I blogged about Vanity Fair writer Nancy Jo Sales many years ago. She had a wacko affair with my friend Mark Kramer, the New York writer. I published that story eight years ago and I reprint it below.
Let me reconstruct three weeks of blogging on SomaReview.com. Much of it has since been removed.
John D. Spalding writes on SomaReview.com Dec. 6, 2007:
It’s been five months since the art world’s "most glamorous couple" committed suicide, but their seemingly fading story, which I blogged about several times this summer, has lost none of its hold on me. Every few weeks I’ve Googled the names Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan to see if there are any developments. And except for a September article in the British Independent that didn’t offer anything new, there’s been little to report. Until now.
In the January issue of Vanity Fair, Nancy Jo Sales has a huge, in-depth feature that paints the most complete picture yet of how such a gifted, beautiful young couple could come to such a puzzling, tragic end. Questions still abound: On the day Theresa died, which restaurant did she and Jeremy go to for lunch at 3 PM, less than four hours before she took her life? And what happened there? What did they talk about? Considering that apparently no one, including Jeremy, had the slightest idea she might end it all, the story will always remain a bit of a mystery.
Several things in Sales’ piece stand out. First, there’s Jeremy’s wonderful description of Theresa, courtesy of Raymond Chandler: She was "a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window." Then there’s Father Frank Morales who, devout SoMA readers will recall, is the colorful East Village Episcopal priest at the center of the couple’s lives their final year. (They moved into the St. Mark’s Church rectory in January of 2007, and immediately befriended Morales.) Other writers have speculated that Morales, who’s big on conspiracy theories, is a nutcase. Sales notes that she was married to Morales for two years, separating from him just two months before he met the couple last January! So she knows whereof she speaks when, later in the article, she calls her ex-hubby "the radical left’s Fox Mulder, a man who makes mere ‘conspiracy theorists’ look like Sunday drivers."
There’s more. The night Theresa committed suicide Jeremy returned home from work around 7 PM. He passed Morales in the church garden and invited him up for a drink. When Morales arrived at the apartment 10 minutes later, Theresa was dead, the police were there, and Jeremy was sobbing and pounding the walls. Some detectives arrived and began questioning Jeremy in Theresa’s office. Her body was in the bedroom, where Jeremy discovered her, and a cop was stationed at the door. Jeremy never returned to the room that night.
OK, we knew all that. But here’s what Sales says happened next: "Morales asked to be let into the bedroom to perform last rites over Duncan’s body. She was now on the floor, where the E.M.S. workers had been examining her. He knelt down and spoke the prayers."
Huh? Last rites–for a dead person? This struck me as odd, so I called Father Gawain de Leeuw, an Episcopal priest and SoMA contributor.
"That is very odd," he said. "And theologically, it’s ridiculous. You perform last rites for the sick, not the dead. You pray for the sick, you anoint them. You take their confession. Those, essentially, are the last rites. But you don’t pray with the dead, or anoint them, or take their confession, or do anything for them. They’re in the hands of God, and the priest’s next step, as far as the body goes, is the burial service. Until then, his or her job is to pastor to the living–to gather the family and pray with them, preparing them to release the body to the hospital, or whoever."
"Whatever he did, you wouldn’t call it ‘last rites,’" agreed Puck Purnell, another Episcopal priest and SoMA contributor. "You can say a commendation prayer for a person at the time of death, but last rites are for the living."
I told Gawain that I wondered if Morales wanted to be with Theresa’s body for his own reasons, because he was in shock and trying to process the blow.
"Now that makes sense," Gawain said. "Maybe he was pastoring himself!"
Then again, maybe we’re missing something here, or overanalyzing a minor detail. Clearly, not everyone, including Episcopal priests, agrees on what constitutes "last rites" and when they’re administered. What do you think?
Follow-up note: I searched the Internet, and it seems Morales has performed last rites for the dead before.
John D. Spalding writes on SomaReview.com Dec. 8, 2007:
When I was making calls yesterday about Nancy Jo Sales’ Vanity Fair piece on Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan, some confusion arose about who wrote it. "Are you sure it was a female reporter?" said a friend who knows a priest tied into the small world of lower-Manhattan Episcopalianism and was interviewed about Father Frank Morales by a male VF contributor. Morales, of course, was at the center of Blake and Duncan’s lives in their final months (see yesterday’s post).
