After talking to Alex Morris for an hour, after having to preface my replies to nearly every question she asked me with the explanation that Laura’s coming out/transition was NOT the reason we separated, I very plainly told her why we broke up: we had grown apart. We were living separate lives. Laura on tour, me at home with our daughter, and that once I finally accepted the reality that I was fading into a version of myself I didn’t recognize, I could no longer carry on under the circumstances. I felt marginalized after years of making sure my partner was ok and mostly ignoring/denying that I wasn’t getting what I needed out of the relationship to feel supported or flourish.

But I guess that truth is too common a reason to report, it isn’t as exciting or sensational as the idea that Laura transitioning is why our relationship fell apart. I guess the truth wasn’t really what Alex was after when she penned this piece. She stated that she was calling mainly to fact check, but the article is riddled with incorrect statements as is the timeline she presents them in. For example, she told me that she knew Laura and Beatrice had broken up nearly two weeks prior to speaking with me but chose to leave that out, writing the article as if they were still together, which begs the question, why?

Why, when she asked me about an excerpt from Laura’s upcoming book concerning whether I was attracted to men or women (which in my opinion is a pretty hetero-normative baiting maneuver) and I explained fully the conversation that Laura was referencing, explained fully that that was NOT the case, going even so far as to share that I was still attracted to Laura and that gender doesn’t determine attraction for me, why the fuck did she print “…Heather was attracted to men, not women.” ?

When she asked me if I had called Laura a narcissist, I explained that I had written to Laura suggesting she call her next book “Baby, I’m A Narcissist.”, I explained that it was a joke and that good jokes are funny because they’re true. I explained this fully to Alex, all the way down to making sure that she understood I was comically referencing the AM! song “Baby, I’m An Anarchist”. Why, then, when she was made aware of the context under which the statement was actually made, as a joke/comic relief, did she choose to present it as hurled insult instead?

The quotes she chose to use from me have been taken so far out of context that they are being used to support the complete opposite sentiment of my replies. Why? What’s the point? Did she run out of time? Did the truths she left out simply not fit into her preconceived idea of the story? Is she simply more interested in appeasing her readers with a happy ending? Alex Morris had the chance to write about something real, something timely, something important to a lot of people and instead she chose to focus on some romance novel teaser bullshit.



There’s so much more to touch on here; the fact that Laura is a woman and you didn’t censor her nipples, for instance, or the way the article ends on a nudge nudge, wink wink “to be continued” note, that feels real sleazy. The entire LGBTQ+ experience is constantly fetishized; sensationalized to absolutely no one’s benefit. I hope that someone eventually gets it right, that a publication with as much influence and as large of an audience as this magazine writes it real someday.