Hello, good people!

I love how you operate.

Paid subscribers, I’ll start with you because I worked in publishing back when all subscriptions were paid and all writers were compensated relatively fairly (unless maybe you were writing for Spin or Nylon or The Source at that time). So those of you paying your six dollars a month (or less if you take out a founding subscription) so that we can replicate that model as much as is possible in these AI times, I love you, I thank you deeply and I know exactly who you are. (Paid subscribers who get an email from my janky yahoo account, that is actually non-automated me, just not switching over when I see that you upgraded, to tell you how much I appreciate your support and I mean it.)

If you’re someone who took out the free 7-day trial or the one-time upgrade, hang on before canceling - if you can manage the psychological burden of having something outstanding to do, which is a tough one for me. That’s because there’s stuff coming out this week that’s extra juicy and I wouldn’t want you to have to go to the trouble of subscribing all over again and then unsubscribing yet again - though I'm sincerely impressed with how quickly some of you manage to sign up to read one paywalled story (like currently a lot of this one or this one) and then cancel minutes later. It’s remarkable and I would love to ask about your reading comprehension. Special admiration goes out to endurance athlete Bob, who subscribed and unsubscribed three times in the course of an afternoon yesterday!

The main thing is: If you’re not into this email, I get it and don’t worry because the next couple are worth hanging around for.

And now for some breaking news: NEW SASSY MAGAZINE T-SHIRTS!

Last week, one of you lovelies alerted me that the Best Shirt Ever (“ever” meaning since we sold them in SASSY Magazine starting 38 years ago) was stupidly only available in sizes up to 3XL. Well that’s because the company that makes the shirts only carries pink shirts in those weeny sizes. So my wonderful partner in crime Ani and I went and created what I now think is an even more gorgeous version. It features, as you can see, the glorious color pairing of hot pink on red! I’m producing it exclusively for sizes 4XL and 5XL. In celebration, I will give them away free to two commenters who tell me in the comments below why they want it.

See you in the comments! Unless you’re too busy having your best sex ever or getting your teeth checked (Virgo) or enjoying any of the other incredibly precise predictions from Bee below.

Love love always, Jane

PS If you haven’t already, you can still vote for all of the controversial books you’re interested in reading (and there are prizes involved!). Next week we’ll close it out and announce the exciting and worthy winners.

PPS Today’s horoscope column is unusually free to everyone, which also means that you can get personalized coaching - which is usually for paid subscribers only - from the most amazing and unique astrologer I know right there in the comments. I use her every month personally. And look how great my life is! Okay then.

The Perfect GIft For Anyone Cool

By The Zine Witch

So there I was, in the tragically muted green rotunda hallway gripping my not so gently used bloody tampon in my hands as I furiously walked down the hallway like an actual Terminator towards Karen’s room. I could not take it anymore. This see you next Tuesday had pushed me too far. Too far! Now I’m over the edge. Yeah, I’m Donita Sparks of L7, baby, and you’re on my shit list. And suddenly, I hit my target. I furiously opened the door and threw it. Right to the kisser. Headfirst, full force. Imagine me. The elevator scene from The Shining. The reluctant hero. Let the fucking games begin.

“Residential school looked like a prison. Kids were medicated severely to compliance. Sexual predators roamed the halls. One cop traded cigarettes for young girls’ tits.”

Residential school was a wild, chaotic, absurd place. Valley of the babydolls. For starters, it looked like a prison. Kids were medicated severely to compliance. Fights broke out constantly. Psychological warfare was everywhere. Sexual predators roamed the halls. One cop traded cigarettes for young girls’ tits. I was punished for defending myself. We all were. I was punished for reacting. I was punished for being human. Bullies went free. Adults were absent, negligent, or predatory. Every day was a brutal, absurd test of endurance.

When Judy spent too much time on the pay phone, the girls got together and cut all of her hair off and every individual piece of clothing in her closet into shreds to teach her a lesson. Day, one, the teddy bear that my dead mother’s best friend had given me that I’ve had since the day I was born was torn to shreds. After losing my father, it was a devastating loss, but there were no times for my tears. Like everything else in my life, it had to be dead and buried and move on for my own survival. This was my reality now.

I have always dreamed of writing this experience as a television show. The absurdity, the pure characters, the danger, the chaos is practically a blueprint for dark comedy, horror, and social critique all at once. Every moment highlighted structural issues in ways you could never stage. The system was designed to fail kids like me, to punish difference, to control rather than protect. And yet, somehow, it made me who I am. I learned to meet chaos head-on, to take fire and turn it into survival, and maybe one day into story.

Being autistic, the school system had no idea what to do with me. And like many neurodivergent kids who just needed care and coregulation, I was sent away for most of my late teens. The more I look back, no one questioned why the behavior happened. They were much more focused on controlling it than understanding the root issue. Many of our systems are designed this way. But this is where I ended up.

I really just wanted to be everyone’s friend growing up. With undiagnosed autism, I often ended up alone or worse, bullied for being myself. A lot of of my poor behavior was just a reaction to my environment. I feel like I was a good kid at heart. I tried to be but would often fail. I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t keep up. I wasn’t…interested in what was being taught.

And like any kid who had gone thought the tremendous personal hell I grew up in, I had problems. My parents were not present and both died by the time I was 13. I was raised by a stepmother who was slowly descending into madness, so I had to look to my rock gods in the pages of Rolling Stone, Spin, Sassy, Circus, and whatever other magazine I was reading at the time for advice on how to grow up because I sure as hell was doing it alone.

In a place like that, minding your own business was practically an invitation to a nosebleed. Predators could smell hesitation the way sharks smell blood. Judy’s biggest crime was calling her mother too much and they butchered her entire wardrobe. In this world, your shampoo was pissed in. Toothpaste was rubbed on your face while you slept so you woke up with your entire face burning. Anyone could turn on you at any time. And the staff repeatedly told you you’re worthless. I left my body at a certain point.

Every hallway felt like a battleground. You learned to read a room in half a second. Who was about to snap. Who was high on their meds. Who had decided today was the day they were going to make someone else miserable just to feel powerful for ten minutes. The adults floated around like ghosts who had already given up. Sometimes they were negligent. Sometimes they were cruel. Sometimes they were just tired in that hollow way people get when they work inside a broken system too long.

The rules were arbitrary and the punishments were not about safety. They were about control. If you defended yourself you were aggressive. If you reacted you were unstable. If you cried you were manipulative. If you stayed quiet you were suspicious. There was no winning the game because the game itself was rigged.

So kids created their own ecosystem. Alliances formed and collapsed overnight. Rumors traveled faster than light. Some kids hardened into little warlords. Others disappeared into the background and tried to become invisible. Some of us developed a strange dark humor about it all because laughter was one of the only ways to metabolize the insanity of it.

Looking back, it was absurd in the way only institutional life can be absurd. Teenagers navigating violence, hormones, grief, medication, and abandonment all at once. Children trying to survive systems designed to contain them rather than understand them. You learned quickly that survival was not about being the strongest person in the room. It was about being the most adaptable. To turn off all feeling. The most observant. The one who could sense danger before it arrived. A breeding ground for sociopaths.

And sometimes survival meant snapping.

Sometimes it meant gripping a tampon like a tiny weapon of war and marching down a fluorescent hallway with the conviction of a soldier who had finally decided the battle was unavoidable. Karen had gone too far. She had given my diary to another student who took it upon themselves to photocopy and share it all over school. My private poems, my thoughts, fears, prayers…exposed. Now it was war.

I don’t know what came over me. It was like my mind stepped into a new persona in that moment. I became my own hero. Donita Sparks was the Aries singer of the band L7 a group that played with ferocious intensity and absolutely refused to take anyone’s shit. She is perhaps most famous, however, for an infamous moment at a concert when a heckler in the audience pushed her too far. In response, Sparks pulled out a used tampon and hurled it straight at his fucking head, instantly cementing the band’s reputation for fearless, confrontational punk rock. And now, I too was pulling a Donita.

Aries is the god of war. In the Jewish tradition, to celebrate the new year, the first month of the zodiacal new year, we blow an instrument called the shofar, which is made from the ram’s horn. The noise of the shofar is loud, jarring, and can bring a room to pause. Aries energy enters the room with a gust of fury much like the sound of a shofar. Traditionally, the shofar is meant to intimidate the enemy, to declare war, and to call people to assembly. As such, Aries energy bursts in with this energy. Like Donita Sparks. Like me in this moment where I declared The Crimson Uprising.

You see, Aries energy pushes us to the edge where politeness collapses and instinct takes over. It is the moment when the body says enough. Enough humiliation. Enough silence. Enough swallowing anger to keep the peace. Aries is the archetype that grabs the door handle, throws it open, and acts. It is not always graceful. It is not always strategic. Sometimes it looks like chaos. Sometimes it looks like a teenager in a residential hallway launching a tampon like a biological grenade.

But beneath the absurdity is something ancient and sacred. Aries is the force that defends the self when no one else will. It is the spark of life that refuses to be crushed. It is the war cry of the nervous system that has endured too much and finally pushes back. In a world where I was constantly punished for reacting, Aries was the part of me that refused to disappear.

I will not be fucked with, Karen. And I never was by her ever again. Her roommate? Now my best friend. I won the battle and the war. Take that!

Listen, I am a very demure person these days. I would never throw a bloody tampon at anyone except for perhaps the maintenance worker who consistently says misogynistic things to me, though I have reported him at least a half a dozen times, but only has his job because he’s union…… But that’s a complaint for another day. These days we handle our business in a more civilized way: using our big girl voice and asking for what we need directly.

All of this is to say: I’m not telling you to throw a tampon at someone this month. Though maybe you want to. The month awakens that urge to disrupt, to shake things loose, to confront what’s been stagnating. It asks you to call forth the master or hero within yourself, to step into your own authority, to start something new even if it feels reckless or audacious. You may surprise yourself with your own audacity. It’s a time to declare war on old patterns, on fear, on complacency, on anything that’s been quietly controlling you. This is the energy that pushes you to ignite bold ideas, unapologetic self-expression, and fierce independence, even if it scares you a little.

FOR ALL SIGNS:

Best Day for Healing Work or Therapy (your choice!) - April 17

Best Day for Sex or a Deep Conversation (again, your choice) - April 25

To Read Something Else Entirely

AND HERE ARE YOUR INDIVIDUAL HOROSCOPES - ALL FREE THIS TIME:

Astrologers tend to write horoscopes for your rising sign or Ascendent. This is the sign that was rising in the east when you were born. This tends to be the most accurate prediction. However, will need your birth time for that and you can go to various websites to figure out your own particular chart, but I enjoy Astro.com. If you do not know your birth time, feel free to read these for your sun sign, which works also.

Aries & Aries Rising- After weeks of exhaustion, you may be feeling like putting yourself out there more! There might be a little fire in your chest this month telling you to start fresh, take risks, and finally do what makes you feel alive instead of what everyone else expects. Someone close might get dramatic when you stop bending to their whims, and a relationship could reveal who actually gets you versus who’s just along for the ride. This is your moment to claim your space, speak your truth, and sprinkle a little extra sparkle on your own life. The people and opportunities that really belong will show up, and the rest can twiddle their thumbs somewhere else.

Taurus & Taurus Rising- This month is the time to slow down and give yourself a little extra care. You might notice your body and your routines have been running on empty, and it’s time to rest, recharge, and pay attention to what actually supports your health. Small changes to your daily habits sleep, meals, movement can make a huge difference in how you feel. Someone or something in your life may push for more from you than you can give, and that’s your cue to honor your limits. When you prioritize your well-being and protect your energy, everything else falls into place more easily.

Gemini & Gemini Rising- This month is all about what lights you up and who’s cheering you on. You might feel a surge of creative energy or a craving to do things that just make you happy, no explanations needed. At the same time, your friendships and social circles could shake things up, showing you who really has your back and who’s just along for the ride. This is a month to follow your curiosity, make space for fun and self-expression, and invest in connections that actually energize you. When you lean into what excites you and the people who get it, everything else falls into place.

Cancer & Cancer Rising- This cycle feels like the universe is inviting you to play both interior designer and CEO of your life. The full moon in your fourth house shines a spotlight on home, family, and the emotional corners you’ve been avoiding, urging you to tidy up old baggage and create a sanctuary that actually feels like yours. Meanwhile, the new moon in your tenth house whispers, “time to show up,” planting seeds for career moves, public recognition, or a new life direction. It’s a dance between nesting and rising like grounding yourself in what feels secure while stepping into ambitions that finally honor your inner truth. This is the moment to make your personal foundation work as hard as your public persona.

Leo & Leo Rising- You might find yourself needing to speak your truth, share your insights, or release old patterns of thinking that no longer serve you. Siblings, neighbors, or close connections could play a bigger role than usual, bringing either closure or revelation. Emotionally, your mind is where the drama unfolds, so watch for mental overdrive or impulsive communication. This is about stepping into bigger ideas, new philosophies, or long-distance experiences that broaden your worldview. Travel, higher education, spiritual growth, or publishing could all be themes. You’re being asked to take a leap of faith, trust in your curiosity, and set intentions for personal growth that feels adventurous and meaningful. It’s a reset for how you see the world and how the world sees you.

Virgo & Virgo Rising- This month is putting your resources and your sense of security under the microscope. You might notice where you’ve been giving too much of yourself: time, money, or energy and finally decide some of it needs to stay put. Things that feel hidden or off-limits in relationships could surface, showing you who is really loyal and who’s just along for the ride. This is a month to own your worth, set boundaries around what you share, and make space for the people and projects that actually matter. When you honor yourself, everything else falls into place naturally. Oh, and keep an eye on your teeth this month. It’s not a bad time for a dental check up or to pay a little bit more attention to what you’re consuming.

Libra & Libra Rising- Balance, baby. That’s key this month. You may be noticing your own needs more these days. You don’t just need to be loved, you need to be understood. You don’t need work that drains you or people who take without giving. You need space to create, to move, to show up fully as yourself and you need the same from others. But, you also wanna look cute while doing it. This is a month to show off your pizzaz. Someone close might push against your boundaries later in the month, testing whether you’ll shrink or finally say no. A new connection could appear, bold and unpredictable, challenging the way you’ve done relationships so far. Or you may prefer the company this month of sharp people who challenge the old and welcome in the new. This is a month to stop apologizing for taking up space, to speak your truth clearly, and to invest your energy only where it actually matters. The people and opportunities that belong in your life will rise to meet you, and the rest will fade without a fight. This is a good month to start a spicy new connection or commit with your work life. Just make sure to pause, listen closely, and pay attention to what it tells you about your own needs and desires.

Scorpio & Scorpio Rising- This month it’s all about finally shedding the invisible chains of people-pleasing and relationships that lead to your subconscious undoing. You’re seeing the ways you’ve bent yourself into someone else’s mold, the old scripts you’ve followed to keep the peace, and now you’re ready to dissolve them. You’re planting intentions around self-priority, daily habits, your work life, and boundaries, creating a routine and meaningful work that serves you first. This is your villain era: unapologetic, decisive, and fierce in how you take care of yourself and claim your space. There is a need to pay a little bit more attention to your health this month and to rest where and when necessary. Take that oil of oregano or chug that fire cider and be kind to yourself.

Sagittarius & Sagittarius Rising- This month brings a strong focus on your inner child and the people you genuinely connect with. Parents may notice their children taking meaningful steps toward self-expression, while others might find themselves stepping into the role of the big sister or brother they once needed. It’s a wonderful time for dating, pleasure, and deepening connections. Some reevaluations around who you connect with may arise, but these shifts will ultimately strengthen your relationships. This is a great time to take a calculated risk towards your goals and the future you envision.

Capricorn & Capricorn Rising- Work life balance is at the core of this month for you. This month is all about finding balance between your progressional ambitions and personal fulfillment, making sure your work aligns with your deeper values. You might feel pulled to make adjustments whether setting boundaries, reprioritizing projects, or reclaiming time for yourself but these changes will help you step into a more authentic and sustainable version of success. There’s an opportunity to clean house, literally or figuratively at this time. Who you are is changing, and with that comes the pillars that create the scaffolding around your life.

Aquarius & Aquarius Rising- You may be questioning your beliefs, long-term goals, or sense of purpose while also noticing the need to communicate more openly and authentically in your daily life. Travel, learning, or exploring new perspectives could inspire breakthroughs, and conversations with others whether casual or deep might reveal exactly what you need to shift to feel more aligned. This is a great time for publishing, broadcasting, or sharing your ideas with the world around you. Connect and use your voice.

Pisces & Pisces Rising- This month is about reclaiming your worth. You are being asked to plant seeds around your self value and financial stability this month while examining the deeper agreements you have made with others. Finances, taxes, debts, these are the areas of concern this month. You may be looking at how much you consume or what it is that you’re consuming. It’s also not a bad time to take care of your teeth and make a dental appointment. By the end of the month you may find yourself standing a little more firmly in the truth that your energy, your time, and your gifts have real value, and that the right exchanges will honor that.

Leave a comment

If you’re new here, WELCOME ABOARD! Thank you so so much for signing up and my gift to you is permission to skip this italicized part from me and scroll right down to today’s featured story. Or skip it all and go straight to the website where you can read more than 500 thrilling articles and their equally thrilling accompanying comments. It’s never dull in there.

Moving on… The story submissions I get here* at AnotherJanePrattThing sure do follow logic-defying trends. If you have been reading AJPT for a while, you may remember when I was getting all those death-related stories and had to put a call-out for some lighter stuff? There was also one point a couple of months ago when I was flooded with It Happened To Me submissions from people in open marriages (like this one that I did run and boy did it get a lot of engagement - and the single most sexually explicit comment on anything I’ve run in my long publishing life - I will tell you where to find that if you want). Another phase involved a slew of dog-related story proposals all within about a week of each other. That was adorable. And then so many eating disorder-related proposals came in all of a sudden, at the opposite time of the year as Eating Disorder Awareness Month too. Well, right now the tide seems to have turned to first-person encounters with celebrities. With a particular bent toward sex with famous musicians. It’s uncanny.

I can count at least four submissions I got recently with that premise (stories that a lot of people probably would have read. Including probably me). These were all different celebrities, by the way. I didn’t publish any of them, for various reasons, even though some were gorgeously written (you know who you are, gorgeous writers) and some have gone on to be published elsewhere.

Mainly, you don’t want to tell a story where the subject doesn’t have the option of telling their side. Or where they don’t want the story exposed at all. Whether they are famous or not. Of course. And even in this story you are about to read as soon as I shut up, we edited out a lot about other women - and a couple of men - who were involved because it didn’t seem right to expose them even while Tara very much wanted to expose Dave - for her reasons which you will see.

I didn’t keep up with the past years’ gossip about Dave Grohl. I’m pretty sure I have met him multiple times over the decades, but I definitely don’t know him. I’ve always liked whatever I’ve known or seen. I also don’t love to perpetuate gossip. And you would think I would’ve learned my lesson about this general topic when a story about a really wonderful musician and sensitive person appeared in the comments section on my old website XOJane - a comment that turned out to be very untrue and very hurtful to the person it was about. I was able to delete it when I was alerted to it by his publicist. (Note to Mark Zuckerberg and every other tech titan hiding behind Section 230 to argue that you are not responsible for third-party content on your platforms: Yes you are and yes you can do much much better.) I still feel terrible about being part of that hurt.

I did also hear (along with I’m sure many of you because it got a fair amount of press attention) that Dave is currently in lots and lots and lots of therapy and I praise him for that and I hope his life and all the lives of all the people involved are better than they were. I’ve done things too. (Thus my memoir, coming in 2027 or so, which would run tens of thousands of pages - in shorthand - if I include all of the shit I’ve done.) Let’s all keep growing.

And if you think my growth should include unpublishing this article, let me know that too. I hope you will talk to me and Tara about her story - and about how you feel about it being aired and the importance of people/women telling their stories like this and how best they do that. And ask Tara all the questions you want, and me too. I want to hear it all.

I love and respect you all tremendously.

Jane

*Send me your stories that you want published to Jane@AnotherJanePrattThing.com, just like Tara and hundreds of others did before you!

Quiz (sort of): How Sassy Are You?

By Tara Dublin

Dave Grohl knew my name before we ever met in 2001.

Yes, the Dave Grohl who’s been on a solo redemption press tour ahead of Foo Fighters releasing their new record on April 24th (two days before my birthday) because of the bombshell revelation that he had fathered a fourth daughter outside of his marriage in August 2024. That news, combined with the firing of drummer Josh Freese without any explanation, had tarnished Dave’s rep as the “Nicest Guy in Rock,” so he’s out there trying to smooth things over before Foo Fighters hit the road again.

At the same time, one of Dave’s most famous exes, Melissa Auf der Maur, has just released her memoir, and I’ve read a brief excerpt that was posted on Facebook. The few details about the beginning of their relationship rang familiar to me.

There was a brief time in the early 2000s when Dave and I were in touch, after he was married, but long before Violet was born. I had an AOL email for him and a cell phone number with a Virginia area code. We never spoke on the phone, and this was before texting. But some of the things that Melissa shared in that excerpt I read were…not original material, shall we say.

I’ve kept secrets about Dave for 25 years while waiting for answers to questions I’ve never been able to ask him. I’m not a vindictive bitch, and there are things I’ll never tell, because I respect him and the relationship he has with his family. Even before I learned about his fourth daughter, I stayed quiet to my own detriment, often misunderstood and called things like “groupie” and “stalker,” when I was only seeking the truth. I don’t want him, I need my poor brain to finally rest after a quarter century of “What if’s” and “Why me’s.”

500+ stories not about Dave are here

It’s been a rough few years for The Grohl, and if you have a forgiving nature, as I do, you might be able to cut him some slack. Dave lost Taylor Hawkins and his mother, Virginia, within four months of each other in 2022. That would fuck anyone up for a good while.

But if Dave Grohl really wants to reclaim his title as the Nicest Guy in Rock, he has to do something bigger than go to therapy or release a new album. He’s got another confession to make. There’s one last component to his redemption arc so he can really stick the landing.

And that component is…

TO KEEP READING AND SEE ALL THE PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE OF TARA AND DAVE’S TIMES TOGETHER, AND TO TALK TO TARA ABOUT HER STORY, PLEASE SUBSCRIBE RIGHT HERE. IT COSTS LESS THAN $2 A WEEK AND WE HAVE TO PAY FOR THESE ARTICLES SOMEHOW. THANK YOU!

Read more

I'm making the featured story free to everyone AGAIN today, partly because I'm excited about all the new readers who just found us and haven't paid (yet!)*. I am truly so grateful that you are allowing me to send you these stories, regardless of your subscription type.* Thank you!*

I'll be back next newsletter with more meaningful material from me and I'm curious which topic you prefer - or if you prefer neither or both:

1. My behind-the-scenes history with America's Next Top Model. As I‘ve mentioned, one of my Jane magazine editors and favorite people in the world, Eric, was right up on that ANTM judging dais between Janice and Tyra when we worked with them as the publication partner for Cycle 2. He turned down talking to “E” for their recent series (because he is much classier than me), but he of course tells me and will tell you everything. As will I (big surprise).

2. My history with JFK Junior, who I knew thatmuch in high school and again when he was living in NYC pre- and post-meeting Carolyn.

“Neither, Jane” is a perfectly valid response. It's weird when a topic is being discussed so widely that you have a connection to and hard to know whether to tell your little side or not. You don't want to be the “it's all about me” person at the table. On a related note, you definitely don't ever want to be the person who, the moment someone dies, it’s as though you were the New York Times obituary department with their farewell piece ready to publish, racing to be first to post an IG picture of you with that person. Often I have noted that it’s also a picture where the subject doesn’t particularly look great, but who cares, I guess, they’re dead and You Knew Them. I do appreciate how far my old friend E Jean Carroll takes this trend; the moment she finds out someone has died, she just blasts out an email with their first name in all caps followed by a lot of exclamation points as the subject line. Why be subtle about what everyone is doing anyway? I love her.