And today I got a call from someone who was interviewed at length for the piece and was stunned to read at SoMA that Nancy Jo Sales had the byline. Asking not to be named, this person said that, last they knew, VF contributor John Connolly was writing the article, and that it was probably now in final edits, not already on the newsstand.
Hmmm. Sure sounds like a tale of publishing intrigue here. It’s certainly odd that Sales, who is so connected to the story as Morales’ ex-wife, wound up with the assignment.
PS: Doesn’t Morales’ timeline in VF sound fishy? He says the night Theresa died, he was in the rectory garden around 7 when Jeremy returned from work and invited him up for a drink. "Then, about ten minutes later, he sees police cars outside the rectory entrance on East 11th Street. He hurried up to the apartment, where [Jeremy] was in the living room, ‘sobbing, pounding the walls with his fist, screaming’… The police were with Duncan’s body in the bedroom." That’s an awful lot to happen in ten minutes: Jeremy leaves Morales, goes up to his apartment, discovers his girlfriend dead, and calls the police, who arrive and are in the middle of their investigation when Morales bounds in.
John D. Spalding writes Dec. 11, 2007 on SOMAReview.com:
What’s up with Vanity Fair’s distribution? Though I live in the boonies on the Connecticut shoreline, I picked up the January issue at my local general store last Thursday, and I’ve got friends in New York and L.A. who still, even today, insist they can’t find it on the newsstand yet. One amigo suggested I’m on the take with someone at Conde Nast who messengered me an advance copy so I could aid in a V.F. p.r. strike regarding Nancy Jo Sales’ Jeremy Blake/Theresa Duncan–for or against whom, I can’t figure out. Plus, a religion blog?
"Dude," I said, "Theresa Duncan at the height of her conspiracy-theory mania would have so grooved to that idea."
Speaking of which, if you’re interested in details about Duncan’s meltdown that you won’t find in VF–like her Slate plagiarism incident, her rantings about Francis Ford Coppola, etc.–revisit Kate Coe’s L.A. Weekly piece. (Also, check out Kate’s post on Beck’s odd denial to VF that he was ever involved in Duncan’s "Alice in Wonderland" project.)
SOMAReview.com says Dec. 30, 2007:
Has anyone interviewed the first responders yet? Reporters such as Kate Coe and Chris Lee, who were among the first to write at length about Duncan’s and Blake’s suicides, interviewed detectives who arrived at the scene later. But it would have been the cops who secured the rectory as a crime scene who’d have initially sent Morales and Hunt away, before Morales returned, without Hunt, to perform last rites. Hunt’s point seems to be not that she entered the crime scene–she makes no such claim–but that she was at the rectory that evening and insists Morales’ account isn’t wholly accurate.
A Friend of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake Was at St. Mark’s the Night Theresa Died. Her Story Challenges Frank Morales’ Account.
Though it seemed details surrounding the summer suicides of Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan couldn’t get any weirder, I just received an email full of bizarre new twists from Melinda Hunt–a friend of Jeremy and Theresa’s who was at St. Mark’s rectory the night Duncan committed suicide. Hunt challenges Father Frank Morales’ account of what happened that evening, and she questions his professional ethics, as well as his marital status with Nancy Jo Sales, the Vanity Fair writer whose in-depth article on the ill-fated couple is on newsstands now. Writes Hunt:
Thank you for picking up on the inconsistencies in Father Frank Morales’ story [see previous SoMA posts here and here]. It is nice to know that someone is paying attention.
I was a member of the congregation at St. Mark’s, where the deaths of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake were handled so poorly by Father Frank that I wrote a letter of complaint to [New York Bishop Mark] Sisk and left the church. As Theresa Duncan’s minister, Frank performed last rites on her, and then used information concerning her and Jeremy’s deaths to further his own interests and gain inside access for his "ex-wife" Nancy Jo Sales’ Vanity Fair article. Understandably, [Blake’s and Duncan’s] families are really upset.
Furthermore, Sales’ piece, like other articles covering this story, includes lies and half-truths. Jeremy did not invite Frank Morales up to the apartment for a drink that night, as Frank has claimed. In fact, at the time of her death, Theresa and Jeremy were so suspicious and distrustful of Frank that they avoided him. Here’s what I know did happen:
I was at St. Mark’s on July 10, the night Theresa took her life. At about quarter till seven, Frank called me, inviting me out to dinner. I walked over to the church, where a swarm of police and EMTs had arrived at the rectory’s 11th Street address. The cast-iron stairway had been removed for restoration, and they were trying to figure out how to get all their equipment around the block on a one-way street. I went into the church’s east yard where Frank was waiting for me, and I told him that something was going on at the rectory because the police were there. Frank had no idea what I was talking about, and he was reluctant to get involved with the police. I wanted to know if Jeremy and Theresa were OK.
