any, 
 ever.  But she did write a play about boyfriends which was a huge hit, 
 called A Girl's Guide to Chaos.  Her mentor was the wonderful acting 
 teacher and director Wynn Handman.  The play went to Chicago and LA and 
 then to Paris and all the little theaters around the country.  Monologues 
 from the play are performed every day for auditions all over the world, 
 with actresses everywhere falling to their knees and praying to God to 
 never have to date again.
        While her play was running all over the country being a success, 
 Heimel was writing two columns.  One for the Village Voice,  which ran 
 forever, and one for  Playboy magazine, which ran nearly forever.  She was 
 in the missionary position at Playboy, holding high her feminist 
 credentials amongst the stampeding bunnies.
        Heimel is a crazed clothing addict who lives and breathes just for 
 Yohji Yamamoto.  She was thrilled to write for Vogue for a couple of 
 years. 
         After Vogue she went out to Los Angeles, where she helped produce 
 her play and became a sitcom writer.  She wrote for the show "Dear John" 
 during their last year, and enjoyed every minute except when they brought 
 in Strippers. 
        While still trying to find a boyfriend she wrote six more books:  
 But Enough About You, If You Can't Live Without Me Why Aren't You Dead 
 Yet?,Get Your Tongue out of My Mouth, I'm Kissing You Goodbye, A Girl's 
 Guide to Chaos, When Your Phone Doesn't Ring, It'll Be Me, and now the 
 fabulous and poignant Advanced Sex Tips for Girls:  This time it's 
 personal. 
        Cynthia Heimel now lives in Oakland California with her wonderful 
 boyfriend (YAY!), his six-year-old son and four dogs.  Cynthia Heimel's 
 son Brodie is now a married TV producer living in LA, and she's very 
 proud.

Leading the discussion is Cynthia's wonderful boyfriend, Bradburn Young, 
who has this to say about himself:

Bradburn Young is a ceaseless rewriter who reveres Cynthia Heimel's prose 
style and humor. He himself has been rewriting the same sentence since 
1987. He can't wait to ask Cynthia Heimel all sorts of questions about how 
she writes her pieces. For instance, where she gets her ideas. Also he 
wishes to discuss romance with Cynthia Heimel.

Please join me in welcoming Cynthia and Bradburn to inkwell.vue!
 
  

    

I am back from the first leg of my book tour.  It went really wonderfully,
and I find I still love to stand up in front of scores of people and make
them laugh hahaha.  I am home until wednesday, when I go to Chicago and
then NYC.  I am kind of exhausted and stupid.  I hope bradburn will be
along soon to ask me questions.

Anybody else can ask me questions too of course.
  

    

Cynthia, you are a leading member of the Emsworth camp. You aren't against
Psmith exactly, but you say he doesn't hold a candle to the mossy, pig-
obsessed peer. Why is that? What is it about Lord Emsworth that's so great?
  

    
Bradburn cuts to the chase!
  

    
Cynthia dear, who is the best dog?
  

    

This is ALREADY the best topic on the Well.
  

    
The title of her next book!
  

    
Slippage of which I was not notified. I meant "Bradburn Cuts to the 
Chase!" as an excellent bookish title.
  

    
Cynthia, dammit I have been completely adrift since you stopped being the
Problem Lady. How the hell am I sposed manage my life now that you're not
writing a weekly advice column?
  

    

dalling cynthia, mr. saiyuk asked a very important question at your reading
in santa monica and i don't feel you delivered a clear answer.  would you
like to elaborate more regarding annie being interested in doc instead of a
cute little mikey dog?
  

    
I enjoyed the book - will be doing a review for the publications I
write for. My audience is all young babyboomers - and holy smoke will
your humor resonate with them!
  

    


Cher Cynthia--

Can you please speak to what you see as the biggest (positive or negative)
changes to the girly cultural landscape since the *first* STFG?

Are we getting better, worse, or just different? Surely, your tour is
providing you plenty of insight, based on who/what happens at your readings?
  

    

I think she's finding out that guys are getting even *creepier*. 
  

    


 Cynthia, you are a leading member of the Emsworth camp. You aren't against
 Psmith exactly, but you say he doesn't hold a candle to the mossy, pig-
 obsessed peer. Why is that? What is it about Lord Emsworth that's so great?


Okay, psmith is one of those I Love Lucy characters.  You're always getting
scared and having to take a valium because he gets into these gawdawful
scrapes and difficulties and having hare-brained ideas.  Although I do
really like that psmith (p silent of course) is basically some kind of
commie pinko.

But Clarence!  How much do we love who doesn't remember a thing from one
moment to the next, but in fact is very piggy and cozy in his ugly shooting
jacket and scary cap.  Clarence is hilarious without making one nervous!
Clarence is better than Galahad or Uncle Fred.  Clarence is funny even when
he's just saying "eh?  what what what what what?"

