Just in time for Valentine's Day comes You Know He's a Keeper ... You Know He's a Loser ... by Linda Lee Small and Vegas' own Norine Dworkin. The book is a collection of women's experiences, happy and horrific, dating men. We'd tell you more, but then you might not go out and buy the book ($12.95 here, $19.50 in Canada—suckers!).
How did the idea for the book come about?
A couple of years ago, I was having dinner with a good friend of mine, also a writer, who lived next door to me [in New York]. I was going through a divorce and her husband had recently passed away. So now we were two newly single women. So she's regaling me with stories about her husband, David, and she told me this one story that ended up in the introduction of our book, and a friend of hers, who's this very prominent feminist writer who helped out on Ms. magazine, said, "David was a real keeper." And me going through the divorce, we started talking about what makes a guy a Keeper and what makes a guy a Loser, and all of a sudden we go, "Oh my God, we've got a book here."
Did you advertise for people to send in stories?
Initially, we advertised and that got us nothing. We were very shocked. We figured this was going to be a piece-of-cake book. We'd put a couple postings on the Web and wait for the stories to roll in. Well, that never happened. What I ended up doing was, I approached a bunch of my girlfriends and said, "Put together cocktail parties or brunches or dinners or whatever. Invite women that I don't know, your friends that I don't know. Let's get them all liquored up and let's get them to start spilling. And that's what I did.
Do you have a favorite Loser story?
I do. How graphic can I get?
Go for it. We're an alternative weekly.
Well, that's what I figured. I have a favorite that I normally can't share with family newspapers and on radio and TV, but I will share with you. This comes from a girl I used to work with back in New York. She was flying from Phoenix to New York City and had been chatting the entire flight with this very cute stockbroker who looked like he came from a great family, well mannered, all the stuff you definitely look for. By the end of the flight, he had her number and they had agreed to go out. He comes over to her house the night of the date and he's in his suit because he comes from work and he says, "Oh my goodness, tough day on the trading floor," or whatever. "I'm beat. Do you mind if we just stay in and order pizza?" And she says, "Sure, whatever." So they order pizza and he takes off his jacket and he hangs it up. And he says, "Do you mind if I get a little bit more comfortable?" and she says, "Yeah, whatever." So he takes off his tie and then he takes off his shirt. And she's like, Huh! All right. But he's wearing a tank-top undershirt so she doesn't think too much about it. And they're sitting around eating the pizza, and he takes off his pants and folds them and hangs them up on the hanger and he's sitting there in his boxers. And she's like, Hmmm, this is kind of weird. And then he makes a move on her. And she says, "Whoa! I don't really know you all that well, and there's no way I'm going to sleep with you, so back off." He says, "Well, you know, I'm actually kind of excited. Do you mind if I take care of things?" And she says, "All right. I'm going to the bathroom. You can do whatever you need to do when I get out." So she comes out of the bathroom and she finds him buck-naked in her kitchen, jerking off. He splatters everything. Then he takes napkins or paper towels, wipes everything up, gets dressed, goes to the door, gives her a kiss on the cheek or whatever, and says, "I had a great time. Can we go out again?"
Did all the Loser stories affect you?
There was one night that I was really depressed about this stuff, and I started to wonder whether this was going to change my worldview on guys. This is a really lighthearted book. But there were some stories that did not make it into the book. And I noticed, not too surprisingly enough, some of the stories that came from Las Vegas, and only Las Vegas, were so dark and so abusive. There were stories that we absolutely could not put into the book. And by the end of that day, I felt like I was Joe Lewis, battered in the boxing ring.
What is it, do you think, about Las Vegas that generated the darker stories?
I hate to trash Vegas since it is now my new home, but there does seem to be something about Las Vegas that lures people who may have not made it elsewhere and are looking for a new start, people who maybe have some kind of hang-ups or problems or something. Spousal abuse crosses all kinds of socio-economic lines, but there just seems to be something about Las Vegas that seems to attract people who have troubled lives. We'll just leave it at that.
What would be the basic guidelines a woman should use for sussing out a guy?
The things that we discovered were that Keepers tend to be interested in your overall welfare and interested in the things that you are interested in merely because you are interested in them. They are a source of support, and they love through thick and thin. And let me make one point. Not one woman, not one in all the women that we interviewed, said money was key to be a Keeper. Not one. Loser guys, beyond the basic lying, cheating, stealing, dating while still married, those kinds of things, the Loser guys had a stinginess not only of wallet, and we're not talking about guys with big bucks, but of spirit, a stinginess of affection. Oh, and this is the funny part: all kinds of strange and bizarre habits. A guy who could only communicate through a shark puppet, a guy who insisted he had been abducted by space aliens. And just off-the-wall sex practices. The guy who wanted to use a gun as a dildo. Maybe you share it six or eight months into the relationship, but you don't lead off with, "Hey, can I stick this .44 magnum in you?"
You're engaged to be married. When did you know your fiance was a Keeper?
Stewart and I went to Oberlin College in Ohio, and we dated twice. We couldn't seem to keep track of each other, but that was the way of the world at Oberlin. He went off and did his thing for 10 years, and I went off and did my thing for 10 years. I married somebody else, went to my 10-year college reunion and met him again, and that night realized I was married to the wrong person.
Was it something he said or did?
It was just a connection of, without sounding New Agey and like a crystal-hugger, it really was a connection of spirit. It's an interesting thing to spend four years in a corn field in Ohio, and people who do that tend to be alike in sensibility and in outlook and stuff like that. It was like an instant thing and that night I said, "Oh my God, I'm married to the wrong guy." I divorced my husband, sold my co-op and moved to Vegas. That was in '98 and we're going to get married in December.