"I Regret Not Finishing Law School" at The Gloss

I contributed to The Gloss's "I Regret Everything" series with my essay on why I regret not finishing law school.

But the part I do regret, and think about every time I log in to Sallie Mae’s website, is that I never paused long enough to allow myself the room to truly grasp that I could exit gracefully, and to the tune of much less than the eventual $150,000 (approximately) tuition and board, plus interest, that I will wind up paying, or just get through it. I chose to leave after having what I’d consider a nervous breakdown after three years with most of my credits, but no degree. I have until 2033 to pay off those loans, and by my estimations will have racked up between $250,000 and $300,000 for a degree I do not have. Or I should have toughed it out, bucked up, even if I knew I didn’t want to take the bar, even if I got Cs, even if the only class I really liked was intellectual property, where we learned about things like negotiating how many seconds’ worth of credit a screenwriter gets on film.

Read the whole thing

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Yes, I have dandruff

And I wrote about it for The Gloss.

Some Girls kiss and tell very, very well

I know that was a cheesy rhyme, but I will have to write at another time about how amazing Jillian Lauren is. You should go read her book, Some Girls: My Life in a Harem, right now. And catch her on her book tour (this Thursday in NYC at Sex Worker Literati at Happy Ending Lounge, 302 Broome Street, 8 pm, for a start). I'll be there, bearing cupcakes (for Jillian, but she will probably share). Follow her @jillylauren on Twitter. Currently #98 on Amazon!!

FYI, I'd never heard of her before about a month ago when I picked up Bust (which has a great review of Best Sex Writing 2010 which I will post soon) and saw an interview with her by Shira Tarrant. I was intrigued, but the book wasn't out yet. Then that Monday, two days later, I got a copy in the mail, like magic, and was riveted, and emailed her to tell her how much I loved and was moved by the book, and we got to meet at the LA Times Festival of Books.

You can watch her appearance on The View here and read an interview with her at The Gloss here. There was a fabulous profile of her in LA Weekly and I will be blogging on a related note (about what happened when I went to Digg that piece) in "I Don't Care About Your Husband" (an homage to Julie Klausner in the title) soon.



I wrote this review on Amazon:

Some Girls is about, on the surface, Lauren's time spent in a harem in Brunei, but dig just marginally beneath that surface and you will see that this is a memoir that tackles major moments in both her life and one's that many women struggle with. Lauren leaves home at 16 to head out on her own at NYU, but soon finds the life of the theater and, later, escorting, more her style. She is young, brash and carefree, but Lauren never makes it as easy as "I was rebelling." She transposes her freewheeling time against her search for meaning--and her birth mother. Her descriptions of life in the palace, the over-the-top, almost sickening shopping sprees, and encounters with Prince Jefri vividly, including rivalry, jealousy, desire and boredom.

Some of the most moving scenes here, though, having nothing to do with the harem, even if they were informed by her time there. Her quest, and eventual success, in finding her birth mother is at the core of what it means to find oneself, and the ways that meeting falls short of Lauren's expectations are poignant. When she writes of her accidental pregnancy, the boyfriend who wasn't interested, and how she chose to deal with that, she starkly highlights the humanity within the debate around abortion in a way we truly need to see more of in our society. And when Lauren finds tattoo culture (fun fact: Ed Hardy once had a magazine called Tattootime, which becomes Lauren's bible), she writes of having found her people, and promptly gets a major tattoo that even her tattoo artist advises her against.

I found myself repeatedly marveling that the protagonist is only, at most, 19 or 20 when most of the scenes here take place. Lauren displays a maturity beyond her years in her self-assurance (though, again, beneath the surface much more than toughness bubbles up) as well as in the writing and self-reflection. This is a memoir in the truest sense of the word, not a dashed-off "I did this for a year" but a piece that flashes back and reveals her childhood piece by piece, showing why she had this restless yearning to travel so far and get involved with the Prince, even dreaming of having his child at one point. She complicates prostitution and her role in it, while never disowning or disavowing that word or the reality of what she did, and in doing so, has written an outstanding story that is both a fast, at times glamorous read, and one that is very likely to make you cry which, in my book, makes it a winner.

This is how she signed my book in LA:

Talking feminism, feet, high heels and "Bad Shoes" with Leora Tanenbaum

See my interview at The Gloss with Bad Shoes author Leora Tanenbaum on feminism, high heels, ballet slippers, armadillo shoes and more.

Read this: Elizabeth Spiers on being adopted

This is an excellent first-person essay, "Alien Baby: Genetics, Adoption, and How I Became Myself" by former Gawker editor and all-around very smart writer and cool person, Elizabeth Spiers:

There are a handful of things I know about her, my biological mother. Her maiden name was a common Latina name. She was married to someone whose surname was “Hancock” and she was 27 when she gave birth to me at a hospital in Montgomery, Alabama at 12:08 AM one morning in December of 1976. I know where she lived at the time and I know she was born in Georgia. All of this information is included in the document that’s been sitting on my kitchen table in New York for the last few days—a copy of my certificate of live birth.

Six years ago, I sent a letter to the Alabama Center or Health Statistics requesting the birth certificate, and it came back along with a copy of my adoption decree. Until now, this is the most active thing I’ve done to find my biological parents. Until now, I’ve been ambivalent about it.

Read the whole essay.