E-mail volleys at heart of hip, funny 'Psycho Ex'

Alex Gorelik, Special To The News

Published July 2, 2004 at midnight

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Take a satirical television writer and bounce her acerbic wit off the sharp acumen of a cynical rocker. Then bind their lives with an addictive e-mail correspondence centered on a contest where each participant gets points for the "total suffering and pain" they endured with their former lovers - and you have The Psycho Ex Game, a hip, hilarious, he-said, she-said exchange between two fascinating, if not entirely well-balanced, minds.

The Psycho Ex Game is a novel co-written by Emmy Award-winning writer Merrill Markoe and songwriter-musician Andy Prieboy.

In the story, Lisa Roberty is a successful screenwriter struggling to cope after a demoralizing break-up with Nick Black, an actor/director and household name in Hollywood.

Grant Repka is an obscure indie rock musician who, in his 40s, finds his career unexpectedly resurrected with the success of his comic operetta about the doomed romance of Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson.

Grant and Lisa's paths cross after one of his rock operettas, when a passing comment leads to an e-mail exchange and eventually launches a battle dubbed the Psycho Ex Game, a competition in which tales of dysfunctional love, humiliation and psychotic behavior garner points and spur players to quote Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

As the correspondence evolves, the two sacrifice their already impoverished social lives for late-night e-mailing stints, and Lisa is surprised that it offers her the kind of intimacy she has never shared with a man. Before long, what started as a friendly competition becomes a road map to an unlikely friendship, leaving both Grant and Lisa secretly wondering, "If we were to get involved, which one of us is potentially the next Psycho Ex?"

Meanwhile, Grant's relationship with Lisa begins to threaten his complex romance with his current girlfriend, the "busty Rocker Barbie creature" Winnie Veenstra.

The leading lady in his musical, Winnie has helped him turn his life around. But Winnie controls Grant. She has taken over his house and his career. In opposing spurts of jealousy and posturing, she is encouraging and supervising Grant's digital dialogue with Lisa.

Grant opens deeply buried emotional wounds recounting his relationship with a junkie who stole not only his heart and his money, but his self-image and confidence. As he and Lisa correspond, Grant learns who he is and what he really wants.

Grant's gradual rejection of the rock-and-roll lifestyle begins to put additional strain on his relationship with Winnie, who is ever the life of the party. In a revealing letter to Lisa, Grant writes:

"As I looked around, God, how I suddenly hated this romantic, teetering-on-the-edge-of-self-destruction . . . I suddenly hated Morrison and Joplin and Brian Jones. I hated any famous beautiful corpse with a fat bank account that made death look good. I hated all those millionaire rock gods with their armies of lawyers . . . and sycophants who kept them afloat and helped them make self-destruction look like a lifestyle, a fashion-choice, an accoutrement. I realized that I was just another one in a generation of idiot white kids who grew up respecting these millionaires the same way earlier generations stood in awe of industrialists like Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie."

The narrative moves seamlessly from comical and tragic flashbacks to the present. The lessons Grant and Lisa learn in their exploration are perceptive and therapeutic, and beneath the Hollywood hype and rock-star decadence, each vignette is a self-contained drama to which anyone who has experienced a bad relationship can relate.

The Psycho Ex Game takes the hurt and humiliation of relationships gone wrong and makes a fun-house maze of mirrors out of them. In the process, it offers an entertaining commentary on everything from sexuality to culture, exploring the entitlement of fame and the greed of addiction in surprising and revealing ways.

The novel is a frightening, funny and honest love story - perfect for a generation of jaded hipsters.

Alex Gorelik is a freelance writer living in Denver.

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