Shes really busy, shes an actress; shes out in LA with her husband, Im not gonna worry about it. Sarah Hepola tells me how in the 1990s while she was at the University of Texas it was important for her to "drink, dress, and fuck like a man". I was very disconnected from, Am I even hungry? I am such a binge eater, and I will eat away my feelings in the same way that I would drink away my feelings. What was trauma, really? Was the gender wage gap a myth? Sallys mom taught her to play the piano, and Sally accompanied many vocal groups over the years, from high school through her adult years when she accompanied the singing group The Harmonettes (renamed 'The New Jubilee Singers'). But it was like that for me.". A couple of years ago, I was asked to conduct an interview at the Texas Book Festival with Malcolm Gladwell. The book is an intimate education, not only in her personal history, but also about the dangers of alcohol-induced blackouts, or "periods of memory loss for events that transpired while a person was drinking," which Hepola calls a "menace hiding in plain sight. by Sarah Hepola. Privately, I worried I was wrong. Shining a light into her blackouts, she discovers the person she buried, as well as the confidence, intimacy, and creativity she once believed came only from a bottle. There was so much that was on the other side of sobriety that was so much better. On the master of precise prose, falling in love, and writing as an irrelevant act. Fear of professional exile has kept me from taking on certain topics. He gave me his dog-eared paperback of Slouching Toward Bethlehem. A menudo se despertaba con lagunas y un espacio en blanco en el que debera haber habido cuatro horas. I was stuck on my second book, stuck on projects Id taken to cover the expenses of not finishing that book. This was 2018, and the party was an informal gathering at the sumptuous Brooklyn brownstone of a writer deemed problematic, even before that word went mainstream. And thats why, midway through a career built on speaking out, I shut up. My book opens with an episode in Paris where I came out of a blackout in the middle of having sex with a man I did not recognize. Sarah Hepola is the author of the bestselling Blackout and whatever she writes next. One evening, I sat on the brown-leather couch of a younger man who admired me for my writing, and maybe other things, if the salty text messages were true. Its projection. One of the common arguments made, at least about #MeToo scandals, is that the men (and women) behaving badly rarely face legal punishment. What if I had to substitute strawberries for raspberries and the customer didnt like strawberries? And a lot of us are trapped in that sorry place. The Internet hates Franzen? He was not an online creature, despite being 29. Yes, exactly! Or I would pause the recording to offer my own opposing view, like I was part of this conversation, and not the passive listener. Hepola convincingly portrays her life as a blacking-out alcoholic, but even more compelling is the picture she paints of sobriety. They have no idea. My parents were Yankee liberals, only one of many ways we didnt fit. Public scolding, all-caps hyperbole, a stubborn refusal to understand another point of viewintolerance, once perceived as a conservative problem, was fully bipartisan now. We spoke about her newly released first book Blackout: Remembering The Things I Drank To Forget, which is about a lifetime of drinking and the initial years of recovery. I grew up in a conservative part of Dallas, in the conservative 80s. Another topic you explore -- related to your own weight loss -- is body acceptance. When a woman is passed out, that is a clear line that you should not cross. Course Syllabus School, What Is It Good For? I was so proud of this small, private act of civil disobedience that I brought it home to Texas to show it to the younger man like a prized pelt. 30 Articles Style & Design |. I was not in that situation; I was on the other side of the fence. He had a book coming out,Talking to Strangers, which included a well-researched chapter on alcohol and blackouts in the context of a college scandal I knew better than most, having met some of the people involved with the legal case. Maybe Ill write something lousy. Sarah Hepola The Things I'm Afraid to Write About by David Labaree March 24, 2022 Leave a Comment This post is a remarkable essay by Sarah Hepola, which appeared recently online at Atlantic. But there would be no lunch after the show. Jack Goldsmith and Andrew Keane Woods: Internet speech will never go back to normal. If so, can they please tell me, so I can choose my stance accordingly? I didnt deserve to be there, or at least thats how I felt as guests exchanged war stories about the scolds on social media, where I mostly posted upcoming appearances, like a bot run by a PR firm. Books were a common pleasure point, and I was eager to tell him about a literary party Id recently attended in New York City, where Id once lived and often visited in the Before Times. You can call it justice. And this bravado among women has continued to the point where it is considered a right. When I quit drinking in 2010, bringing to an end a dark history of blackouts and tumbles down staircases, I thought I might lose my writing career. H. Armstrong Roberts / ClassicStock / Getty; Gabriela The Things I'm Afraid to Write About Books were a common pleasure point, and I was eager to tell him about a literary party Id recently attended in New York City, where Id once lived and often visited in the Before Times. Show More. (Laughs.) But so many of these spectacles could be grouped under a more mundane heading. The #MeToo movement, which felt like a necessary corrective when it began, was starting to feel like an arrow pointed at our own agency. I have read one article that is like a flawless, pure distillation of everything that annoys me about waffly liberal writing. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times magazine, the Atlantic, Elle, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Guardian, Salon, and Texas Monthly. Fewer open bars, more closed DMs. We need to understand these terms -- "blackout" and "passing out -- a little bit better, so that we can have a better conversation. She was one of those people who rarely had a bad day. Sarah Hepola @sarahhepola Feb 22, 2023 @TheJenosphere That sounds incredible. I have spoken to women who, when they wake up and they cant remember what happened the night before, their immediate thing is, I was drugged; I was roofied. And that is possible, but I think one of the things that wasnt out there, to my thinking, was just how often excessive drinking leads to blacking out, especially for women. Last year marked a low point for me. I couldnt always tell the difference between activism and protectionism, valid critique and frivolous complaint. When men are in a blackout, they do things to the world, he told me. If women wanted equality in the bedroom, why did so many confess to being turned on by domination and rough sex? (Blackouts can be either partial or complete.). All Content 2023 Sarah Hepola. I understood such moral panics to be the product of generational hand-wringing and the religious right, which was then gaining ground. For Sarah, and many of her peers living in New York, blackouts were normal. Too fraught, no lived experience. Three guys I met on dating apps who refused to get vaccinated: Eh, never mind. Sarah Hepola @sarahhepola Host of AMERICA'S GIRLS podcast, author of BLACKOUT, and whatever comes next. And the writing community changed. Cloud Teachers College and became a 4th Grade Teacher in Sebeka, MN where she met her future husband, Donald Hepola. Movies and books became a refuge, along with the Top 40 radio I listened to at night in my pink-and-red bedroom to drown out arguments between my parents, who were going through a rough patch. Instead my writing grew better, stronger, more clearheaded. I still wanted it both ways: the respect and admiration of strangers without the hard work of earning that respect. A nagging sense that I did not know enough about any given controversy to weigh in publicly (though that never stopped so many others). ANew York Timescolumnist who would eventually be publicly excommunicated. The fast-typing egalitarians of the internet age wanted social change, vengeance, a megaphone for their righteous anger. I lost 50 pounds, but I still have to accept that Im never going to have the body of my 5'10" actress friend. Your email address will not be published. Its a bad situation, to be relying on alcohol for your acceptance, because then you start doing things that are unacceptable. I was so hungry for this luxurious taffy pull, where we all gathered together and tried to sort out something closer to the truth. Sarah grew up in Dallas, Texas, and was brought up in a household of modest chaos. To do so risks public shaming and possible loss of livelihood, both of which are of overwhelming importance to people like Hepola who write for a living. But the conversation didnt go as Id planned. He came from a different generation, but I was pleased to discover that he shared many of my unconventional opinions and favorite authors, that taste and perspective werent necessarily a matter of the year you were born. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, the Atlantic, Salon, and Elle. Perhaps you've seen her work on Salon. Id long considered myself a liberal and a feminist, but Id grown terrified of being banished for views I considered reasonable, or at least worth discussingbut maybe, but what about, but actually. I suspect I will lose followers (I dont have that many), but perhaps I will gain self-respect, which Ive been sorely lacking lately. on Sarah Hepola The Things Im Afraid to Write About. She moved out of Brooklyn to a tiny, beautiful apartment on Jane Street in Manhattan, then a year later back to her hometown of Dallas, Texas, where she is tearing up the town writing for local and national publications, and still editing essays for Salon. Im not going to die in that ditch today, I often said to a like-minded friend when we spoke about these scandals, which was daily, both of us getting in a lather because the topics were so rich. And they dont know the difference between blacking out and passing out. And I knew blackouts so intimately that I literally wrote the book. Artists were the weirdos and the scoundrels, the square pegs who never fit the round hole of society, and the result was typically a bucket of