Frank followed me around to the west garden. The police were already in the rectory and had sealed off the area as a crime scene. We tried to go up to check on Jeremy and Theresa. We could see Jeremy in the living room, but we were denied entry by the NYPD. At that point, I wasn’t thinking suicide. I was wondering, "domestic violence?" but that didn’t make sense.
Back in the garden, I was struck by how slowly the police were moving if this was indeed an emergency, so I asked a police officer, "When is the medical examiner arriving?" He said, "Not for a few hours," and that’s when I knew it was a death, and that it was Theresa’s. I encouraged Frank to go up and perform last rites because I knew she was Catholic and that her family might want a Catholic burial. The police let Frank access the room, but only in his official capacity as a minister. That he then relayed information about the circumstances of her death to the press, and arranged interviews for Sales with Jeremy’s and Theresa’s families, is, I think, a violation of confidentiality and his responsibilities as a minister.
Another half-truth is Sales’ claim in Vanity Fair that she’s Frank Morales’ "ex-wife," and that they "were married in 2004 and separated in 2006, a few months before he met [Duncan and Blake]." Frank and Sales were never legally married, though they celebrated a "spiritual marriage" in a public ceremony. In early 2007, Bishop Sisk informed Frank that he’d violated his vows as a priest by representing himself and Sales as "spiritually married," a relationship for which church doctrine makes no provision. Even if Frank had misled Sales on other facts in the story, she certainly must have known whether or not she was legally married to the man.
The truth is, Frank Morales told me he is legally married to a woman named Lisa Walker who, according to a New York Magazine article, was in prison on Riker’s Island in 2004, the year he "married" Sales. I forwarded the article to Frank this past summer, after the suicides, and he confirmed that Walker is still his wife, though he claimed to have left her 10 years ago.
Oddly, when Nancy Jo Sales first contacted me this past September, she introduced herself to me as "Frank’s wife."
Your recent post on Blake and Duncan has several errors and omissions. For starters, the writer, Melinda Hunt, is a former girlfriend of Frank Morales. They broke up right before Duncan died. According to cop sources, Melinda Hunt was not present at the scene of Blake and Duncan’s death, as she claims.* At Jeremy Blake’s memorial service in Washington, in front of several witnesses, Ms. Hunt accosted me and demanded to talk to me about Morales, for whom she seemed to harbor a lot of sore feelings. I told her to go away. I never contacted her about my article in Vanity Fair. A close friend of Theresa Duncan’s informed me that Duncan was not crazy about Hunt, and believed (wrongly, I assume) that she was a member of the Church of Scientology; it was Hunt’s connection with Morales, one source said, that put a chill in Theresa and Jeremy’s relationship with Frank.
As for my marriage to Frank, it’s true, we did have a spiritual marriage, in a ceremony in New York, attended by about 100 people, in 2004. Unfortunately, we were unable to obtain a divorce from Frank’s estranged wife in time for our scheduled ceremony. We continued to try and get the divorce, hoping to become married some time after our wedding. In my early drafts of the piece, I wrote that Frank and I had had a "relationship"; but since it had been reported in the press that we were married, my editor and I thought it would be less confusing to simply say that we were married–which in some circles we were (are gay people who have "spiritual ceremonies" married? It’s up to you to decide). Our feeling was that we wanted to fully inform the reader of the extent of our connection.
As to whether my having had a relationship with Frank altered my reporting of the piece, of course it didn’t. He was a source like any other. As with any source, everything he said was checked against other sources, through my own reporting and through fact-checkers. He was one of many, many sources interviewed for this piece. I am also not the first reporter in history, I believe, to interview a friend, spouse, or family member. Frank did not seek out access to me, as Hunt claims, but quite the contrary. It took a long time to convince him to talk about his friends. He was very close to Blake and Duncan in their final days, and at the scene of Theresa’s suicide, so of course he had special insight into their lives and the end of their lives, which is part of what makes the portrait we were able to draw of them more intimate than others.
