The pink billboard near Great Neck and Wolfsnare roads advertises “Washington Square — Homes for Rent.” Washington Square is also a community of homeowners. /Photo by Cat Porterfield.

I disliked the billboard before I knew it was evidence.

It is enormous, pink and planted beside the turn from Great Neck onto Wolfsnare and then into Washington Square. It rises above the reeds with all the subtlety of a casino marquee installed after civilization collapses:

WASHINGTON SQUARE.

HOMES FOR RENT.

Except Washington Square is not a rental complex.

McLeskey still owns and rents about 74 units there, but the neighborhood is also, and by no small margin, a community of homeowners. I know because I am a real estate agent, and I sold two homes there to friends.

Every time I drive past that sign, it feels like a developer’s version of ownership extending beyond the property line: one giant advertisement telling everyone on Great Neck Road what kind of place Washington Square is, regardless of the people who actually bought homes there. I can’t prove the billboard depressed anyone’s property value. I can tell you that, as a real estate professional, I would never market a community of homeowners to the passing public as though the entire neighborhood were rental inventory and definitely not on a shitty eyesore of a billboard that NOBODY likes. Well, maybe one person does. We’ll get there.

And it sits over a wetland like a big, pink, ugly lie.

That is middle-finger bait for me.

But when I opened the old city files about Washington Square, the sign stopped looking merely ugly. It began to look like a monument to the entire mess.

The party for a promise already fifty years old

On October 22, 2022, I went to an event on a vacant parcel near Great Neck and Wolfsnare.

It had been advertised to the neighborhood as an ice-cream social with a big announcement. There was an ice-cream truck, a podium, and a portable speaker sitting on a battered strip of pavement in the middle of an empty property.

Mayor Bobby Dyer was there. Councilwoman Rosemary Wilson was there.

A handful of residents were there.

The turnout was about as lackluster as a political event involving free ice cream can possibly be. When almost nobody shows up for free ice cream, the universe is giving feedback.

Actual Meta Ads run during October 2022 by Friends of Linwood Branch.

Linwood Branch was using the promised park as part of his campaign to keep his City Council seat.

I was running against him.

So were Worth Remick and Richard “RK” Kowalewitch. There were four of us in District 6, and yes, it is important to keep up: Remick won in 2022, and Kowalewitch is now challenging him for the same seat in 2026.

I planted my campaign signs among Branch’s and watched the spectacle.

What repulsed me was the opportunism. The old promise now had an ice-cream truck, a podium, a portable speaker and campaign signs. What it still did not have was a park. He had the podium. I had the receipts.

October 22, 2022: a sparse campaign-season gathering on the proposed park parcel.

The diamonds in the file

I already had the Washington Square records, months before the ice-cream social. They were not neighborhood folklore. They were city memoranda, planning conditions and correspondence reaching back to 1972.

A July 10, 1972 memorandum by city planner R. Patrick Gomez records a meeting with Wayne McLeskey and others about the Washington Square development. The document separated the for-sale townhouse portion from the rental apartments. For approximately 44 acres of townhouses, the city’s standard 15 percent recreational allocation worked out to 6.6 acres.

The memo then recorded a different arrangement: McLeskey would independently develop a six-acre park, owned by McLeskey, “complete with basketball courts and swimming pool, etc.” The sentence that matters is astonishingly plain:

The August 1972 approval for Application No. 1393 covered 403 townhouses and 368 apartments, a total of 771 units. Approval was subject to “six acres recreation as set forth on site plan.” City correspondence kept returning to that requirement.

In August 1973, staff sought a letter spelling out the park, its facilities and its construction schedule. The city wanted assurance that the park would be built and maintained.

In February 1974, the city engineer called the six developed acres a requirement for the project as a whole.

A December 1983 memo still referred to McLeskey’s obligation to develop the greenbelt.

The July 1972 memorandum does not whisper. It separates “townhouses for sale” from “apartments for rent,” describes a six-acre park with basketball courts and a swimming pool, and records McLeskey’s agreement to develop and maintain it.

The paper trail becomes less tidy as the years pass. The location and composition of the recreational acreage shifted. A smaller central area and distributed open space entered the chat. That may complicate the legal argument. It does not erase the original promise. The homes were built. The park was not. The checks got cashed, and a pipeline to keep it coming was established.

The original plan treated the rental apartments and the for-sale townhouses as separate parts of the development.

The apartment side eventually became Emerald Point Apartments & Townhomes at 2100 Westminster Lane. The Breeden Company purchased the 863-unit property in 2004 for $68 million, the largest apartment acquisition in Virginia Beach history.

Emerald Point advertises two seasonal swimming pools, three tennis courts, a playground, a fitness center and an activity room. I’m highlighting the contrast visible today. The rental apartment side has abundant on-site recreation.

The Washington Square homeowners spent more than fifty years waiting for a neighborhood park. This inequality does not require embellishment. One side of the original project can advertise pools, courts, and a playground. The homeowner community on the other side waited half a century for the city to buy an empty field and then learned that creating an actual park could cost another $5 million.

I gave the receipts to the man who beat me

In the 2022 election, Remick beat Branch by 227 votes. I finished fourth. That did not make the documents less important.

On July 31, 2023, I texted Remick that I had records from the 1970s and offered to share them. He told me an appraiser had not found any proffers or other promises for a park.

So I sent him the files. His reaction after reading it was immediate: “Well, wow! I’m going to send this to city attorney and ask for his opinion.… I’m going to push very hard on this.”

That exchange matters. This is not score-settling over a campaign. I handed the evidence to the person who won because the homeowners and their children were still the point.

In March 2024, City Council unanimously authorized the acquisition of roughly 7.1 acres near Great Neck Road, Wolfsnare Road and Westminster Lane. The city paid $1.5 million through its open-space program as part of a settlement of pending litigation.

By the way, it is nearly impossible to get to the root of anything in this town without being distracted by something equally curious. This place could kill a curious person.

Virginia Beach finally owned land for the park Washington Square had been discussing since the Nixon administration, subject, of course, to the seller’s carefully preserved billboard easement.

That was progress. It was also an invoice. A “top priority” with no money.

I recently checked back with Remick. He called the park a “top priority” and said Parks and Recreation had produced a $5 million estimate “to create a park worth visiting.”

He said he needed to find a funding source before Parks and Recreation would begin meeting with residents. He was, he wrote, “just as upset as any on how we got here” and wanted residents to receive what they “should have gotten decades ago.”

Add the $1.5 million public purchase to the $5 million preliminary development estimate and Virginia Beach could be looking at roughly $6.5 million to finally deliver the neighborhood recreation described in the old approval file.

For perspective, today’s $6.5 million has the purchasing power of roughly $864,000 in 1973, when city staff were still pressing McLeskey for a plan and schedule for the park. In 1983, when a city memo was still referring to McLeskey’s obligation to develop the greenbelt, it would have been about $1.94 million.

