Fast Funny Women: 75 Essays of Flash Nonfiction

By Gina Barreca

FAST FUNNY WOMEN is a broad collection: 75 women writers, ages 20 to 89, were invited by editor Gina Barreca to make a party out of their life's most unnerving, challenging, illuminating, desperate, and hilarious moments.Political campaigners, devoted teachers, lousy daughters, good mothers, would-be nuns, admired sportswriters, grad-school-wanna-bes, revenge-driven sisters, frustrated roommates, body-fluid-sorting professionals, lace-loving fashion mavens, intrepid daters, hungry lovers, justice-seeking nasty-women, ACE wedding celebrants, trapped wives, and women with all kinds of ammunition tell their stories-- and their stories are all under 750 words.You know many of these brilliant women, but you've never heard them like this: with new works commissioned for the book from NYT Bestseller and member of the American Academy of Poets, Marge Piercy, Pulitzer-Prize winner Jane Smiley, NYT bestseller graphic artist Mimi Pond, New Yorker staff cartoonist Liza Donnelly, Commander of the British Empire Fay Weldon, bestselling author of Love, Loss, and What I Wore Ilene Beckerman, Sylvia creator Nicole Hollander, stand-up comics Lisa Landry and Leighann Lord, filmmakers Ferne Pear

• Language: English
• Publisher: Woodhall Press
• Release date: Mar 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781949116212

Gina Barreca

Gina Barreca is a professor of feminism and English literature at the University of Connecticut and a columnist for The Hartford Courant. She is the author of They Used to Call Me Snow White, But I Drifted, and four other books. The authors have never met.

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How Gumbo Was My Valley

Lisa Landry

I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood twenty miles from the French Quarter, hundreds of miles from pretention, and decades from helicopter parenting. It was the 1970s. Seatbelts were optional. Kids rode in the backs of pickup trucks. Helmets were something only Evel Knievel wore. Adults happily dispensed bottle rockets to everyone over the age of five each New Year’s Eve and Fourth of July, but bottles weren’t necessary for launching them. Your hand worked almost as well, give or take a second-degree burn or partially blown-off finger.

One day, the community golf course in the middle of our neighborhood closed. Previously manicured acres became our labyrinthine playground. Golf cart paths turned into go-cart tracks. We jumped dirt bikes over sand traps and raced bikes with banana seats through eighteen former holes repurposed as mountains and castles we defended from each other playing Battle. We were free-range kids building our own adolescent afterschool, unlimited nights, and weekend minutes utopic dystopia.

Each October the firefighters at the end of my street transformed their station into a haunted house. Our community swim club hosted a weekly Kids Only Swim during summer. The parents planned next year’s Mardi Gras all year long. Folks knew how to prioritize.  

Everybody knew each other. The Black family two streets over threw block parties. The Cajun grandma near old Hole 4 sold spicy homemade crab cakes. A Bolivian dad jogged through the neighborhood every night. His daughter and I became best friends. Our neighborhood was one of hospitality and inclusion, despite the systemic racial inequity we never pretended didn’t exist.

On Friday nights neighborhood dads drank beers at the edge of my parents’ driveway. Sometimes they’d smoke pot. We could tell they were about to smoke when my dad told us to go inside and watch TV. Nobody wanted their kids inside the house in the ’70s. If your parents told you to go inside and they stayed outside, they wanted to smoke pot. 

 The Episcopal church we attended was fifteen miles away from home, and my mom has always been a devout worshipper of the god of convenience. So when the Vatican built an outpost across the street from my house—St. Martha’s—she decided we were turning Catholic. It’s the same Jesus, just closer. I don’t think we got saved, but we did get another half hour of sleep and pancakes instead of cereal on Sunday mornings. Praise God.

St. Martha’s sprang for a gargantuan concrete parking lot, providing every neighborhood kid with a huge, flat outdoor skating rink/go-cart racetrack, except for during choir practice or Mass. Then we kids endured the trials and tribulations, because the parishioners hogged up our Roller Boogie/Grand Prix with their dumbass real cars, decimating our circuit. Forced to skate and race among rows of cars, we did our best to avoid creating too many dents—in them or us.

 The church also threw an annual weekend-long festival on that parking lot. Bright lights bled through my window curtains. Live bands performed, a DJ played records, and volunteer parishioner chefs smoked chickens in barbecue pits. The scent accosted my nostrils, giving me a seventy-two-hour chicken jones. I could hear people laughing and singing all weekend long. I loved it! I felt like I was at Woodstock. 

