muffy bolding

The Lie:

The Truth:

Sometimes grass don’t grow, wind don’t blow, and the sky ain’t blue.

1) Are you currently in a serious relationship?

I am currently in a hilarious relationship.

2) What was your dream growing up?

Gosh, first and foremost, as the oldest girl in a family of nine kids, I suppose it was to not have to take care of someone else’s huge brood of wild Comanche children every day! And to live in England! And to be a writer! And to be a Medievalist! And to be a Medievalist writer in England! Oh, and to be one of those fab tour girls in a pea coat and knee socks on The Storybook Canal Boats at Disneyland who always sound like they have a stuffy nose as they tell you all about the miniature park where Peter Pan taught Wendy to fly! I may still do that yet. My dreams are still the same as when I was 5.

3) What talent do you wish you had?

I feel so ordinary for giving this answer, but it’s the truth: I wish I could just sit my fatass down and beautifully play the piano. Every once in a great while I am able do it in my dreams and it thrills me to my very core! If I could play my favorite piece of classical music on the piano — Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition — I would be one happy dame.

4) If I bought you a drink what would it be?

Just a club soda with extra lime for me, please — but I’d still make out with you if you caught my fancy. In polite company, I would most likely be referred to as a woman of questionable moral fiber. In impolite company (which is the kind I prefer to keep), I’d just call myself a tart, a trollop, a shitkicker, and a thief and be done with it.

5) Favorite vegetable?

Aside from those bitter bastard lima beans (which are shit), I adore all vegetables — they make up about 90% of my total diet and always have. But if I must choose, it’s a toss-up between corn-on-the-cob and brussel sprouts.

6) What was the last book you read?

Oh, Christ, I am always at any given time reading about ten books. The one I have next to me is a really good one about writing for sitcoms. I am also delightfully waltzing my way through, “The Crusades” by Zoe Oldenbourg yet one more time, as well as “Lucky Jim” by Kingsley Amis, “Among the Porcupines” by Carol Matthau, “This Book is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All” by Marilyn Johnson, and waiting in the wings is (wait for it…) “The Pale King” by David Foster Wallace, who, along with Ted Hughes, is the greatest writer I have ever banged around with in my dreams.

7) What zodiac sign are you?

Oh, lord, isn’t it obvious? I am a Leo.

8) Any Tattoos and/or Piercings? Explain where.

No tattoos –- yet. Husband-raised-in-the-upper-middle-class is patently against me getting one, too — despite the fact that I have several choice ideas for what design I would have inked upon my arm. Suffice it to say, when it comes to tattoos, I am definitely a traditionalist and a literary whore — and that would without a doubt be reflected in any image I would have permanently affixed to my body.

9) Worst Habit?

Ah, just like every other worthless, piece-o’-shit writer on the godforsaken planet: perfectionism and procrastination. I also stack books on every available surface in the house. When my former husband and my current husband get together, they gang up on me about what they call “The Stacks.” I just belly laugh and remind them both that I am the greatest piece of ass they have ever had and that their petty annoyance over a few scattered piles of bound and published material pales mightily in comparison to my profound ability to suck the chrome off a trailer hitch. This always shuts their cakeholes immediately.

10) If you saw me walking down the street would you offer me a ride?

Speaking of the suck — this question sucks and serves merely as filler. Hit me with something more interesting and I’ll consider answering you. Until then, go fuck yourself.

11) What is your favorite sport?

To watch on television: Women’s gymnastics.
To watch live: Baseball at Dodger Stadium with my two boys, one on either side of me, and a Dodger dog clutched in my meathooks with great reverence and satisfaction.
To play: Squat-hop-in-the-asparagus-patch.

12) Do you have a Negative or Optimistic attitude?

Infernally, annoyingly, appallingly optimistic.

13) What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me?

Gouge your left eye out with my thumb, you little freak, I shit you not.

14) Worst thing to ever happen to you?

