Key Publications

P.O. Box 1064
Santa Monica, CA 90406
800-735-0015
Email: KeyPubs@KeyPubs.com

For Immediate Release                                                                       Contact: Robert Moskowitz

                                                 www.RayniJoan.com

The Skinny Is A Rollicking Great Story

(Excerpts)
 

pp 15-19

Every night Daddy came home tired from traveling miles and miles to call on drug stores in three counties. He sold things like aspirin tablets, cold cream, Mercurochrome and bandages. Always an optimist, I'd be delighted to see him, run to greet him and hug him around the legs. Sometimes he'd squat down and throw his arms around his girls in a big friendly hug.

"Were you good girls today?" he'd ask.

"Yes, Daddy," we'd chant.

"Weena was bad again," Mother would say, tsk-ing as she emerged from the kitchen on cue. "She's due a spanking, Buddy. Wait'll you hear what she did this time. Don't tell fibs, Rowena Gay Wine."

I had no idea what I'd done. My heart pounded, stomach wobbled, throat tightened, lips trembled. I was so bad.

It wasn't always something big like when I went naked to visit Karen at her school, for which I'd gotten the longest spanking ever with Daddy's belt on my tush, legs, arms and back. He made me take all my clothes off for that spanking so I'd remember never to get naked again and publicly shame them. After that, Mommy got mad at me for all kinds of little things like spilling my milk, forgetting to flush the toilet or dropping a piece of something soft like cooked carrot without noticing, then stepping in it and dragging it around a little. I never meant to do these naughty things. They just happened accidentally when I moved around. Mommy said I was a big klutz.

Lots of times by evening, I forgot what my infraction was and probably she did too because she rarely reminded me of what I had done, only that it was bad. Sometimes I ran and hid under the bed, but that only made Daddy madder. I watched him from across the room and quaked.

The man had a routine I knew too well. Couldn't Mr. Buddy Wine have drunk a few sips of wine to mellow him out after work? No, this paragon of sobriety did not indulge in Dionysian pleasures; he was more aligned with Puritans, if there had been Jewish Puritans. All in slow motion, he took off his dark overcoat and hung it in the dining room closet, put his gray fedora on the shelf, went to wash his hands, and then came for me. He would sit somewhere, usually his big green armchair, stretch me out across his lap with my underpants down around my ankles or all the way off and he'd hit me again and again, hard, sometimes with his looped belt, sometimes just with his hand….

My first foray into wild imaginary realms occurred after Grandpa taught me that prayers were just fancy requests, like asking parents for a Popsicle. Little kid that I was, at four I begged the bearded God guy in the sky to save me from spankings and remembered to say "please" politely. Did Daddy have an instant personality change and spare the rod? Not even close. Instead, God the comedian sent me flying. I zoomed faster than a speeding bullet up to the light fixture and found myself watching from the ceiling as Daddy continued to splay me on his lap and do what he did with his hand and finger. It was a strange and exhilarating experience and fascinated me. Although I could see myself being hit and fingered, I didn't feel like the girl on Buddy's lap. I was disappointed not to be able to see the mysterious hard thing in his pocket because my little girl's body blocked it.

"Daddy, daddy," I exclaimed, when I returned to my body. "I was up on the ceiling! I was! I really was!" I pulled my underpants back on. This was exciting! The spanking didn't hurt!

"Goddamn you, Weena," he said sternly, "Pull those goddamn panties back down. Get back across my goddamn knees. Lying will not be tolerated for Crissake."

As he whacked and stroked me again, right then and there, perched like a spider on the light fixture, I decided not to say a word because I didn't want to risk being called a liar again. At least I didn't have to feel the harsh hand and that thing in Daddy's pocket sticking into me anymore. God worked miracles all right, in strange and perverse ways….

Next night during another hard spanking, I flew straight out of my body to the bluff and picked dandelions and buttercups. With each smack and caress, I plucked a flower and ended up with a nice big bouquet. I made up music in my head and the smacks became drumbeats. I could even smell the flowers I'd picked and hear boat whistles while I splashed in the cold river water. After that, I branched out and followed the river all the way past Bear Mountain. Little did I know this was just the beginning of wanderings to other planets way up in the sky and lands under the sea. I'd found a way to avoid the conscious experience of being abused by an anger-crazed, weary thirty-year-old man who hated his job and found me a handy outlet for frustration. I think he might have hit me more when I stopped reacting but I have no way to prove that, and I suppose the opposite argument could be made as well, that he lost interest because I was a limp dishrag. Most importantly, I stopped crying and, although I was powerless to stop the abuse and still struggled to figure out how to stop being bad, at least I enjoyed a new, secret life….