 The festival always closed with a talent show. One year my dad and his friends performed in drag. My father was Dolly Parton, the dad next door was Barbara Mandrell, and Bolivian Jogger Dad was Cher. Together they sang Here You Come Again very, very badly. I looked over at Father Perkovich. He seemed to be mouthing a prayer for them, but the audience enjoyed the spectacle. They won second place. Dad proudly placed his trophy in the living room, on the mantle next to Mom’s statue of St. Jiffy.

 Then the ’80s came. And the divorces began. It was a slow burn at first. Kids started not showing up to race or shoot bottle rockets. They’d moved away when their parents broke up. There were fewer dads drinking beers on my driveway, then no dads. Moms had tag sales, low-ball pricing the ugly ties our friends’ dads used to wear, and their rusty golf clubs that (also) hadn’t seen any action since the golf course closed. When my parents separated, my mom had a yard sale too and sold my dad’s trophy for a quarter. St. Martha’s canceled its annual festival due to low attendance. My utopic dystopia Woodstock was no more. 

Whole Cloth

Mimi Pond

In the mid-1960s, I’d come home from grade school in San Diego, slap my Man from U.N.C.L.E. lunchbox on the kitchen table, and find my grandmother smoking and clutching newspaper clippings sent from her sisters in Arkansas: their adult children’s wedding announcements published in the Petit Jean Country Headlight. There were grainy black-and-white photos of my mother’s first cousins, all younger than she—young men with brush cuts and military uniforms; ingenues with big early-1960s hairdos, gazing thoughtfully over their satin-shrouded shoulders. My grandmother would read them aloud: The bride wore a fingertip-length veil of Alençon lace. Her floor-length, empire-waisted, gored gown was ivory silk gazar with touches of seed pearls, a sweetheart neckline, and short sleeves. Ivory opera-length gloves added a cosmopolitan touch.

This was followed by detailed descriptions of—well, of EVERYTHING: the bridesmaids’ dresses, the mother of the bride’s outfit, the bouquets, the boutonnieres, the floral arrangements for the tables, the table settings, who the guests were, where they’d traveled from, and, at the end, a description of the bride’s going-away suit (summer-weight pale green bouclé, if you must know, with a matching hat and shoes). To my grandmother, always in some way disappointed by life, all this meant was that things were so much better back there, and it was all going on without her. 

While my grandmother was yearning for home, my brain was being titillated by all these fabric names: plissé, peau de soie, dupioni, crepe de chine, faille, charmeuse. Words like these were once the coin of the realm in newspaper wedding announcements from coast to coast. In those olden days, a woman’s name was meant to appear in the newspapers only twice in her life—when she got married and when she died. Once married, she’d be referred to by her husband’s name: Mrs. Charles Buchanan. Mrs. Philip Longstock. Mrs. William C. Kimbrough. A husband’s name was the best defense against anything, women having no agency. If you weren’t going to be called by your own name again until they dug a hole for you, at least this wedding reportage was like a kind of temple, the fabric names supporting the narrative like Corinthian columns. Or was it a tomb?

Look, it’s not the fault of fabrics that they’ve been used by the patriarchy. The names are dizzying! Gingham, dotted swiss, gabardine, organza, taffeta, baize, cretonne, chambray, bombazine, dimity—words that roll around inside your brain like loose marbles. 

Maybe I was hooked when my grandmother showed me the sense of promise in the yardage department at JCPenney—so many colors and patterns and textures! The trims and ribbons, buttons and thread, zippers and snaps were called NOTIONS. The pattern books transported you to a heretofore-unknown world of style and glamor, and I had my own personal tailoress to do my bidding!

Of course she was disappointed when I failed to take to sewing myself. That white piqué tennis dress, an eighth-grade Home Economics project—one long seam-ripping struggle from beginning to end—was my Waterloo.

What stayed with me was the words—easier to stitch together: their sounds and their origins give text color and depth. Aside from being a repository of fabric names, I also know all the words for kinds of garments, and parts of garments, and things attached to garments: shrugs, boleros, chubbies, dirndls, sheaths, hostess pajamas, toreador pants, capris, pedal pushers, raglan sleeves, modesty panels, peplums, passementerie, epaulets. Dickies and knickers and capes, oh my! I thought everyone knew these. But not everyone grew up in the 1960s and 1970s with a grandmother who sewed and a brain that memorizes words the way others memorize baseball statistics. Who wouldn’t love them? A garage sale philistine, that’s who.  