Finally, Frank did not "arrange interviews" with Blake and Duncan’s family for me, as Hunt claims. I never spoke to Duncan’s family, who refused to talk to the press. I had many exchanges with Blake’s mother before she would agree to answer a few questions. p.s. According to a close friend of Duncan’s, Hunt insisted on coming to Duncan’s memorial service in December, to which she was not formally invited. As to the why of that, and the why of her post to you, I leave it up to you to speculate.
I am glad Nancy Jo Sales agrees that she was never legally married to Father Frank Morales. She is also correct that she did not interview me for her article. However, she did call me on September 23, 2007 and introduce herself as "Frank’s wife." She said Frank had left his cell phone at her apartment and she was calling the women listed on his phone, many of whom were parishioners, to find out if he was sleeping with any of them. One of the women she mentioned is a great-grandmother in St. Mark’s congregation. I thought Sales’ use of his phone in this manner crossed yet another line a priest was expected to draw, and I sent Frank an email saying her call was totally inappropriate.
It is unfortunate Ms. Sales did not interview me to ask if I had been with Frank when he first entered the rectory after Theresa’s death. I was there when the police and the ambulance arrived. Detectives from the precinct hadn’t arrived at that point. When Frank and I went to the top of the stairs, I saw Jeremy in the living room. The police, who were first responders, asked us to leave. They did not take my name because I didn’t enter the apartment. Frank went up a second time and was allowed access to perform last rites. Apparently, like me and Frank, the police didn’t realize that Episcopal priests don’t perform last rites for the dead, either.* Frank came down and told me he was going to wait with Jeremy until the end of the police investigation. We knew that the Office of the Medical Examiner would not arrive for a few hours, so I went home.
When I got to my apartment, I left a message for Father John Denaro, Priest-In-Charge at St. Mark’s, to call either me or Frank about an emergency at the church. Later that evening, I called Frank to find out how Jeremy was holding up. Frank said that Father John had called and they agreed Frank would stay with Jeremy until his mother and step-father arrived from Washington.
Since Ms. Sales brought up the issue of the memorials, I should point out that not only was I invited to both memorials by Jeremy’s mother, but Jeremy himself had personally invited me and Frank to his October 26 Corcoran Gallery opening–the opening that ultimately served as his memorial service. In May, we knew Frank would not be able to attend because he’d be in California to receive a Project Censored award. This award prompted the May 31 interview with Frank that Theresa posted at her blog. When I saw Ms. Sales at Jeremy’ memorial service, I told her I didn’t think it was right that she attended the event as Frank’s guest, without Frank, and that she was simultaneously covering it for her Vanity Fair piece. I also expressed to her my displeasure with Frank for divulging intimate details of Theresa’s death that he learned only in his capacity as a minister performing last rites. When I spoke with Jeremy’s family the day after his memorial, they were upset Frank had used his personal invitation to gain access for his journalist ex-wife and had not shown up himself.
I’m only writing this because I feel an obligation to address factual errors in a piece of investigative reporting that may not otherwise be resolved. There are issues of possible professional misconduct in this story. I can’t imagine a Vanity Fair editor agreeing to an overt lie involving the definition of a marriage to an Episcopal Priest. Ms. Sales’ comparison of her "spiritual marriage" with Frank to a gay marriage might be more compelling if Frank hadn’t been legally married to someone else at the time. What I can’t figure out is why Frank found it so difficult to obtain a divorce. His wife was in prison and he had more than adequate grounds. Once divorced, he’d then be free to marry whomever he wanted, with church doctrine on his side, in a proper wedding.
*For more on the Episcopal Church and last rites, click here.
Nancy Jo Sales responds:
Melinda Hunt’s continued, bizarre fabrications are veering into the realm of actionable. The story of my alleged phone call to her in her last post is completely made up. She has failed to admit her own romantic relationship to Frank Morales, but the bitterness of their breakup is palpable in every line she writes. I am afraid this is nothing more than the fury of a woman scorned–a woman with apparently nothing better to do on a holiday weekend. As I told Ms. Hunt at Jeremy Blake’s memorial service, when she accosted me, please leave me alone and get a life, I have nothing to do with your breakup with Frank Morales. Frank and I are not "reconciled" except in the sense that we began speaking again after he became a source for my story.