At the same time, you don’t want to withhold any stories your friends might find interesting. So let me know in the comments what you want.

And let me know what you think of Jenn’s piece today there too. I want to talk to her more about her story because it was understandably difficult for her to write and because I think what she covers is part of an increasing dilemma for so many people. And I know she wants to hear from and talk about it with you too. So say anything.

Last: If you haven’t voted for any controversial books yet, get in there and support your favorite offenders!

I love you all a lot.

Jane

* If however, you are a particularly beautiful and generous and supportive new person who understands that we pay the writers out of the six dollars or so a month subscription fees, it will mean even more if you upgrade now when your nose is not being held to any grindstone or your curiosity about what comes after a cliff-hanger paywall is not eating away at you so much that you cave and say, “OK I’ll just take out that free 7-day trial to find out whether she lives and then I’ll cancel out of it after 6 days.” Though you can always do that too, of course!

I Wore This & Everyone Wanted It

By Jennifer Dines

I puked out the car window and pissed my pants every morning in the early months of 2014, en route to the middle school where I taught English to four sections of twenty or so new immigrant students each per day. I made a point of arriving early to work in those days, heading to the staff bathroom to double-bag my wet underwear and pants into corner store Have a Nice Day sacks. I stuffed this squishy mass of cotton, pee, and plastic into the front pouch of my backpack for the walk down the hallway to my classroom. Once I sat down at my desk, I swiveled around in my teacher chair and pulled out one of the four-gallon trash bags in the top drawer, dumping the evidence of my incontinence inside. Then I hid the whole mess in the back of the bottom drawer, where it languished until safely after the final bell. Before leaving for the day, I placed the trash bag in my third bag of the day, a paper grocery bag, which I carted home, sitting in the damp driver’s seat with the old folks’ home scent of urine wafting around me.

It was the second trimester of my first pregnancy - twin girls! My body transformed into a shape not un-like Roger Hargreaves’ Mr. Greedy, the main character in one of those British Mister Men and Little Miss books. Mr. Greedy, a purple blob-man, has a giant beer-belly, but not from downing pints at the local pub. Rather, his binge-eating disorder drives him to devour a giant’s “pillow-sized sausages” and “potatoes the size of beach balls,” this after wolfing down a 17-item breakfast.

My Mr. Greedy-ness came not from the meals I couldn’t keep down, but from the exponential growth of the babies and their accompanying rivers, lakes, and oceans of amniotic fluid. I could no longer engage in pre-partum fitness routines either. Running? In the city? I couldn’t see over my bump, so I couldn’t see the slip-and-trip hazards of sidewalk cracks, uneven pavement, pebbles, and sticks, not to mention the ever-present threat of stepping in dog poop. Pilates Reformer? Nope. My trainer of three years cut me off from sessions because she felt lacking in the expertise to work with pre-partum clients, and I didn’t care to find someone else. [Just a tangentially related aside, but I quit my one form of exercise, Pilates, when I got pregnant with my daughter because I couldn’t imagine that those pelvic moves and compression and twisty stuff and pushing were good for her. And now I see women whose water basically breaks on their front-row Soulcycle saddles and I still can’t imagine that that’s healthy. But tell me why I am wrong and old-fashioned in the comments. -Jane]

I headed to the library to peruse the fitness DVDs for child-bearing ladies, where I found PregoFit, KnockedUp Fitness, and fitmama. The titles of these workouts set my already precarious pregnancy hormones a-ragin’. If someone called me ‘Preg-O’ or ‘Knocked Up’, I’d clock them with my swollen fist. And Mama? MAMA? What, was I wearing calico bonnets, churning butter, and sewing ragdolls now? I huffed out of there and road-raged home to my computer.

I cruised the internet for an hour or so but found only more of the same stupid stuff and more irritability. I took a break from browsing to scarf down half a sleeve of saltines and a couple huge spoonfuls of peanut butter. This replenished my energy enough to give the World Wide Web another old college try.

I don’t recall the search terms I typed, but, all the sudden, a miracle popped up on the monitor: Ballet Baby Fit & Graceful Pregnancy. The ballerina on the DVD cover had a huge swollen belly, a knowing smile, and long glossy chesnut-colored hair. Her face resembled Mad Men’s Allison Brie. And her positioning, in spite of her big bump, somehow formed an elegant diagonal line from the tips of her fingers to the ends of the satin slippers.

If this isn't your topic here's 500 more

The DVD cover beckoned: Stay long, toned, and graceful during all 9 months. Whoever this Mary Helen Bowers was, her posture made it look so possible.

And then I spotted the words that sealed the deal. MARY HELEN BOWERS Trainer to Natalie Portman in Black Swan. BLACK SWAN! A film so dark, so intense, so horrific…one of my all-time favorite movies. And this MARY HELEN BOWERS played a part in that. I whipped out my credit card like it burned a hole in the pocket of my high-elastic-waistband maternity lounge pants.

And, let me tell you, this online DVD purchase really delivered. Honey-voiced pastel-clad Mary Helen looked like an angel, but her tendus, leg lifts, and one-legged bridges burned my ass like the devil’s pitchfork. Sometimes I could only survive ten or fifteen minutes before collapsing onto the sofa, but I enjoyed the movement, the fantasy of being a dancer, and regaining a modicum of control over my mutating body.

I credit Fit & Graceful Pregnancy, particularly its seated core exercises, along with the splendor of an epidural, for the relative ease of my childbirth experience. Instead of agony, adrenalin, unadulterated raw power, electrified my body. I activated my ab muscles, kegel-ed up. And with a few pushes, Francine’s first cry echoed across the delivery room, busting out of her mighty lungs.

After the twins’ birth, I didn’t need workout videos because I got jacked wheeling them around our hilly neighborhood in a double stroller a couple times a day and hauling car seats up and down the stairs of our building. Fifteen months and a third girl later, I upgraded to a triple stroller and gained even more definition in my muscles. My once-beloved Fit & Graceful Pregnancy DVD collected dust in a storage closet until I wiped it off and donated it to a thrift store during a bout of spring cleaning.

I all but forgot about Mary Helen until a year or so after COVID when ads for a Ballet Beautiful streaming service popped up on my Instagram. Oh, the memories of pregnancy - Mary Helen’s lilting voice, that classical piano music, those movements that strengthened me up for one of the most important moments of my life. Also: AS SEEN IN VOGUE. I had thirty pounds of pandemic weight to lose, and so again I yanked out my credit card and signed up for more Mary Helen.

I became obsessed with the program: a mix of longer workouts filmed at Mary Helen’s house in North Carolina and then shorter in-studio videos with those familiar Chopin waltzes. I created detailed spreadsheets of the challenges on the Ballet Beautiful site, mapping out sequence of workouts to complete and recorded the dates I completed each one.

In the mornings before my commute and during my lunch breaks, I fit in five minutes of Swan Arms here, ten minutes of standing abs there. I kept light dumbbells and fitness bands in my desk. My bed frame and the side of a long table in my classroom became impromptu ballet barres. I even bought a Spandex turtleneck leotard and wore it several times a week under my work pants and cardigans.

Once a week, I did the hour-long videos on Friday afternoons at the gym, a pick-me-up just for me after a long week of lesson planning, grading, and stressed-out teenagers. In the little back stretching area of the gym, I planted myself on a mat in front of the wall of mirror in the little stretching area, popped in my earbuds, and fired up a livestream Full Body Mat workout on my phone, which I propped on the mirror.

At the outset, the usual parent and teacher worries ticker-taped around my brain, but Mary Helen’s ethereal voice took me out of my anxious mind and into my body.

Really turn out your thigh.

Keep your hips square to the mirror.

Neck long.

Lift-down-out-in.

While focused on Mary Helen’s concise directions, I concentrated on precision, and then, as I properly aligned my bones and muscles, I had to tolerate the intensity of the repeating movements.

This is really starting to burn.

MARY HELEN! This burned sixty-four reps ago! I talked back to the screen, joking around with my old pal. She ignored me. She directed and counted to eight, again and again and again.

After the video ended, I rolled onto my back, closed my eyes, and breathed deeply in a corpse pose. I stood up, faced the mirror one last time. The workout elongated my posture, glowed up my skin, and painted a Mona Lisa half-smile and soft eyes on my face. I had become the calm, strong woman I wished I could be all the time. You look great, sweetie, I told myself, before heading to the locker room for a long hot shower and few minutes in the steam room.

My Ballet Beautiful routines felt more essential then ever when the whiplash changes of Trump’s second term began. My job as an ESL teacher? Classes bursting with new arrivals? My once-thriving career became a distant memory. By September 2025, eighty-plus students a year dwindled down to thirty-three. My classroom felt like a ghost town. You’d think fewer students meant less work, but it didn’t.

Anyone who watches or reads the news knows the violence and vitriol that MAGA vomits onto migrants and most US-born non-whites. Xenophobia and English-only initiatives have always existed in schools. Migrants have always struggled with all the adjustments of reinventing their lives. But, for my students, it seemed in the past those struggles lived alongside hope for building a more prosperous life in the United States: dreams of college, job opportunities. Dozens of my students over the years shared the same sweet wishes: I want to build a house for my mother. I want to build a house for my grandmother.

This school year, I’ve witnessed more tears, panic attacks, anger, overeating, undereating, sleeping in class, and defiance than ever before. The Boston Public Schools and the City of Boston have firm laws and policies around public safety for migrants. But the school system slashed funding for social-emotional learning initiatives at the end of the 2025 school year. And, so, teachers working with these populations have been left to navigate the impacts of trauma on our own.

Still, I soldiered, continuing with the same instructional routines of years gone by. Even if schooling no longer led students towards a real future in the United States, I still believed that rigorous academic demands could at least serve as a distraction from the real world.

Despite being the old Mrs. Dines at school, the Jennifer outside its walls really started to change. I had once been a serious woman striving for an awareness beyond my whiteness and its accompanying privileges. I attended screenings of The Cost of Sugar and Born into Brothels. I ball-point penned essay annotations in the margins of Rethinking Schools and Mother Jones. I poured over Reading Lolita in Tehran, Mountains Beyond Mountains, and A Different Mirror.

I didn’t want to know anything anymore. It all seemed so…vulgar.

But at the start of the 2025 school year, I swapped CNN.com and the New York Times for Page Six. And I fell into a rabbit hole of media about the most glamorous lives of the 20th century. Podcasts about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford’s divine feud. Multiple Doris Duke tv biopics. Books about the histories of media empires, art heists, and luxury department stores.

Forget doomscrolling. I glamscrolled, staying up later than ever on my phone, combing over Wikipedia biographies of celebrities of yesterdays. I zoned out during any discussion of current events, but if someone asked me about Jason Robards’ alcoholism or Zsa Zsa Gabor’s emotionally abusive marriage to Connie Hilton…well, to tell you the truth no one ever inquired. I even built a capsule wardrobe of grey skirt suits, which I paired with a long white coat and beige pumps a lá Kim Novak in Vertigo. It was my own little world. You could say I lived in a bubble, but it was more stepping into a balloon shellacked with gold glitter. I could not and did not want to see the outside world. I used the idealized sparkle and shine of the past to block the devastation lurking outside the latex.

I leaned into Ballet Beautiful more than ever. I started doing longer videos during my break instead of eating. After school, with ten minutes between the final bell and meetings or homework help, I wedged four minute Posture Stretch segments.

But, the week before Halloween, during one of my longest late-night Wikipedia jags, I uncovered a devastating piece of information, the catalyst for my slow break-up with Mary Helen and Ballet Beautiful.

There I am in bed, wearing my hot pink sweatpants and Future Corpse t-shirt, munching on goldfish crackers. Failing to conjure up the name of some long-dead celebrity, I pop MARY HELEN BOWERS into the search bar of Ye Olde Wikipedia.

As is my custom, I scroll right down to PERSONAL LIFE. There’s only a single sentence: She is married to Paul Dans, with whom she has four children. Yup, her kids! In one of the livestreams, Mary Helen pointed out a purplish-green chunk of goo on her gray wool sock. While her chunky cat Missy meowed at some birds chirping out the window, she explained how her kids left homemade slime on the kitchen floor, and she’d stepped in it. Relatable!

Paul Dans. Who’s this guy now? I click on his name and…BIG MISTAKE! HUGE!

My eyes dance frenetically over the blue links in his bio.

President Trump…Republican…Project 2025…the Heritage Foundation…Lindsay Graham.

All these boorish proper nouns flicker in the dark like a strobe light, stabbing me in the eyes with the pain of betrayal.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Should I keep reading? I have to keep reading.

I open my peepers and scroll through subheadings, stopping at Heritage Foundation.

Dans is known as the architect of Project 2025.

Well, that’s it for me. I shut off the phone, nearly slamming in down on my nightstand. I pop a Unisom from my nightstand. I put on an old episode of Unsolved Mysteries. I doze off during a segment about the death of George Reeves.

In more cognizant days, I’d read a little bit about Project 2025’s fascist vision of America and its fetish for criminalizing migrants. Dans name wasn’t familiar to me, but I knew right away he was evil. And his neoconservative fantasy was coming true. Abrego Garcia came to mind, taken by ICE while in the car with his five-year-old son, right in my hometown of Baltimore, and shipped off to an El Salvadorian prison. It seemed like ICE might come for my students, their families, the many many immigrants in my community any day now.

Mary Helen’s marriage hit me like a ton of bricks. How could my friend be…sleeping with the enemy? A better version of me would’ve grabbed my laptop, unsubscribed from Ballet Beautiful right away. My $40 a month might as well be a donation to the Department of Homeland Security.

However, breaking up with someone you’ve known for over a decade isn’t so simple. I associated Mary Helen with the birth of my daughters, one of the most important moments in my entire life. I didn’t really know Mary Helen, but when you look at a person and listen to their voice multiple times a day, the relationship with them feels personal.

Ballet Beautiful was a major part of my sanity preservation, until it wasn’t. I quit the classroom workouts cold turkey; I couldn’t bring Mary Helen into that space anymore. At home, I joked with my husband about my GOP workouts, but he didn’t find it funny. Still, I continued in my living room and with those unmissable Fridays at the gym. While I loaded Ballet Beautiful onto my phone, I tried out all the classic techniques of denial.

I normalized: Everyone drinks coffee. Everyone wears cotton. Both are products of slavery and child exploitation. I’m not much more of a hypocrite than everyone else.

I self-pitied: It’s not fair. Why can’t I just do my workout without a moral reckoning?

I rationalized: What am I? Some big campaign donor? Forty dollars? Hah! A real SuperPAC, right?

Still, something that made me feel beautiful and in control increasingly made me uglier and uglier. Ballet Beautiful wasn’t working anymore, and I started peeking at the real life news again. I read a little bit more each day. The more I read, the more my cheeks, the ones on my face, reddened when I thought about Mary Helen and especially after a Ballet Beautiful workout. The shame burned more than my muscles ever had.

My fellow union members protested in freezing temperatures while I nearly cried into my yoga mat over my toxic relationship with Mary Helen. ICE murdered Minneapolis mother of three Reneé Goode while I fantasized about Mary Helen taking her children and leaving Paul because she didn’t want to lose me. It got to a point where the workouts didn’t even feel bad. Instead, I felt numb, a nothing person who’d really lost her way.

It took the death of Veterans Association nurse Alex Pretti to snap me out of it. If the Department of Homeland Security had no shame about killing an American white man, ICE would stop at nothing. An hour after I heard the news, I logged into Ballet Beautiful and closed my account.

A few days later, ICE snatched a man from his car only a couple feet from the grocery store I visit multiple times a week. But I wasn’t funding a GOP business anymore. I even agreed to be photographed for a news story about ICE’s effect on Massachusetts schools.

Since the breakup, I’ve gained a few pounds. But I’m exploring some new free workouts on YouTube. The instructors are no Mary Helens, but they don’t have me spiraling into a spiritual crisis either.

The $40 a month. I should probably donate it to some worthy cause. Then again, I could save it just to blow it on some trip to an amusement park with my family. Quitting made me a bit of a better person, but I’m still not that good.

Leave a comment

First of all, if you signed up for this because you love our contributor Michael Stipe, well so do I! But anyway, where I was going with that was: If you signed up because of Michael, you can see some of his past contributions here, here, and here, or just use the search to see what he’s written and what I’ve written about him. I also highly encourage you (and everyone) to join us in the comments where all the contributors and readers hang out pretty much daily. You can write about anything you want or ask anything you want there - and we do. It doesn’t have to be related to whatever story is highlighted in the day’s email (what some people call a “newsletter” but there’s no way this is that). I don’t even care if you read my email or the story. Non-sensical non-sequiturs and disquietingly random thoughts are always encouraged, as is speaking out of turn, interrupting and interjecting. So join the writers and other readers in the comments sections as often as you like. I live there myself.

If this is your first note from me on this platform and you signed up because you’re a fan of my past publications, well so am I! Partly kidding - but the good news for you is that your favorite writers from SASSY, JANE and XOJane are all over this site, so you can reunite and talk with them here.

If you’re a new subscriber for an entirely different reason, welcome, welcome, welcome and also use this place however you like. These emails I send out are just the marketing device that’s required to make this site grow on Substack (thank you, Substack) but the joy and the fun and the enlightenment and the tears among like-minded kooks, and all of that worthwhile - and worth subscribing to - goodness is in the 500+ stories and their comments here. So I hope to see you everywhere.

Thank you so so much.

Now for Book Club! Here we go!

Love, Jane

Better Than A Thrasher TShirt

By Amanda Long and Jane Pratt

[UPDATE: I'm back to add the following very urgent clarification. One reason you are meant to like all of the books that you are at all interested in reading here is because Andy's is in a category unto itself (duh) in that it's an option for anyone who wants to be part of giving him feedback on his work in progress. But we are still picking a book – at least one book! – from the others on the list to read and rant over together. So as I said, choose unwisely and vote early and often! Thank you! -Jane]

Let’s start with how reader/contributor Amanda got roped into putting together this second cycle of the AJPT Controversial-Books-Only Book Club with me.

Amanda says: Giddy from the first AJPT book-club gathering, a little gobsmacked that I got to hang out (even virtually) with an editor in my personal Editor Hall of Fame, and aching to do more writing thanks to what Jeff Bezos (Asshat Hall of Fame) was doing to my former writing home, I volunteered to “help out” with the next meeting. Five rounds of edits and 15 or 20 so book ideas later, here we are.

“One warning I have for you beforehand is that I don’t expect these books to be an escape or a happy diversion, or a breath of any kind of air.” – Jane Pratt, Aug. 1, 2025. I don’t know how Jane feels about me quoting her back to her, but I’m doing so with her statement from the original AJPT Controversial-Books-Only announcement to remind you of her rules for this club. Like members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, we are tasked with both nominating and picking our next winner. The books also all have to be controversial in some way. So after repeatedly and enthusiastically asking us for picks and pestering her friends in publishing, we came up with this season’s line-up.

From Jane: Unlike last season when we only had three measly books for you to choose from, this time we have 9 titles plus an exciting bonus offer I will explain below. I will put each author’s name in a comment and all you have to do is vote by liking the comments on AS MANY OF THE BOOKS as you are even remotely interested in reading. And if you have a new and better book suggestion than what’s on this list, add that there and we will all vote on yours too.

I’m sure there are some books on here that you actively do not want to read or do not want to even see on this list. Me too! So don’t vote for those but do vote for all the others and I will be back with our final tally next week!

A related aside you can skip: Something one of my Oberlin professors told our Modern Dance class seemed really deep at the time and then has actually stuck with me. She said that the least interesting thing you can say about a piece of art is whether you like it or not. So the idea here is not to necessarily indulge in happy-go-lucky escapist shit that we adore (which has its place, especially now) but to think and talk and agree and disagree – which you all are expert at already. One of the reasons I so admire you and listen to everything you have to say.

And the nominees are….

American Canto by Olivia Nuzzi

From the publisher: A mesmerizing firsthand account of the warping of American reality over the past decade as Donald Trump has risen to dominance—from a participatory witness who got so far inside the distortion field that it swallowed(!) her whole. Olivia Nuzzi spent a third of her life observing those in power. She became a reporter in 2014, when the political landscape began to recon­figure itself around a singular personality whom she was uniquely primed to understand. Over the next ten years, she used her access and eye for detail to chronicle his campaigns, trials, and government. Then, in 2024, her personal life collided with the public interest in a scandal that cost Nuzzi her job and reputation.

The controversy: Who doesn’t know this one? Just in case: Olivia got fired from New York magazine after revealing that she had an affair with Robert Kennedy Jr. while covering his campaign for the magazine - and living with Ryan Lizza, a journalist who was also fired from The New Yorker for “improper sexual conduct.” She refers to RFK Jr. as “The Politician” throughout. The Atlantic calls it a “Tell-Nothing Memoir.” But it was our AJPT diehard reader and contributor Cathy Alter whose comment made us finally choose the book for this list: “If we do pick Nuzzi’s book (which I am all for), everyone has to promise to send me your copies. RJK Jr. lives in Georgetown and has a free lending library outside of his house. I want to STUFF IT with Nuzzi’s book. My small act of resistance.”

Famesick A Memoir by Lena Dunham

From the publisher: In this rowdy, frank reflection on illness, fame, sex, and everything in between, the remarkable mind behind the hit series Girls and the bestselling author of Not That Kind of Girl asks whether fulfilling her creative ambitions has been worth the pain.

From Jane: Ok, Lena’s book isn’t out as we are announcing this - and I didn’t get an early copy to read or anything (even though we share a publisher - c’mon, please??). So I don’t know what about it will be considered controversial, but I’m sure there will be something in it that’s at least so provocative that it will help propel Famesick to be an even bigger blockbuster than it’s already obviously going to be. Lena is sassy so there’s no way she wrote anything safe. Also, we (royal we and self-effacing Editor-In-Chief we) just love her personally and professionally and every which way and want to read her book so if you do also, you can vote for it by liking it in the comments and we will find the drama surrounding it as we go. You can also preorder it via the link above, as I am because as I said, no free copy (just being a brat).

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

From good old Wikipedia (who finally corrected my page so it no longer says I was ever married, thank you all for telling them!!): Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel Lolita is highly controversial for its depiction of a middle-aged man, Humbert Humbert, who sexually abuses his 12-year-old stepdaughter, Dolores Haze. The book was banned in multiple countries—including France, England, and Argentina—for obscenity upon release. It sparked debate over artistic freedom versus the moral, taboo, and abusive subject matter.

From Jane: Certainly fits the criteria! I've had a hard time convincing some of my cohorts in this book club of the value of including old books, but I'm going with it anyway. This is one I haven't read in at least a decade or two and think would be interesting to read now in light of everything. (It was also really fun picking which cover to show you here because there have been so many good ones – and some really cheesy ones too. I went with a classic but if we read it, you certainly don’t have to buy the pictured vintage $150 hardback.) Vote for it if you're ready for a read or reread. And if you absolutely don't want to read it, I'm interested in hearing about that also.

Adult Braces by Lindy West

From her website, just an excerpt: Through Shrill—the book and then the Hulu series—Lindy West became an inspiration. To this day she is stopped on the street and hailed as a beacon of empowerment by women who felt badly for not conforming to a narrow set of societal norms—thin, straight, compliant. But behind the scenes, Lindy never felt like she was the self-actualized woman fans made her out to be. When she found herself in the throes of a deep depression, with her marriage and sense of self-worth hanging in the balance, she knew she needed to make a change.

Why It’s Upsetting The People, according to Chat-GPT:

The Polyamory Debate: Many critics and readers have debated the ethics and power dynamics of the relationship presented in the book. Some reactions have been harsh, with commentators suggesting that West was coerced into the dynamic by her husband, characterizing it as “patriarchy disguised as progressivism.”

The Content of the Book: The memoir details a “chaotic” period of their marriage, including early, difficult attempts at opening it up, such as instances where her husband would disappear for hours. The book also describes a solo road trip West took to process her feelings and navigate her marriage’s collapse and subsequent restructuring.

