Best Gift Ever!

For Starters:

Here's How Not To Meet The Mayor For The First Time

By: Jane

How Not To Meet Your Mayor:

Don't wash your hair because you washed it the day before and even though you did one yoga class and it looks ridiculous down, putting it up so solves that and saves a lot of time that you can spend on Instagram instead of wasting effort "getting ready.” Pull items out of your closet that you haven't worn in decades and put them all together. Be very happy with that outfit.

Don't realize that you are actually going to hang out with him one on one and assume you will just hear him speaking in a big room full of people. Try to bring your half-drunk wineglass into the room with him and have security stop you and tell you you have to leave it out there on a table so you take one sip first. Remember where it is in case you want to take it on your way out.

As you enter the room, overhear other people in the vestibule saying to each other "whatever you do, don't wear red.” The decades old coat you have chosen to wear for the evening is bright, red and big. Thank god spot a big puffy couch just inside the room as you are ushered in and shove your red coat down into a corner of it between the cushions where hopefully neither he nor anyone else will see it.

Decide to tell him “Thank you,” rather than trying to converse about any policies you know nothing about. Say it twice, emphatically, to which he reacts instantaneously and warmly and then replies “That is so sweet,” and gives your arm a nice squeeze.

Ta da.

Other things happened too since we spoke last, but I'm going to save them for the comments. There is also another new piece right here that just went up and talks about friend divorces. Which had me thinking a lot about mine with Natasha Lyonne years ago, partly obviously because she's been so in the news. So I would love to talk about that and reason it out with you and also talk about yours.

As far as today's featured story goes, I've known Anka since the ‘80s and to paint the picture of the life we were all living then, I'm 95% sure the last time I saw her was at a crazy awards show where I was seated two spots away from Madonna and my date was Courtney from The Dandy Warhols, who I was soooo crushed on. She and I have had some fun. Anka has a Substack now too and everything on it is as good as I think this story is so check it out AFTER you read today's piece. I love you all so so much! Talk to you below!

Now without further ado….

Jane

My Brown Eyes Turned Green!

By Anka Radakovich

I was having a lunch date in Los Angeles, where the sun bathed our faces in warmth, as it does there, and everything seemed perfect. My date looked at me and said “You have the most beautiful green eyes.” I said “Thank you,” and I giggled, and said “But I have dark brown eyes.” And he said “No you don’t silly, you have green eyes.”

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had dark brown eyes. What was he talking about? A WTF moment. I secretly freaked out, and as soon as I got home I looked at my eyes with one of those scary 10X magnifying mirrors that shows everything, and I indeed had green eyes. Why did I not notice this before? What was going on? I immediately called my doctor to ask her why this was happening, and if I am turning into another species, like a reptilian, a green lizard lady.

She laughed, which is always a good sign when your Doctor laughs. She told me “not to worry about it” but to get a blood test in the morning. Omg, was I turning into an Amazonian woman in a 1966 sci-fi movie where I turn green and become a crazed monster who is an insatiable nympho? I took the blood test to find out.

The blood test revealed that I was perfectly healthy, but my cholesterol shot up to an alarming high of 268, and my Doctor immediately put me on 40 mg of Lipitor so the fat in my blood wouldn’t blow out my arteries. The weird thing is that just three months ago I had a blood test and my cholesterol was a perfectly normal 180. I asked the Doctor why my eyes might have suddenly turned green and she told me to “not worry about” it but to go to an eye doctor. Ok, now I’m worried again. Was I going blind?

TO FIND OUT WHAT THE HECK IS HAPPENING TO ANKA’S EYES AND TO SEE PICTURES OF THEM GREEN, please do a nice thing and subscribe here so she can get paid!

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Hello friends and former friends!

My friend Kat and her friend Jennifer made a movie about friendship breakups that may be right up your alley. All the links you need to watch it are below, along with a q and a they did to explain why they wanted to make this movie in the first place. As you might have guessed, it’s personal.

Enjoy and I will see you in the comments to talk about our friend divorces and anything related. I am having a weird moment on that subject right now with a former friend, Natasha Lyonne, who has been trashing me for a couple of decades over a story I published (and understand in retrospect that I shouldn’t have and have publicly apologized for every time it comes up). Anyway, let’s get into all of our stories below, yes? And let’s talk about what you think of the movie!