Oh, god, I just cannot answer “the death of my little sister a few years ago” one more fucking time. I’m getting sick of it, you’re getting sick of it, and my fabulous sister –- wherever she may be –- is probably getting sick of it, as well. If she were here, she’d roll her eyes and SO tell me to get over my bad self and just get on with it. She was awesome that way. So, I am going to say, carelessly leaving my mother’s treasured 24 carat antique gold pen at a restaurant in Los Gatos when I was 10. We were traveling and stopped to get something to eat and she hesitantly gave it to me so I could draw on my paper placemat to pass the time until my spaghetti arrived — with the admonishment, “Okay, you can use my gold pen, but whatever you do, do not forget to give it back to me before we leave. “ Of course, I forgot. We had gone about an hour down the freeway before we realized my transgression, and so much did she love and treasure that pen, that we drove all the way back to retrieve it. Of course, when we got there, no one had any idea what happened to it. Yeah right. DIRTY, LYING, PEN-THIEVING BASTARDS. To this day, I still feel like shit about that goddamned pen.

15) Tell me one weird fact about you.

Although I used to mock them without mercy when I was a hateful, young hipster, I now know that as my babies get older, I will FULL-ON become one of those dames who has legions of yipping, scampering little dogs around to pamper and care for. I used to make fun of those broads, but I am telling you right now — with neither shame nor apology — that although I am all done procreating, I am nowhere near done taking care of small creatures and lavishing them with monstrous amounts of adoration and affection. Frances and Pearl are my fucking LIFE. It was said that Dorothy Parker was rarely seen without a treasured little dog at her wicked feet. I suppose I shall be in good company.

16) Do you have any pets?

Two glorious Chihuahuas who both sleep sweetly curled up around my gunt and are the reason I wake up in the morning. I kiss them both on the lips about 300 times a day. No, seriously.

17) What if I showed up at your house unexpectedly?

How I would react depends entirely on who you are and what you mean to me. If you are someone that I love –- you would be heartily embraced and swept inside in a great flurry of kisses and welcomed like family and fed and cared for and given the biggest slice of pie and the most comfortable pillows in the house. Oh, and hot tea! And the remote control! I would wait on you hand and foot! And I would love it! I am Sicilian! On the other hand, if you are someone I…am not necessarily too keen on seeing…I wouldn’t even answer the door. Even better, you would see me peer out the window and look right at you with a completely bored and jaded look on my face –- so you would very clearly know that I was home and simply not opening the door to you — before merrily going back to my work or play. For the record, other than very, very close friends or family, I personally would never in a million years show up on somebody’s doorstep unannounced. I am far too mortified at the prospect of catching somebody wearin’ a ball-gag and gettin’ nailed in the keister, or something. Better to call.

18) Do you think clowns are cute or scary?

I am so over the whole, “Oooooh, clowns are scary!” thing. I’ll tell you what, cabron –- I think that people who obsessively dwell on whether or not clowns are cute or scary are scary.

19) If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?

Well, a few years ago I definitely woulda said “my titties” — christ, those hideous milky beavertails were an OUTRAGE! But since I already got those bastards shaved down and shimmied up…I would answer that I’d like gorgeous, smooth, translucent skin.

20) Would you be my crime partner or my conscience?

I would SO be your partner in crime! The tendency to be complicit in acts of clandestine mischief is entrenched in my genes! It is The Way of My Pipples! In fact, I am the friend you call when you gotta get rid of the body. Capische?

21) What color eyes do you have?

Green –- the only one out of nine children to have them (my youngest sibling, Ted, has blue.) Everyone else has brown.

22) Ever been arrested?

Oh, god, yes, and it was SO COMPLETELY AWESOME. If you wanna know more, you hafta read the book!

23) Bottle or can soda?

Umm…Diet Coke from the fountain –- with that pebbly, crunchy kind of ice you don’t see much anymore.

24) If you won $10,000 today, what would you do with it?

An extravagant sashimi dinner with Gregory and the babies at our local sushi joint and after that, a lavish, unbridled shop stop at Powell’s Bookstore –- and then first star on the right and straight on til Europa! Picture us and the babies lounging about the Southwest of France with good books, full bellies, sashimi breath, and self-satisfied looks on all our faces.

25) What’s your favorite place to hang?

At home with Gregory and the babies.

26) Do you believe in ghosts?

Let me put it this way: I want to believe in ghosts. The world is so much more interesting with the possibility of ghosts in it, don’t you think?

27) Favorite thing to do in your spare time?

Read –- mainly European history. And travel. And watch really good films. And talk about really good films. And write really good films. And feed Gregory and the beasties yummy vittles.

28) Do you swear a lot?

Ha! You gotta be fucking kidding me with this question. I make Keith Richards look like Hannah Montana with this mouth.

