How to Mend
Vol. 2, Issue 12
If this were a 9,000 word feature article, I’d tell you what Jenn Sterger had for lunch the day she met me at House of Pies in Los Angeles. I’d tell you what she wore, what kind of bustle in the restaurant took place. I’ve lost those colorful details mostly because I was so terrified of the forthcoming conversation. Although I’m pretty sure neither one of us had pie.
In 2010, in my former life as a Deadspin editor, Jenn Sterger was someone I hurt very much when I burned her in pursuit of a story. The story–Brett Favre’s sleazy harassment of her while she was a New York Jets sideline reporter–became one of the biggest sports stories of the year. Jenn shared this story with me in confidence; I did not abide by that. Both our lives changed, albeit for completely different reasons. For most of the decade, she held a justifiable resentment against me as she agonized over being “The Brett Favre girl” and the resulting trauma and employment struggles that came from the ordeal. I became “The Dirtbag Brett Favre Dong Guy” (before I was “The Hulk Hogan Sex Tape Dirtbag Gawker Guy”) but was mostly rewarded for it.
Our meeting at House of Pies was my formal attempt to make amends almost a decade later.
When I was newly sober my first impulse was to send a mass email to selected friends, family, and former associates to apologize–just to act contrite about all wickedness quickly in a performative half-assed paragraph. But most sponsors in 12-Step programs advise against it. The actual step here, the 9th one, “make direct amends wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others,” is fraught for me. I’m very active in recovery, but it doesn’t remove fear of a surprise interaction with someone who’s negatively activated by my very existence. This fear always pushes me towards a premature reconciliation, an entirely selfish way for me to avoid some unnecessary pain. I’m still working on that part.
“The steps are in order for a reason,” is a particular refrain among 12-Step devotees, specifically for selfish scaredy cats like me who cannot see how unnecessary amends could cause more pain for someone else. I didn’t send a mass email, but I forged ahead on a few sloppy attempts at undercooked apologies. Believe me, it’s better to wait.
While I wait, I keep updating my amends list each year which is filled with the usual people who suffered because of me: ex-girlfriends who deserved truth and compassion but got emotional abuse; ex-employees who I betrayed; company investors who got burned; a sister who sensed my absence; parents who did the best they could.
Then there’s another list a little more unique: work-related hazards and hurts tied to my years of vicious, contemptible blogging at Gawker Media for many of their sites. Both of my sponsors have suggested most of this list falls under the “living amends” guidelines–where the only thing to be done that isn’t harmful to myself or them is to write out an imaginary letter to the Universe or offer up a thoughtful prayer. The real amend, both sponsors said, is that I leave them alone now and forever. I must still be accountable, this is simply an added level of consideration for myself and others. It’s important to be ready though, just in case.
Jenn Sterger was relegated to the living amends list. But yet here we were, sitting across from each other at House of Pies like two people desperate to talk to each other, but not knowing where to start.
*****
Here’s how we ended up at House of Pies together: I wanted a dog. My wife wanted to (sensibly) wait a little while because we had a one-year-old son and number two was on the way. But two summers ago she saw an Instagram pic of three puppies on the shelter kill list and couldn’t resist. The dogs–three yellow-white lab mixes–resembled the dog I had growing up, so it would be downright unconscionable to not put our name in. Julieanne emailed the rescue shelter and within a couple hours she heard back from one of the volunteers who was eager to bring the dogs over for an in-home inspection visit the next day. Julieanne grew silent, almost anxious. Then she showed me the volunteer’s email address and my heart closed up a bit. It was Jenn Sterger.
My first thought was are you shitting me?
A frantic, cursory search on the internet ensued to clarify that she did, in fact, volunteer at a rescue shelter in LA, and yes, of course she did.
“Well, I guess a dog will die,” was my next thought.
Or: I could face this, I could derail this run-in as best I could, hoping she didn’t show up at our house with a puppy only to find me standing there like a ghoul.
I quickly dashed off an email to her rescue shelter address giving a rambling explanation for the random coincidence. Reluctantly, I wrote that my wife and I would both understand if she’d prefer to find the dog another home.
I also wrote that I’d love to finally get the chance to apologize in person for what I did to her. I tried to be as sincere as I could under such short notice and obvious duress.
I sent it off and settled into the interminable wait for a response.
*****
Jenn continued to pop up in my orbit from time to time in the past ten years, and I made some half-hearted attempts to apologize but they were mostly for my benefit, not hers. Many years after I published the story, the worst, most broken parts of me still maintained that it was MY story. I used equivocation and denial to come to this conclusion: She knew she was speaking to–and consider this the loosest definition possible–a “reporter” so this was the consequence. She also knew the potential league-wide impact since Brett Favre was arguably one of the most famous (and married) athletes on the planet at that time. Favre had harassed a team employee, and the Jets nudged her out the door while they protected him. This was bigger than both of us and I waited almost six months before I published anything on the site. Most reporters would not wait that long with a story this huge.