Reaction to a Feminist Icon: As a prominent feminist voice known for Shrill, some fans have struggled to reconcile their image of West with the vulnerability and, to some, concerning choices revealed in this new memoir.

From Amanda on the controversy: Like Molly Jong-Fast, who wrote our first controversial book club pick, West didn’t wait for things to get all better or even figure out how she, her husband and their girlfriend were going to figure out sleeping arrangements.

From Jane: I was just happy that there was a controversy because I really want to read this book, although I atrociously still haven’t read her first three – which I will rectify as a fun pre-read or co-read if we choose this. Anyway, want to read it (again)? Vote below!

All The Way To The River by Elizabeth Gilbert

What About It, From A Google Search: Chronicles the evolution of Elizabeth Gilbert's friendship with Rayya Elias into a passionate, codependent love affair, intertwined with both of their addictions. Deals with the pain of Elias’s terminal cancer diagnosis and her subsequent death in 2018. Details Gilbert’s personal reckoning with her own self-destructive tendencies and her path to spiritual healing and sobriety. Written in a raw, unpolished, and intensely personal style, sometimes resembling a journal, and includes poems, sketches, and journal entries.

Why It’s Controversial, from the same Google Search: Some reviewers found it excruciating, self-indulgent, and uncomfortable to read.

From Jane: Wow, I love Google’s succinct bitchiness. I never read Eat Pray Love but this sounds more interesting to me than that, and was suggested by a few of you. So up to you all!

Next to Heaven by James Frey

From the publisher: One night. An ultra-elite swingers party. Multiple betrayals. And a murder that will shatter New Bethlehem’s carefully constructed facade. Enter a world of troubled opulence and sharp betrayal that’s reminiscent of “The White Lotus,” “Your Friends and Neighbors,” and “Big Little Lies”—a world of spectacularly badly-behaved rich people where money can buy anything… until it ruins everything.

Why It’s Controversial, from Amanda:. The author famously called onto the carpet by Oprah for passing off a work of fiction as memoir has been teasingly walking the fiction/nonfiction line in his press tour (and wearing a big-ass silver chain). His life in New Canaan, Conn., is source material, as is its wealth and cut-throat, cocktail-party competitive circuit.

And from Jane: This book is on here because even if it isn't highly controversial, as Amanda well describes (though I wouldn't call the Oprah-bashed book a work of fiction personally – we can talk about that more), James is one of the icons of the genre so he inherently is, and because I promised him I would include his book when it came out about a year ago, and because he wants to join our book club meeting when we talk about it, and because he once saved my life. Again, up to you! Vote with your likes - early and often (meaning choose as many titles as you want).

The Tell by Amy Griffin

The book’s website says: “An astonishing memoir that explores how far we will go to protect ourselves, and the healing made possible when we face the secrets that terrify us and begin to share our stories”

Why it’s controversial, says Amanda: A cautionary tale of repressed memories, via psychedelics, made into a best-selling memoir, fueled by the circle jerk that is the Oprah-Book-Club-led publicity tour of rich people telling us to read books by their rich friends. Now at the center of a controversy for its questionable provenance. A former classmate of the bestselling author says “The Tell” uses a story from her own life and has sued. The “who is the ‘me’ in this memoir?” questions are coming from many directions…

Jane Finishing That Thought:… making it way more interesting to me than if it were just a legit integrity-laden truthful memoir. I had no interest in reading this book until I heard about the controversy.

The Emperor Of Gladness by Ocean Vuong

The publisher says: A young man on the verge of suicide is saved by an elderly woman with dementia, leading to a life-altering bond and journey of self discovery.

Why we are including it: Ocean Vuong’s debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019), faced controversy regarding its explicit descriptions of LGBTQ+ relationships and sex scenes, leading to it being banned in some Texas school districts. That novel has also sparked debate over “blunt-force ethnic credibility,” with some critics arguing it fetishizes trauma for Western readers. Emperor of Gladness received criticism from reviewers who labeled the prose “overwritten” or a “failure,” arguing it relies on a “forced” or “sententious” style.

I Regret Almost Everything, by Keith McNally

From Amanda on what the book’s about and our internal controversy around it: McNally, a Londoner, helped to create and shape the downtown scene in NYC too with his lineup of “be seen, be mean and be obscene” bars and restaurants. Then, late in his career, he had a stroke. I kept waiting for this book to find a narrative arc, or for the writer to learn something about himself. I’m still waiting. I’m glad I’m no longer on IG, as he’d likely take me down like he did James Corden.

“I Regret Almost Everything” Well, me too Keith. I regret downloading this “frank and funny” memoir. I regret that Jane is agreeing to include it in this roundup, but considering some of our lineup, it fits in with the “Oops, I fucked up, but I also have juicy gossip about famous people and friends in the New York publishing world.”

From Jane: That quote sounds like me and like the protagonists of all of my most-treasured stories! I want to even say bedtime stories because that sounds so lulling. And now I’m further intrigued. Also note that I think to guarantee yourself the IG terrorizing James Corden got, Amanda, you would have to inspect Balthazar’s special order omelet for egg whites like James and his wife supposedly did and then complain. I am going there for lunch next week, so I can order a yolk-only omelet and send it back and let you know how it goes. In any case, I can’t even decide on whether this book should be on this list, so that seems to qualify it. Vote your conscience, folks.

BONUS OFFER: Unfinished Manuscript by our own Andy(!)

From Jane: This is a little departure, but there are so many writers in our AJPT community that in addition to picking a published book to all read together, I thought we can also vote to look at and give feedback on a work in progress by one of our own, in this case Andy Finley. It’s called Frank Pickney Can Do Anything for Five Minutes. If you are new here (yes, you again, and thank you again for being here!), Andy has been a prolific AJPT commenter and contributor since day one, including the classic It Happened To Me stories he penned, entitled “I Pooped In The Pool” and “ I Painted My Dad’s Kitchen High On Acid.” (These are real. Search if you want.) So if you are interested in reading his book manuscript, vote for that too and he will get us all the pdf.

A note from Andy about the potential controversy in his story: The main character is a man who was severely abused by his ex-wife--who in turn was able to successfully convince him and anyone who would listen that he was the abuser in the relationship.

That’s it! So don’t take it too seriously but do cast a lot of likes so we can move this along to the fun part!

PS Speaking of fun parts, did I say that like last time, this AJPT Book Club season will culminate in a gathering at my apartment that you can join virtually or in person. With free food and drinks and Sassy Tshirts and other good stuff. Last time we did it at 9:30 am on a Sunday because of (the wonderful) Corynne’s busy schedule but now the world is our oyster and time is meaningless. So once we pick the book, you will get to weigh in on when is best for you for the party and I will schedule around that.

PPS If you want to show your gratitude to Amanda and your relief that it was her and not you working on this with me, you can follow her own Substack too.

Leave a comment

Hello lovely people!

The way I got today’s It Happened To Me story is the way I hope you will consider sending me yours: Emma emailed me at Jane@AnotherJanePrattThing.com with a version of this headline and I asked her to write it up. Then the fun began (for me) of editing the story, gathering photos and captions, finding pullquotes and about 20 exchanges between us later, here is Emma’s piece. I love her sassy and non-reverential approach to talking about the deceased, for one thing. (Emma is also $50 wealthier - woohoo - and you know why? Because a disproportionate number of you pay to subscribe, which I am beyond grateful for. I was interviewed recently and the journalist mentioned the percentage of AJPT subscribers he presumed were paying and I had to say no it was at least 3 times that. And those fees all go to these writers, so thank you on their and my behalves. It also warms my heart when you become paying subscribers while reading a free post, just because we asked and just because you are good. Thank you, Maureen - most recently - and others!!!!)

Before you read today’s featured piece, I want to point out that there is a tangential moment in the story that may be upsetting or jarring to cat-lovers (aren’t we all?), but I left it in because it is real life and I think worth talking about. Tell me if you disagree with my judgment call.

And finally, if you care about what Happened To Me between the last time I wrote you and today: I got to dance for hours with my BFF (and AJPT contributor!) to a performance of his music and then hear him get up and sing some of it too. I was the only person there who had known him while he was writing all of those songs and it was trippy and thrilling. I was high as an adrenalized kite and we couldn’t stop talking for at least three hours after. His voice was better than ever. Getting older is awesome. I cried.

I love you and I will talk to you more (if you want to) in the comments.

xo Jane (By the way, if you happen to have heard of that website named XOJane, I never actually signed things that way. Our boss Troy just made that up because he thought it looked good.)

PS For those (ten?) of you who are following my recent Celine wallet predicament, I reunited with the friend this week! I will fill you in more in the comments because I know you just can’t live without this major update.

This shirt will look great on you!

MY BOSS DIED, LEAVING ME IN CHARGE OF HER FRAUDULENT NON-PROFIT AND MESSY LIFE

By Emma Margraf

For a while, it was a job I loved. I was Director of Special Projects for a non-profit dedicated to volunteer service, and I had a wide berth: I led fifty people in a flash mob– a choreographed dance in the middle of a main street in our town to Take a Chance on Me by ABBA, organized a Day of Service for an entire middle school to honor Martin Luther King, and ran something called the Economic Survival Fair, where folks could find every helpful resource I could muster under one roof for a day. Every month I led a large, fun, chaotic community project and I loved it. Until it started to fall apart.

The work appealed to me as a veteran of a progressive Catholic school; it was service work with a thread of whimsy. Plus my boss loved me, and loved that I was a foster parent. I knew there were people who didn’t like her, but I didn’t know why and I didn’t see it. But a few years in, I did see something new. My boss started to turn on people she used to love. She became angry and her anger became explosive. There was something clearly wrong with her but anyone who tried to get close enough to find out what it was regretted it. Over the course of a few months, most of the staff were laid off. All we were told was that we’d lost most of our funding and that the three of us who remained were the three that she deemed most capable of helping her raise money to keep this twenty-four year old non-profit afloat.

She spent several weeks screaming at us before she stopped coming into the office. She didn’t respond when I asked her if she was ok. She started to not respond to me at all. Our remaining staff were left in our offices at one end of a long and lonely hallway. The only sight of her we had was on Fridays, when she would pull up in front of the building to take our developmentally delayed volunteer receptionist out to lunch. The only communication we had was through emails she was sending to whomever she was speaking to at the moment. I remember feeling relieved when that was me.

I knew I wasn’t handling this well. I knew I had to leave, but I was so hesitant to leave a job I loved and thought maybe this was a temporary situation. I was at a friend’s house discussing the state of my life when I got a text from my boss’s landlord. She’d apparently listed me as her emergency contact and they were out of town, but their housesitter saw my boss get taken away in an ambulance. They wanted to know if she was ok.

She’s definitely not ok.

Why am I her emergency contact?!

I’m the worst person on earth. Get it together.

The second hospital I called told me that my boss was in the ICU, and that they could give me no more information. I got chills down my spine. I called our board chair, who said he would see if he could get more information and call me back. I waited. I couldn’t think of anyone else to call.

There was nothing I could do, so my friend and I made a lemon meringue pie. It was a nicely complicated thing to focus on and for that I was grateful. Right as it was going into the fridge to set, my phone rang.

My board chair had just gotten off the phone with my boss’s parents, who were getting on a plane to make a cross country flight to come to our town. They were informed by the hospital that my boss had a blood clot that led to an aneurysm, and was in critical condition.

They took her off life support the next day. She was 36. I told the staff while we all sat in my office eating lemon meringue pie straight out of the tin. None of us knew what to think or what to say. Fortunately, my friend also sent along a key lime pie.

We posted an announcement, and my phone started ringing off the hook. Our town was shaken by the loss of this young leader and we were the only ones aware of her decline. It felt like everyone wanted to talk to me, including my boss’s landlord, who wanted to know if I could tell him who would be responsible for her belongings, and her cats.

None of those calls were from friends of hers, but my boss’s elderly and very nice parents were asking whether we were going to have a funeral, and there was the issue of these cats.

Meanwhile, the board asked me to be the acting director of the organization and funders were calling….

There is free content on this site, about half of it, but in case you want to keep reading this piece specifically and so we can pay the writer, you can take out a subscription or just a free trial here. Thank you!!

Read more

Hello!

I love this day. Because I get to talk to all you old and new people, from AJPTers who have been following this site for over a year, to past readers of SASSY magazine, JANE magazine and xoJANE, some of whom are just finding us and each other again here decades after being unceremoniously torn asunder! And a special welcome to those of you who came here thanks to our tight-knit highly-valued “Oldster Magazine” connection. For all of you: I will be sending out an It Happened To Me story tomorrow you won’t want to miss. So look for that for sure, whether you care about today’s featured subject matter or not.

Speaking of today’s excitement, we have another installment of Another Jane Pratt Thing contributor Rain Phoenix’s unconventional advice column. This is one of only two places on AJPT where anonymity is fine (the other being this recurring feature called Extra Safe Space), so that you can fully go for it in your questions without worrying about repercussions from the people you’re writing about. (I don’t care about anonymity myself because my proverbial cats are already all out of the bag, with multiple proverbial generations of kittens, so I ask Rain my relationship questions as myself in the comments - as I will today - and you certainly can too. Up to you!). If you like the anonymous route, send me your questions to Jane@AnotherJanePrattThing.com to pass along to Rain (just put in the subject line that your email contains a question for Rain and if you want me to not even read yours first, say For Rain Only and I will pass it along without even glancing).

One thing that I think makes Rain so good at giving relationship advice is her extraordinary life experience. Another is her complete lack of judgment. There’s not anything you could ask her that she would not carefully look at strictly in terms of how best to help you with it. You can get a sense of all that from her past stories:

Anyway, Rain’s a genius at many things. She always gives me new and practical insights - and does it again in her answer below - even when the question is not one I personally relate to. I’m thrilled she is here helping you and me. And I’m beyond thrilled you are here too, if that wasn’t already abundantly clear.

Love love,

Jane

PS Do you often read advice columns for the juicy questions and then skim through the expert answers? Do you get irked when the columnist foists you onto some other expert, like “See your doctor,” shirking responsibility and making you feel like the burden you thought you were for asking in the first place? Maybe that’s just me. Here’s Rain….

Check Out This Shirt First If You Want

By Rain Phoenix

Today’s Reader Letter:

Hi Jane!

I’m so happy to see that you have another online publication. Janexo got me through a lot in my 20s.

I know you mentioned Rain is taking questions on relationships. If that is still so I’d love to ask her a question:

Hi Rain,

How do you come to terms with friends ghosting you? I had a friend and everything was seemingly great. We were close and would hang out pretty often and we would communicate with each other pretty openly. Then all of a sudden radio silence. What hurts is I can see through social media and through the discord for the various communities we are a part of is that she makes plans with other mutual friends and hangs out with them. Even made plans to go to a festival with other people....a festival we originally talked about going to together.

People have told me to take her silence as an indication that she doesn’t care anymore.

It just hurts. I don’t understand why she couldn’t tell me if things were bothering her. The idea of asking what I did to make her not want to be my friend anymore just makes me feel lousy and pathetic. I don’t want to chase after people who don’t want me in their lives. It just......hurts. I feel like my self esteem is tanked. All the bad feelings of being bullied in elementary school come back. I feel unlovable.

How do I work through something like this?

I appreciate any insight you could share

Much love,

Crocus

P.S. Thank you for all of the beautiful music over the years. “What’s Left” by the papercranes was the first song I ever bought on itunes and put on my ipod nano. That and “minor” are still on repeat in my household.

Rain’s Letter Back:

Crocus,

Thank you for your question. I’m also grateful for your kind words about my music. I regret the delay in replying.. I wasn’t ghosting you, promise! I hope this response serves to be of benefit in some way.

I think it’s fair to say no one likes being ghosted. From what I understand you’re feeling hurt about the loss of a friendship. A sudden change in a relationship can be really jarring, especially when you’re on the receiving end of the sudden change and there seems to be no indication as to why. Or even if there is a reason, being ghosted feels like it prevents us from pinpointing exactly what that reason is which can be very painful.

When situations feel acute like that, I try to remember, we always have choices. There are probably more than three choices, but these are a few I came up with. We can blame the other person. We can be self-reflective. We can let it all go and wait to see what happens. The latter is extra tough because we want answers! I also think blaming the other person is unsatisfying long term, because we rarely find closure. I advocate for choosing self-reflection because there’s more agency. We can examine the difficult experience, gain deeper insight and uncover relationship patterns that haven’t served us. The hardest part is allowing the other person their own timeline of self-discovery.

We can wish, hope or pray, but we cannot insist they do the same. It’s my experience that we humans have the tendency to insist others make changes believing it’s more likely their fault when we’re feeling discomfort. Self reflection can help us to reverse engineer that tendency. It’s not the easy route but, if we hold ourselves accountable, the outcome can be very empowering. I don’t know if this has helped at all. Whenever I’m struggling with what to do, how to help or even how not to be upset during challenging times, I read this Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche quote.

“Trying to change the world without changing our mind is like trying to clean the dirty face we see in the mirror by scrubbing the glass. However vigorously we clean it, our reflection will not improve. Only by washing our own face and combing our own unkempt hair can we alter the image. Similarly, if we want to help create conditions that foster peace and well-being in the world, we first need to reflect these qualities ourselves.” ~ Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche

If you’re looking for inspiration and tools to practice with, I recommend the book Change of Heart, also by Chagdud Tulku. It was written as a support to people with any kind of belief system, but clearly steeped in Buddhist philosophy. That said, you can use the meditations without adopting the beliefs.

I hope you find this helpful in some small way. I really appreciate the opportunity to share about what has been a support to me in difficult times. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Best, xxx Rain

Leave a comment

To start: If you are new here (because many of you are and I am so so appreciative of that), I encourage you not to immediately unsubscribe if today’s story or subject line doesn’t interest you. (That last one I tested showed that you as a group both open emails with SEX in the subject line the fastest and unsubscribe from them most quickly thereafter - but I get that.) The range of topics we cover here varies a lot, as do the writers, so I would love for you to look around on the Another Jane Pratt Thing homepage itself and see if something else there does appeal. I also LOVE criticism in the comments if you are generous enough to offer up any of that.

That disclaimer was meant with no shade at all toward today’s story, which I find fascinating, and has more to do with this newsletter format versus everything else you can get from going to the whole site. Anyway, today’s It Happened To Me happened because Cal wrote me (at jane@anotherjaneprattthing.com, which you should use too any time you want to write your story here - and get paid $50 for it!) with the subject line:

Re: Submission From a Non-Cis/Trans Person.

Now that’s how to get the AJPT assignment! I had told friends (including you here) that I was looking for more diversity among the AJPT contributors. Cal heard about it and wrote me with a pitch on a riveting topic I’d never heard before. Then we had to wait a while for Cal to actually submit the story because it was tied to an ongoing trial.

Side note: I have been impatiently waiting for months to write here about a friend of mine who was shockingly and horrifically murdered this year, because I don’t want to screw up the trial any more than I just might have by using the word murdered without quotes around it. (The case was in the news a bit and I can give you clues in the comments if you want to look into it.) But it is killing me - bad word choice - to have to refrain from telling you a story that I so want to tell - for my friend’s sake, for his family’s sake, for all of you to get to know what an angel of a person he actually was, and to keep that part of him alive. But the “justice” system takes time and I have to wait. I am not good at this.

Anyway Cal, with more restraint than I just displayed, kept up with me for months while the first trial resulted in a hung jury – one woman was believed and the other initially was not in a sexual assault case against the same man. And then stayed in touch through a retrial and finally, the verdict. But I won’t give any more away. Here is that story. Let’s talk about how we feel about it all in the comments, as usual.

Thanks for being here always,

Jane

This shirt was made for you

By Cal Cates

My parents named me Lauren. Seemed harmless enough. Lauren’s a beautiful name for any baby with girl parts. My parts, as it turns out, were just a packaging error.

Growing up as a person who never saw themselves as a girl, I also missed many of the things that I now understand were and remain part of life for women who went the “woman route,” ifyaknowwhuttameen. In case you don’t know what I mean, I remember watching Weird Science with my brother when I was maybe 10 years old. When they “built” the woman played by Kelly LeBrock, I only ever thought she was hot. No part of me was like, “Oh, that’s how I could fashion myself to attract the male people.”

When I was 8, playing flag football with the boys, they would pull the bottoms of their shirts up over their heads when it got hot. (Because I guess 8-year-old boys in rural New Jersey didn’t just take their shirts off. I don’t know. I didn’t make the rules.) I did the same. Obviously. Because Summer.

I’ve never questioned my own story. But for people whose comfort depends on everyone’s gender being obvious and stable, my existence is threatening. I am a white, transmasculine person assigned female at birth (that means I look mannish… well, boyish honestly, and I intentionally work to present myself in this way). I’m also a massage therapist and a rabid activist for the legitimacy of massage therapy as a healthcare profession. When I get to talking about massage therapy and massage therapists, I can be pretty compelling. Downright believable, you might even say. It’s possible I might even change your mind about things you thought you knew.

That’s how, many years ago, in a town far far away, I got invited to serve as an expert witness on a case involving a massage therapist who was facing charges for felony sexual assault.

The lawyer who commissioned my expertise sent me all the police reports, witness statements, and other background information. I’d done this gig before. My job would be to use these documents to write an expert opinion as a subject matter expert on massage therapy ethics and practice as they pertained to the case. Easy enough.

Somehow, I had made it through four decades with just one scary experience with a man, while my female friends who’ve remained solidly, socially cis women tell me such encounters are regular occurrences—in dating, at work, even in their marriages. As a result, reading through the legal documents triggered a feeling tinged with something unfamiliar. Certainly, I toggled between my experiences as a massage therapist and back to the sense of unsafety that I have often felt being a trans person, but maybe I was also feeling threatened as a woman?

As I read, I felt like I was there in that room, being assaulted. My hands shook, my heart raced. I had to stop reading multiple times to let my nervous system come back to itself. It was like a panic attack, but with a side of deep and inescapable vulnerability.

Two women were victimized in this case when they should have been able to feel safe and to trust the massage therapist. They didn’t know each other, but now they would be bound to each other in the way so many other women are by the things so many men do. The cases were very, very similar. Without photos, my brain found it hard to keep their reports separate. Every time I messed it up in my notes, I piled on myself about how I was doing exactly what I hate—failing to see these women as distinct individuals. I spent hours reading, making notes in the margin, re-reading and collating my notes so I would absolutely get it right on the stand.

I submitted my expert opinion indicating that not only were the actions taken by the massage therapist during these sessions far outside the bounds of ethical practice and consent, the environment and logistics were such that consent would have been virtually impossible for either woman to grant, based on a variety of ethical precedents and concepts. Done and done.

Then, I was asked to testify.

Ruh-roh.

I have been in a courtroom exactly one other time in my life. For a moment, I imagined myself standing up in the witness box and shouting, “This whole trial is out of order!!!”

Ahem. Reel it in, buddy. Deep breaths. This is a circuit court in Podunk, USA.

After talking with the lawyer, I knew I would not likely take the stand until the end of the second day of the proceedings, and possibly not until the third day, right before closing arguments, but I had been asked to attend the whole trial so I could be available to be called if necessary. I knew I was in for a couple of days of… court...? Imagine my shock at the conspicuous absence of both Doug Llewelyn and Judge Judy when I arrived at court on the first day. A most unsettling turn of events.

Listen. Court is slow as shit. It’s so much better on TV. Hats off and a hotline number to anyone who has chosen this type of law as their life’s work. I cannot imagine waking up energized to sit in a windowless room every day of my life wading through carefully-crafted evidence and arguments only to have it all come down to which lawyer is more clever or which jury member has a grudge or unexamined trauma that wasn’t surfaced in the jury selection process.

The trial began and I watched them call the receptionist from the massage practice to testify to evidence that was unbelievably obvious, and this person completely bungled their very simple testimony. The defense attorney asked, “Were you working the front desk on (the dates of the incidents that are the whole effing reason any of us were in the room)?” I shit you not, the witness cast their eyes toward the ceiling with a legit pensiveness and asked the attorney to repeat the dates. Wow. This was the first witness. Did anyone believe this person?!

