Interview with Jancee Dunn - Page 2

They were concerned, especially when I began to get really caught up in the whole scene. At its apex, I had three pairs of leather pants – black, brown and white. How I wish I were kidding. And I lost a lot of weight, and stayed out all night, and at family gatherings my family would corral me and try to talk some sense into me. There are a few family pictures where they look like the Brady Bunch and I look like I crawled out of a crypt, with these dark eye bags and grey skin. Fortunately I eventually realized that like it or not, I, too, was a Brady, and I threw out the leather pants.

Having a younger sister, I had to ask Jancee about her relationships with her sisters:

Oh, there was definitely some rivalry when we were younger but being the domineering oldest sibling who did everything first, I didn’t feel it as acutely. And my parents really did a good job of parceling out parental attention fairly. They were almost obsessive about making sure that everyone got their share so that no one felt left out. Plus as we were growing up, my parents were so strict - I mean, it was like something out of the Victorian era, so we kids needed to band together.

I come from the hippie generation. Jancee is Gen X,Gen Y, all these generation tags make me nuts, and her bad boyfriend stories sounded positively tame to me. Comparing herself to a Brady, not even a Partidge:

I'll tell you, when I was putting the book together, I was asked constantly if I had some juicier stories – did I do harder drugs? Did I sleep with any celebrity? (No, I didn't, nor did I date any of them.) Sometimes I wished I had stories that were more hardcore, but I didn't. So I just tried to find some sort of interesting or relatable bit with the hand I was dealt. I tried to tell myself that it was a writing challenge that I didn't have a dysfunction to exploit. I exploited my kooky family instead.

Certain friends of mine used to make fun of me for being close to my parents while still maintaining a "hip veneer." Now the same friends have older teenage children. They ask for family stories and sometimes even advice. I found myself adoring and relating to Jancee's family:

It's funny - people relate to my family in a retro way, as if they're from a bygone era, which they sort of are. My parents have been married 35 years and still hold hands. My dad was a freakin' Eagle scout and my mom was a cheerleader! No wonder I did drugs. But I'm so glad you could relate to them. The most gratifying thing in the world has been having people come up to me and say, 'my father is as paranoid and safety-obsessed as yours' or 'I talk to my sister on the phone fourteen times a day, too."

Article Author: piaSavage

I write. I blog @ courtingdestiny.com. Once it was a Technorati "A" ranked blog but I gave up my life and paid for the privilege. Now I live. I moved from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to SC recently. I go back to NY too often to miss it. …

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