My parents argued all the time. I used to sit at the dinner table in our tiny dining room, listen to the forks and knives clinking against the plates before the inevitable fight began, and stare at Daddy's graceful, well-formed hands. I wanted to touch them, to put my hand in his. But I didn't dare. Instead I stared, fascinated by the gold pinky ring with the Masonic insignia. Sometimes when he hit me, he must have turned the ring around because it branded my bottom with dark red marks that sat inside his handprints. I knew because when he hadn't used the belt and I felt extra sore, I pulled my panties down, stood on the toilet, twisted, and checked my tushy in the medicine chest mirror. It burned when I dabbed it with a cold washcloth. As I got older, when I stared at Daddy's hands, I imagined chopping them off so he couldn't hit me anymore….

- ∞ -
 

pp 87-89

At the time, school bored me so I was supplementing with an ever-expanding variety of library books. Convinced my family was insane, I chose to analyze them by reading the complete works of Sigmund Freud, and I fixated on the concept of phallic symbols.

"Mommy," I said one day from my now visible perch on the stool where she'd formerly ignored me. "Have you noticed that we're surrounded by phallic symbols everywhere?" I picked up the tall glass saltshaker with silver colored cap. "This is a good example. We pass this thing around at every meal. Isn't that amazing and incestuous?"

Mommy laughed with hilarity and nervousness. "Gimme that," she said, grabbing it out of my hand. "I need it." Giggling, she held the saltshaker in her left hand, gazed at it with a strange moony face, then used the thumb and index fingers of her right hand to stroke it up and down and over the cap. I stared, taken aback. What was she doing? Did this saltshaker really look like a penis? With two hands around the saltshaker, she sprinkled a bit of salt into the Good Seasons salad dressing she was preparing, then pretended to kiss the saltshaker and handed it back to me. "Your turn," she said.

Dumbfounded, I wasn't about to kiss the saltshaker or even pretend to, but I had started this little game, so I played along and stroked the saltshaker a little, carefully copying her movements. Flushed and giddy, Mommy snatched it back. It didn't feel exciting to me, just odd and funny.

At dinner that night she surreptitiously passed her hand up and down the saltshaker before passing it to Daddy and threw me a furtive look. That began a new craze. She fondled cigarettes, pens, pencils, bananas, cucumbers, carrots, long pretzels, anything vaguely tube-shaped. I mimicked her moves and began to see the whole world as phallic. Weren't arms and legs phallic? Weren't noses and fingers and toes phallic? Everywhere I looked, I saw phallic symbols: hammers, nails, spoons, straws, knives, flashlights, a world of coded Freudian mysteries and delights.

Our private joke went over Lainie's head, and Daddy seemed oblivious, but Karen reacted with horror.

"Are you two perves?" she demanded as Mommy and I finished dishes one evening. I'd just thrown up and was in pajamas and robe, feeling elated, sensuously massaging tall drinking glasses as I dried them. "Nobody else's mother or sister acts like this. I think you're both disgusting and I'm going to move out altogether."

"Leave us your forwarding address," Mommy said, laughing as she caressed the thick handle of a long fork she was washing.

"Mother! Rowie!" Karen insisted. "Stop it! You're scaring me!"

"What are you scared of?" Mommy said. "I've told you before and I'll tell you again because I wish my mother had given me this advice. Don't get married until you sleep around first. Remember that. Sex is far more important than love. Love is overrated. Love is blind, but sex opens your eyes. According to the Kinsey Report, ninety-eight percent of Americans have premarital sex. I saw it in Redbook. Be smart. Don't be a dumb-dumb like your mother. Women deserve to know what sex is all about before they walk down the aisle and maybe get stuck with a dud."

"With all due respect, Mother dear, you are insane, now I'm sure of it," Karen said, appalled. "And Kinsey too!" As she was storming out, she turned and said to me, "Don't listen to her, Rowie, she's giving you screwy advice."

