Some Girls Know How To Fight Back

Last week, I was eating breakfast and reading through Boston's snarky but awesome weekly alternative, The Dig. Or Weekly Dig. Or Boston's Weekly Dig. Whatever. In any case, the bittnerness, sarcasm, and or frequent chomps of biting humor that the weekly pub contains has expanded my interest to read it front to back for some time now. Like most folks, I hardly ever read the letters to the editor, but I did come across Juliana Hatfield's response to Debbie Driscoll, who panned the new Soul Asylum album with a bit of a death threat. Juliana's blurb was published in the Letters section (which I'd type up if it wasn't still buried under cereal crumbs and issues of the other new age crap we read and leave on our kitchen table), and Kevin Dean responded to which he'd said “Wishing death (or at least a hair-washing) upon Soul Asylum: not punk rock. Losing your virginity to Evan Dando: totally fucking punk rock.”


Grrrrrr!

This is Ms. Hatfield's extended reply, which was published as a Dig soapbox:

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Kevin Dean,

A. Who told you I lost my virginity to Evan Dando?

B. Why do you care?

As a matter of fact, I didn’t lose my virginity to Evan Dando. (Not that it’s any of your business, you perv.) You are not the first, however, to have made this assumption, so I guess I forgive you. There are, sadly, a lot of punk rockers out there who apparently have nothing better to do with their very limited brain space than to speculate about people they’ve never met and come to erroneous conclusions about them, and thereby think nasty things about them (and even sometimes wish for their deaths).

We’ve never met, have we? I’m pretty sure we haven’t. “Kevin Dean” doesn’t ring a bell. I can say with 99 percent certainty that I don’t know you and you don’t know me. So, what the hell? What is your beef with me, exactly? You didn’t like what I said in my letter to the editor? That’s fine. I can understand that. But why drag Evan, and my and his fabled—FABLED—sex life into it?

There are people who do know me—in real life as opposed to make-believe—who will confirm that, to the best of their knowledge, I do indeed belong to a distinguished, though probably small, group of girls who can claim the distinction of having said no to going all the way with Evan Dando. Or you could just go straight to the horse’s mouth and ask Evan—he’ll tell you.

It pains me to have to talk about such personal stuff in this public forum (I’ve never actually stated these technical facts about Evan and my supposed sexual life and “relationship” on the record, until this very moment), but it will hurt me even more, Kevin Dean, to let you get away with using such a groundless, baseless, truthless, LAME argument to take your pitiful shot at me.

Besides, I’ve always been kind of proud of the fact that I didn’t succumb to any outside pressure, ever, to indulge in sexual intercourse, or blowjobs or anything—with the handsome, charming Evan Dando, or anyone else—until I was good and ready. You can’t take that away from me, Kevin Dean. And that is why I am setting the record straight: so you and all the other sorry-ass, lie-spreading, rumour- and hatemongering, Dig-reading shit-for-brains out there will shut up about all the stuff you know nothing about.

And so, in summation, just to be clear, because I sense the subject is pretty important to you—important enough for you to write a letter to the editor—and I really want you to not have to worry about it anymore: Evan and I never did it. Never! Got it? Now can we please just put this ancient subject to bed? Go and pick on someone who deserves it, like the person who wrote the ill-conceived Soul Asylum review in question.

Sincerely,

Juliana Hatfield

PS: For your information, I lost my virginity to Spike Jonze. I’m totally serious.

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You know, I'd never cared for her that much before. Disliked? No. Disinterested? Yes.

This changes eeeeverything.

Source: The Dig
Audible: Juliana Hatfield - "My Pet Lion"
Website: http://www.julianahatfield.com