Woof. I began to mentally apply for a karmic refund for the hours of my life that would disappear into the miasma of this trial. We wandered through the first witness’s “testimony” and over the next two days we heard, very briefly, from the women who reported being assaulted. Then, we heard from the police officer who picked up the massage therapist. His answers were mercifully short and polished. Who wouldn’t believe this man?

Just before we broke for lunch the judge said the bodycam footage from the arrest interview would be available for any juror who wanted to see it. As I drove to lunch, I rolled this over in my mind. Wait. So, some jurors would see this footage, and some wouldn’t? Personally, if I were a juror, I would want to look under all the shells in this game, thankyouverymuch.

I guess I wasn’t the only one wondering if we’d be seeing this footage with our own eyes because when we came back from lunch, the trial proceeded with everyone in the courtroom watching every minute of that arrest video. The video showed these two dudes, the cop and massage therapist, talking about how, if, and why one of them engaged in sexual behavior in the course of his work as a massage therapist on the two occasions in question. I watched the officer normalize it so the massage therapist could feel comfortable enough to share what maybe actually happened. They joked about how sometimes one thing means one thing and sometimes that same thing means something else. Over the course of the video, I watched the massage therapist admit to the crimes he was accused of, while insisting he had every reason to believe these “encounters” were consensual.

As the video concluded, I could feel my ladyboy wheels start to come off.

I felt a responsibility to take the evidence seriously. I was surprised to feel, as I watched, like the system was kind of “working.” Despite the locker room vibe and some crafty police work, I found the massage therapist’s testimony compelling. I could see his humanity. He seemed like he really thought these were consensual engagements. He appeared to be truly unsure why he was in a police cruiser talking about these nothing events.

I found myself wondering about consent and about the well-documented truth of how humans do most of their communicating in woefully unclear and indirect ways in just about every setting. I was left with a serious shadow of a doubt. I almost believed him. I wanted to believe him.

At the same time, I was acutely aware that the showing of this video essentially meant that this massage therapist just got two full hours of airtime in the courtroom, and he hadn’t even testified yet. When he took the stand, we heard a story that was very similar to the bodycam video. The details crept out of his face like a magician was pulling scarves out of his mouth, one by one.

Except, this time, his lawyer went a step further. His shifted his line of questioning in a way that positioned this massage therapist as a de facto expert on “sexual” moans versus “other” moans. As a result, the massage therapist’s assessment of the women’s vocalizations during the session were entered into the record as part of his unchallenged testimony.

And the kicker? He admitted that he did commit what the law deems a sexual act during each session. He testified that he received good training. He said he knew that he violated the ethics of massage therapy practice. He admitted to signing the clearly worded policy regarding sexual misconduct at the place where he worked.

Wait. Did we all just watch him deny committing a crime by completely owning it? If that’s not some systemic boys’ club action, I don’t know what is.

And I fell for it.

Then it was my turn on the stand.

“Mr. Cates, do you solemnly affirm that the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

When I heard “Mr,” I did the somatic shift that has become reflexive after so many years of sitting on the gender fence. I pulled my shoulders back, hardened my face, and deepened my voice. “I do.”

The attorneys both asked me questions about my education, experience and current employment. So far, so good. Next came the questions about what massage therapy is, what’s typical in a massage session, ethics and boundaries. I answered truthfully and clearly without over-elaborating, which had been my biggest fear. I deflected the attempts made by the defense attorney to twist my words and turn me around. In terms of expertly witnessing, I killed it.

And I felt empty, powerless.

The massage therapist accused in this case had just said openly and on the stand that he knew and understood everything I had been brought in to say. None of it was in question. I was relieved I hadn’t made things worse or failed in the epic ways my massage therapy colleagues had warned me about, but I was deflated knowing that my participation had not clearly tipped the scales toward the women who had been assaulted.

I’ll admit I still felt a little slow when counsel made their closing arguments the next day and the only thing they were asking was if either of these women agreed for their massage therapy sessions to become sexual. That was the only thing left in question.

Personally, I didn’t know the answer. Or did I? Still, I silently wondered, “Why would he admit it, knowing the consequences, unless he really believes he did not commit a crime?” I was deeply conflicted. He didn’t have a prior record. He presented as kind and thoughtful. He testified that he had trained as a massage therapist because he wanted to “help people.” Even so, what he did was wrong? Right?

And these women, well on their way in their lives, with futures ahead of them, and good friends who showed up in court to testify about their mental state after the massage sessions and about their years’-long friendships through thick and thin did nothing wrong. How could he do this to them? And did they, as defense counsel suggested, “go with it in the moment” and then feel guilty and ashamed after the fact, setting the legal wheels in motion that had brought us all together in this deeply fraught and intersectional conundrum?

I was spent. Every version felt impossibly possible in the chaos and immediacy of those three days. My biology and identity were at war deep inside me.

The pretzel of my stomach tightened.

Is allowing space for complexity the same as enabling harm? In a situation of possible sexual assault, “both sides” can never be a neutral framework. The biases are deep and fraught with tribalism and loyalty and shame and trauma. My essential feminist (I know. It’s complicated.) fiber was shouting, “Believe women!” while my – was it maleness? was it fairness? was it conflict avoidance?---was doing a six-seven motion.

And, just in case this didn’t already feel like a terrible episode of SVU, leaving the courthouse after my testimony, I was approached by a pair of men, hands extended, “We just want to say thank you for what you’re doing for the profession.” It was clear they had clocked me as male. A trusted source to be believed.

Flattered. Dumbfounded. Totally unrehearsed in how to handle a conversation with people I had seen in the courtroom gallery and assumed were journalists, I asked who they were. The one man lowered his voice and scanned the immediate area in a laughably Maxwell Smart kinda way, “Let’s just say we’re people with a vested interest in the profession.”

I stifled a laugh.

Wanna know who they were? Yeah, ya do. And I hope you’re sitting down.

They own the practice where the incidents in question took place. They’ve owned it for many years.

Fellas, please at least try to be less predictable and straight out of central casting. Still, I wasn’t sure whose side they were on. Obviously, nobody wants to be sued, but maybe they’re still good guys who value massage therapists?

Man, I’m a sucker.

The next afternoon, as we sat outside the courtroom awaiting the jury’s decision, the one guy, arms crossed, hips jutting out, smug, “It’s obviously just a money grab. These women saw that they could sue us and they went for it. It doesn’t even matter what happens here. They’re after the civil case cash.”

I looked up at him from the bench on which I was seated. “That is the grossest kind of dudespeak I’ve ever heard. Do you really believe that these women have gone through all of this to maybe, possibly, squeeze some blood out of your little stone?!” I was… woman? He heard me roar.

He blinked. Scoffed. Obviously a little embarrassed, but honestly only embarrassed to have been caught talking shit and possibly to have thought I was a man and on his side all this time.

I stood up and shuffled to the other end of the hallway. Shaking.

I talk a good game, but I was gutted. I quietly wondered who was really being served by the narrative of complexity that had been created in that courtroom. A narrative that had left me on my heels and a jury to wonder who had been harmed and who deserved to be punished?

The jury would be expected to decide if consent took place in each instance. All the jury had to go on was what he said and what they said.

The jury came back very, very late that night and it was complicated.

Since the case had begun, my cis woman spouse, who has most certainly been harmed at the hands of and by the choices of men many times in her life, had been continually checking on me. Wondering how it was going. How was I doing? She knew I couldn’t really tell her anything until it was over, but she was worried about me. I had been keeping everything I was seeing and feeling and hearing to myself, but as I drove home that third night, I called to talk with her.

I told her about how compelling the massage therapist’s testimony had been. About how I observed the women as reticent and reserved, even on the stand. About how much I wanted to believe the massage therapist, to believe that he is somehow a victim, too-- caught in system of masculine expectation, a system in which massage therapists don’t make enough money to live on, a system where we know women are not believed, but in which people are people and some people, even women, might seek out some unattached sexual pleasure when introduced to the idea in a safe setting.

I took a breath to continue, but was interrupted by her audible crying.

“Stop. Just stop! He’s guilty,” she shouted. “They’re all fucking guilty! I can’t talk to you about this anymore.”

I was floored. Ashamed. Confused.

Oh, man. I suck the most.

How could I, knowing so much about my wife’s history, just spill my unedited, self-focused, epistemologically curious version of events?! And how could I still be under the spell of the dog and pony show of “open admission as absolution” that had been created?

Stand by please while I scratch a huge hash mark in the unintended, but very real harm ledger. The silence on the phone gaped a cutting admonition. I hung up. And then? I cried so hard my nose and mouth made a suffocating snot vacuum. What kind of person could wonder if these women consented? Is this “man thinking?” Maybe the testosterone has gone to my brain. I mean, this can’t be “woman thinking.” What woman would even hint that another woman may have consented to this?

Or maybe I am neither or both - occupying some liminal middle ground where I can see the machinery of male power for what it is, but still find myself caught in its gears.

Everyone wants to be believed. And I want to believe them.

I will never know what really happened. I do know that a man is probably going to jail and I think, now that I have some distance from those days in court, that he should. I also know that MeToo is a deeply important response to centuries of harm that has been made invisible. And I know that I ache for want of justice in a broken system that adjudicates the actions of broken people in a broken world.

In the end, my spouse’s response shook me awake. The practice owners’ gloating revealed whose interests the fabricated complexity was really serving. And I learned something about my own position I wasn’t prepared to see: my gender-bending perspective and presentation give me access to a kind of male credibility that I didn’t ask for and which I find hard to resist.

That’s work I’ll be doing for the rest of my life.

Leave a comment

I will be extra succinct today (love you too, Andy!) as I'm posting this just-completed gem at the very last minute.* So I will let the piece speak for itself (which, like all good Unpopular Opinions, it clearly has no problem doing). And I will save my many stories and takes for the comments. I can't wait to talk to you and Genevieve more there. She is chatty, so you don’t really have to worry about the content of what you say. She’ll chat anyway.

Now if you're new here, don't get too accustomed to this brevity, because usually I ramble on quite a bit more. And if you're new here, big big welcome and thank you for being here! If you're old, well, so am I and that's what we can talk about - among other things - in that comment section we all love so much. See you there once again!

Xo Jane

*Partly because its theme sort of ties into the glowing interview with ’s in the New York Times today and I wanted an excuse to congratulate her again here before the day is out. Go, Sari!

Remember Sassy magazine?

By Genevieve Sage

I’m in Madison Reed, the national hair color bar with nearly 100 franchises across the country.

They don’t cut hair. They don’t even pretend to care about your layers. They just color it. That’s it. It’s a root triage center. And it is filled — respectfully — with “women of a certain age.”

We’re all there for the same reason: to eradicate the grey halo jutting from our scalp like something Tyler Henry might see as a spirit who’s crossed over to deliver you a message. And that message would be: ditch that skunk stripe, babe.

I’m snapped into my black salon smock, clear plastic shower cap crinkling like a microwaved popcorn bag over my head, settling in for the 45-minute miracle that promises to move me from “late 40s” to “early 40s if the lighting is soft, the camera is forgiving, and the Filter Gods accept my humble offering of a 3 year old box of unused tampons.”

I pay $42 a month for my signature Barletta Brown 4.5NN touch-ups. It is technically a color, but spiritually it’s a belief system. A tax bracket for my childless womb I never got deductive credits for. Nay. Maybe even simply for “serving lewks.”

The color dye bar is more like a suburban coven. All of us there, a ream of cotton fluff worn like a sad crown beneath our shower caps. We’re there to reclaim our beauty and maybe even our youth. It’s a resistance movement. A silent war against the Crone archetype. Yeah, I said it.

I can hear you typing already: “It’s a privilege to age!” Correct. It is. I’m thrilled to be alive. But I have a personal rule based on hours of observation and zero facts: silver works in only two windows — women under 32 (cool, downtown art girl) or over 75 (regal matriarch energy). The middle stretch? That’s a lawless no-man’s-land. That’s where you either look chic… or like you’re kinda tired, Janice.

Yeah, I know: come at me.

Before Madison Reed, I forced my brawny, manly, 6’6” husband to dye my roots in our bathroom like we were running a meth lab but for vanity. He treated it like a painting project. “Ooooh boy,” he’d say, parting my hair with the tint brush, “a lot of snakes in the grass this month!” Charming. But impractical. My natural hair is (was) dark brown. When the greys come in, they don’t whisper. They scream. It’s less “distinguished streak” and more “electrical wire exposed.”

I don’t remember the first gray hair I found. I don’t even remember when I started dying it. But it was never sparkling flecks, never the chic streak that Stacy London has. It was a BAND of whitish gray that grew all around the crown of my scalp and sprouted like a Chia Pet marshmallow cloud against my natural dark brown hair, it was…stark. It was..not cute. I’ve heard the phrase “going gray gracefully” too many times. I’m sorry but it will add about 15 years on me! Is it a pain in the ass? 1,000%!! If the whole world was blind, I would’ve gone gray a loooonnnnnggg time ago (ok, not that long ago…calm down, self). But I have a teensy bit of vanity. Ergo. I dye.

As a burgeoning TV/film writer, I’m fully committed to the Delulu that I’ll soon land on a real red carpet, and I BETTER BE READY. I may not make it to the gym, and the plastic-y gel nails make me itchy and irritated, but damn it, I will not—not—be caught without great hair. (What can I say? I’m a Leo Rising. The mane is non-negotiable.)

Now let me tell you about the time I tried to go grey.

Five years ago, I decided I was done. I was evolved. I was a “good feminist” (still am!! I promise!). I was sticking it to The Man. I marched into my stylist’s chair with my very dark brown hair and the delusional confidence of someone who had clicked on one too many Pinterest boards. I said, “Make me silver.”

Reader. I wish that stylist had said a simple, “No.” She did not. She moved forward like Mark Zuckerberg launching TheFacebook — a little unsure at first, then fully committed to the takeover.

They stripped it. They bleached it. They hovered. I wish someone had just been honest and said, “There is no universe in which this espresso bean becomes icy Edie Sedgwick.” It would not lift past angry tangerine.

After hours in the chair, I emerged Ronald McDonald orange. Not auburn. Not copper. Traffic cone. Emergency flare. I could’ve directed airplanes on a runway.

And it was damaged A.F. so it looked like fried cheetos. On my head.

Read more

If you didn’t say your “Rabbits Rabbits Rabbits” first thing on the 1st, don’t get down on yourself because the end of February is particularly tricky to keep up with and I forgot and talked until about 2 AM before realizing too. Just redeem yourself with “Tigger Tigger Tigger” now - AND follow Bee’s brilliant astrological advice here - and your month will be whatever you want it to be! (I also re-said the whole “RRR, TTT” thing three times in unison with my patient daughter after doing it myself, due to extreme superstition/mostly-subclinical OCD tendencies, but I don’t recommend that.)

If you are new or otherwise unfamiliar with The Autistic Astrologer, you might want to see her It Happened To Me story from when we first met and before she began writing our monthly horoscope column. It explains some of what makes her so uniquely good at these predictions.

And because there was such a hullaballoo over the accuracy of her previous Amazing Sex Day prediction, I am giving you that date for free this month! Usually that is part of the paid-subscribers section, which contains your individual signs’ readings and your opportunity for one-on-one coaching and answers from Bee to your specific questions in the comments. We charge for that last part so Bee can get paid and she definitely makes it worth the investment. But today Free Sex for all!*

I love you!

Jane

*However, if you are considering even the free 7-day trial subscription that is offered when you hit the paywall, I highly recommend doing it now because this week coming up is more jam-packed with great stories than maybe ever in our little AJPT history. I am upping my game because of all the SASSY, JANE and XOJane readers who have joined here recently with their Sassily high expectations. You all deserve it!

ETA: I’m running a title test on the open rates for this email and so far Your Most Enticing March Horoscope is beating out Your Best Sex Date. I’m impressed. 9:27 PM UPDATE: Spoke too soon. You chose the sex. Understandable.

Original Sassy TShirts Right Here!

By The Zine Witch

Are you exhausted? I’m exhausted.

And to that, I think the answer this month is oranges. Yes, oranges. Let me explain. But, first, an introduction.

I’m The Zine Witch, your resident astrologer and celestial flight attendant this month, watching the cosmic skys and asking the big questions for you here at Another Jane Pratt Thing. Make sure your seatbelt is fastened. Grab yourself a drink. Something you’ll need that orange for. (Tell me in the comments what you choose) This is another big month astrologically.

Last month was a cannon. This month is processing the remains. What a news cycle. Eclipses in the ancient days brought the death of the king. Nowadays, it’s usually a titan of their field. RIP James Van der Beek, a legend of his craft, but, also was a genuinely empathetic, thoughtful, deeply emotionally intelligent parent, husband, and thought leader.

James Van Der Beek once shared an Instagram story that really OK stayed with me. So many of us grow up never learning what repair feels like, never taught how to return to safety after a storm of emotions. He remembered that after a meltdown as a child, his mother would quietly start peeling an orange and bring it to him, asking gently if he wanted help, offering a small snack and a moment to breathe and speak. In that simple, luminous gesture, the orange became more than fruit. It became a lifeline, a soft bridge back to calm, a silent promise that he could be held, understood, and soothed. It was an ordinary act transformed into extraordinary care, teaching that even in the aftermath of overwhelm, tenderness and connection could exist. It reminds me that love often whispers in small gestures, and that healing begins in the quiet patience of someone willing to stay with you in the mess. And if we are exhausted right now, maybe some oranges will give us the vitamin C our adrenal system needs!

In addition to losses, many things were revealed last month. Many of the Epstein files were exposed leaving us feeling emotionally paralyzed and righteously angry. Prince Andrew arrested. Questions of a Ghislain doppelgänger. A new Lana Del Rey single. Aliens are real! It’s been a month.

Lately I’ve been thinking, with everything being so jarring in the news, that the real shift this season isn’t about what these men did. It’s about who we are becoming in response. The illusions we’ve been holding onto are dissolving, and suddenly we can’t hide from the parts of ourselves we’ve been avoiding.

Much of the framework around this month is about dissolving. Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac. Have you ever met a Pisces? They are always the one with one foot out the door and the other in outer space. They are world builders who feel not from this world. They see the truth even if they want to run from it within themselves. James Van der Beek. Drew Barrymore. Kurt Cobain. Chappell Roan. Olivia Rodrigo. These magical fairies too sensitive for this world. Now, that we are in their season, we begin to take up space as they do. Fluid. Sacrificial. Receptive. Enigmatic.

With what’s dissolving, in the background we are also being asked to pay attention to the places interesting new things are now forming. Last month we had a rare conjunction of two planets that last met in 1989. This was a pretty important time culturally. Almost every band that would go on to shape the early 90s musical trajectory formed during this time. Even the records of 1989 sounded more like the 90’s than the 1980’s. Oh, this is a great year for art. The new Lana sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard.

So there’s fog but new messages coming through. A collective weight in the air, a sense of disillusionment that makes authority, institutions, and old narratives feel brittle. Pisces season dissolves fantasy. How comfortable are you with truth? That’s the test of this transit. The lower octave of Pisces is to disassociate. To completely spaced out and do nothing. Pisces season can be hard to sit with. It will point out where we are lying to ourselves, or denying reality, avoiding the real work. It can be gentle or it can hit like a tidal wave. This is the magic of free will on the amusement park called Life™. Evolve at your own pace. No refunds.

Mercury is retrograde in Pisces this month, which means the mind is naturally circling back, wandering, and revisiting old conversations, decisions and feelings. You may notice yourself rereading messages from mid February, replaying situations, and noticing details you didn’t see before. Electronics stop working. Headphones go missing. Texts get delayed. Messages get fumbled. That fog is not a flaw. It is an opportunity. Mercury retrograde asks us to slow down, pause before reacting, and give ourselves permission to rethink without judgment.

Some days, focus drifts. Emails get half written. Texts are sent and immediately regretted. Decisions that once felt simple now feel tangled in unseen threads. The theme isn’t clarity. It’s reflection. Walking through the fog and realizing the fog is inside you.

This season is not about doing more. It’s about noticing more.

The missed detail isn’t external. It is internal. This season asks us to uncover the places where we’ve abandoned our own clarity, where we trusted noise over intuition, where we confused hyper-vigilance with power. Mercury retrograde nudges us to rewrite, revise, and reclaim our story. Nothing needs to be perfect. The goal is awareness, not completion.

Around the nineteenth, something internal clicks. Not loud. Not cinematic. A moment where you cannot unsee your own truth. A conversation, a plan, a story you told yourself needs revision. Boundaries feel porous. Emotions leak in from every direction. You absorb other people’s moods. You romanticize the impossible. You see illusions you wanted to believe. And you see yourself more clearly than you have in months.

There’s a strange seriousness emerging around identity. The fantasy self meets the responsible self. It is uncomfortable. Necessary. There is anger too, quiet, righteous, clarifying anger. You realize you’ve been tolerating things that no longer align with who you are becoming. Compassion remains. Firmness deepens.

Pisces season is not about doing more. It is about noticing more. Noticing the stories we repeat, the wounds we nurse, the patterns that masquerade as spirituality but are really fear in a silk robe. Mercury retrograde reminds us that reflection is productive, even when it feels slow.

We feel ourselves dissolving a little. The version of us that was hyper-vigilant and self-correcting is exhausted. Good. Let her rest.

The next six months are seeded right now with what we are willing to release: mental habits, old guilt, the compulsion to be flawless to be loved, the illusion that if we just analyze harder we’ll finally feel safe.

Pisces season asks us to surrender. Safety isn’t perfection. It’s acceptance. It’s noticing where we cling, where we resist, and letting it go. Use Mercury retrograde to reread, rethink, and refine, not to punish yourself.

Maybe we need to grab that orange peel in our own lives this month. Sit with it. Peel it slowly. Smell it. Taste it. Bring it to someone who needs repair that’s long overdue. Maybe thus ourselves. Let it remind you that finding repair, care, and gentleness are possible even when the world feels chaotic. Let it inspire you to have the conversations you’ve been avoiding, to speak truths that are uncomfortable but necessary. To connect with the people you love in your life about the uncomfortable stuff. Mercury retrograde gives you permission to revisit, reflect, and reclaim your voice. You’ll be happier you did next month, I swear.

Orange ya glad your astrologer gave you this advice? Okay, No more dad jokes, I swear.

Best Day for Sex: March 9

Best Day to Send an Important Message:…. [Sorry, you have to pay for this prediction. I gave you the sex for free! What more do you want? -Jane]

Read more

I recognize that I have been publishing a lot of doozies lately and that you are overdue for a ditty (I just made that up as an opposite for doozy – feel free to suggest other ideas). Fortunately, I have a great hilarious little story coming up this week - written by this crabby writer - that I promise will make you guffaw or chortle or both.

I also encourage you to write your It Happened To Me stories of all topics and tones. It could sound like a cop-out, but if you don't find what you want to read here, make it yourself! Then send it to me at Jane@AnotherJanePrattThing.com. There’s a really good chance that I will agree with you that it’s just what's needed and publish it and pay you for it.

Also coming this week, by ridiculously popular demand, the next installment of our genius advice columnist’s aptly named "Making Bad Choices With Rain Phoenix” where she unconventionally advises one of you fortunate readers on your current relationship dilemma. It could be you! Or someone with an even bigger problem! So that’s a dream. And those are some uplifting things to look forward to.

Today's featured piece, while on a serious topic, is timely because it's related to this Eating Disorders Awareness month. I'm keenly aware too, having been told by people in this community who I love, that seeing so much ED coverage everywhere throughout this month can be triggering. I have also learned that those people don't need any more awareness themselves because they are aware of living with it every single day.

