I've given up waiting for the article about her to appear. High-powered legal beagles futzing over minor contract points is ridiculous and bound to be protracted. When the article does finally make publication, I'll post a link here. Probably in 2011, knowing the way goddamned lawyers work.
I've said a lot already, but a few things need repeating, I think, and a few things need stating.
- I think Janna Saint James really thinks she did something good for me by pretending to be "Jesse" and his random coterie of faux friends and relatives. I would like to state unequivocally that she did nothing good for me. All she did was make my job more difficult by distracting from it with "Jesse's" various trials and tribulations. All she did was disrupt my sleep with worry and eventually grief. I fully believe that she contributed to (if not outright caused) the illnesses that befell me following "Jesse's" death by weakening my immune system with all the grief and guilt and days without sleep. All she did was try to screw up friendships I had with my real-word friends. All she did was make my home life uncomfortable at best and unbearable at worst. She did not "free" me, which is what I think she comforts herself with when she's alone with her private thoughts. All it was, all she did, for nearly two years (whoops, sorry, a year and a half), was shovel the bullshit on, and it's that crap-covered yardstick I use to measure those twenty months by.
- Last month I sent Janna's daughter Jessica an email, to an address I believe is her own, although who knows to what lengths Janna has gone to deceive? I will assume that Jessica received it, and would hope that she read it, and this blog, and has taken appropriate action in getting her mother to the nearest psychiatric facility. Of course, it could very well be that she was in on this whole scam from the beginning, and is happily availing herself to some of the many gifts I showered upon "Jesse". Still being the cockeyed optimist that I am, I'd like to think that there's at least one normal one in the St. James family and that she's done the right thing with her demented mother. If not, well, maybe she didn't get the mail. Or maybe she doesn't care. Or maybe it really just is all Janna. Maybe there's not even really a Jessica. If there is, and she's reading this, mazel tov, move as far away from your nutjob mother as you can after the wedding. I suggest Europe. And keep her away from your kids. She's obsessed with child molestation.
- I have decided against pressing charges, although a lawyer in Chi-town will be sad to not soak Janna for her car, fancy Indian silver jewelry, and other assets. He'll have to make do with the retainer he's been paid. My main reason for wanting to sue Janna was to get the courts to rule that she see a shrink for at least a couple of years and to limit her computer usage, but that kind of thing is virtually unenforceable by the courts. I'm hoping that by giving Jessica the information about what Janna spent her time doing for nearly two years that she cares enough about her mother to do the right thing.
- Going through all my receipts for taxes, and going further back into 2005, I spent WAY more on "Jesse" et al than I first (and second) thought. All that stuff at the beginning, a personalized iPod and all the accoutrements for $650 (which, yeah, "Jesse" reimbursed me $300 for, but I didn't reveal how much I spent because I like gifting those I love), expensive bath stuff from Lush, the sterling silver handmade bracelet for $300 that "Jesse" asked to be cremated with, a $600 reservation at a Laguna Beach B&B that had strict no-refund cancellation policies (cancelled because "Jesse" had to voluntarily check in to a psychiatric hospital to avoid his sister committing him), that $550 R/T nonrefundable plane ticket to Denver that I never used, $100 worth of organic asparagus ("Jesse" liked asparagus), $250 for toiletries bags with the Jesse prairie dog photo on them, one for me and one for Janna, $200 to FedEx the birthday package to Spain for "Jesse's" "son," which was of course returned to me (and in fact phenomenal amounts of shipping charges for all those items I sent to "Jesse" and Janna via Priority Mail and FedEx), $600 in moving boxes/packing to put my stuff in for my move to Colorado, $400 for a few bottles of "Jesse's" favorite wine, so I could drink it in tribute after he died, $40 for a goddamned clothes shaver, and another $40 for a backup in case "Jesse's" "son" burned out the first one, horseback riding lessons and the fucking useless boots recommended by "Cakey," the entire New Mexico/Colorado trip, outfits I bought on ebay thanks to "Jesse's" prompting, and all those little stupid things that time and trauma had erased from my memory banks. Teetering at the ten grand mark. Over two years -- sorry -- a year and a half.