"Prude!" Mommy called after her and giggled.
 

- ∞ -
 

pp 180-184

The following Thursday afternoon, as I sat in our usual seventh floor hangout in Lydia's room, engrossed in a hot conversation about guys and sex, someone called me to the hall phone. It was Mommy on the line.

"I have to see you, Rowie. I'm downstairs. Can I come up to your room?"

"You're here, on a Thursday? That's weird. I'd rather come down to the lounge, Do you mind? That's where visits with parents are supposed to take place." My mind raced. I immediately remembered Grandma and Grandpa were dead and she wouldn't be here if anybody else died, but this was odd. My room was my sanctuary, and I didn't want it invaded by one of the two people in the world I was relieved to have escaped.

"I prefer speaking to you privately," Mommy said. "May I come up please?"

"I guess so," I said, reluctantly, and hurried to make my bed and straighten up the messy room just as Mommy had taught me. I left the door open and sat down in the neat little cubicle on the easy chair. I hoped she wouldn't smell throw-up from my using the sink.

She walked in hesitantly. She looked bloated and triple chinned in one of her shapeless paisley tent dresses and heels her fat feet bulged from. She must have been at work and taken off early. "Mind if I close the door?" she asked and closed it before I responded. She came over and pecked me on the cheek. I sat expectantly, curious and a little upset with her in my private space.

"Would you like to sit in this chair, Ma?" I asked, not getting up.

"No, don't get up," she said.

She sat on the edge of the bed. I was glad I'd put on the red Bates spread and the throw pillows Mommy had bought me. She patted the cover. The room felt like a cave with a brick wall right outside the window but I didn't turn on the light, so it stayed dim. I waited in silence. What in the world could be so damn important that she interrupted my privacy to come on a weekday? No parents ever visited during the week. I'd fulfilled her damn fantasy getting to this college. Now what?

"I need your advice, Rowie," she said.

"You need my advice?" This was getting stranger and stranger.

"Should I leave your father?"

"That's why you're here? You're asking me if you and Daddy should break up? What the hell?" I stood and paced the little room. This was the ultimate inappropriateness. I have an insane mother, I thought. Why had I bothered going to her stupid party for that AA degree that took her about a thousand years to get? "It's your life, Mommy. I can't believe you're asking me." I was astounded. I didn't want to sit still, found myself fidgeting, flashing on ice cream and doughnuts.

"I trust you," she said. "I don't know who else to go to."

"Let's see, Mommy." I counted on my fingers. "You could go to a marriage counselor. Go to a rabbi. Go to a friend or even a shrink. Go to somebody else, anybody else, but not me. How do you expect me to be objective? You and Daddy have been fighting for my entire life. What in God's name is different now?"

She began to cry. "I don't know. This is going to sound stupid, but I think it's because I got a degree. I can't explain it. I'm so sorry, Rowie, it was a mistake to come. I'm sorry I bothered you." She stood up, still whimpering.

"Mommy, sit down." I handed her a tissue box and sat next to her on the bed. I put my arm around her, aware of how pathetic she was. "Please, do whatever you think is right, okay? I'll support whatever your decision is. But it has to be your decision. And Daddy's, of course." I patted her back. "You asked me for advice, Mommy. That's my advice."

"He's impotent, Rowie. He's been impotent for years."

"Oh fuck," I said and didn't excuse myself. I lit a cigarette, and Mommy lit up too. I felt sick to my stomach instantly and thought I might throw up involuntarily. I didn't want to hear any allusion to my father's sexuality ever. I hated Daddy for hurting me every day when I was little, but I hated her too for egging him on. "Don't tell me this, Ma." I trembled. I was still a virgin, maybe the only one on my floor. It was one thing to talk about sex in Lydia's room with the girls but quite another to hear this from my own mother. Why did she have to burden me like this? She'd always burdened me in one damn way or another. I'd thought I'd finally escaped and here she was, violating me and I was allowing it. I remembered that offhand comment I'd made when she'd come from a business trip years ago, saying she looked so happy she must have had an affair in San Francisco, and she freaked out and confessed to me and from then on I'd become the confidante. I couldn't meet her eyes. She started crying. I mumbled, "I'm sorry, Mommy. I had no idea. Isn't there something doctors can do for that?" Just cut the thing off and forget it?