The promise aged for free.

Delivering it did not.

It is an excellent measurement of institutional rust, and apparently rust costs considerably more to remove after everyone ignores it for fifty years.

I told Remick I knew where to find the money: McLeskey.

It could look like giving back, I wrote, “when all she’s actually doing is paying up.”

That is my judgment. I am not pretending a court has ordered Cheryl McLeskey or the company to fund the park. But after reading the original files, I do not believe taxpayers should be the people asked to solve a problem the development arrangement created.

The billboard got better paperwork than the park

When Virginia Beach finally bought the land in 2024, I assumed the city had at least purchased the ability to remove the billboard.

Reader, it had not.

The $1.5 million purchase and litigation settlement allowed two related seller entities, Lynnhaven Area Properties LLC and Washington Square Townhouses LLC, to reserve an approximately 1,565-square-foot sign, access and maintenance easement.

The easement allows its holder to own, maintain, and repair the existing wooden sign. If the billboard is damaged or destroyed, the holder may seek approval to rebuild or replace it. The city also agreed, as owner of the surrounding land, to promptly sign documents needed for future sign-related applications.

The public did not simply purchase land that happened to have an ugly billboard sitting on it. The transaction drew a private little kingdom around the advertisement: 1,565 square feet of sign, access and maintenance rights carved out of property being acquired for open space and park infrastructure.

The old park obligation could dissolve into decades of ambiguity.

The commercial advertisement was protected down to the square foot, and for successors and assigns.

The easement even says the sign must be maintained so it does not become “unsightly” or hazardous. I appreciate that someone thought to write that down. The city apparently had no comparable trouble preserving the sign’s right to exist.

And now there is an active lawsuit over the billboard.

That lawsuit says permission allowing the sign was granted using information that may not have been true. If that information was false, the permission is fairy dust. An easement may protect the path to a lawful sign. It cannot launder a bogus approval into a lawful one.

That is an impressive amount of legal bubble wrap around a billboard whose original permission slip is now being challenged in court.

The city bought the future park. McLeskey kept the marquee. Now the marquee comes with litigation.

The park has a campaign season again.

After I told Remick I was preparing to publish, he gave me the city-side explanation. He wrote that he and I had both learned about the issue in 2022 and that he investigated it further. He said he believes the promise went south when then-Planning Director Bob Scott “signed off on this and released McLeskey from putting the Park in.”

Remick also said he had spoken at length with City Attorney Mark Stiles and that they could find no current legal avenue to enforce the proffer.

That is Remick’s account.

I have not seen the document he believes released McLeskey from the park requirement, nor have I seen a written legal analysis concluding that the promise cannot now be enforced. Those records should be public.

If a city sign-off erased a neighborhood park without delivering anything comparable to the homeowners, the failure did not disappear. It moved inside City Hall.

“Yes, assuming I win this Fall, it will remain a top priority. Meanwhile, I will speak again with Cheryl McLeskey,” he said.

Washington Square has already watched one campaign decorate an empty field with a podium, campaign signs and free ice cream. Residents should not have to wait through another election to find out whether “top priority” means money and a plan or merely another season of adjectives.

The name on the park

Then came the reply that turned irony into farce.

“I asked Cheryl and she said yes but no amount yet and wants to name the park. Do we want that?”

No amount had been agreed upon. No naming arrangement had been finalized. Remick was asking me a question, not announcing a deal.

Still. After all that?

I understood his message as a request for naming rights. The text itself says Cheryl “wants to name the park.” Remick and McLeskey can clarify publicly exactly what that means.

My answer is much simpler.

Washington Square Park.

That is the name.

It belongs to the neighborhood whose homeowners waited, whose children grew up without the promised park and whose history sat in city files while the promise rusted.

A contribution from McLeskey would be welcome.

Naming rights are not a thank-you note the public owes for partial performance fifty years late.

How large would the contribution be? Would it cover the entire $5 million estimated buildout or a symbolic fraction? Would the money come from Cheryl McLeskey personally, the McLeskey Family Foundation, or one of the company entities?

Is naming the park a condition, a preference or simply an idea?

Would residents get a vote?

Those questions need answers before anyone trades away the neighborhood’s name.

Wayne’s legacy, Cheryl’s stewardship

The McLeskey name is not obscure in Virginia Beach. It is practically civic typography.

F. Wayne McLeskey Jr. was one of the region’s most influential developers and, according to the company, one of the city’s largest taxpayers. He helped advance the Virginia Aquarium and was a major contributor to the Sandler Center.

Wayne and Cheryl created the McLeskey Family Foundation in 2011. He died in 2012 after lymphoma.

Cheryl McLeskey then took the helm of the family company.

Her public biography is formidable: president and CEO, licensed pilot, champion angler, breast-cancer survivor and philanthropist. She has flown patients for medical treatment through Angel Flight, supported cancer research and served on a long list of civic and nonprofit boards.

In 2023, she was named Virginia Beach’s 71st First Citizen.

And then there were those fishing tournaments. What happened to those annual fishing tournaments? See what I mean about curiosity in this city?

None of that is a reason to soften this story.

It is the reason the ending should be easy.

This is not about whether Cheryl McLeskey has done good things. She plainly has.

It is about whether good works purchase the right to rename an old obligation and whether a certain civic legacy should be written over the name of the community that carried the cost of waiting.

McLeskey’s website describes the company as a multigenerational investment office built on “trust, stewardship, and long-term thinking.” It says business should leave things better than it found them. Its leadership language emphasizes accountability.

A Regent University profile quotes Cheryl saying financial resources are a tool for doing good for others and describes servant leadership as thinking about others first.

Beautiful words.

Here is a beautiful opportunity to make them literal:

Fund the park generously. Do not condition the money on branding it. Let residents help design it. Leave the Washington Square name where it belongs.

A park should not become a monument to the family associated with the promise that went unfulfilled. The better legacy would be the park itself, built well, built soon, and given without requiring the neighborhood to surrender its name in gratitude.

A First Citizen can write a check without buying the noun.

I requested an interview with Cheryl McLeskey. Her assistant returned my call and invited me to submit my questions by email instead. I have done so, while making clear that I would still prefer a phone interview that allows for follow-up questions. I will update this story to include any response she provides.

What the neighborhood is owed

The city deserves credit for buying the land. Unless we discover they could have forced the park process through legal channels.

Remick deserves credit for reading the records, pushing the acquisition, and going back to McLeskey for help. Credit, however, is not completion. And naming rights are not a substitute for accountability.

The next steps should be public: release the basis for the $5 million estimate; disclose the proposed McLeskey contribution and every condition attached to it; begin meeting with residents now, not after another indefinite funding search; make safe access and neighborhood needs part of the design; and keep the name Washington Square Park unless the people of Washington Square decide otherwise.

