Abbey Robertson

When I was a freshman in high school, I made a series of battle plans along with my older brother and his friends that detailed how we’d take out our entire school once we obtained guns and bombs.

This happened while huddled over my dining room table, and it was funny. We drew blueprints. We made maps. We organized lists of ammunition and inventory and all the different things we’d need to make our military raiding of our own school a success. We figured we’d all have cyanide pills to take ourselves out before we got arrested. We knew we had to take over the nurse’s office first – it’s where all the medical supplies were and it also had no windows, which made it a perfect place for our final showdown when we were inevitably backed in by police as we burned out in a blaze of glory in our bold last stand.

What’s up, everyone! How have you been? Did we ever find the plane?

With that, I am overjoyed to announce that my book SCIENCE…FOR HER! comes out NOVEMBER 4, 2014, published by Scribner.

(Click here to read a prettier, mirrored version of this letter)

On New Years Eve I made what I thought was a harmless joke http://dailym.ai/1crNs71

Here is my response:

Well hello America!

I was at work when the two bombs went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.  I’d just started at TMZ and realized I hated it.  Why they hired me still remains a mystery and while the newsroom buzzed over the suspected acts of terrorism, my brain reeled as I frantically attempted to get ahold of anyone I knew could either be at the marathon or in Boston.

One of the great loves of my life is a runner.  And although we do not keep in contact as often as we should, we exchange messages a few times a year, reconnect and update each other on the things going on in our lives.  

He works for the United States government.  He has the cocky swagger of a nerdy white guy who figured out how to leave his awkward teen years behind him.  Opting instead for red tape, meetings with lobbyists and the a desk job in the Capitol building.  I chose a viciously aggressive life in Los Angeles where I would either kill myself in pursuit of the perfect party or make it as a writer.  There was never any middle ground for us, singularly or otherwise.  When we were together it was that perfect balance of magic between two people with nothing in common on the surface.  He’s conservative.  I make liberal look conservative.  He’s regimented.  I’m a disaster.  He’s got a longtime girlfriend.  I love whomever I’m with.  We were doomed from the start, which made the whole dalliance between us even more exciting.  What was I doing talking with a young attorney in D.C.?  

Around this time, in the early 2000s, I gave up on conventional life.  I’d finished school and traveled around the United States, writing and sometimes taking the occasional odd job.  I was living off money I’d gotten from breaking my neck knowing that it, like my youth, had a verifiable expiration date.  I was visiting a friend in Manhattan when some weirdo on Myspace saw me making bizarre comments on his friend’s page.  He added me and we had a quick back and forth.  He had excellent taste in music and film.  And I found myself intrigued by his quippy responses.  He stood planted in the ground in his photos, solid like an oak.  I asked for his phone number.