“Évian is ‘naïve’ spelled backward,” said Janeane Garofalo in the 1994 classic, Reality Bites, blowing this then-young Gen X mind on the thin glossy line between commerce and satire.
“See you in the ditch!” read the business card for Willie, the tow truck owner in Challis, Idaho, whereabouts my sainted Honda CRV found itself* ass-deep in a freak hotsprings quicksand mud patch.
I just turned 45. It’s been hell on wheels so far. Lots of minor league lessons with super hard turns. Even on the attempt to get up to Tunnel Rock Cafe for a slap dash writing retreat.
Rag & Bone black cashmere sweater – $210 (discounted from $700), Nordstrom’s Rack | Zara Woman premium denim collection floral dress – $10, Saint Vincent’s thrift store | Frye knee-high black leather boots – $75, Bombshell & Blokes “head to boots” fall make-up event
Cheep it while speed-dialing first your dad then AAA in middle of nowhere Idaho.
Lost my ever-lovin mind somewhere between home and the Capitol. For legal reasons, this story will be told exclusively in Eminem “monster” lyrics and batsh*t public displays.
“I’ve created a monster ‘Cause nobody wants to see Marshall no more, they want Shady, I’m chopped liver“ – Without Me, Eminem
Monster, you get in my way, I’ma feed you to the monster (yeah) I’m normal durin’ the day, but at night, turn to a monster (yeah) When the moon shines like Ice Road Truckers I look like a villain outta those blockbusters – Godzilla, Eminem
“I’m friends with the monster that’s under my bed Get along with the voices inside of my head You’re tryin’ to save me, stop holdin’ your breath…
“And you think I’m crazy, yeah, you think I’m crazy Well, that’s nothin.” – The Monster, Eminem
Like BLTs are my comfort food, this is my winter comfort ‘fit.
Bruno Duluc KUSH burgundy velvet dress – $6.99, ReStyle thrift store | NN07 No Nationality pastel rainbow wool from Italian yarns – $170 (? on sale), Nordstroms Rack | Croc Allcast faux fur lined snow boots – $40 (on sale), Crocs.com | Peruvian llama fur comfort hat – gift, ex-BF | Armour Bijoux Tibetan coral neckplate – gift, Bethany Walter | Masai tribe beaded bracelet – $20 or so, Kenya near the Masai Mara
The staircase in my art deco dream pad is dramatic and steep. When you turn the corner, you’re surprised with a giant oil painting in a gilt gold frame by my friend Skyler Pierce of girls riding horse-sized roosters in the yard.
I remember a few years back, newly single, bringing a beautiful man upstairs, eager for his reaction.
“What do you think of my giant cocks?!” I asked, emphasizing the consonant cluster(f*ck), as I turned on the neon light I had in my bedroom then. It read FEAR, ILLUSION, DECAY and cast a sickly green pallor over the skin.
“I’m…a bit afraid…of big birds,” he said in his dreamy British English accent.
It was then the truth struck me like a bolt from the blue(jean): It’s me. Hi! I’m the problem. It’s me.
Or if not me, at least my taste in art.
I borrowed this outfit from a story slammer to wear last night at Story Story Night’s SLAMMER OF THE YEAR, because the team I coached decided to wear Canadian tuxedos. We also won the show! (At least someone is scoring.)
Saint Germain Paris jean jumpsuit – borrowed | LL Bean jean jacket – borrowed (and blue) | Nine West multicolor butterfly leather platform shoes – $11.99, Savers
Cheep it like you’re Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake at the 2001 AMAs.
What a month and a half, no? The day of Trump’s near-assassination, I happened to be in Challis with a group of circled-up women, outlining rough plans if a Civil War breaks out after the election. You know. Just in casesies. (Waves white…er….American flag.)
I know what I would do, I thought to myself, getting up to go….anywhere else….I would stand in the middle of the road and say, “Flatten me now, please and thank you. It’s too late to make me breeding stock, joke’s on you.”