Joan Baez’s “Diamonds and Rust” by Judas Priest feels right here — not because this is a romance, but because time turns memory into argument.

Washington Square’s diamonds were always in the file: six acres, recreation, basketball courts, a swimming pool and a developer’s agreement recorded in black and white. The rust accumulated during the decades between the promise and the public purchase.

I disliked the billboard before I knew it was evidence.

Now I want it remembered for exactly what it accidentally announced: who kept the name, who controlled the story, and who was expected to live with the consequences.

Build the park.

Let McLeskey help pay for it.

Call it Washington Square Park.

The diamonds were always in the file.

Everything else was rust.

This was not immediately alarming. I have been cursed with stomach problems for most of my life. A curse, I tell you. If gastrointestinal suffering had a loyalty program, my face could be its logo. I would have lounge access. There would be a concierge. It would all be in my rider.

Our bedroom bathroom is a tiny, second-story bathroom with nothing but a shower. It is in a newer residence for us, and we haven’t gotten around to making it cute yet. The day before this happened, I had finally thrown up a decorative shower curtain, hung a giant picture of a shark and put down a rug that said, “You look good.”

This is especially funny because I am so vain.

I sit on the little shelf in the shower and aim very hot water directly at my stomach until my intestines either calm down or become distracted by the possibility of being poached.

Sometimes this works.

On Monday, it did not.

I was sitting there under the hot water, shaking violently and trying to remain conscious. I was drenched in a cold sweat while taking a hot shower, which seemed medically significant but not uncommon for me.

Pick a temperature, body. We are in enough trouble already.

I thought I needed to use the toilet.

I managed to stand up, which turned out to be ambitious. There was blood. Then the pain hit with such force that I collapsed.

At some point, I tried to call for help.

I think Matt reached me relatively quickly. Time had become unreliable. I was naked, wet, semiconscious and either on or beside the toilet while he called the rescue squad.

There I was: Elvis Presley, except completely sober and without the reassuring knowledge that people would covet commemorative plates with my face on them fifty years later.

One thought kept looping through my head:

Please don’t let me die on the toilet.

Please don’t let me die on the toilet.

Please don’t let me die on the toilet.

Looking back, I probably should have dropped the location requirement and gone with the more comprehensive “Please don’t let me die.”

But even while possibly dying, I remained concerned with optics.

Thank you for making me a weirdo, God.

There are worse places to die, I suppose. You could die in the middle of writing the perfect email and leave everyone saying, “At least she died doing what she loved.” You could die at a family reunion and become the story people tell every holiday, right after someone asks whether the potato salad is still safe. You could die onstage.

But the toilet is impossible to romanticize. Elvis had talent and an enduring cultural legacy. Even he couldn’t make it glamorous.

Still, being found naked on a toilet felt like an undignified conclusion to a life in which I had already endured more than my share of indignities.

Also, I knew people would talk.

I have spent enough of my life in journalism, politics and small-town rock and roll to know that everyone says they want the unvarnished truth. What they ACTUALLY mean is the truth with flattering lighting and all bodily fluids edited out. Nobody really wants the naked middle-aged woman bleeding on the bathroom floor. They want the version after hair and makeup.

The rescue squad arrived.

I wish I could tell you I greeted them with courage and composure. Perhaps I thanked them for their service and supplied a concise medical history organized by date.

I did not.

I left my home naked, soaking wet and wrapped in a blanket.

This is not how I would have chosen to make my public exit. Given ten minutes and adequate blood flow to the brain, I would at least have put on a light cotton shift. Perhaps lipgloss.

Instead, several strangers carried me out of my house looking like a small, damp hostage.

I don’t remember the ambulance ride.

That bothers me more than I expected. An ambulance ride seems like something a person should remember. There are lights. There are sirens. Traffic finally gets out of your way. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have taken notes.

But there is simply a hole where that part of Monday should be.

One moment, I was begging God not to let my life end in the same tiny upstairs bathroom where we kept the toilet brush, and the rug insisting I looked good. The next pieces come back only in flashes: bright lights, unfamiliar faces, questions I could not properly answer and terrifying words drifting through a morphine haze.

Blood flow.

Transfusion.

Ischemia.

Intestine.

Surgery.

Words that sounded less like a diagnosis than a list of things I did not want anyone discussing while standing over my body.

I had never really been the patient before.

I had delivered three children without the benefit of a zipper. I had broken a bone skating when I was 10, badly enough to earn a helicopter ride from one hospital to another. But those felt like events. Dramatic, painful events, certainly, but events with an expected conclusion.

This was different.

I knew hospitals from the chair beside the bed.

I had been the mother of a pediatric brain cancer patient. I had been the daughter of a veteran dying of brain cancer at the VA. I knew how to listen to doctors while simultaneously watching their faces. I knew how to remember medication names, locate vending machines and recognize when a nurse was being reassuring because reassurance was medically indicated, versus when she was being reassuring because  they, too, were terrified.

But I had never been the person in the bed while the people I loved watched my face.

My body was spent.

That is the simplest way I can explain it. It had been hurting for a long time. I was tired. I couldn’t try as hard as I used to, and I was even more tired of feeling guilty about that.

So, during that first 24 hours at Virginia Beach General, I attempted to negotiate my release from existence.

I tried to make a bargain with God.

Just let me go.

Not in anger. Not dramatically. I wasn’t shaking my fist at the heavens, mostly because there were IVs attached to it and shaking anything seemed medically unwise.

Actually, I had so many IVs I lost count. Evidence on my hands and forearms points to about six. Every attempt to keep one had failed. Eventually, someone had to insert one using ultrasound, guiding the needle into a vein my body had apparently hidden for sport.

I was simply finished. And high as hell on fentanyl and then morphine.

I love Jesus. I should probably make that clear before I tell you that God got a little miffed with me.

Fair, but stern.

No. You don’t get to leave. I need you to keep doing your thing.

Those were the instructions.

Do your thing.

Keep doing your thing.

Help with the pain was coming.

I could tell you God was an orderly, but you probably wouldn’t believe me.

Then again, you have only just met me.

You don’t know about the cancer wards, the glamorous but vacant mother, the newspapers, small-town rock and roll, the politicians, the dying veteran dad I lost too young, the crooked cops I’ve encountered or the many occasions on which I have worked far beyond my job description without experiencing the inconvenience of being properly compensated.

You don’t know what “my thing” is.

Honestly, neither do I.

But apparently, I have been sent back to do more of it.

So I suppose I should start at the beginning.

Or at least at one of the beginnings.

There are rather a lot of them. They’ll all be on Substack someday.

Meanwhile, back at home, my activities are equally glamorous.

