Apparently not every story about a friend has to feel like suicide

Many many moons ago, I started working on a story about the Suicide Girls for the Santa Barbara Independent.

It was one of those stories that kicks my ass every which way and for every kind of reason: it was personal, it involved people I know and like , I respected the editors I was working with (and therefore wanted to do a good job), and I cared about the topic. Which meant I spent about a million and a half more hours on it than it probably needed - and about two million times more than I'd be getting paid for.

My main concern, though, was that what started out as a straight-forward story about Suicide Girls in Santa Barbara turned into a personal essay about my personal experience with the site - a much different undertaking and much scarier prospect.

I feared the day the story would come out.

That day was today.

I have yet to see the final draft, though the text is online here , but I'm already relieved with some of the feedback I've gotten. Most notably? A peripheral friend who called it "the most insightful, feminist article on Suicide Girls I've ever read." Most hilarious? The main subject's ex-boyfriend who called me to exclaim how weird it was to see his former flame plastered all over his hometown paper.

But the best thing is that, thanks to fantastic advice from my friend and fellow journalist Tom Schultz, I'd already shown a draft to a representative from Suicide Girls. Which meant I'd already gotten their reaction. Which meant I didn't have to wake up this morning, close my eyes, hold my breath and wait for a phone call ... naturally expecting the worst.

Nope. Not today.

Today I woke up feeling clean and prepared, curious but not the least bit afraid of how people would react.

Funny how easy that was. I'm going to pit it on my imaginary little list: Journalism Lesson Number 642 — Never let your story be a surprise to its subject. And a reminder to go back to Lesson Number 2, which I started learning in 2002 and seem to keep needing to learn every few months or so, — Don't write about your god-damned friends.