I adore you all.

Jane

Your favorite shirt! New color!!!

By Jennifer Zahlit and Kat Belinfante

Friend breakups are brutal; no one wants to have a single girls’ night out when your platonic best friend dumps you. So we made a movie (an 82 minute indie dramedy that we co-wrote, Jennifer directed, and Kat starred in) inspired by the heartbreak of our own friend break ups. While making it, we experienced two other friend breakups, but somehow our friendship emerged stronger.

Kat Belinfante: I think my worst breakup was with Chelsea. We always had so much fun together. My other friend Anne and I ordered her a cake with a print out of all the guys she had made out with for her birthday; we would prank strangers at a bar telling them to shake their butts and pretending we had already met before. The tension began when Anne started dating Chelsea’s roommate, and I chose to remain friends with Anne. Chelsea told Anne to date this man but was secretly (not so secretly) in love with him. Weirdly, she was not a Scorpio, but my lack of loyalty was enough for her to cancel the birthday trip she was planning for me that year and just stop talking to me completely. What was yours?

Jennifer Zahlit: Mine was two years ago. After spending many weeks with her and her family over the holidays, I came home to sense that she was avoiding me. When we finally talked, she said that we had been codependent (we lived in two different states and talked maybe once a week), was feeling self-conscious about a career change (what actor doesn’t think about changing careers every month), and felt like a passenger in her own life (this just made me feel sad). It soon became clear that she couldn’t communicate what was happening with her and didn’t want me to be a part of her life anymore. That was obviously devastating, but it was all of the reminders after that got me: the bit we had about that one friend’s Instagram stories, the French restaurant we would always go to together, the street of her old apartment where I always peek into her old place.

Kat: Yeah, honestly my breakup with my ex-boyfriend was much easier, no offense to him – my mom just told me she saw on Facebook he got married, so he’s fine, but you know that’s the risk when you enter a romantic relationship…it might end. I don’t think anyone enters a friendship thinking those are the stakes.

JZ: There’s not really any space or time given to a friend breakup like there is for a romantic breakup (not that I would know…unless ex situationships count?) But there’s something so deeply personal about a friend breakup. The old adage “it’s not you, it’s me” doesn’t apply because it really is about “you.” How do you move forward from that?

KB: Yeah, where’s the Taylor Swift album about replaying every interaction with your former friend wondering if that was the moment things went past repair?

JZ: Well, there is “Bad Blood.”

KB: So true; I love that song. I have such a vivid memory of forcing my old roommate/ our sound guy to listen to it on repeat driving to set for Friend Divorce.

JZ: Ok segue queen! But wow too real, we really went through it! Looking back on the entire experience of making Friend Divorce, would you have done it if you knew what it would entail?

KB: Absolutely not. I both am so grateful we made it, and also think we’ll still be processing the effects of it for years, not unlike our most painful friend breakups.

JZ: Same. Lol. But I don’t regret it at all. I feel like it changed us as people, friends, and artists.

KB: The fact that we each had a friend breakup while making the film, had the big personnel shakeups we did, went into debt, not to mention but obviously to mention, the death of my dad, and stayed friends is nothing short of a miracle. I think in a lot of ways making this film broke us - not in just a shattering way, which did happen, but it also broke us open. It was one of the hardest things I think we’ll ever do, and there was so much heartache along the way (with friends, with grief, with rejection after rejection from the festivals), but I’m really proud of us for never giving up on it.

JZ: The rejection…sigh. Yes, lots of heartache for sure, but also a lot of highs. I’ll never forget getting an email from one of our creative heros, encouraging us to keep going or the wrap party where we all jumped in the ocean, giddy with celebration and disbelief at making it through. But ultimately, I think we made it through because of our communication. We had a lot of #hardconversations but I feel like we always genuinely wanted to know how the other was feeling and what we could do to support. Even under the weight of debt, of figuring out every new stage, of doing this all on our own, we kept talking.

KB: Yeah, I remember one hard conversation we had on set, where you basically told me to step up as “number one on the call sheet.”

