I requested Kathleen Rooney's memoir, For You I Am Trilling These Songs, thinking that it might work for older teens. Dubbed a "collection about life as a twentysomething in the twenty-first century", I figured it was a solid possibility for older girls who might want a glimpse of the life ahead. I haven't always had luck with the twenty-something memoirs but I don't think it is fair to let one abysmal book ruin the whole genre.

You know where this is going, don't you?

The book opens with an essay called "Natural's Not In It" and right there in the second paragraph lucky readers discover this is all about Rooney getting a Brazilian, as in a Brazilian wax. For those of you not up on Sex and the City this would be some waxing of the very intimate areas for reasons that vary from wearing teeny tiny bikinis to just - well whatever. Who knows everyone's reasons. Rooney's however are right here for all the world to consider. She was in Brazil! She was with her sister! Let's get ourselves waxed!

Doesn't everybody feel so inclined on vacation and then feel compelled to write about it later?

The essay continues for twenty pages to tell us about some good Brazilians Rooney has gotten and some bad ones. (Because apparently once she did it, she had to do it again.) The big reveal though is when she tells us about the one she was getting as a gift for her husband. This is shared because knowing about Rooney's crotch was not enough, readers need to know also how her husband feels about said crotch.

Yeah, I decided early on that no way in hell was this one going to get recommended to teenagers. (Why gift them with such trauma while still in high school?)

After reading the first essay I just kept going partly because I couldn't believe what I had read and was sick curious to see what more was in store for me. Don't hate me because I couldn't turn away.

There is the student when she is teaching for the small college in Washington who has a crush on her. It's really quite cute how he has that crush and of course she has to tell her husband which results in this exchange:

His letter, black ink on jagged loose-leaf, concluded with a second page, on which was written super neatly: "Well I was kind of debating on this, but since you're leaving, what the hell? You are a total babe as well, I mean, really hot."

"You are a total babe," he said and kissed her.

(I might have forgotten to mention that sometimes Rooney refers to herself as the third person in these essays. I have no idea why.)

We also find out about her night out with friends that sadly took a negative turn when they had to share a table in a bar with a couple of increasingly drunker guys one of whom wanted to sleep with her. She couldn't get the guy to back off and can you blame her? How could she possibly have been expected to say to her friends: "These guys are drunk idiots and we need to move!" Instead she writes for many pages about manners and politeness and how sometimes "It is all too often necessary to go ahead and be a so-called bitch just for the sake of having a voice."

So an idiot who drinks too much in a bar is about the subjugation of women everywhere and not, well, just an idiot who gets drunk in a bar. Please pardon me while I call about fifty guys I went to college with and tell them all what they were really doing twenty years ago.

And then there is the boss. We get a couple of essays about her job in Chicago and the boss who wanted to sleep with her and how everyone knew he wanted to sleep with her and how sometimes she kinda flirted with him even knowing he wanted to sleep with her because she kinda liked knowing he wanted to sleep with her and that led to much confusion. To wit:

He'd call her into his office.

And she would and she'd feel better in spite of herself, light as the buoys bobbing out in the lake.

I don't know what is worse, that this conversation actually happened, that both people enjoyed it or that Rooney had to write about it later. No, actually I do know what is worse: that she told her husband all about how the boss wanted to sleep with her which resulted in this conversation:

...he said it was okay, no big deal, he was fine with it. He quoted her something from Lacan, from Barthes, about how the frisson had to do with language and wit and power and games.

This response makes sense apparently because he worked in a bookstore and is a wannabe novelist.

"Your boss isn't looking for consummation - it's the constant frustration, the pleasure of deferral." He was really smart, pretty much all the time.

Well at least I'm glad she got him that Brazilian - the guy is pretty damn patient with everybody hitting on his wife.

There is an essay about researching Weldon Kees in which not much is discovered and about catching students who cheat in which a great deal about the immorality of cheating in college is discussed but not much else happens and about her cousin Jennifer becoming a nun which is apparently much more about Rooney's reaction to this decision rather than Jennifer. Oh, and there is also an essay about a zoo and one about driving cross country. Nothing much happens in those essays.

Here's the thing, not everyone is Joan Didion or Susan Sontag. And not everyone is interesting enough to pretend to be them. And not everyone should think they are interesting enough to pretend. I don't expect essays about rock climbing and bungee jumping or walking on the moon from the average twenty-something. But you can write about the larger world and your place within it. You can write about interesting people and places and big ideas. You can find something to write about that, quite frankly, does not involve spreading your legs for someone you've never met so they can pour wax on you and then rip it off.

Trust me. You do not need to write about that. (Please God. Just don't write about that.)

Kathleen Rooney has sold several of these essays (the Brazilian wax one ran in Ninth Letter) so I guess she has her pulse on the heartbeat of American lit journals. I wish her much success with her career and her marriage. Forgive me though if I don't want to dwell on what Rooney might feel compelled to write about next. Some stuff, I don't care how many literary bows you wrap around it, is conversation best saved for sitting around with your girlfriends and that's where it needs to stay.

You got a Brazilian wax for your husband? "He's eager to pick me up and see the results." Ew. Just...EW.