It Happened To Jane: I Went On Liquor Runs For My Therapist While Paying Her For Sessions

Plus an ACTUAL (bonus!) IHTM: “I Lived In The Same ‘Temporary’ 350-Square-Foot Apartment For 22 Years."

Hi hi hi!

Are you all still a little brain-dead from living through the incredible and epic four-part saga that ended here Monday? Me too.

Semi-related (I like to say that everything is related, because it is, and because it allows me to get away with awkward segues): I just noticed how often lately I have been describing my relationships as contentious — including recently with a friend, a coworker, a writer, a relative. When it hit me that I’ve been using that phrase a lot a lot was when I said it yesterday about both Siri and Alexa. (That sounds like a dumb joke line, but it’s just the truth.) That's when I realized the problem is me! That old lesson again about finding the common denominator in your problematic relationships. So my goal is to be less contentious.

HOWEVER, the conversation in the comments of Leslie’s Monday post got me thinking about revenge and retaliation and how we Scorpios handle it versus the more circumspect Taurus Sun + Moon/Cap Rising Triple Earth Sign that perhaps was part of allowing Leslie to wait all those months without telling her husband she knew everything about his affair.

So I figured, pre-less-contentious me, I would go ahead and get off my chest three people that I have been holding grudges against forever and whom I will never get to retaliate against fully (one of them, you'll see, I did get some measure of "closure" with recently). They are, in no particular order:

Lia S****r (I put these **** symbols here instead of spelling out the whole names throughout this list for Charlie's heart health.) Lia had - and I think still has - a skin salon in Manhattan that my old beauty editor Mary Clarke suggested I go to back when I was 24 and we were starting Sassy magazine. On that first visit, Lia promptly ran my credit card twice for the facial I got. And then when she saw that I didn't call her out on it, she continued to do that every time I went, sometimes running the same charge three times. When I caught onto it after years of this and confronted her, she said to come in and she would give a free treatment to me and two friends, so we went to get them and guess what? She said she just needed my credit card to hold the appointment, but she ran it twice that day, too.

I'm sure this is a serious offense with all of the money it added up to, but I'll say it on the witness stand if I need to. It was a shitty thing to do to someone kind of naïve and new to New York and that facial world. (And by the way, if this sounds, and I think it does, like rich people problems, I was making $40,000 a year – and thrilled with that – but even back then that was not enough for luxury living.) It did teach me that when someone is so haphazardly generous - throwing products at you as you walk out the door every time - that they are maybe taking it back from you in another form. It was a lesson in mistrust. Anyway: Hi again, Lia!

My therapist, Carolyn F*******n For the more than 12 years that Dr. F insisted I was not ready to leave her, she did things like have me go and buy her liquor while she was running late for her appointment, and give her daughter an internship and a paid writing assignment. And she would talk about me to her friends and family in ways that got back to me. (“I didn’t know you went to Dr. F*******n? I am going to a book release event at her apartment tonight!” said an innocent bystander coworker.)

I did get a measure of revenge here, though, when a couple of years ago I was looking for a doctor to sign something claiming that they had recently seen someone I knew as a patient and that they were scheduled to meet again. I thought through my mental contacts list of unethical doctors I knew, and I called her and got what I needed. And then I never returned her call about that upcoming appointment after or since.

The last one (for today - no, forevermore if I stick to my new non-contentious policy) is Andrea O******i, the owner of a pilates studio in the East Village. I was a student and champion of her studio, taking every opportunity to recommend it and hype it publicly and help it grow however I could help. Meanwhile, she continually scammed or at least manipulated me (you can judge that for yourself), such as when I took a break for a while and she coaxed me to come back in by writing a “sweet” note saying she would coach me personally, and then, after I paid, never taught me again, swapping in other new instructors (they were great - it was the principle!). Also, when I went to film a segment there as a promotional favor for her for a local TV show, she stepped in as soon as the cameras started rolling, pushed the actual instructor aside and made it look like she was my teacher there, posing dramatically while giving me fake adjustments on the reformer and the cadillac. That’s all not necessarily criminal or egregious, but annoying and uncool to the guy that really did the training.

A.O. also trashed her celebrity clients to me almost every time I went in, as though I were someone who would love to jump on that bandwagon with her (I just stayed quiet especially because some were friends, like Gwyneth). But when anyone from Mos Def to Martha Stewart wanted an appointment with her, she would cancel on whatever client had that slot to take them instead. Bitchy, right?

Soooo… I’ve known I would out these people for years, even decades, holding solidly on to the grudges like the double Scorpio I am, and it now feels a mix of good and bad to have done it. Hmmmm. If you are so inclined, feel free to join me and say everything here about anyone you want to retaliate against. For Jessica, perhaps she would choose the Dutch nudist she accidentally lived with for a while in the early 2000s, or the bad boyfriend who ditched her on Valentine’s Day.

You can also use the comments to thank people who have done great things for you, kind of like that “Unsung Heroes” segment on NPR. I will do that there, too. Also, I promise to be less contentious starting tomorrow.

