It Happened To Me: Jane Pratt Saved My Life

On a random weekday afternoon in 2016, I walked into an unglamorous exercise studio in a nondescript patch of Manhattan, in the dumpy-in-patches East 20s. I’d signed up for something called a Gyrotonic class, which I’d never taken before. Back then, ClassPass was unlimited boutique exercise classes for $100 a month, so I tried everything and anything.

“Caitlin Marnell,” I said, checking in at the desk. 

In New York City, there are two kinds of Pilates studios. The first kind has great lighting, reed fragrance diffusers, brand-new white reformers, and a clientele of Hailey Bieber-looking women in matching co-ord sets. The second kind has arcane-looking equipment, a strange studio layout that occupied with a rent-controlled lease since 1997, old school male instructors in their early sixties who talk in a New Yawk accent, and clients like me, who regularly show up in Amy Winehouse eyeliner and a Pornhub sports bra.

I go to both kinds of studios, but I prefer the latter. They’re never full. This studio, on that day in 2016, was arcane, and full of dusty fake plants. I was going to be the only one in the class. Or was I?

The other client arrived. She was a small woman, like me, and blonde.

“Jane?” I gasped.

“Cat!” 

We burst into laughter. 

“Of course you’re here on a random Wednesday,” I said. “You weirdo.”

“Of course YOU’RE here,” Jane said.

The class started. It was just me and Jane. I’d never done Gyrotonic before. Our instructor was a little old man. Gyrotonic machines pull you, to stretch your spine. By practicing Gyrokinesis, you work to open up places that are tight and weak, with repetition and breath. 

The machines require that you place your feet in stirrups, then spread your legs open repeatedly in circles. You’re really meant to be listening to your body, which I had plenty of time to do. The instructor seemed completely fixated on Jane. The old man walked over to Jane and began his adjustments.

“Breathe,” he was saying. “Hip down. Pelvis tilted.”

“Oh, okay …” Jane kept saying.

These old-school Pilates guys are truly purists, and I don’t suspect anything sinister of them. Still, the whole situation swiftly evoked inappropriate laughter in me. Jane was being somewhat MANHANDLED, all while she had her legs spread. It lasted honestly several full minutes at the top of the class, and then he kept going back to her throughout the hour. He barely touched me at all! I don’t know why I found this so HYSTERICALLY FUNNY, but I did. Like, tears were running down my face, and I kept biting my arm to stop laughing. I made eye contact with Jane only once, and she widened her eyes. Then I started uncontrollably laughing AGAIN. 

When the class was finally over, my abs hurt not from the exercise, but from trying to suppress my outbursts.

“I love you,” I said to Jane, as we departed.

“I love you, too, honey,” Jane said.

Cat + Jane.

**

Hello, all! I am writing this from a HOT patch of sunlight streaming through a window on St. Marks Place, in my rental apartment in the East Village. It’s been 13 years since I began at xoJane as a wild, drug-addicted 28-year-old, fresh off eight formative years in fashion magazines, where I’d risen through the ranks of beauty departments at NYLON, TEEN VOGUE, GLAMOUR and LUCKY before bowing out of my dream life due to drug addiction.

I wasn’t supposed to be on staff at xoJane. I joined as a freelance health writer, attended many staff meetings and submitted pieces before launch, and was genuinely shocked when, one day, I was called into Jane’s office and offered one of two big salaried positions. Along with the managing editor, Emily McCombs, I launched as one of two staff hires. Our photograph ran with Jane in the New York Times. 

The three editors at the launch of xoJane.com: Emily McCombs, Jane and me.

I was very sick at the time. Still …

“You’re going to be our little star,” Jane used to tease me … before any articles ever went viral, or my name ever appeared on Page Six.

She was right. Jane is always right about everything! 

**

When I think of my time at xoJane — just like when I remember that Gyrotonic class — I think of the laughter. I think of staff meetings where no idea was too crazy, where I could say, “I’ve ordered this weird fake blood pouch from eBay. It’s for virgins to put inside themselves to fake like they have a hymen.”

“Great!” Jane would always say. “Get it!”

(I can’t even remember all the crazy things I pitched, only that the answer was always a “yes,” accompanied by loads of laughs. Jane’s main issue with me, incidentally, was always execution — as in, making the great ideas come to life.)

I remember LAUGHING as Jane chased down Howard Stern at SiriusXM studios, imagining her as a teenybopper chasing the REM tour bus back in the ’80s. I remember LAUGHING when I contacted the offices from the Jersey Shore, concerned that MTV star Sammi Sweetheart didn’t own a single piece of knitwear for the winter “Marilyn Monroe in a Fair Isle sweater” George Barris–inspired beach shoot MakeUnder I’d planned.

I even remember LAUGHING when Jane and I knew the job was over — when I showed up at the office after ghosting her and the staff for a week, after returning from a month in treatment.

What a fake hymen looks like (before you put it inside yourself).

**

I love Jane Pratt. I love her like I love contemporary art and Zaha Hadid architecture and traveling Europe and boxer puppies and Goldendoodles. I wouldn’t know exactly how to articulate what it is about her. 

People used to write that Jane enabled me. Yeah, right! She SAVED me. There was no one like her. There was no other job like that job I had, that I could have found and flourished in. Before Jane hired me, in 2011, an extremely bad current was pulling me out to sea. I would have gone to bed on my mattress-raft. The raft would have disappeared out into the dark water. Those Condé Nast years I was so proud of would have been washed away, too. 

Instead, we had a magic year, that changed my life. I got to show off my skill set as a beauty editor and writer. I got to be funny and write; I got to include lots of photos and be visual.

People always say, “How did Cat hold down a job?” But I didn’t. I lasted 12 months. Jane herself pulled the plug on my employment, though as I wrote in my memoir, HOW TO MURDER YOUR LIFE, “There has been speculation about whether I was fired or whether I quit. The truth is, when an addict leaves a job, it really feels like neither.”

The hottest bitch in the game. Jane was the only woman who could get me to Midtown in the morning.

**

It's 2024. I’m vastly humbled, vastly changed. Two of my wild, beloved friends that I used to write about on xoJane died in horrible ways: of pancreatic cancer in 2018, and in an accident in 2020. This one-two punch changed me more than anything. What else? I became a New York Times Bestselling author in 2017. In 2022, I got sober and entered 12-Step recovery. In November 2024, I will have two years clean from absolutely all drugs, which of course includes alcohol.

Right now, I am packing for a November move, negotiating my first mortgage, writing a novel, taking a year-long workshop for that aforementioned novel, writing columns, and working on several other big projects that I have to keep private. But when Jane hit me up that the launch was happening, I was on it. 

I’m so thrilled that she’s launching ANOTHER JANE PRATT THING. Jane and I will never not be in contact. We belong together! As I told her in a text recently, I’d be appalled if she ever launched anything without me.

And I’ll stay contributing. I love books, but there’s nothing like MEDIA. And Jane is the queen of the media carnival. I’m so excited for this new, fun, wild editorial ride.

Love you people so much! 

XO CAT

Cat Marnell: Writer / Editor / reformed party girl. New York Times bestselling author of HOW TO MURDER YOUR LIFE (@simonbooks).