Former St. Louisan Wade Rouse is two-thirds through with a trio of memoirs. His second, “Confessions of a Prep School Mommy Handler,” is now out in paperback and was choosen recently to be featured at Target stores as a Breakout book and placed prominently on endcaps in the stores.

Although the new pink cover and its silhouette illustration of three short-skirted women looks like it might be real-life-based fiction - like ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ or ‘The Nanny Diaries’ - it’s actually an account of his years working at MICDS, Mary Institute Country Day School. He does rename the school Tate Academy and changes the names of characters, which muddies the nonfiction waters a bit, but he calls it a memoir so we’ll believe him.

His third book is scheduled to come out June 2 from Crown/Harmony publishers. It’s marketed as “Sex and the City meets Deliverance.” The working title: “At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream: Misadventures in Search of the Simple Life.” So maybe St. Louisans can breathe easier - he’ll be humorously skewering Michigan instead of Ladue.  From the catalogue copy: “In this rollicking and hilarious memoir, Sex in the City meets Deliverance and Green Acres as one urbanite strikes out for rural America in an effort to re-create Thoreau’s Walden, but discovers the simple life ain’t so simple.”

 
If you want to read more about what Wade Rouse is doing in his home in Michigan, see his Web site. 

Here is some of last year’s story about Rouse and the book by Post-Dispatch reporter Cynthia Billhartz Gregorian. It was published in September 2007 when the hardcover of “Confessions of a Prep School Mommy Handler” came out.

09/11/2007

By Cynthia Billhartz Gregorian

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Wade Rouse’s “Confessions of a Prep School Mommy Handler” is a scathing portrayal of one of the country’s top prep schools that might or might not be a well-known school in Ladue.

In his book, Rouse writes about a school he has named Tate Academy for reasons of protecting privacy. But Tate shares many similarities with Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School. And coincidentally — or not — that’s where Rouse worked as communications director from 1991-94 and 1997-2006.

Rouse, now an author living in Saugatuck, Mich., said during a phone interview last week that every event happened as described in “Confessions.” That includes a chapter titled “The Fall Boy,” which describes when Mrs. Van Cleve, a 93-year-old whiskey-chugging alum, pushed Rouse down a flight of marble steps during a crowded event.

But Rouse was extremely coy about matching specific elements of the book, which he calls his second memoir, with his time at MICDS.

Instead, Rouse urges everyone to read the author’s note, in which he explains how he’s also changed the names and identifying characteristics of those portrayed, and has rearranged and compressed events and time periods into one school year.

Kitsy, the main character; her Lilly Pulitzer-wearing posse of spoiled, rich mommies; and Doty, Rouse’s sychophant boss, are composites of real-life mean mommies and administrators whom he’s worked with at several schools, he says.

Rouse also stressed, both in the book and in the interview, that the vast majority of parents he worked with in private education were decent, down-to-earth people. “Confessions” is about a tiny number of snobby parents and students he’s come into contact with, he says.

The book opens with Rouse doing yoga breathing exercises on his first day at Tate Academy as his office phone rings.

It’s Kitsy, “a former Tate beauty queen and sports star, who went to an Ivy, married an Ivy and made a lot of money.” She’s summoning Rouse to the carpool lane outside school for an impromptu meeting, something she’ll do regularly throughout the school year.

It’s a ritual that has Rouse trying not to step on the gleaming running board of Kitsy’s Land Rover as he leans in the passenger window to hear Kitsy’s orders and complaints about superficial stuff. For instance, she can’t understand why there aren’t any chickpeas at Tate’s salad bar, says the texture of paper used in the alumni magazine needs to be more buttery and instructs him to redesign an invite using the Louis Vuitton insignia.

It doesn’t take Rouse long to realize that his real job at Tate is to make sure Kitsy and company are happy.

From there, the short breezy chapters go on to tell of the sometimes demeaning requests Rouse feels obligated to fulfill, such as dressing as Ronald Reagan for Halloween (Rouse is gay and couldn’t stand the conservative president), and packing and shipping two sets of luggage for Kitsy’s vacations over Christmas holidays (because she’s going to a cold destination and then a warm one).

He’s also given the task of delivering coffee on a daily basis to Miggie, a wealthy, eccentric old alum. Miggie moons a classroom full of kids one morning when Rouse forgets to pay her a visit.

Rouse says this memoir is a natural continuation of his first, “America’s Boy,” and that he wanted to share what he thinks are universal experiences. At the same time, he says, it’s about self-esteem and self-acceptance.

“It’s about my and society’s fascination with those who we think have more — more beauty, more confidence, more power,” he says. “And the big questions is why? Why do we too often admire this?”

To that end, Rouse is as hard on himself as he is on anyone. He hid that was gay. He feels great compassion for students who are ostracized for not being attractive or rich, but he never comes to their defense.

He admits that he took the job at Tate to be a mover and shaker and to be liked by popular people for once in his life.

“Sad? Yes,” he writes. “Pathetic? Yes. True? Yes.”

But back to the similarities between Tate and MICDS.

Rouse describes the prep school’s location as a Midwestern city with hot, muggy summers. Residents there worship their local professional sports team like it’s a religion, and everyone wants to know: “Where did you go to high school?”

Several phone calls to parents of students at MICDS about this book either went unanswered or were skittishly answered off the record.

But Mary Beth Wilson, who taught high school art at MICDS for seven years, laughed when she heard a description of the book.

“Wow. That sounds like our school,” she said. “There’s one circle of parents that basically are the untouchables, and you don’t create friendships with them or engage with them beyond being a teacher to their children. They’re also all about scandal, scandal, scandal. That was shocking to me.”

But then, like Rouse, Wilson explained that students at the school are kind and humanitarian, and that their parents are not as aggressive and difficult to deal with as some people think.

“They expected you to do your job, and then respected you and allowed you to do it,” Wilson said, adding that she became friends with many of them.