When you write a book, you expect a lot of things: to make piles of money, to meet lots of witty and interesting people, and to be on TV. The last thing you expect is to have to explain to your mother what your book is doing on page 172 of the July “Playboy”.
Yes, tucked into a back corner of the world’s most prestigious men’s magazine is an item about my book – catty-corner to a story (illustrated with a topless woman) about a discount card for gentlemen’s clubs and backing on a picture of a scantily-clad actress with a caption that says “Danish pastry.”
Ordinarily, I don’t bother regular patrons of this space with details about my life, which is no more or less interesting than anyone else’s. And I can’t stand to read – and immediately launch into tirade No. 347 – those sort of columns where readers are bored with descriptions of 40th birthdays and the shenanigans of cute kids. (And I swear I’m not writing this to plug the book, which is doing just well enough so that I don’t have to take the job Burger King is holding for me).
Rather, it’s not every day that someone who genuinely tries to be a sensitive man of the ‘90s has to account for his presence (with a naked Madonna, to boot) between the pages of a magazine that is best known for pouting breasts.
Consider, for a moment, whether to send my mother a copy of the item. I can’t win. If I don’t send it to her, she’ll be upset she had to hear about it on the street; if I send it to her, do I send the entire page, or do I send a discreetly edited copy of the page?
Then there are the snickers and the giggles, which have already started.
A friend called me. “Your book’s in ‘Playboy’” he said. “Hunnhhhh hunnhhh…Too bad Miss July’s not holding it.”
I did a radio show to promote the book, on one of those stations where the disc jockeys have silly nicknames and make bathroom jokes. I made the mistake of mentioning the “Playboy” item, and I thought the DJ was going to, well, you know what I mean. The man began acting like he was in junior high school.
Don’t get me wrong. Sex has its place. I’m just not sure that it’s in selling my book. There was a question in the “Playboy” Advisor, only 139 pages away from my item, about three-way sex. How can I explain to my little sister – who has always looked up to me and admired me and respected me – about the publicity without realizing she might see that?
“Selling your book to perverts now?” she’ll ask.
No, Beth, I’ll say, only people who buy “Playboy.” Which I was, this month anyway. And God strike me dead as I write this if the following didn’t happen when I went to Bookstop to get my copy.
You have to ask for the magazine these days, because they are kept discreetly displayed behind the counter. There was a woman with a small child in line behind me.
Maybe it was my imagination that she leaped out of my way, snatching the child from my presence before I could contaminate. But it wasn’t my imagination when I went to leave, magazine tucked anonymously under my arm. There was a priest walking right past me.
Still, things could be worse. As someone else pointed out, I could have been mentioned in the raunchier “Hustler” men’s magazine. In that case, I’d still be in the store, hoping the priest didn’t spot me.
