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In
honor of Happy Woman's one year anniversary, we here at "Audra"
beg our faithful readers' indulgence as we look back over the past
year, and the fateful circumstances that brought us all together.
For
relationship, sex, career or family advice, email your questions
to Audra at AskAudra@yahoo.com.
Audra
& Me
By
R.Hall
The
genesis of my relationship with Audra is no
different
from that of any other disturbingly Freudian, mother-son affair
involving a high profile network television programming executive
and her young, amnesiac ward. I'm sure you can fill in the blanks
yourself. But to paint a complete picture, I must go back fifteen
years to a time and place I no longer recall.
In
the middle 1980's, Audra, on sabbatical from the world of American
TV, accepted an offer to fill the recently vacated, highly esteemed
Dr. Fell Chair in Renaissance Art at the Universita di Firenze.
It was there amidst the amply-tittied splendor of the Raphaels and
Botticellis that Audra found her niche. As she gazed into the winsome
eyes of the masters grape-draped, lovelorn subjects, she realized,
perhaps for the first time in her life, the precariousness of love;
how the fickle heart can play tricks on our Cartesian minds. And
she knew at once that American women would go hog-wild for a network
that featured violent, "true" stories of women whose love lives
had gone to hell in a handbasket. (She also intuited that she could
fill-out the schedule with Bea Arthur sitcom reruns. The woman's
a frickin' genius.)
Without
delay Audra rushed back to the States to set her plan in motion.
(But not before buying a Loretta Lynn album that she listened to
for the one thousandth time for the first time, if you know what
I mean.) Upon return to New York, Audra pitched her idea first to
an old boss at Nickelodeon who nixed it, opting for more wholesome
content on the order of Christina Aguilera music specials. Although
Audra was never one to accept defeat, she did reference this particular
slight quite often, particularly while preparing meals.
Armed
with only a vast network of industry contacts and unlimited cash
flow, Audra struck out on her own. In order to acquaint herself
with love's seamy underbelly, she researched criminology, specifically
domestic abuse, sexual battery and middle American, homicidal, bulimic
housewives who bare uncanny resemblance to Meredith Baxter Birney
That's where I came in. You see I was a junior Special Agent with
the FBI when Audra came calling. The bureau chief assigned me to
help the "nice, intimidating, overtly sexual lady from Jew York
City". Initially Audra's insults and pomposity rubbed me the wrong
way. But I suppose her constant barrage of insults ("You cheap-shoed,
bug-eyed rube.") belied her affection for me. After only a month
I accepted an invitation to join Audra at her chalet in Lake Placid,
ostensibly to review case files. One evening, the last I recall
with any detail, Audra and I had a guest for dinner. Although I
remember almost nothing of the meal or the man, I do recall he wore
an odd hat through part of the meal (which I found unusually rude),
only to remove it as the main course arrived. Oh, and he was President
of Nickelodeon, the very same one Audra had repeatedly sworn to
murder in the most gruesome manner possible.
Long
story short, when I came to six months later in Rio, Audra was Executive
in Charge of Programming at the brand new Lifetime Television for
Women and I had all the cashmere sweaters I could ever hope for.
Although the intervening lost months were troubling (as were the
battery of medications Audra insisted I take), there was all that
cashmere!
These
days, between meds, I dispense Audra's sage words of advice to the
readers of Happy Woman Magazine. Audra says it's the least we can
do, for, after all, "doesn't everyone deserve a love like ours?"
Ask Audra1
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