My Fair Lazy: One Reality Television Addict's Attempt to Discover if Not Being a Dumb Ass Is the New Black, or a Culture-Up Manifesto by Jen Lancaster Page B

porn.
    This would be the equivalent of Fletch telling Candace Bushnell I bought all my handbags at Kmart.
    After that, I pretty much had no choice but to buy Fletch the new flat-screen TV he wanted for the media room. Granted, all of our money is pooled, but somehow he found victory in me writing the check. 94 Fortunately, I had the wherewithal not to tell Chris that Fletch couldn’t come to the signing because he’d had a run-in with Thanksgiving leftovers that had turned; otherwise I’d have been on the hook for a surround-sound system, too.
    For a while we drive in contented silence. Stacey’s paying strict attention to the slick roads while I’m lulled by the gentle back-and-forth motion of the windshield wipers. Stacey breaks the stillness by asking me, “How are you feeling about tonight? Are you still worried about talking to people at the cast party?”
    “Actually, I’m kind of okay. I figured out what my problem is. It’s confidence.” I wag my finger at her before she can protest. “Bup, bup, before you disagree, I realize I’m always going on about my own self-confidence. I mean, we’ve established that we’re both girls who like ourselves and how we look and what we’re about. That’s not the issue. What’s going on here is situational confidence. I discovered I can only be confident in a situation if I’ve been in it before. I have trouble with firsts.”
    “Since you’ve already been to a cast party, it’s old hat? No big deal?”
    “Exactly. I can be my usual calm, cool, collected self now. It’s totally the Eliza Doolittle syndrome.”
    Stacey clicks on her turn signal and we ease onto a side street. The tires crunch in the snow. “How do you figure?”
    “The first time she had to talk like a lady in public, she was sharting herself. She was under pressure not just internally, but from Higgins and, at least tangentially, Pickering, too. But as soon as she got that initial conversation under her belt, it was easy-peasy. She’d done it before and knew what to expect, so she handled herself beautifully.”
    “Except for the ‘move your bloomin’ arse!’ bit.”
    I stare straight ahead. “Rome was not built in a day, Stacey.”
    “So you’re good.”
    “I am unflappable,” I agree.
    “And what happens when you meet Vince Vaughn?”
    “HOLY SHIT, IS VINCE GOING TO BE THERE?”
    “No, just testing.” She flashes me a playful grin.
    “Oh. Don’t do that to me. I just had, like, fourteen heart attacks. Otherwise, I’ll be the frigging Miles Davis of cool; just you wait. What are we seeing tonight anyway?”
    “It’s called Old Glory . I honestly don’t know anything about it, except that it will be done well because we’re going to Writers’ Theatre,” she tells me. She pulls up to an intersection and yields to oncoming traffic.
    “How do you know?” I ask.
    Stacey takes her eyes off the road to glance at me. “Because we’re going to Writers’ Theatre.”
    I reply, “So, post hoc ergo propter hoc ?”
    Stacey’s forehead scrunches. “What?”
    “I don’t know; it just flew out.” I’ve been reading some smart stuff lately and I thought I used that right. I guess not.
    She ignores my ham-fisted attempt at Latin. “All the plays performed at Writers’ Theatre are thought-provoking. These productions put a huge amount of value on words. There’s no theater in Chicago that’s as much about the writing. You’ll notice that the set’s simple and the cast’s small. They do it that way because it creates intimacy. Whatever the story is, it’s going to feel huge, and yet you’re going to feel like you’re a part of it.”
    “How will it be different from Desire Under the Elms ?” In my head, I’ve already painted all iterations of “theater” with the same brush. It never occurred to me that there may be nuances.
    “ Desire ’s set probably cost three hundred thousand dollars. Tonight’s set may be a couple of old couches. Or, better example,