Joan Bryan

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Joan has always been a combination of mimicking Sarah, spoiled brat entitlement, and Sarah-style aggressive insecurity. Like all of us, she is physically unattractive but rather than developing any genuine interests or concern for others she adopted the wannabe tactic of mimicking the most rigid, negative attitudes around her. She also adopted the Sarah shtick of loud-mouthed abuse and scammy insistence on overrating her own non-existent qualities, character and competence.

She oddly continues to comment on other people's physical appearance as if it is another area in which she is an undisputed expert. It is all a combination of rote Sarah-isms and stunted fifth-rate adolescent, failed sorority rushee, mean girl/popular girl wannabe - the perpetual asides denigrating other people including her vaguely transactional husband ("Tim doesn't make very much money", "Tim works almost full time"), the constant (and typically underinformed) references to what is "popular" or "on trend" or has "made money" as a guide (no Totoro for you, kiddies; Ghibli “didn’t make much money”), the canned corporate jargon word salad, the astonishing belief that she is smarter than everyone else coupled with grotesque ignorance and cookie-cutter self-promotion. Like all truly stupid and ignorant people (including Sarah), she is grotesquely incurious and inconsiderate, and thinks she is indisputably smarter and more capable than anyone else - or at the very least committed to pretending she is.

She has always been selfish, insecure, shallow, ignorant, stupid, un-self-aware, rigid, closed-minded, and emotionally immature. She adopted all of Sarah’s hysterics and neuroses - her violence, bigotries, and lying – as a matter of course and considers them entirely normal and proper. This was compounded by Sarah trying perpetually to prop Joan up, coddling and spoiling her - doing her homework, encouraging her temper tantrums, taking her to overpriced shopping malls, praising her failures, dismissing and denigrating anything Joan did poorly at (i.e., most things) and exaggerating Joan’s abilities. Joan remains chronically condescending - as child and adult - without noticing or admitting that she has next to nothing to condescend about, not even getting into the whole mindset of seeing condescension and snottiness as positive traits. She is incapable of questioning anything because she is fundamentally empty and can only copy or regurgitate whatever is around her.

She mimics Sarah's gestures (the hunched over storming about; sticking her bony finger in people's faces; the grabbing and pulling; the blocking people's paths, the performative busy-ness and frantic counterproductive running around to pretend she is Oh So Busy And Important). She regurgitates all of Sarah's slogans at full screeching volume - "I'M NOT HERE TO BE POPULAR!" (which also serves as cover for the fact that she isn't but has always been shamelessly obsessed with being so, as was Sarah), "I'LL JUST KNOCK SOME HEADS TOGETHER!!!", "NO! WE'RE NOT GOING TO DO THAT!", "YOU LISTEN TO ME!", "YOU'RE CAUSING PROBLEMS IN OUR MARRIAGE!","YOU'RE NOT GONNA LIKE IT!!!!!", "MAYBE THAT'S JUST WHAT YOU NEED!!" and most strangely "I'M A LOUDMOUTH WHITE WOMAN!!!" which she ludicrously seems to never have noticed was part and parcel of Sarah's blatant racism. 

She refuses to listen or learn, pay attention or try to observe or understand anything or anyone. She has difficulty comprehending most things so largely doesn't try. The point is not to listen or understand but to make it look like she is listening or understanding. Like Sarah, she stomps around making noise and mess and regurgitates rote boilerplate ad nauseum. Like Sarah, she has always refused to read (and, like Sarah seems barely able) but then went into typically hysterical denial when her daughter was supposedly dyslexic. As this should have been the remotest surprise, and as if Joan’s typical hysterics, hyperventilating and cowardice would ever be helpful.

She jumps to conclusions and has problems with anything that is not rote regurgitation and cookie-cutter boilerplate. So her information sources are incredibly limited and she latches onto whatever handful of factoids or sources happen to drop in front of her and then regurgitates ad nauseam. If challenged, she will simply increase the volume - like Sarah.

