Monday, October 20, 2003

JT LeRoy, Bono, and Why I Want a Wife:

I'm now a regular contributor to Bookslut and I'm trying to set up an interview w/ the searingly talented JT LeRoy ("The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things", "Sarah"):
This Is

His publicist at Viking Press thinks it's a great idea, and she forwarded my interview request to him. I read his books two years ago and now I'm pounding down his essays and sifting through the reams of press he's accrued.

In the midst of my JT Fest, I remembered that somewhere I'd saved an interview w/ Bono in which he discussed his admiration for "The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things". (Yes, I'm a Bono-phile. Shut the fuck up.)

I found the quote I was looking for, buried in an early 2001 interview. In the same piece, the writer mentions that Bono and his family have recently moved into their Central Park West apartment. Bono hasn't slept the night before and he apologizes to said writer because he can't find the coffee and he has nothing on hand with which to feed the guy, so he nicely asks the building's doorman to go buy some bagels. However, he can't remember what bagels are called and has to describe them to the writer and the doorman, to which they both reply, astonished, "Um, bagels?"

Bono sheepishly laughs and admits that his wife set up their new kitchen and he's still trying to find his way around. I don't see this as particularly anachronistic: it makes sense that the spouse who is on tour and testifying before the U.S. Senate re increasing African AIDS relief is not the spouse who's going to decide in which drawer to put the butter knives. Also, to the degree that you can ever know what goes on in another's relationship, Bono and Ali seem like equals.

That being said (and obviously, a lot of women feel this way) I want a wife, too, damn it. Not sexually--like my mom said recently, "I know not you're not gay b/c if you were, we'd have to march in *all* the parades"--but in the sense that I'd like someone else to care about the domestic stuff in my life. Because I simply don't.

By any estimation, I'm a good cook: whenever I actually make food for others, it's devoured right away. I just can't see the fucking point. When I'm invited to someone's house, I'll bring something scrumptious, but odds are good it came from DeLaurenti's or Dilettante. I much prefer restaurants to dinner parties, anyway. Isn't that the point of financial solvency?

I haven't been in love in awhile, and maybe that's the source of this hausfrau ennui. I have a fine sense of story, and there's something inherently dramatic in preparing a meal for a new love. On the other hand, I always enjoy the meaning and the gesture behind the food infinitely more than cooking it, and the novelty inevitably runs out.

Of course, I'm a total clothes whore (whore, horse: whatever) and I rarely leave the house w/out lipstick, usually red. So, this isn't a gender thing. (Well, sort of. But anyway.) Maybe I haven't met the right guy yet.

Or maybe I just haven't found my wife.

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