Advanced Sex Tips For Girls

Chapter 1: GIDDY!\ It was June 1996. I remember it as if it were yesterday. Sometimes I feel as if it were yesterday.\ I was sitting on the bed at the Paramount Hotel in Manhattan on the night he asked me to marry him. Complicated and addled New York woman, sitting in a complicated, addled New York hotel, ice available whenever needed or appropriate, is as usual talking on the phone, Vogue on lap, when his words etched the air.\ "Will you marry me?" Woodrow asked.\ "Yes," I answered without hesitation.\ There had been clues. The five-hour phone conversations. The crucial and palpable need to call him during a family wedding to say, "You're not going to believe this, but there are rich people in Scottsdale who don't like Jews." The odd coincidences that we won't go into. The way my insides would puddle when I read anything he wrote.\ It took us so long to meet. I had been looking at my watch, humming and tapping my foot for an entire decade. There were two Mr. Wrongs in quick succession. I had given up. We corresponded before we met. One of those Internet billboard systems. I knew he was the right one but I didn't want to meet him because he would be the wrong one. We would look at each other and say, "And who are you?" All that writing, all that talking, and we would look at each other and say, "Heh-heh, gotta go, left the iron on, let's have lunch maybe never." But I finally said I would meet him at a bookstore in Long Beach, and I pulled into the parking lot and there he was. One look and I was fucking dead. I was dead fucked. I knew it and I didn't care.\ And it was hours, agonizing hours later when he spilled two quarts of iced coffee on me and I knew, I just knew, he wanted to grab me by the hair. And pull.\ By the end of the evening we were finishing each other's sentences. By the end of a week we were on a runaway train slamming blindly through stations at a hundred miles an hour. The passengers waiting on the platform for the train, arms akimbo, mouths agape, started yelling, "Wait! Stop! Are you crazy?" In New York the train sped up. I said yes to him without hesitation.\ S. said, "I don't want you to have a boyfriend. I want you to be always available to me."\ L. said, "Oh please, you're being just so ridiculous. You don't know what you're doing."\ B. said, "I am so jealous, what about me? Will I be the last one alone?"\ K. said, "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!"\ I watched their mouths move as I sped past them.\ I flew home to LA. At the airport he was waiting with a dozen red roses and a blue box from Tiffany. He led me to a chair. I stumbled and stared into my lap. I opened the box and found an engagement ring. He got down on his knees.\ "Will you marry me?" he asked again.\ "Yes," I answered, and he slipped the ring on my finger.\ Later he said, "I want to get married very, very, very soon."\ "Wait at least six months," said my shrink.\ "Okay," I said.\ "No, wait at least a year," said my son.\ "Okay," I said.\ Several days later at 2:00 A.M. the love of my life and I got into the car with a thermos of coffee, a loaf of sourdough bread, and a small dog and headed east on Interstate 15 toward Las Vegas.\ Sally sat on my lap, 9.8 pounds of doggie love concentrate. My future groom drove.\ We passed through interminable LA suburbs and hit the stone strange Mojave. We drove all night, ignoring the stars while I looked for the glint of coyote eyes.\ What would my son think? How would I tell my shrink? My bladder began to chatter. I asked my intended to pull over by an abandoned gas station and got out and peed on a flat rock. Clouds of steam and dust rose up. A big black dog drowsed a few yards away but I did not say hello.\ At the Clark County Court House people were checking their guns as they went through the metal detectors. We filled out marriage applications in pencil. I gave myself a new middle initial, what the hell. We didn't have to show driver's licenses or anything. At all.\ The block walk to the marriage commissioner was a Bataan Death March Jr. It was 107 degrees. Sally trotted hazily.\ The marriage commissioner was a fat man who was enveloped in a cloud of Aqua Velva. His toupee was as big as the Ritz. "Wait right here," he said to us, and went to round up a witness.\ Sally and I left the office and went to the ladies' room. I wanted to wash my face, have a drink. I wanted to think.\ I stood in the ladies' room with the faucet running, splashing my face while Sally danced around my ankles. I thought of the Mudd Club. I thought of doing so many drugs one night that a friend wanted to drink my urine. I thought of the smell of Lester's coat the last time I hugged him. I thought of Saban and Musto and Peacock and the Odeon and a specific anxiety attack I call the blancmange. I thought of exactly where you can get a cab in Chelsea at 5:30 P.M. I don't know what my betrothed was thinking.\ I plucked white dog hair off my black linen shirt as I lost myself in memories of sitting in countless coffee shops on countless Manhattan corners drinking endless cups of coffee with girlfriends endlessly discussing men and how fucked up they were and what did it mean when they said, "I'll call you Thursday." And how we reassured each other stoutly that of course it was the men, of course there was nothing wrong with us, but inside the voice of sabotage was keening, "You are so fat and you are stupid and you're not supposed to smell like that and who are you kidding with that hair and those neurotic thoughts and that hellish neediness that desperation and that huge butt? Do you really think black lipstick is going to help?"\ But we were stouthearted with each other, bolstering each other against disappointment and confusion, drinking coffee, drinking more coffee, discussing, discussing. Never realizing that there was nothing wrong with us, that it was, more often than not, the men.\ And I thought, "Me, married?"\ Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.\ Ha.\ Copyright © 2002 by Cynthia Heimel

