SHORT:
I am going to pen a special edition of the famed American Girl Doll puberty book: The Keeping And Caring Of You. I will call it The Keeping And Caring Of Jews. It will be the exact same book, except it will include a lengthy section about how to put a tampon in as your mom screams about how “the store is out of Kosher chicken again!”
“I mean, we live in Silicon Valley for god’s sake, not Chicago.”
MEDIUM:
Yesterday I went upstate with my girlfriend and her gay brother. An awesome element of the trip was my girlfriend’s wanting to stop every 10 minutes to take photos with the fake skeletons outside the town stores. She loves Fall, and that’s beautiful, I guess. I am from California. We don’t have Fall, we just have droughts.
I am now not upstate. Instead, I am in the worst mood in America at Blue Bottle Coffee (a place that canonically gives me the runs but is also one of the few places near my therapist’s office that has outlets). If anyone I know walks into this establishment, I will jump up and pretend like I’ve never been depressed in my entire life. I’ll point to my cup and smile and be like “there are actually rainbows in here! I drink rainbows and crap sunshine”. We’ll both laugh laugh laugh like we’re on cloud nine and nobody will ever know (except for you, dear reader) that I currently feel like a caca-covered sunken rock (for no discernible reason, of course! :)).
^ whenever I type :) and then parens and then a period it looks like a person with two mouths and a chin mole. Gotta love it!
LONG:
Yesterday was also World Mental Health Day. My mental health is better than it was last year and the year before that and the year before that and the year before that, but it’s still horrible, sort of like Camila Cabello’s singing voice. (Is that mean? I’m watching The Voice and there are just so many better singers than Mx. Cabello. I actually wept to YouTube recaps of The Voice this morning because nothing gets me going quite like a beautifully placed rendition of “Brown Eyed Girl”. Every time I watch The Voice I think… should I go on that? My high school voice teacher would b so happy– I don’t know if she’s still alive, but a year ago, my dad saw her sitting in a car outside our local Albertsons, so... assuming she’s had a good year… and that she was alive in that car when my dad saw her… she’s probably still around and would b so proud of me 4 going on The Voice. If all the judges turned around for me, I would probably choose to be on Ariana’s team or Kelly’s or John’s but maybe I’d throw a curveball and choose Blake and give him a massage because he just looks so tense all the time).
Anyway, in honor of #WorldMentalHealthDay, i would like 2 thank my mental health team who always tells me that i need 2 take my Wellbutrin even tho it has been smelling soooo weird lately!!!
My therapist said, “it’s probably the bottle that smells not the meds” so I took them out of the bottle and guess what, Jacob? THEY STILL SMELL.
In today’s session, he was reminiscing about how brilliant he was being last session. I was like “what did you say last session that you think is brilliant?” and he said “that you’re not taking testosterone to grow boobs”. And I was like, “ok.” I think he and I have different definitions of brilliant.
Just kidding. I love him. I get what he meant (too long to explain here). The day he reads this newsletter is the day I pass away from humiliation.
Speaking of, does anyone wanna psychoanalyze why I used to get so embarrassed that I’d almost cry when my dad would yell, “STUB HUB!” really loudly at football games (in synchronicity with the StubHub commercials that would play on the jumbotron)? Every few weeks, I sit and ponder this… It doesn’t feel like a deep enough thing to bring up in therapy, but I am like, why… was I so humiliated by that?
I just got a push notification on my phone that Timothee Chalamet is on the cover of TIME Magazine and is being lauded as a “leader” of the future … please tell me what he has done to “lead” anything (except 1 million teenagers down a huge rabbit hole over who and what they’re attracted to).
Did you see that he’s also playing Young Willy Wonka? He announced it yesterday. A few minutes later, I announced that I will be playing Young Peach from James And The Giant Peach and Timmy will f*ck me like he did in that gay movie. And James will be like “Aw man, Timmy! That’s my peach!” And Timmy will be like “stfu James, I don’t see U on the cover of TIME Magazine”.
I don’t think my mom will like this newsletter because it has a lot of sexual humor in it. Shifting gears to something more her speed (Broadway):
I’m singing at a famous Broadway place in January. I spent two hours today trying to decide what I’m going to sing. There’s a beautiful chance that I won’t be able to make any good noises out of my mouth at all thanks to the world-famous testosterone that I’m taking (to canonically not grow boobs, callback to my Einstein gay therapist).
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” - Albert Einstein
“It’s not like you’re taking it to grow boobs.” – Jacob [ last name redacted because one time I mentioned too much information about him onstage and someone in the audience figured out who he was]
I really need to stop writing this and go do my actual homework.
Last week I wrote a play for school about a kid who pretends they’re a male seahorse and then gives birth to a basketball. It single handedly changed every film boy’s mind about the power of theater!!!
They all think theater is a “lesser” art form than film and have no problem saying that over and over again in class <3
I don’t really get how they can like film and not theater. Maybe it’s an internalized fear of theater’s flamboyance?
Whenever I get stressed out about our country’s masculinity crisis, I remember that some macho men put little stuffed animals on the backs of their trucks, and I think, “ok so all hope is not lost”.
HOWEVER, if I see a TENNIS BALL on the back of a truck, I am like, “ok, just kidding, things are DIRE”.
A tennis ball on the back of a truck (instead of a stuffed animal) is a HARSH reminder of our country’s toxic masculinity problem. What? You need an extra BALL? To feel like MORE of a MAN? Your two balls ain’t enough!? What? Is your truck LANCE ARMSTRONG? It’s only got one ball but it’s STRONG and a WINNER!? If so, it might have some illegal stuff inside of it, u better check.
Did you like that incredibly topical joke about Lance Armstrong’s one ball and doping? Idk. I’m really starting to lose my mind. I oscillate between thinking dumb thoughts like the Lance stuff and other darker thoughts about state of the world and my place in it.
This week a bunch of artists went off about trans people in a negative and dangerous way and it just made me… I don’t know. Heavily exhale. If you’re an artist and cannot understand that plurality/ multiplicity exists and everything is constructed, then I worry about your art and abilities. Your job is to blow the world wide open. How are you gonna do that if you can’t wrap your head around trans shit? And spectrum shit?
Also fuck Netflix for profiting off their queer vertical and also the incredibly fucked-up Chappelle special. You do not get to make money off both things. Choose a fucking side.
^ I understand this flies in the face of the plurality argument I just made, but when it comes to virtue-signaling corroded corporations, it’s different.
Alright, Blue Bottle is closing. See you next Tuesday.
Thank you for subscribing. If this is your first time reading the newsletter, read the archives. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s not – it’s very much like when people slip on ice.
Sincerely,
Reid
Venmo: @rpope-venmo-26
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