Fascinated with Nan Tepper

Hi gang! I’m sharing this article with all of you because, oh boy! I’m a star! This post is paywalled on Jess’s site, but you’re getting a sneak preview of the whole article because I love you all….and I want to strut my stuff a bit! Women need to brag more. Okay, Jess Greenwood, take it away, sister!

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Welcome to Fascinated! A series where I interview people who fascinate me about their work, their why’s, and their what the f***s and share all of that with you. Today, I have the sincere pleasure of introducing you to our first guest, Nan Tepper.

The first thing you need to know about Nan is that you will not get anything past her. She does not stand on convention, she will not let you slide, and she expects that you have a reason for everything you do. Because she does. And, when questioned (or criticized), she’s happy to share said reason. Boldly, but not bitchily. Nan fascinates me because when called to the carpet for anything she’s said or done, she doesn’t lash out, she reaches in. A lifetime of therapy (from talk to shock), a more recent trip through the 12-Steps, and Grace, her name for whatever floats beyond us, has made her an unapologetic advocate for Nan. Where that could easily produce defensiveness or even arrogance, in Nan it comes out through carefully considered words that are meant to do nothing more than share her truth. Your perception is your problem, but she will entertain your perspective all day long.

That is fascinating.

Along with her buddy, Eileen Dougharty, Nan is the originator of Wham! Bam! Thank you! Slam!, a virtual version of the live story slams Nan has been participating in for the past several years. The tagline, “1 story. 4 minutes. Zero dicks.” garnered gobs of attention on Substack, the current home of the publication, both the good kind and the party pooper kind. WBTYS (because who doesn’t love an acronym?) is a place for female authors with smaller Substack publications to tell their stories. Men are welcome to watch the Slam, encouraged, in fact, to buy a ticket, although at a higher price than their female counterparts. But, they are not allowed on stage. Zero dicks. Period. The anatomical kind or any other kind.

People felt some kinda way about that.

I knew they would, and if I’m honest, I was cringing behind my computer on Nan’s behalf, waiting for the onslaught of patriarchy to rain down on her parade. It did. And she didn’t care. To her, it’s a joke. With a broader meaning. It’s also her stage. You don’t like the rules? You need not participate. But there was one push back that gave her pause. She picked up her pen and responded in such a beautifully human way that I was, you guessed it, fascinated. If you, too, are feeling some kind of way about dicks and their inclusion or lack thereof, read Nan’s response here.

The care and conviction she showed in this response is when I realized that WBTYS was far more than just a fun project for Nan.

I knew from Nan’s writing on her original Substack, The Next Write Thing, that she struggled mightily with depression for most of her life. We’re talking the ugly, dark, take over your life kind. I also knew that she used to be a person who was afraid to try, her fear of failure or judgment so strong that it overwhelmed any sense of “I might,” “I could,” or heavens to Betsy, “I can.” So, how in the hell do you take someone like that and get them to go on stage to tell a 4-minute story about their life?!? And then entice them to return and do it again?

Nan explains the crack factor here:

Hey, it’s Nan. I’m interrupting this post for a moment to say I’m upgrading to a paid membership because I want to read the rest of Jess’s Fascinated! conversations, because I hate missing out. xo

And this is when I found out Nan was a clown.

Y’all, I couldn’t have been more confused. A what?!? Apparently, in the seventies on Long Island they offered “How to be a clown” summer camp where official Ringling Brothers clowns came to teach kids their craft. I’ll hold off on inserting my disdain for clowns here because they scare the living crap out of me, but whatever. Nan, ever the entrepreneur, saw an opportunity, and promptly got her mom to start schlepping her around the boroughs on weekends to be the paid entertainment for story time at the library. Picture Nan, indignantly avoiding any public demonstration of her talent, hamming it up with some balloon animals and and a bright red nose. I can’t. It’s confusing, right?

I didn’t see that coming, I will admit, but as our conversation continued, it started to make more sense. Nan is a performer at heart. She wants to be the source of people’s feel good, but that didn’t feel possible when she played herself until very recently.

Nan and I got into the body shaming stuff early on in our relationship. As a fat teenager (her) and an anorexic one (me), I understood immediately how her body has gotten in the way of her storytelling, and she sees how my fear of food continues to eat away at my joy.

Nan’s ability to articulate how hurtful her own body has felt to her at times can leave me breathless, the air disappearing from my lungs as if she borrowed my breath, my own truths rolling off of her lips. I felt my eyes prick at her unabashed acknowledgment of the role fatness has played in her inability to fully step into herself, this quote in particular landing right across my solar plexus.

“But as a fat teenager, if I dressed up like a clown, and pretended that I wasn’t me, I could do it. I was somebody else.”