She projects constantly and assumes other people are as shallow and selfish as she is while couching it all in cookie cutter, boilerplate slogans - a hefty portion of which are borrowed from Sarah while others are regurgitated wannabe-isms, fifth-rate corporate speak she barely understands, the occasional misused fetish word like "ironic" that she thinks makes her sound smart or delusional asides about her non-existent "morality" and "conscience". She combines the random bigotries, prejudices, misunderstandings, assumptions and poor judgment typical of Sarah with her own spoiled brat entitlement and over the top performing. She is screeching and arrogant but too lazy to bother with facts, specifics, details, logic or anything but the tiniest of information sources.

The consummate little brat as a child, she would go into rages – real or manipulative – and come up and start kicking and screaming and throwing whatever she had handy. She would be some nothing wimp at school – awkward, inept, unconcerned with others and incompetent at everything – then come home, stomp around imitating Sarah and throw her manipulative little temper tantrums. For lack of any more accurate term, she was a nasty little shit from the very beginning – though an awkward, desperate little wannabe outside the household. And, ultimately, Joan was a nasty little shit because Sarah was a nasty little shit.

We could never go on any sort of vacation or family outing without Joan launching into one of her screeching, Look At Me! performances whereupon we all had to stop and watch Sarah fawn over the little monster. I don’t think a single outing ever went without at least one Joan drama queen performance. Lord knows what she was thinking or what the purpose of any of it was other than to make herself the center of attention and fawning. She couldn’t stand my having birthday parties or us doing anything for my birthday (I DON'T WANT TO!!!) so she would sulk or fake being ill so that Sarah would make us come back early. Like Sarah she would go into spastic nervous attacks driving, wrecking one car with me in it driving to the local, garbage Springbrook High School in Silver Spring when she panicked and turned the wrong way into a lane of oncoming traffic. 

Her late high school, early college anorexia was one sign though it went beyond the relatively brief (as far as I know) period of not eating and drama queen food productions. Her post-forced mental ward internment - daddy, of course, had to fly out to get her out - with its screeching, dictatorial projection was much in character ("YOU'RE MEASURING YOUR FOOD!!!! I SAW YOU!!!!!!" in response to nothing and without the slightest change to her Sarah-esque assumption that she always and everywhere was "right" ("NO!! THAT'S WRONG!!!")). The general traits were the same: rigid and controlling of herself and others, obliviously selfish, egotistical, aggressively dictatorial though inevitably clueless, uninformed, incurious, and incompetent.

The anorexia was in the tradition of her other "look at me while I perform" productions. Lord knows we had to be subjected to her weekly swim meet breakdowns every friggin' summer where after coming in fourth or fifth or sixth or whatever in the piddly local swim club meet (and knowing she would since – as with everything else – she sucked and other folks were obviously and always faster as if any of it even remotely mattered) she would break into hysterical tears and rush over and perform for mommy. Every stinkin' week for a decade as standard narcissistic, grossly selfish practice. Joanie needs this, Joanie needs that; Joanie stomps her feet screaming "I'M VERY ANGRY!!!!!" as if anyone should be anything but repulsed with her garbage. She would, and does, insist on whatever random half-baked idea she has fallen upon and then whips herself into a fury trying to force them onto others - most often with typically ludicrous results. 

It continued after I went to college with Joan calling and screeching or doing holiday visit productions. Sarah and John would have me do favors for Joan (and then present it as somehow my idea) and then Joan would, of course, not say any thanks but would turn around and launch into her hysterics and grossly ignorant lectures and smarmy asides. Sarah thought Joan was too unstable to drive across country herself in 1990 so she asked me to fly out to Colorado and drive with Joan as designated driving buddy for her car crashes. Stupidly I agreed. Joan showed up at the airport and promptly launched into her typical, Sarah-inflected brat routine. Joan is such a big girl and knows everything! This was wrong and that was wrong. Oh, how I didn’t understand anything. Then we had the driving fiascos. Joanie wrecks another car; Joanie gives herself a concussion. She would panic and then demand directions. We couldn't possibly walk around the block in Topeka of all places because it was "too dangerous" (i.e., Joan had seen a "black person").

