4. This is an X-Rated Newsletter
The word “I” has always been one part of my journalism.
I began my career in journalism, in the early 2000s, during the steady rise of the personal essay, the slow adoption of that medium by outlets that pay people to write, and the erosion of hard-and-fast rules that prohibited use of the word “I” in anything journalistic.
At times in my career, especially as a younger writer, essay writing was required of me; many times, I chose to put myself in my stories. Consistently, though, I’ve worked with writers over the years who have openly turned their noses up at the inclusion of oneself in pieces of journalism, as if it was some sort of weakness, or a bruise to be ignored. Not only do I reject this, I think it is a male-centric viewpoint that asks for me, a female writer, to neglect the foundation that I built my career on. It ignores any good that comes from an essay. And, frankly, I think the message behind this view is just to write more like a guy. Nope. I’m good, thanks.
Essay writing is not something I learned during my journalism education at a semi-prestigious four-year school with a un-prestigious journalism program. We learned the basics of reporting: writing ledes, interviewing, recognizing our own conflicts of interest, taking photos, writing headlines. We did not write stories where we were central characters. And I’m not arguing it should have been included in the curriculum: I re-read some of the things I wrote as a younger writer, and — wow — the musings of young Leah were so earnest and embarrassing.
Yet when I sat down in my corner cubicle at my first newspaper job — one reporter of a staff of three at a rural newspaper in an Eastern Washington town — I got comfortable using the word “I” very quickly. All of us were in a rotation to write a monthly column, which, many times, turned into a space for personal writing. On one occasion, I wrote about being a bridesmaid in a friend’s wedding, and my conflicted feelings on marriage as a feminist. I would bet actual hard-earned money that this was the first and last time something like that has been published in that particular newspaper.
I had always wanted to work at an alternative weekly newspaper — places known for blending both investigative journalism and breaking ground with writing style. And I got lucky: within six months I landed a new job at an alt-weekly: The Inlander, in Spokane, Washington.
Growing up in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon in the 1990s, my journalistic dreams had been built out of my obsessive reading of the region’s alternative media outlets: Willamette Week, The Rocket (RIP), The Stranger. I bought The Burnside Cadillac from homeless vendors and used it as inspiration to found my own street newspaper (The Rising Times, RIP) years later. I couldn’t see myself in mainstream media back then, but in these other papers, the Northwest became more of a place for people like me: the rejects, the weirdos, the people that powerful classes have always feared and still do.
Today, there aren’t a lot of alt-weeklies left. The Inlander is one of the last surviving ones in the country. I did a lot of experimenting in that paper, learning how to take on big investigative projects, but also to use first-person writing when it fit the occasion. I grew up in its pages, in that newsroom, where I worked on and off for nearly ten years, holding almost every available editorial job. I learned that you can be both a reporter and a writer if you want to be, and sometimes you can do both at the exact same time.
I was lucky, in a way, to land at the paper in Spokane — which was the exact opposite of where I, an eager young writer, though I should be. Faraway, in places like New York, essays were becoming a commodity at sites like xoJane, which asked young, eager female writers to deeply mine into their pain and pasts so the site could get more clicks. At first it seemed like it could be a good thing — to boldly show the world the experience of being a woman. But in many cases, first-person writing wasn’t bringing readers into an idea, or humanizing an issue; it was demanding that young women spill their guts to make someone else rich. With that new demand, a class of writers came up, examining every social interaction, every bad date, every personality quirk as fodder for a new “It Happened to Me” essay. It exploited the female experience. That climate, and the rash of xoJane lookalikes that emerged during that time, led — I think — to social media: places that say they’re giving everyone a platform, but that are absolutely exploiting its users in their faces.
I proudly use the word “I” in my work, and I don’t believe it compromises all the work I do where that word doesn’t come in. Essay writing is one more tool to get across ideas, one more style that allows me to be paid to work as a writer. I don’t see an admission of my emotion as some kind of failure to the rest of my journalism. I am a person who is a journalist but who also feels pain. Stories I work on make me cry. They change the way I view the world. They hurt. Sometimes they give me joy. They are a part of my life. In some cases, they’ve offered some help. But so have the essays I’ve written.
In 2015 I published one called “This is Meant to Hurt You” in the Northwest-centric literary journal Moss. It’s my husband’s struggles with chronic illness, and the effect that was having on our relationship. It was a piece I toiled over for months, and when I published it, a floodgate of emails came into my inbox: people who were struggling with the exact same thing. (Though I never claimed for it to be journalism, I had written journalistic pieces that also used first-person to humanize the amorphous term “chronic illness,” like my story “Living Sick and Dying Young in Rich America,” written in 2013 for The Atlantic).
That Moss essay had an unintended utility: a sudden fellowship between me and the people who read it, showing us we weren’t as alone as any of us thought, but also blurring the line between me the journalist and me: an actual human being. That was healing. It also underscored a thing I need reminding of a lot lately: that writing can help. It’s okay for journalists to show the world they are people, too.
The essay I am most proud of, though, is one you’ve never read. It’s about porn.
I published it in Playboy in May 2017. It’s not online, so I’m sure you haven’t read it. It was called “Porn to the People,” and chronicles two years in which I followed around a group of amateur porn stars. Reading it again now, it’s without a doubt the most X-rated piece of writing I’ve ever put together: a true orgy of words. It has sex, drugs, drinking, dancing and more than one use of the term “fuck pile.”
I loved writing for Playboy for this reason: there were no boundaries, nothing was too far. It was the only outlet where I could tell my editor I wanted explore the theme of shame in a journalistic manner, and they told me to go for it.
Here’s an excerpt, which follows a scene of me meeting a group of aspiring porn stars at a North Portland bar:
… That was the story I planned to write: how an amateur porn gets made.
But in the nearly two years since that night at the bar, it became a lot more than a story about on-camera sex. It became a story about all the ways the world tells people to have sex, about the fear that comes with being honest about our most primal selves. It became a story about a woman who aggressively knows what kind of sex she wants to have, and the consequences that come with that knowledge. And it became a story about me, and all the things I didn’t know I had to learn.
Paying subscribers to this newsletter can hear me read the full piece. If you’re getting the free version of this newsletter, and want to upgrade, just hit that button above.
I’m calling these recordings of my old stories Quarantine Archives, and as the months go on, I’ll get better at editing the audio, and maybe I’ll put some music in. For now, think of them like a short audiobook story.
Trust me: do not listen to this with your children around unless you want to explain to them what a butt plug is. (And if you’re related to me, maybe skip this one? Your call.)
I’m sharing this piece with you because I am proud of it, and you’ve never read it. But I am also sharing it because it is a story where I admitted my ignorance and discomfort on the page, and I think that’s OK for a writer to do sometimes. To say: hey, I’m confused about a thing, and here’s me fumbling my way through that.
Ultimately, it is a story about finding joy. About how the only way we can navigate through the tunnels of our pain is to find pleasure — whatever that looks like.
I think, right now — after all we’ve been through, knowing everything we have ahead — we all deserve to remember what it feels like to just go for something. To take a leap and come out of it a better person. To let go, and feel alive.