I cuddle the dogs.

I sleep.

I wake up and watch YouTube videos about motorcycles and current events.

Then I sleep again.

In between, I write this thing.

That is the current schedule: dogs, sleep, YouTube, writing, repeat. It is not exactly the triumphant return I might have imagined, but it is a return.

The YouTube videos provide background noise, distraction and the occasional reminder that there are people in the world who are still making things, fixing things, riding things and explaining things with far more energy than I currently possess.

And the writing is my way of doing my thing.

Not efficiently. Not elegantly, and never on a schedule anyone would mistake for professional.

But I am here.

God declined my resignation.

So Monday I’ll go downstairs to my desk, take one last glance at my old list and start a new one. More tattoos are going on the top, because after this ordeal. I’m getting a “Never Say Die” tattoo. Undertakers need a laugh just like the rest of us.

That was my mother’s way of shutting down an asshole.

Her sister, my favorite aunt, would have gone with, “Fuck her. She’s trash.”

Both phrases popped into my head yesterday at exactly the same moment, overlapping in their voices. Here’s why.

Matt and I headed to a beloved local beach hangout to cover a handful of Virginia Beach interviews for a documentary about Mid-Atlantic surf culture.

It was a pretty perfect Virginia Beach morning. The setting was a straight-up stoked example of the kind of local place people spend years trying to manufacture and never quite can.

We aspire to become collectors of one of the artists heavily featured there. Apparently, you need three pieces before you can officially call yourself a collector. That morning, he was there in the flesh to film his part in the documentary and talk about his work.

There were other familiar faces, too. Overall, it was a sweet little scene.

There was also a woman there I didn’t know.

She never introduced herself, so I went about doing what I had been invited to do: capture content and tell the story of the gathering. There was no other news media in the room. Just me and Matt.

Breakfast was served. I didn’t indulge. Old reporter habits die hard. When I worked in print, our policy was basically: don’t accept so much as a glass of water while covering a story unless you might actually die without it. As though eight ounces of tap water could corrupt the fourth estate.

For the record, during the roughly two and a half hours I was there, I had one cup of coffee and one glass of water.

This detail becomes funnier later.

Matt ate a little breakfast while I sat to his left. The woman came over on his right, leaned close, put her hand on his upper arm and whispered into his bad ear. Then she floated away.

I asked what she had said.

Matt told me it was either her pedigree or her résumé, but all he caught was something about her grandfather and Kelly Slater.

Interesting.

I thought touching my husband and whispering in his ear was a little cringe, but I didn’t react. I’m not threatened. 😂 It was just weird. And I can handle weird. I often prefer it.

A little later, as I stood up from my chair, she appeared again and asked, very directly, “Where are you from?”

Still no introduction.

For context, I was wearing a hot-pink shirt with my media company’s name fully displayed across the front. You would have to work pretty hard not to notice it.

The question immediately felt less conversational than qualifying.

Gatekeeping with a clipboard no one could see.

So I asked, “Are you asking where I was born?”

She said yes.

I said Chicago. Not entirely accurate, but close enough for someone conducting an unsolicited background investigation beside the breakfast table. I explained that I was a coastal kid and had lived in Florida, Texas and Hawaii, among other places.

Then she said, “Your father was in the Navy.”

I said no.

Then she asked, “What did your father do?”

Mind you, I am a 56-year-old woman whose father died when she was 19.

I said he was a developer. Also an incomplete answer, because this stranger had no right to interrogate me about my bloodline, my father’s occupation or whether I possessed the proper hereditary credentials to stand inside a local restaurant with a camera.

If she was there to support the documentary, why was she badgering the reporter who had shown up to cover and platform it?

The first interaction had been awkward. Now it was layering into something else.

I still didn’t react. I did quietly tell Matt and a friend how disrespected I felt. And I have to say, in all my years covering events, I have never experienced anything quite like it.

The filmed interviews were taking place inside a glass-walled room with a sliding barn door. Before one interview began, I stepped beside the doorframe to grab a quick shot through an opening of about two feet.

The woman came over and slid the door shut on my wrist.

Not hard. It didn’t injure me.

That almost made it stranger. It wasn’t an accident with consequences. It felt like another small, deliberate message.

Again, I did not react.

I went outside cleared my head, came back in and decided I would leave when the interview ended.

In the parking lot, Matt said he wanted to go back inside to make sure he said goodbye to our artist friend. I agreed and thought I might grab a couple of final shots through the glass.

That is when I heard the woman yelling at me.

I didn’t yell back because an interview was being filmed.

Then she began screaming, called me a bitch and shouted, “This is our film!”

For clarity, I had been invited to cover the interviews by the person who had done ALL of the local groundwork and literally pitched it to the fimmaker. I had been promoting and teasing the documentary shooting for weeks. I helped secure and attended a meeting related to the project. I worked to help facilitate one of the interviews. I am a genuine fan of the filmmaker and the concept, and I had been trying to lift the project within my own orbit.

I wasn’t there crashing anything.

I was there supporting it.

The man who had invited us told her to stop. She continued yelling for me to get out while holding the business door wide open, apparently to make my departure more efficient and ceremonial.

We stayed until the interview ended, said our goodbyes and prepared to leave.

Then, on my way out, she offered me a free T-shirt.

I declined.

See? The water and coffee policy really was the least of our ethical concerns.

Since then, I have learned that my experience was not isolated. Other people present had their own troubling interactions with the same woman. The artist whose work and interview were central to the gathering later described being insulted, watching her give away his shirts as though she had the authority to do so and feeling embarrassed by her yelling inside the restaurant with no regard for the lunch crowd.

I am not sharing that to pile on.

I am sharing it because gatekeeping thrives by convincing each person targeted that the problem was uniquely theirs.

It wasn’t.

And I have deliberately kept almost every name out of this story because name-dropping is gauche, and because the entire point is that knowing important people does not make you important.

Pedigree is not character.

Proximity is not credibility.

Access is not ownership.

A résumé whispered into somebody’s ear is still just a résumé.

You can know every important name in surfing and still be the least impressive person in the room.

I’m more interested in what people contribute, how they treat others and whether they leave the scene better than they found it.

Surf culture has always had gatekeepers who confuse proximity with ownership, pedigree with credibility and knowing the right names with having the right to belong. That kind of elitism is especially ugly in a culture built around freedom, community and stoke.

Nobody’s grandfather, birthplace or social résumé gives them the authority to decide who gets to stand in the room, tell the story or care about the culture.

And beyond being ugly, gatekeeping is economically stupid.

The corporate cocksuckers will always find a way to package surf culture, sanitize it, brand it and sell it back to people at a markup.

But the small surf shops, board builders, artists, instructors, restaurants and other local businesses survive because new people keep entering the culture.

