Joan was that old maid, that was her joke. She was, as she famously said, the “last girl in Larchmont.” She called herself ugly, fat, unfuckable—brutally honest about her worth in the eyes of a rigged society, but then, instead of fighting for us lost, last girls, she turned around and gave worse than she got. Men built the system, they run it, and we suffer (Joan was always clear on that), but if suffering’s our lot, the best we can do is climb to the top of the pile, figure out how to get paid, how to be the one. And so Joan climbed us and climbed us and climbed us until she died, still not
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