[This was not originally posted on Cranky Lesbian, it was posted elsewhere in 2014 and later migrated here.]

How do you open a blog? There’s no instantly recognizable HBO intro for blogs, something that signals quality (or, in the case of True Blood, the pretense of quality). That’s just as well, because you should never expect to find quality here.

Certain things, though, you know how to open. There’s that Motown signature drum roll and Woody Allen film credits in Windsor Light Condensed typeface against a black background. There are famous first lines in literary history that readers the world over can recite by heart. People who’ve never read A Tale of Two Cities can tell you its first 12 words.

My own favorite book opening comes from the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of Notes from Underground: “I am a sick man … I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts.” Does it get any better than thinking your liver hurts?!

But I’ve never heard of a blog opening with a line that instantly captures anyone’s attention or is quoted years later, so let’s forget everything I wrote preceding this and pretend this blog began with something a bit more memorable. Let’s pretend it opened with the first line from the first chapter of Jackie Collins’ Hollywood Wives.

Elaine Conti awoke in her luxurious bed in her luxurious Beverly Hills mansion, pressed a button to open the electrically controlled drapes, and was confronted by the sight of a young man clad in a white T-shirt and dirty jeans pissing a perfect arc into her mosaic-tiled swimming pool.

jackie collins, hollywood wives

There. Doesn’t that make you want to keep reading? Aren’t you thinking to yourself, “Who is that young man in a white t-shirt and dirty jeans who is urinating — no, not just urinating, but flawlessly urinating — into a rich woman’s Beverly Hills mosaic-tiled swimming pool?”

I’ll give you the answer now, because if I were you I wouldn’t want to have to wait to learn something so monumentally important: He’s a sexy pool boy. Of course he’s a sexy pool boy.