What Becomes of Loyalty When No One is Loyal to You?

On March 7, 2020, with the early pandemic raging especially in NYC, and booksellers, schools, and libraries all frantically shut or shutting down (not to mention publishing offices), my then-5th title, JACK KEROUAC IS DEAD TO ME came out -- and quickly disappeared, given that no one was around to promote it or even see it on booksellers' shelves. It broke my heart. My earlier books had been critically well reviewed but had never made much of a breakthrough in sales... and then "KEROUAC" had, pre-release, gotten a pretty unheard of audio deal for a YA title, after a bit of a bidding war (these are often through separate publishers who negotiate for the rights), which had my editor and I believing that KEROUAC might have been my "It" book. My "breakthrough." Obviously, the pandemic had other ideas.

The hardcover version of JACK KEROUAC IS DEAD TO ME has been remaindered by my publisher and, I assume, will soon be put out of print (if it hasn't already been... I might not know as, despite the fact that I have published seven critically well reviewed novels all from major publishers, they seem not to think much of us unless we are making them a fortune... So be it...). JL in JACK KEROUAC IS DEAD TO ME is the main character closest to me as a young adult... not her family (thank goodness) but the judgement and misjudgments she experiences at the hands of the most important friends in her life, and other teen girls, and, ultimately, the utter abandonment. I think JACK KEROUAC IS DEAD TO ME is an important story, because I believe we must talk about what teen girls -- and women! -- do to one another when we judge and tear down. As well as examine the power we girls and women might have in this world if we did the opposite: lifted each other up. For starters, I believe so many of us would be less vulnerable to situations where so many of us end up wearing hashtags of #metoo. I could never have gotten a paperback of JACK KEROUAC IS DEAD TO ME to print by myself. And I am SO very grateful to Jeff Fielder and FMP Publishing for getting it out there for me. And it is available with not one but two extraordinary covers by the talented Darklee Ayllon.

In rereading this book in order to prepare it for its paperback publication, I will say there are so many things I think I did well with it -- including writing some incredibly steamy scenes, which I get can (and should!) make you uncomfortable, and make you think about the complexity of our sexuality ... and what it does -- and does NOT entitle others to in our expression of it). I also think it has one of the most breath-stealing and emotional last 40-50 pages of almost any book I've ever read (of course, I don't read many thrillers or fantasy books, so I guess we're talking realistic fiction here, which I acknowledge might be a different bar).
All I can say is that each time I read them, my heart pounded and my heart broke for JL -- and for the young girls SO MANY OF US were and still are. - Gae

ALL THE HEAVY FURNITURE (The Visit)

All The Heavy Furniture (The Visit)

We visit on a Saturday and I search for you in all the heavy furniture you, the young woman who taught me how to drive over that breathtakingly narrow bridge, who drove me to Super-X and bought me Trojans “just in case.” I spot you in places, familiar in your art room scattered with zines — me, swinging playfully like a teen, indoors, in your hanging basket chair . . . Read the rest at Medium where I am now blogging.
https://gaepol.medium.com/

What If Girls Were Taught to Lift One Another Better From an Early Age?

 

What if girls lifted girls?

Might everything be different?

This simple question has plagued me for a long, long time.

In high school, I was badly bullied by other girls. In repeat instances.  I was threatened, physically harmed and slut-shamed before I'd ever even "lost" my virginity. For two years of high school, I lived in daily terror.

To this day, I honestly don't know why.

Were they jealous? 

Did I appear too self-confident or aloof?* 

Was I unwittingly cruel to them first? 

Did I play a role in my own torture? Did they, too, play a role in their own simultaneous pain?

You can read more about that if you'd like to know the specifics HERE.  

**I'm also making the original Google Doc I drafted for that feature public with this link and invite you or your readers to have a conversation with me about all of this any time with me there. **

Some of the girls who were cruelest to me are lovely, kind women now. Perhaps a few are not. One of them is dead. I wept, not celebrated, when I learned of this. Of course. Of course. It only cemented what I believe, my best guess as to why girl-on-girl cruelty perpetuates itself, decade after decade:

We were all suffering, and being cruel to me helped them avoid their own insecurities and pain.

Sometimes, when I see photos of teen me,
my heart breaks for me

But what is the source of those insecurities? What if WE -- girls, women -- had a LOT of power in reducing and undermining those insecurities and pain?

I've been reading and thinking a lot about Evan Rachel Wood these days, and her brutal painful story. Maybe I read something that triggered the connection, about women blaming her, but I can't stop thinking about the connection to my book JACK KEROUAC IS DEAD TO ME and what I was hoping to say by that story.

Let me first state unequivocally, that what happened to Wood and seemingly many others, is the fault of a man, of men, of a system of patriarchy and toxic masculinity, and what we continue to allow men to get away with. Period. End of story.

And.

I know, I know. How is there an "and" after you said, "end of story?"

Because. Because two seemingly contradictory things can exist and be true at the same time. They can.

So.

And:

Whatever the book jacket for JACK KEROUAC IS DEAD TO ME says, to me, it is a story about girls judging girls, girls not standing up for girls, and what often happens when they don't.

It's about a story about an insecure, scared teen girl turning wholly to a boy who isn't particularly good for her when her best friend deserts her.

When the other girls around her judge her and turn their backs. Kudos to the Booklist reviewer who got this in their review when they wrote, "Perfect for readers who love coming-of-age stories and who understand the value of female community."

Yes. YES!!! That.

There is value -- and, more than that, huge POWER -- in the female community.

Girls need girls.

Women need women.

And too often we still fail to lift one another up and support one another.

I know this because I talk to teen girls all the time. They tell me how they are judged, bullied, deserted by other girls. I ask the question when I visit schools. We talk. Or they listen.

It's always the same: Those who are bullied cast their eyes down.

Those who do the bullying cast their eyes away.

I see this over and over again. And I always implore them: "You don't have to be friends, but support one another. You don't have to hang out. Just don't tear one another down."

I don't tell people what my book is about. That is up to the individual reader, of course. The book jacket says what it says. People will take from the story what they take. And very few even know the book exists.

But if you read it with your daughters, have a conversation.

If you read it with your students, have a conversation. If you want to have a conversation with me, we can also have one HERE.

I can't help but think how our lives might be different in the face of this one simple change.

Because of my relationship with girls -- because of the harm girls did to me in middle school and high school, and, yes, into college -- I put all my efforts during those years into relationships with men: friendships and otherwise. Because. Because.

A self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.

My truth is, it took me well into my forties before I trusted women again, until I allowed myself to find any value in those relationships at all. To trust female friendship.

For sure, I am the better for it.

My female friends are beyond important to me. They lift and buoy me.

And I trust I am worthy of them in return.

I believe women's lives - and our willingness to speak up in the face of bad relationships, and, yes, abuse - might be very different if girls and women learned to support one another better from an early age.

We still do not.

At least, too often, we do not.

I know this from personal experience. Still. To this day. And I believe our lives would be very different if we could.

This was also posted to MEDIUM.COM

p.s. Please note that JACK KEROUAC IS DEAD TO ME is upper YA/crossover to adult. The book contains language and sexual situations. * Yes, this is something someone told my dad once. Read that again. I appeared too self-confident and aloof. Those two things could not be further from the truth of how I felt.