NONFICTION - July 4, 1993

GET YOUR TONGUE OUT OF MY MOUTH, I’M KISSING YOU GOOD-BYE! by Cynthia Heimel (Atlantic Monthly Press: $20; $20) I have been a fan of Cynthia Heimel’s since I read one of her columns in Playboy, though working motherhood has forever erased the memory disk that might tell me what she was writing about, or what I was doing reading Playboy. Maybe looking for Cynthia Heimel, a brash, funny, angry, outspoken writer with a definite point of view. No one escapes Heimel’s barbed wit; everyone, from the pastel-toned ladies at a Hollywood baby shower who don’t quite know what to make of the L.A. riots, to well-intentioned moms who want to stifle their daughters’ imagination/artistic leanings/generalized passion, gets it right in the head in this collection of short essays. Heimel writes like a woman making up for lost time, like she has to live her enlightened years at warp speed to make up for all the terrible things society tries to do to women. Given the level of her righteous indignation, it’s hard not to wish for more than column-length efforts--I’d like to hear her long-form analysis of “Thelma and Louise,” for example. But her attitude sets her refreshingly apart from all the people doing shtick these days and trying to pretend it’s relevant.