How to be Alone if you Want to and Even if you Don’t Lane Moore
Growing up, Lane Moore had a very unstable family life, full of dysfunction and disappointment. As an adult, she has little contact with them. This situation spilled over into a life with few friends and those she did attain, rarely evolved.
One friend in junior high seemed the exception. They shaved their vulvas together. This is only one of the many instances of quirky, hilarious behavior that are revealed through the book. Though they seemingly had a very close, even intimate, friendship, the relationship ended when her friend decided their behavior was outside of heteronormative bounds.
Lane decides at age 13 that visiting online dating sites might be a great way to meet new people and move on. The results were as predictable as one would imagine. Agreeing to meet men who were in their 20s, or even older, did not lead to success. She did manage to meet underage boys who were also lurking on the sites. Everyone clicks on the “must be 18” button regardless. Who knew that people would lie on the Internet?
Eventually, she moves to Bushwick in Brooklyn after high school but not before she spends time living in her car. Calling her first apartment/room in Bushwick a shithole, would be charitable. She fled the crazies, junkies and heroin dealers to check into a hostel. At least she befriends a group of international tourists that seem a bit more desirable.
Through sheer grit, she lands a job at the satirical newspaper “The Onion.” Starting as an intern, she moves up the ranks to earn a whopping $200 per month (this is not a typo). Most of her fellow employees seem to have landed at the site without the need for a living wage. Without a wealthy, or even supportive, family there is no one to catch you should you fall.
She meets a former writer at “Saturday Night Live” who has left that position to attend law school. Everett seems like a good match even though they come from completely different worlds. He grew up privileged, with a loving family and a wide circle of rather mundane friends. Everett discounts her past trauma and resists giving in to a relationship with someone so different. Perhaps he wants her free-spirited life without giving up all the trappings his life provides? It does not end well. Ultimately, they settled into a long-term limbo of dissatisfaction.
Everything seems to come back to her family and upbringing as the source of her failures. In fact, she states, “Everything, culturally, is weighted by whatever you were born into.” This could be the motto for the book.
Her experiences babysitting reflect a responsibility to provide parenting that sustains and lifts up children. One boy loves the color pink but she senses he has already been indoctrinated to think this is not acceptable.
Lane meets Max, a woman she already knew through friends. They begin a relationship despite numerous warning signs and the repetition of previous behaviors that men had exhibited. She should not have ignored the red flags. Max appears to be bi-phobic and cannot reconcile Lane’s fluidity. This one does not end well, either.
Lane’s career seems to flourish as a writer, musician, comedian and performer. She is even chosen as one of the OUT Magazine 100.
After a trip to Prince Edward Island, to live out her “Anne of Green Gables” fantasy, she sounds like someone who has found her best life. The finally essay reads like a manifesto and encapsulates what she has learned thus far.
Lane Moore is an American stand-up comedian, writer, director, actor, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist living in New York, New York. Out Magazine named her one of the OUT100 of 2017, a list that celebrates compelling people who have had a hand in moving forward LGBT rights,
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/How-to-Be-Alone/Lane-Moore/
REVIEW: STEPHEN COY
Queerguru Contributor STEPHEN COY has been an avid reader all his (very long) life ? and is finally putting his skills to good use. He lives in Provincetown full time with his husband Jim, having finally given up the bright lights of Boston and now haunts the streets mumbling to himself that no one reads anymore …
Labels: 2019, book review, Stephen Coy
