Kyria Abrahams's Blog, page 6

Original Salon Article: How (and a bit of why) I Stuck So Many Women With The Check

She's deleting it from Salon, but several people took screen captures.

Here's a pdf: http://www.box.net/shared/lqgq5vysks47im895u6e

And here's the original article:

How (and a bit of why) I Stuck So Many Women With The Check

DECEMBER 5, 2010 3:23PM

by Susan Crain Bakos

The aging lesbian artist sat across the restaurant table from me, her eyes aglow as she praised me. Her sexual pass was feeble, easily put off with an "I don't know what you mean" shrug. She said she was preparing to fight her landlord's eviction (though he was right, she was behind in the rent) and trying to get a show and worrying about finding replacement income now that she couldn't sell Obama condoms on the street. An old Leftie in the East Village mode, she was, had been and always would be poor, proud, ineffective and angry. She will take aim at someone with the dying push of her fingertips on the keyboard. What did she want from me, except perhaps the chance to score a heterosexual sexpert? Buy her paintings. Write about her. Help her get a book deal. Introduce my banker friend to her friend who needed investment. I stuck her with the check—and cab money.

Let me be clear. That was mean. Every time I've done it, I've known just how mean it was—and not justified by my contempt of the "mark." Rather, even more my bad for having lunch with them.

Sometimes I've walked the check when cash-flow constricted and more often with more than enough money in my handbag to pick up that check. I say I didn't bring my wallet and hand it over—usually to the woman who wants to "network" with me, i.e., she's younger, full of herself, very ambitious in the sense of wanting to get somewhere fast and be somebody NOW but not in the old-fashioned sense of: Willing to work hard to get there. So many girls identify themselves as sex coaches or educators, going by the name of Luscious Lola or Divine Deenie or Sumptuous Sade, posing, for example, with nearly bare—and why oiled?—ass thrust toward camera, glancing cheekily over their shoulders— like the girls of the 80s, 90s, 00s, but a bit more dummied down in each re-incarnation, especially this one The Cupcake Re-Generation. Most men don't network like this and women don't either, but "girls" of any age do. They gush over me, "love" me, "love" my work, call me an "icon" or something similar meaning "old achiever on way out." They ask me to read their work, help them write a book proposal for free, send my contact list. Yet they come expecting me to buy lunch too. I claim missing wallet, hand over check and tell her I will need cab fare.

Within hours, she is blogging nasty comments about me (in a blog read by tens of people). Suddenly I am old" and not as talented as they are. They will sell more books than I do, they say—they "hate" me now they say—or so I've been told they say because I don't read any of it. (The lesbian artist wrote her intentions of collaborating on an "anonymous" Hate Susan website with another woman in an email that a third party forwarded to me. Smart girls, huh? I won't mention their names because I don't want to drive traffic to their sites, selling their products. Let my lawyer/lover/cousin go after them if either ever makes a profit.)If I don't care about people, I don't care about what they think or write or say—even if I am the subject. Anonymous internet trolls and mean girls, snarky jealous people and the poor little marks who didn't get all that free help they wanted? Time-wasters. Watching a syndicated episode of "Friends" is a better use of time than reading them.This check-dodging is relatively new behavior for me, a new category in a series of bad behaviors that is—at least I can say this much—declining in severity and intensity to the point where it is an errant stream, not a river sometimes overflowing its banks.

For much of my life I have been struggling with psychological issues. Following a suicide attempt seven years ago that was very nearly successful, I began hearing a new diagnosis from a succession of therapists. Programs run out; new ones open up; everybody has their own diagnosis and treatment concept; nobody ever put me on drugs which should have been a clue to Borderline. When I was out of those options, I saw a semi-retired therapist who had a sliding fee scale fee. I paid her in lump sums when writing checks came in. Some therapists said Borderline Personality Disorder; others did not. My first therapist following the attempt labeled it "reactionary depression to a series of life setbacks." My current therapist, an expert in the field of personality disorders, describes me as "on the borderline of Borderline," not quite putting me in, not quite taking me out. ("BPD is an umbrella term, covering a range of symptoms and behaviors, manifested differently in each sufferer; and in the majority, the symptoms are treatable, the behaviors can be changed but it takes time which is why insurers go for the 'untreatable' label.") Her treatment plan includes dialectical talk therapy and Buddhist meditation. (Google the research, people. It works for many of us.) Brain scans prove that Buddhist monks have been able to change their brain patterns through meditation. And brain scans of Borderlines also show abnormalities in certain regions of the brain.