29) Biggest pet peeve?

People who are not generous with their praise or gratitude –- who are too small and petty and threatened and insecure to realize that there is room enough at the table for EVERYONE to shine and succeed. Also, adults who whine incessantly when no one makes a big deal about their birthday. FUCK RIGHT ON OFF.

30) In one word, how would you describe yourself?

Present.

31) Do you believe/appreciate romance?

Yes, but I suspect it’s probably my very own brand of romance. As in, if my husband forgets my birthday or our anniversary or Valentine’s Day or whatever –- I could give a fat rat’s ass. Fuck off. Unless you’re 16 years old, all that dire, forced, commercialized horseshit drivel drives me insane with disgust, anyway. For me, romance is belly laughing and traveling together and eating good food and watching good movies and having amazing discussions and just enjoying the shit out of each other’s company. Romance is setting off on great adventures together — even if that adventure is just to Trader Joe’s in Eagle Rock. Romance is encouraging the other person to seek their heart’s desire — whatever and wherever that might be. Romance is encouraging them to be exactly, precisely who they are every minute of every day — and celebrating that freedom. Romance is looking at the other person and knowing, to your marrow, that no matter how much time you will have together in this life, it will never be enough.

Romance had nothing at all to do with this shot I stealthily fired off at the grocery store at 5:30 pm on Valentine’s Day this year. Despite the Brooks Brothers shirt, the cashmere vest, the $400 Italian loafers, and the top-of-the-line black Mercedes S-Class parked right outside, homeboy looked fucking scared:

Romance also had nothing to do with this shot taken at See’s Candy a few minutes later. Along with the smell of marzipan and milk chocolate, dread and fear hung in the air like an unholy mist. You could just sense the many anuses puckering in desperate terror all around you:

This poor sap looked like he was waiting in line for a prostate exam:

Those pictures don’t show me romance; those pictures show me obligation, submission, and perhaps even a little annoyance.

Now, for me, this is romance; someone patiently sitting vigil at your hospital bedside for days and days whilst you emerge from major surgery and face the uncertain possibility of the dread cancer; and then that same someone consequently frolicking about with you like a giddy jackass on amyl when your oncologist tells you, this house is clean:

As for me, I subscribe to the David Sedaris definition of true love. It’s not always what you do that shows how much you love someone; it’s often what you don’t do:

“I was reminded of just how lucky I truly am. Movie characters might chase each other through the fog or race down the stairs of burning buildings, but that’s for beginners. Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you’re offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone’s feelings.”

32) Do you believe in a god?

Again, I do –- but I am sure it’s my very own rarified, twisted version of god. My god is not a punishing, judgmental god; my god is a belly laugher and a deliverer of dreams.

Next month, the darling Gregory and I are stowin’ the babies, packing our bags, and heading out for a little adventure to the Land of Baked Beans, Butch Sicilians, and Blue-blooded Brahmins:

Boston!

So…do tell us your fave places to feed, dream, and schtupp — and what we absolutely should not miss as we gaily scamper about the city where my dear husband originally sprang forth from his mother’s yapping yenta cooter, fully-formed and fabulous!

Thanks!

Ten Weird Facts About Me

1) I have never, ever been bitten by a mosquito. I don’t really know what the deal is, but apparently they just don’t like the taste of my fatass. Pity. With a little gravy and a shot of Boodles gin neat, I think I’m actually quite savory.

2) Aside from Sam Kinison, George Carlin, Doug Stanhope, and Louis CK, I generally will only watch black stand-up comedians — because aside from these four GODS, there aren’t really any white stand-ups I find even remotely funny. None.

3) When it comes to fork usage, I prefer the type with long, elegant European tines.

4) My fifth grade teacher, Mr. Nickel (who was as fabulously gay as a day in Springtime) used to affectionately call me Rhoda (as in Mary and), because he said I was her exact doppelganger in every way.

5) In college, my husband’s roommate was this dame.

