HOW TO MAKE LOVE TO A MARTIAN - KARRINE STEFFANS

Recently I had to go out and get my hands on a Kindle, due to an upcoming move that will make getting physical books difficult, and I’ve been using the internet to fill it with titles. As of right now, it’s mostly titles off of my list of books that aren't in the library, rendering most of the current next-ups relatively obscure. But beyond filling out my Kindle before I move (and on that note, please send me suggestions of any sort of book, tho I’m especially light on poetry and/or fiction) I did want to give it a spin in terms of reading a book off of it. I’m a pretty big bibliophile, if you’ve ever been to my house or lived with me, I’m constantly surrounded by and switching out books. I like their physicality and smell, and really like staring at them when I’m drunk. I don’t think I’ll ever love the Kindle but I’ll chose it over not reading. This was a good book to test out the system on, I’ve definitely read one of Steffans’ books before, I believe it was CONFESSIONS OF A VIDEO VIXEN tho, possibly, it was VIXEN DIARIES, the sequel. Both books, and this one, were both ahead of their time and, simultaneously, part of a tradition that stretches back to, at least, Pamela Des Barres, wherein groupies or admirers or young (often illegally so) female fans get a chance to write a juicy memoir of the scene they were part of. Nowadays, Steffans would have a scandalous and popular social media presence and probably be rich off of OnlyFans. Steffans is stuck writing books about her time in the hip-hop world from the late 90’s on. Unlike the previous volumes, which are more like a collection of anecdotes, each with a different popular rapper as the main character, this book focuses on her relationship with Lil’ Wayne. I’m something of a Wayne completist so I was naturally drawn to the subject, and w/r/t Wayne, the book does not disappoint. He definitely comes off, as he always does, as insane and somewhat inhuman (he does have a mixtape series literally called I Am Not A Human Being). Steffans finds it endearing and masculine and calls him a Martian, but I don’t think that really captures his frequent cruelty. But the book is Steffans’ new story wherein a woman falls so completely in love with an insane millionaire it upends her life, not a series of one-off with a current who’s-who (tho, Lil’ Bow Wow is in the book alot and has a strange relationship with her and Wayne). If you’ve seen other Wanye media (let me suggest the wonderful The Carter documentary which is the hip-hop version of Don’t Look Back) you get a glimpse here of the vampiric Wayne lifestyle where he shows up in the early morning, around 6-7, fuck you, goes to sleep, wakes up around 1, goes to the studio and repeats. He’ll also seem to often get his convoy together in the middle of the night to go skating for hours, either alone or while Staffan watches. The rest of the day, the girl who’s been flown out, stays in the apartment or hotel room alone. Sometimes, apparently to play mind games but possibly also from xanax-fueled memory loss, Steffans is flown out and stays in a plush hotel room for days while Wayne is living on his bus in the parking lot, seeing other girls, and never going up the the suit nor call her down to the bus. Steffans is smitten and immediately rearranges her life completely around Wayne, to the point of telling multiple husbands that she will leave at any point for a few days if Wayne summons her. She makes good on this a number of times and it, as expected, strains those relationships, with guys who come off as real shitty, abusive partners. Steffans goes out of her way to make sure we don’t have any pity for these guys though she does also reveal how often she leaves her son in the lurch (ex. having to scramble and lie to get others to take him to guitar practice) to give Wayne what he’s asking for. Wayne seems like he always does, in a Tasmanian devil like whirlwind of sex and drugs and money and rap, in jail one minute, having multiple kids by different women every few months, not responding to Steffans for months and years at a time then asking her to drop everything and fly out on a moments notice. It’s an incredibly strange and unhealthy seeming relationship with a man who does seem to have spent so long living a very strange, opulent and inhuman lifestyle that he really is some sort of Martian. Whatever the version of dramatic irony is where the reader seems to know something that the author doesn’t is heavily at play here. Steffans seems to think Wayne is the love of her life and worth everything while he consistently seems to forget about her, ignore her or see her as one small piece of the way he’s trying to live. She gets an abortion, worrying that, based on what she’s seen with other baby moms, a kid would kill the vibe between them and never tells him for the same reason; Wayne is very surprised when she’s upset that he suggested he’s never hurt her. Seems like a very unrewarding way to live but it’s not my life and it is an interesting read if you’re into the extended Ca$h Money Universe. 2008 Lollipops