If I fell to my knees, wept, tore my hair and told you I'd found Jesus and will devote the rest of my life to spreading His word, some of you would likely forgive me anything except maybe cruelty to animals. But as I confess my crimes, I am also trying to understand them, an intellectual exercise that will offend the judges among you. Like the first confessor in this series, I expect to be pilloried by the outraged. It won't be the first time. Six years ago I wrote about liking black men in bed and I still get death threats from angry, ignorant racist black women and their counterpart white men. (Idea for a dating service?) I read far enough in to pick up the scent of the tar pits from which they spring—and delete or forward to a cop when threats are involved.

Understand. Explain. Not Excuse. Or even Defend.

The emotional conundrum is that I feel some emotions with inappropriate and painful intensity—which is why BPD sufferers have been compared to burn victims—yet also suppress and distort emotion, channeling it into actions that have nothing to do with the feeling. I've not exhibited the big bad behaviors of poor Lindsey Lohan, but I have left when I should have stayed, played havoc with schedules, mine and other people's, lied, cheated, managed money badly, including my phase of picking up too many checks and attempting to buy love, veered from thinking I am worthless to exhibiting a sense of entitlement (like "entitled" to getting my checks picked up)—and now in a sense, I have stolen. The latest—and truly, I hope the last—bad behavior is a con, you're thinking, aren't you?

What is a con?

Bigger than the small stuff we sinners are confessing to in this section on Salon. Really. We are street hustlers, small players for petty cash or the equivalent. A hustler or a con artist works on the same basic knowledge of human nature: The greedy, the self-involved, the dreamer with a romantic vision of her future success that doesn't include a trail of blood, sweat and tears—he and she can be conned and hustled. It takes but a tiny amount of leverage to use that greed or lust for fame against her.Applying the leverage, pulling the hustle, feels good at the time—really a high—but awful afterward. I imagine binging/purging must feel like this in the mind and soul. Or shoplifting. I am trying to understand and explain the behavior—and recognize the trigger points, usually major life events out of my control—to stop it because Jesus is not there for me (but Buddha is.) Looking back, I see that I risked months, years of stability and happiness on a big gamble (or, in this case, in little crimes)that let out some of the emotion, like blood-letting. The street hustle as pressure valve.

My former friend Alex Zola based his blog The Zola System on his father's life philosophy. His late father, a Holocaust survivor, once hustled the streets as a survival tactic while Alex has done it for the same reasons I did: for the high and out of contempt for the mark. There's a lesson here for you too: If you go out looking for a free lunch, you will probably get a check, payable now in your case, or later with interest in mine.

The Tattoo Interview: Brianna Karp

An (oldish) interview I conducted with Brianna Karp, author of The Girl's Guide To Homelessness back in April. On The Zeitgeisty Report:

Brianna Karp Reveals The Healing Power Of Ink

New York Magazine on Susan Crain Bakos

"Behold the sad, strange tale of sexpert Susan Crain Bakos, the author of such titles as Best Sex Ever and The Sex Bible, who has a troubled history of tricking aspiring writers and photographers into paying for her meals in order to punish them for networking..."

Wacky Sex Columnist Sticks Young Women With the Check by Joe Coscarelli

Help spread the word about Susan Crain Bakos - The Grifter Granny

Among the various bizarre lies that Susan Crain Bakos, author of The Sex Bible flung at me over her free croquettes at Pipa this past Tuesday was a tempting job offer: $1000 in cash to get started doing SEO and social media work for her website.

Although she didn't pay me (I'm sure she will, though!), I would like to get started doing some of that SEO work pro bono.

