I Read It!
THE 100th BOYFRIEND
by Bridget Daly and Janet Skeels (Real Comet Press, 1987).
Cover price: $5.95. We paid: $1.00.
Bridget Daly and Janet Skeels's
The 100th Boyfriend is a 96-page horizontal paperback collection of numerous "true" dramedic/tragicomic anecdotes about ex-boyfriends. My favorite is at the bottom of page 32:
Before getting in bed at night, Don liked me to "pre-warm" my butt on the electric heater. I felt like a Canadian jumbo [hot dog]. When we broke up, he said, "I can't believe you'll be grilling your butt for another man."
Ha!
The anecdotes, which range in length from one sentence to a few brief paragraphs, are illustrated by black-and-white photographs (used with permission) of some of the men (probably also, in some cases, used with permission). One man is naked and you can see his entire penis. Most of another's pubic hair is visible. This is a book that presumably sat in the Humor section of Waldenbooks in 1987.
While many of these anecdotes are interesting, none are attributed to actual people. Perhaps this is because — despite the cover statement that "ALL OF THESE STORIES ARE TRUE" — they're confabulations? (Indeed, the co-authors own up to as much in the book's intro: "Transcripts have been edited and synthesized, yet in each story, we have striven to maintain the tone and mood of the original account, at times feeling ourselves to be instruments of some collective girlfriend unconscious.")
Whether or not these synthesized, unattributed texts count as TRUE STORIES (in the ALL-CAPS-on-the-book-cover sense of "true"), it's too bad — an opportunity missed — that the book doesn't tally, thank, or otherwise mention specific contributors.
How many women contributed? The lack of any gesture resembling a specific accounting leads me to wonder. How many women do you have to interview in order to feel as though you've truly captured (and can confidently sell) the "everywoman" experience?
I wish the authors had tied each ex-boyfriend photograph to a specific anecdote. It would be more fun — even if it was all made up — to be told which asshole's picture goes with which story. Instead, all the pictures float freely amongst all the textlets, defying clear connections.
Previously: Fup by Jim Dodge (01/13/08)