So I hope you agree with me that Kirsten’s story (which she just sent me unsolicited at that same email address above that you’re going to use for your submission!) is another key take on eating disorders that a lot of us can learn from. I will also let you know here first that while emailing back-and-forth working on this piece, Kirsten mentioned that she and her thriving daughter are right now on a college tour. So you can go into the story below knowing that there is a happy ending. You're welcome! I love you! Tell me what you think about all of this and let's talk to Kirsten and each other much more in the comments.

Also, reminder to RSVP to my Sassy, Jane, XoJane and AJ PT readers’ and editors’ gathering here, You can start by telling me what times work best for you and whether you prefer to do it virtually or come to my place in NYC. Some of you seem to hate the virtual idea.

XO Jane

your favorite shirt is here!

By Kirsten Love

Late winter means one thing to me as a Girl Scout Troop leader for the last twelve years: Girl Scout Cookie sales. Every year we gather in front of grocery stores to sell cookies, the girls in vests adorned with badges and patches and stars and pins.

When a woman of a certain age approaches our cookie booth, I buzz with excitement. Often they share memories from their own Girl Scouting experiences. The girls get a kick out of hearing that cookies were once a dollar or two per box, compared to the current six or seven. They share stories of camping trips and friendships forged during years with their own troops. The sense of community and legacy is powerful.

My 18-year-old daughter has been a Girl Scout for 12 years. For her senior yearbook, she was voted most likely to survive in the wilderness. That is a direct result of Girl Scouts— all of the camping trips, the first aid classes, the kayaking, horseback riding, and hiking.

But another scenario plays itself out just as often: “Oh, I don’t need more calories!” they will say, often laughing as if what they are saying is casual, as if we are all aligned against the dreaded cookie. These are the women who feel the need to tell the girls that they won’t be making a purchase because they are on a diet.

The first time this happened, our troop members were only six years old. I was shocked that an adult would have the audacity to hand her diet culture over to girls so very young. It felt like a grenade had been casually tossed at these children, and as leaders, we frantically tried to mitigate the damage. Surely this was an anomaly, I thought. But every single time we sold, it was the same story. When our little girls called out “Come get your Girl Scout cookies!”, women replied that they were “too fat”.

​Every time this happens, I want to scream, “Girls deserve support, not your diet culture!” Why do they feel the need to explain themselves to complete strangers when a polite no would do? How could they possibly feel this is appropriate or necessary to convey to children?

​My wilderness survivor daughter spent a chunk of her junior year hospitalized with anorexia, a brutal ordeal. And I

Read more

I have SO much to say but I am going to keep it lite (you are very welcome, Andy and Charlie and others who prefer my shorter introductions). For those of you who are either new here (welcome! I am thrilled that you found us!) or undecided about the great More Jane Writing or Less Jane Writing debate, I will point out that not all of my long intros are about heavy things like my miscarriages. Sometimes I even deftly derail things here with a story of sweating on my hugest Bachelor Nation crush. So let me know what you want from me in the future and I am here to please.*

One thing before today’s featured story: Because I am so excited that we have so many new folks here all of a sudden who were Sassy, Jane and xoJane readers, it feels like an excellent time to have another Zoom party with former readers and staffers of all those defunct publications. The day after the last party, my stomach was actually hurting - either from the cold pizza that was left outside my door while we went almost an hour overtime or from laughing so continually hard with Andrea Linett, Christina Kelly, Mary Clarke and all of you beauties who came. I can only imagine how uproarious it will be now with even more of you and all the memories you will bring. So if you are interested in being part (virtually or otherwise) of a gossipy gathering at my place with staff and readers of all of these annoyingly-largely-Jane-themed titles, including AJPT, let me know in the comments that you are in and also what timing works best for you. And if you came to the other parties, you had better return or I will be highly insulted (Morrissey tickets for the day we decide on are probably not going to be an issue, Alyssa and Robin, because… you know).

I am very close to today’s story (and every AJPT story), having worked with Kris on it sometimes until crazy hours over these past weeks, so I am ready for anything you want to say or ask and my favorite part about publishing here is talking to you about it. Kris is also up for discussing anything. We want to hear what you think about her argument and whether you relate to her story - or not. It's all worthy. So let’s do that in the comments. I sure do love you.

Jane

*I do want to prepare you that tomorrow’s email will include a story from me about Jane magazine’s involvement with America’s Next Top Model. I’ve been talking to my Jane and xoJane Fashion Editor (and favorite person) Eric, who was a judge on Cycle 2 (with Janice, Nigel, Jay and, of course, Tyra) when Jane (the magazine) was the publishing partner for the show. And because ANTM is SO back right now, we wanted to tell you what we experienced. So stay tuned (or tune out) for that coming up.

This Shirt Was Made For You!

By Kris Rose

In 1965, Neil Simon premiered his play The Odd Couple on Broadway. It was a hit, later developed into a movie and TV show. In the play, two friends, Oscar and Felix, share an apartment although they are in many ways opposites. In particular, Felix is tidy and fastidious while Oscar is messy and careless. Oscar is cool; Felix is not.

In 2006, I shared a microscopic studio apartment in San Francisco’s filthy and disgusting Tenderloin district with Dave, who would later become my husband, in a similar arrangement…except for Oscar’s “mess,” read my “drugs.” I had done every drug, and still did, in addition to being a committed drinker and chain smoker. Dave had, and still has, done none. No drugs. None.

Usually it’s the other way around–a “nice” girl who barely drinks and has never done drugs falls for a “bad boy” with a checkered past, but that’s not my story. I’m the “bad” one. My husband tried drugs three times, pot twice (each time with disastrous results), Vicodin once for a toothache, which led him into an ill-fated long-term relationship. Perhaps due to his autism, his brain just isn’t wired for substance use. I can barely get him to take ibuprofen when he has a headache. I, on the other hand, have taken just about everything with the exception of no-nos like angel dust and ketamine, or peripheral drugs such as “wet daddy” formaldehyde-dipped cigarettes, paint huffing (though I have looked into it enough to know metallic colors give the best high), bath salts, or krokodil. I mostly stick to your basic drug groups: alcohol, amphetamines, psychotropics, benzos, and opiates.

When I first started hanging around Dave, at age twenty-five, I had just come off of the worst opiate addiction of my life. I was recovering in the way that all Tulsans recovered from anything, by drinking a constant supply of half-strength beer. Oklahoma was one of the few states that restricted the strength of beer you could buy cold. The strong stuff you had to buy warm at a liquor store; they closed at nine pm and weren’t open on Sundays. I guess it was supposed to be punitive, but all it did was force us to get used to drinking our beer warm, which was disgusting not because of the temp, but because we could only afford the cheapest, shittiest brands of six point beer. Piel’s, Pig’s Eye, Lost Lake, Hamm’s, etc…

I organized an art show called “3.2 Blues Sunday,” because the beer you could buy on Sunday could not exceed three-point-two percent alcohol.

So there I was, day-drinking near beer and fully into the euphoric “pink cloud” phase of recovery from opiates when my two best friends, Janet and Nadine, got crushed out on this guy from a band. We were all going to go visit him in Fort Smith, an hour and a half away. I had met Dave before, when my best friend pointed him out to me at a punk show at the park. He had managed to smash his knuckle while playing blast beats for a hardcore band and we brought him whiskey and sympathy as condolences. I tried to get him to stay the night that night, in service to my friend who was smitten, but he managed to escape our clutches and slipped away to try and untangle a disastrous relationship with a recent ex. I would see him a few times over the next year or two, but because I was constantly moving to Chicago or Los Angeles or hiding out amongst my opiate-loving friends, I wasn’t out and about as often.

But that day, I jumped into Janet’s car and off we went, uninvited and unannounced (it was 2003 back when you just showed up at people’s houses without them knowing, it was wonderful) and ready to drink.

.

Dave was not a big drinker, but he was never judgmental or critical about our drinking. He thought we were fun and delighted in our drunken banter and antics. (He will testify to this day that he loves me no matter what and would support me not drinking too, but that a Kris lubricated with a few drinks is a good time, full stop.) Since my two friends were already starting to have weird tension over their shared crush, I simply removed myself from the equation by dating another bass player who lived in Portland and who I had met when his band came through town to play on the rooftop of a downtown parking garage. He was younger, and I wasn’t looking for anything beyond our one night together, but he kept calling me each day trying to convince me that we could make it work.

My drinking was no secret from anyone, especially not my new Portland boy. He made it seem as if it was no big deal, something I’d discover was just him telling me what I wanted to hear. Dave and I also started writing regular emails to each other. Since we weren’t trying to engage the other romantically, we just sort of let it all hang out. We told each other all the gross embarrassing parts of our lives without shame or guilt. Something I’d really appreciate as things progressed with Mr. Portland, who soon moved to Tulsa and started having major issues with my lifestyle.

Granted, I knew I was drinking an excessive amount, but I was still such an open wound, not just from the recent opiate addiction and withdrawal, but because one of my dearest and most favorite people had died that spring. Chris and his older brother Eric had been like family to me, in fact, his older brother had died from suicide just eight months prior to Chris’ own death, something which I have always suspected played a part in Chris’ choice to keep drinking even after a doctor had cautioned him against it. At only twenty-one years old, Chris had a failing liver and was told that even one more drink could send him over the edge. Unfortunately, Tulsa was the worst place for anyone trying to quit anything, but Chris loved his friends more than he loved himself, and on May 7th of 2003 he was found dead in our friend’s garage apartment, seemingly from liver failure, but possibly from a heroin overdose since several people had seen him with heroin the night before his tragic passing. His death sent me down a dark path that I wasn’t sure I even wanted to escape, but somehow I did. Barely and by the skin of my teeth.

Unlike some I knew who had addiction issues, I usually tried to be moderate in my insanity. If I was using opiates, I abstained from alcohol and especially benzos, as the combo was often deadly and vice versa. If I was in a drinking phase it meant I wasn’t taking opiates. Things like LSD, mushrooms, weed or amphetamines were just occasional dalliances for me. If they were available, free, and the situation seemed right, all aboard! However I didn’t go out seeking these things, they literally had to fall into my lap. That wasn’t the case with booze and opiates.

As the years went on, Portland and I became more serious, and Dave and I stayed in touch via email after he moved to Bloomington, Indiana to become a star on the indie label Plan-It-X Records. I moved with Portland back to his hometown of San Francisco, enrolled myself in City College, and started trying to clean up my act for real. The Portland guy made me feel like he was superior to me because he had never struggled with drinking or drugs. I had somehow internalized the idea that sobriety equaled some moral high ground. It sounded reasonable when he asked me to cut back on going out with my girlfriends every night to the bars, because he wanted me to spend time with him. Everything he asked of me seemed reasonable, so I did it, but there was an underlying theme of isolation and control that I couldn’t see until I was already halfway across the country from my home heading towards my new life in SF and legally married to the guy.

Fast forward to 2006, I’ve left my unhealthy and abusive marriage, I’m still going to school full time and working full time, and drinking a moderate, but not insane amount on the weekends when I go out with the few friends I have in this new city. Most of the people I knew there were somehow connected to my ex husband, who made sure to always appear to the public eye as a goofy affable dork, and a darling in the punk community there. Through school I had met a friend who was definitely more of a drinker than I was, so I didn’t have to worry about any judgement there. Dave then invited me to go on tour with him and play my original songs. Considering that my ex husband wouldn’t even allow me to step in and play second guitar for his band outside of tour, I was more than happy to have somebody ask me to play music again. I was especially honored because I liked and admired Dave’s music, not to mention his one man act (Dave Dean’s Musical Forklift) in which he displayed his hand drawn signs depicting cartoons to accompany his songs. It was music and comedy and art all in one, and I was thrilled to be asked.

It was on that tour that we fell in love and realized that we had probably been in love with each other for ages, but were way too dysfunctional to admit it. I of course was terrified to get into another relationship with another non-addict guy who could and probably would start judging me as soon as things got serious. Outside of my ex husband, I had only ever dated other drinkers and/or addicts. I thought I needed to in order to have somebody truly understand me as a person. It never occurred to me that somebody without this history would accept me as I was, and to be honest, it wasn’t always easy for Dave.

After the tour I went back to SF where I was still in college and he went back to his life in Bloomington where he was still on the label. I won’t get into the weeds about it, but after a lot of needless drama and back and forth he ended up moving to SF and we eventually got an apartment together in the Tenderloin. It was around this time that I had a trip to the emergency room for a ruptured ovarian cyst. It was so painful that no amount of morphine in the ER could numb it. I managed to recover but not without some strange new symptoms such as muscle weakness and a burning sensation on my skin. I took opiates again to try and mitigate the pain, not to mention offset the fatigue that would lay me out. I couldn’t afford to lay around, I had a nanny job, a daycare job and full time school. The only reason I could even afford our studio apartment in the Tenderloin was due to student loan money which would dry up the minute I left school. All this was a lot for Dave to take on board. Especially since no doctor seemed to know what was wrong with me. It was as if I had been mysteriously stricken with some biblical plague out of nowhere. Things got so severe that we decided to move back to Tulsa in order to focus on my health.

I then started getting doctor-prescribed opiates for the constant and unbearable chronic pain. I have to say, taking opiates recreationally and taking them for actual pain are two different things. Part of the reason I had liked opiates in the past had been the energy they gave me because I had always suffered from random bouts of fatigue and achiness. I now know that I have had thyroid disease all this time and these symptoms could have been controlled with thyroid medication, but because of the changing way medicine is practiced (mostly due to the insurance industry, which is an entirely other topic for another article) I was given one single test to determine if my thyroid was working properly that wasn’t specific or sensitive enough. It wasn’t until I did my own research and asked for a full thyroid hormone panel test that I discovered that I was hypothyroid. Ironically over the years each new doctor would say to me, “you have all the symptoms of hypothyroid disease but your TSH test is in range.” Let me tell you, “in range,” is just a made up number taken from mostly white dudes because most medicine is tested on and for the benefit of white dudes. Women and minorities get left behind and thrown into the same basket, despite the fact that women’s hormones are totally different from men’s and we require specialized treatment.

During this horrible time when no doctor could diagnose me, I was in constant pain and Dave suddenly and out of nowhere announced that he was going back to San Francisco without me to keep working his job at a private school for an undetermined time. This was devastating news to me. I had never wanted to move back to Tulsa, and I had loved City College of SF, but Dave had made me think that we were moving back together, so it would be different than other times I had lived in Tulsa. We weren’t breaking up, but I was definitely breaking, emotionally, physically, mentally.

Without him there, I was lost. I was terrified to be left alone to my own devices. I was having a hard time finding a pain management doctor. I was still taking the long term pain meds that I had been prescribed back in SF, which weren’t enough, so it only made sense to find a stronger longer-acting opiate since I’d be facing down a handful of opiates per day otherwise, full of acetaminophen which I knew had helped destroy my late friend Chris’ liver on top of the drinking. Taking twelve pills per day versus taking two with no Tylenol seemed like a much better choice for my health in the long term, so that’s what I did and I stand by that decision today.

I was suffering from all kinds of abandonment issues, friends doubting if I was even really sick in the first place, other friends using drugs in a reckless and dangerous way I had never seen before, and anger at my inability to keep up with other friends at the bars. Would I fall back into old bad habits and start using unprescribed opiates on a regular basis to kill my emotional pain? I couldn’t allow Dave or anyone to dictate how I treated myself. Eventually Dave came back with his tail between his legs, asking to give it another shot. Since I had been given a second chance by him before, I decided to give him the same in return. He had one more chance to not fuck this up, but he had to get on board with what was actually happening with me, and that is exactly what he did.

Over the next few years I gradually started drinking less and less. I was so desperate to feel normal and healthy that hangovers didn’t really feel worth it to me in the long run. I’m not saying making the adjustment from social drinker (meaning I always drank when I was out socially) to sober person was easy. It was something I literally had to practice. Smoking cigarettes was also something I had been doing since I was thirteen. But when I decided to stop drinking for my health, I also decided I’d give not smoking a try too. Luckily I was able to call a number and get sent a kit with enough nicotine patches to get me off of my half a pack a day habit (a habit that lessened considerably when I quit drinking booze). Dave never even realized I could be a non-smoker - he was surprised and overjoyed. He had never asked me to quit anything and I was in the mindset of doing it for my own benefit and health, and not trying to please or appease anyone besides myself.

Being on pain management, I got piss tested regularly, so using marijuana for pain was never allowed. That was up until it was legalized here in Oklahoma in 2018. I hadn’t been a huge pot smoker back in the day simply because I had started to get paranoid and anxious instead of giggly and fun. What I realize now is that I was just getting too fucking high and that my tolerance for such things is luckily quite low. I have no idea why people think it’s a good thing to have these enormous tolerances that cause you to have to spend more money and more time trying to get to the same place I get to for cheap and toot suite.

Dave had never seen me high before, but he found it delightful, almost like the good old days when I was drinking my small beers in my flip flops around his house in Fort Smith. By this point we’d gotten married and had bought a house. Dave had stopped trying to pretend he liked having even one beer in social situations and I became a full on pot head. We owned and operated an independent bookstore and hosted bands there at reasonable hours. Our guarantee was that our shows were over by ten PM on the dot. We allowed a BYOB type of atmosphere and I’m pleased to say that our all ages shows never had an unruly or overly sloshed attendee or performer. I think we set the tone for how we wanted our guests to behave and Dave set the best example by not drinking at all. I was still learning how to navigate my new weed habit, so occasionally I’d have to sit out in my friend’s car watching humorous youtube videos away from the crowds, but we managed to create a sort of punk rock mom and pop reputation that we apparently still have to this day. We modeled moderation, without the superiority complex and even hosted my friend’s non profit harm reduction group so that they could organize important resources like Narcan training and needle exchanges.

In 2022 Dave and I started playing music together again, him on bass and myself on drums, since I had started finding it too difficult to play guitar with all the muscle pain in my arms and back. Weirdly playing drums was much easier on my body and I also really enjoyed the challenge of coming up with drum parts for Dave’s eclectic bass lines. It was recently that we were driving home from a performance at a local bar and I was just thinking about how grateful I was that I never had to worry about him being too drunk to drive. It was just a non issue. I didn’t have to worry about him drinking too much and making an ass out himself, or a million other problems that come along with being with somebody who imbibes.

Dave often used to tease me that he was waiting for the day when I’d run off with some heroin chic dude riding a motorcycle. That honestly might have been the case when I was twenty-four, but it sounds like a total nightmare to me now. Dave freely admits to having his own issues with his own fucked up brain, but addiction isn’t one of them. His biggest addiction is eating an entire sleeve of sandwich cookies in one sitting and then passing into a sugar coma for half an hour. We don’t trade horror stories from the “bad old days,” either, although he’s definitely witnessed a few doozies thanks to my friends, some of whom never got off that train. He’s been to more than a few funerals too, for people that I loved and he liked, but who took too many risks and didn’t slow down. I’ve even collected some mushrooms for microdosing purposes and Dave takes it in stride. He tells me that he knows that I know what I’m doing and he has no authority in that department. He trusts my judgment because he knows I don’t have that hair trigger to self destruct like I used to, thanks in part to being loved and accepted exactly as I am, a now sober drug user.

I know that I am also an outlier, and that there’s a few things different in me than the average addict. My brain is different, whether from PTSD or nature, or both, who knows, but I’m an outlier in quite a few categories, so what works for me might not work for everyone, or anyone. I quit alcohol in 2009, but I occasionally drink here and there just to make sure I still don’t care for it. I don’t know if my chemistry has changed or just my perception of what it feels like to have alcohol in my system, but it just doesn’t do it for me anymore. To clarify, I have had one beer, maybe two at the most in these experiments, and I wasn’t impressed, not to mention half a glass of wine gave me a three day hangover once and that alone was enough to prove to me that it just wasn’t worth the price of admission. Dave never gives me the side eye when I do these tests, nor does he gloat when I’m groaning and miserable the next day or two, he simply says that he trusts me, and I can make my own choices in this matter. Perhaps if I had been an ugly drunk, he’d feel differently, but since all the ugliness of my drinking was contained to my vital organs, he sees no harm. I don’t believe in punitive programs where one drink erases years of sobriety. I think people can use substances in a moderate and healthy way, and they can be “sober” in an unhealthy, almost addictive way too.

As for opiates, I still take some amount to mitigate the chronic pain that I have. Unfortunately the crackdown because of the opiate crisis has left many of us chronic pain patients in the position of always looking over our shoulders, waiting for the next “common sense” measure or law to take away the few rights we have left. It seems they’d rather us suffer and die rather than risk people using opiates recreationally. Now there’s even more deaths than ever, and you can’t trust anything that you buy off the streets. They’ve made the problem worse because of the severe judgment they have towards people who take drugs. The only thing I’ve ever seen work is harm reduction, and it’s what has worked for me personally. The ugliest deaths I’ve witnessed have been from alcohol addiction, something which is completely legal and readily available. There are friends of mine who would be a hundred times better off on drugs than drinking. I dream about being able to have access to the drugs that would actually help my physical pain. I live in pain every single day in order to make some nameless able bodied person who lives without chronic pain feel better about the opiate crisis. Ain’t that some shit.

I also want to say that there were times when I was so mentally down that I was close to self harm in a major way, and that I needed to numb the emotional pain more than I needed to be sober. Luckily, and because I took precaution in the amount and combination of drugs I imbibed, I survived. I’m not so sure I would still be here if I had forced myself to “raw dog” life. Self-medicating is frowned upon by the “professionals,” but I have to say that those so-called “professionals” have a major blind spot when it comes to actual drug use and abuse, and the difference between the two. So many people want to reduce things to binary, right/wrong, black/white, good/bad, but life is more complicated than that, and so is addiction. What we’ve been doing the past few hundred years isn’t working. You cannot wage a war against drugs, only drug users, and most of us are good people who struggle. If my first marriage taught me anything, it’s that a person can be sober but that sobriety is no compass for morality. No matter what people want to tell themselves. An addict doesn’t always equal “bad,” and sober doesn’t always equal “good.”

I wish there were more Daves in the world. People who abstain for themselves without making the rest of the world subscribe to their way of doing things. I respect his choices not to drink or use drugs and I would never pressure him to be otherwise. I love and respect who he is and that for him doing those things isn’t fun or needed. I’m also so glad that he saw a few sketchy things and despite all that decided I was worth the ride. Like the late Cookie Mueller once lamented, it’s not as if she’s looking for drama, but drama seems to find her all the same. I have to say having a stern looking sober husband at your side helps persuade a lot of that drama to go looking elsewhere. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Share

Leave a comment

Hello, truly lovely people!

I am so so so glad you’re here, longtime subscribers and cute brand new ones and even people who just haven’t bothered to cancel their subscriptions. I’m going to use my limited introductory space* to tell you that over the last few days I’ve gotten an inordinate number of lengthy and thoughtful emails and DMs critiquing stories, writers, me or other aspects of AJPT. We’ve talked a lot and I’ve learned a lot. I have also been letting the letter-writers know that they don’t need to apologize for criticism toward me ever - seriously where would I be in my career without it? Well, where am I in my career actually? I guess that’s another subject.

Because Substack is a writers’ platform, and because there is no anonymity, most everyone here understandably wants to publicly support other writers (almost to the point sometimes of 7th-grade-style gaggery: “Your writing is perfect.” “No, YOUR writing is more perfect than mine could ever be. It’s unconscionably unfair that you’re not a best selling author already seriously!!!!!” ). And all that praise is certainly better than the alternative. However we are all adults (or kind of) and I think that hearing critiques and counterarguments about our writing or our ideas could be useful for us all. So I’m not standing here screaming “Fight! Fight!” (even though I do love drama and is anyone else watching Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills and if so, does Amanda bug the shit out of you as much as she does me?). But I don’t think there is anything you are telling me in private that you can’t say in front of the whole class and I welcome you to do that in the comments. I definitely always want to hear there about what I could be doing better.