I adore you. Please enjoy Jessica’s great actual-story below!

- Jane

It Happened To Me: I Lived In The Same ‘Temporary’ 350-Square-Foot Apartment For 22 Years

My mom, my sister Susanna, and baby me, 1977. I loved those Raggedy Ann curtains. I also love my mother's shirt.

By Jessica Max Stein

If someone were to write my biography, 2003 would get its own chapter.

Our whole family was knocked off balance when my mother died on February 15 of that year. My father, my big sister, but probably me most of all. I wasn’t that balanced to begin with. I was 25, a week short of my 26th birthday, and just a couple of years out of college when we lost her.

In those two years after college but before she died, I lived in six different Brooklyn apartments. One was deep in Kensington above a drummer, and the rest were scattered in a circle around Prospect Park.

While living in one place, in Park Slope, my roommate broke into my room, banging the lock open, while I slept. In a Prospect Heights share, the radiator exploded over my books, and on Eastern Parkway, my roommate locked up the living room, lied about the rent (apparently I paid all, not half), and finally took up with a Dutch nudist.

“I tried to hide up in Schenectady with my dad but he was becoming a hoarder. The den was stuffed with boxes of food products with a narrow exit lane between them and precarious towers of newspapers.”

Mom had thought Brooklyn was a bad idea to begin with. She grew up in the Bronx, and resented having to commute into Manhattan, which to her was still the center of the world though she’d lived in Schenectady for over forty years. But I liked the park, I liked the dykes around the neighborhood, I didn’t mind the trains, and I wanted to make it work.

My beloved Brooklyn apartment, the front half. Looking over Prospect Park, early spring 2024.

I was dating a jerk when my mother died. Boys were a stretch for me; I’d been a dyke since puberty and never noticed men until a couple years earlier, when I started wondering what all the fuss was about. Men seemed easier than women, easier to find and draw in, and they didn’t need to process everything. I met this guy at the progressive newspaper where we both spent most of our time. After staying up all night putting the paper to bed, it was easy enough to go to bed with each other.

Technically, he and I were broken up when she died. We had been (sleeping) together for about six months when I asked him what we were doing for Valentine’s Day. Horrified, he said we didn’t have that kind of relationship, so I replied that I guessed we didn’t have any kind of relationship at all. So I dumped him, and then my mother died, and my life yawned with a terrifying cavernous emptiness. So I started going out with him again. At least he was familiar: His weed, his magazines, his Lower East Side apartment, his warm body beside me when I couldn’t sleep.

I needed a place of my own. It beat like a drum as I earned an MFA in writing in May. It beat like a drum as I started spending entire days in Prospect Park to get away from the jerk and from the Dutch guy. I tried to hide up in Schenectady with my dad but he was becoming a hoarder. The den was stuffed with boxes of food products with a narrow exit lane between them, and precarious towers of newspapers.

How had I not noticed how much my mother did around the house, even while she was dying? How had I not realized that someone who had been dying for over a decade would probably actually die? I needed a place of my own.

“I called the jerk to see what he thought, but he couldn’t care less. “It’s kind of small, but I guess I won’t be living here that long,” I said to him.”

I got a job adjuncting where I had just graduated, starting in the fall. So now I had money to get a place, I just had to do it. I knew I could go to a broker, but, I thought they were a ripoff. I knew I wanted to be by the park, but, I couldn’t afford the Slope. I walked all the way around the park until I came out the other side, at the Lincoln Road exit.

My apartment was a haven during the pandemic. I taught over Zoom, but I still dressed up for work. April 2020.

The vibe was different over here. More chill, but also more frenetic: folks hanging out on the corner, playing stereos and smoking. It seemed like somewhere you could relax, somewhere you could hide out. I went to [redacted] Ocean Avenue and rang the super’s doorbell. Frankie was a skinny Dominican guy, even then kind of old for all the heavy physical chores his job required, but this building and the one next door were his domain. He gave me a form to fill out for the landlord. I put down my name, my job, my income.

He showed me a studio, one sunny room about 350 square feet with two windows on the park, a vista of trees. The apartment was rent-stabilized; the rent would only go up a specific percentage every year or two, as decreed by the city’s rent control board. And I could afford the rent: $635 a month. Most importantly, it would be mine, all mine, a place to get away from everyone, to string two thoughts together, to do some writing. I called the jerk to see what he thought, but he couldn’t care less. “It’s kind of small, but I guess I won’t be living here that long,” I said to him.

I moved in on July first. I stayed in that apartment for 22 years. It was time to go when I eventually left. It was right, but it broke my heart.

A picture I took in 2023 of Prospect Park looking particularly magical.

I had plenty of other adventures in 2003: The citywide blackout, just a few weeks after moving in; breaking up with the jerk for good; my first day of teaching; riding my bike into a van on my way home from my first day of teaching, flying off the bike, breaking my collarbone, and riding home in a police car – but it all starts with my mother dying, and me realizing that no one was going to come along and put together my life, that I had to put it together myself, and going out and getting that apartment.