Maria spends most of her time on the phone, calling the University of California, Irvine, and the City of Hope in Los Angeles, trying to get Kartz into a trial study for brain cancer. It is understood that Kartz cannot stay in Oregon; she can’t stay at home. She’ll need constant care for a while, and Maria has the summers off from her job as a nurse at an elementary school.
Gamma knife therapy is an option at UC Irvine, but chemo and radiation are definitive. Gamma knife, we hear, has great results on most patients. We cheer and clap when we find out she’s been accepted into the trial but that she barely skated in because the diagnosis is terminal.
Finally, we think. Terminal is finally good for something. It’s good for gamma knife therapy studies and stealing shit from World Market.
She is still wearing her battle dress a week later, and we find escaped sequins all over the house. The dress is beginning to fall apart, but it is of no consequence. It’s just the way it is. We find them on the dogs, in the couch, sprinkled in the kitchen. Shiny, minute pieces that Kartz leaves behind her, reminding us, reminding us that she is here.
They leave for California in a rented van that is so weighed down that Frank isn’t sure he’ll be able to make a turn in it. It is full of things deemed essential: a collection of pure white, immaculate towels; an enormous box of boots with three-inch heels that make Kartz feel taller; at least four heavy winter coats and three suitcases of sweaters; a king-size dog bed and photo albums. Figuring out what to take isn’t hard. It is deciding what to leave behind that is impossible.
When I point out that she’s not going to need sweaters in Southern California, that she won’t wear coats, and that she should pack sensible shoes instead of her Coach boots, the only response I get is a suggestion from my friend, who can’t remember my name and turns her head, now staple-free and with only a scarred ravine, that maybe I shouldn’t say anything else and just let her pack what she wants.
And she is right. This is not the time for anything to make sense.
Half a year later, only the top of her head has hair, in a spiky salt-and-pepper strip. Radiation has left the sides a little fuzzy, but it looks good. Kartz opens the door to the house she left in the spring, and Massimo jumps on me and nearly knocks me down. She looks healthy. She looks great. She looks like herself. The gamma knife therapy has been a success; a wonderful, lucky success. Radiation is done, but there are still the aftereffects and the partial loss of vision in one of her pale blue eyes. Her memory is spotty, and there are still times when she looks at me for a moment and I know to say, “Laurie.” Chemo is ongoing, and will be for a year. But the MRI is clean, no tumors, no traces of the spiderweb; it is clean.
Kartz is back home for a week, moving some of her stuff into storage before a friend rents her house for several months. It’s also a test to see how well she does on her own, if it’s possible that she might be able to live the life she left before the big white ball showed up on her doctor’s computer screen. Tonight, we are having a slumber party—me, Kartz, and Massimo. We put on our jammies and climb into a big, antique bed and turn on True Blood, a television show that she has rediscovered lately. With the constant scene changes and cast of shape-shifters, vampires, panthers, fairies, and now the werewolves, it’s hard for her to keep up with the ridiculousness of what’s going on at any given moment.
And the truth is, I hate this show. It’s complicated and silly and, much of the time, kind of stupid. But right now, when the only issue is to remember why one werewolf is eating another, it seems remarkably simple, as Kartz raises the remote one more time and rewinds it all again.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
So may thanks, so little time because I am already beyond my deadline, as usual.
First and foremost, a kiss, a peck, and a juicy thank you goes out to the readers, the readers, the readers. I love spending most of my days with you guys, running stuff by you, and waiting for the next moment in which you will make me laugh like the lady who shops at Safeway in a bathrobe and wears a blonde wig like a hat. I love you all.
To Tricia Boczkowski (I spelled that right on the first try. FIRST TRY!) for being the fine, delightful, and hilarious editor that she is. I’m lucky to fall into your lap, sister. Very lucky and I know it. Thank you to the tireless Jenny Bent as always; Bruce Tracy, Amy Silverman, Claire Lawton, Phoenix New Times, Lore Carrillo, and anyone else I beg, borrow, or steal from.