On the Beltway around DC, she couldn't find her exit so started screaming for directions I had no clue about and for which I had no intention of being her servant. "WHERE'S THE EXIT!! WHERE'S THE EXIT!! WHERE'S THE EXIT!!!!!!! YOU TELL ME WHERE THE EXIT IS!!!!!!!!!!" She pulled up to the house rushing to mommy, screaming, slamming doors, stomping, flinging her arms around screeching, "HE KNEW WHERE THE EXIT WAS AND HE WOULDN'T TELL ME!!!!!!!" in typical toddler Joanie fashion. Sarah coddled and fawned over her as usual (What does little Joanie want for dinner?! It’s alright, little Joanie! We can go shopping!). John, after standing there with his usual comatose expression, went and shoved peanuts down his face. 

She pulled the same WHERE’S THE EXIT! WHERE’S THE EXIT! trick earlier when she invited herself out to quote-unquote visit me in college when she simply wanted to prance around, perform and look at the campus (“I’d study in the coffee shop!” – shades of Sarah’s “the best part of college was going to the coffee shop, drinking my coffee and smoking my cigarettes” as if she would ever be admitted in a gazillion years, couldn’t of course be bothered with a library and whose idea of “learning” was regurgitating copy-paste PowerPoints) while otherwise performing and spouting passive aggressive criticisms and “advice”.

At Christmas during my first year of law school with exams after break and when I was in peak ulcerative colitis and vomiting non-stop three days in a row out of every ten Joan stomped around as usual demanding attention, flinging out her brain-dead-spoiled-brat-thirteen-year-old-wannabe snottiness (“WHAT?!! ARE YOU SPECIAL OR SOMETHING?!!!”), screaming orders, plopping down where I was studying and turning on some crap TV program while she flipped through her Glamour magazine (as if that was going to help). When even Sarah asked her to tone it down, her response was to scream "IT'S MY HOUSE, TOO!!!!!", turn the TV up louder and stomp around some more. Given Sarah and Joan’s trash TV habit, there were of course four different TVs in four different rooms, but Joanie just had to sprawl herself where I was. I ended up taking the train back to school for the rest of the holiday break.

And, then of course, when I came out at a ridiculously late date in the ‘90s – big whoop, as if anyone should give a shit, and with the prefatory if you don’t want to know fine (Sarah: “IS IT A BLACK GIRL?!”; uh, no, Sarah, it’s not 1957 Alabama, but feel free to update your idiocies) Sarah and Joan (emergency call from Sarah!) both launched into their typical shrieking hysterics ("HOW DARE YOU?!! YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF!!!!"). This, of course, was followed by the random periodic asides of condescending idiocies in response to absolutely nothing (“Tim and I don’t have anal sex” – as if anyone asked). Which, in turn, fall into Joan's more generalized Miss Morality routine (“I have a moral problem with that!!”; “That is INAPPROPRIATE!!”) – which inevitably turns out to be deeply cynical and self-serving. Joanie doesn’t feel like doing something and – voila! – she has a “moral problem”. Joanie doesn’t want to pay her bills and – voila! – that would be “inappropriate”.

A couple of years later a friend of mine who was moving to DC stayed over for a couple of days before his apartment was ready. Utterly unremarkable. Joan, of course, launched into hysterics as usual. She melted down into her usual aggressive insecurity and after some typical snotty asides stormed about throwing yet another temper tantrum ("I HAVE A VERY STRESSFUL JOB AND NEED TO RELAX!!!!!!") and gojo'd herself back to Cincinnati. Lord knows why, though typical. Part of it, it seems, was the fact that he was fairly decent looking and not a complete idiot while Joan was, of course, ugly, stupid, awkward and unpleasant and, at the age of 29, still had not apparently really dated and it seems from another wildly self-centered, hysterical outburst had not even had sex yet ("I HAVE BASIC BODILY NEEDS THAT ARE NOT BEING MET!!!!!"). Sure, fine whatever, - yet another of the never-ending excuses for performative temper tantrums and which, of course, had John and Sarah worrying that she was going to sleep with some random person off the street (who else would have her?) and get HIV or whatever given her history of over-the-top meltdowns, ignorance and poor judgment. The typical Joan main character syndrome bit.