addictions, perversions, and bizarre predilections born of life on the outskirts. Lets talk about it out there, he said, gesturing to the corridor that led to a packed audience, and I gave him that look, the same look Id given the younger man who asked why I didnt write about these things. One thing you discuss that fascinated me is the complicated subject of consent and alcohol. If youve never experienced a blackout, it might be hard to understand the icy wrongness of waking up to find a blank space where three hours should be. Often called the Stanford rape (although the ghastly episode was, under California law at the time, considered a sexual assault butnot a rape) it became famous after the young woman at the center wrote ablisteringvictims statementthat was published onBuzzFeedand went supernova. My college boyfriend introduced me to Joan Didion. One of the common arguments made, at least about #MeToo scandals, is that the men (and women) behaving badly rarely face legal punishment. What It's Like When Alcohol Takes Over Your Life -- And Steals Your Memories, "periods of memory loss for events that transpired while a person was drinking,". Id get killed!, His look wasnt judgmental. Maybe it would get me intoThe New Yorker! TWIN CITIES, MN Camille Williams, who co-anchored with her husband Cory Hepola for KARE 11 on weekends surprised her fans Tuesday night when she announced her departure from the station . Like me, the younger man had fallen in love with art because it was the place where people told the truth. Thats not what this is about. The fast-typing egalitarians of the internet age wanted social change, vengeance, a megaphone for their righteous anger. But central to Millers despair is this: She could not remember what happened. woozy with rainbows." I kept going. A journalist whose delightfully combative Twitter account I read regularly, like an episodic novel. She and Don raised six children there. I just decided, I get to be however I want, and you need to accept me. Its very unusual for sexual assaults involving a blackout to get a conviction, partly for this reason. Lets get blackout has been a college rallying cry for many years. A bigot? Peak Atlantic. My parents were Yankee liberals, only one of many ways we didnt fit. Sarah Hepola writes a long rambling pointless essay titled The . But in silencing our own moral compass and strongly held beliefs, were hanging ourselves out to dry, rendering our wisdom and insight useless. Not that project, not that story, not that controversy. If so, can they please tell me, so I can choose my stance accordingly? If you do, that is sexual assault. Admin. Because I wanted to talk to other writers about the things you cant write about anymore., His eyes narrowed. Joan Didion, Carl Sagan, Christopher Hitchens, though I had more reservations about that last one. I was very disconnected from the emotional stakes of sex. Sarah Hepola is the author of the bestselling memoir, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget, and the host/creator of America's Girls, a Texas Monthly podcast about the lost history and cultural impact of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Political talking points dont lie neatly along human behavior. Joining Tracy in conversation is New York Ti. When I quit drinking in 2010, bringing to an end a dark history of blackouts and tumbles down staircases, I thought I might lose my writing career. At my core, I was a people pleaser, and the culture had reached a moment when any opinion worthy of expression ran the risk of losing half your audience. The notion that men were the ones who needed to changenot a bad idea, in my opinionhad a stubborn way of relinquishing women from the burden of their own choices and behavior. All I know is that I hated it, and for five years, I kept very quiet about it. Louis C.K. This was the stuff of doorstop novels, and yet people were working it out in 280 characters dashed off in line at Trader Joes. I toyed with the idea of writing about Brock Turner. By now the name Sarah Hepola should be familiar to you. Executive Editor, Editorial Partnerships, HuffPost. Public shaming is the worst kind of shaming. I toyed with the idea of writing about Brock Turner. Thats when I first found out what blacking out was. The other is that she is exploring an incredibly important problem for writers and other public figures in the currently period of over-heated cultural conflict. Public shaming is the worst kind of shaming. One of the reasons that I drank so much when I was drinking and involved with men is that I felt deeply uncomfortable with my own body. Its kind of mind-boggling to contemplatethat not pouring a beer on a strangers head would be the bad career move. Millers victims statement evokes the confusion, the shame, the soul trespass of this harrowing moment. I carved out a journalism career during an era when that was not so hard to do. For press inquiries or to contact the author, click here. Five years ago this month, Sarah Hepola awoke to a scene that looked like just any other Sunday morning. Maybe Ill write something lousy. There were the pressing matters of rent, exorbitant insurance, and the occasional glitter heels. I was stuck. 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