Putin-fleeing-journalist Masha Gessen wrote right after Trump’s election in 2016 about the apathy that sets in after a too long spell of the violently absurd.
It felt almost surreal to feel….what is this strange thing?…after Biden dropped out and Kamala was vibing her way into the presidential race.
Then it popped into my mind, a long-forgotten phrase fully formed by the wise words of Sarah Palin: “It’s that hopey changey thing.”
It’s been a long, long time, hopey changey thing. Nice to feel you again.
Custom Leather Works blue leather & wool plaid vestwith a leather label impressed with a sun that reads: “Handmade by K. Kent” – $4, Idaho Youth Ranch thrift store. handmade, vintage 1960s plaid red, white & blue cotton skirt – $40, consignment / music store in New Orleans next to my AirBnB. Frye red leather top studded short boots – $60, Bombshells & Blokes fall party.
Cheeped at one of my local favorites, Bonneville Point, the spot overlooking Boise that’s legendary for French explorers yelling “Les bois! Les bois!” when first spotting the river and trees after wandering though the bleak wastelands of southern Idaho and Utah.
What if you’re so late to bloom you go to seed instead? Motherf…nature.
I cannot pinpoint exactly what went wrong this year but it started with sudden weight loss and insomnia and hair loss and skin eruptions and severe unrelenting anxiety and you know when you learn new words to help better define your world? I highlighted ANHEDONIA in the Oxford: the inability to feel pleasure. “Ahhh, sounds about right. Dead-voiced yay.” Dictionary footnote: Maybe just don’t get off your meds, ok.
“My books will be my kids,” I’ve said since I was 20. But what if I never wrote any books, and it’s too late to have kids, and what if I always thought all the gutting and hilarious and hideous things that happened were the ultimate storytelling fodder, but what if I was just dissociating from my real life, fictionalizing it in real time, instead?
Here I am, 44, looking at myself dead-eyed in more ways than one. A pale vintage childless cat lady in a desolate red state in a white vintage Caddy with an unstoppable avoidant attachment style that wishy-washes out my desire for both “real” relationships and w2 employment.
Here I am, now, wild and free as a tumbling tumbleweed, come hell or JD Vance or high water. Meds finally fully kicked in again. The recent three trimesters of mental ill winds reminding me once again of all the wastelands I’ve walked through and survived. Reminding me of all the depressive brainwaves that were my normal for decades. Reminding me that I (eventually, historically) always make it to the other side. Again and again. Lone wolf and in style. Because that’s how I rolling stone.
This time up the Sisyphusian hill, I told myself, “I know you don’t feel like doing anything right now, but do this for future Jessica ok?” So former Jessica of 2024 got up at 6:30 am after staring at the ceiling for hours and went to BodyPump at the Y. And found some steady employ to lay under her feet. And pushed her projects and friendships forward. And paid her bills and cleaned her house. Even when she didn’t feel like doing anything. Like not fucking anything.
She waved a white flag at her prostrate psyche and came clean: “OK TRUCE, THEN. Maybe I will not be the literary writer I always thought I’d be, and maybe I will not be famous, and maybe I will not step on stages in front of 1000s, but I will sit here alone, stubbornly, until I feel that ecstatic core fire of creativity again.” And she back-burned her ego away from the center of it all. And she silently waited. And waited. And waited. To feel any warmth at all.
I don’t know what it is yet, but I’m feeling the flame again. It’s a more grounded fire, this time. Cheeps are Cheeping in my soul and closet again in a real birdsong way too.
All I can do is fly on and see what I can sew in my second half. Whichever way the wind blows.
I have to get the dress and shit out of my Caddy but I’ll give you label and price deets later….
For some obscure reason this outfit makes me think of Major Kong riding the nuclear bomb like a bull in Dr. Strangelove. I always thought he said, “Yeeeeehawwwww!” But he actually yells, “Whaaaaahooooo!” So we all learned a bit of annihilation cowboy trivia.