"He tried. He even went to a psychiatrist. You know what the doctor told him? He said I was a castrating woman." She sobbed.

I'd read enough psychology to know the shrink might have nailed that one, but I didn't say so.

"Maybe if you split up, it'll be better for both of you."

"I'm worried about him, Rowie, and I'm tired of worrying about him. He's a grown man. I'm living like a single person so I might just as well be single again."

"Sounds like you made your decision without my advice," I said.

"Lainie thinks I should leave him," she said. "If Karen weren't all the way in Buffalo, I'd go and ask her too. What do you think she'd say?"

I was horror stricken. "You asked Lainie? She's only thirteen, Mommy. Don't you think that was inappropriate?"

"Why? You kids should have something to say. I want our family to be run democratically."

"Mommy, you're the biggest bundle of contradictions in the world. Our family was never democratically run. Anyhow you're not talking about deciding what to make for dinner or what color to paint the living room. This should be between you and Daddy. I can't believe you asked Lainie. You've got a problem."

She began weeping again. "I'm so mixed up, Rowie. I don't know where to turn. I shouldn't have come. Will you forgive me?"

My instinct was to hug her, but we didn't hug in my family so I patted her arm and stayed silent. I could feel emotions zinging through my body. I was on the verge of tears myself, but I controlled. Maybe I could forgive her and maybe not.

"Do you need me to walk you out or can you find your way?" I asked, using Ira Silver's selling technique of two choices to get what I wanted.

"I know the way," she said, sniffing.

I wish to hell you knew the way, I thought, as I bade her goodbye.
 

- ∞ -
 

pp 285-290

Thanks to the Cuban missile crisis, our romance escalated quickly, and though that tense drama ended with the world intact, our personal worlds had shifted irrevocably After we'd been together a couple of weeks, the likelihood of missiles taking us out lessened. As we lay in his big bed relaxing by candlelight, Gabe told me there were guidelines he wanted us to follow.

"First, no lying," he said. "Promise me."

"I definitely will not. I've lied all my life. I can't even identify truth anymore."

"No intentional lies then. How's that?"

"How about half truths?"

"Give me an example."

"Food scares me. I feel fat half the time. I hate that I just said what I said. I'm ashamed and I'd like to throw up."

"Jesus, Rowie, you poor kid. That must feel shitty. That's what you call half truth?" I shrugged. He sat silently awhile.

"Okay," he said. "Guideline number two. Communication. Can we talk about what you just said?"

I shrugged again. He took my hand and waited silently for me to speak.

"Gabe, I've been screwy with food for at least ten years. I doubt I can unscrew in less."

"Question," Gabe said. "How many shrinks does it take to unscrew a screwball?"

"I give up. How many?"

"Depends on how tightly the screwball's screwed. Depends how much the shrink loves the screwball and loves screwing with the screwball." He ran his hand from my navel to my breasts and down, grazing my pubic bone.

"This screwball's tightly screwed, Gabriel. My daddy spanked me a lot and I think there was a sexual element to it. I hated him."

"I may have the perfect cure," Gabe said, and he rolled me onto my stomach. "Will you trust me?"

"I guess so."

He massaged my butt, one cheek and then the other, in a circular motion, and then he smacked me. He interwove sharp slaps with gentle rubs and kisses and penetrating fingers. I could feel the urge to leave my body, but I stayed.

"You're a naughty little girl," he said, and smacked me. "But I love you, pumpkin," and he massaged and slapped, sweet-talked, massaged and slapped, over and over.

I felt myself getting wet, then getting wetter, simultaneously crying, coming and ejaculating a flood. "This is going to heal the wounds," he said. "We're making the booboos all better." He said "bet-ter" as though talking to a child. After that, he used long pieces of soft material to tie my legs spread-eagle to the sides of the bed and he handcuffed my hands to the headboard.

"Do you trust me, little girl?" he asked. "Do you trust Daddy?"

"I hate you Daddy," I said. "Bring back Gabriel. Untie me, Gabriel, before I scream and the neighbors call the cops. This is scaring me too much. My father hurt me a lot. I don't remember it all, but it's intense."

"I had a feeling," Gabe said. "I love you. I'll never hurt you."