Newcomers buy their first board. They take lessons. They need wax, wetsuits and repairs. They buy art. They bring friends. They bring their kids. Eventually, they buy another board.

A kook today could be a surfer tomorrow.

Make that person feel stupid, unwelcome or insufficiently pedigreed, and they may never come back.

That doesn’t protect the culture.

It starves it.

Surfing cannot complain about corporate takeover while local gatekeepers stand at the entrance checking birthplaces, grandfathers and social résumés.

A kook today could be a surfer tomorrow.

But a dick today is probably still going to be a dick tomorrow.

There I was, in one of my favorite local places, among some of my favorite local people, supporting a project and a filmmaker I am genuinely enchanted by. It should have been the absolute epitome of stoke.

But one shitty person can suck the stoke right out of a room.

Be kind to your friendly neighborhood reporter.

Better yet, just be kind.

Postscript: If you decide to come after someone while they are actively filming, there is a very good chance your behavior is being recorded. Cameras are funny that way. They don’t care about pedigree, status or who you think owns the room. They just preserve the evidence.

Just a little light local discourse. You know. The kind of thing that definitely does not turn your notifications into a five-alarm dumpster fire.

Here’s how it started. I got a text from a friend who had gotten a text from another friend. When I saw what was sent to me, of course, I recognized how significant it was and on too many levels for any of us to count alone. For the record, I did not take the photo but asked if I could source it. I was told no. Below is a screenshot of coverage by Black Virginia News. Please subscribe to her Substack. She’s on it.

BLACK VIRGINIA NEWS

We give you the no B.S. truth in an era of lying.

By Black Virginia News

The post had pulled more than 909,000 views by the time I sat down to write this. It’ll likely be over a million by the time I publish this.

Ninety-nine point six percent of them were non-followers, which means this thing blew past my audience and escaped containment almost immediately. Dumpster fire turned wildfire.

There were more than 2,200 comments. Over 1,500 shares. Over 4,500 reactions – just on the OP.

What fascinated me most were not even the arguments. It was what people revealed about Virginia Beach while having them. Because people thought they were arguing about free speech. They weren’t. They were arguing about fear. History. Ownership. Identity. Who belongs.

Now, before some guy named Chip with wraparound Oakleys and Punisher stickers on his lifted truck starts typing in all caps, let me save you a little time. (See Chip, I see you. You aren’t invisible. Not even behind a white gaiter.)

Yes. People have a First Amendment right to wave flags. Even ugly ones. Even offensive ones. Even ones that make the rest of us feel like we accidentally wandered into a Klan rally. What if those flags said, “NAMBLA?” (North American Man Boy Love Association — I tell you because I do not want you searcing it) instead of “Patriot Front”? Would we be divided over that? A year ago, I would have told you, “no.” Now…

Here’s the part some people either genuinely do not understand or pretend not to understand. Something can be legally protected speech and still function as intimidation. Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

A Confederate flag may not legally qualify as violence in and of itself. But if you think symbols exist in a vacuum completely detached from history, I don’t know what to tell you. The Confederate flag is not a random geometric pattern somebody doodled on a cocktail napkin in 1861. It carries generations of context with it, whether certain people like that fact or not.

And to little ol me, that intimidation absolutely smacks of lurking violence. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But history leaves fingerprints.

Virginia Beach leaders can pretend to detach us from this twisted history, but it ain’t much more effective than aggressively spraying Febreze over it and calling ourselves “family friendly.”

We have a long, complicated history with segregation, white flight, housing patterns, school politics, and suburban identity. A lot of people moved here specifically chasing distance from “urban problems,” “racial tension”, and changing demographics in neighboring cities. That’s actual regional history.

That energy still hums underneath the surface here like old wiring in a vintage beach cottage. You can feel it every time certain people start talking about “those crowds.” “Those thugs.” That’s what made the comment section fascinating. Because the same people screaming that curfews were government tyranny suddenly became constitutional scholars defending masked men waving Confederate flags in public spaces. Which, by the way, is another interesting wrinkle in all this.

Virginia has an anti-mask law tied to public intimidation and unlawful assembly concerns. Guess why we needed it? If you said the KKK, congratulations, you passed Virginia history. We also have laws about jaywalking and illegal street crossing. Because these Patriot Front sickos were caught on video breaking those laws, too.

I watched people demanding aggressive enforcement of kids at the Oceanfront. Screaming about chaos. Demanding crackdowns. But suddenly, when the neo-Klan enters the chat, everybody turns into Patrick Henry in a stained tank top, bellowing about liberty with a mouthful of cheesy poofs.

Before somebody tries to twist this into “Cat hates free speech,” spare me. I literally defended the right for these idiots to assemble while simultaneously saying people have every right to feel disturbed by it. That’s the whole point of the First Amendment. It protects speech you dislike.

But constitutional protection does not magically erase historical meaning.

And the biggest question I kept coming back to while reading thousands of comments was this:

Do these guys even live here? I asked about it during our recent bouts with gun violence too. They didn’t, and if these soulless meat sacks don’t live here – in comes that ever-present question rolling around in my head – why do people always come here to show their whole ass?

We, who live here, actually have to deal with the consequences. We’re the ones trying to maintain a tourism economy. We’re the ones raising kids here. We’re the ones trying to build a city that attracts business, families, art, culture, and investment. News flash: Masked extremists waving Confederate flags around the Oceanfront is not exactly the tourism campaign most of us had in mind. It definitely doesn’t scream rest and relaxation, but it certainly does scream racism, and its imagery may be more effective than any tourism campaign VB has ever launched. I have a sick hunch that someone made a call and these guys were the result. Decades of reporting instinct behind that hunch.

And if this whole thing isn’t depressing enough… I am not celebrating these numbers. Not one bit.

Because media and storytelling are my career. Elevating content is a huge part of what I do every day. And the stuff I desperately want people to care about barely moves the needle. My day job is promoting an independent film about an American underdog who any decent person would relate to. I pray for a viral post. Like, what would these metrics do for THAT project? Heratbreaking realization.

This week, I posted about the new Surfability scores going live for Virginia Beach, Sandbridge, and the Outer Banks. Do any of you understand how cool that actually is? Real-time surf intelligence. Better forecasting. Less wasted time on the road chasing dead waves. Less gas money burned. Less traffic. Smaller carbon footprint. More time actually surfing instead of sitting in traffic, wondering if the wind shifted an hour ago.

That’s genuinely revolutionary local tech and surf culture news. Nothing.

But post a photo of Patriot Front marching around looking like rejected background actors yearning for a part as a correctional officer in an HBO prison drama and suddenly everybody’s fully engaged.

What does it say about us that hate spreads faster than hope? What does it say about us that innovation, community, and good news struggle for oxygen while rage and extremism immediately dominate the algorithm?

