All I Want for 2024 is... a Freakin' Sandwich.
Plus, Introducing... The Secret Society of Sh*tty First Drafts. 😂
To keep working, I depend on the financial support of gotham girl’s readers and sponsors. I know your resources are precious, too. And so, I am ridiculously grateful for your help. Now, more than ever, gotham girl could use your support.
Because I miss crunch like nobody’s business and all these green smoothies taste like the back of a goddamn taxi cab.
Hello, Lovelies, How the hell are you? On the cusp of 2024, you might think…
Another year since you failed to become a better person, but you’re OK with that. And you think, “How's that for radical self-acceptance, mothertruckers?”
Here's the thing of it... you'd “rather be whole than good,” or god forbid, perfect.
The Update from the Foggy Nob…
Titanium Chin Plate: Healing nicely! I’ll be setting off metal detectors in airports worldwide for the remainder of my life. Look out TSA—you are going to have so much fun with me. 😂
Suture Swelling: Still “Potato” status. Think… Yukon Gold.
Rent: Thanks to all of your generous donations, December rent is paid. Huzzah!
Special Thanks: to Kim Warner at
Media for her incredible write-up. I am so deeply humbled and honored. And thank you so much for not making me into a pitiful Dickens orphan, which is so often the case in these situations.Legal: They still want me out—even though you couldn’t ask for a quieter tenant.
Good News: I’ve qualified for a grant for January rent!
The Kicker: I just need the landlords to sign a single-page form and they'll receive the funds, but so far, there's no news on whether they’ll sign it—or not.
Amid all this, they have technically served me seven times, so while I have been kind to the process server…
A gentle reminder: 65M people deal with seizures, and we all have to live somewhere. Le sigh.
And, upon the advice of my legal team, as well as one of our funniest sisters-in-mischief
, I also installed a motion cam for the times they pop ‘round when I’m out at the doctor’s. Here’s that sign…
Now, onto the Doofus of the Year, this week it’s singular.
The Doofus of 2023…
For endangering the life of a pregnant, grieving mother of three children, and viciously refusing her life-saving healthcare, I am again going with
on this one:The Corrupt-ass AG of Texas… Ken Paxton
For a more robust catalog of Paxton’s felonies, ethics violations, and repugnant inhumanity to the LGBTQ+ community, please see this most excellent piece by Lyz.
But also, see the very real face of Kate Cox, the mother Paxton went WAY out of his way to physically and emotionally harm.
That’s Marvelous of 2023!
My surgeons at UOP
Thank you to Dr. Lam and Dr. Aaron for your science and artistry. Excellent needlepoint job. You both deserve very funny bathroom plaques that say, “I sewed a head back on—Beat that!” And thanks to you, I can feel my lips for the first time in eight years, which means I might feel a kiss again, one day.
And thank you to my Speech Therapy person who taught me how to swallow again. Your work does not get enough credit.
Now, as part of our paid readership perks, I’m introducing unfettered access to The Secret Society of Sh*tty First Drafts where I share early peeks of my next novel This is Going to Be Hard For You. It's a dark comedy in the spirit of some of my favorite writers; Carl Hiaasen, Grant Ginder, and Wednesday Martin.
Logline: An early investor, a woman now ostracized from her peers, profession, and New York high society exacts her revenge on a celebrity wedding planner-Ponzi schemer acting as The Bernie Madoff of Matrimony. Things go too far when he fails to plan for the rage, wisdom, and eye for detail of midlife women. (That he was besties with an infamous sex trafficker and got his start catering her parties doesn’t help!)
Disclaimer. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used facetiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental, or because it’s genuinely funny.
For Marina... This is going to be fun for you.
Prologue:
“This is going to be hard for you,” said the Chechen, blow torch in hand.
Naked and quivering to the bone, Cormac looked down and regarded his cock with nostalgia. How it bent to the left like an heirloom gourd. Martha Stewart would be proud. He felt it now retract into his scrotal nether regions. Regions he only contemplated as a single entity when death was close and cold.
This is what you get for letting Teddy cosplay Wolf of Wall Street at the Yale Club, you stupid Reno fuck.
They never should have come to Miami. Neither of them.
The last time Cormac saw Teddy, the Chechens were hauling him away with a dead gator clenched to his groin. Still clad in his treasured Brioni, Teddy’s horrified screams seemed to be more about the suit than any injury to his person. Somehow Cormac sensed Teddy would be getting neither back.
Now, here in the buff with the Chechen, Cormac recalled a conversation with a lover at Yale decades earlier. How odd it was that a person of his stature—Cormac was six foot four inches—would have such an insignificantly sized member relative to his height and strength. The lover, an Econ major, had been a fellow oarsman on varsity crew, though they had first met in Art History class. The Art of Dionysus: Drink, Drama, and Ecstasy. Art History had been Cormac's reluctant major, a means of postponing life decisions. A mere elective for the senior oarsman.
Unsettled by his lover’s remark, Cormac had argued that in ancient Greece, smaller penis size was highly coveted, and considered more desirable and aesthetically pleasing. He knew he was biding his time with the oarsman and with Art History. Neither was what he truly wanted. What he wanted to do with his life didn’t exist. Not yet. Or not anymore, at least not in any profitable way, his advisor had counseled him.
He was far more transfixed by the theatrical tableaus of the art of celebration, of ritualized catharsis, the bacchanals of the ancients then, the bacchanals of billionaires now. But how to make an industry of it? An empire. Life was a blink in the end. Too precious not to celebrate every nanosecond. A point made all too clear by the Chechen before him now.
“If you just give me the day, I can get you the piece.” God, how had he become such a cliche? Fucking pitiful.
“Celebrity show and tell?” The Chechen raised a sliver of an eyebrow and leaned in. “We both know she is only interested in liquidity event.”
And Cormac did know.
The Chechen twisted the valve. With a hiss, the torch menaced to life.
Just then, the Chechen’s cell phone rang a ridiculous techno-pop acapella version of the song from the film Pitch Perfect. It was Ace of Base’s “I Saw the Sign.” The solo trill of the soprano’s pure declaration echoed across the empty warehouse as if to mock the blowtorch.
It was her. It had to be her, Cormac thought, feverish with hope. Maybe she would give him more time. Maybe she had an extra condition, or a caveat, or some way. Some weird Yelena-specific loophole.
All of this he knew. In his party-planning life, all of this in his rich vocabulary of client-management-speak was addressable if only he could get dressed and speak to her one-on-one.
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