A Snasty Book I Read

That's right. Snasty. Not just nasty.

Snasty is the next rung down from nasty on the descent to Hell.

I have no idea why I read The Vixen Diaries by Karrine Steffans, author of New York Times bestseller Confessions of a Video Vixen.

Oh yeah, it was cheap when I found it and it was close at hand.

That's probably the same rationale many of Ms. Steffans' paramours probably gave for their hook-ups with her.

I'm sorry. That was a cheap shot.

Hey, she's a human being and not just an attention whore or fame whore (although she excels at being both) and that comes through in this book which is all about the author's vulnerability and spiritual growth.

She's vulnerable, but the solvent kind of vulnerable.

She pines for her former lover Bill Maher on virtually every page.

The book really reads as a thinly-disguised attempt to get back inside the financial empire of Bill Maher, Inc.

I think Ms. Steffans realizes she let the one man she bonked who won't self-destruct by the age of forty and leave a string of illegitimate children in every other state of the union get away.

Plus, he's probably going to be the richest of all the ponies she's bet on and ridden. Or who have ridden her. Whatever.

She spits some sort of vitriolic acid from the back of her throat at former lover Bobby Brown on every other page, like one of those dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.

She reminds you that she is a New York Times bestselling author about a hundred and ten times. I'm not joking. It's like a constant mantra through the book, a mantra of ego gratification.

For all the author's physical beauty and her youth, she has a nursing home sort of mind. She blathers and verbigerates and repeats herself ad infinitam, ad nauseam.

There is a calculated attempt to appear quite ladylike in this collection and soften her image. Steffans succeeds at that.

One feels bad to read of her experience with losing custody of her son. One feels terrible for her when one learns she is a cutter.

One does come away with empathy for the woman, but the celebrity revelations--which should be the book's biggest selling points--are not even revelations. She saw Jamie Foxx here. Chris Rock loaned her money. Andy Dick is bisexual. None of this is news or even gossip.

When she does give gossip, it's Mr. X or Mrs. Kumquat.

Who cares.

I feel for Ms. Steffans. Because she is basically a gay man in a woman's body. Probably her psychiatrist missed this diagnosis, but I can spare her considerable expense by just giving her the diagnosis right here.

There is no cure, Karrine. Welcome to the Brotherhood.

She is a natural Caribbean beauty on the back of her book jacket.

On the front she is a tranny horror, seemingly strangling herself to death with a phone cord and in a state of slutty deshabille. Foundation has been overapplied to her face to make it resemble brown vinyl, as though she were going for a plastic sex doll look. She has Pamela Anderson hair and the whole shot is calculated to make her look like a Rohypnoled babe, post date-rape.

I suppose that moves units.

The biggest audience for this book should be the therapy heads and girls in trouble. Or gay boys.

But if you're looking for dish it's boring.

She is able to generate ten pages of text for every one minute conversation she has with a celebrity.

If you prorate that out on her revenue in book sales, she is one smart bitch.

That's a much better conversion rate than any football player is going to get.

And did you get to sit beside Oprah on the comfy couch? She did.

But this book is a yawner and at times torturous. She's a doll in more ways than one. And you don't need to pull her string. She does that all by herself. Over and over.

Still, I like her. As a person I mean. She is likeable.

And she's purty. Did I say that already?

She is inadvertently funny sometimes. Here are a few of my favorite quotes. Lest you think she isn't a literate woman, you need to read these quotes:

"Like Lemony Snicket, my relationship with him had gone through a series of unfortunate events, and just as Lemony announced the end of the series, so did I. I threw his clothes into garbage bags and put them outside the front door." (on Bobby Brown)

"I would love to engage in debates about the writings of Chekhov and Gibran, and sometimes I just want to talk about nothing at all." (She's lamenting a self-perceived inadequacy needlessly; she has already demonstrated great success at that.)

When she's spurned though, she can turn tigress. Witness this snasty bit of verbiage from a woman scorned, when she sees her former lover with his new bride:

"And as Antonio and his wife kissed, I recalled his face and lips between my legs, licking and sucking my clit and asshole. I wondered how I tasted to her."

Don't hold back, girl. Tell us how you really feel.

Oprah won't read that part aloud when she's sitting on the couch.

I was imagining how a group of octogenarian readers might discuss this book if it were assigned in their book club. I imagine the conversation might go something like this.

Octogenarian: Oh my god, does the bitch ever shut up about Bill fucking Maher?

Octogenarian: I know. And they say people with Alzheimer's are tiresome.

Octogenarian: I just hope she has a live-in gyno.

Octogenarian: Gynecologist? Bitch would need a plumber instead. Plunger and snake territory, that one!

Octogenarian: Teeheehee. You made me snorkle my Ensure, cunt!

Octogenarian: This book is worse than a nursing home. Both of them make me contemplate suicide.

Octogenarian: She's like Samuel Beckett on Skittles. She communicates the monotony of existence because she is the monotony of existence.

Octogenarian: What are we reading next week?

Octogenarian: Some snuff novel. French.

Octogenarian: Oh goody! I love a good snuff novel. Gay?

Octogenarian: I think it's more polymorphously perverse.

Octogenarian: Okay see you then. Hasta bitches.