I was invited to the Jeremy Blake memorial at the Corcoran Gallery by the Corcoran Gallery and Jeremy Blake’s curator, Jonathan Binstock. Jeremy Blake’s mother assured me that it was all right with her that I attend, and I still have her emails to that effect. I find it sad that Melinda Hunt has enlisted this poor woman in her strange obsession with Frank Morales and the story of two people she barely knew, and who apparently didn’t like her very much, Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake. She seems so badly to want to insert herself as an important figure in this story, but she just isn’t. (Frank Morales did not attend the Blake memorial because he was accepting an award for an article he wrote, at Sonoma State University.)
The only thing that matters to me here is whether I got my story right in Vanity Fair; and, as far as I can tell, Ms. Hunt has said nothing that points to the contrary. Once again, the story was run by an army of the usual fact-checkers and lawyers. It was a tragic tale of two very interesting people, who just didn’t care all that much about this person grinding out these nasty posts to you.
Anne Schwartz Delibert, Jeremy Blake’s mother, emailed SOMAreview.com in response to Melinda Hunt’s posts:
Melinda,
The following is my "on the record" reply to you that you may use. It’s good you followed your conscience & took a public stand.
As you know, we generally do not want to get involved in public discussions about matters other than Jeremy’s artwork, which is where we think the focus should be. However, I confirm:
Frank Morales emailed me to introduce Nancy Jo Sales; he urged me to grant her an interview.
The Corcoran Gallery of Art invited Nancy Jo Sales to the "Wild Choir" exhibition press preview on October 23, 2007, which she did not attend. We did not invite her to Jeremy’s memorial service on October 26. However, Frank Morales told me he was bringing his wife, Nancy Jo Sales, with whom he’d recently reconciled. At the service, she showed up, he didn’t.
Anne Schwartz Delibert
Father Frank Morales emails SomaReview.com (the website has since removed this and related posts):
Melinda Hunt and I dated earlier in the year, you might even say we were a couple for a while. For various reasons I decided to terminate our relationship. When we separated, she became very angry and insistent that we get back together, via phoning, emailing, and showing up repeatedly at my office at St. Mark’s Church. I must say that I was feeling harassed for a spell.
I am sorry that Melinda is now manifesting her anger at someone who is entirely undeserving of it, Nancy Jo Sales. The anger and dishonest and delusional testimony that she is directing at Nancy Jo is really meant for me. I feel sorry for Melinda.
Nancy and I lived together for more than two years, prior to my meeting Melinda. During my time with Nancy, whom I still consider a friend, I had a very close view of her conduct as a journalist. She is scrupulously honest, responsible, and dogged–not to mention being a very fine writer–and she has deservedly gained the respect of her friends and peers in the profession.
As to the particulars of Melinda’s allegations about my conduct as a priest, these are matters which were resolved between myself and the Episcopal Diocese quite some time ago, about which Melinda only pretends to have any knowledge beyond which she learned directly from me (when I would speak to her).
Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan and I were friends. I felt that, after their deaths, in the wake of many vicious and unwarranted attacks on them, someone had to come forward and talk about what wonderful people they were. This is why I agreed to be interviewed by Nancy Jo Sales. I knew that her story would be the first and only story to accurately portray this amazing couple in all their complexity, and most critical for me, would portray their deep and endless love and appreciation for each other.
Nancy Jo Sales writes frequently on sex and gossip.
I now gossip about her.
Former Screw writer Mark Kramer describes "the bogus case lodged against me by my then-girlfriend/Yale honors grad/psychopath Nancy Jo Sales–a big-titted, red-headed Jewess–who would later be appointed, not long after the Psychedelic Solution incident, a Contributing Editor of New York mag."
Nancy wrote an article on nerve.com about her rough sex life with Mark Kramer without naming him but his identity is clear to those who knew them. The article has since been removed from nerve.com and from web.archive.org.
Sheila Thomson sent this query to Tina Brown, then editor of The New Yorker, on April 4, 1996:
I am a freelance writer who has been published extensively in New York Newsday and other periodicals. I am querying you with regard to an exclusive media-on-media story which may be suitable for your occasional "Annals of…" section. In this instance, the purview would be "Annals of Gossip."
This idea is pegged to a purportedly true-life report that appeared in the January 1996 Mademoiselle entitled "When Boy Beats Girl," by Nancy Jo Sales. Not since Norman Mailer stabbed his wife has a domestic violence case resonated – as the enclosed clips will show – through Gotham’s journalistic community more sensationalistically than that initiated by Tim Inc. staff writer – now People correspondent – Sales against free-lance writer Mark Kramer. Closer scrutiny of the events behind the Mademoiselle story – as well as a paper trail of documents and memoranda left by a complainant Sales – proves the Mademoiselle account incorrect in every particular. There is evidence of widespread complicity by journalistic professionals drawn wittingly or unwittingly into a personal and careeristic tempest between two writers – that dates back to both their experiences in supermarket tabloid culture, specifically as stringers for The Globe, The National Enquirer, and The Weekly World News.