- I've gone through all the stuff I bought for "Jesse" and his "family" but hadn't had the opportunity to send before "Jesse" died, as well as some things I received. I'll be selling most of it, with the proceeds going to a couple of local organizations who help abused kids. Most of the stuff I got for "Jesse's" "son" has already gone to these shelters. The things I don't sell I'll destroy, if I haven't already - I enjoyed shredding that bullshit prairie dog giclee with the bullshit sentiments written on the sides. I'll have a pass at selling that painting of Doug that Janna did, if nobody wants it, I'll shred that too. As much as part of me thinks that I should sell these items to recompense myself for the money conned out of me by Janna Saint James, I'll just think of it as a pricey life lesson. I don't want that money, because it has the stink of bullshit on it. And especially after Janna sucked up sympathy from so many for poor poor "Jesse's" abuse by his mother's husband and the drug dealers he was traded to, I think it's about fucking time some poor kids who really did have to go through that shit get something positive from this icky negative.
- I know that I'm sane, rational, and honest, all things Janna is not. I don't even think she's that smart. I was impressed by "Jesse's" breadth of knowledge as a 35-year-old man who'd spent half his life drug-addicted. Not so much when you find "Jesse" is a fiftysomething Batavia, Illinois hausfrau who has all the time in the world to read histrionic tomes and watch Oprah while chowing down on Hot Pockets.
Janna's biggest danger is that she tries real hard to create an alternate reality that shows her as a loving, kind, unlucky person. We joked at the beginning, "Jesse" and I, about how I was probably a wizened man with bristly hair in my ears and plaid pants hiked up to my armpits, emailing from my senior care center in Sarasota, and that "Jesse" was probably an obese housewife in Chicago. Well, guess what? I think that was the first and last time that "Jesse" was ever honest with me. Janna is exactly that. Exactly that, but she'd regale me with stories about how she never weighed more than 105 pounds until she was gang-raped, beaten, and left for dead in the middle of a cornfield about ten years ago by three Mexican men. But thanks to "Jesse," he sent her to the best doctors in Europe for reconstructive surgery, and slept on the floor by her bed in the hospital room, when even her husband didn't do that. "Jesse" would always talk about how wonderful and clever and brilliant and beautiful Janna was. Blah blah blah blah blah. It goes on and on, about how tiny and petite and pretty she always was and now she's a huge hideous house and the Weight Watchers people don't understand or sympathize with her because she hasn't been fat all her life. A million stories, a million excuses for why she is the way she is. I really never gave a shit what size she was, or for how long. I never asked for explanations, but was a huge issue for her. Huge. She had to convince me that she was once attractive, desirable, sexy, and that it was misfortune rather than one too many supersized McDonalds meals that made her the way she was. We all have things we wish we could change about ourselves. I'd like racehorse ankles and calves that boots could fit over. It don't mean I'll pretend I once possessed these things (well, maybe I did, when I was nine). I'd also like to be nicer to people, but the fact is that I'm not a very nice person, and I'm happy to be a bitch when bitchery is called for, and as far as Janna is concerned, she deserves a shitload of bitchery.
Janna lied to me for twenty months, and then once she was found out by my friends, she lied for a few more months, about me. And probably still is lying now, and will lie tomorrow, and the day after that. She's probably right now studying some new fashionable illness that she can give her next Perfect Man, and god knows, she's probably absorbed some of my life into her new Mister Right. She may be sick, but she's also fully cognizant of what she's doing, because the calculated way she tried to tear me apart following her outing was utterly spectacular, and hey, talk about mean. I've spent my time since February rethinking everything I've known to be true and cannot find it in my heart to forgive Janna for any of this. I can't even say with assurance that if she'd been up-front with me prior to, or even following, her unmasking by my friends, that I would have been less angry with her than I am now. I also can't guarantee that if I ever run into her that I won't want to give her a serious slap across the face. Maybe two. I do know that she should count her blessings that so far her victims have been relatively benign, because even here, with my friends, she was thisclose to getting herself a righteous ass-kicking by a couple of my (normally pacifist) friends. Next person Janna does this to, she might not be so lucky.
I really hope that this blog serves its purpose and warns anyone else who gets tangled up in the Janna St. James web before emotional harm is inflicted upon them. But since Janna is in deep, deep denial, and who knows how much she's fucked up her own life, I reckon she'll just keep herself out of the next deception and reconfigure Mister Right for some other unsuspecting person who trusts just that little bit too much. I've done what I can, and it's up to those who love Janna to keep her from pulling this kind of cunning stunt again. I just hope that there is someone out there who loves her enough. Or at all. Otherwise, I guess I'll just see her in hell.
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*note to Janna, who I know is reading this, either as herself or as a Jannafestation: I know Tom Waits and you are no Tom Waits [with apologies to the late Lloyd Bentsen]. He has talent. You have limited creative typing ability.
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