I hope I have cleared this up to your satisfaction, comrade.
  

    

I seem to have left out some words in the above post.  Just fill them in in
whatever way you like.


 Cynthia dear, who is the best dog?


Jef, my sweetness, the best dog in the whole world is my dog Doc.  He is old
and blind but still rules the house and the rest of the pack with an Iron
Paw.  He still steals food.  He smart and kind of glowing with the doggie
love.  Bradburn says he is "presidential," but I would disagree, since Doc
is on every level superior to George Bush.  I shouldn't even talk about them
in the same sentence.
  

    

Doc is more like Edward R. Murrow. 
  

    

Now that you're out gallivanting about the country reading at bookstores
and whatnot, I'm curious: what do you think are the BEST cities to read
in? And at the risk of alienating some fine citizen of a lesser city,
where would you shudder and say NO! I will not go there!
  

    

 Cynthia, dammit I have been completely adrift since you stopped being the
 Problem Lady. How the hell am I sposed manage my life now that you're not
 writing a weekly advice column?


Strega honey, you did better than you realize.  I only did my Problem Lady
column once a month!  You were filling in on your own all that time!

Twice a month I did a column for the voice.  One of those two columns was
called "Tongue in Chic", the other was the beloved Problem Lady.  Then I
continued doing problem lady for Los Angeles Magazine but called it Ms.
Lonelyhearts.

I will continue to write it, and more often even maybe, if I get a lovely
venue.
  

    

 dalling cynthia, mr. saiyuk asked a very important question at your reading
 in santa monica and i don't feel you delivered a clear answer.  would you
 like to elaborate more regarding annie being interested in doc instead of a
 cute little mikey dog?


Techgirl:  Oh dalling I hardly know the answer to why women's minds work,
and I'm one of them.  Dogs minds, while not a closed book to me, are seen
through a somewhat dark glass.

I think it would be politically correct if Annie fell for little big Mikey
the fabulous papillon, whom we know can have sex even though he's neutered
since I have seen it with my own eyes, but who can blame her for falling for
Doc, that magnificent sonovabitch?  If I were a bitch in heat I would
probably choose Doc too.
  

    

 I enjoyed the book - will be doing a review for the publications I
 write for. My audience is all young babyboomers - and holy smoke will
 your humor resonate with them!


Well, thank you!  I am very pleased to hear this.  But I hope you're not
writing for any republican publications.  Republicans hate my guts.
  

    


 Can you please speak to what you see as the biggest (positive or negative)
 changes to the girly cultural landscape since the *first* STFG?

 Are we getting better, worse, or just different? Surely, your tour is
 providing you plenty of insight, based on who/what happens at your
readings?


Lily angel!  I loved your book so.  You are SUCH A GENIUS.

Surely you know the answer, or a set of answers, to that question.  I sure
don't.  I stay home with dogs all day.

But things have definitely changed.  Now it's Sex Tips for Girls all the
time.  Everyone is very happy to have a sex life and chat about it.  This is
good, right?

The sexual landscape when I was growing up:  It was all diet books, all the
time.  Maybe Women who love too much had come out, I'm not sure.  But
everybody was buttoned up and not talking, and certainly not joking, about
sex.  Also, your girlys were very scared of the guys.  And, if I'm not
mistaken, now the guys are afraid of the girlys.  Which is only right and
good.

In the book I try to address these changes, and the way I go about it is to
tell the story of the fifties, then the sixties, then the seventies.
Because I don't think most people know what women went through in the early
days, before feminism and in its original flowering.

For example, how many people know that the pantygirdle is the straw that
broke the back of the patriarchy?
  

    

please understand that I am making these up as a type along and can't
proofread or edit them.  So I might be appearing quite stupid.
  

    
So since you've moved to Oakland, what do you like best and least about
the place?
  

    


 Now that you're out gallivanting about the country reading at bookstores
 and whatnot, I'm curious: what do you think are the BEST cities to read
 in? And at the risk of alienating some fine citizen of a lesser city,
 where would you shudder and say NO! I will not go there!


There is no place I would not go, my mim, to spread the word of my fabulous
book.  I am a total hobag.  Speaking of hobag, have you read the Hobag
Manifesto?

The worst city in which to read for me in Los Angeles.  I had a very, very
good reading this time, but that is mainly because I papered the house with
all my friends on and off the well.  My lovely son was there, for instance.
I don't think techgirl will get over meeting him, ever.

Portland was really good though.
  

    

Since you are a sexpert, I ask:  If two Papillons have sex in
an empty room and then forget about it 3 seconds later, has
copulation really occurred?
 
And could you expand upon why Berkeley (aka Entitlement Town) and
the wider Bay Area is such an angry place?
  

    
Plum, you write knowingly of Piedmont Avenue, as if you'd actually been
there.  I thought this was a work of fiction, or humor.  And yet: poignant
and incisive.

What is my question?