“Women don’t care enough about each other, in my opinion, but it took me years to figure that out.”-Alana Noel Voth

Dear “Marie Calloway,”

            When I was 21, Britney Spears was a Musketeer. I was insecure with a voracious appetite for attention and compliments, particularly, the admiration of older men. I ached to be seen, so I took off my clothes for money. When I started stripping, Tao Lin was ten years old. This was before FB, YouTube. Twitter, Tumblr and I-phones and before the send button became a lethal weapon. This was before celebrity sex tapes, before Americans became obsessed with gawking at the horrific unraveling of the human spirit on 60 inch Plasma TV’s.

    I was 21, and I knew what time it was. Time to use my feminine whiles to obtain the thing I craved.  I explored the shit out of my sexuality and smeared it all over bathroom walls and lesbian magazines. I took my stinking fingers to fisting parties, spied on my girlfriend who’d broken into my house and held a gun to my head and fucked me. I ensnared a slave.  I’d try anything.

Laura Jackson by Ronna

    You know you’re pretty. Thin legs and luscious hair, the pictures of your glossy lips surrounded by fog. I didn’t see “Adrien Brody’s” load on your face. I don’t know “Adrien Brody.”  I don’t know who his girlfriend is either, but I picture her nail polish and wonder if she’s my age and if she poured that nail polish onto her boyfriends balls and grinned as the lacquer dried.

What about him? Does he regret his actions? Does he feel like a slimy, arrogant douchebag? I wonder why he’s off the hook and “Marie Calloway” is under the microscope. I also wonder why, as a woman interested in female subjectivity, she gave men exactly they wanted: a star-fucker, hipster chick with a load in her face. They would jerk off endlessly. Her father might too.

Maybe we shouldn’t give them what they want all the time. Give them our beautiful legs open and lonesome. Let’s give them furious, witty, enraged words and see if it tickles their fancy.

So, you’ve made some mistakes. We are not fucked.  We are women who dig deep and write about our hideous parts with great love.

In my 20’s and 30’s I rooted out the women who saved my ass, and taught me craft. They are: Lorrie Moore, Mary Gaitskill, Michelle Tea, Eileen Myles, Cheryl Strayed, Lidia Yuknavitch, Dylan Landis, Susie Bright, Susan Straight, Sapphire, Mary Karr, Jeanette Winterson, Jennifer Egan, Dorothy Allison and Joan Didion.

Young writer, you are no Dave Eggers. You are no David Foster Wallace, writing to become “Unlonely.” You are not “fucked” like the characters on the pages of a Tao Lin novel. You are a Daily Rumpus, an on-line journal story, a lovely little thing with an angelic face with moxie and nerve. You could be the girl on her back in thigh-high leg warmers on an American Apparel billboard. But, you’re not. You’re a writer. You’ve read some books. You’ve been an escort, and you’ve made a splash on the Internet by the age of 21.  Writers I admire are blogging about you: Stephen Elliott, Roxane Gay, Tao Lin, and Alana Noel Voth.

Stephen Elliott was in my apartment once, handcuffed to a chair, hooded and blindfolded, penetrated by my cock. His head was lowered, almost touching his chest. I could hear him breathing. He seemed happy. I wanted him to be. After red wax dripped down his spine, my friend Ronna arrived. She walked into my house, took pictures and lightly mocked him, then left. I removed a red rag from his mouth. Know what I made him say?

“Tell me I’m a good writer.” Like he had a choice.

“You’re a good writer.” His heart wasn’t in it. I was crushed. He was a wet mouth, saying the words I wanted to hear more than anything, more than oxygen.

“Tell me again.” I wanted more conviction, but the words came out and landed like a damp piece of cardboard in the street.

I wasn’t a good writer. I was in grad school. He attended my senior reading, during which I broke the microphone stand so I had to hold the microphone like I was singing Karaoke while reading a painful, sloppy non-fiction piece about my mom dying of cancer.  

But I was going to be a writer. I swore to do what it takes. Criticism hurt.  I thought I learned how to shoulder rejection in strip clubs, but this flavor of rejection was different. One man rejected two of my stories, but gave me extensive notes. I asked him:

Are you just being polite because I know all of your friends and I have great tits?

Man: you have great tits?

Me: Yeah, my tits make Jenna Jameson’s look like a couple of juju bees.

I emailed him a naked picture of me. It was tasteful and staged and airbrushed, a pin up photo like the ones I put up on my blog.  Sending that picture was begging: Am I good enough?

I’m exactly twice your age. I could be your mother.

Leah and I, NOLA

I’m not. If I were, I’d tell you to not accept an open drink from a stranger and to beware of the send button because you can’t take it back.  I liked your sexual agency and your well-thought out views on subjectivity. Still there was this: You exposed “Adrien Brody” and his girlfriend. That was mean and cowardly.

I’ve learned by making mistakes. I dig for the courage to reveal myself and protect others.  Sometimes I fail. I wrote a story about being drugged with GHB on a paid date. The man who drugged me was black and he had a black name. But the name was too telling so I changed his race and his name, which was weird, because the professional black man who essentially raped me, not a white guy named Rob.

 I changed his name, race and other telling characteristics in order to protect his identity, because the story was about me, and the shame of my secrets. I’ve written many stories about men who paid me to touch them. One asked me to change more about his character on my blog because he was uncomfortable with the details. I changed them.

Writing is treacherous terrain where we dance the line between sparing others and splaying ourselves on the page. We write about our own suffering and shame because we want to connect with our readers. That is how we do it, with our words. We are not fucked. We can begin anew, with the blank screen, lit up and waiting.