No, not the actor (though I grant you that he is pleasing on the eyes), but the latest lit blow up/ Gawker style “scandal” to come out of New York city, the confessional piece of writing known as “Adrien Brody” (the pseudonym the young woman in question chose for her much older lover/ writer friend once he was outed).
Now, here’s the thing: I do not particularly like the style of writing. I would dare say I don’t even particularly care about it. However, I am appalled by the snark and wall of condemnation thrown at this young woman because she wrote this piece. Probably the reason I have a fondness for it is because I *was* once Marie Calloway (saving cultural and situational differences). I too had a penchant for much older sort of famous writers that I wanted to impress (but above all, fuck). I didn’t want them to love me or date me or introduce me to their parents. Oh no. I wanted to fuck their brains out because somewhat, I used to believe that it was a way to apprehend part of the talent, part of the intellect that dazzled me, a piece of the mind I so wanted to possess. Yes, I look back and sort of cringe, but yet I don’t. At least not completely. I don’t condemn 21 year old me for having these absurd notions of apprehending subjectivity through sex. Those topics remained a constant throughout my life. They became the center of all fiction I wrote (which was a vaguely disguised autobiographical exploration of fucking and possessing more than someone’s body but somewhat having access to their mind, if only for a fleeting second). I stopped writing fiction and theater plays for the most part (except some stuff that I don’t intend to publish) but I don’t regret those early explorations. I would probably be mortified if someone took the texts I wrote back then and used them as an example of the “failures of feminism”, which is what is happening with this young woman.
Now, there was one specific paragraph in her piece that made me laugh out loud. It was when she asks this writer friend about a conference he gave in Amsterdam and his answer was:
“Some people knew the blog but I feel like they don’t take it seriously because of where it’s published. And they didn’t take me seriously because I don’t have a PhD in sociology or philosophy. But it’s like, I’m smarter than these people. The only difference between me and them is that they’re teaching…”
Like Marie, I also had a tendency to get involved with guys who had themselves on a higher esteem than regular folks had for them. Again, that’s part of the deal when you are 21, not that you are gullible (looking back, I know I wasn’t; if anything, I didn’t take any of my shenanigans too seriously even if, like Marie, I would also cry a bit over a broken heart). But going back to the dude now known as Adrien Brody: the reason people in Amsterdam didn’t take him seriously is because we have no idea what the “New York scene” is all about. The few of us who have a remote and vague idea about what constitutes this “scene” follow it intermittently with a mixture of dread and curiosity, but not the kind of envious curiosity this guy probably has in mind. Oh no, the few people who are semi aware of this literary/ blogging/ cultural phenomenon going on in New York are actually perplexed by it. An ocean between us can do that. Speaking only for myself, a lot of it comes across as endogamic, a bit mean spirited and not very interesting (unless you actually live there, I suppose).
Here’s another kick to the story: the guy in question had (has?) a girlfriend at the time. Who found out about his cheating through a column written at The Hairpin. Still, a great number of people point fingers at the young woman, calling her “a famewhore”. Little is said of the guy’s behavior. (Really, ponder that for a second, your girlfriend finds out you cheated on her by reading The Hairpin!).
As a former (and not repentant) Marie Calloway, I am dismayed that a young woman writing about sex is still scandal worthy. And that even in this day and age, a first person account (which she didn’t intend as anything except that) is being analyzed as a “betrayal to feminism” (she does mention in several paragraphs that she is a feminist). If anything, we should perhaps take a step back and wonder why a young woman writing about a sexual encounter is still worthy of such vitriol, whereas, as Kate Zambreno mentions here, and TheRejectionist mentioned on Twitter, a dude doing exactly the same thing gets praises on The New Yorker.
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