Please link to "Never Have Dinner With Susan Crain Bakos" everywhere you can. The goal is this:

When an unsuspecting girl gets asked out to dinner and Googles the name of Susan Crain Bakos, author of The Sex Bible, Don't Go To Dinner With Susan Crain Bakos will be the first thing that comes up.

So please link, Tweet, Google+, and get the word out there. Your link could be the difference between some young writer buying her birth control or buying Susan Crain Bakos a sandwich next month.

Made possible by viewers like you.

That being said, I've worked in web development for the past ten years and I'm currently unemployed. I was also displaced from my apartment this summer while I work to pay the back rent I accumulated during this hard economic downturn. Some of the ways I've paid my rent include working as a wedding photography assistant (see my portfolio here) as well as cleaning houses, painting a friend's kitchen, and even writing $15 eHow articles for a content mill.

Most recently, I was hired by Socialbrite as project lead on a series about how nonprofits can best use Twitter. I also wrote an article called "Should Your Organization Launch A Podcast?".

As you can see, I've been hustling. But it's just not enough. I work almost non-stop, but it's hand-to-mouth. I don't make enough money to pay off my debts, only to eat for that week. And I work too long and too hard cleaning people's apartments to successfully look for work, or, god forbid, have the emotional space to write a second book.

That's how it is in this recession.

One thing I never did, however, was purposely stuff someone with a dinner bill.

Susan Crain Bakos may have stiffed me and countless other women for hundreds of dollars, but maybe we can stop her from doing it again.

In just two days, we've already made Manhattan a safer place.

Thanks, internets!

Help spread the word about Susan Crain Bakos - The Grifter Granny - and then hire me to do SEO for you!

Among the various bizarre lies that Susan Crain Bakos, author of The Sex Bible flung at me over her free croquettes at Pipa this past Tuesday was a tempting job offer: $1000 in cash to get started doing SEO and social media work for her website.

Although she didn't pay me (I'm sure she will, though!), I would like to get started doing some of that SEO work pro bono.

As of today, "Never Have Dinner With Susan Crain Bakos" is hovering around number five in the Google search results. That's from just two days of hard work by me.

Please link to this everywhere you can. The goal is this:

When an unsuspecting girl gets asked out to dinner and Googles the name of Susan Crain Bakos, author of The Sex Bible, Don't Go To Dinner With Susan Crain Bakos will be the first thing that comes up.

So please link, Tweet, Google+, and get the word out there. Your link could be the difference between some young writer buying her birth control or buying Susan Crain Bakos a sandwich next month.

Made possible by viewers like you.

That being said, I've worked in web development for the past ten years and I'm currently unemployed. I was also displaced from my apartment this summer while I work to pay the back rent I accumulated during this hard economic downturn. Some of the ways I've paid my rent include working as a wedding photography assistant (see my portfolio here) as well as cleaning houses, painting a friend's kitchen, and even writing $15 eHow articles for a content mill.

Most recently, I was hired by Socialbrite as project lead on a series about how nonprofits can best use Twitter. I also wrote an article called "Should Your Organization Launch A Podcast?".

As you can see, I've been hustling. But it's just not enough. I work almost non-stop, but it's hand-to-mouth. I don't make enough money to pay off my debts, only to eat for that week. And I work too long and too hard cleaning people's apartments to successfully look for work, or, god forbid, have the emotional space to write a second book.

That's how it is in this recession.

So, the $1000 Susan Crain Bakos was offering me to work on her website would have gone to paying my back rent.

For two hours, I sat across from her at Pipa and thought: "Now I can pay my back rent."

She gave me two hours of thinking everything was going to be okay.

But it isn't, really, is it? It's been a year now that I've been trying to get steady work. I've been hired for jobs that disappeared. I've been hired for jobs that weren't funded. I've signed and faxed contacts only to be told the next day that the job was being filled internally.

One thing I never did, however, was purposely stuff someone with a dinner bill.

If you need a website editor or content writer who is SEO and social media savvy (as well as a PhotoShop and HTML guru with some backend experience), I'm available. Please contact me: kyriaabrahams at, well, WeWelcomeOurNewGoogleOverlordsYouWillBeAssimilated.com (you know the drill).