I wore this to a saloon-themed awards ceremony, The Rockies, for the Boise advertising industry. I’ve been a writer in this ad scene for nearly 20 years, and it’s been one of the strangest years yet. AI has warped some brains, including mine. I had a horrific client who fed my work into ChatGBT to rewrite and it sounded like a high schooler with a thesaurus trying to sound smart. (Then she stiffed me for $6k. I should’ve known.) Demoralizing doesn’t begin to describe the way AI twists my painstaking writer mind into knots with its instant spitting out of mediocre paragraphs.
My mind has been spinning for several reasons. I’m attempting three equally ambitious projects this year—run a successful business, launch a new brand, finish a book—and it appears I’ve bitten off more than I could chew. My mouth is comically full. Instead of immediate gains in the first quarter, I lost gobs of hair (likely due to stress) and had to cut it off. I lost my appetite. I lost my desire to Cheep. I lost my clear vision for my future. The comedown from my delusions of grandeur feels like Major Kong with less enthusiasm. It feels like bombing.
But I’m getting a second wind with the spring. A friend told me today about the way trees push into the hard-packed ground to root in before they reach out into the air. And when they do, they branch out in many directions. I am no tree, but I believe I can fly. I can touch the sky. I’ve had to change a lot about myself and my habits and my work patterns to even make it to the point where some sort of progress might be visible on the surface. All I can do is keep pushing forward, and stop being frozen in the gates before the bull ride of it all.
“Believe in yourself,” says the psychiatrist talking to the unicorn on his couch. I believe. I believe. I believe.
Banjo Dallas, Texas red western shirt with cowboy boots & rope pattern & gold buttons – $5.99, Idaho Youth Ranch thrift store | Maxima by Wilson black leather skirt – $7.99, Restyle thrift store | Frye knee-high black leather boots – $75, Bombshell & Blokes “head to boots” fall make-up event
By the favor of the free and cheap, Cheep Universe, I ended up on an exquisite hand-painted pink-and-purple wooden Viking ship (ok, a Dory, but it felt like one) floating down the Main Salmon River for six days through the vast Frank Church Wilderness.
For weeks before, I had been seeing salmon everywhere. Then a college friend spontaneously asked me if I wanted to take a last-minute cancelled spot on her long-planned birthday trip. I think she knew I’m one of the few on earth who could drop everything on a moment’s notice to simply float for a week.
For a last-minute gift, I went thrift store shopping and gave her the Caitlin River Capsule Collection in a neon green duffel bag. Because what do you get for the woman who embodies everything, but more ways to embody herself? Each outfit had a ridiculous name and tagline, ala Cheep, and brought such weird magic to every beach night. I am finally using my superpowers for good.
Lately, magic has been a running theme. At long last, I am learning how to paddle in the slipstream of my life. To recognize the movement of current, however slight. To not fear the big waves, but to anticipate their thrill ride, even when butterfly-stomached. To realize that life is a river—like I’ve been telling my storytelling students this whole damn time—so go with the flow, take the rapids and rough times as they come for the wondrous stories you’ll spill over them later, and don’t worry too much about the course ahead, but let yourself run like water. Fluid and dynamic.
I am not exactly sure what is happening—but it looks like the silver sparkles glittering in the river sun; it feels like the giant heart made of rocks I found on the island at the confluence to the South Fork—and I am floating on for dear, sweet life. For this one wild and precious life.
vintage Jones New York bronze silk skirt – $4, Idaho Youth Ranch thrift store | vintage Isabella’s Journey(matted like an OG merkin)brown fake fur apron – free (for the night), Canyons Inc river costume dry-bag | unlabeled psychedelic pink-and-purple pullover – free (for the night), Canyons Inc river costume dry-bag | unlabeled bronze & black pants fashioned into a headdress(the crotch on these was dank, but I’ve had some dank crotches on my head before so no bother) – free (for the night), Canyons Inc river costume dry-bag | square wooden earringswith a pinprick hole bored in the middle of each – $15, Buckskin Bill’s historic hideout upstream (handmade by a local who lives on the Salmon)
Styled by Brandon Megorden, my ultimate creative “yesander.”
