by Fay Jacobs
By this time, somebody summoned a Dead Pooler who, when she was not waving farewell to deceased movie stars, was a nurse. She took charge, gently determining that the rest of me seemed unbroken and all that suffered was my nose. Unless, of course you count injured pride.
Somebody passed me a towel and some ice, as I heard someone else whisper “Let’s see if she writes about this.”
I was helped to my feet, shuffled into my buddy Larry’s car and transported home, where Bonnie plopped me in a chair while she, Larry and a painter who happened to at the house edging the guest room, stared at me in horror. The painter started shaking his head and announcing “that looks real baaad.” Thanks a lot for the expert opinion.
Soon, consensus held that the cut on the bridge of my nose might need a stitch or two after all.
A five hour emergency room wait was not appealing, so, with a bag of ice held firmly to my ballooning schnoze, we set off for the Route One “Doc in a Box” emergency clinic (even knowing I’d have to pay through the nose, ba-da-biing). It’s the clinic with the 12 foot sign out front advertising “Open Seven Days a Week.” It was closed. Is this a great town or what?
So we went home, where my ice bag and I flopped onto the sofa and, like Scarlett O’Hara, decided to worry about it tomorrow.
By morning at the battered woman’s shelter, every bone in my body ached, both wrists and knees were solidly black and blue, and my face looked like I’d gone ten rounds with George Foreman. And losing by a nose. I had black eyes, swollen lids, large puffy bags under my black eyes, plus a nose that rivaled Jimmy Durante (ah, a name only us Dead Poolers may remember). I looked like a victim of spousal abuse.
By mid-afternoon I had seen the doctor and he sent me for x-rays. Now here’s where we tip over into farce. At the radiology center, a nice woman carefully positioned my face on the machine and took pictures of my lumpy nose from every angle possible—and at this point my nose had a lot of angles.
Very quickly she checked the film and determined I could leave.
“So, is it broken?” I asked.
“You know I’m not allowed to tell you.”
“Listen, I just faxed my medical history to Asia. The entire secretarial pool at Bangladeshy Insurance knows when I had my last colonoscopy and you can’t tell me if my nose is broken?”
“Nope.”
Back at my car, my cell phone rings. It’s an underwriter from one of the insurance companies I had auditioned for, following up.
“Why do you take cholesterol medicine?”
“Because I don’t want my arteries to congeal.”
“Why did you have a stress test in 2005?”
“Gas.”
As I’m answering, nose bandaged and raccoon-eyed, I recall my obligation to be forthright with the almighty insurance pooh-bahs.
“I have to tell you,” I interrupted. “I’ve just had my nose x-rayed and it might be broken.”
“Is this something that will require surgery?” the underwriter asked in a morbidly curious tone.
“I have no idea,” I said, “but whatever happens it will be before January first and not on your company’s watch.” She seemed satisfied by my honesty.
By the time I got home, Bonnie was in the kitchen with an ice bag on her hand. She’d smashed it moving furniture. Great. Between her swollen hand and my bruised face, Rehoboth nosy buddies with their noses for news would promulgate the spousal abuse story.
As it turns out, my nose is broken and I have a deviated septum. I’ve been called a deviate before, so I wasn’t shocked. I find out tomorrow whether surgical intervention is required. Hell, if they fix my nose maybe they can do my eyes at the same time.
For the moment, the black and blue is yellowing, my cut and scraped beak is healing and the only thing permanently bruised is my ego. I’ve fallen on my face many times before, but never this literally.
And of course I wrote about this. It’s no skin off my nose.
Editor’s note: Fay did need surgery. Now, her nose is back where it belongs, but she had to walk around in a hard cast nose cone. That happened to be Rehoboth Film Fest week, the one event where Fay was guaranteed to run into everyone she knew so they could admire her nose bra. Timing is everything.
December 2006
THE ACCIDENTAL PUBLISHER
I’ve got two cars on the driveway and a garage stacked with books. I’m trying to learn about the world of publishing as fast as I can but I’m drowning in sell sheets, ISBN numbers, back-orders, and other terminology from the publishing wars. Not to mention bubble wrap. I’m up to my ass in bubble wrap.
I wish my mentors were here to help. But of course, they are not and I’m in this alone, unless you count Bonnie who now has the official title of Fulfillment Manager for A&M Books. It means she drags heavy book cartons to the UPS Store.
This isn’t the glamorous Vanity Fair book party kind of publishing, nor is it New York Times Best Seller kind of publishing, and it’s certainly not the “Let’s option this for Julia Roberts” kind of publishing.