JZ: Gently checked in…

KB: I mean you were right…I was just so nervous to be starring in the film and having flashbacks of a webseries I co-created a few years earlier (a comedian’s rite of passage) where I felt like I was wearing too many different hats, and I felt like it took away from my acting. I really thought about what you said and showed up in a completely different way the next day, which was my character’s big blowout scene with her best friend on set. That day showed me that I could step up in a leadership capacity while still having fun with my friends on set. That and my “fake wedding” were definitely my favorite days because we got to have so many of our friends on set and create all of these micro moments that helped bring the story to life. Plus, I loved seeing myself in a wedding dress (it was a $69 white dress from Lulus but I’ll take it!).

JZ: I’ve been thinking a lot about how scrappy we were in making the film. We called in all of our favors (think getting a location from a friend of a friend of Kat’s fellow yoga teachers, casting two gals that I used to babysit since they were three, etc) to make this happen. We willed it into existence somehow. All of our friends chipped in, whether it was through contributing to our Seed & Spark, getting us free Covid tests from the library, lending us their homes, listening to our five minute voice memo meltdowns…the list goes on. In that way, the film became a manifestation of all of the love and care we have poured into our community that came back to us tenfold. We emailed everyone in the industry we could find an email address for during pre-production, casting, post-production – I’m kind of in awe of how brave we were. But I think it came back to the core of the film; we really believed in the story and could see that it always sparked a conversation with people when we brought it up.

KB: Friend breakups are so brutal. But through this process, we’ve realized it’s a nearly universal experience, and it’s reinforced why we still place such a high value on our friendships in our lives. Even if we decided that neither of us would get “friend married,” friendships will always be a top priority for us.

JZ: Ditto. Love you girlina.

XO

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I had the worst nightmare last night (I know who cares, but hold on because you’re involved). I was sitting on a white couch in the bedroom of the worst person we can think of (you know who I mean - he lives in a House the same color as his dumb couch). That person was talking at me and then leaned over and started kissing me. Thank god my legs worked and I could run out of the room, though the door was heavy. After I woke up, I realized what sparked that horror: I announced yesterday that I had reached an epiphany about starting a print version of Sassy magazine again. I have never wanted to for so many reasons and all of a sudden I saw all the reasons to do it. So we can.

BUT in announcing this, I made a (true) comment about feeling like I’m in some kind of heyday - and that everything seems optimistic and hopeful and easy. I asked if any of you could relate. It’s the sweetest thing how many of you are still responding to that note. But a few smart people made the point that the world is shit right now and that in 2026, no, they do not feel any of those happy vibes. I get that and I think the guilt of not acknowledging that infiltrated my dream - that I had somehow pleased and supported and aligned myself with the gross dude by saying I was so optimistic right now. So I promise you all that I am not letting him off the hook for any of his atrocities and I now know what my real hell feels like. Anyway, I will be writing more here about the process of doing Sassy again and will include you in every step that you want to be part of.

Next up: Whenever I do any public speaking (I am doing three appearances today, because I have been saying yes to everything - which sounded like a good idea at the time and is about to come to an abrupt halt because panic attacks are so derailing), I like the Q&A part best. That’s because I know that at least one person wants to hear what I’m saying. So I’m using the same method with this deep investigative “story” you requested about our time with America’s Next Top Model. I'm not going to try to tell you that this is the most astounding exclusive world-changing scoop I've ever published (because that was last week).

If you’re new here, today’s piece is a little bit of a diversion from the norm (the abnorm norm). I’ll be back in two days with our regularly scheduled programming like your beloved It Happened To Mes and all those extremely messy stories you (and I) love so much. So enough preamble, and here goes, by popular demand…

Also: I love you no matter what.

Jane

PS Here's another great thing: I am extending this giveaway offer because so many of you used it, so if you become a subscriber today, a month of access to all of our best stories ever and all of those coming up in the next month are yours for free free and free! Take advantage of me and that here!

Support Abortion RIghts This Way

By Jane Pratt (but all credit to Eric Nicholson)

Way back in the now-trendy then-vaguely-boring ‘90s-’2000s, shortly after I started Jane magazine, my fashion editor and handful-of-favorite-people person Eric Nicholson walked into my relatively-fancy-in-retrospect – though I didn't appreciate any of it at the time - office to tell me he had been approached about being a judge on some show called America’s Next Top Model with Tyra Banks. It was between him and an editor from Glamour magazine, but they wanted Eric.

