THE UNBEARABLE CROWDEDNESS OF BEING LISA JONES

Number of US women named Lisa Jones: 4,262. Number named Ann Smith: 2,991 (source: Whitepages.com)


My name is Lisa Jones. Not Lisa Jones the adjunct professor of nutrition at LaSalle University. Not the college basketball player. I run neither a home for the needy in Florida nor a pilates studio in New York City. I’m not a realtor, anchor woman or a porn star.


Even among authors, a certain amount of individuation from other Lisa Joneses is in order: I did not write Bulletproof Diva (whose author, Lisa Jones, was hailed by the Boston Globe back in 1997 for writing “so vibrant and dynamic, her words create a kind of fierce music... a fabulous book.”)


Damn! I wish I DID write that book. Its publisher called it “chock full of the fierce black girl humor that has made her column so popular, this provocative collection of essays and observations on race, sex, identity, and the politics of style speaks to a young generation of blacks who were raised in an integrated society and are now waiting for America to deliver on its promises of equality.” She lives in New York City and even worked with Spike Lee. I am of Swedish/Irish stock and am pretty much white as snow. I was raised mostly in Denver, worked briefly on used car lots, became a Buddhist and wrote a book. But so did ANOTHER Lisa Jones, whose book, Up: A novel (about car sales and love) won her a 2003 “Best Novel About a Car Saleswoman” citation from Westword magazine, Denver’s weekly newspaper. I got an e-mail from that Lisa Jones a few years back when I wrote a column about my boyfriend that appeared in the Denver Post. The by-line had caused some confusion among her friends, since she was, in her own words, “a big ole queer.”


So I’m the white, straight, married, suburban Lisa Jones. In the spectrum of Lisa Joneses, this may sound like I have just put down my gun to sob into my coffee about McCain’s dashed presidential hopes. Believe me, I’m not. I’m the water conservation fanatic Lisa Jones; the backpacking Lisa Jones. I’m the one with a fascination and love for the Northern Arapahos of Wyoming, in particular with a member of that tribe named Stanford Addison (whose name sounds like it belongs to some guy who graduated from St. Paul’s with John Kerry and is now stockbroker, but actually belongs to a quadriplegic native healer and horse trainer.) He is the hero of the book by this Lisa Jones.


Get more on Lisa Jones at SimonandSchuster.com