But it’s the keep-the-legacy-alive kind of publishing and, when I’m not too pooped to notice, I’m honored and delighted.
Anyda and Muriel represented more than half a century in the evolution of lesbian literature in America and their lives spanned almost the entire history of the gay rights movement in this country—thus far, of course. I was lucky enough to know them, love them, learn from them, and agree to try, to the best of my ability, to carry on for them.
Now before you start thinking I’m Random House, let me explain the realities of a tiny publishing house (or garage in my case). It’s almost impossible to sell enough books to make any money. Not that the books don’t sell. Anyda’s are still selling, and I’m luckier than I ever imagined, with my book into a second printing. That’s a lot of books sold—all over the country, and I am so flattered.
But the distributors, book stores and Amazon.com take a big cut (I’m not complaining—they get those books out there!) and shipping is so costly that this publisher earns just enough money to schlep the next cartons of books to UPS and send them on their way—okay, and maybe a little extra to help with travel to book events. It doesn’t hurt that those events are in gay Meccas, either.
The ladies of Laurel Street never cared about what it cost—their mission was to publish books written by lesbians and get them into the hands of lesbian readers—who often had nothing else in print that related to their lives.
The A&M Books publishing house operated by me has no such luxury. We’re operating hand to mouth. Or possibly foot in mouth. But either way, investment money we do not have. Which is why I chuckle when I get several e-mail inquiries a week from writers eager to have A&M (that would be me and Bonnie) publish their gay or lesbian novels, self-help books, poetry, short stories, and in one case, a children’s book about gay ferrets (really).
We’d love to. Even the ferrets. But until we win Powerball or Hollywood options As I Lay Frying for a major motion picture (that sound you hear is me exhaling, breath not held) all A&M Books can do is be keeper of the flame for the Sarah Aldridge novels and use the funds the ladies left me to publish my second book. That was their request.
Although, I cannot predict the future. I’d like to think that someday circumstances would allow me to continue the mission of those early Naiad days and have A&M Books be a launching pad for female writers who otherwise would have no outlet. A&M (the women and the publishing company) did that incredible favor for me—and a whole lot of others—and I would love to pass it along. I’m working on it.
But in the meantime, I’m a teeny tiny publishing house. My den is my distribution center, with books piled four feet high and purchase orders, packing tape and the ubiquitous bubble wrap filling every available crevasse. I can easily lose a Schnauzer in the clutter.
Here in the 2006 holiday season, Bonnie and I have donned our gay apparel to keep the Yuletide gay. And, while it’s only the week before Christmas, and the mi
ddle of Chanukah, we’ve already had our Christmas miracle. No, not the usual one. But Mary Cheney’s immaculate conception, with her parents Lynn and Dick Cheney happily looking forward to their next grandchild. Hypocrisy lives large (I’ll stop with the Cheneys now. Although they have been a great target). As for my own same-sex household, we’re getting ready for the spring celebration of Fay and Bonnie’s 25th anniversary – that is, the informal anniversary of our becoming a couple. Was it the night we met? The night we ‘did it’? ’The night we moved in together? Our gay anniversaries have quite a mystique, don’t they? Well, like Anyda and Muriel, we’re not divulging.
Although, face it, after a quarter of a century, our liaison is only informal under our antiquated federal laws and to the crazies who love them.
Actually, our Canadian marriage is a mere three and a half years old, but since that’s not recognized here either, we’re going with the 25th.
But even at 25, though a laudable achievement, it’s a drop in the bucket by the standard set by Anyda and Muriel. We’re looking forward to beating them at their own game.
And one other thing. Along with carrying on the publishing tradition, Bonnie and I, plus a cadre of Anyda and Muriel’s friends, are carrying on the happy hour tradition as well.
I can still see Anyda walking slowly to the kitchen, pouring from a jug of scotch into two cut crystal glasses and bringing them both to Muriel for inspection. Muriel would determine which one had a micro milligram more of the golden liquid, taking it for her own—and then she’d sip a tiny bit from the other glass before handing it over. As their friend Tom said at Anyda’s memorial service, it was a very intimate and charming tradition. It lives on in our house, mostly with the morning coffee.
So that’s the news from the accidental publisher. I’m a very lucky writer. My second book is in the works and that bitch of a publisher is breathing down my neck. I’m trying to finish up before that big disco ball drops into Times Square to signal that it is 2007.
And none of this would have been possible without the ladies of Laurel Street.