Of course I immediately said yes. Because I was in the middle of an intense editing session with another editor over these lost Courtney Love interview tapes that never did materialize, but also because being the publishing partner for ANTM meant that on a (minor) network show every week there would be mention of our still fairly new magazine - thus exposure to a broader audience. Equals more readers. Equals more ads. Etc in the simple days before algorithms.

The trade-off of having to orchestrate and publish a photo shoot with whoever became “America’s Next Top Model” was not an ideal arrangement, because editors like to pick – usually along with a photographer – the models they use in their valuable expensive print pages. They want to carefully choose the models, photographers, clothes, messages, etc., that will do the most for their readers and secondarily advertisers. (Though sometimes the advertiser was the first priority – especially if you got monthly notes like I and many of us did from people like our beloved Giorgio Armani, who went through each new issue and counted the number of editorial credits we gave to Armani versus Versace compared to the advertising pages that both ran in that issue. But that’s another thing.)

Okay, back to Tyra. So Eric did the show while still working his regular job at Jane where I would see him every day and he would come in to my office with stories after taping ANTM. I was so busy with the magazine and I’ve still never had time to watch the show, but over the years people would mention to me that they had seen Jane magazine featured. A lot of times that would be the first thing people would say about the magazine when they approached me. Mission accomplished.

When all the interest in Tyra and ANTM sparked up again - starting with that podcast “Curse of America’s Next Top Model” which I loved because the host was so sassy, and then of course the Netflix documentary that everybody seems to have watched and then the E! series on the same exact topic, which got less attention because it came out last, I guess, but did feature Janice calling Tyra a bitch twice - of course I texted Eric about all of this.

Eric had been asked multiple times by the producers of the E! series to be featured on there. But he’s classy and said no. He was raised in the fashion business at a different time (as everyone now gets from the scenes in Love Story where Carolyn aligns those heels in the Calvin showroom maybe a dozen times in the first episode). This was the same era where I was, as Jane Editor-In-Chief, made to fire someone because she insisted on wearing the wrong lipstick in meetings with our boss. It wasn’t my call, but after the third infraction, even I knew I had to follow through. In any case, Eric has standards, holds his head up high and only does publicity, and work, that he’s proud of. And it’s good work.

[When I was searching for pictures of me at Jane magazine, two things from that era kept coming up: This sort of goofy picture above of me and Mike D attending an event for Food Bank of New York, and this interview from right before I started Jane, which there is zero reason to watch unless you want to.]

Anyway, finally, here’s Eric:

It’s fascinating, but not at all surprising, the amount of attention the show has been getting. I feel for Shandi, and remember her being your favorite. [She was and I was always pushing Eric to make her the winner.]

I truly was focused on my career being a fashion editor at Jane and was happy to do the show to help promote the magazine AND hopefully inject some of the spirit of Jane into the show. Like when they were I remember pushing back on criticism of Yoanna’s body not being thin enough or when some said Shandi was too thin. I had absolutely no contact with any of the models other than the weekly judging. ZERO insight into what was happening at the shoots or the models apartment, etc.

I think the backlash is a testament to how far the culture has grown and that what you/we were doing at Jane did make a difference. [He knows just what to say.]

Though I was a fashion editor at Jane when I appeared on the show for 12 episodes, I approached judging America’s Next Top Model through the lens of choosing the best model overall. After all, it was called America’s Next Top Model, not Jane’s Next Top Model. I understood the assignment.

That said, I was also representing Jane — the magazine and the brand — so I inevitably judged through that perspective as well.

.

Here is my take on some of the standout Cycle 2 Contestants:

Yoanna

She was somewhat of an underdog, and I’ve always loved an underdog — and always will. Her face was striking in a classical way: impossibly symmetrical, with large, wide-set eyes and full lips. Her short, choppy hair felt fresh and fashion-forward.