And people kept saying the same thing over and over in the comments.

“But did they hurt anyone?”

“Were they violent?”

“Did you die?”

Yeah. A little.

I think some of us died a little seeing those images. And I know I’m not alone in that.

Because there’s a difference between physical violence and psychological intimidation. There’s a difference between being punched and being reminded that there are still people walking around romanticizing the ugliest parts of American history.

Hate sure sold clicks this week.

I just don’t think it’s going to sell oysters and hotel rooms.

Virginia Beach still has not fully decided what it wants to be.

Surf City?

Or a place still quietly negotiating with confederate ghosts.

Because let me tell you something after reading 2,249 comments.

Those ghosts are still in the room, and they’re making decisions.

Buried in it, I found some cool stuff. Old invitations to Alice Cooper’s Christmas party. Not to humble brag, but yes, I met Peter Frampton at one of those parties. Funny story for another day.

But then I found something else.

A piece of hate mail I printed out and apparently kept. Folded four times. That means I tucked it into my purse or, most likely, my back pocket at some point.

This might be easier to read…

Suddenly, I wasn’t sitting in my house in Virginia Beach cleaning junk. I was back in Dover, Delaware in 2004, working as the education reporter for the Delaware State News, covering a story about a girls’ softball coach at Caesar Rodney High School who had been arrested for sexually assaulting a 17-year-old player.

When I found the letter today, I was on the phone with my friend and fellow journalist Suri Crowe. I read the whole damn thing to her out loud, then gave her the background and finally asked the question that probably says something about reporters as a species: “Was I wrong?” Because even after all these years, after all these stories, after all the instincts sharpened the hard way, you still sometimes stop and check yourself. Suri didn’t hesitate. She said no. She said the connection mattered. She understood immediately what I was trying to show in that story all those years ago: that predators often build themselves a fortress out of community trust before anyone realizes what they are. Before we got off the phone, she told me she wanted to cross-post this piece herself. Which honestly felt a little like having another old newsroom soul look across the years and say, “Yeah. You saw it right.”

The coach, who was arrested and later convicted, was also a special education teacher. Young guy. Friendly. Respected. Coach. Teacher. Future husband. The kind of guy communities line up to describe as “such a nice young man.” He was engaged to another teacher in the district, and her mother, Connie Welde, was the president of the school board. But the rest of the world didn’t know that yet. I realized I’d seen their engagement announcement in our paper OR it was not yet published. It’s a 22-year-old memory, so please forgive me if I’m not 100 percent.

That mattered to me. Not because I was trying to stir shit. Not because I wanted to embarrass anybody. It mattered because I’ve been around long enough to understand that monsters don’t usually introduce themselves as monsters. They build credibility first. They wrap themselves in institutions. Schools. Churches. Sports. Civic groups. Good families. Nice smiles. Handshakes. Potlucks. Booster clubs. Community trust.

That’s the camouflage.

So yes, I included the engagement connection in the story because it provided context about proximity to power and community standing. And for that decision, somebody in Dover e-mailed me a letter telling me, among other things, “fuck you and go to hell.”

Not because I got facts wrong.

Not because the reporting was inaccurate.

Because I connected dots they didn’t want connected.

That’s the part people still struggle with. They want these stories to exist in isolation like lightning strikes. One bad apple. One sick guy. One shocking incident. They never want to examine the system around the person because then people have to ask harder questions. Questions about why certain people get the benefit of the doubt for so damn long.

And this wasn’t even the first case like this I’d covered.

Before Delaware, I was reporting in Paradise Valley, Arizona, one of the wealthiest communities in America. Gorgeous place. Immaculate cacti. Luxury. Carefully curated public image. They were so obsessed with safety and order that they became the first town in America to install red light cameras.

Meanwhile, a third-grade teacher was accused of molesting a child in his classroom during school hours. He coached girls’ sports too.

Of course he did. Different state. Same story.

People always ask how predators hide in plain sight. Sometimes they aren’t hiding at all. Sometimes they’re standing right in the middle of the damn room, collecting awards and coaching softball.

And as a woman, none of this was abstract to me anyway.

Like a whole lot of girls, I encountered my own monsters growing up. Enough to develop instincts long before I had language for them. So when I became a reporter, I wasn’t interested in helping communities preserve comforting fairy tales about themselves. I was interested in pulling the damn veil back. As far back as I could pull it.

That instinct made some people uncomfortable then, and it still does now. Because institutions do not like reporters who understand patterns. Patterns are dangerous. Patterns turn “isolated incidents” into systems. Patterns make people nervous because once you see them, you start recognizing them everywhere. Schools. Churches. Hollywood. Politics. Media. Rich neighborhoods. Poor neighborhoods. Red states. Blue states. Doesn’t matter.

And honestly, reading through all the Epstein stuff years later gave me the same chill I’d already felt sitting in small-town school board meetings twenty years ago.

Not because the cases are identical. They’re not. Because the protection reflex is identical.

The same social math kicks in every single time. He’s respected. He’s connected. He knows important people. He comes from a good family. She must be exaggerating. Don’t ruin lives. Don’t damage the institution. Don’t ask uncomfortable questions.

Most communities don’t actually want the full truth. They want a version of the truth that leaves the wallpaper intact.

That old letter reads a little differently today than it did back then. At the time, I think I kept it because I was pissed off. Now I realize I kept it because it was proof of something bigger. Proof that my instincts were right. Proof that I had the courage to follow them anyway.

And proof that every time somebody says, “why didn’t anyone see it?” the answer is usually this:

Somebody did.

You just called her a “bitch” for saying it out loud.

P.S. Another doom pile down. A whole four-drawer filing cabinet to go. Pray for me.

The sender is head of a group that owns the Cavalier Resort which is in my district so I do interact with him or a representative as issues come up. I have received hundreds of emails, texts and phone calls, now totaling over 1000 if not more and I do respond to all. This I could not due to the number of Councilmembers.

As for the curfew, and any other issue, I listen to all, take all input into account and perspective, and then I make a decision which I think is in the best interests of the citizens and the city of Va Beach.

I think we all learned lesson from the 2 shootings and the curfew. I have listened to many on this and believe that we all want to improve and not be put in this situation in the future.”

By Cat Porterfield

There is something about looking at a group text you were never meant to see that feels both secretive and revealing at once, like overhearing a conversation you weren’t meant to be part of.

Except in this case, it wasn’t overheard.

It was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, and it offers one window into how conversations were unfolding behind the scenes as Virginia Beach leaders weighed how to respond to mounting concerns at the Oceanfront – concerns that would ultimately lead to the implementation of an oceanfront curfew.

The messages, initiated by Gold Key owner Bruce Thompson, were sent to Vice Mayor Rosemary Wilson, Councilman Worth Remick, and Councilman Stacey Cummings during the same window of time that city leaders were considering their response.