The sign announced, COSTUMER’S YARD SALE. VINTAGE WEAR. I swerved to the curb and made beeline to the young woman presiding. 

How much is that brocade car coat over there? I asked, breathlessly.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, she said, coolly.

The brocade coat on the fence—how much is it?

I don’t know what brocade is. The gauntlet (which is a glove) had been thrown. 

You’re in costuming, I said, narrowing my eyes, and you don’t know the names of fabrics? 

I just know what I like, she answered with hauteur.

There would be no deal that day. That woman did not have a NOTION.

Memories of a Boxing Broad

Amy Lennard Goehner

On the day Angelo Dundee—renowned trainer of Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard—died in 2012, my big brother Jeff and I reminisced about our Grandpa Abe, who owned a diner near Dundee’s Fifth Street Gym in Miami Beach. Years earlier, during our Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, childhood, Grandpa Abe never missed the Friday Night Fights, teaching Jeff as a toddler about the fistic science; Jeff in turn taught me. Our Grandpa Sam lived nearby and had fought as an amateur. That double dose of boxing DNA landed me a job covering boxing for Sports Phone and then the granddaddy of sports publications—Sports Illustrated—in the 1980s.

The news about Dundee sparked more than a touch of nostalgia about my halcyon years as a cub reporter. I rifled through my boxing tapes, looking for my interview with Dundee that I conducted before one of Sugar Ray’s title fights. And I found it! If I could only find my old reel-to-reel tape recorder to listen to it. It’s probably somewhere near my Betamax.

I read the faded names on the tapes. Hey, here’s lightweight champion Ray Boom Boom Mancini! I had traveled by bus with the New York newspaper guys to Mancini’s training camp. In the camp’s ladies’ room I ran into the only other female with the entourage: the reigning Penthouse Pet of the Year. Dressed in a leopard-print bathing suit and awaiting her photo shoot with Mancini, she tugged at her suit in front of a full-length mirror (something I go at all lengths to avoid). She was getting more agitated with each tug. Do I look fat? she asked me. FAT? You look fine, I assured her while thinking, There is absolutely no hope for the rest of us.

Where were my tapes of the three hours I spent at Mitch Blood Green’s mom’s house in Queens? He was a six-foot-five heavyweight, and I was there to ask about his upcoming bout with Mike Tyson. But he just wanted my advice on women. A year later I was shocked to awake to a news report that Mitch Blood Green had been arrested while impersonating a gas station attendant—and robbing cars until the cops showed up. Not my Blood, I thought. Surely that must be some other Blood.

Ah, my Gerry Cooney tape looked intact. Too bad Gerry didn’t look that way after his fight against Michael Spinks. A few days before the fight, I ran into Gerry in the Atlantic City hotel lobby—alone! An exclusive, no throngs of reporters. I asked him if he had some time to chat; he said to come to his room in ten minutes, where he’d be getting a massage. I quickly did the math: Massage equals one massagee and one masseuse—two people. Phew! Sure, I said confidently. When I entered Gerry’s room, he lay on a table with just a small towel draped over his six-foot-six frame. He started talking—but not about boxing—then resignedly switched gears when I started asking about overhand rights and left hooks. I should have included Remember to duck.

And where was my tape with that heavyweight whose name I am still afraid to mention, given that he was part of an investigative mission I was part of to get the goods on a no-goodnik boxing agent. When I arrived at the desolate place the heavyweight had chosen to meet, he was flanked by two equally large men, arms folded, all eyes on me. Where did you get my number? one of his henchmen asked me. I had been told explicitly NOT to reveal my source. So I humana-humanaed, Jackie Gleason style, trying hard not to picture the New York Post headline: Day 12: Sports Illustrated Reporter Still Missing.

What’s this? My tape from a New York Rangers game? My boss had asked if I could fill in for the hockey reporter. Put me in, coach! I said, while thinking, Oy vey, remembering that hockey players do their postgame interviews in a locker room. Usually nude. At least Gerry Cooney had a towel.

In that locker room I kept my microphone and eyes up. I never longed more for another female face. Even the Penthouse Pet would have been welcome.

