A View From a Broad Read Online Free

was no stopping me. I would become the hot dog and the hot dog me. We would be as one. Like all true artists, I was determined to bring my own mighty vision before the public, no matter what that effort might entail. Let the Philistines spit on my wiener now. Time and the public would prove me right, as they had so many times before.
    Of this I was blissfully, pigheadedly sure.
    “What I needed to make life worth living again was simply this: an Entrance.”

Dear Diary: I just got a letter today from the Johnson Girls, two of my most loyal fans, telling me that they bought tickets for every show of mine in London and will be doing the same for all my European performances as soon as they go on sale.
    I am, of course, flattered. I am also troubled.
    I guess it’s always troubling to be faced with that kind of devotion. Like most performers, I can deal with intense adulation from the multitudes, but as soon as it comes from a focused source . . . well, that’s another matter altogether. Maybe that’s why so many performer friends of mine refuse to have any dealings with even their most ardent fans. They don’t want them to become specific, particularized people. Well, sometimes they hire them (they make such loyal employees), but that’s just another kind of distancing as far as I’m concerned, and I’ve never been able to do that.
    Fans. It’s so tempting to dismiss their behavior as deviant or simply crazy. But when I’m actually faced with the humanity of it—the Johnson Girls, for example—there is something so essentially sweet about the whole thing, something so naive, that I find I can’t dismiss it, or ignore it, or belittle it at all.
    I embrace it.
    Just knowing that they’ll be in London or Gothenburg or wherever already makes those places less strange to me, less frightening. And what is so wonderful about the Johnson Girls in particular is that they always travel with their mother. I suppose most mothers would discourage such a consuming (and expensive!) obsession with a performer. But not theirs.
    Mrs. Johnson not only encourages it, she also seems almost proud of it. For her, it is something that makes her daughters not odd, but special; not silly, but serious; not limited, but giving.
    I wish you could see the three of them standing backstage after a performance, looking like they just got off the train from Boise, Idaho. Which they did. They seem to have nothing in common with the circus around them or the people around them—least of all me. Yet there they stand in all their gingham glory. So unlike anything I think I stand for. Or anyone I would ever really know. Certainly unlike anyone you’d think would ever want to know me.
    But in some strange way, they give—to me—meaning. I always feel more solid, more real when they’re around. They make me think that maybe there is more to me than I know.
    They say they love me, the Johnson Girls do, but I love—and need —them . . . more than they’ll ever know.

The Divine’s Test for the Traumatized Traveler

Multiple Choice

PART ONE
25 Points
    1.  The Great Wall of China was originally built as part of:
----
    a) a defense plan
    b) a Chanukah celebration
    c) a divorce settlement
    d) the world’s longest dog walk
    2.  The Great Pyramids of Egypt are actually in:
----
    a) Yemen
    b) Lake Havasu, Arizona
    c) The British Museum
    d) a terrible state of disrepair
    3.  The passageway leading up to the king’s burial chamber in the Great Pyramid is only three feet high because:
----
    a) that’s how tall the Egyptians were
    b) that’s how tall the Jews were
    c) The foreman was a jerk-off
    d) they ran out of stepladders
    e) the low ceiling forced everyone to bow as they approached the Pharaoh
    4.  The Baths of Caracalla are:
----
    a) where the nobility gathered to wash and gossip
    b) a spa in Calabria known for having extremely hot water and no towels
    c) the latest novel by Gore Vidal
    d) a fashionable shop in Kensington specializing in