Indeed, this narrative which might have been headlined "When Girl Beats Fact Checking" is an eerily tabloid-like tail trail that along the way involved such celebrities as Caroline Kennedy, Lorraine Bracco, Woody Allen and Harold Bloom. Also figuring prominently here is a stable of Daily News gossip writers for whose benefit the events leading to Kramer’s arrest may well have been, if not staged – then greatly exaggerated. Significantly, it was the Daily News "Hot Copy" column – whose writer A. J. Benza was so lavishly profiled by Sales in a recent New York Magazine article – that most aggressively attacked Kramer, who was at the time a competing daily gossiper at the defunct Her New York.
What is my interest in this case? I was among the reporters working at HER New York – and I remember Nancy Jo Sales’ numerous appearances in the newsroom there, where she was attempting to hawk her free-lance work. There was no mention of this in Sales’ thinly disguised reportage a clef (nor any mention of the fact that Nancy Jo Sales nee McCullough was married at the time, nor that she dissolved her marriage to take up with Kramer). I knew Kramer as Her New York writer/editor who survived several newsroom purges, and who went on to write for Newsday and New York magazine.
The accumulated evidence – none of which seems to have accumulated in Mademoiselle – suggests that Kramer was vigorously prosecuted in a matter initiated to discredit him professionally. Take note that all charges against Kramer were dropped – and not for the rather self-serving reasons enumerated in Mademoisele, but because frivolous cases like this fare less well in court than in gossip pages in womens’ magazines. Also not mentioned in Mademoiselle was a subpoena served on Time Warner by the defense which found literally scores of phone calls from Sales to Kramer after his arrest.
If I have sacrificed a certain brevity in order to pitch this story, it is only because the intrinsic complexity of these events is what enabled them to unfold in the first place. The thrust of my story would be to use "When Boy Meets Girl" – and a wealth of supporting materials – as a Rosetta Stone-like means of decoding the turbulent and often malicious professional climate in which today’s gossip is manufactured.
According to her brief bio on Nerve.com: "Nancy Jo Sales is a Contributing Editor at New York magazine. She has sworn off men and is trying to get pregnant . . . which is difficult."
According to the New York Post’s Page Six Gossip Column last Sunday: NEW York magazine scribe Nancy Jo Sales is preggers – but not, despite her best-laid plans, by one of her handpicked sperm donors.
The 35-year-old writer has made no secret of her desire to be a mommy, going so far as to chronicle her baby quest in the mag’s "Singles" issue last week. "I’ve had it with New York men. Just give me some sperm," she declared. In the piece, the industrious Sales described how she decided to invite "a bunch of old boyfriends to a wine-fueled dinner party and get one of them to impregnate me."
Now, sources say, Sales is expecting, but the father-to-be apparently wasn’t on the guest list. "She’s been telling everyone she’s pregnant for weeks," says a source. "The irony is, Nancy Jo went to great lengths to pick out a perfect father, and then she got pregnant accidentally."
The uncharacteristically closed-lipped Sales declined to divulge details to PAGE SIX on her reported delicate state, joking, "You’ll just have to wait for the sequel." Sales raised more than a few eyebrows when she went public last week in New York with her unorthodox fertilization plot.
"Raising kids is expensive enough; I didn’t see why I should start the process with a five-figure donation to a sperm bank," she wrote. "[And] I couldn’t bring myself to single out just one guy because that felt too much like genetic engineering," explained Sales, who added that her dating dance card has included "tall men, short men, fat men, skinny men .. a doctor, a lawyer [and] a member of the Wu-Tang Clan." "So I picked eight," Sales confessed. "Sort of like applying to college, I had long shots and I had ‘safeties.’" Her candidates were "all good friends and all lighthearted, if not positively irresponsible, fellows … so I was expecting at least one offer, maybe a bidding war …"
Sales wrote in Mademoiselle, January, 1995, about a past relationship: "When people see us (photo of Nancy Jo Sales with Kramer) together they must be jealous, " said my boyfiend–I’ll call him Matt [Mark Kramer???]. We were in the Italian restaurant where we had gone on our first date, more than a year before. We drank a little more wine, ate wonderful pasta, kissed and held hands. The perfect romantic evening.
