Molly Jong-Fast - Girl [Maladjusted]: True Stories from a Semi-Celebrity Childhood

Table of Contents

To my father, who supports me, my husband, who writes me, and my stepfather, who represents me.

PRAISE FOR girl (maladjusted)

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AS The Sex Doctors in the Basement

Full of nutty episodes, colorful characters, and personal problems... Ms. Jong-Fast has an unusually wry sense of humor mixed with a sweet-and-sour sarcastic tone.

TheNew YorkSun

Neurotic, very funny essays... Jong-Fast is the Joan Rivers for slackers: she delights in pushing the boundaries of libel only to retreat, all in the spirit of good clean fun.

KirkusReviews

Molly Jong-Fast proves that its never too late to have someone elses happy childhood. Reading Girl (Maladjusted) is like reading about growing up in my own family, only Jewish. Molly is a smart, wickedly funny absurdity magnet. (Or is that absurdity magnate?) Run dont walk to smell this new book, laugh out loud, and be swept up in a very specific Tasmanian devil-esque kind of madnessplus youll learn some stunning new vocabulary words.

Moon Unit Zappa, author of America the Beautiful

If youve ever wondered what exactly it was that Henry Jamess Maisie knew, heres your answer: In the form of Molly Jong-Fast, Wise Child extraordinaire, she knows everything. Girl (Maladjusted) is a post-postmodern memoir, written by a young woman who has sussed out all our collective dirty secretswho shtupped who, who had their teeth capped, who gobbled Hostess cupcakes on the sly, why being thin matters more than anything elseas only a painfully clear-eyed kid who grew up on the Upper East Side and refused to play by the unspoken rules of her class and time could. The result is a funny, sly, affectionate, nutty, beyond-irreverent tale of celebrity dysfunction and down-to-earth truths. I came away from reading it with a sigh of relief that there is someone out there who sees all, tells all, and still manages to come out smelling sweetly. Molly Jong-Fast is that rarest of beings: a writer who sounds like someone youd want in your life.

Daphne Merkin, author of Enchantment and Dreamingof Hitler

Girl (Maladjusted) is a heartfelt, funny, bittersweet saga of growing up fame-adjacent. It was Molly Jong-Fasts peculiarand peculiarly fascinatingfate to be born into a cosmopolitan vortex of celebrity, family, and sexual revolution. Her skill at translating the naked and hellish privilege bequeathed the spawns of the famous gives her stories the high-impact slap and tickle of truth. A unique and hugely amusing Manhattan testimony.

Jerry Stahl, author of I, Fatty and PermanentMidnight

Molly Jong-Fast has mined the mother lode of literature the familywith sass and style and soul. As the daughter of a famous woman (Erica Jong) and the granddaughter of an infamous man (Howard Fast), she has spun what Mark Twain called bringin up into a sparkling romp at once killingly funny and heartbreakingly poignant. Read Girl(Maladjusted) and relish the humor of this generations new Dorothy Parker.

Kitty Kelley, author ofTheFamily: TheRealStoryBehindtheBushDynasty

the optimistic lesbian

THERE ARE A LOT of brilliant doctors and scientists in the Jong family. The Jong family is also chock-full of great gourmet chefs and talented tennis players. Members of the Jong family are placid and sane; they enjoy large family dinners and even larger family reunions. Almost every single member of the Jong family is Chinese. Tragically, this family full of good-looking, tennis-playing, well-adjusted Chinese doctors is no relation to my actual family. My mothers married name was Jong, and she acquired it during her second marriage, a brief legal coupling with an even briefer Chinese shrink. Sadly, my mothers maiden name was Mann, and her mothers maiden name was Mirsky.

Where the Jongs play tennis, the Mirskys play ride the porcelain pony while they suffer the effects of our two biggest inheritancesirritable bowel syndrome and Crohns disease. While the Jongs are perfecting the latest gourmet dish, the Mirskys are screaming at Lulu (the illegal Ecuadorian housekeeper) and chugging Manischewitz. While the Jongs are diagnosing cancers and radiating tumors, the Mirskys are being diagnosed with everything from West Nile virus to hepatitis C (sorry, Uncle Larry).

It all started with two Polacks. Great-Grandpa Mirsky had two daughters, Eda, my grandmother, and Kitty, my grandaunt. Both girls were born in England, and both came to New York City via Ellis Island before they were ten years old.

In the grand tradition of sisters, Eda and Kitty always hated each other. Mostly they hated each other because they did the same thing; both of them were painters. Grandma Eda painted flowers and children. Grandmas flower paintings were filled with lavish colors, sensuous shapes, and the hand of her abused housekeeper, whod been holding the flowers since early the day before. Grandmas flower paintings were the stuff of midwestern hotel room walls. But Grandmas portraits of her children and grandchildren seemed to express something more than just a love of flowers or housekeepers: Grandmas paintings of her family highlighted her distaste for motherhood. For example, the only portrait Grandma painted of me showed me with hooved feet, horns, and hair made entirely of writhing snakes.

Kitty painted different subject matter. She painted dark, brooding seascapes. She painted the howling wind, the waves slamming into Fire Island, the spray from a huge hurricane-force wind, the harsh sand, and the pain she felt about the popularity of the song Abra-abra-cadabra, I want to reach out and grab ya. She also painted the occasional kitten.

Each sister thought the others work was of the hackneyed greeting-card sort.

Once I interrupted Grandmas screaming about socialism long enough to ask her why she didnt like Kitty. It was the late eighties. I remember little of that dark time in American history, except that I had feathered hair and thought white Keds worn with scrunchy socks were fashion-forward. Grandma was standing half-clad in a red silk Japanese kimono on a foot ladder in the bathroom of her apartment on ritzy Central Park West, where all the window curtains were made of old floral bedsheets, and all the toilet seats were painted with large red and pink daisies. Grandma had a stomach that looked like a tushy placed slightly higher up on the wrong side of her body. Through all clothingsweaters, coats, dresses, and heavy wool cardigansone could see Grandmas enormous front tushy. Grandma had gotten rich by Grandpas foray into tchotchkes (Grandpa had started an import-export business aptly named Seymour Mann Imports), which had happened innocently enough when one night after smoking tea Grandpa had come home stoned with a showgirl on each arm. Grandma didnt like showgirls. She didnt like her husband bringing two of them home when she was busy with two other girls, her young daughters. The showgirl incident basically marked the end of Grandpas career as a drummer.

Yes, Grandpa had been a drummer; he had played in a Cole Porter review. He was immensely proud of his time as a drummer, but his first career was only ever apparent to me in one wayhe was almost completely deaf. So deaf when he picked up the phone the first thing he would say was Im fine.