6) This is something that drives me completely insane: if his name is spelled Brett Favre, then, goddamnit, it should be pronounced “Fahv-ruh” not “Farv”. First of all, a word is not awkwardly pronounced a certain way just because you say it is — even if it is your goddamned name. It doesn’t work that way. And further, DO NOT tell me that I am not seeing what I am so clearly seeing, motherfucker. If the “r” sound comes first when you say it, then the letter “r” should come first when you spell it. PERIOD. Look, we are a civilized society that collectively agrees on certain conventions so that civilization itself can progress. You can’t change the rules part way through just because it suits you, pal. If your name is Naomi and you pronounce it “Nay-oh-mee”, then spell it “Naomi”, NOT “Noemi”. That’s “No-ee-mee”. And if you insist on being called “Brett Farve” then spell it that way, goddamnit, and quit fucking with the heads of those who have far more important things to think about –- like just how much they wanna be man-handled, violated, and called a dirty whore by Clive Owen.

7) I recently had the teenage friends of my 17 year old daughter leave me bouquets of flowers on my front porch, along with notes affectionately addressed to “The BAMF” (that’s “Bad Ass Motherfucker”, for all you church-going types.) You know, why on earth would you ever wanna be a MILF, when you could be a BAMF? Those babies RULE.

8) Speaking of those adorable teenage baby friends, one of the greatest compliments I have ever received was when a flock of them came to me recently and seriously asked if I might be willing to give local classes to all their folks on “How to Parent Teenagers –- The Right Way.” They told me I could be their Parent Whisperer. I cried, of course. I am a lucky girl.

9) I have a very definite theory on the whole Brad Pitt/Jennifer Aniston/Angelina Jolie triad. Now, you have known since DNA that when he was first cast opposite Jolie in Mr. and Mrs. Smith that Aniston told him, “You better watch your P&Qs with her, buster!” and you know he assured her, “Honey, don’t be silly!” –- just before he slipped ol’ Angie the high hard one in her set trailer. So, armed with that knowledge, here’s my take: If your man (or your woman –- we are, after all, speaking about The Tippiest-Top Shelf Of All Top Shelf Pussy here, kids) gets cast in a film opposite Angelina Jolie…it is then up to you to do the right thing and give your spouse a get out of jail free card. Do you hear me? Do not kid yourself. Yes, I know you have real nice slab o’ cooter yourself and you can suck a golf ball through a garden hose, honey, but your spouse will nail her –- there is absolutely no getting around it. Hell, given half the chance, I’d nail her myself! You think some swingin’ dick far from hearth and home is going to pass up the chance to bang around with Angelina Jolie? You gotta be fucking kidding me with that denial. As someone who works in the entertainment industry, allow me to teach you about a little something we like to call “The Thirty Mile Rule.” You know what “The Thirty Mile Rule” is? “The Thirty Mile Rule” is if you’re more than thirty miles from home, THEY AIN’T NO RULES, MUTHAFUCKAS. That’s it. It’s real simple. So, if your spouse will be acting opposite Ol’ Pillow Lips, just take a deep breath, step up, and do the right thing: turn your head, close your eyes, and think of England. It just might save your marriage, friend.

10) I honestly believe that life basically comes down to a neverending battle between the Greasers and the Socs. I am a Greaser.

You get 3 words; no more, no less.

1. Where is your cell phone?

Between my titties.

2. Your girlfriend/boyfriend/hubby?

The Cutest Piglet.

3. Your hair?

“That Girl” flip.

4. Where is your father?

Covered with snow.

6. Your favorite things to do?

Read, travel, schtupp.

7. Your dream last night?

Kurt and turtles.

8. Your favorite drink?

Ice, water, lemon.

9. Your dream car?

Crazy Rodent Vehicle. (CRV!)

10. The room you’re in?

The Schtupp Chamber.

12. Your fears?

My babies hurting.

14. Who did you hang out with last night?

Piggies, Goats, Otters.

15. What aren’t you good at?

Tolerating no-talent meathooks.

16. Muffins?

No, sourdough bread.

17. One of your wish list items?

Diamonds and guacamole.

19. The last thing you did?

Rinsed my cooter.

20. What are you wearing?

Granny panties. Smile.

22. Your pets?

A fuzzy butt.

23. Your computer?

My Lord/Saviour. Amen.

24. Your life?

Deliberate and improbable.

25. Your mood?

Blissful, lovestruck, anticipatory.

26. Missing?

The lovely Julia.

27. What are you thinking about right now?

Mrs. Dorothy Parker.

28. Your car?

Crazy Rodent Vehicle.

29. Your work?

Hunting and Pecking.

30. Your summer?

Jean Nate cooter.