No one will read this because it’s Treefort in Boise but I’ll write it anyway. I stopped at a thrift store in Las Vegas and bought…everything. This dress says, “I sell crystals to heal your chakras from my Mercedes sprinter van. #vanlife”.
My dad gave me this sweet cowboy hat right before I left. It has a Harley Davidson emblem in the middle. I was, indeed, born to be wild.
pink & patterned Sage boho dress with fringe – $13, Savers in Las Vegas | Harley Davidson cowboy hat – $0, gift from dad | hot pink Columbia trail shoes – $80, REI outlet
The Kelso Dunes in the Mojave Desert sing. Like Julie Andrews with less Astroturf. When you break off a swath of sandscape, it vibrates the entire dune in this guttural hum. Earth throat clearings.
Over 20 years ago, I camped on the side of this dune while on an “Into the Wild” style backpacking trip. More of an escape. Sand, everywhere. Coyotes, too. Another howl that cannot be captured by audio devices. The vague always lit vibe of Vegas haloing the mountains.
Dune side that night, I dreamed of an orange beetle. It broke open to a radiant white goo. Now I’m writing a novel adaptation of this stint in the desert. (If not of the David Lynchian dream.)
Strange and surreal, to come back here looking like you wear the sky with a backcountry sheepskin BDSM bodice. This place, already a sort of fiction in your mind. You, a sort of fiction, too.
Sage sky dress – $13, Savers in Las Vegas, NV | The Comstock Load sheepskin vest – $60, from a friend’s familial clothing inheritance | no label, made in Italy leather boots with fur trim – $30, Restyle thrift store
It’s the fin de siecle—and fin de this sick outfit. This will be the last time I ever wear this dress. It’s from the 1920s. Over 100 years old. It’s silk and velvet brocade with tassels and a fur-lined skirt. It’s the most exquisite dress I’ve ever owned. And I’ve owned a lot of exquisite dresses.
But the seams rip every time I move. I kept painstakingly sewing it back together. The last time I wore it (before this last, last time photoshoot), I hand-sewed it for a half hour before going to Story Story Late-Night’s “A HOLiDAY NOT TO BE REMEMBERED.” It was a powerful show. The stories were riveting in the way that makes you put one hand on your heart and one hand in the air to feel the palpable electric buzz of the collective human experience of raw, real storytelling. I’m glad that this was the last event it will ever go to. I will not forget it.
But sometimes, beautiful things cannot be resurrected. Because they are simply done here.
Seven years ago, I had an ego death of sorts. Tho painful, it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. I learned the hard way the vital lessons I desperately needed to learn before I could ever become the person I truely want to be.
Lately, I’ve been feeling like that line from Taylor Swift’s Look What You Made Me Do: “The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Oh! She’s dead!”
The old Jessica is dead. She was lovely and weird and porous and fragile and low self-esteemed and always seeking ways to escape. She had zero healthy boundaries. I both hated and adored living inside of her. She loathed herself a lot. She was miserable too often. She projected all the time. Only her fantasy life and ungrounded idealism kept her alive and lit.
But as Cheryl Strayed once said to an aspiring writer: “You’re up too high and down too low. Neither is the place where we get any work done.”
This bitch no longer lives in fantasy. She spent seven years in a cocoon. As goo. Trying to figure out what is real and what is not real about herself and her dreams and her perception. Finally, she has emerged. A butterfly. Still delicate but fierce as fuck. She is free and she is responsible. She lives in clear-eyed vision and inspired daily action. She is far kinder to me. She is deep-down content. She is pretty fly. I can’t wait to see where her new wings take her.
I assume I got this unlabeled antique dress from In Retrospect like 10 years ago but I can’t really remember that or the price | Frye boots with brown antique leather – $200, TheFryeCompany.com
Cheep 