It’s my fondest wish that that the legacy of both Naiad Press and A&M Books live on—either through younger generations reading the old-fashioned, romantic and now classic Sarah Aldridge novels, or the telling and re-telling of the tale of the amazing couple who made publishing history.
It’s ten minutes to five, time for crackers and cheese and a toast to those fabulous women who changed so many lives. They certainly changed and inspired mine.
Cheers! And make sure your drink isn’t too pale.
Afterword
Hello, readers. A lot has happened since this book was first published by A&M Books in 2007.
Anyda and Muriel (the “A” and “M” of A&M Books) published two more books in the series, For Frying Out Loud and Time Fries: Aging Gracelessly in Rehoboth Beach. Then I turned from author to publisher, taking over A&M Books after their deaths. Anyda wrote under the name Sara Aldridge, and it was a pleasure to re-issue her very first novel, The Latecomer, in a wonderful new edition with commentary by a host of other famous literary forerunners.
Now, a decade later, I am thrilled to have merged A&M Books with the wonderful publishing house Bywater Books, which has given my entire four-book Frying series new life, and most importantly, committed to continuing the legacy and pioneering spirit of Anyda and Muriel.
I originally got into the storytelling business because my father always said nothing is ever so horrible if you wind up with a good story to tell. And that turned out to be the best advice my father ever gave me—especially since the rest from that era tended toward “It wouldn’t kill you to wear a dress to your sister’s wedding” and “You’ll never find a husband if you buy a house with another girl.” Turns out he was right on both counts.
And, for a retiree (yes, I am that old now), my life is suddenly going in all kinds of surprising new directions and I’m having a blast. I still live in Rehoboth Beach, still write my columns, and still have wacky experiences that are worth the story I can tell. The march toward equality alone has been worth reams of paper and barrels of ink.
With running a publishing house off my plate, I was free to do the second most exciting thing that has happened to me. At age 60-something, I have a whole new career. I’m touring with my oral memoir Aging Gracelessly: 50 Shades of Fay. Reviewers have called the reading “sit-down comedy” as I tell some fun stories from my books and chart our LGBT march from the closeted outlaw days to marriage equality. As I write this I am headed to The Big Apple at the Duplex Cabaret Theatre on Christopher Street in NYC. For this lapsed New Yorker, it will be a huge thrill.
So please, check out all of my new editions from Bywater Books, and come see 50 Shades of Fay if I show up in a venue near you.
And remember, nothing is ever so horrible if it’s worth the story you can tell!
Fay Jacobs
April, 2016
Rehoboth Beach, DE
PRAISE FOR FAY JACOBS
“Her columns...are laugh out loud funny and the best part is that Jacobs is sincere...those who enjoy her essays won’t be disappointed and those reading her for the first time will understand why she’s such a beloved columnist.”
—Lambda Literary Review
“It’s an intelligent, hysterically funny and occasionally poignant look at how we live today, with hopes for tomorrow. Recommended for everyone, male or female, gay or straight. Five stars out of five.”
—Echo Magazine
As I Lay Frying
Print 978-1-61294-071-7
Ebook 978-1-61294-072-4
Fried and True
Print 978-1-61294-073-1
Ebook 978-1-61294-074-8
www.bywaterbooks.com
“Fay’s essays resonate with warmth, candid hmor, and the unabashed joy of finding one’s place.”
– OUTtraveler
“Fay Jacob’s hilarious dispatches are funny, touching—and real. This is a true laugh riot, as Fay wittily takes on sexuality, politics, relationships, and day-to-day dilemmas.”
– Insight Out Book Club
Fay Jacobs’ books are part memoir, part social commentary, and an easy and fun summer read. Very smart, very funny, very insightful. These books will appeal to everyone.
– Northampton’s Pride and Joy Bookstore
For Frying Out Loud
Print 978-1-61294-075-5
Ebook 978-1-61294-076-2
Time Fries!
Print 978-1-61294-077-9
Ebook 978-1-61294-078-6
www.bywaterbooks.com
At Bywater Books we love good books about lesbians just like you do, and we’re committed to bringing the best of contemporary lesbian writing to our avid readers. Our editorial team is dedicated to finding and developing outstanding writers who create books you won’t want to put down.
We sponsor the Bywater Prize for Fiction to help with this quest. Each prize winner receives $1,000 and publication of their novel. We have already discovered amazing writers like Jill Malone, Sally Bellerose, and Hilary Sloin through the Bywater Prize. Which exciting new writer will we find next?
For more information about Bywater Books and the annual Bywater Prize for Fiction, please visit our website.
www.bywaterbooks.com