Part of it is also that Joan's idea of family has always been her performing and everyone else coddling and covering up for her. For Joan "family" has always meant Joan storming around doing whatever she feels like while everyone else accommodates it. Like Sarah, everything with Joan is pitched to 11 - it is always SO difficult, SO demanding, and SO stressful, and must involve a maximum of self-centered emoting and performance art. She cannot simply do something. It all must be surrounded by layers upon layers of useless, counterproductive, inevitably ill-informed and selfish emoting and hyperventilating (Look how hard I'm WORKING!!! Look how hard I'm TRYING!!! Everyone LOOK AT ME!!!). That has been a constant since the very beginning and is a direct copy of Sarah and her perpetual need to hyperventilate and perform. She remains the perpetual spoiled brat five-year-old who never learned or cared that she is not the center of the world and that life does not revolve around her every erratic, self-serving, spasmodic and emotionally immature impulse.

When Sarah found out she had terminal lung cancer (big surprise; Sarah smoked for a quarter century including in front of us as children; "the best part of college was going to the coffee shop, drinking my coffee and smoking my cigarettes" as she liked to say), Joan decided to start calling overseas in the middle of the night demanding that I quit my job and fly back to the U.S. to do lord knows what - not that Joan had any intention of quitting her job or doing anything beyond flapping her mouth ("YOU NEED TO COME HOME RIGHT NOW!!!! WE NEED TO RALLY AROUND AS A FAMILY!!!!").

Joan lies and bullshits constantly and thinks it's "normal" because Sarah did the same. Her bias for bullshit (“I have a bias for action!”) is part and parcel of her wannabe-ism, insecurities and lack of any real character or core. She shamelessly copies other people without having the slightest thought or concern. She thinks her children should do the same, generically flinging around meaningless, brain-dead phrases like "crafting compelling narratives" in her usual fifth-rate corporate wannabe gibberish. She is incapable of dealing with specifics and rarely if ever deals with anything of substance. She sees neither the forest nor the trees but will wallow around in whatever dung heap she may trip over without even realizing where she is. She flaps her mouth about how "moral" she is and her "good conscience" – without having any idea what the words mean - while being the same shamelessly selfish and insecure egotist she was as a toddler and adolescent. 

From kindergarten through high school Sarah would write out all of Joan’s homework for her, which Joan would then copy verbatim – typically after much hysterical emoting and production (Look how hard I’m WORKING!!!!!!! Look how hard I’m TRYING!!!!!). If there was a book to read neither one would actually read the thing. Sarah would simply plagiarize bits from Cliff Notes that Joan would then re-copy. I would want something for Christmas, which of course we could not possibly do and that Joan would belittle along with Sarah, and then – surprise! – multiples of the same thing suddenly mysteriously show up at Joanie’s house years later and are now a Joan-invented “family tradition” (along with various household objects of mine that she looted from storage at John’s house).

She pushed her children into applying to Cornell because that was the only place she was accepted for biz school after her junk major, party school college and crap test scores– at which point it became the shining city on the hill of excellence. (And, of course, called me demanding advice on how to apply to schools and then screeched “NO!! THAT’S WRONG!!!!” when I told her. So don’t ask. As if I’m dying to talk to the little monster or try to do favors for her.)

She did the Americana entitled parent trick of hiring consultants to write her children’s college application essays and tell them what books to pretend to have read and what activities to pretend to be interested in. Joan, naturally, made quid pro quo wannabe donations to her preferred college (Cornell!; the typically scammy and haphazard reasons for which she then repackaged into her standard truth-stretching fairy tale) oh so coincidentally timed with her children's applications. Bonus points for using money from John that she was trying to avoid paying taxes on.

She had them take up rowing to pad their applications and then pretended this was all such an original idea from her and she was SUCH an expert on crew blithely failing to mention that I did rowing in college (and had an erg in the family basement which she walked by multiple times, making snotty remarks each time ("JUST HAVING FUN!!"); and was on my way to a couple of weeks of rowing camp when I had to detour to babysit her hysteria filled car trip from Colorado to DC). Like so much with Joan the question usually comes down to how much is stupidity, how much is willfully selective memory, how much is self-delusion and how much is explicit lying. Or all of the above.

Then we have the college funding scam where she conned John and me into setting up accounts for her children supposedly to pay for their college though she had more than enough money to pay herself and has simply pocketed the change by insisting her children pay the money back to her. Precious, entitled, spoiled brat little Joanie couldn't possibly pay for her own children's college just as she couldn't possibly be bothered to pay for any other major expense in her life despite being fully able to do so. She stomped around, as usual, years in advance complaining that everything was so expensive. John thought she wouldn't be able to afford college despite her other copious wannabe expenses and asked me about setting up college accounts.