And suddenly, the way decisions get shaped in this city feels a little less abstract.

Thompson’s messages are not subtle in tone. He describes groups of young people “blocking sidewalks,” “smoking weed,” pointing to what he sees as a lack of enforcement and urgency. He references other cities taking stronger action and, perhaps more notably, looks backward – invoking a time when, in his view, similar problems were handled more decisively under prior leadership.

It’s a familiar rhythm with a certain donor class around here: things were better then, leadership was stronger, problems were handled more effectively.

The past becomes a measuring stick, even when the present is operating under a very different legal and political reality. And even when the past smacks of corruption that was just more easily hidden.

Because that reality matters.

In response, Councilman Cummings lays out something far less emotional and far more structural. Virginia, he explains, is a Dillon Rule state, meaning local governments only have the authority explicitly granted by the General Assembly. He points to legislation the city sought in Richmond – measures aimed at controlling large gatherings through temporary safety zones – but which ultimately did not advance due to legal and constitutional concerns.

That distinction is important, and often lost in the public conversation.

In recent weeks, some local leaders have framed the situation as a failure by the General Assembly to act – as if the tools were there and simply denied. But the legislative reality is more complicated than that. The proposal raised constitutional concerns that prevented it from moving forward.

That’s not the same thing as refusal.

It’s the difference between a door being closed – and a door that cannot legally be opened.

And yet, the pressure didn’t stop.

Cummings said he did not know why the General Assembly did not act on the legislation the city requested. “They did not share that information with me or anyone else to my knowledge.”

The group text itself: multi-party, informal, and happening outside of any public meeting – offers a glimpse into how that pressure is applied. A prominent figure in the city’s tourism economy reaches out directly, not to one elected official, but to several at once, framing the issue, expressing frustration, and calling for action.

There is nothing inherently improper about that. Constituents, including influential ones, communicate with elected officials all the time. I’ve reached out to my councilperson through text.

But it does raise a question worth asking: Who has access like THIS – and how much weight does it carry when decisions are being made in real time?

Because for most residents, engagement looks very different. It’s a 3-minute public comment at a council meeting. It’s an email sent into a queue. It’s a voice raised in a room where the decision has already been made. Over and over and over.

Here, in this text thread, the conversation is immediate. Responsive. Layered. And, until now, largely unseen.

There is also a noticeable difference in WHAT is being described as the problem.

In the group text, Thompson focuses on behaviors like smoking marijuana, and groups of young people congregating – issues tied to disorder, quality of life, and the overall experience of the Oceanfront.

At the same time, the broader public conversation – and the justification for emergency measures – was centered on violence, including recent shootings that raised serious concerns about public safety.

Those are not the same categories of concern.

One speaks to perception, atmosphere, and control.

The other speaks to immediate threats and harm.

Whether those distinctions were clearly defined in the decision-making process – or whether they blurred together under pressure – is an open question.

And he’s remarking like this like a problem that could have been handled in the good old days.

The curfew that followed did not apply evenly across the Oceanfront.

At the opposite end of the beach, businesses like Waterman’s, The Shack, and several surrounding properties were not identified as problem areas. And yet, when the curfew went into effect, those businesses still operated under the same restrictions, absorbing the broader impact of a policy aimed elsewhere.

Cummings said, “Stakeholder input resulted in reducing the hours of the curfew and removed Saturday night of the second weekend.

But THOSE stakeholders didn’t change their opinion on the curfew.

That tension is hard to ignore.

On one end of the beach, stakeholders are raising concerns about disorder and calling for a more visible response. On the other hand, businesses that were not part of that narrative felt the weight of the solution.

At the same time, another question lingers.

If constitutional concerns were enough to stall state-level action, why were similar concerns not a barrier to local enforcement decisions like the curfew?

City officials have argued that their authority is limited without additional tools from Richmond. But in practice, they acted anyway – using the authority they do have.

And that leaves residents and business owners in an uncomfortable middle space, trying to understand not just what decisions were made, but how those decisions were justified – and to whom.

The people in this exchange matter, not because of any one message, but because of the roles they hold.

Bruce Thompson is a prominent figure in Virginia Beach’s tourism economy, with a long-standing presence at the Oceanfront. The elected officials included in the text – Vice Mayor Rosemary Wilson, Councilman Worth Remick, and Councilman Stacey Cummings – are part of the body responsible for balancing public safety, economic impact, and legal constraints in moments like this.

That intersection – between business influence, elected leadership, and policy response is where the broader story begins to take shape.

This is not a story about a single text thread driving policy. It is a story about the environment in which policy is made. Where perception, pressure, legal limits, and political messaging all collide – often in ways the public only sees after the fact.

Because in the end, this is not just about a curfew.

It’s about something quieter, and arguably more important:

Who gets heard.

And what happens next.

I reached out to everyone mentioned in this article and will update as requests for comment are returned — or not.

I woke up to more male-centered nonsense and felt that familiar pull – the one that says say something. I made a conscious decision to look at entertainment news first this morning and gently ease myself into the real-life terror of actual news. Mistake? Maybe, because now you get yet another editorial you didn’t ask for. One of my favorite readers told me recently that I wrote well in a, “you’know-what-frosts-my-cookie way.” I’m leaning in.

I wrote this as an open letter to my daughter, Elizabeth, because she’s always the first place my mind goes when these thoughts of feminist justice start rushing in. She’s out there in Michigan, just quietly killing it.

This one is for her.

But I’ll give you this promise before you dive into this long rant – sitting in my inbox right now is a piece by Mary Reid Barrows about the biggest tree in Virginia Beach, and I plan to read it like a palate cleanser when I’m done here. Because I know I need that too. I’m stoked to read it. I’d also like to schedule a coffee – on the off chance she’s reading, and isn’t too offended by my language.

I named my daughter Elizabeth on purpose. If your name is Elizabeth, you get to be anybody. You can be Ellie, Liz, Beth, Eliza – you get range. I wanted that for her. When she came out of the gate, I was right there making sure nobody tried to cage her.

Three decades later, that may not technically be my job anymore.

I’m going to keep doing it anyway.

Gratis. In retirement.

I read this piece to Matt when I finished. His note, gently offered: maybe don’t say “fuck,” it cheapens it.

I swallowed that advice.

And then I ignored it.

If I’m wrong, tell me. I can take it.

Like a lady.

Ellie — The Only Girl I Ever Wrote a Love Song For

Ellie –

Mom here, I’ve been sitting with this, turning it over like a fidget spinner in my hand, trying to figure out how to say it in a fully honest way.

“Steven Tyler has announced a 32-date world tour across North America, Europe, and Australia, marking his major return to the stage following a 2023 vocal injury and Aerosmith’s 2024 retirement from touring. The tour, which follows his recovery and surprise performances, is seen as a major comeback.”