"I'm scared," I said. "I may never be able to love anyone." He held me and I cried.

As the holidays and my birthday neared, Mommy, Karen and Lainie began pressuring me to forget going to Guatemala.

"You and Gabe are adorable together," Mommy said. "He'd make a perfect son-in-law. Another doctor. You could do worse."

Karen said, "He's crazy about you, Ro. We all love him. He's the one. It's obvious."

Lainie said, "I'll bet he's great in bed. I can tell because you're glowing, Ro."

Gabe wanted to take me on a Caribbean vacation over his holiday break, but I told him I had to prepare for my year away. He looked grim. For my twenty-second birthday, he got me two dozen red roses and took me to a fancy downtown restaurant where we got our own private alcove.

Before the waiter even brought our menus, he brought a bottle of iced champagne. I knew I could handle only a sip or two. While we toasted to my birthday, he brought our menus, handed one to Gabe, then grinned and handed me mine. "This one is especially for you, miss." He bowed and backed away smiling. Inside, instead of a menu, there was a blown up photo of Gabe on his knees and just above him, in a large word balloon: "Rowena Gay Wine, MARRY ME, PLEASE." Gabe handed me a small purple velvet box and wished me happy birthday.

"I love you," he said. "I want to love you forever."

In the box, in the center of pink silk, sat a good-sized diamond solitaire. I stared at it as though it were poison. My mouth felt dry. My heart raced. Gabe took it out and easily slipped it on my ring finger. I felt sick and wanted to leave the restaurant. I couldn't help myself. I cried. How could he spring this on me?

"I adore you, Gabe. But I can't stay in Syracuse. I have to go to Guatemala. There's a contradiction when two neurotics fall in love. We're too crazy to allow ourselves joy. It's too perfect. We need chaos, drama, poor choices, suffering." I laughed.

"Rowie, don't do this to us."

"Gabe, you must have known. I'm not even close to settling down. I'm just discovering love. Mostly, I still despise myself."

"Okay, maybe we haven't burned out enough of the self-hatred, but we're on our way. I predict you'll return, Rowie. One day, after you've traversed the planet searching for some unknown, suddenly you'll know, and you'll return to my arms where you belong. Until then, keep the ring, Rowie, and we'll be engaged."

"I hope you're not saying you'll wait."

"I love you, Rowie. I can be myself with you. I can't imagine marrying anyone else. I want to visit you in Guatemala. I want to introduce you to my mother and my aunt and all the rest of my crazy family. I want you to wear this ring and know how much I love you. If language counts, Central America sounds like an appropriate place to center yourself. Go for it, Rowie. Find your center and then we'll get married."

As unobtrusively as possible, I took off the scary ring, which fit perfectly, slipped it into the case and handed it back to Gabe. I closed my hands around his. Tears streamed down both of our faces. I was embarrassed and wanted to run away.

"The ring is beautiful, Gabe. Thank you for your kindness. But I can't accept it right now. I have a date with destiny."

"Funny you should say that, Rowie, because I believe you and I are beshert, destined for each other, and nothing can get in the way of our being together, not your stubbornness or self-loathing, not Guatemala, not time or storms, or wars, not anything except death and maybe not even death. I believe you and I are going to marry and have babies someday. If I had my way, you wouldn't go, but if you'd be unhappy staying, I couldn't live with that."

"Thank you, Gabe."

"Will you promise you'll come back to me?"

"I can't promise because I don't want to make a promise I can't keep. You're the most special man I've ever known, but I'm seriously crazier than you can imagine, my darling, and I have to follow this urge to go thousands of miles away from everything familiar. I'll never forget you and I don't expect you to wait for me because I have no idea whether I'll ever return."

"I'm deeply disappointed, but I respect your honesty, Rowie. Can I at least visit you there?"

"I'm sorry," I said, crying, shaking my head. "I need a clean break."

"I'm sorrier," he said. "You warned me at the beginning, didn't you? I didn't listen."

"Blame Fidel and the Soviets," I said.

"Thank them, you mean. I don't regret one second of our time together. And I caution you, sweetheart, I'm a patient man."
 

- ∞ -

 

#     #    #

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© Copyright 2006 by Rayni Joan

Key Publications

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800-735-0015

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