Precious little fuckup Joanie needs to be bailed out again – with me dragged into the production as with the Colorado road trip fiasco. But heaven forbid we should tell her directly to her face. Little Joanie couldn’t possibly be bothered with the details or specifics. We, of course, must pretend that screechy Little Joanie is a big girl and not the recipient of fuckup funds. I foolishly agreed – with John leaving the decision of setting up accounts entirely with me. It was my decision and only existed because I explicitly agreed – which, of course, given Joan’s history and character was yet another unbelievably stupid thing to do like all the other times I did favors for the little monster from babysitting her nursey school temper tantrums to chaperoning her ridiculous road trip fiasco drive from Colorado.

Joan, of course, had and has more than enough money to pay for her children’s college as she likes to passive aggressively brag (“I make THREE TIMES as much!!!!”; “I’m Marriott Titanium Elite!!” – do you know who I am?!; "not bragging, just stating fact!") when she is not trying to get other people to pay her expenses (cars, condo, boob job, family vacations (“our family prefers Marriott!”), children's college etc. etc.). She never gave the tiniest thanks, tried to pretend I had nothing to do with any of it, acted with the same rudeness, snot and grossly ignorant condescension she always has and then refused to read the emails with backing it up ("I DON'T HAVE TIME TO READ 800 EMAILS!! I HAVE A BUSINESS TO RUN!!!" despite having neither a business nor anything to run and there being closer to eight mails than eight hundred – not to mention the inordinate amount of time she wastes on performative busy-ness and posing). As always, when confronted with details, specifics and receipts, Joan dodges and runs away.

Typical for Joan, she still has not paid back my part of the money and, as far as I can tell, has no intention of doing so. That would be “inappropriate” and cause her a “moral problem”. This, of course, after I had scholarships for undergrad and took out loans for law school while Joan perpetually sucked off of John and – like Sarah – never cared a thing about education and learning (and, as far as I can tell, has never read a book in her life) or much in general beyond her shallow Sarah-esque wannabe-ism and passive aggressive insecurities.

She likes to nickel and dime and "garnish", as she calls it, if she thinks she's owed money or simply wants to be abusive and obnoxious - and she almost always thinks she is owed something, monetary or otherwise. When John died he had a pension with survivor benefits. Since Joan was in the U.S. and I was overseas and it was paid out at the time in US bank checks he put her name down as the beneficiary (there could only be one) and then left written instructions that it was to be split 50/50. Joan has gone through periods - as she of course would - where she likes to dick around with it, sometime send it, sometime not, complain that PayPal or an electronic transfer is far too complicated for her, etc. It's a trivial amount of money, but yet another site for Joan performance. I've spoken to lawyers about this and am perfectly happy to sue if she pulls this or any other stunt again. 

As with most everything else, Joan has tried to use the ridiculous, dishonest Sarah scholarship to parade around and attempt to prop herself up. Look at grownup little Joanie “paying it forward” with other people’s money that she pretends is her own. And she still doesn't have sense enough not to push the most blatant lies. Incompetence, idiocy, selfishness and bullshit – the perennial Joan standards.

She had the nerve and the shamelessness not only to help concoct and publicize the utterly bogus, word salad biography of Sarah used with the scholarship including made up opinions supposedly from me about how Sarah was a wondrous, and wondrously talented, "friend, supporter and role model", but then told me nothing about it, never showed it to me or asked my opinion, leaving me completely unaware of it until after John died and I found it on my own, at which point she refused to change it despite my explicitly asking that she not publicly lie about me and Sarah's conduct ("NO!! WE'RE NOT GOING TO DO THAT!!!!"). Little Joanie needs to have her photo taken and could not possibly change her “compelling narrative”. Get some self-respect already. It was repulsive and embarrassing at the age of two and is no better – and no different – now.

In short, Joan was, and remains, a smarmy, shallow, humorless, insecure, selfish, rigid, immature, inconsiderate, emotionally stunted and willfully ignorant wannabe poser, bigot and coward. Like mother, like daughter.