But Jenn didn’t want that. She didn’t want the attention, or to be considered a home-wrecker or a liar. Her career in sports journalism was just picking up and she didn’t want the distraction. I remember the desperation in her email after we got off the phone:
“AND NOT A WORD OF THAT SHIT TO ANYONE.
I like ya AJ... and if there is a way to expose this dude for the creepy douche he is WITHOUT me being attached to it in any way that is fine. I just want to make it clear I never met him, saw him, etc.”
But I published her account (including the email shown above), and then a third party stepped forward and provided me with the evidence. I don’t even remember their name because they didn’t matter. I just met them at a hotel, handed over an envelope with $10k in exchange for a flash drive with the voicemails and photos and off I went.
As I hoped, the story became huge and dominated most of the headlines throughout the entire 2010 NFL season. An investigation was opened by the commissioner's office to see if enough evidence existed to suspend Favre.
Jenn disappeared from public view for a bit, but did some angry talk show appearances over her unwitting involvement in the Favre story. I didn’t pay too much attention to her version of events because it would only make me feel guilty.
I did see her "Good Morning America" spot, a two-part interview with George Stephanopoulos that occurred about a year after all the mess where she sounded positively deflated. “I just want my life back,” she said.
*****
Every time the scandal seemed to wane it gained more momentum, but I started to gain most of the attention–from magazines and book editors and TV producers–who all wanted to build 'projects' around my idiotic brand of 'journalism.' That was when the true self-loathing set in. All the stories about my unethical methods, left open-ended so the consumer could decide if I was a dirtbag or not, drove me into a deep depression and I classically self-medicated.
I was ashamed, but all the success made it hard to repent.
In a desperate attempt to re-route my journalism career, I concocted a whimsical, foolish plan to spend three months in Kabul and do Gawker-style media coverage about war journalists. “War Stories About War Stories” is how I pitched it to my boss. He got the gist, liked the risk, and said he’d fund it. I went through Hostile Territory Media Training in May of 2011. I spent about ten days at a remote encampment 60 miles outside of Atlanta to prepare to go to Kabul in August. (I say “encampment” but it was actually a zipline forest.) My classmates were from CNN and the CBC and they were all confused as to why I was there.
But this was my plan: As part of my reinvention, I would go over to Kabul, dick around, hopefully get kidnapped and beheaded. I had the pre-written post already cued up in my brain: “If You’re Reading This I’m Dead, But Here Are Pageviews From Heaven.”
I finished the camp, got the certificate and the insurance policy but never went. A few months later I quit Deadspin, but I got promoted to Gawker on my way out the door.
I'd shared some of this with Jenn via email before we met up–some of it I hadn’t shared with anyone–but part of me thought she, of all people, would understand.
*****
When Jenn and I finally sat down at House of Pies, we were already civil and I didn’t think she would choke me across the table, but it was intense. I still resented many people, mostly connected to the Hogan trial, but even with all my therapy and spiritual work I wasn't ready to sit across from any of them at a diner. It must have been hard for her, too.
In one of our email interactions before the meetup she confessed her lingering self-doubt, that maybe she’d lost her right to feel like a victim because she’d confided in me in the first place. I related to that part as well: the true madness resides somewhere between that fear of culpability and the anger of justifiable victimhood. Plus she's struggled with what part of her life should be different: How does it feel to no longer be blackballed? How does it feel to be whole?
Jenn admitted that there are still uncomfortable days and awkward moments stemming from the Favre ordeal. There’s still a version of her that exists in the internet’s memory hole that will never acknowledge her as a real person; she’s just a plot point without context, without skin.
In some ways she never existed, because during the Favre scandal she was never thought of as a person in the first place. I know I failed to treat her as one. It was easier for me to pretend that she wasn’t.
The only reason we met up again is because somehow, through all the chaos of the past decade, Jenn Sterger and I could understand each other. We’d both lost control of our stories along the way and wanted our lives back. And it’s not just career stuff for me–mostly, it’s the ability to be self-deprecating about who I used to be, to remember who I used to be before that little chunk of my personality was taken from me. There’s a strange forcefield of humiliation, hurt and anger that still exists around me and there are only a handful of people who can connect through it because they know. But sitting across from her I’m no longer this awful dirtbag blogger, fossilized forever as the man who killed Gawker and who deserved it. And she’s not the Brett Favre girl.
I don’t remember how long we actually talked, but I remember we both walked out of there a little relieved, like we’d both just found a therapist who finally understood the excavation tools required to break new ground, and that some hurts were still unreachable.
*****
The dog's name is Nessie. He’s a bit overprotective of our babies with strangers, he still eats shoes and wooden toys, and he still somehow manages to poop on his hind legs a couple times a week, but he’s just wonderful. I look at him sometimes when he naps on the couch, all angelic in the freaky window sunlight, and I get amazed at how he got here. Jenn Sterger. What a strange and beautiful tale.
And just so you know, I’ve sat on this story a while, too. More than a year. But I asked her if it was okay to run it and she said “you’re definitely welcome to,” which helps us both inch even closer to a welcome peace.
— AJD
Love, The Small Bow
by ajd/ez/ljk
Illustration by Edith Zimmerman