Just let me survive this locker room and get back to my comfort zone, I remember thinking. Back to boxing—a civilized sport where men keep their clothes on. The sport my grandpa Abe taught us to love. u

Making a Girl

Jianna Heuer

Age 10

Hey, girl, love your French braid!

She seems nice. New friend?

Age 11

Hey, girl, can I get a taste of that?

He doesn’t seem like he is talking about my gummy bears. Adults are weird.

Age 13

Hey, girl, you look so grown up. Come over here and talk to me for a minute. 

Hmm, bald spot—check. Weird hand movement in pocket—clocked. I’m not a grown-up, but I’m not an idiot. I know what’s up. I’m out.

Age 15

Hey, girl, you know what I could do with an ass like that?

It’s cute right? Swim team has really put me in fighting shape.

Age 17

Hey, girl, show us some more of what you got. 

Hold on; let me just grab my boom box and put this stripper song on! OK, I’m ready to take it ALL OFF.

Age 18

Hey, girl, come on over; give us a little something. 

I am OZ the all-powerful! For you, empathy. For you, integrity. For you, my favorite, respect.

Age 20

Hey, girl, you’re so beautiful; you should smile more.

I would, but people like you make it impossible.

Age 22

Hey, girl, you have gorgeous eyes. 

Brilliant observation! I hadn’t looked in the mirror the last twenty-two years. If I hadn’t met you, I may have never known. Thank you!

Age 24

Hey, girl, nice tits. Come to Daddy. 

I haven’t had a daddy since I was twelve years old. My daddy also liked to talk about my great tits with his friends. It was AWESOME! Exactly what every twelve-year-old girl wants to hear from her father—a real gift, just like this interaction with you.

Age 26

Hey, girl, you know you’re hot, right? Why don’t you stop and hang out? Fine; keep walking bitch.

You’re not that cute, but now that you have yelled at me and called me a bitch—I think I’m in love.

Age 28

Hey, girl, looking good. 

Cool, Ivan. I just need to get around you to the printer . . .

Age 30

Hey, girl, you married, huh? I could give you a little sidepiece.

Well, I married for love, but I’ve got a lot of student debt. How’s bigamy sound to you? I could use a rich husband.

Age 32

Hey, girl, can I hit that?

This is the closest we’ve come to the truth; believe me, the assault has been real. Consider me hit.

Age 35

Hey, girl, you got what I want. 

Yeah, yeah, I know.

Age 35

Hey, girl, you are glowing. Love the look; you are pulling it off! 

Umm, thank you?

Did I startle you? I get it, girl. Take the compliment; we can feel good about how we look, at least with each other. 

Yes, girl. YES. She seems nice. New friend?

That Sounds Awful: The Art of Self-Care

Lily Shell

Have you ever told a doctor about a past medical experience you’ve had, expecting a nod of affirmation or a smile of gentle pity, only to have the doctor look absolutely horrified and choke out a shocked That sounds awful? Ever since I was hospitalized for a few days earlier this year with a rare infection, I have.

I’d never been in the hospital before, and I bided my time waiting for recovery, envisioning the day I would spring back to life with sage advice to dispense and a zest for life—like a character in a Victorian novel sent to the countryside to improve her constitution. It didn’t quite play out that way. I have anxiety, and the experience of being that sick really did a number not only on my body but also on my mental health. It also, for better or worse, gave me a lot of practice in the ultimate millennial art form: the art of self-care.

A lot of the language of self-care has sadly been co-opted by the corporate wellness industry, which wants us to distract ourselves with face masks and bubble baths while other, more important things are going on, like structural attacks against marginalized people of all kinds. But honestly, some friends sent me some overpriced nail polish and it put me in a really good mood—it helped to feel that some part of me looked nice while my body felt like it was in disrepair. Other things that helped in this specific Instagrammable way included: taking exorbitantly long hot showers, the aforementioned face masks, scented candles, and a plethora of at-once soothing and invigorating reality TV fare.

Especially given the cultural prevalence of the nail-polish-and-face-masks version of self-care, it’s easy to conflate self-care with positivity, even levity. When I first got home from the hospital, it felt great to laugh with my friends on the phone about the ridiculousness of my situation. (I’ll spare you the details, but it did involve my butt). To be honest, laughing about it was the mode I gravitated toward the most. I didn’t want to dwell on my negative feelings; I wanted to come across as independent and capable. However, when independent and capable me took center stage, she left scared, sick, and cranky me to wreak havoc behind the