Now I’m sorry to Christina that I decided to post this alert on the day of her piece in particular, in case she is the recipient of a bold new unleashing of pent-up disapproval, but I don’t expect it for this story - I expect a lot of you to relate to what she has been through and the beautiful way she expresses it. I loved her premise instantly when she sent it and loved her deeper and less predictable execution of it even more. And I’m not just saying that. But tell us what YOU think.

LUV U 4EVA!

Jane

*I am now officially dragging on my whining about this one minor criticism the same way I did when I was 5 at the zoo one day and my grandma commented that I was walking on my toes so I spent the entire rest of that weekend walking only on my heels while groaning to express how miserable I was with each step. So glad about all the maturity that has come with aging. See you in the comments for more!

Your Defining Shirt Is Here

By Christina Jumper

Ask anyone and they’ll tell you I’m so not a dog person.

Don’t get me wrong, dogs are cool. As a kid, I learned to recognize every breed by name after falling in love with the Samoyed in Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco. I’m a favored dog sitter among my friends, and especially enjoy coming across a dog and their human who resemble one another.

(How does that work, exactly? Does the lithe runner gravitate toward the wiry greyhound because they share compatible traits? Or do we choose pets that resemble us because we can’t escape the primal urge to replicate ourselves?)

It’s not because I hate dogs or anything, I just can’t share my home with a creature that needy. Besides, our personalities clash. I’m quiet, observant, prone to distrust and judgement, and affectionate only to those in my innermost circle. Sometimes I respond to texts instantly; other times I’ll leave my phone in another room for hours. I prefer most activities on my own, unless there are mood-altering herbs involved.

In these ways, I’ve been told I’m more like a cat. But I didn’t start out as a cat person. That happened by accident.

—-

I have to begin this essay by talking about Ruby, my ride or die. She’ll be 10 this July, which means she’s been in my life longer than most people.

Growing up, we had every pet under the sun…except for cats. Allergies ran in the family, and I was not immune. (This only delayed my ascent into cat-person-dom, though it accelerated my descent into antihistamine abuse.) Friends’ cats scared me, as I mistook their independence for animosity.

Everything changed when Ruby appeared in a parking lot one hot July morning in central Texas.

Technically, I took her in with my partner at the time, but she was mine from the start. At work, I’d watch the same few videos of her over and over again until I could rejoin her in person. She was so damn striking with her marbled brown-and-white coat and eyes the color of the Colorado River. As she grew, her fur got long, her affect regal. I was smitten.

When I became single and decided to move to Seattle a few years later, Ruby drove with me in a rented minivan. It seemed as though it had always been just the two of us. On the first night of our trip, we stayed in a Columbus AirBnB, where she growled at drunken strangers outside the bedroom window. She’d never done that before, and I felt touched that she thought she could protect me.

Being with Ruby felt like the same as being with myself. Little did I know how true that would end up being.

—-

One of the reasons my relationship had ended was because I was an alcoholic. In the aftermath, my bulimia came back after a remission of four years. Part of me moved to Seattle because it was far enough away that I could die in peace.

I would have, too, if it weren’t for my stupid cat.

The house we moved into was a charming 3-bedroom in Green Lake. My two roommates were quiet professionals who kindly ignored my odd food habits. Almost nightly, I’d drink a bottle of wine in the upstairs loft that I shared with Ruby and nobody else. The only bathroom was downstairs, right in between my roommates’ respective doors. I tried to be quiet.

As my drinking escalated, so did my binges. I started ordering delivery several times a week, sometimes multiple times in a night, spending hours in front of the TV while I ate and drank my way to oblivion. Ruby bore witness to my blackouts, including the time I fell asleep mid-binge and woke up to find one of the containers had spilled on to the beige carpet, staining it a sickly orange. If you didn’t know any better, it looked like a cat had gotten sick there.

My first spring in Seattle, I was busy evading rehab and plotting my final hurrah. There was just one problem: Ruby. I didn’t want to leave her alone, so I called up an acquaintance—-someone I’d met in a recovery group—and asked if they would watch my cat for “just a few days”. Luckily, they saw through my bullshit and ended up not only taking Ruby, but driving me to the ER and waiting with me until a bed in detox opened up.

Gone were the days of blacking out on the carpet and worrying about whether my cat could tell I was drunk. Of course, the bulimia hadn’t gone anywhere. I was still chasing oblivion, just stone cold sober. It sucked.

—-

2020 was the year my eating disorder got the worst it had ever been. It was also the year Little Fang entered our lives.

I’d been wanting a kitten for months, but the start of the pandemic (and the ensuing stimulus check) was the final push I needed to make all the necessary preparations. I’d been texting someone about a fluffy tuxedo kitten with blue eyes, but they ghosted me the morning I was supposed to make the pickup. Disappointed but still determined to expand my family, I went back to Craigslist.

One kitten jumped out immediately. A tiny void with a puff for a tail, he looked like a cross between a soot sprite from Spirited Away and a baby bunny rabbit. I contacted the humans and they met up with me in Olympia, in the parking lot of a Joann’s Fabrics. A preteen girl handed him to me through the window and I handed cash back. He immediately made himself comfortable on my shoulder, under my hair.

Just like that, I was the parent of cats. Multiple.

—-

I can’t remember when I first started noticing that my cats were weird about food.

Maybe it was around the time Ruby started leaving

Read more

Apparently I got so excited on Monday about giving you our best stuff for free that I forgot about the new policy of short intros only from me.* Any of you who are new here and don’t know (or care) what I’m talking about, you now have a say in the matter too if you want it, so here’s the bottom line: I have been banned from writing more than a paragraph or so here at the top of each email you get from me. If you want to check out some humdinger long-ass intros in my former style, here are a couple of verbose examples: one in which I ramble on about women who wronged me and another where I talk off the cuff about my Xanax addiction and miscarriage. Fun lighthearted stuff to glide through before you even get into the daily featured story itself. Tell me in the comments if you like them or if you agree with Charlie and pretty much everyone else here that, nope a paragraph from you is plenty, Jane. And before you read today’s piece from Shawna, here’s one quick question only: Which writers do you remember from Sassy or Jane magazine or XOJane? And would you like for me to ask them to write here also? ‘Cause I will.

I'll see you in those comments to talk about favorite writers and whatever is on your mind today, whether you read today’s story or any of this intro or not. If you prefer to get paid for your words, you can also pitch me your story ideas there or email them to me Jane@AnotherJanePrattThing.com.

I love you!

Jane

*Shorter intro means I WON’T tell you about how giving you AJPT’s most popular and monetizable stories for free reminded me of a vintage Celine wallet that I really really wanted for myself but gave to a friend and now regret because we stopped being friends, so that’s not a good example of the profound satisfaction that can come from giving away your most-loved stuff, but can I ask for it back? I will save that for the comments. I love you again.

Best Shirt Ever

By Shawna Willow

It started with the World Series. Innocently checking out groceries, “you lookin’ forward to the game?” I stop myself from asking which game, lest I cause a riot. This has proved an unpopular question in the past during Canadian sports seasons, producing many furrowed brows and looks of disbelief. “Oh yeah…” I avert my gaze and bag my asparagus. Pretend you’re one of them. Go Jays Go.

I remember when the Toronto Raptors (who I had to be constantly reminded was a basketball team) won the NBA championship (I even had to Google this) in 2019, I was living downtown in a condo building beside the team’s coach. The whole city was in revelry, I was gearing up a custody battle and trying to get sober. The bars stayed open late. Elevators packed with people making Airbnb sports pilgrimages . “How about them Raptors?” I rolled my eyes and took the stairs. God damn sports.

So, last week, when my well-meaning Father in law sent me this text (pictured below), with the addendum: “If you want to read the whole article, I could email it to you. Let me know”... I had to play nice. After all, he just lent us money for some vehicle repairs. I need to be friendly, but I absolutely cannot begin an exchange with him that will span the entirety of the Olympics. He’s retired, constantly online, and seems to thrive in the minutiae of inane data, often confronting me with morning screenshots to share his graphs, charts and infographics related to his blood pressure, sleep cycles, etc. As a person who engages with numeracy as little as possible, I’ve barely learned to manage his numerical proclivities without coming off as rude.

I knew going into these Olympics that a boundary had to be placed.

I responded with the friendliest, but firmest, tone I could manage: I’m not too interested in the Olympics but I do love Italia! I weigh in whether I should tell him about my aborted night of clubbing in Milan, about the British interior designer who picked me up at the performance art conference in Venice. Me and my friends are going clubbing in Milan tonight, you should come. I gave him my business card and ran off to buy wine and a universal phone charger, spent the night watching a Ke$ha documentary in my hotel room waiting for a text that never came. Whatever. My boyfriend back home wouldn’t have appreciated it anyway. But I’d always wanted to say I’ve been to Milan.

Which brings me back to the Olympics…ugh.

See, I’m not against all things Hellenistic. I grew up on Saturday mornings watching the foundational myths being retold in 1998 cartoon form on a show called Mythic Warriors. I studied the shit out of Greek tragedy in my theatre undergrad, regularly quote Sophocles like some artsy-fartsy asshole and have two feral chihuahuas named Zeus and Athena to boot. Ok, Zeus is the only feral one. Poor Athena is more often an innocent bystander. All this to say, my sentiments aren’t so much anti-Greek as anti-sports in general.

Even as I write this, I look behind my shoulder for the bludgeoning that I assume is coming from somewhere for uttering such blasphemy. I picture my Mother, smoke in hand, yelling at the television as a bunch of men chase around a puck/a baseball/whatever. I think about my bestie, an 80 year old novelist/pugilist, who calls me up to troll me with sports trivia (one of his novels was titled, wait for it, Save Me, Joe Louis). And, as always, the omnipresent Whatsapp loving Father in law, who regularly left his family to take long, dangerous bicycle rides all over Europe/the Americas, and sends links to my husband about tour de France articles.

I think about growing up in a small town, and the imported hockey players- aptly called THE WILDCATS- that would come down from the city and attend our high school classes, gang rape our classmates, and generally send the town into temporary pheromone, sports-induced chaos. I would steal vodka from my Stepdad and sneak the water bottle containing it into the games under my hoodie, chug rapaciously from the stands as We Will Rock You blasted out for the fiftieth time. I wonder what poor Freddie Mercury would think of all this? I chug again, allow his theatrical spirit to nourish me as I attempt to block out the fact that I’m at a sports game. I’d rather be watching Shakespeare.

Which brings me to my next live sports experience, the ever-riveting lacrosse game that I was forced to attend in 2010. My boyfriend at the time, who had a large lacrosse stick tattooed on his calf muscle, had purchased tickets in order to “introduce me to” his much-beloved game. I reluctantly agreed, straightened my hair, slipped a Pinter play in my handbag and went off to the liquor store.

We got to the venue- a garish, massive stadium downtown teeming with sports folk- only to find out that they were checking bags. Just ditch the mickey, we’re gonna miss the face off. Unable to cope with the idea of facing hours of lacrosse without a buzz, I promptly went and drank the entire mickey in a bathroom stall. I drunkenly complained his ear off throughout the entire first half, focusing largely on how lame I thought lacrosse was, only to spend the last third of the game nose deep in the Pinter play. These sports people are insane, I would bellow into my cell phone to my gay theatre school classmate. My boyfriend was practically in tears. I was only waiting that relationship out anyway, needing someone to split the rent. I certainly wasn’t going to spend my forever with a sports fan. Especially not one with a tattoo of lacrosse. Yuck!

So when I heard a few weeks ago that the good ol’ Olympic games were gearing up in Milan, thanks to that text from my FIL, I began to make a plan to avoid them. It’s not that I don’t believe in the perspicacity of the human spirit, or am not inspired by the athletes and their dogged push towards greatness, glory and, more often, terrible injuries.

I remember tearing up when I was ten years old watching the 1998 figure skating with my Nana. A lone French skater named Surya Bonaly, knowing she wasn’t going to win, decided to abandon choreography and do a rebel backflip- much to the chagrin of the judges and the delight of the audience. What a badass! Notably, I also remember being offended on behalf of Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati, who had his gold medal revoked for testing positive for marijuana. I had to Google this and, apparently, this was also 1998. So it’s been twenty plus years since I’ve given a shit.

Marijuana and unplanned backflips aside, I’m no longer ashamed to say that I don’t care about organized sports. I have a two year old who appears to be on track to breastfeed until he’s thirty, a sassy as hell eleven year old with head lice, and an upcoming art show called FLOOZY where I attempt to support my family with fine art photos of disassembled Barbie parts. I’m one of those “artsy fartsy”, high-falutin’ jerks who quotes Yeats with my geriatric bestie, attends odd performances in burnt out warehouses, and revels in opportunities to wear a petticoat under just about anything. I married someone with an art history major. We would rather discuss Marcel Duchamp’s readymades over breakfast than the results of the men’s slalom.

So, if you are planning on texting me about the Olympics, please, don’t bother. With that orange haired tyrant running amok below the border, it’s now thirteen dollars here for a cabbage. Forgive the sportfishing reference, but I’ve got bigger proverbial fish to fry. Unless you have some tips on weaning an adolescent, promoting an art show, or getting rid of head lice, I’m good in my little art-bubble. Even if we have to borrow money from my sports-loving Father in Law until that elusive day when we make it in the arts, I’m happy to say that I couldn’t care less. Bah humbug to the Olympics, basketball season, hockey season, and all that jazz. We can wipe ourselves with our arts degrees when we run out of toilet paper.

Share

Leave a comment

That means “hi again since this morning” for a bunch of you but also “hi again decades later!” to all the new AJPT subscribers who were Jane magazine readers and just found us here (thanks, Threads and others!). I could not be more excited to reunite with you. You look great and welcome welcome welcome back! I’m excited for you old AJPT people on here too but you already know I love you, I tell you all the time, and it’s not about you right now so just pipe down and welcome the new kids in the comments, please.

First, a question: If there are any Jane magazine or Sassy magazine features you remember and want me to revive here, just let me know and I will. I have recently gotten a number of requests to bring back the Jane Makeunders, so I am on top of that one. What else, if anything?

Now here is where I feel like I invited you over to my house (which does happen and will again soon for our next Controversial-Books-Only Book Club party, which you can attend in person - including snacks and drinks on me! - or virtually -also fun!). But today in particular I feel awkwardly like I invited you over and then it’s a cash bar. That’s because today’s post is paywalled partway through. Oy, dilemma.

Here are my workaround ideas for you:

If you already dove right in and became a paying subscriber, bless you, I know who you are, and I bet you probably have very healthy longterm relationships overall and fewer problems with trust than I do. (By the way, I had trouble with the concept of charging people to read any AJPT pieces when we launched, but then realized it was the only way to get the writers paid and so my partner in crime here Charlie talked me down and we decided to charge the least possible for a monthly subscription, which is the exact same as the cost of an issue of Sassy in today’s dollars - and that’s original not Ebay prices.) Thank you paying subscribers for keeping us alive and carry on! I love you and appreciate you! If you're a free subscriber, you’re also awesome and following are some ways to read this stuff without paying.

Scroll down and read all the free articles. We have over 500 all-exclusive articles on AJPT and I would say that at least 470 of them are good! And a bunch of even the good ones are free. So enjoy all of those or tell me in the comments why you don’t (I live for negative feedback too).

I'm also going to make these SIX hand-selected-for-you posts that were paywalled FREE for a whole month because I’m so happy to see you again and it’s the least I can do:

The one and only Christina Kelly on menopause.

Cat Marnell on me.

Rain Phoenix’s It Happened To Me on her brother, River.

Jane magazine’s Esther Haynes on creepy behind the scenes happenings in the Jane offices.

You can also binge one of our riveting (if I do say so myself) episodic series like this one or this one without having to wait the week or two that we all did between installments.

Even better, if you’re up for it, I activated the seven-day free trial so you can use that whenever you hit an annoying paywall and read anything and everything here. Then at the end of the seven days if you don’t think it’s worth it to pay, just cancel (set a reminder if you’re like me and may forget) and come back by taking out another free subscription. I want you here either way (and don’t you ever leave me again!).

Whatever you do, please get into the comments. Remarkable reunions keep happening there between readers and editors from Sassy and Jane and even our red-headed stepchild XOJane (to be clear, I love redheads - maybe unwisely even dyeing mine the day of my first photo shoot for Sassy). And if you ever ask or tell me anything in comments, it’s embarrassing how fast I will respond. But now I’m at the point where I asked you over and not only is it a cash bar but I’m going around asking for charitable donations. So let me stop here and say how much I deeply appreciate being back together with you. It’s overwhelming in the best way.

Love always,

Jane

Want A Sassy TShirt?

By Sherri Bale

Your 23 & Me results are ready!

It was 2019. I had purchased a $69 gift for myself.

As a practicing geneticist who performs DNA-based diagnostics in a medical setting daily, this would be my first experience with recreational DNA testing. I clicked the link and was off on a busman’s holiday.

A pie diagram confirmed what I already knew. I was ¼ Irish and ¾ Ashkenazi Jewish. Nothing new there, or so I thought.

Next to do: See if 23 & Me had identified any of my relatives. I was an only child, but I knew my cousins on my mother’s side, the Abrahamsons. We all lived within an hour’s drive, and our reunions occasionally resulted in a visit from the police or a trip to the ER. My people were regular folk, at the lower end of the middle class. They drank some beer, got rowdy, and had seltzer and snowball fights. The women were homemakers, the men salesmen or tradesmen. Most in my parents’ generation had finished high school, but none had gone to college.

My same-age cousins talked of the Red Sox, the Bruins, clothes, drinking, and parties. School was only of minor interest to them. I was the odd one. They called me “the smart cousin” – the good student and avid reader who was planning to be a doctor or a scientist.

23 & Me had identified some relatives, but the only ones I recognized were from my mother’s side. I hadn’t expected to find any first-cousins on my dad’s side (the Gluckmans, Jews who had immigrated from Romania), because, although the family was pretty extensive, he was the only child of his parents to have had a child. But I was surprised not to see any aunts, uncles, or even second and third cousins.

Perhaps the Gluckman family members had sent their samples to a different DNA testing company, like Ancestry or MyHeritage, instead of 23 & Me. I decided to send my sample to those, as well. Ancestry identified a few Irish relatives from my mother’s father’s side (Crosby), and l learned more than I needed to know about my estranged grandfather. But still no Gluckman relatives.

Both 23 & Me and Ancestry.com had identified many people they classified as my 2nd cousins, all of whom were related to each other and also to me. I recognized none of them. One of those individuals, a woman my age who lived in Boston, had assembled an extensive family tree, and I shared DNA with many of the members of her family. They were Ashkenazi Jews, whose ancestors (The Kleins) came to Boston from Hungary in the late 1880s. Being from Western Massachusetts, I was intrigued and examined the Klein tree closely. I saw that Bernard Klein, my family doctor, was a member of this family. My doctor had a brother, and his grandson had done DNA testing. It said this man was my first-cousin once removed. I was confused.

Actually, I was only confused for an hour. I am a geneticist, after all. It was clear why I had no Gluckman relatives. I was not a Gluckman. It was equally clear why I had so many Klein relatives. I was a member of the Klein family. Specifically, my family doctor was my father.

To continue reading to the end of Shari’s story, and to see a picture of her with her doctor/biological dad, subscribe here or use one of those tricks I taught you in my intro. Thank you so much either way!

Read more

Hi!!!!!!!

All those exclamation points are because I'm so excited - for so many reasons – about this story today. I find it - and Jasika herself - incredibly inspiring. She and I bonded tightly over the value of this message as we worked together. Her email to me one minute ago, when I told her this was going live, said, “If just one person decides to try to learn how to knit again or buys a button to replace on their favorite old shirt, our work on this piece will have not been in vain 💪🏽!” Hear hear (or here here?)! I won't go on and on with all the specifics of my admiration for her and her story, because let's do that in the comments so that I don't give anything else away. And abiding by our pending new policy of short intros I'll just say that Jasika (you can also follow her on IG for more of her goodness) is not only a phenomenal new writer for AJPT (thank you thank you thank you, Jasika!), she's also a known and apparently great actor. The only reason I've never seen her in anything is because I only watch dumb reality TV and documentaries. Don't even tell my best friend Courteney that I've never watched “Friends.”

I adore you and I'll see you in the comments!

Jane

PS See that one-paragraph-intro action?! I can do this!

PPS When I was going crazy wanting to write more to you last night, I took it out on Jane's Phone over here in case you want to go there and talk about something wholly unrelated to today's amazing piece that I am already getting hate on in Notes. Only if you like that sort of thing, as I do. Love you!

This Shirt Is For A Great Cause!

By Jasika Nicole

The first item of clothing I ever made for myself was what I referred to as a “halter top”, but what was actually nothing more than a sneeze of sequined fabric with thin elastic cording sewn onto its edges. It barely covered my tiny side boobs- if I Tootsie Rolled too hard in the club, the ensuing wardrobe malfunction would have scarred me for life. But that didn’t feel nearly as important as the realization that I could make my own clothes!

It was 2001 and I was in my third year of undergrad as a theatre major when I sewed that halter top. I had just passed my costume design class for the semester, which, despite my love of fashion, I had disliked. The collaborative aspect of design for theatre put me off (I found it restrictive and boring), but it was soon clear that what I lacked in an aptitude for theatrical design I more than made up for with a competence in costume construction. After I completed my first big project (Lady Capulet’s gown in Romeo and Juliet), I continued spending my weekends in the theatre’s costume shop, draping dress forms with whatever fabric I could find in the scrap bin and cursing at the faulty old industrial sewing machines.

My mom bought me a cheap Brother sewing machine for Christmas that year so I abandoned the costume shop and turned my dorm room into a one-woman sewing factory. I found my way to commercial sewing patterns (the kind our moms and grandmas bought from Joann’s Fabrics), and immersed myself headfirst into understanding how to use them.

The pattern designs from Vogue and McCalls were my favorites, alternative and cool for the time, but the learning curve was steep. The instructions and illustrations were abysmal and keeping track of all those floaty pattern pieces covered in mysterious symbols was maddening. Furthermore, I didn’t yet understand which types of fabric I should be using for the garments I wanted to make, so I ended up with dresses that were too lightweight, bodices that didn’t keep their shape, and zippers that bunched into a wavy ripple all along my back.

Once I made a pair of pants out of fabric that didn’t have 2 directional stretch, so they wouldn’t expand around my body at its widest points. When I finally completed them I couldn’t even pull them up past my hips! Sewing was often disappointing when I first started out, but I didn’t let that stop me. I considered all my failures as learning successes, ways of cultivating not just a skillset, but also a patience with myself to not give up simply because the results weren’t immediately perfect (perfectionism is both a tool of capitalism and a thief of joy, in case you didn’t know!).

After college I moved to NYC to begin my career as an actor, and between auditions and waiting tables I had little time to devote to my college hobby. My sewing machine lived far back in the closet of whatever apartment I happened to be living in at the time, making appearances only when a garment needed mending or a hem needed adjusting.

When my first big tv show went to series and I began getting invited to PR events, I balked at the “rule” that I could be photographed in a red carpet look no more than once, encouraging me and other young actors to participate in the proliferation of clothing consumption. The pitfalls of fast fashion were becoming widely known at this point, an industry proving itself to be detrimental not only to the environment but also to the communities of people overseas employed by clothing manufacturers (the acclaimed documentary The True Cost is a great watch for those interested in learning more about fast fashion’s destruction).

As much as I hated filling up my closet with junk, I was at the beginning of my career, naive and afraid to rock the boat, so I did what was expected of me and scoured Urban Outfitters and sample sale racks, hunting for anything in my size that was vaguely stylish.

Then came the devastation of the Rana Plaza tragedy, when a poorly-built building in Bangladesh occupied by garment workers collapsed, killing and injuring thousands. I was heartbroken by the disaster and alarmed at my own complicity in it, as I was a consumer of some of the brands employing those manufacturers. I started paying more attention to sustainability in retail, willing to pay higher prices for clothing made of quality materials by garment workers getting paid fair wages, but the designs at the time were often unremarkable and shapeless, and didn’t embody my aesthetic at all. I wondered if it was even possible to be a lover of fashion while also being a responsible consumer of it.