If you don't have a job for me, please just spread the word about Susan Crain Bakos.

She may have stiffed me and countless other women for hundreds of dollars, but maybe we can stop her from doing it again.

In just two days, we've already made Manhattan a safer place.

Thanks, internets!

You Played Yourself

Yo, VIP. Let's kick it.

Had shrimp tacos at Lime Jungle tonight.

Totally paid for them myself.

How I roll.

U Mad Bro?

Received these emails today. I forget who they are from. I don't really understand them (I only speak English), but I found them entertaining in that "Wacky Engrish" kind of way. I guess she's Japanese??! I'm going to go put them in Babel fish and see what they say now. Something about... loving black cock like a boss? I think? Oh well! I give up! They are still fun.

On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 7:58 PM, u mad, dog? (PWNED@EFFINPWNEDBITCH.com) wrote:

Subject: you take down the blog post...and pics,

including a shot I discarded from photo shoot.

as a professional photographer you cannot put up the outtakes.

OR
I write the story, accepting responsibility for my bad behavior AND quoting your emails.... if you think that offering to buy a belt for suicide etc. will make you look employable.....

then let's go for it.

You were overpaid for the phtos....by your own admission.
you didn't pay for the tapas. I did.
and I still await Marco's invoice.

You also left out the part that I had surgery yesterday morning.

The whole story will make you look like a nutcase.

But if its what you want, Kyria, let's roll it out.


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On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 8:00 PM Someone?? (whitenready@luvblkmen.com) wrote:

Subject: ps

I will also post on nycwriters that you were paid in full for a job...in fact paid three times your asking price.... and used unflattering outtakes on a blog to make fun of me.
should build your client list.

Kyria, seriously, I may have problems, but you are crazy.

Nobody looking for work behaves like this.



On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 8:19 PM, HURRR DURRR RACIST (hurdurrRACIST@hotmail.com) wrote:

Subject: Just spoke with my lawyer

You have that blog down by tomorrow, shut up already or I am taking you public.
I wrote about you in my blog today: without using your name or even hinting at your identity and focusing soley on your age/sex issues.....
your rant about that clearly had nothing to do with a restaurant check but represented your issues.

After writing this morning that you didn not want to publicize this etc., you assured me I wouldn't hear from any more of your friends and you turned around and blogged....
using my name and outtakes of a phto session which you are NOT entitled to use at all....and, yes, of course, I've heard from more of your idiot fan base.

So I will sue you for a refund of fees in addition to writing the full story if you dont take down the post immediately and shut up.
What is wrong with you?
You have done 1 book in your 37 yers and have little else as claim to fame. I would think you need to build connections.....
not waste your time on such BS. And I cannot see how you think violating the confidentiality of a paying photo client benefits you at all. Even people who think I shouldn't walk out on restaurant checks won't hire you to take their photo because they can't be sure you won't get mad about something and use the outtakes against them.

I will check in the morning and if your blog post is not down,
I want my photo fees returned or I will sue....and I will quote your lovely emails. Maybe the mail next time will come from other people who have received similar emails from you.
You had an opportunity to end this today.......
the truth is....and truth would be hard to find on your blog....that I owe YOU nothing.

You, however, owe me a refund of photo fees.

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On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 10:47 PM, CRAZYCAKES MCGEE (BLEEEEEARRRRGH@TWEEDLEDEEDOO.com) wrote:

Subject: here is how I have decided to handle the situation; ignore previous emails

fyi,
I will copy your blog post with the "transcript" as you edited it--
and then the emails as you actually sent them.

My goodness, dear, you left out so much............all the really ugly nasty stuff.............
and I will not bother to blog it...
1. will just post your revision with the transcript and a warning on nycwriters re. your photo services
2. send same to your agent-
3. send same to your publicist--who will no doubt be thrilled you passed up a chance for a good review to blog that. Great career move!

and
4. have a law clerk file a suit in small claims court for the return of photo fees.

