I Don't Have to Argue with You, You're Not My Wife by Gary Morgenstein, Author of How to Find A Woman...or Not

Today's guest blogger is Gary Morgenstein, author of the comic step-by-step guide to finding true love, How to Find a Woman...Or Not (Volume 1).

Tired of ordering in Thai food and watching a Netflix on Saturday nights? Don’t despair. Finding true love isn’t impossible as long as you view the entire world as one big singles bar. Walking your dog, practicing yoga, riding mass transit, buying a book, even visiting a friend in the hospital can lead to the woman of your dreams.

Critically-acclaimed novelist/playwright Gary Morgenstein provides the romantic roadmap!

Using his own battle-scarred experiences as a divorced man along with many years “spinning” as a public relations specialist, Morgenstein takes men (and women eager to go inside the mind of a guy) on a step-by-step comic and erotic guide to love and sex.

From making eye contact, dazzling opening lines, online etiquette, younger and older women and how to conduct yourself on a date to what goes into a successful relationship (in and out of the bedroom), How to Find a Woman…Or Not is a riotous, poignant and indispensable blueprint for passion and commitment


“I DON’T HAVE TO ARGUE WITH YOU, YOU’RE NOT MY WIFE”
by Gary Morgenstein

The first date I had after my marriage broke up was with this very foxy late 40s woman, off the nerve.com dating service, at an Indian place on East 6th Street in Manhattan. Here we were, sipping wine and dipping Nan in chutney. For all I knew, there were many middle-aged men at adjacent tables dripping rivers of sweat down their shirts on their first date in more than 25 years. Pale expressions, gaunt looks, notes scribbled on the inside of the sleeve, do you still bring flowers/candy/Mateus Rose/exactly what do I do on a date?

A date. What the hell was a date? That thing you get dressed up for, but without the wife crowding you in the bathroom and criticizing your choice of shirt/socks/pants. Where you get dressed alone and then meet at a bar or, even more terrifying, pick them up at their apartment. A strange woman’s apartment filled with strange foreign objects like lamps and windows and end tables. Where they have dangerous traps like a couch and bed and you’re expected to dance and kiss and, as for sex, well…

Then deciding where to eat, having no knowledge of their prior eating habits, what might anger them.

What, are you crazy offering me a shrimp when you know I’m allergic and it could kill me? You think you’re getting anything now?

Smelling good, dressing right, speaking properly, not dribbling béarnaise sauce down your chin, coming up with good stories/jokes, hoping you don’t repulse her.

A date. A great deal like March Madness, one mistake and you’re eliminated, back to Boise, baby.

Yeah, I was terrified that night. I’d recently quit smoking. After learning my marriage was kaput, my friend Vicky explained women don’t like to kiss smokers. Hmm, let’s see, tongue or addiction, which wins? Got that monkey off my back in a few days. I swallowed several tic-tacs, took deep breaths and prayed for guidance.

I mean, do you act as if they’re a friend or colleague at work? Is that how you charm a woman? Just talk, be smart and witty, hopefully the hammering of the heart won’t lead to cardiac arrest. Somehow I remembered turning blue wasn’t a turn-on.

If I remembered. Even in college and post-grad, I wasn’t exactly a stud muffin. Okay, I had my triumphs, which I ascribed more to delusional behavior on the part of the woman, greatly aided by alcohol and Quaaludes. But now I have gray hair. My jawline isn’t exactly taut. I keep myself in shape with weights and yoga, but no six-pack. Maybe one Bud Light.

Suave I never was. Nor rich nor powerful nor famous. No Jack Nicholson snapping his fingers courtside. Plus I’m a Republican living in New York. I do have a few things going against me.

Yet here I was. She laughed at my jokes and looked at me a certain way. I think it’s called with sensual interest. That was in retrospect, mind you, because I was just hanging on the ropes, babbling and throwing down wine like they’d just found three spots on my lung. Somewhere between the aloo chat and the tandoori chicken she suddenly reached across the table and squeezed my hand. Course, she needed a bath towel to wipe away the perspiration, but a strange woman had tenderly touched me. What would my wife say? Wait, I didn’t have a wife anymore. I was alone. Looking for love in all the wrong places.

Outside on a frigid January night that made icicles shiver, she tongued me up and down East 6th like a vacuum cleaner to a dirty rug amid cries from passing cars of hey, get a room. She slipped my hand under her down jacket and then under her sweater and then under her blouse. Just before I lost feeling in my fingers, I touched the top of another woman’s breast.


In addition to How to Find a Woman…Or Not, Gary Morgenstein’s books include the novels Loving Rabbi Thalia Kleinman, about a divorced man who falls in love with a beautiful woman rabbi; Jesse’s Girl, a powerful story about a father’s search for his adopted teenage son, and Take Me Out to the Ballgame, a political baseball thriller, as well as the baseball Rocky The Man Who Wanted to Play Center Field for the New York Yankees. His prophetic play Ponzi Man played to sell-out crowds at the New York Fringe Festival. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, surrounded by lots of books and rock and roll CDs.

Gary Morgenstein’s HOW TO FIND A WOMAN…OR NOT VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR ‘10 runs from February 1st to Feb. 26th. You may follow his tour each weekday by visiting http://virtualbooktours.wordpress.com/.

Pushing Yourself Over the Edge by Gary Morgenstein, Author of Jesse's Girl

Today's guest blogger is Gary Morgenstein, author of the thriller Jesse's Girl.

How much should a parent sacrifice for a troubled child? In Gary Morgenstein’s taut new thriller, Jesse’s Girl, the answer is – anything.