Thanks to the cop who pulled me over for driving a half mile over the speed limit just so I would have to pay a fine; for all of the many, many assholes on Yelp; the cabdriver who mooned me with his huge, dirty buttocks; the poet who had a really shitty attitude; the poor little boy I tried to abduct; the people who I threw up in front of; the person who rummaged through my fake trash to find a donut; to the people who did not invite me to their parties; and the scallywags at Antiques Roadshow. I couldn’t have written this book without you, and I hope I never see any of you again.
Many thanks to Kelly Kulchak and Kathy White, neither of which is a devil or an angel, but both of whom sit on either shoulder and insist that I can do it. If either of you need vast quantities of fat for butt or check plumping, know that I am your donor.
Thanks to my family, my husband, and my dog, Maeby, for making me get out of bed every morning and plop down at the computer. Hopefully, by publication time, you’ll be speaking to me again for a short period of time until you read this book. I’m sorry, you are too funny to ignore. It’s your own fault.
Awesomely,
Laurie
AUTHOR Q&A WITH LAURIE NOTARO
1. Ten books into your writing career, what have you learned about writing or how best to make readers laugh? Is there anything you do differently now?
With each passing book, I have more interaction and communication with readers, particularly online and with social media—and I think that is so important. I love knowing what makes them laugh, what they relate to, and whether something strikes a chord or not. When approaching a subject or a story, I have this wonderful resource, and the readers never, ever disappoint me.
2. Would you say that you’re prone to finding yourself in situations that make for funny stories, or that it’s your perspective on everyday incidents that makes them funny? In other words, could you say a little about the source of your humor?
I have never thought that I was someone whom funny things happen to, because these occurrences aren’t specific to me. I think these sorts of things happen to everybody, you just need to be keyed in to see them—and in many cases, appreciate them—for the brushes of tragedy that they are. For example, I offered some great pants that I can’t fit into anymore to someone I know, but after she tried them on, she declined, saying, “Well, they don’t fit—unless I gained a bunch of weight.” Seriously. What are you supposed to say to that, “Well, maybe one day you’ll be as fat as I was when I thought I was skinny”?
3. As you’ve gotten older the content of your books has shifted. How conscious are you of that shift? Do you roll your eyes at your younger self or look at her fondly?
Oh, I not only roll my eyes but I shiver so hard I’m afraid my skin might fall off in one humiliated heap. Thank God I was raised Catholic, and although I’m a fallen Cath now, I take a bath in my sin every day and I wisely refrained from spouting some of the most questionable material I could have written about. Some of those pieces were written twenty years ago. I dare anyone to not be horrified of their 1992 selves. I dare them.
4. Do you write with your audience in mind, or tell a story like you’re trying to make a certain person laugh? How conscious are you of your reader—male or female, young or old, etc.?
I have to make myself laugh first, and then if I do that, I feel comfortable passing it on for public consumption. As a writer, you know when you do work that is awesome, and you know when you are sucking, so I try not to suck. But I don’t have a particular reader in mind when working; I think it’s more of a reader’s mindset than it is an age or gender.
Your life experiences will dictate if you will understand why it is funny when I accidentally racially profile a youngster and try to buy him with a bottle of water or not.
5. How long does it typically take to gather enough material for an essay collection? Do you reject some pieces as “not funny enough” or otherwise not right for the book?
Oh, usually a year to two years. Some of the material in Potty Mouth was stuff that needed to be digested for years before I was ready to put my name on it, like the title piece. I needed time to see if I was overreacting or if my arch-nemesis in that piece was really a super asshole. Turns out, he’s a super asshole. So I wrote it. Others I know right away, and I have it framed and ready to go. So it depends. They tell me when they’re ready to go.
6. In this book you often focus on strangers and their bizarre and rude behavior, and after reading about them one can only conclude: What’s wrong with people?! Is it simply part of the human condition to sometimes be unaware of or unconcerned with our own strangeness?