And then I remembered: I could make my own clothes!

I wasn’t amazing at sewing, not yet... but maybe if I worked hard, I could be.

I dusted off my old brother sewing machine and committed to only buying second hand clothing and sewing my own garments from that point on. The idea was ambitious, but I was determined and inspired (for the record, I’m an Aries sun, Aquarius moon/rising). I started collecting commercial sewing patterns again but was soon introduced to the online sewing community, a group of industrious people from all over the world dedicated to sewing their own clothes, making and selling indie sewing patterns and books, and sharing the knowledge they gained through blogs and social media. Reading their posts about their sewing escapades encouraged me to start my own blog about my journey into building my own wardrobe, which eventually turned into the TryCurious blog and JasikaIsTryCurious IG account.

This time around I took my clothes making very seriously, dedicating all my free time to my sewing practice and even bringing my travel sewing machine to tv jobs I booked out of town. Spending time at my machine was infinitely more fun than wiling away the hours watching hotel tv, and the more time I spent on my hobby, the better I got at it. I learned how to adjust patterns to fit my body, since I’ve rarely been able to find RTW garments that accommodate my specific combo of small boobs + small waist + big ass.

As I was smack dab in the middle of my vintage phase, I became obsessed with Gertie’s Book For Better Sewing and made more fit n’ flare dresses than Modcloth would know what to do with. I learned how to Frankenstein patterns (also called “pattern hacking”), which fits certain elements of one pattern onto another to come up with a unique design. I figured out what my seasonal color palette is (I’m a deep autumn!) and only bought fabric that I knew would look good against my skin, since by this time I was noticing that I had many beautifully made pieces in my closet that I never wore because the color made me look washed-out or clashed with my hair.

My hard work paid off. It’s been twelve years since I first committed myself to not buying RTW clothing, and my skillset is so solid now that I can see a garment in a store window, snap a few pictures of it’s insides with my phone, and make a version of it perfectly tailored to my body within a matter of days. 90% of the clothing in my closet is me-made, full of staples like jeans, pussy-bow blouses, wool jackets and button downs. I’ve even made myself bathing suits and high heeled shoes!

It’s important to note that making clothes isn’t the only or even best way to combat the impact of fast fashion; buying new fabric is still part of consumer culture, and depending on what kind you sew with, new fabric isn’t necessarily sustainable. Additionally, not everyone has the time, resources or skills to make their entire wardrobes by hand. I recognize that my own dedication to craft exists because I don’t have kids and I have a non-traditional job that affords me lots of extracurricular time. Thankfully there are many other ways to keep textiles out of landfills and off the shorelines of the world’s least developed countries, since a huge percentage of America’s donated clothing gets shipped and left to rot elsewhere.

Up-cycling textiles and clothing, participating in community clothing swaps, buying second hand (Depop is my current favorite online thrifted retail space, but there are many others!) and mending/altering clothing we already own to give it new life and make it last longer are great ways to shift our dependence from fast to slow fashion.

Many people assume that sewing my own clothing is cheaper than buying it in a store, and that’s not exactly the case (or the point). Fast fashion, like Zara, H&M and Shein, use cheap materials and labor to get new clothing into their stores as quickly as possible, feeding our society’s frenzy for new, now, next. I don’t want to wear cheap material (polyester and rayon make me sweat like a whore in church ) and I don’t want to wear what’s trending in Tik Tok shops, either. I want luxury and elegance!

Sustainably sourced yardage of washed linen, silk velvet and selvedge denim is pricier than items you might find at your local Target, but much less expensive than the designer racks at Saks (which, by the way, are filled with garments that are still likely to be made with some percentage of manmade fibers). Considering the fact that not only are my pieces made of fine materials but are also tailored to my exact measurements, my wardrobe is priceless because it’s one of a kind.

The sentimental value of my wardrobe cannot be understated, either. Each piece is almost like a journal entry of where I was, physically and mentally, when I made it. Last year when the LA fires ravaged the neighborhood adjacent to mine, I packed a suitcase in the event that I would receive evacuation orders and have to leave my home in a hurry. Having spent my childhood moving from one shitty apartment to the next, buying my own home as an adult represented safety and stability for me, and the threat of losing my house and all the beautiful handmade furniture, decorative objects and DIY projects I had filled it with was incredibly difficult. I tried to combat my fear by reminding myself that things are replaceable, people aren’t. I threw in a few changes of clothes, some toiletries, and some sentimental items, like photo albums from my childhood. But what I really wished I could have brought with me were my clothes.

I wished I could save my favorite pair of jeans, high waisted and wide legged with a concealed button fly, sewn in a light colored, sturdy denim. [You can see these exact beauties below, because Jasika was so generous about supplying so many visuals for you! -Jane] I’ve worn these jeans a million times over the years, amassing multiple period stains in the crotch and food and drink spills everywhere else, with buttons replaced and the waistband re-topstitched more than once. These jeans have traveled out of the country with me, shown up in dozens of audition tapes, and held my body together as I swung my young nephews around on the playground.

I wished I could save the very first dress I made and wore to my own red carpet event. In season 2 of Underground I played Georgia, a mixed race woman “passing” as white and using her privilege to help enslaved people escape on the underground railroad. She held secret meetings with her abolitionist women friends to sew hidden maps onto quilts that they would then give to escapees to guide them to freedom. Wearing my own handmade dress to the premiere seemed a tiny but poignant way for me to honor the work of women across history who used their skillset to incite positive change in a world in which they had little power. My dress, made of Liberty silk, donned a stunning print of a shiny Tokyo cityscape, and I felt both proud and beautiful wearing it.

I wished I could save the pink velvet tiger-covered coat that was fresh off my sewing machine, and all the hand knitted sweaters I had spent hundreds of hours stitching. I wished I could save everything in my closet, evidence of a life well lived.

My home was thankfully spared from the fires, but in the aftermath of their devastation I was embarrassed that I had wanted to save my clothes instead of my old love letters or my college sketchbooks. My partner at the time gently reminded me that my clothing was a declaration of love, each garment proof of my affection for myself, and as much an artistic expression as anything I’ve ever drawn. Their reframe was helpful, an opportunity to stop judging myself about my passion for fashion and instead recognize it as the healing modality it has been in my life.

Sewing has gotten me through so many lulls in my work as an actor when my value felt rooted in how regularly I was booked. It severed my dependence on RTW and allowed me to engage with fashion in a more holistic way. It challenged me as a craftsperson, helped me develop a personal style that made me feel confident in my body, and allowed me to inspire people all over the world to develop their own special relationship to craft.

Plus, it makes middle age feel fierce as fuck.

Leave a comment

I searched a bunch of other Editor-In-Chiefs’ names and they were all in there, some hundreds of times. So there is an element of feeling like chopped liver.

Kind of like when I went on Howard Stern for the first time and he did not objectify me or even ask me to show my boobs.

Have you also searched for yourself in the Epstein files, just in case? And let's talk about who IS in there and how we feel about that. If you like!

I’m adhering to your preference that I keep my intros brief (for now). So I will just tell you that I think today's story is a capital-D Doozy.

I love you and let's talk about the following masterpiece and every other random thing we want to talk about in those comments that I love so much. You know I have a lot more to say (always) and I know you do too. So we’ll do it there!

Big XO, Jane

A Sassy TShirt Makes Everything Better

By Robin Wheeler

I met Steven Drozd of The Flaming Lips on one of the most surreal days of my life.

That summer morning in 2014 I dropped CJ, my 10-year-old, at day camp. In search of some dopamine, I went to the neighboring record store to get the new Jack White album. But first I found Steven.

I kept reaching for my phone to text my best friend Molly, “HOLY SHIT!! Steven from The Flaming Lips is at Vintage Vinyl OMG!!” We lived for moments like this—a music hero ensconced in layers of weirdness would make her laugh.

And each time I reached for my phone, I remembered the biggest surreality of the day: I couldn’t text Molly. She was in a courtroom in her town 600 miles away, awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to Vehicular Assault, and Operation of a Vehicle Under the Influence of Alcohol.

I never would have predicted this scenario when Molly and I became friends 14 years prior through an online group. She was 20 and I was 28, and we were in different stages of life. I was a newlywed home owner starting my second career and she was working on her undergrad, but we shared a love of music and books that quickly bonded us. Soon, we were regularly traversing the 600 miles between us to attend concerts together: Wilco, Bruce Springsteen with Michael Stipe, The White Stripes, U2, Garbage, Interpol, Franz Ferdinand, Chuck Berry, along with music shrines like the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and Sun Studio in Memphis. We could always find a reason to turn a concert in one of our cities into an adventure.

We sat in pre-dawn, sub-freezing temperatures for spots near the stage, got locked in a parking garage, nursed cuts and scrapes from questionable punk clubs, and even dodged a couple of fights through the years. We both had hot tempers when it came to bad concert behavior. She had my back when I shoved a guy in the face because he braced his hands on my shoulders while pogoing (In my defense, I was pregnant at the time) [And you let him off easy, in my opinion. -Jane]. She invited some loud talkers to meet us outside, so we had to dodge them to make our escape. We always skirted our way out of trouble.

Sometimes we turned those tempers on each other. While visiting me two years into our friendship, she hooked up with one of my husband’s friends. Even though I’d played matchmaker, I was hurt and jealous when she opted to spend most of her visit at his place. This culminated in Molly and I screaming at each other in my kitchen until I was so furious I kicked her out. She could stay with him or fly home early for all I cared.

Just as fast as we had exploded in anger, we made up when we realized we’d taken it that far. She stayed with me.

When I got pregnant with CJ, Molly was the Chosen Aunt, buying gifts and nicknaming the fetus Coco Monkeytoes in honor of Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore’s daughter and the Beastie Boys song “Brass Monkey.”

While I was in labor I played a homemade CD from Molly, a curation of the songs she thought should be the first ones my baby heard.

Molly was in town before my C-section stitches dissolved. Having her in my home was wonderful, as I was slipping into what would become a life-threatening case of postpartum depression. It was so bad my husband missed enough work to endanger his job. She visited often and helped take the burden off of my husband a bit while I tried to balance motherhood, my catering company, and my mental health.

In these days before easy and affordable texting, Molly and I emailed daily. She always told me to turn to her when I needed anything. I tried to convey just how bleak I felt, how unable to handle anything I had become.

“Yeah, I know how you feel,” she’d type before telling me about a co-worker who pissed her off, the latest incident of her mother drinking too much, or whatever thing was bothering her. I know I was terrible when it came to asking for help, and it was clear my message wasn’t getting through, which left me feeling unheard and unsupported.

Molly told me that at least I had a husband, which was more than she had as a single woman. That was enough to send me spiraling until I didn’t want to share anything with her. I wasn’t angry. I was just too depleted to risk another argument.

I stopped answering Molly’s emails without explaining why.

My silence dragged on for months. I spent time in therapy, closed my business, whittled my life down to the bare minimum I could handle, which wasn’t much.

Sometimes Molly would leave rage-filled drunken comments on my blog.

While she had every right to be angry with me for ghosting, I had no desire to argue on the internet with anyone who was drunk. I did something very foreign to me: I set a boundary, telling Molly that I would delete her hateful messages and wouldn’t communicate with her while she was drinking.

That broke the ice and started a conversation. Just not one about my silence. We just went along like it didn’t happen.

And so it went for the next seven years. She got her master’s degree, fell in love and moved into his house, adopted some pets, and landed her dream job in an academic library. I raised CJ, settled into mom-and-wife life, and got a job writing for the local alt weekly newspaper. Molly and I returned to our frequent visits. We grew into competent, responsible adults. Mostly.

Molly went back and forth with her drinking. Sometimes she hit it hard, others she abstained for extended lengths of time, especially when she was in graduate school. That facade started cracking in 2011.

During a visit to Molly that summer, while CJ played with her dogs, Molly told me about a night when she walked home alone from happy hour because she was too drunk to drive. While walking through the park, she blacked out, waking up on the ground in the middle of the night with her purse missing.

The next morning her boyfriend Tom scoured the park and found her purse with everything intact. We laughed at her good luck, but I was horrified, grappling with what to say and coming up short. Plus, I didn’t want CJ to overhear anything. That was my excuse for staying quiet.

By the time we returned home I had convinced myself that Molly’s night in the park was just an isolated incident. It’s easy to do that with 600 miles between us.

Molly seemed fine when she visited for my birthday a year later, but during her visit six months after that it was clear that her drinking was a problem. It wasn’t my problem, though. At least, I didn’t act like it was. I convinced myself this time that we were both blowing off steam and having fun.

The night she arrived, we went to a bar where I occasionally DJed. It didn’t seem like we drank a lot—a couple of stouts and a shot of bourbon each. I wasn’t drunk, but Molly staggered around the bar, bummed a cigarette and lit up. The owner almost threw us out.

The next day Molly slept late, blaming the single shot of bourbon for her hangover.

A few nights later we started with friends at a brewery which should have been enough. But we accepted an invitation to go dancing at a club, which led to harder drinks, and an incident with both Molly and me smooching my business partner on the dance floor.

Molly slept through the next afternoon while I took CJ to the playground. Thinking back, I was embarrassed and baffled by the night before. I wasn’t a big drinker. None of the throw pillows in my house said “It’s wine o’clock somewhere”. But when I was with heavy-drinking friends, I would keep pace like a peer-pressured high schooler.

Years later I’d realize that I really was like a child, who morphed my behavior to match who I was with in a pitch for validation. This kept me from accepting that I should have initiated a conversation with Molly about her drinking, my disordered reaction to it, and how we could fix it. But I knew enough about addiction to know that I couldn’t force Molly to change. I could only change my behavior.

I couldn’t be Molly’s drinking buddy ever again. I also couldn’t handle a screaming match about it. My solution: I would slowly distance myself after Molly’s visit—shorter, less frequent messages that stuck to superficial topics while I extracted my heart from our relationship.

That worked for six weeks.

On Mother’s Day morning, I was at my childhood home, getting dressed for a day of celebrating with my mom and grandmother, when my phone rang.

There had been an accident.

I UNDERSTAND THIS IS KIND OF TRICKY TO MAKE YOU PAY TO CONTINUE READING RIGHT AT THIS PIVOTAL MOMENT. BUT CONSIDER THAT IF YOU DO BECOME A PAID SUBSCRIBER, THAT MONEY GOES TO WRITERS LIKE ROBIN. AND SHE HAD TO LIVE THROUGH THIS TO TELL YOU ABOUT IT. WHICH IS WORSE? THANK YOU FOR THINKING ABOUT IT, FRIENDS! -JANE

Read more

I had a little editorial discussion with Lovely Charlie yesterday in which he told me that he thinks my introductions to these stories can be more like a paragraph as opposed to the six or eighteen or forty-seven or whatever paragraph ramblings I've been giving you. There was a part two to his suggestion, which is that he thinks I should byline an additional couple of longer stories myself each month. I don't know which seems harder, holding back from telling you all the tiny little details of my existence every single time or composing more actually structured pieces. But I am up for trying anything and want this to be the best for you, of course. So here goes my first attempt at a brief intro:

Shit, this is already graf 2 (note that efficient spelling?), so I am now cutting 200 words I just typed without thinking, all about people I have encountered since I was with you here last (Tina Brown was one) and if any of you want to see them, ask and I will paste them in the comments. And as I keep inadvertently writing and then redacting almost as much as you know who these days, thus miserably failing the assignment, let’s move on to today’s featured story: Many of you know Dana from other incredible pieces she has written here, but she contains multitudes, clearly, and this story shows an aspect of her life that I think none of you had heard about. I very much look forward to talking to you and Dana about her piece more in those comments.

PLUS Coming up in mere days: New book club picks for your final votes, and happy results from our Beauty Editor auditions where you were the judges. With potentially minimal introduction from me!! You're welcome! Thanks, Charlie!

xo always, Jane

SASSY Ts ARE THE SEXIEST

By Dana Walker Inskeep

I used to base my entire self-worth on how fuckable men thought I was, and that’s why I opened my marriage.

My husband and I had hit a big slump several years into our relationship. Actually if I’m being completely transparent, it started not long after we were married, took a giant skid after our first child was born, and never recovered.

Neither of us had done the necessary pre-relationship groundwork to make our communication effective. I was still a major people-pleaser, suppressing my needs while prioritizing his…right up until I had our first child and any semblance of sexual desire I had flew out the window. I made excuses while he quietly grew more resentful.

Now call me crazy, but I’m the kind of woman who, in order to actually want to have sex, wants to feel desired. Maybe it was because I was raised on soap operas, but that’s how I’m wired, and it became a requirement once the initial new car smell of our relationship faded into…just smell.

Early on his attraction to me wasn’t in question, but since I was usually the initiator he didn’t have to make much effort...all he had to do was show up. It was much easier for me and my charming codependency to be the one to get things going and bust out the ambiance in those early days.

I was so afraid of losing him that I would’ve done just about anything to keep him around.

That was all before two kids came along and drained me of every iota of sexiness I had. At that point I needed him to kick the seduction into high gear in order to feel amorous, but since his romantic default back then was “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it,” I was only setting us both up for disappointment.

When I began to voice things like “I don’t feel sexy anymore” or “I feel like I’m drowning all the time,” he took it as rejection. When I’d offer suggestions for how to help me get in the mood, he’d reluctantly comply once or twice then revert back to his norm of waiting on me for direction. Eventually I stopped, because the last thing I want to do is force my partner to be someone he’s not.

And so our sex life — or lack thereof — devolved into both of us feeling unfuckable. Enter ENM (ethical non-monogamy), now known by the preferable term, CNM (consensual non-monogamy).

We decided to open our marriage because, in short, we both deserve to have our needs met. The process certainly wasn’t easy or linear. There was jealousy, miscommunication, and deception on both sides. But as it turns out, we love each other enough as human beings, family, and best friends to have forgiven each other for some pretty big mistakes and managed to figure out what works for us.

Our current arrangement of living together, co-parenting, but not having sex with each other (a.k.a. “platonic nesting partners”) has been steady for the better part of three years.

In the beginning things were happening mostly online. He was involved in a sex-positive community through Tumblr, but once the people who spend their wild and precious lives looking for things to be outraged about (like scouring Disney movies for offensive imagery) got wind of it and complained to the internet Overlords, that got shut down. From there most of that bunch moved over to an app called MeWe, which I would sum up as “Facebook with porn.”

For the first six months or so, I held off on participating in the scene and spent the majority of my time trying to figure out how to reignite my nonexistent sex drive. I overpaid for an online course led by a woman who markets herself as a “vaginal weightlifter,” purchased a few relatively useless sex toys, and proceeded to…ahem...get busy with myself.

The results were mixed.

Being fully convinced by the weight lifter lady that strengthening my vag muscles would reinvigorate my urge to use them for something fun rather than functional, I bought a Kgoal — a device that you can pair to an app on your phone, insert in your vagina, and…how do I put this? Well, you squeeze and relax your muscles to operate what is basically a video game controller. It’s like playing pong on Atari, but with your cooch.

While I eventually strengthened things down there enough to clutch a yoni egg inside me until the world ends (yoni eggs are porous egg-shaped crystals made from jade that Gwyneth’s Goop crowd [I am cool with this Gwyneth reference because it’s neutral and seems accurate, but I am overall protective and careful with calling her out because people put her down for no reason -Jane] swears by to tighten your pelvic floor), I had no interest in developing a UTI as jade eggs are known to do. And honestly, it didn’t get me all that fired up, although it did help with the hiatal hernia I developed from having carried two fetuses with gigantic pumpkin heads.

Eventually I had enough of sitting on the sidelines while my husband had all the fun, so I decided to engage.

The biggest mistake I made right away was

Read more

Well hello, new week,

I realize this intro will seem incongruous (maybe even insensitive) alongside the serious topic of the story below, so forgive that if you could. And here goes: I was out at a delicious Indian dinner last night (at Lore in Brooklyn - and if you want to know the fabulous company I was in, just ask me in the comments and I will happily name-drop away). So none of us were paying attention to the Grammys, nor would I ever think that I would care to pay attention to them anyway, but on the way home, I had texts from other friends that made me actually want to discuss elements of the event with you. We can certainly talk about Cher, Justin Bieber's boxers or what I think might be the most interesting for me to hear – your take on Chappell Roan’s outfit. (Also why do Vogue and other outlets I just searched only show pictures today where her breasts are basically covered with hair or fabric when what I saw last night was not that at all?) So let's talk about all that in the comments if you wouldn't mind.

In Good You-Sure-Are-An-Awesome-Group News: Since I last told you about losing subscribers after I gave info here about protesting ICE and calling senators, more of you shared that around with friends, and we ended up with more subscribers than we started with! Go, Good People, GO! Thank you all for your awesome support and for sticking with me. (Amazingly, I think some of you are the same people who kept passing Sassy magazine along and kept it alive after the wave of cancellations due to our “controversial” content back then! That is so so meaningful to me that we have that history and that we’re still together.)

Speaking of which, I wish on a star every night that I can find one. Often, I don't go into the wish knowing exactly what I'm going to wish for, but when I close my eyes, I see what comes to me in terms of what I want and the only rule is that if I can't actually envision it and feel myself being there in that situation that I'm wishing for, then I have to switch wishes because I have to be able to truly feel and see it to know that it is the right way for me to go. For example, I used to always wish for a baby brother for Charlotte, but I could never quite see it – and I think it was not meant to be. Long explanation.

Anyway: The night before last (not last night because that's when I was preoccupied with Chappell Roan's breasts, as we know), I went to make a wish and I found myself at 83 years old still in contact with all of you and still all helping each other out through all the new things that will be with us then. I thoroughly envisioned it. Thus you are cordially invited to join me here in 20 years and won't that be fun?!? I can't wait to see how all of your lives go also.

I love you all timelessly. Thank you so so much for being here.

Jane

PS You probably know about it already, but a sciencey friend was just talking to me about aphantasia, the syndrome where people cannot create a visual image in their own minds. It's fascinating to me because envisioning is such an important part of my enjoyment of reading and of remembering and, of course, wishing. Tell me more about it if you know anything and just: Let's talk about it all, as we always do!

PPS I haven’t even introduced today’s featured piece, but I think it really speaks for itself. I was reading Substack Notes and saw something from Dana that made me super intrigued to hear more about her story, so I asked her to write this for you and not only do I appreciate it so much, I truly appreciate how she ties it to the egregiousness of the delays in releasing the Epstein files. I hope her story and her opinion matter to you as much as they do to me. I am in awe of her. And I love you, once again!

Sassy TShirts Only Available Here!

By Dana Von Allmen

December, 1979. We awoke early Thursday morning to drive to Hugo, Oklahoma. Billy went to grab a cup of coffee from the pot he had brewed just outside in the adjacent shed. I jumped out of bed and quickly threw on my jeans and a flannel shirt while he was out of the camper.

“Whew, it’s chilly out there this morning. You want something?” he asked, stepping back inside and cradling his cup of coffee.

“No, I’m good,” I said, shaking my head as I sat on the edge of the bed. There was nowhere else to sit in the cramped camper. I wasn’t hungry or thirsty; my stomach was in knots, preoccupied with the day ahead.

Two hours later, we arrived at the Choctaw County Courthouse. I snugged my jacket tighter to shield me from the brisk cold as we crossed the parking lot. We entered the red-brick building and headed to the County Clerk’s window. We had been here before, so we knew the drill.

Billy was thirty-five years old, tall and lanky, with brown hair and a beard; he looked even taller with that straw ten-gallon cowboy hat on his head. He leaned over to speak to the woman in the window.

“Hello, um, we’re here to get married. We were told we had to wait three days after we applied for our marriage license on Monday. Her mother was with us then, and she signed her consent, so everything should be in order.” He slid the document into the metal tray at the bottom of the glass window. A middle-aged woman wearing gold-rimmed designer glasses looked at Billy first, then at me, standing at his side. We locked eyes for a moment, then she shook her head and tightened her jaw as she focused on the marriage license. She’d seen this before.