Anchored around a floundering father-son relationship, finding roots and re-uniting vanished bonds, this timely novel about teen addiction and adoption follows a desperate father’s search for his son, who has run away from a wilderness program to find his biological sister in Kentucky.

Available exclusively from Amazon.com, Jesse’s Girl opens as a jarring phone wakes lifelong Brooklynite Teddy Mentor well after midnight. It’s the Montana wilderness program saying that his 16-year-old adopted son has vanished – and they haven’t a clue where he’s gone. Only two weeks ago, Jesse had been taken to the program by escorts to deal with substance abuse problems.

Jeopardizing his flagging PR job in New York, Mentor rushes across the country to find Jesse, who is off on his own quest: to find Theresa, the sister he’s never known. When Teddy finally discovers Jesse at a bus stop in Illinois, he is torn between sending him back or joining his son on a journey to find this girl in Kentucky. He decides to go. They become embroiled in a grisly crime when Theresa’s abusive husband Beau attacks her – Jesse stabs the big beast of a man, leaving him for dead.

Given Jesse’s misdemeanor criminal record, Teddy can’t go to the authorities without risking his son’s arrest. However, Beau is not dead, merely wounded, and he hunts them down, thirsty for revenge. Teddy, Jesse and Theresa flee across the Bluegrass State with Beau in hot pursuit. Seeking safety but finding trouble, their story leads them to an ultimately shattering question: is Theresa really Jesse’s sister or has he been scammed?

"Pushing Yourself Over the Edge" by Gary Morgenstein

A writer must push his comfort level. What else is writing but descending/ascending into that abyss/summit where your strange imagination lives in a parallel world? It is painful and scary. But we’re not alone. While pressing against our own internal boundaries, we’re also inviting the reader along for the ride.

In Jesse’s Girl, I ripped out my creative spleen. After all, this is a thriller about a family in crisis, the trifecta of parenting, addiction and adoption. A widowed guilt-ridden father, Teddy Mentor, has his troubled adopted teenage son Jesse escorted to a drug treatment program in Montana. Their relationship is fractious and intense to read. The turmoil of the violent plot -- their lives are in danger from a brutal killer -- is not intended for the faint of heart. No Saw V for goodness sakes, but real people get hurt.

Real people, especially teenagers battling addiction, swear. Check out an AA meeting sometime. The language can be rough. I had a couple of adoption bloggers refuse to review the book because of that. Not sufficiently family friendly. I mean, really, what world do they live in? The one where adoptees don’t suffer trauma? Where’s that, a right turn past Neptune?

But the harshness comes not from saying %$# or the bloodshed. It comes from the emotions. Jesse’s Girl is about parenting. I’m a father. There is nothing, other than religion, which evokes such a strong consuming response. To write about being a parent means letting go and allowing all the ugly, shameful conflicts pour out. Unless you think raising a kid is tickling your infant and saying kitchy kitchy goo? That world’s a left past Pluto.

You can’t write wrapped in self-censorship. You’re cheating the reader and cheating yourself. I wouldn’t do that to my characters. Nor my fans. Teddy is angry and confused. You parents understand the inherent conflict. You love your child unconditionally and want them to do well and, when they don’t, you beat yourself up emotionally.

Teddy loves and hates his son. He wants to help Jesse and is furious because Jesse won’t help himself; hello, addiction is a disease. Teddy wants Jesse home and he wants to send him away so he doesn’t have to deal with him anymore. Many of his thoughts embarrass him. How can a father think like that?

Because the core of Jesse’s Girl is that Teddy loves his son so much and will make any sacrifice to save him; his very emotional being is a seething cauldron of conflict and contradiction. In some scenes I brought tears to my eyes, forgive the egregious egotism, by what I’d written about Teddy and Jesse. As a father-novelist, the book at times was very difficult to write.

Perhaps some readers will wince at the naked emotions of the novel. But I think anyone who has ever been a child or a parent will appreciate the honesty. And honesty is what writing is all about.

READ THE REVIEWS:

"Gary Morgenstein is a master at twists and turns. His latest work, Jesse's Girl is a masterpiece. The characters are exquisite. The plot will capture the reader's attention and hold them captive until the last page." - Readers Favorite

"...'Jesse's Girl' by Gary Morgenstein, is a thrilling, engrossing page-turner from the very beginning right through the end. But along the way, the author shares serious and wise observations concerning the relationships between the very lifelike characters and challenges the reader to come to a deeper understanding of the bonds between people and the bondage of addiction. The drama is real, and the geographic setting is depicted in vivid and accurate detail. The nature of addiction and the power of the parental bond are central issues in the book, but this in no way detracts from the excitement of the plot, which is a non-stop thrill ride all the way through. The language is quite coarse at times, but the characters are people who are, at best, on the edge, and this makes the language quite realistic for the situations. There is nothing gratuitous about the language; nor is there any gratuitous violence. In fact, there is little in this taut drama that is wasted...I emphatically recommend this book, and look forward to reading other works by this author, who may well come to be regarded as one of the keenest voices in contemporary fiction." - John Balchunas, Psychologist


Novelist/playwright Gary Morgenstein is the author of four novels. In addition to Jesse’s Girl, a thriller about a widowed father’s search for his adopted teenage son who has run away from a drug treatment program to find his biological sister, his books include the romantic triangle Loving Rabbi Thalia Kleinman, the political thriller Take Me Out to the Ballgame, and the baseball Rocky The Man Who Wanted to Play Center Field for the New York Yankees. His prophetic play Ponzi Man performed to sell-out crowds at a recent New York Fringe Festival. His other full-length work, You Can’t Grow Tomatoes in the Bronx, is in development. He can be reached at www.facebook.com/people/Gary-Morgenstein/1011217889.