"Then we went back to his place, and Matt exploded into violence. He nearly killed me. I ended up in the hospital; Matt ended up in handcuffs. How had our evening–and our relationship–gone so wrong? Matt seemed crazy about me….Suddenly, the violence gave way, perversely, to an intensely sensual moment. I wound up attributing the incident to Matt’s "passionate nature"."
Here are a few notes on gossip columnist and Mark Kramer ex-girlfriend Nancy Jo Sales, who writes frequently on sex (photo of NJS with Kramer). Kramer and Sales were together about two years.
NANCY JO SALES VS CAROLINE KENNEDY "PRIVACY EXPERT":
Hey, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg–better recheck the credentials of that research assistant you just hired. Seems she is also a stringer for the National Enquirer–who toils for the weekly supermarket tab under a pseudonym [Nancy McCullough] –told us yesterday that she’s helping the late president’s daughter research her upcoming tome on…privacy in the workplace… Calls to Sales’ home were not answered. She wrote a few weeks back about her childhood correspondence with Woody Allen. [New York Post 6-26-94]
NANCY JO SALES VS EDWARD JAMES OLMOS Wrote actress Lorraine Bracco to New York Magazine [ 8-8-94 ]: "I have read with disgust Nancy Jo Sales’s inaccurate, distorted, and plainly one-sided story about my custody battle with Harvey Keitel. Keitel is both a destructive and self-destructive person. His jealousy and hatred at my happiness in my new marriage has, with Sales’s assistance, reached a new low…"
[Note: Harvey Keitel’s attorney, Dan Kornstein–who falsely and unsuccessfully presented Edward James Olmos as a child molestor–also handled Nancy Jo Sales’s own divorce in 1992].
NANCY JO SALES VS LEONARDO DI CAPRIO "… New York magazine writer Nancy Jo Sales… spent several weeks earlier this year looking for Leo on the streets of Manhattan. Her futile search ended in June when she published a scathing piece portraying DiCaprio as a boozy, sex-obsessed party boy… Fast-forward to Friday night at Life, a West Village Club. Sales stops by, spots her long-hunted prey and tries to make contact by sitting down at the table next to his. But DiCaprio had the last word. First he moved tables to get away from her, then, when she approached him, he gave her a few choice words and bluntly brushed her off. [Daily News 10-6-98]
NANCY JO SALES VS JAMES TOBACK …"I’ve never heard of Nancy Jo Sales, [asserted sociopathic filmmaker James Toback] and I’ve never read one syllable of hers. How can some stupid bimbo I’ve never met be making these allegations?"…
[Sales:] "Toback should be directing traffic, not movies." [New York Post 9-28-98]
NANCY JO SALES VS SOCKS THE CAT
[Nancy’s faxes to Weekly World News editor Eddie Clontz, 1-27-93]: "SADDAM HUSSEIN’S SECRET PLOT TO KIDNAP SOCKS! White House insiders reveal why the First Cat is being kept in Little Rock–for security reasons! "We don’t want an Operation Desert Catbox on our hands", confided one high-ranking government source."
[Added Sales:] "Dear Mr. Clontz, I believe you know my dad, Ronald Sales [matrimonial attorney retained by Clontz as well as by National Enquirer editor Iain ‘The Icepick’ Calder]…."
[2-4-93] "Dear Mr. Clontz, This just in: "SADDAM HUSSEIN’S SPY IN THE WHITE HOUSE: "SOCKS." SADDAM’S SATANIC SWITCHEROO REPLACES SOCKS WITH IRAQI UNDERCOVER CAT!"
NANCY JO SALES VS MARK KRAMER [Wrote NYPD Officer Garrett Doherty in the lobby of Greenwich Village’s notorious Riverview Hotel, 10-24-93, 11:30 A.M.,]: "Deponent states that he is informed by Nancy McCullough that defendant struck her about the face and body and kicked her in the stomach, causing substantial pain and physical injury, to wit: bruising to the eye area, nausea, and pain to the stomach. Deponent further states that he is informed by Nancy McCullough that informant is pregnant."
Nancy Jo Sales’s late-night visit to The Riverview Hotel as further mythologized in Madamoiselle’s January, 1995 self-victimography, "When Boy Beats Girl".