32. Your favorite color(s)?

Pomegranate, Peridot, Chartreuse.

33. When is the last time you laughed?

Every five seconds.

34. Last time you cried?

Every five seconds.

34. School?

Dropped Out Debutante

35. Personal mantra?

Fuck off, lady.

When will these blasted writers ever learn? If you come from a normal, boring background with no visible signs of addiction, poverty, abuse, or neglect, first of all, drop to your knees and thank your lucky goddamned stars — and then write your story, in whatever way your little heart desires. Add all the hungry tummies, crack pipes, jailhouse angst, bureaucratic failures, gangland killings, truck stop pussy, and “Mystical Magical Negroes” that you want to. But do not — I repeat, DO NOT — forget to tell your agent that it’s “literary fiction”, and not “memoir.”

This broad apparently wrote what is quite a compelling read — but it seems home skillet forgot The Golden Rule. First off, don’t lie! And, christ, if you must lie, make sure that not a single human being who could credibly contradict your story is still sitting upright and scarfing cupcakes.

So, now, because she is a dummy and a story swindler (and perhaps, it might be argued, even a racist, culture-appropriating one, at that), she will forever languish — along with James Frey and JT Leroy — as a pathetic, lying, cheating turd in the bargain book bin of humanity.

As The Goblin King declared, “What a pity.”

Author admits gang-life ‘memoir’ was all fiction

Sister blew whistle on Margaret B. Jones, who said she was a foster child in South L.A., but really grew up with family in Sherman Oaks.
By Bob Pool and Rebecca Trounson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
March 4, 2008

The gripping memoir of “Margaret B. Jones” received critical raves. It turns out it should have been reviewed as fiction.

The author of “Love and Consequences,” a critically acclaimed autobiography about growing up among gangbangers in South Los Angeles, acknowledged Monday that she made up everything in her just-published book.

“Jones” is actually Margaret Seltzer. Instead of being a half-white, half-Native American who grew up in a foster home and once sold drugs for the Bloods street gang, she is a white woman who was raised with her biological family in Sherman Oaks and graduated from Campbell Hall, an exclusive private school in the San Fernando Valley.

Her admission that she is a fake came in a tearful mea culpa to the New York Times, which last week published a profile of Seltzer using her pseudonym. It was accompanied by a photograph of the 33-year-old and her 8-year-old daughter in Eugene, Ore., where they now live.

Seltzer was unmasked when her sister Cyndi Hoffman, 47, saw the newspaper’s profile and notified the memoir’s publisher, Riverhead Books, that Seltzer’s story was untrue.

Riverhead announced Monday that it had withdrawn “Love and Consequences” and canceled a book tour that was supposed to have started yesterday in Eugene.

Seltzer could not be reached at her home for comment late Monday.

In a brief telephone interview, Seltzer’s mother said her daughter was very upset and contrite about the fabrication, but had been advised by her editor not to speak further about it for the moment.

“I think she got caught up in the facts of the story she was trying to write,” Gay Seltzer said. “She’s always been an activist and she tried to draw on the immediacy of the situation and became caught up in the persona of the narrator. She’s very sorry and very upset.”

Gay Seltzer, of Sherman Oaks, said she had been aware of her daughter’s book, but had not read it or known that it was a purportedly personal account of gang life.

She confirmed that Hoffman had revealed the hoax.

Margaret Seltzer’s literary agent, Faye Bender, declined to comment.

“I’m so sorry, I can’t be a part of it. I’m running out” the door, she said.

But Sarah McGrath, Seltzer’s editor at Riverhead, told the New York Times on Monday that the publishing house was stunned by the disclosure.

“It’s very upsetting to us because we spent so much time with this person and felt such sympathy for her and she would talk about how she didn’t have any money or heat and we completely bought into that,” McGrath told the newspaper.

McGrath, whom the paper identified as the daughter of former New York Times book review editor and current writer-at-large Charles McGrath, characterized the deception as “a huge personal betrayal” and “a professional one.”

“Love and Consequences” drew admiring reviews from critics. Los Angeles Times book reviewer Susan Salter Reynolds cited “her loyalty to the language, the sense of community, the tight bonds she formed with her gang.”

The review told of how “at 5, Margaret B. Jones, part white, part Native American, was taken from her suburban Southern California home after she came to school bleeding from what the teachers and social workers assumed was a sexual assault. She spent three years in foster care before landing with ‘Big Mom,’ a hard-working black woman raising four grandchildren in South Central Los Angeles. It didn’t take Jones long to fall in with the Bloods.”