Her face reminded me of a young Carol Alt — whom, coincidentally, I had the privilege of styling for the launch of xoJane. [Carol was my favorite model when I was a teenager too, and I was so excited we got to photograph her for the xoJane launch.]

Nigel said that Yoanna was flat-chested and looked like a boy, or had a boyish body. I remember saying — though it was edited out — that she was the only contestant I could realistically see being cast in a Marc Jacobs show. At the time, Marc was the hottest designer in the industry and represented a somewhat new take on beauty. He championed models with distinct personalities and often cast his friends in campaigns — Sofia Coppola, Winona Ryder, Lil’ Kim, Kim Gordon (young, old, short, tall, etc).

Yoanna radiated a genuine love of fashion and style. She had that extra special something — a personality that elevated her beyond just a pretty face.

Xiomara

During one judging panel, I said that Xiomara was the only model there who could walk in a Jean Paul Gaultier show — and I still stand by that. She had the height and physical presence of a traditional model, but with an interesting, powerful edge. Gaultier is known for casting memorable, sometimes unconventional faces, and that’s where I saw Xiomara fitting into the fashion world.

This will definitely date me, but about a year after the show ended, I was at the Limelight club in NYC and Xiomara was bartending. She leapt over the bar to give me a huge hug. If you remember, she wore bright blue contact lenses on the show — way over-the-top, obviously fake, and they made her look… bizarre (though, again, very Gaultier).

She told me she had worn them to the auditions, but once filming began, she hadn’t planned on continuing to wear them. According to her, producers insisted she keep them in or risk immediate elimination. How manipulative is that?

I’m sure each contestant has her own story about manipulation — as we saw highlighted in the Netflix special — and I genuinely feel for them. I’m sensitive — Jane can attest to that — and every time a girl was sent home, it saddened me.

Judges

The first judging session went something like this:

A producer tells me which chair is mine behind the judging desk. The lineup is: Nigel, Tyra, me, Janice.

I’m five-foot-six. They are tall. Very tall. Especially in wigs and heels.

I’m chronically early, so of course I’m the first one seated. Janice sits down next, takes one look at me, and announces: “You’re SHORT. Sit up straight! Don’t slump. Get a pillow!”

So I get a pillow. It helps.

Tyra arrives. We clap, we gush, she sits down. She immediately clocks my pillow and asks for one too. Then Nigel and Janice ask for pillows. Before I know it, I’m balancing on three pillows.

That’s how judging began.

Tyra, Janice and Nigel are exactly as striking in person as you’d imagine. Cameras don’t exaggerate them — if anything, they understate.

Tyra

The fashion nerd in me was constantly debating whether to ask her about her true high-fashion era — pre–Sports Illustrated, pre–Victoria’s Secret bombshell mythology.

I was dying to ask:

• What was Karl Lagerfeld really like?

• Was Naomi Campbell actually awful to you?

• Is it true Tina Turner recommended you to Azzedine Alaïa?

• What Alaïa do you still own?

But Tyra was always impeccably professional with me — warm, lighthearted. Cordial. I never quite felt the opening to dive into fashion-history interrogation mode. That may have been her boundary… or just my hesitation.

Nigel

Nigel modeled before becoming a “noted” fashion photographer. I’ll admit — I’d never heard of him, so I didn’t arrive with burning questions. [I remember thinking this was hilarious in the same way that they get Bachelorette contestants to squeal in delight about a country music performer they could not possibly have heard of suddenly joining their date - or Abbie Lee Miller introducing a ‘world-famous’ guest choreographer. I had never heard of Nigel Barker either and had worked in magazines for decades at that point. No offense.]

He was always kind to me, though [says Eric, more diplomatically than me]. And whenever I ran into him and his wife, Crissy, they were genuinely lovely.

Janice

Janice is the one I became closest to.

Her stories are endless — and she tells them freely. You don’t have to ask. But of course, I asked anyway.

“What was Diana Vreeland like?”

Janice told me Vreeland once warned her, “Janice, don’t ever MAR yourself with ink,” when she was considering a tattoo.

“Weren’t you terrified posing with a cheetah for Peter Beard?”

“Did you really fuck Peter Beard?”

“Tell me everything about Irving Penn. And Richard Avedon.”

