Jillian Lauren was raised by adoptive parents in New Jersey and had aspirations of a career in acting. As a teenager, she made it into the NYU theater school, but decided to drop out and make it on her own. Today, Lauren is a wife and mother. Oh yeah, and somewhere in between, she was a stripper, a prostitute and moved to Brunei to live in the harem of Prince Jefri Bolkiah. Got your attention?
It certainly got mine when Lauren discussed her memoir, Some Girls: My Life in a Harem, on “The View.” She discussed how her teenage rebellion led her from stripping to prostitution to living in a harem, and that she chronicled it all in a newly published memoir. For days I looked forward to my next trip to Chapters.
After making my purchase, I spent every spare moment devouring Lauren’s writing. Lunch breaks, after dinner and before I fell asleep were times dedicated to reading Lauren’s account of her exhilarating life. Her writing is candid and brutally honest. Lauren describes searching for her ballerina birth mother, her first experiences as a prostitute, her dream of being an actress, and what it was like living with a gaggle of girls as an entertainer for Prince Jefri, or Robin, as Lauren calls him.
While living in a land most North Americans have never heard of, residing in a palace so extravagant most North Americans can’t even imagine, Lauren was lavished in jewels, designer garbs and money. For Lauren, living in Brunei was an escape from the mundane, and she left everything behind in order to fulfill her appetite for adventure.
I felt like I had walked onto the set of some 1930s MGM movie version of Salome. Surely a flock of harem-pants-clad showgirls was about to descend the stairs and launch into a Busby Berkeley dance number.
“It’s all real,” said Serena.
“Real what?”
“Like, the gold in the carpet is real gold. That ruby is a real ruby,” she said, pointing at a ceramic tiger that stood near the fountain. The tiger held in its mouth a round, red stone the size of a tennis ball.
I spotted what looked like a Picasso directly across from the front door-also real, I assumed. (82-83)
Reading is an escape. It is a time to set aside work documents, laundry and errands, to relax on the sofa and enjoy living someone else’s life through their own words. For readers, Some Girls: My Life in a Harem is an escape from everything you have ever read before. For readers, Some Girls: My Life in a Harem is an escape from the mundane.
New content is on my new website, The Pop Can!
There is something exhilarating about finding a good blog. Good blogs are out there, but, unfortunately, they are buried beneath a pile of bad ones. The outside world equivalent of finding a good blog is finding a needle in a haystack.
Fortunately, I found that needle! The blog is http://jessicakroy.com/blog-page/ and reading it is like a hot bubble bath or a delicious cup of tea; cozy, warm and comforting.
The blogger’s name is Jessica Roy and, I’ll admit, I’m the last person in the blogging world to notice her. Roy is a fantastic writer and is extremely open about her personal life, which makes for a blog that I can’t resist.
I came across Roy’s blog via VanityFair.com. As a voracious reader of the website, I decided to type “literary scandals” into the search bar because, yes, I am the type of person that types “literary scandals” into the Vanity Fair website (I highly recommend the 2006 piece on J.T. LeRoy.) Any way, I decided to read Jim Windolf’s article, “You’ve Got (Hate) Mail: The Curious Case of Keith Gessen and Emily Gould,” which detailed the two young New York writing sensations. In the piece, Windolf mentioned Roy on the fourth page of the April 2009 web exclusive, writing, “Jessica Roy, a 20-year-old student at New York University, was there. She had begun to get attention for her own blog, Jess & Josh Talk About Stuff, which she ran with friend and fellow N.Y.U. student Josh Becker.”
A 20-year-old mentioned in a VanityFair.com piece? I was intrigued. I searched for Jess & Josh Talk About Stuff, which was long gone, and then I searched for Roy. She still exists in the blogosphere and thank goodness for that, because Roy’s blog is fantastic. She writes about her boyfriends (both past and present), N.Y.U., her future career, life in the Big Apple, depression and literature. Roy divulges her personal life with the detail of a memoirist and I read her entire blog in one spurt of I’ve found a good blog glee.