The reviewer told of how the book described “Jones” selling drugs at age 12 because she was “eager to earn my own money toward the flame-red Nike Cortez with fat laces that everyone else wore, but even more excited to prove myself worthy of wearing the affiliated color and moving up the ranks.”

Seltzer told the New York Times that although the personal story told in the book was fabricated, other details were based on friends’ real experiences.

“I just felt there was good that I could do and there was no other way that someone would listen to it,” she said.

Ha!

“You use lots of colorful language and expressions.”

Ya think?

You Are An ENFP

The Inspirer You love being around people, and you are deeply committed to your friends. You are also unconventional, irreverent, and unimpressed by authority and rules. Incredibly perceptive, you can usually sense if someone has hidden motives. You use lots of colorful language and expressions. You’re quite the storyteller! In love, you are quite the charmer. And you are definitely willing to risk your heart. You often don’t follow through with your flirting or professed feelings. And you do break a lot of hearts. At work, you are driven but not a workaholic. You just always seem to enjoy what you do. You would make an excellent entrepreneur, politician, or journalist. How you see yourself: compassionate, unselfish, and understanding When other people don’t get you, they see you as: gushy, emotional, and unfocused

Actor and Scientologist, Jenna Elfman, and her son, Story.

She undoubtedly purchased those shoes for him and is proudly carting him around in public whilst he wears them…so, call me kooky, but I’m gonna go out on a limb here and just assume that she knows.

From George Orwell’s, “Why I Write”:

“Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

(iv) Political purpose. — Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

(v) Much like that which compels the whole of humanity, we just wanna get schtupped.”

(Okay, okay, Number 5 is just me — although I’d be willing to bet that Ol’ George liked to tear him off a big slab o’ steamin’ cooter every now and again, just like the rest of us. Christ, who doesn’t after a few cocktails?)

I have been a passionate, aggressive, dedicated activist and advocate for women’s civil and reproductive rights since I was a teenager — and remain as energetically committed to the cause of feminism as I ever was.

I have coordinated, participated in, and led more demonstrations than I can even begin to count or remember. I have given speeches, hand drawn hundreds of placards, made phone calls, manned tables, gathered signatures, moderated roundtable discussions, given interviews with major media outlets, written articles for, as well as letters to, nearly every major newspaper on the West coast.

I have marched whilst heavily pregnant (and, for the record, expressly against doctor’s orders), recruited legions of supporters and sponsors, and talked on and on, ad nauseum, to anyone and everyone who would listen to me (and even some who wouldn’t!) about the dire importance of voting for pro-choice candidates. And sometimes I just sat quietly and listened to one woman tell me her story of why she chose to end a pregnancy; not once did I walk away from such an encounter unmoved.

I have written and published essays about how women of my generation should not be afraid to enthusiastically embrace the word “feminist”, provided rides for both rallies and abortions, procured funding for women who could not otherwise have afforded to safely end their pregnancies, and even paid for a few of them myself…at a time in my life when, trust me, I could least afford to do so.

Also, because I think it is critically important to put real names and faces to our side of the issue whenever possible, I have honestly, publicly, and without hesitation or shame told my own teenage abortion story — even when doing so was a risky, precarious thing to do for every reason you might imagine. And, most importantly of all, I have educated my own teenage daughters and son about how very crucial it is that all women everywhere be allowed total control over their own lives and reproductive destinies, no matter the circumstance. Just as others choose to teach their children hate and intolerance, I have taught mine the justice of equality and autonomy for women and the power of encouraging all people to be self-determining, not just those with a dick. My wicked plan? After I am gone, there are three to take my place in the fight towards that end: take that, hateful, pasty-faced Armies of God.

I have stood and wept, stood and cheered, and stood defiant and unyielding in the face of hatred, ignorance, judgment, and small-mindedness — and in all that time, in all of the confrontations I have had with all these cretinous, ignorant anti-choice pricks, I have never once, not a single time, ever seen anything like this. Watching this, I feel as though the top of my head were just taken off — I literally feel dizzy. In all the showdowns I have had with these freaks — and believe me, there have been many — not once has anyone, including myself, ever thought to ask this one, small question.

The answers are stunning.