Four months with Janice could fill a book. One day, maybe. For now, I’ll keep it close.

On the very first day of judging she told me, “Someday you’re going to be a CEO — so act like it. Let me be the bitchy one.”

Honestly? That might have been the most valuable critique I received all season.

I do think Eric was too sensitive for what the show actually was. Don’t get me wrong, he has the snobby seemingly-insensitive fashion side that I adore, but thank God he didn't know about what was all really going on behind the scenes because you could see in his eyes that he was upset even whenever a girl simply got cut. So I can only imagine if he had known what was going on with Shandi for example (filming and exploiting her drunken sex with someone not her boyfriend), he wouldn't have been able to take it. He's a good person. “I feel terrible for Shandi,” he still says.

After talking to me about ANTM - and other gossip we fit in, of course - Eric texted me the post below with this note: “Someone sent me this from Reddit about my judging and I hope this is how I came across on the show and it reminds me that the best advice I could give to anyone who’s trying to succeed at work is super simple ‘don’t be late.’ I tell this to all the new assistants I work with to this day.”

I had my own snobby editor side and I was somewhat bummed when we actually did have to run a feature using the contest winner, not because of Yoanna but because it felt like a promotional shoot more than an editorial choice (as I already whined about above). But of course we were going to follow through. We did an accessories story, which can be a little more utilitarian and less fantastical and aspirational, in the front of the book so that we could run ads adjacent to it and not call as much attention to its aesthetics. We gave it six pages which I think was honorable of us because we could’ve tried to run it at 4 or even 2. The story wasn't something that I promoted on the cover because it would not have helped sales (now with all the notoriety of ANTM maybe, but not then). So it just kind of flew under the radar, as I hoped it would, and that was that and this is what it looked like:

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One of my editors called me after watching Tyra’s interviews on the E! series, saying Tyra reminded her of ME. Wtf?! But here is where I do relate to the situations Tyra was in:

Sometimes you get into a job where you are hosting a show that is exploiting people. This happened to me with my talk show Jane that ran on Fox in the 90s. Your name is on it but you feel like you have no control over who the guests are or how they are prepped, etc etc - especially when it is live TV like my show was most days. I hosted shows where people would stand up and announce that they were pregnant to their mothers or start stripping in front of their dads. But here’s what you can do in that situation: Quit. Which Tyra didn’t do.

Another scenario that has happened to me too: Being made to compromise and release content that is not what you want to be promoting but feeling like you shouldn’t quit because of your staff, who may lose their jobs if you go (this happened to me at both Sassy and Jane magazines, where I stayed longer than I would have because I wanted everyone to keep jobs that I had hired them into). But in Tyra’s case, she fired her whole staff anyway when the show was at that compromised crossroads. So it is hard to relate to what she did or why.

I would love for her to come back with something actually altruistic. That’s my goal for Tyra. I have hope. That doesn’t mean we can’t trash her or anything else about ANTM in the comments because that’s fun.

AND one little addendum that came up when I was telling the Jane staff that I was going to be posting this:

From former Jane magazine editor Josh Lyons (who incidentally is one of at least three former employees to include scenes in their memoirs where they were on drugs in meetings with me and I didn’t know it and thought that I must have been off that day because we weren’t connecting. His awesome book with that in it is Pill Head.):

If you need any additional ANTM Jane content, I was so obsessed with the first season that I somehow convinced you to let me fly to Albuquerque where me and Elyse (3rd runner-up) hosted America’s Next Top Med Student (cuz Elyse was in med school and they kept talking about it on the show) and she judged a bunch of women on how well they could draw my blood.

I also helped write Miss J’s book. And one more ANTM story: Around 2004/2005 I was at a gay bar and got hit on by a guy who told me he’d been a photographer on the currently-airing cycle. We got super wasted and started trading deep dark secrets and his last one right before I bolted was something along the lines of “I only really like young boys. I’ll never act on it because I know how wrong it is, but I can’t help it.” His episode aired maybe a month or two later. Oh and one last random detail and then I swear I’ll stop blowing up your phone: Elyse was dating/living with a member of The Shins at the time, which made the whole experience even more early aughts.