If keeping your post up is worth the grief to you, I'm ok with that. But I reconsidered blogging it. I'm not giving you free publicity by mentioning your name or book.

oh, and re. taking down posts....i took down my blog. SEO person hired says outside blogs must go.....odd you, with your incredible genius, didn't get that.
I may update and post the restaurant check walk on. Stay tuned. But I still won't mention your name.



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Never have dinner with Susan Crain Bakos

Below is a transcript of a letter I sent to author of The Sex Bible, Susan Crain Bakos, after being stiffed on a check by her and reading this:

How and Why I Stuck So Many Women With The Check

Dear Susan Crain Bakos,

Please let me know if you need suggestions for a future suicide. The dinner was great. I, myself, also had it for free. And I applaud you on masterminding the lamest con ever.

A Jim Thompson novel you are not.

Unfortunately, the "best spinach on earth," as you called it, was not worth the price. That is, even spinach touched by the hand of the Lord Baby Jesus himself would not be worth one second of forcing myself to smile and nod at your inane conversation.

You think I wasn't paying for dinner? My dear, I had to pretend that you had something interesting to say.

I didn't pay? I had to pretend you're not weird and pathetic and overly grandiose. And it only takes American Express.

I did this because I'm only 37 (jealous?) and one thing my mother taught me was to always be respectful of the elderly.

So, apparently this is a con you enjoy inflicting on other women. And you wrote about it because you're trying to understand why you do this.

Well, let me take a wild stab.

It's because you grew up with no sense of self worth other than your looks. You have no idea what you can offer to society outside of a sexual context. And now no one wants to have sex with you any more. And now you're nothing.

Poor old sex columnist. Now that you're unfuckable, you've got nothing left inside you.

They say that the youth should always look to those older and wiser for wisdom. This is true. For example: never become a sad and jealous old woman with nothing inside and no one who loves her.

Maybe if you were about 30 years younger I would have shown you my real personality. But since you're a creepy old lady who owed me money, I tried to be respectful and businesslike.

The truth is, I was sitting across from you at the table and thinking: "Who the hell does this fat old retard think she is?"

But I'm nice and fake and polite. Like you.

So. Welcome to being treated like a pathetic grandmother and not a peer. How's it feel to know that I didn't respect you enough to even show you who I am?

Don't bother to write back. I cannot stomach any more of your strained prose.

p.s. If you think I paid for dinner last night, you're even stupider than you seem.

p.p.s. I hear that auto-erotic asphyxiation is all the rage. Let me know if you need me to spring for a belt.


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(Read what fellow Blogger Brian Stilson has to say in: Why I Hate Susan Crain Bakos)

A conversation with Brianna Karp, author of The Girl's Guide To Homelessness

[image error] (all photos by Kyria Abrahams 2011)

"I'd like a fruity drink,"Brianna says, "Something with vodka. Do they have that here?"

We're seated at a small bar on 10th Avenue, just around the corner from the studio where they tape The Colbert Report. The audience coordinator at Colbert read and loved The Girl's Guide to Homelessness so much that he sent Brianna free tickets and a fancy personal invitation. Now, we paw through a red paper gift bag full of Colbert hats, boxer shorts and luggage tags. The bartender is waiting. 

Brianna is not a big drinker. At the age of 26, she's still figuring her way around "worldly" customs, such as how to order drinks at a bar. This doesn't strike me as unusual since a large chunk of her book focuses on her childhood upbringing as a Jehovah's Witness. These are the random things you have to learn when you leave a high control religion.

"She'll have a mojito," I tell the bartender.

"Thank you," she says. "I never even know what to order. I usually just ask for something with fruit juice. And then I never know what to tip."

True to form, later that night, she will try to give the cab driver an extra five dollars in front of her hotel. He will stop her from doing this, saying "Miss? Miss?" while waving the change into the back seat. This is the difference between Brianna Karp and the rest of us. Something about her evokes compassion and stops an over-tipped New York cabbie from just driving away.

Brianna pokes at the muddled mint in the bottom of the glass and adjusts a vintage broach. Her hair is a shock of orange, perfectly colored due to a short child labor stint in a local beauty salon at the age of 10.