Ya know he’s embroiled in yet another sexual assault case, right?

Trigger Alert. This is beyond disturbing.

John Mellencamp has released a memoir. He’s innocent and doesn’t really deserve to be here, but that headline was the straw that broke … as I was processing the Aerosmith bit.

So now, I’m a little fucked up over both of those things.

You’re in your thirties now. You’ve got three boys watching you, learning you, absorbing everything you do and don’t say. And I keep thinking about what we pass down without realizing it – what seeps in through music, through culture, through the things we normalize because everyone else did.

When I was a kid, I was already a writer. Not a “cute kid writer.” A real writer. By seven, I was sitting in an adult writers group with your grandfather – he was 45, working on his memoir, trying to make sense of his life on paper.

And there I was, this little kid in oversized sunglasses, long brown hair, and feminist T-shirts, writing poems about life as a girl in the style of Shel Silverstein.

Your grandfather believed in it. He’d take my best poems and mail them off to Johnny Carson, hoping one might land on his desk. Maybe even get read on air.

It never happened.

But that’s not the point.

The point is, I knew who I was. I felt things deeply. I understood the story before I understood the rules.

And that scared people.

My own mother hated me for it.

I’d sit there as a little kid watching soap operas like they were real life, crying over characters like they were family. Your grandmother would get frustrated, turn off the TV, and ask me what I was doing — angry at a child in a heap of tears on her floor.

“Tara’s sick, Mommy. She’s really sick.”

That’s what I’d say. Because to me, it was real. The stakes were real.

Same with Snoopy. That storyline where he leaves Charlie Brown to go back to a sick little girl – it wrecked me. I couldn’t just watch it and move on. I had to feel it all the way through. Loyalty. Loss. Love. The impossible choice.

I wasn’t confused.

I was paying attention.

But instead of someone saying, “This kid understands things,” I got labeled.

In fifth grade, I was accused of plagiarism. My teacher couldn’t prove it, my standardized test scores were off the charts in writing, my parents defended me – “we know she’s only eleven, but this is her work.” That teacher spent the rest of the year bullying me for it. Does that happen to boys? I’m asking for clarity.

A child psychologist looked at me – this little girl reading adult tomes, writing beyond her age, and decided the issue was something called “female math fear.”

That’s what they told us.

Not gifted. Not perceptive. Not emotionally intelligent.

As if that explained everything.

As if that diminished everything else.

Just a girl who wasn’t as good at math as the boys. Just a girl who was never going to be as good as a boy. I could write children’s books after I got married — a way to not squander any real talent I may have while still allowing time to take care of the man and any offspring I’d birth. Who knows, if I’d gotten lucky and the right man validated my work, I could make a name for myself.

And I carried that, whether I realized it or not. That quiet message about what counted and what didn’t. About whose intelligence mattered. Whose creative gifts were acceptable.

A couple of years later, I’m sitting in a theater between your grandparents watching E.T. You know the scene. The one that determines whether you have a soul or are simply a flesh vessel.

And I hear your grandfather crying.

Softly. But not hiding it.

Your grandmother leans across me to him, and laughs.

“Are you crying?”

And he says, catching his breath, plain as day:

“Yes. You hard-hearted bitch.”

I didn’t fully understand it then, but I felt it.

He wasn’t ashamed of feeling something real.

And that mattered.

It mattered because I had evidence for what I felt. Men can be kind. Women can be cruel. Men can be cruel. Women can be kind. Emotions are not monopolies owned by one gender or another and the same goes for everything else. EVERYTHING.

But what I know now – what I wish I had known then – is that I didn’t have a deficit.

I had clarity.

And so did he.

But the world wasn’t going to reward that in the same way for girl.

I was handed a life’s manual written by men — novelists, screenwriters, lyricists, visual artists — mostly men. I read, wrote, and sang about women through the male gaze. I didn’t seek out anything otherwise. I kind of hate myself for that.

Men like Steven Tyler and John Mellencamp were positioned as the storytellers. The truth-tellers. The ones who got to define what love looked like, what rebellion looked like, what meaning looked like. For the record — neither of these men is among my favorite artists, but they were forced into the soundtrack of my life.

And I bought in.

I sang it. Loud. Proud. I let it shape the edges of how I saw the world.

So when you came along, and you lit up over Steven Tyler – his voice, his energy, the whole thing – I didn’t stop it.

I supported it.

I stood right there with you.

And I need to say this as plainly as I can:

He’s fucking gross.

Not the music.

The reality behind it. The history. The young girls. The imbalance of power was excused because he was talented. After all, he was famous because that’s how the story is always told.

I didn’t interrogate in the way I should have.

I let mythology outrun truth.

And for that, I’m sorry.

I’m sorry I didn’t protect you from that piece of it. I’m sorry I didn’t say, you can love the music, the movie, the literature, but let’s also look at what’s real here. I’m sorry I didn’t hold both things at once.

That’s on me.

Because here’s what I understand now, looking back across all of it:

I think about the “LA girl” in “Small Town” now. The one who gets folded into a man’s version of home, his version of life. Where, “people let him be…” just who he wants to be.

I used to hear romance in that.

Now I hear something else.

I hear a woman adjusting. Compromising. Becoming smaller in ways that don’t make it into the lyrics. And the man — kind of on an ego trip. Really. Big fish, small pond energy. I wonder what his child psychologist told his parents.

And then I look at you, and I see the opposite.

I see a woman who built her own center. Who didn’t disappear into someone else’s narrative. Who is raising three boys in a house where the story doesn’t default to the loudest voice in the room. And I know how fucking hard that was because you trusted me enough to tell me.

And if I’m being honest, I’d say this to that long-ago psychologist, wherever the hell he is now, probably dead:

I raised a couple of girls.

And Ellie—she’s a banker.

I raised a girl banker.

That matters more than anything.

Because the lie wasn’t just about those men.

It was about convincing women that we were the inspiration, not the authors.

That we were the muse, not the mind.

And I lived inside that longer than I should have.

But you don’t have to.

You get to look at something you once loved and say, “I see this differently now.”

You get to rewrite it.

And those boys, they’re watching you do exactly that.

They’re learning what it looks like to respect women.

That’s how it changes.

I’m sorry for what I didn’t question.

I’m grateful for what you’ve become.

And I trust you – completely – to keep writing something better.

You always have.

Love,

Mom

PS – Girls invented Punk Rock

PPS – The Blind Leading the Naked by Violent Femmes was the greatest album to come out of the eighties.

PPPS – Violent Femmes in the best band name ever

PPPPS – They are on tour, skip the Aerosmith tickets and support the Violent Femmes. Make your mother proud.

And to any readers out there — Going to read about a tree now. Highly recommend.