My friends have asked me for some time whether "Slut Machine" is my alter ego, and though careful readers would probably realize that's impossible, today is finally the day to dispel all the rumors and unveil the slut. Slut Machine is actually the nom de plume of one Tracie Egan. Tracie and I share a lot of things: lapsed Catholicism, alcoholism, maybe a sex partner... is that redundant? But rape fantasy, which she bravely wrote about in this month's Vice under her authentic name, is not one of them, not that there's anything wrong with that. Anyhow, not to sound like I'm giving some sort of warped wedding toast, but I think of Tracie as a sort of noble enabler. Like, only Tracie could get me to come over to her kitchen — in Brooklyn — on a Sunday night and get smeared with nine layers of makeup so as to authentically reenact the historic Lindsay Lohan/Vanessa Minillo knifeplay photos. (Which is why she looks like a self-described "old whore" in these photos, shot by the sadistic Nikola Tamindzic, to use her words.)
Tracie also likes to stay up until, like, 10:30 a.m. (ahem) and drink Olde English and watch reality television, habits I am beginning to pick up. But more importantly, Tracie has always been the type of girl who, when a condom gets lost inside her snatch, will write about it. Before I started reading Tracie's blog, One D At A Time, I wasn't really that type. Things change! But for a reason: it's those frank, oversharing, ever so occasionally verging-on-overly-self-referential posts that make Jezebel Jezebel, and long before she was on staff, Tracie was something of a spiritual leader to the site in that way. Because, quite frankly, fuck discretion. Discretion is how I didn't figure out how to come until I was 24 years old; discretion is why women's magazine editors persist in treating their fellow humans like total shit; and when you've spent a career trying to catch others in their own indiscretions, discretion just feels a little dishonest and superior. No one, besides maybe Tyra, understands this better than Tracie. Also she's good with computers. Maybe because she's a Taurus. Because my "alter ego" could not edit a video clip to save its life.