Excerpt from Good In Bed by Jennifer Weiner, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

So here I am. Twenty-eight years old, with thirty looming on the horizon. Drunk. Fat. Alone. Unloved. And, worst of all, a cliché, Ally McBeal and Bridget Jones put together, which was probably about how much I weighed, and there were two determined lesbians banging on my door. My best option, I decided, was hiding in the closet and feigning death.

"I've got a key," my mother threatened.

I wrested the tequila bowl away from Nifkin. "Hang on," I yelled. I picked up the lamp and opened the door a crack. My mother and Tanya stared at me, wearing identical L.L. Bean hooded sweatshirts and expressions of concern.

"Look," I said. "I'm fine. I'm just sleepy, so I'm going to sleep. We can talk about this tomorrow."

"Look, we saw the Moxie. article," said my mother. "Lucy brought it over."

Thank you, Lucy, I thought. "I'm fine," I said again. "Fine, fine, fine, fine."

My mother, clutching her bingo dauber, looked skeptical. Tanya, as usual, just looked like she wanted a cigarette, and a drink, and for me and my siblings never to have been born, so that she could have my mother all to herself and they could relocate to a commune in Northampton.

"You'll call me tomorrow?" my mother asked.

"I'll call," I said, and closed the door.


My bed looked like an oasis in the desert, like a sandbar in the stormy sea. I lurched toward it, flung myself down, on my back, my arms and legs splayed out, like a size-sixteen starfish stapled to the comforter. I loved my bed -- the pretty light blue down comforter, the soft pink sheets, the pile of pillows, each in a bright slipcover -- one purple, one orange, one pale yellow, and one cream. I loved the Laura Ashley dust ruffle and the red wool blanket that I'd had since I was a girl. Bed, I thought, was about the only thing I had going for me right now, as Nifkin bounded up and joined me, and I stared at the ceiling, which was spinning in a most alarming way.

I wished I'd never told Bruce I wanted a break. I wished I'd never met him. I wished that I'd kept running that night, just kept running and never looked back.

I wished I wasn't a reporter. I wished that my job was baking muffins in a muffin shop, where all I'd have to do was crack eggs and measure flour and make change, and nobody could abuse me, and where they'd even expect me to be fat. Every flab roll and cellulite crinkle would serve as testimony to the excellence of my baked goods.

I wished I could trade places with the guy who wore the "FRESH SUSHI" sandwich board and walked up and down Pine Street at lunch hour, handing out sushi coupons for World of Wasabi. I wished I could be anonymous and invisible. Maybe dead.

I pictured myself lying in the bathtub, taping a note to the mirror, taking a razor blade to my wrists. Then I pictured Nifkin, whining and looking puzzled, scraping his nails against the rim of the bathtub and wondering why I wasn't getting up. And I pictured my mother having to go through my things and finding the somewhat battered copy of Best of Penthouse Letters in my top dresser drawer, plus the pink fur-lined handcuffs Bruce had given me for Valentine's Day. Finally, I pictured the paramedics trying to maneuver my dead, wet body down three flights of stairs. "We've got a big one here," I imagined one of them saying.

Okay. So suicide was out, I thought, rolling myself into the comforter and arranging the orange pillows under my head. The muffin shop/sandwich board scenario, while tempting, was probably not going to happen. I couldn't see how to spin it in the alumni magazine. Princeton graduates who stepped off the fast track tended to own the muffin shops, which they would then turn into a chain of successful muffin shops, which would then go public and make millions. And the muffin shops would only be a diversion for a few years, something to do while raising their kids, who would invariably appear in the alumni magazine clad in eensy-beansy black-and-orange outfits with "Class of 2012!" written on their precocious little chests.

Copyright © 2001 by Jennifer Weiner