In the words of your grandmother, Brianna is a sweet girl. She is well dressed, polite and artsy. She plays the piano, loves antique shopping and drives a green 1968 VW bug. 

This is the new face of homelessness, or at least the face people will listen to. She's articulate, bright-eyed, pretty, and, until recently, lived alone in a trailer on a Walmart parking lot. She's the spoonful of sugar to make the plight of the homeless go down.

Severely abused by a seemingly bi-polar mother who rendered her homeless at the age of 23, Brianna began blogging about her experience from a laptop in a Starbucks in 2009. People were immediately drawn to her story, and by 2010, she had landed Augusten Burrough's lit agent. By 2011, her life had been published as a memoir by Harlequin.

"I really don't want to be famous," she says.

I stop her for a moment. I suggest that what she means is that she doesn't want to be publicly judged and misunderstood. But doesn't everyone want to be famous, to have their art to be seen by the widest audience possible?

"You're not Emily Dickinson," I say. "On some level, you do want to be famous," 

She laughs at the suggestion that, in the spirit of Dickinson, she might be hiding a non-fiction marketing proposal under her bed. "Yeah, sure. I guess," she concedes. "Everyone wants to be loved. But I swear I really just want to be able to buy my house."

The house in question is a $100,000 Victorian fixer-upper in upstate New York which she first told me about in September of last year. They don't have houses like that in Orange County. It is her dream home, it is amazing, and it is still for sale. It's all she wants in life.

And here's the rub: For all the media attention that her book is getting, Brianna Karp, author of The Girl's Guide to Homelessness, is still homeless. She lives in a shed on a dirt lot.

"Funny thing, I always hated camping," she recalls, shaking her head at the irony of living in an RV for so long. "Every year, my parents would go to Kern River and I would always be like 'Yay, camping!' And then after about 20 minutes of being there reality would set in and I would already be asking to go home."

Lately, some have insinuated that she's not really "homeless," because she was shielded from the elements by an RV that was bequeathed to her by her dead father. By rote, Brianna begins to define homelessness. Hint: it doesn't mean that you don't have some form of shelter. Homeless does not equal rained on.

She has already answered this question too many times to count, and she hasn't even had her first book signing yet.

"I know I had it easier than a lot of people," she says, with some guilt. "I never said I didn't."

Brianna had no running water on the Walmart lot, no septic system to hook the RV up to. It's worth noting that 'water and sanitation' are described at inalienable rights by pretty much every human aid organization on the planet, including the United Nations.

I ask her how many people would be content with their lives if they had to get up in the middle of the night and drive to a local gas station bathroom. I wonder how many of those people challenge the ease of Brianna's living situation from the ease of their swiveling desk chair. How many of those people must hate camping, too.

We grew up in the same religion, she and I, which some have (perhaps rightly) called a cult. We are both ex-Jehovah's Witnesses and both first-time authors having written about our upbringing. Because of this, we've become fast friends.

Yet, the personalities we took on after leaving the organization were markedly different. For me, several years of drugs, raging alcoholism, and regrettable sex. For Brianna, it seems, she graduated straight into a strong work ethic and a by-the-bootstraps can-do attitude. We both had failed suicides, we both were shunned by our friends and families, we both thought demons were going to possess us though yard sale furniture.

While I was gobbling psychotropic mushrooms in the park, sleeping with your husband, and getting into barfights, Brianna was sending 100 resumes a day from a Starbucks and feeling guilty about having a threesome.

In many ways, Brianna seems the ingenue. Then you hear about the things she's accomplished in her life, such as learning to drive a stick shift at the age of 12, taming a wild horse, or running with a hanky over her nose into the putrid room where her father had recently committed suicide. You have to concede she's a take-charge badass, even if she doesn't yet know quite how much to tip a bartender.

Is it possible that Brianna Karp is the most naive badass you've ever known?

But a girl does things the right way because things need to be done the right way, right? That's how the world should work, and, as such, an unwavering sense of justice is palpable in all her polemics. Although she could have, she never lied on her resume or stopped paying rent on her apartment and waited for them to have her evicted.