Ugh. That’s sadly not fascinating. Just true.

She’s working on letting that body shaming s**t go, but it still shows up, particularly in her preferred way of performing now. The Story Slam. She hates going up on stage in her body. Podiums are her friend, another place to hide. But, despite the lurking fear of judgment from every body in the audience, Nan takes the mic anyway. She knows that if there’s an a*****e sitting in the audience that’s more focused on her body than her story, that’s on him, not her.

See, this is what fascinates me. The Nan that perseverated over whether her body is good enough to stand on stage is the same Nan that stole her brother’s underwear because she just wanted to wear boys underwear. They were more comfortable, and she liked them better. One q

uestions whether her body has worth and the other values its comfort so much it goes about stealing to make it happy.

I could cop out and say ‘It’s complicated, and so is Nan.” But I actually don’t believe that. I think Nan fascinates me so much because she’s not complicated. Complex…absolutely. But, not complicated. I wonder if that’s because she’s written so honestly about herself that I feel like I understand her complexity, its origins, and how it shows up for her these days. If that’s the case, it’s a testament to her writing, which is, in and of itself, confusing as Nan didn’t become a writer until two years ago.

For most of her life, Nan claims she wasn’t a writer. I stopped myself from inserting the tired argument that “If you write, you’re a writer” because Nan got ahead of me and told me she only wrote about 1,000 words a year for the Slams she participated in up until she joined Substack. Okay, just kidding, maybe you weren’t a writer. Then, how in the hell did you decide in your 60’s that you would go from writing two essays a year to one a week for over two years straight? That’s quite the transition, Nan.

Just jumping in might be a slight understatement, but it turns out that the simple joy of making people laugh in the context of the Slam helped shepherd Nan into the next iteration of herself. One that is, unequivocally, a writer. As she says, “It was an evolution.” Yeah, I’d say. That evolution involved a ton of therapy, medications, and a 12-Step program that Nan credits with saving her life. Going through the program helped her see what a dysfunctional home she grew up in and that her parents were not necessarily intentionally awful or neglectful people, but a product of their own dysfunctional homes. And despite the years of suffering, she’s kinda grateful that she lived the life she lived because its helped her see other people that suffer with compassion…most of the time, at least (her words, not mine).

And, WOW, has it given her an arsenal of stories from which to pull both for the Slam and for her writing.

I wanted to understand how Nan sits with that discomfort in her writing, especially given that she’s a person who does not enjoy discomfort. Nan scoffs at my proclivity for exercise as she loathes “sweating and panting”, and she has a person who does her grocery shopping because who likes going to the grocery store? But, she’s a master at approaching her own psychological discomfort bravely, and from a place of peace. As she says, “When I have a feeling like I want to defend or I’m reactive to something somebody else does, most of the time, I can step away and ask myself what is it about this that’s creating this reactivity in me?”

That’s such a masterful skill, and, unsurprisingly, for Nan, it came from doing the hard work. The personal work. The work that comes when you’re ready to dig through the dirt in order to actually find a clear path. I am just awed by what comes out on the other side when Nan goes through that process of self exploration.

So, because this publication is primarily about joy, I had to ask what brings Nan joy.

Her first response? “Getting into bed at night.”

Welp, yup, that tracks. The comfort thing and all.

Beyond that, her dogs, her cup of coffee in the morning, the NYT puzzle (the only part of the Times she can tolerate anymore), writing, and reading. Friends. And laughter.

Simple stuff. Predictable stuff. Fulfilling stuff.

There’s no wanderlust here. Nan wandered far and wide inside her own life for many years, and now that she’s finally found herself, the biggest blessing she can offer to that self is to stay put. BIG curiosity. Little footprint.

Now that’s fascinating.

If all this talk of dicks and slams has tickled your pickle, check out this month’s Wham! Bam! Thank you! Slam! slated for THIS SATURDAY, February 21st on Zoom. Tickets are still available, and you can laugh your ass off in the comfort of your own home. In your bed, in fact, if you’re like Nan and find joy there. Sweating and panting is not required, so what’s holding you back?

Another message from Nan. I know the names might be hard to read on the graphic, so…here’s the line-up for Saturday: Kari Bentley-Quinn, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Sarah Hauser, Kara Westerman (she/her), Amanda Jaffe, Jennifer Silva Redmond, Janine De Tillio Cammarata 🖊️, Kelly Thompson TNWWY, Susan Kacvinsky, Irena Smith, with special appearances by Eileen Dougharty, Nan Tepper, and Mel Moseley. Slamone de Beauvoir, we’re sure, will be missing in action, once more. But her spirit surrounds us. It’s a little creepy, honestly. xo