Today marks the final issue of Bookslut, the end of fourteen years of books coverage and a brand of irreverent blogging that always assured me it was okay to be a little bit of a weirdo. The founder and life force, Jessa Crispin, is moving on in her writing career, having already released two books in the past year. The Dead Ladies Project is without a doubt the best travel book I have ever read, and while I haven’t gotten to The Creative Tarot, I did get a personal reading from Jessa and love how she approaches tarot cards as a conduit for storytelling. As much as I’ll miss my favorite blog, times are changing, and Bookslut’s Wake is Friday night at Melville House if you happen to be in Brooklyn.

In the spirit of reaching out for something new, I started Chantix today. I am fully prepared to hate everyone and everything, so I skipped the gym and traded gossip with the mean girls from work for a nature walk with my dog. My playlist these days is solid Prince, another life force who always assured me it was okay to be a little bit of a weirdo. Little Red Corvette plays a particularly humorous role in my personal history, seeing how I was six months old when it was released and grew up claiming a favorite song that contains nuances I could not possibly understand until much, much later. 

Even today, as I was staring at the built-in lyrics scroll on the Amazon music app (yes, Amazon, but we all know he had his music locked down exactly where he wanted it) I finally noticed that the gasped/growled line I always took as “Girl, I’m gonna dance like I never did” is actually “Girl, you got an ass like I never seen.” I was on the homestretch of a two-mile walk as I realized this, and I have not laughed so hard in months. It was Prince letting me know he still loves me, and that I should never, ever forget how raunchy he could be. It also gave me a little pride, knowing the Purple One’s shoutout to fat-bottomed girls had been there all along; I just had to love myself enough to find it.

Sometimes a presence can be so ubiquitous that it almost fades into the background, like Shakespeare’s phrases in the English language, or the book with a well-known cover used as home decor, or a song so universally beloved that it makes a millennial stop and say, “I didn’t know Prince sang this.” I’m the same way with the header image on Bookslut.com. It’s like I became numb to it, forgot to consider what someone looking over my shoulder would think or whether or not the website would be deemed Safe For Work. Until today, I hadn’t realized that I’ve spent the past fourteen years with a little squiggly drawing of the Bookslut’s ass lounging at the top of my browser. 

All credit, image and otherwise, to Bookslut.