Thanks for the perfect ending, Josh! I forgive you for doing drugs in meetings with me AND taking advantage of our expense accounts for your own follies (which was pretty close to Jane’s Mission Statement anyway). Thanks to the greatest crew of editors, thanks to Yoanna and everyone else involved in that crazy magazine and that crazy ANTM chapter. Josh’s visual proof below…

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For now, I am going to add an extra month on to every paid subscription. (I am also in a really good mood for OTHER reasons, so you all can reap the benefits of my happy-drunk largesse.) I will do this after the weekend so if you are not already a paid subscriber and sign up to subscribe today or tomorrow or Friday or Saturday or even Sunday (April 19 - my wonderful brother Ben’s birthday!), you will get that extra free month on top of whatever subscription tier you choose. (Even for Founding Member/Lifetime subscribers, I will figure out a way to produce an after-life accessible version just for you, in both Heaven and Hell editions - preorder whichever you need in the comments so I can plan accordingly.) And if you were hoping to get out of reading more from me and have been just waiting for your subscription to lapse, then sorry again and you have to suffer through a whole extra month of emails alerting you to stories from me and this unusual crew.

Those of you who have been around AJPT for a while already know today's writer from her take-your-breath-away punch-in-the-gut comments on most every story. I had gathered from these comments that Gina had a bigger story of her own to tell and I felt lucky when she said she wanted to tell it to you here. I love love Gina. She is not afraid to fight for anything she cares about. Which is most things. For this reason, she has often been controversial in the comments (which you know I REALLY love). The one-of-a-kind experience she writes about here will probably make it even clearer why she is the lovable fearless warrior and champion she always is. Go, Gina, go all the way.

As you have probably already surmised from the subject line, this story is intense. So the next promise I will make in this span of three paragraphs is that the feature I send out later this week will be goofy and happy-go-lucky and gossipy and superficial. Yay! And you can just wait for that if you prefer.

If you do choose to read today’s story, first you may want to brace yourselves or take a gummy or do whatever ritual you do before entering into something that might bring up strong reactions. (Speaking of which, if you are ever going into a situation with people you want to protect yourself from, this can help: Physically mimic the motions of putting on a hazmat suit and zipping it all the way up to the top just before entering. That has reduced or eliminated my stress many times - better than a cortisol-reducing supplement I also take. Plus I paid my therapist for it and it’s yours free! If you try it, let me know if it works for you also.)

Then feel free to say something nice and supportive to Gina in the comments, because going through what she has been through is a lot and putting it out there for all of us to read and see is also a lot. I can only imagine. Also, ask her questions! I had a ton of them and still have more. I know the medical aspects of this are complicated and that you may have your own knowledge about and opinions on all of them, which we would also love to hear. As I've said, Gina can take it all on and more! As can I!

OK, that was supposed to be a short intro today for Charlie’s and Andy's sakes and it didn't end up to be. Sorry again, guys!

Sincerely (and I mean that),

Jane

PS Truly last chance to vote for all the controversial books you’re even mildly interested in reading. Lena and Lindy are currently in the lead, but can Keith or Vladimir can catch up?? Next week, I will make the announcement that we will all have to live with, so have your say now!

The Cutest Shirt Ever In The Land

By: Eugenia Mancini Horan

On the day of my appointment, I put on a long skirt, long-sleeve shirt, and jacket in the August heat to cover my frail frame and cancer accessories. We set off, my heart pounding with excitement and tachycardia.

Dressed up? In my head, I thought I looked amazing.

My husband, my mother and I arrived at the cancer center. I could feel eyes on me, but I didn’t let myself think about it. I remembered how I’d gone through that same door just two and a half months earlier. Even though I was even worse now, I was one of the only people smiling.

I wasn’t asking them for help; not this time. Today I knew how to help myself. I just needed a signature. Easy. How could my doctor deny me this treatment that could save my life? That was too ridiculous to waste energy on.

Just like at my first visit, I was completely unaware of how unbelievably sick I looked. I was just over the moon that all the fighting had paid off. I held on. I didn’t give up. I had never believed I was too far gone to get here. I said this woman would fix it, and here I was to be fixed.