“Okay, I just need your ID, sir. Then you can have a seat over there.” She motioned to the plastic seats behind us in the waiting area. Billy handed her his driver’s license, and I pulled my birth certificate from my purse. It was the only ID I had at fifteen.

“You can keep that honey; we have a copy. You’ll need two witnesses for the ceremony. Did you bring anyone?”

“No, ma’am, um, we didn’t know we needed to,” Billy responded nervously.

“That’s okay. Carolyn and I can be your witnesses.” She stood and carried the document across the room to review with her supervisor.

A few minutes later, she led us down the hall to an empty courtroom and seated us in the front row of the visitors’ gallery, facing a huge, mahogany judges’ bench. I stared intently at the large, round clock above the desk, watching the second hand as it counted down the minutes until I was married.

The woman reentered the room, followed by her supervisor, who led an older gentleman by the arm to where we were seated. He wore jeans, black cowboy boots, and a blue plaid shirt with pearl buttons. He was bald, with a wispy ring of white hair encircling his head just above his large ears. He carried a worn, distressed leather Bible in his right hand. They walked over to us, and we stood as she introduced him. At that moment, Billy and I realized he was blind. A convenient disability when marrying off child brides.

“Hello, all. This is Mr. Dan Cooke, the minister who will perform your ceremony today. Carolyn and I will be your witnesses. Do you have any questions before we get started?” We both shook our heads. No questions.

“Okay, Dan, you’re on,” she said as she released her grip on his arm. The minister began reciting his marriage spiel. It was short and to the point. Then he spoke my name.

“Dana, do you take this man to be your lawful wedded husband, to have and to hold, ‘til death do you part?”

My head hurt, and my pulse throbbed in my temples.

Jesus, what am I doing here? Am I really going through with this? But I don’t have a choice, I can’t go back to Mom! I just want to run away, but where would I go?

“I do,” I blurted out, before I could change my mind.

“If there is anyone here who objects to this union, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.” I flashed a nervous glance at Carolyn, and our eyes locked again. Then she pursed her lips and looked away.

“By the power vested in me by the State of Oklahoma, I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.” Billy bent over and gave me a quick kiss on the lips, and that was it. I was married.

TO READ WHAT HAPPENS NEXT AND TO SEE PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE OF DANA WITH HER 20-YEARS-OLDER HUSBAND, PLEASE SUBSCRIBE HERE. (THE REVENUE GOES TO DANA AND OTHER WRITERS FOR THEIR GREAT ONGOING WORK.) THANK YOU.

Read more

It’s a common story these days, but a bunch of subscribers unsubscribed when I posted about ICE on Saturday. You’d think I would have expected it, based on way past experience - including the Moral Majority-led boycott of Sassy after my apparently-controversial content (before it was called that) in that publication. Content that was necessary and that I didn’t have one regret about publishing. Like today’s. But I am a little surprised every time things I consider basic human rights and not at all incendiary to say out loud conflict with the agendas of even people I thought were aligned. In other words, I wonder what those people who love the US of A just the way it is right now were doing here in the first place. So back to business: Are you all shutting down tomorrow? What does that mean for your lives and what will you be doing instead? Taking part in an action of some kind? Calling senators? Doing all of that AND sleeping in? Or are you NOT participating in the nationwide shutdown? And why? Let’s talk about it all.

On that proactive note, this horoscope from Bee is unlike any other. She already is unlike any other, as you may know - but if not, check out her story here. She decided to give us 10 moves you can make in February that will not only change your months, but will change the trajectory of your lives and will benefit the world (so certainly worth a try!). I think her 10 Commandments below contain the best advice of all time personally.

Bee wrote me a note on this one (because she knows I don’t know this stuff so she kindly breaks it down) saying, “Honestly, we haven’t had anything like this in my lifetime or yours [Even mine and I’m OLD! -Jane]. When the outer planets change signs, it only happens once per decade or two for some of them, and next month, almost all of them shift. This marks a huge generational shift, what astrologers call a world point, meaning the changes are not just personal….they’re affecting humanity.” She says we all will likely need a lot of support this month. So thank goodness we have each other. And Bee especially - I am always moved by how willing she is to help with your (and my) individual dilemmas in the comments. Just ask.

I love you and I am here for you. Let’s change things. And also: Keep On Truckin’ (as my mom hilariously wrote to me recently - and if you are old or just wise enough to recognize that phrase, let me know!).

Love love,

Jane

Radical T-Shirts Here

By The Zine Witch

Record scratch. That is the feeling of this month, like the needle just skipped across a groove you thought was smooth, leaving everything suddenly jagged and unpredictable. Plans that once felt solid wobble in your hands, conversations take sharp turns you didn’t see coming, and even your own thoughts feel like they’ve been interrupted mid-sentence. It’s a month of jolts, moments that make you pause and say, “Wait, what just happened?” but it’s also a month of revelation, because in that sudden stop, you catch the details you usually miss: the hidden patterns, the subtle shifts, the truths you’ve been skimming over. The chaos isn’t random; it’s calling you to wake up, to notice, to adjust, and maybe even to rewrite the soundtrack you’ve been moving to without questioning. This is not a gentle month, but it is a necessary one, a time to lean into the discomfort, let the record scratch, come together, and take action.

2018. What was going on for you at that time? That is the last time we had a solar eclipse in Aquarius. That period carried a feeling of rupture mixed with awakening. For you that may have felt like friendships that shifted or fell away. Communities that revealed their limits. You may have felt alienated, misunderstood, or suddenly awake to dynamics that had always been there but were no longer tolerable. You may have taken on an entrepreneurial effort. The eclipse then was asking you to choose integrity over acceptance, consciousness over comfort. It was less about becoming something new and more about remembering what you had always known but had not yet been brave enough to live. That’s Aquarius.

“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.” Lester Bangs, the legendary rock critic, says this to fourteen‑year‑old precocious William Miller in the Aquarius rising native Cameron Crowe’s legendary film Almost Famous. William is not chasing fame through his writing. He is chasing truth through experience. Music is his compass in an uncertain world. Music is how he reads people, community, culture, belonging, identity. He doesn’t fit in at school, his mother doesn’t understand him, and he is driven by curiosity: unfiltered, unpolished, fierce in its softness. He wants to be in the middle of it, not performing for the world like the musicians he admires, but witnessing it. He knows the importance of being a fan. Rock stars can’t exist without fans. Our role is just as vital as the artist. We are the ones who perceive the art. We are the electricity they plug their amps into. William Miller wants to find…his tribe. Independent of his family. That is classic Aquarius. You see this trope throughout most of Cameron’s films but it’s this one that captures it so intimately. William Miller. Lloyd Dobbler. Jerry Maguire. These are all characters looking to share their unique talents with their community. Their talents aren’t flashy or wild. Instead, they are connective. They see things from a different perspective and ask good questions. They give good one liners that stick with you. They are the ones who see life differently, authentically, led by a conscience that is nonconformist in its nature. That is the energy the cosmos is activating for you now in Aquarius season: radical vision, unedited perception, and belonging that comes from authentic connection, not conformity.

I’m autistic, and I happen to have a stellium in Aquarius, which gives me a natural lens on this energy. I am William Miller in many ways. Lord knows that’s who I wanted to be as a kid. I didn’t want to be an astronaut or a surgeon. If you asked me at 13 who I wanted to be, I would answer very plainly, “Kurt Loder.” A fellow Aquarius moon. The cool even keeled bridge who allowed the conversation to flow. He always got the best interviews because he just allowed people to be themselves without judgment. Loder was a Taurus which made him patient. But, his Aquarius moon offered support and acceptance along with genuine connection.

Ah, Aquarius energy. Places me either as an outsider or a connector. Aquarius wants to connect. But, the problem is a lot of people disregard what comes out of our mouth because it’s a little too futuristic. They are not ready for truth.

As an Aquarius, I look for what connects rather than what separates. Do you remember the infamous Kurt Loder, Madonna, Courtney Love interview? In the midst of the chaos, Kurt is just trying to find common ground between the two. There’s hella tension, the pure definition of an ego war, the epitome of great 90’s television. Yet he sits in the middle unbothered, cool, calm, looking for connections rather than divisions between the two bleach blond divas. If Kennedy was sitting in that chair, we may have gotten a completely different interview. [Absolutely. And just an annoying interjection here to say that I was there off to the side watching the interview you’re talking about and agree that this was very much the vibe from Kurt. I remember feeling grateful for it. -Jane] Aquarius energy asks you sometimes to play it cool. To choose the path of improv rather than controlling the dialogue. Aquarius rising natives Thurston Moore and Henry Winkler would be nothing without their cool reputations.

Right now, Aquarius energy is stepping into the spotlight in a big way. The eclipses over the next six months are shaking things up, ending what no longer serves, and opening doors to what’s next. Even more, the nodes of fate are moving into Aquarius, which means these themes: authenticity, community, innovation, and challenging the status quo will be with us for the next two years. I’m sharing my perspective because this energy is powerful, and understanding it now can help you navigate it instead of being swept along by it.

What is happening in the cosmos this month is unprecedented. On February 17 we have a solar eclipse in Aquarius, throwing open whatever doors you thought were nailed shut. On March 3 we have a lunar eclipse in Virgo, forcing endings and deep emotional closure in parts of your life that have been on autopilot for too long. Saturn and Neptune meet at zero degrees Aries, a cosmic handshake that says dreams must take structure, and structure must be reimagined. Neptune is exiting Pisces after fourteen years in that watery sign; an era that birthed social media, curated identity, and illusion masquerading as connection. Now the illusion dissolves. Venus conjunct the North Node is amplifying alliance, shared values, and relational innovation, and there is a clear theme this month: voices that have been marginalized, especially women and relational creatives, are gaining traction and shaping culture through community, aesthetics, and collective vision. Look to Iran right now. Women are leading cultural revolution already. This is not a whisper. This is a wave. A fist. A revolution. And while it might be televised, we all know it might be a lot of bullshit. If it’s on CBS. [I love you, Bee. -Jane]

On February 20, Saturn and Neptune will meet in conjunction, a rare alignment that hasn’t happened since 1989. That was the year the Berlin Wall fell and the world seemed to shift overnight, marking a pivotal moment in cultural history. It was a time when narratives around toxic masculinity were being questioned and the underground was flourishing, pushing against the norms and reshaping art, music, and social consciousness. This was also the height of Sassy Magazine, with Jane at the helm, capturing that spirit with fearless energy and unapologetic style, giving voice to the questions and rebellion of the era. The upcoming conjunction carries echoes of that moment, signaling a period where structures are challenged, illusions fall away, and new cultural rhythms are emerging. [I remember so precisely the exhilaration I felt at Sassy at that exact time and can’t wait to experience echos of it again. +Who is getting sick of all my interruptions here? -Jane]

On top of all the wacky energy stirring with the outer planets this month, we also have Mercury retrograde beginning February 25 in Pisces. Mercury retrograde in Pisces calls for slowing down, paying close attention to details, and being especially mindful of how we communicate. The two weeks leading up to the retrograde are called the pre-shadow, and during this time, the energy is already shifting. This is the moment to be extra careful with your words, double-check your plans, and avoid making promises or agreements you aren’t fully ready to commit to. Misunderstandings can easily arise, emails can get lost, and intentions can be misread, especially in emotional or creative contexts.

Mercury retrograde in Pisces favors reflection over action. Take the time to revisit old projects, clarify your intentions, and finish things you started rather than launching new ventures. Be gentle with yourself and others, listen closely, and don’t be surprised if past issues or unresolved conversations resurface for closure. Avoid impulsive decisions, especially those tied to finances, travel, or contracts. Use this period to reassess, review, and refine, trusting that the insights you gain now will give you clearer direction once Mercury goes direct. It’s a time to move with care, to speak thoughtfully, and to honor the inner wisdom that often gets drowned out in the rush of everyday life.

In a world that moves fast and often rewards noise over presence, those who are ahead of their time offer us a rare gift: a glimpse of what is possible when we pause, observe, and connect with something deeper than the chaos around us. Find your Aquarius friends this season for insight. Aquarian Eckhart Tolle reminds us that the future is not only built in grand gestures or external achievements, but in the simple, radical act of living fully in the moment. As he says, “Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the now the primary focus of your life.” Let this be the lens through which you see your own path, and the courage to follow it, even when the world hasn’t quite caught up. We are in the now this month.

In an effort to raise our collective courage in this moment, I thought today I would write down the 10 Commandments of Aquarius season from my lived experience. The energy will stay with us for the next two years so consider this your starter pack in the journey ahead.

Commandment One: See with clarity, not conformity.

The solar eclipse in Aquarius demands that you see yourself and your world without the filters you have built for safety or acceptance. Yoko Ono, a quintessential Aquarius sun, never made art that was meant to be predictable. Her work is exposure, not beauty for comfort. It questions. It laughs. It pokes. It shifts the collective. In her song ‘Yes, I’m a Witch’ she sings, “Each time we don’t say what we wanna say, we’re dying… Each time we’re open to what we see and hear, we’re living.” That is the raw demand of this eclipse: your unfiltered truth matters more than your polish. See what others smooth over. Notice what the world is trying to edit out of the narrative. Your clarity becomes currency in a time when most people are still trading in surface illusion. This is not the time to be neat or tidy or even quiet. This is the time to be a disruptor.

Commandment Two: Speak truth even when inconvenient.

Venus (beauty, women, values) conjunct the North Node (fate) in Aquarius (freedom and rebellion) during the eclipse in Aquarius is highlighting relational truth. It is saying that how we connect, how we share values, and how we speak honestly to one another is no longer optional. Look at Iran right now. Women are leading the revolution. The energy is already moving. It’s going to explode in February.

Henry Rollins embodies the raw, uncompromising essence of Aquarius. He grew up under the shadow of a father whose values clashed violently with his own, a man steeped in sexism and racism. From an early age, Rollins found himself questioning authority, challenging the structures around him, and refusing to accept the world as it was presented. Aquarius energy thrives on independence and originality; it demands authenticity and the courage to carve out one’s own path, even when it means standing alone. Rollins didn’t just reject his father’s worldview, he built a life and career entirely on his own terms, creating a voice that is fiercely individual, socially conscious, and relentlessly unafraid to speak uncomfortable truths. His journey is a testament to what it means to live authentically under the influence of Aquarius: to rebel, to innovate, and to shine light on what others try to ignore.

Yoko Ono’s lines from Yes, I’m a Witch “Each time we don’t say what we wanna say, we’re dying… Each time we’re open to what we see and hear, we’re living” are your mantra for this month. Do not edit yourself for comfort or acceptance. If your voice feels inconvenient, that’s proof it is important. If your words create tension, that is evidence they are doing the work they were meant to do. Speak with integrity. Speak with courage. Speak even if your audience catches up later. That is how communities transform. When you speak truth this month, it lands….not perfectly, not always politely, but it lands, and it reshapes the room. Truth is not an accessory. It is a starting point.

Commandment Three: Chase your dream with an activist mindset.

My really dear friend and fellow Aquarius Moon native, Brody Dalle, is one of those rare people who trusted her calling long before anyone else could understand it. Born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, she began playing guitar and writing music as a young teenager, full of restless energy and a fierce desire to make something of her life that felt true to her spirit. By the time she was eighteen, she had dropped out of school and made the bold decision to leave her home country and move to Los Angeles, not for a conventional life or safety, but to forge her own path in the punk rock world. In Los Angeles she founded The Distillers, pouring everything she had into her music and creating a voice that broke through the overwhelmingly male punk scene with a raw, unfiltered authenticity few expected. Brody’s story isn’t just about talent; it’s about courage. It’s the choice to step into the unknown, to embrace her vision even when it seemed reckless, and to define success on her own terms. In recent years, she has faced some very difficult circumstances involving the family court system and its increasing corruption. There is a false narrative that women automatically receive primary custody in divorces, which is often untrue and is becoming a serious epidemic. As the world begins to catch up to some of the most tragic moments she has endured, Brody has transformed her experience into advocacy, sharing her story of overcoming abuse and navigating the loss of her children to raise awareness about court mandated reunification camps and narcissistic abuse. She inspires me every day with her courage, resilience, and commitment to making a difference.

The planet of commitment, Saturn, the ruler of Aquarius, meets this month with the planet of dreams, Neptune, in a rare conjunction we last saw in 1989. What was happening in your life back then? [Starting Sassy and dealing with the backlash from conservative groups including the one I mentioned in the intro. Oh wait, were you not talking specifically to me? -Jane] The Saturn–Neptune conjunction in Aries is a cosmic signal that your future vision must begin to take shape now. Saturn brings structure, discipline, and reality checks, while Neptune brings imagination, vision, and idealism. Their meeting in Aries, the sign of initiation, is not subtle. It means that the long-term insights you have been developing are ready to move into action and create real outcomes. What is the new dream for the next thirty to forty years? This is the moment to make a master plan, to visualize, to dream within reason, and to restructure your goals. It is a time to lay down a new blueprint while leaving space for surprises, because the future is still very unclear and full of possibility.

Being ahead of your time is not comfortable. Sometimes you’re not believed. Sometimes the support you need isn’t there….yet. I know the feeling of seeing connections that others shrug off. I know the bracing loneliness of early insight. You will be misunderstood at first. You will be ahead of the curve. This month, let that be your strength, not your insecurity. Move with foresight. Act with intention.

Commandment Four: Honor community.

Cameron Crowe, an Aquarius rising, captures human orbit and disarray without sentimentalizing it. His films are a snapshot of communities, friends, outsiders. His lens sees people not as stories to be pretty, but as messy, contradictory, alive. The lunar eclipse in Virgo demands that same approach in your life. Virgo is about discernment, not drama. When our daily routines, systems, and relationships feel messy, that is not chaos for entertainment. It is data. It is your nervous system telling you something must change. Observe the mess. Learn from it. Recalibrate. Do not dress it up in nostalgia or myth; treat it as information.

I have watched people romanticize apocalypse while ignoring the structural hygiene of daily life. This month, don’t fall into that trap. Notice what is breaking. Notice what is draining you. Notice what you have been sweeping under the rug. The lunar eclipse highlights endings not because life is brutal, but because compressed clutter cannot survive in a world that is rapidly rearranging itself. See clearly. Act with precision. Remove what weighs you down.

With what’s ending, community support is absolutely necessary. This is the time to get off of our phones and to tap into your local basement punk show instead. To show and do the work to connect with others on a deeper level. To invest in mutual aid. Connect with your neighbors and build community. Our health will be dependent on it over the next few years.

Commandment Five: Become fine with being misunderstood.

Holly Madison, an Aquarius rising, was widely misunderstood by the public in the early 2000’s. Bimbo. Ice queen. Gold digger. She was misread, miscast, minimized. People labeled her without listening, and she endured narratives that were not her own. It turns out she was autistic and navigating a culture that lacked the vocabulary to understand her aloofness. That is the heartbreak and brilliance of Aquarius energy: others mistake your clarity for coldness. This month’s eclipses are shining a light on the very qualities that have historically been misunderstood.

If the world has ever labeled you “too much” or “too strange,” that is not a flaw. That is your vantage point. This astrology rewards the thinker outside the box, the outsider with vision, the person who watches while others perform. Your strangeness is not a gap in your wiring. It is your access point to what the mainstream has not yet seen. Lean into it. Your clarity is future currency.

Commandment Six: Friendship is sacred, not secondary.

Jennifer Aniston, an Aquarius Sun, embodies loyalty, presence, and the kind of support that sustains people through transition. She’s everyone’s favorite blunt rotation choice. She’s mine. Who’s yours? Tell Jane and I in the comments.

Venus conjunct the North Node this month highlights alliances built on shared values, not convenience. This is a time when friendships are not emotional add‑ons; they are strategic alliances that carry you through transformation. Women and everyone committed to nurturing community are not on the sidelines this month. They are the backbone of cultural rebirth, holding space, protecting vulnerable ideas, and amplifying voices.

I have lived in worlds where friendships were the difference between collapse and survival. This month, do not take your allies for granted. Honor those who see your truth, who stand with you when the world balks, and who help you adapt when chaos knocks. Solidarity is not soft. It is foundation. Treat community as sacred infrastructure. This is what carries you through eras of reinvention.

Commandment Seven: Disruption is purposeful, not random.

Saturn and Neptune meeting at zero degrees Aries means that structures are being rewritten as quickly as old frameworks collapse. Neptune leaving Pisces signals the end of an era of illusion, curated online selfhood, and emotional distortion fueled by profit machines. The world is not breaking down for no reason. It is recalibrating. Your insight, your courage to challenge old norms, your willingness to dismantle systems that no longer serve. This is not chaos. This is strategy in motion.

I have watched industries, ideologies, and cultural assumptions vanish within a few short years, replaced by emergent ways of being. This month demands purpose, not randomness, in disruption. If you have been called to build something that feels unfamiliar, unsettling, or revolutionary, do not shrink. Step forward. The cosmos is aligning with structural change. Purposeful disruption rewrites what’s next.

Commandment Eight: Stay curious rather than controlling.

At the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards, Kurt Loder, an Aquarius Moon, was interviewing Madonna in the New York City twilight when Courtney Love showed up and hijacked the conversation. But, Kurt Loder did not panic. He laughed. That Aquarian coolness. He did not try to control the moment. He saw the power and opportunity in it. He observed, engaged where necessary, and let truth and fireworks emerge. That is the lesson for you this month. Curiosity is your tool, not control. Lunar and solar eclipses push unpredictability. When you insist on domination, you lose perspective. When you stay curious, you see deeper.

Personal experience has shown me that controlling outcomes kills creativity. Observation, patience, and thoughtful response reveal the unseen currents shaping reality. This month, hydrate your curiosity. Let it lead you into spaces others fear. Find commonality in lieu of division. The universe rewards those who watch without fear, act without ego, and listen without rushing to conclusion.

Commandment Nine: Being misunderstood is the cost of insight.

Paris Hilton, a fellow Aquarius, is a striking example of someone whose vision was dismissed at first but later recognized as transformative and powerful. Born February 17 the tail end of Aquarius season, she intuitively understood how to build a personal brand and leverage visibility long before the rise of social media, effectively inventing the blueprint for the modern influencer. Early in her career, she was mocked and ridiculed, labeled “famous for being famous,” and even criticized by her own family for pursuing a path they didn’t understand or approve of. Her ADHD played a role in shaping her unique and curious approach to life and work, giving her a restless energy and heightened intuition that pushed her to follow what felt true to her, even when others doubted her. By trusting her instincts and embracing her individuality, Hilton anticipated cultural shifts that the world would only catch up to years later. What seemed superficial or frivolous at the time was actually a radical insight into visibility, influence, and personal power, proving that being misunderstood is often the mark of someone ahead of their time.

Commandment Ten: Show up fully because you are the revolution.

Henry Rollins, an Aquarius Sun, said, “This is not the time to be dismayed. This is punk rock time. This is what Joe Strummer trained you for.” That line could be the banner for this cosmic moment. The solar eclipse in Aquarius signals a beginning. The lunar eclipse in Virgo signals an ending. Venus conjunct the North Node highlights alliance, community, and shared values. Saturn–Neptune and Neptune leaving Pisces demand that imagination meet reality.

This month is your invitation to stop deferring your power. Speak boldly, act with integrity, protect your community, build what matters, and love with intention. This is not a dress rehearsal. This is the main event. You are the revolution. The future is not out there somewhere. It is being built in every honest word, every courageous choice, and every community grounded in shared truth. Show up fully. Live fiercely. The cosmos is watching, and history is listening.

Best Day to Start a Revolution: February 17th

Best Day to Make a Plan: February 20th

FOR YOUR SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL HOROSCOPE PREDICTIONS FOR THE MONTH, AND TO TALK TO BEE IN THE COMMENTS ABOUT YOUR PREDICTION OR ANYTHING ELSE, PLEASE SIGN UP BELOW. THANK YOU!

Read more