For those that enjoy reading memoirs, I highly recommend checking out Roy’s blog, as it is a wonderful read. And as a fellow blogger, I tip my hat to you, Jessica Roy.
New content is on my new website, The Pop Can!
At one point or another, everyone becomes restless with where they are. For many, it comes as a midlife crisis; the father of four that buys a motorcycle or the bank clerk that spends her savings on a Hawaiian vacation. For some, it happens later in life (the old man that marries a 27-year-old model), and for others, it happens early in life (the high school drop-out that runs away to the big city.) For me, this “grass is always greener” syndrome is an every day struggle. I am constantly dreaming up vacations, researching work abroad programs, and wishing I could just up and leave.
Alas, I’m stuck in school. The cage, the prison, the fence, the barrier of my life… Like that Miley Cyrus “Can’t Be Tamed” music video, I’m a skanky exotic bird trapped in a cage and want to escape. Minus the narcissism and barely-there clothing, I’m just like Miley Cyrus.
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“I wanna fly,
I wanna drive,
I wanna go.
I wanna be a part of something I don’t know.
And if you try to hold me back I might explode.”
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Okay, maybe not. But I’ve always been drawn to characters in the media who have a restless leg syndrome for life. The ones who move around with no direction, whose home is themselves, and who aimlessly wander- having lots of adventures and making friends along the way. These gypsies have the life I dream of, and it’s no wonder- I’ve grown up on movies romanticizing the life of a wanderer.
Esmeralda
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I got my first taste of gypsy life as a seven-year-old sipping Pepsi at my small-town movie theatre. The movie was “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” and I was entranced by Esmeralda, the gypsy dancer with bangle bracelets and a tambourine. I wanted to be just like her. I even had a purple shirt with the cartoon character on it, which was cinched at the waist (just like real gypsy clothes!) Esmeralda was the free-spirit that the hunchback fell in love with- isn’t that every little girl’s dream? Maybe I didn’t explain that right…
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Roux
Then, at 13, there was Roux, Vianne Rocher’s lover in “Chocolat.” Roux was kind, romantic and extremely handsome. Who wouldn’t want to join a camp of river gypsies when Johnny Depp was in the pack? Plus, they lived in France! It really couldn’t get any better; Well, the town did hate them, but you can’t have everything…
If Disney Classics can make little girls everywhere-myself included-dream of finding their Prince Charming and being whisked away to a castle, can films not make us want to travel the world? If they can make girls want to be Cinderella, can they not make you want to be Penny Lane (“Almost Famous“)?
I have dreams of Paris and Monaco, L.A. and Vegas, St. John’s and Halifax, Ireland and Wales. I want to see everything. I envision myself globetrotting with a notebook in hand, chronicling my journey below the Eiffel Tower and atop the Empire State Building. I want to return home at Christmas with amazing stories to tell. And, of course, I want to blog about it all.
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Unfortunately, I have one year left in my education. One whole year of studying journalism before I can pack my bags and see the world. I must resist the temptation of SellOffVacations.com and Swap. It doesn’t help that I have Shakira reminding me everyday of who I’m not. Perhaps one day I will live abroad and visit exiting lands, or maybe I’ll just use my two-week vacation to escape, but, for now, I’m in the cage that is school. And, unlike the rare bird that is Miley Cyrus, I can be tamed.
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What is your dream vacation? Have you lived abroad? Drop me a line @LAMcEachran.
New content is on my new website, The Pop Can!
Jillian Lauren was raised by adoptive parents in New Jersey and had aspirations of a career in acting. As a teenager, she made it into the NYU theater school, but decided to drop out and make it on her own. Today, Lauren is a wife and mother. Oh yeah, and somewhere in between, she was a stripper, a prostitute and moved to Brunei to live in the harem of Prince Jefri Bolkiah. Got your attention?
There is something exhilarating about finding a good blog. Good blogs are out there, but, unfortunately, they are buried beneath a pile of bad ones. The outside world equivalent of finding a good blog is finding a needle in a haystack.