But I obviously wasn’t thinking clearly. My Oncologist had no idea that I had obsessively thought about this exact moment since July thirtieth. Imagining this triumph had gotten me through the darkest moments in the ICU, the scariest moments in hospice, and my late-night terrors at home. But she had no idea. This wasn’t the winning of an incredible battle against time, power, and my own body—not to her.

I had turned her into my salvation because, honestly, there was nowhere else to go. I believed the fact that she knew me would save me. She knew I was stubborn, that I was a fighter, and that I wanted to get well. I knew her to be fair, even-tempered, and thorough. She wouldn’t turn me away and sentence me to death. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

I was called back to see her, and within three minutes, all these attributes I recalled seemed the opposite of the doctor that I saw looking at me. I saw it immediately. She did not believe that treatment would save me. She didn’t believe anything could save me.

She only believed my cancer math—those stupid numbers.

I hoped she would see what I had going for me: My mind was on, it was firing, and I was determined to live.

She wasn’t able to see past my frail, useless body.

I used the most important muscles I had—those that enabled me to speak. I plead my case. I outlined and framed my argument, serious as a sermon. I think she was quite surprised to find out I had a mission. It was a word that had never passed between us before. I also think she saw the uncertainty on the faces of my husband Seth and my mother. She spoke to them, and I flinched as she saw the shrugs and uncertainty.

“God damn it,” I thought. “Are they trying to get me killed?”

I didn’t have the luxury of not betting it all. I wouldn’t hear of anything else or look at any other option; I had found my person. I intrinsically knew it was treatment or death, so I’d picked my side and never wavered. There was no other side. I was too sick for chemo. Even if I had been willing to take it, it would certainly have killed me. I had outlived a few death forecasts in order to sit in this room.

She looked at me, her face blank, as if she wanted it to seem like she was considering it.

She said, “No.” …and continued to.

For over thirty minutes we volleyed. Not only did she refuse, but she actively tried to dissuade me from this drug. But I could not be swayed. I was fueled by adrenalin. I had never considered the possibility that she might say no, because it was so obviously black-and-white. She was a doctor. Their duty is to at least attempt to save lives—to do no harm. This seemed like the ultimate harm. I was present and I was fighting. How could it be “too late?” How could I be “too far gone” if I’d gotten my ass into that office to beg?

I didn’t buy her stance that it could be considered cruel to prescribe it to me, likely because it was bullshit. If I died from pneumonitis or colitis, then so be it. But I would be damned if I died from neglect, waiting for cancer to shut down my lungs, from not being brave enough to try… or from her not being brave enough to try.

I had nothing to lose. I started pleading and could not stop. I talked about my deepest desires. I said that I wasn’t done with my life, that I could do this; that I would fight harder, longer, relentlessly. I would live. I didn’t want to leave Seth. I didn’t want to leave my dogs. I couldn’t bear the thought of my mother and father losing their child. How could she stand it? How could she sentence me to death? I didn’t stop. I pulled away from Seth and my mother, both of whom were trying to catch the snot running from my nose. I laid myself bare. I was livid. The past seven months flashed before me, and the memories of my mistreatment lit me on fire. I would not end like this.

I was called back to see her, and within three minutes, all these attributes I recalled seemed the opposite of the doctor that I saw looking at me. I saw it immediately. She did not believe that treatment would save me. She didn’t believe anything could save me.

I was two weeks past my two weeks to live. I was already on borrowed time. Who was she to just say no? I was asking her to prescribe it, not to pay for it herself. I wasn’t asking for heroin or crack. I wasn’t asking for cash or prizes. I was asking for a chance—just ONE chance—to keep my life. I was asking her to do her job, not for her opinion.

I called once again on my philosophical training to assess the situation. How do I best argue for my life? I knew her stance was based, if not on personal bias, then most certainly on the bias of the medical system. If there was a crack in her agreement with the system, I might still have a shot. I could not convince her I would survive. That had been my error. Asking her to believe in me had been a nearly fatal mistake.

So I tried to convince her of the death I thought I deserved.

TO READ THE REST OF GINA’S STORY AND TO SEE PICTURES OF HER NOW, PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND THANK YOU SO MUCH.

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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.

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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!

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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!!

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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

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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.

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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.

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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]

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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

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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!