I.Prologue to a Nervous Breakdown111.Giddy!132."Complicity," He Said193.The Fifties--Root of All Panty Girdles23II.Dating Goddammit314.Problem Lady335.Getting Laid: The Point436.Dater Beware497.The Alleged Shame of Solo59III.Relationships and Breakdowns698.Problem Lady719.What Are Boundary Issues?8510.Listening to Peanut M&M's9111.Beware of Love at First Sight9512.The Sixties, Still a Problem for the Chicks99IV.Alpha Bitch Soup10913.Women's Intuition?11114.My Life as a Man11515.Men: The Default Sex12116.Bitch! Bitch! Bitch?12517.Mothering Made Easy12918.Hardwired13319.Problem Lady137V.Falling Down14520.Leaving Home14721.The Seventies151VI.A New Leash15922.Life: A Theme Park16123.My Angel Homer16524.Dog Is My Copilot17125.Take My Collectibles, Please17526.Little Annie, Happy at Last18127.Political Correction18528.A Very Modern Wedding19129.Problem Lady19530.Mental Notes20531.The Hobag Manifesto20932.The Heart Is a Lonely Muncher219

\ From Barnes & NobleThe Barnes & Noble Review\ Heimel fans have been waiting nearly 20 years for this hilarious sequel to the bestselling Sex Tips for Girls -- but it was well worth the wait. Heimel's witty musings on relationships, sex, and society are the perfect antidote to the blues. Heimel's writing is a skillful mix of humor and advice, including some very practical warnings about love at first sight and tips for overcoming pesky boundary issues. \ Heimel is a woman on a mission, determined to prevent hapless ladies from stumbling into the kind of awful relationships she's endured over the years. One of the funniest and most useful chapters, called "Dater Beware," warns women away from "Iffy Men" ("He wears fur"), "Renaissance Men" ("His entitlement expectations are off the chart"), and married men ("Don't be a sap"). Interspersed throughout the book are Heimel's laugh-out-loud reminiscences about her life in the 1960s and '70s, when she discovered the real meaning of free love ("There was always someone to fend off") and, later, being a good wife ("Getting bored to death").\ Advanced Sex Tips for Girls, even at its most wildly sarcastic, is full of real self-improvement gems. Heimel assures readers that it's okay to feel lonely when single, even in the face of those smug girls with significant others on their arms, and encourages women to be aggressive and active in their relationships. Most important, she also assures readers that it's perfectly okay to heed the call of peanut M&Ms. (Julie Carr)\ \ \ \ \ \ Publishers WeeklyTwenty years ago, Heimel's Sex Tips for Girls was a hot item for women with bad attitude; her down-and-dirty, irreverent take on male-female relations was a welcome relief, after eons of machismo and years of second-wave feminist struggle. Her sequel, however, is a mixed bag: a little of the old rap on men-to-avoid-like-the-plague (serial killers; "/" guys like plumber/poets and dentist/photographers; "Renaissance" men who think they know more than you do about everything; etc.), a lot about the joys of mindless sex and some ambivalent passages on the joys of singlehood. It's all woven around a loose version of her own personal history, from repressive girdles in the '50s, hippie pleasures of the '60s, feminism in the '70s, dogs in the '90s (it's a DNA thing, as "all cells reach toward dogitude"), culminating in menopause. She doesn't end there, though. With a quick Heimel maneuver, she tacks on three pages of true romance so readers will know she's still into love and men and all that good stuff. While there are some witty moments, especially her menopausal manifesto against wearing "purple drapes," caftans and ponchos, she mainly obsesses about needing sex, needing to flee needy relationships and faking being happy about being alone. It's as if Heimel has turned into a parody of herself: too much "ooh baby" and overexcitement, and readers will begin to think she's just faking it. Still, old fans will buy this sequel, anyway, even if the elastic has lost its snap. Agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh. (Feb. 13) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.\ \ \ Library JournalIn this sequel to Sex Tips for Girls, Heimel offers her sardonic advice and wry observations on the difficulties of being a woman during the past 40 years. Thirty-two short chapters cover topics as varied as men's preference for bitchy women, Heimel's delight in discovering feminism, eating out of frustration, and trying testosterone patches. Several chapters deal with her close connection with her many dogs, including the "beagle-ish" Homer, who had "no pedigree at all, just essence of K-9, which, if you ask me, is at least next to godliness." Heimel has a knack for choosing snappy cover titles and for poking fun at male behavior, and here she reveals much of her personal life. Some readers will find her sex tips hilarious and sassy. Others will consider them frivolous, vulgar, and full of anger. A suitable purchase for larger public libraries. Ilse Heidmann, Olympia, WA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.\ \ \ \ \ Kirkus ReviewsA sequel, nearly 20 years later, to Heimel's Sex Tips for Girls (1983), in which the beleaguered humorist's sex life is not all that much better: she seems to prefer her pack of dogs, especially the late, angelic, beaglish Homer (tossed out of a car at a California strip mall in 1992 by a "a disgusting lump of putrid slime [and] scum-sucking pig") to over-attentive males who love her unconditionally, just like her mother, and sit on the edge of the bed each evening meticulously dissecting her every word and move that day in search of the slightest hint of betrayal. Is she still as saucy as in her Get Your Tongue Out of My Mouth, I'm Kissing You Goodbye (1993) or as zingy as in her If You Can't Live Without Me, Why Aren't You Dead Yet (1991)? Her married friend Gillian complains, "When you're married you don't get to discuss your sex life or the L-word or anything with your girlfriends." She blames the 1940s for making men insane and the '50s for the panty girdle-"You'll wear it and you'll like it, little missy," her mother tells her when she's 11. Yet she now faces drastically reduced libido and vaginal lubrication about which she says, "I want a second opinion."\ \