My theory is that everyone is crazy, it just takes the right circumstance to expose how insane we really are. The terrifying thing is that I have lost my fear of strangers, and before I even know what’s happening, I am asking the guy who made my taco and is just letting it sit there for five minutes while he works on the order of the lady behind me, “Um. Dude. What do we need to do to complete this transaction?” And then, he looks at me like I’m the insane one. Like my taco hasn’t already entered the second stage of decomposition because it has been sitting on his side of the counter for so long. That happened yesterday. Boo for Mucho Gusto. Boo!
7. Your husband and friends feature prominently in some of your stories. Are there instances where your family or friends draw the line or declare a story off-limits to the public?
Oh, my mother said she was going to stop speaking to me a month and a half ago because she didn’t want to be in any more books. So I wrote about it, and I put that conversation in this book. Then she read that, and really did stop speaking to me. Last week, she asked if I was coming home for the holidays, and I said I didn’t know because she wasn’t talking to me. She shot back that it wasn’t true. I reminded her that she hadn’t called me in six weeks. She replied, “Well, that wasn’t because I wasn’t talking to you. It was because nothing happened.” I give her until this book comes out, then she’ll be mad enough to cut me off again. But I’ll just write about that. She clearly doesn’t understand that even if she stops speaking to me, she’s still giving me material.
8. Speaking of off-limits, can you tell us about the first dead body now? Please?
I checked again. He said no. I promise, the first indication that the scab has fallen off, I’ll hit the keyboard. But until then, I have to respect his Finder of the Corpse rights. I told thousands of people in the last book that as a boy, he had a tampon collection. I’m going to have to let this one lie.
9. Looking back, what was worse: human feces in your garden, vomiting on yourself in public, or discovering that your puff was public property? Is self-inflicted grossness worse than coming into contact with that of others?
Definitely the vomit. Definitely. I really tried to die that day. I mean, it’s the fear we all have, it’s the worst thing you can do, and now, I’ve done it. I’ve peaked. I’m terrified for what’s waiting for me next, and I just pray it doesn’t include a toilet out in the open in Grand Central station. Seriously. What other landscape is open to me? I’ve traversed every humiliating terrain there is. That is a scary thought.
10. The last essay is a bit of a departure in tone, but it’s a beautiful story. What prompted you to include it?
I included it because even in the darkest of circumstances, humor got us through. It was only because we were able to laugh at aspects of what was going on—in this case, the diagnosis of a stage four brain tumor in one of my best friends—that we were able to hold it together and even make it through those weeks. Without that perspective, I can’t imagine what would have happened. It showed me that humor is such a vital mechanism in dealing with the good things in life and the truly terrible, and it’s such an essential part of being human and coping. I wanted to show that despite the grim baseline of that piece, we laughed because we needed to. Because we had to.
11. In an interview, you mentioned being flattered that you were once compared to Erma Bombeck. Who do you think some of the funniest lady writers are these days?
Ha ha ha. Well, I don’t read a lot of contemporary humor of my counterparts, I worry about seepage, crossover, and raw jealousy! But I will tell you which lady writers are absolutely hysterical. I’m in a phase where I’m mainly reading 1930s fiction from American and English writers, and those who I find particularly impressive are Margaret Halsey, Nancy Mitford, Stella Gibbons, and Anita Loos. All of them have made me laugh out loud and consistently. And the funniest book of all time, in my opinion, is Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis. A resolute masterpiece, that book!
LAURIE NOTARO, the author of seven previous humorous essay collections and two novels, is a New York Times bestseller many times over. She lives in Oregon.
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Copyright © 2013 by Laurie Notaro
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
First Gallery Books trade paperback edition April 2013
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Designed by Jaime Putorti
Cover design by Christopher Sergio
Cover photography by Catherine Casalino
Image of doll head and fork courtesy of the author
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Notaro, Laurie
The potty mouth at the table / Laurie Notaro. — First Gallery Books trade paperback edition.
p. cm.
1. Notaro, Laurie. 2. Etiquette—Humor. 3. Humorists, American—20th century—Biography. 4. American wit and humor. I. Title.
PS3614.O785Z476 2013
814'.6—dc23
[B]
2012039338
ISBN 978-1-4516-5939-9
ISBN 978-1-4516-5941-2 (ebook)
Laurie Notaro, The Potty Mouth at the Table
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