There is no paragraph in the book where she shoplifts a steak or gets stoned and pees into a Mountain Dew bottle like a truck driver.

Perhaps this is another difference between you and I and Brianna Karp. Brianna does not steal steaks. And I totally would have stolen a steak.



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I first met Brianna in May of 2009, when I noticed that some homeless girl was following me on Twitter. I wondered how someone so articulate could be homeless, until she told me that she had been raised as a Jehovah's Witness. After that, I didn't have to ask any more questions.

I remember how horrified I was when her trailer was towed from the Walmart parking lot. I didn't know her, but wasn't that her home? I wrote about her situation on my Facebook page, which is followed by about 2,000 angry apostates. Homeless ex-Jehovah's Witness here, guys. Maybe someone can help?

"Thank you! All the support/finger-crossing I can get will help!" Brianna responded. "I really, really appreciate it.  Matt says thanks, too!  He also says he loves the excerpts of your book I've read him."

At the bar on 10th Avenue, the discussion focused mostly on the Colbert taping and the free ice cream in the VIP lounge. But, as it often will with writers, the conversation quickly turned to some of the more insulting things people have said about us after reading our books.

I tell her I'm going to write a few things down as we talk.

"Okay, um, but please don't write that down," she says, in reference to her opinion about a recent over-the-top character assassination. Brianna does not talk trash anyone. This is not a PR move, this is a personality trait.

"The problem as I see it," I tell her, "Is that when you write a memoir, people focus on the protagonist (ie: you) and forget that a writer was involved (also you). They either hate you or they love you, but they forget that the person they hate is also responsible for the writing."

I tell her that if people truly hate her, that means she's a successful writer.

"I guess so," she says, trailing off a bit. Her book barely came out three weeks ago and she's still processing what it means when strangers get to have a negative opinion about you.

Besides, she tells me, it wasn't really her idea to write a book. She was approached by several agents after being on television with Kathy Lee for her popular Starbucks-powered blog. She had some help from others in forming the meat of a proposal. And, unlike most memoirs, she was actually writing the end of the book as it was happening.

Hence, jealous hardscrabble authors say that Brianna is not a real writer and has not paid her dues. Meanwhile, people with homes cry that Brianna was not really homeless. And the Jehovah's Witnesses say she brought everything on herself by leaving the one true religion and angering God. She's white, she's privileged, she's sad and lost and probably suicidal. And, worst of all, she has forgotten her initial purpose of putting a face to the homeless problem.

"I'm like, you know what people? Fuck off. I lived in a Walmart parking lot."

Her honest anger embarrasses her, as she clearly wants to be nothing but humble and gracious about this entire opportunity.

We look through our bags of Colbert Report swag. Neither of us are feeling particularly sad or lost or suicidal at the moment. We put on our free hats and giggle.

"Women get so mad at me," she says. "Women read the book and they hate me, especially about my relationship with Matt. They say: 'How could she do that, how could she pay for everything, how could she not see that coming?' I mean, haven't you ever been young and naive before? Haven't you ever had a bad relationship? Jeez, people.

"There's just something kinda unstable about it."

If women seem angry and threatened by her youthful mistakes, many men are responding positively. Men such as Stewart, the audience coordinator who was responsible for our Colbert hats and encouraged the two of us to take photos behind Steven's desk.

I asked him what about the book appealed to him.

"Well, I love autobiographies," Stewart explained. "And I was homeless in NYC for one night. Yes, only one night, but I just thought it might be an interesting read! Brianna seemed very mature and resourceful, and she is the type of person I could see being friendly with if she lived in New York... Plus, she mentioned The Colbert Report twice in the book and I thought it would be cool to have her see the show live."

Brianna is delighted, if not a bit confused by her male fans. "I'm like, why did you pick up a book with a picture of a girl on the cover?" she wonders. "It even had the word 'girl' in the title! What guy buys a book with the world 'girl' in the title?" She stops for a moment and remembers herself. Humble and gracious, as always.

"I mean, no. It's awesome to me, believe me. I'll take it!" As she so often does, she looks down at her lap.

"I just don't understand why they like it."

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