REID #69

Jan 25, 2022

txt from mom… (white-meat turkey sandwich with Thousand Island dressing and coleslaw, one slice of corned beef just for the accent, with a little bit of mustard)

SHORT:

One time I tweeted about how I didn’t know what Ray Donovan was and then immediately after posted about the FBI coming to my door because of a tweet and someone commented “they came because you don’t know what Ray Donovan is?” and I replied, “ya” and now that guy is probably really making sure he knows what Ray Donovan is so the FBI don’t come to his door.

MEDIUM:

It’s so hard to know how and in what way I can be “fun”. Every time I try, my body freaks out and is like, “that’s not you, that’s not real”. I get the same feeling every time I tweet or post literally anything.

I am reading a book that is really good called trans girl suicide museum that talks about how society wants us to know ourselves but also doesn’t give us proper categories and tools to actually define ourselves/ do that knowing in a meaningful way (and if this isn’t what the book is about, I am stupid and this is what I gleaned from it – along with many other cool things).

After reading the book, I tweeted “will 2day b the day that posting about being gay on this website finally fills the self worth anxiety void that consumer capitalist society has made me believe I might be able to fill by commoditizing gay and selling it in my own awesome quirky way or should I just eat a bagel?”

I put a poll beneath it and 52.4% of people voted bagel.

I think it’s really messed up that human beings need to be liberated and emancipated and free to feel things but also secure and safe and that we float in that stupid little paradox tension dance forever throwing in and taking out ingredients being like maybe this is the right concoction of the two paradoxical concepts.

Eating a bagel* is a great example (and perhaps one of the only examples I can think of) of feeling safe & secure but also free & independent & wild & liberated.

If anyone reading this owns a bagel store, feel free to paint that up on ur wall.

—

*for me, it’s (specifically!) an everything bagel toasted with scallion cream cheese, or if I’m a little less hungry, a cinnamon raisin bagel toasted with butter … the other day I heard about someone who gets tuna on cinnamon raisin bagel and was like ew that is disgusting but then a few days later I thought about how it’s not that different, ingredient-wise, than the absolutely delicious Tunaberry sandwich I get from Court Street Grocers… one time I made my girlfriend watch a 30 minute video where two people taste-tested everything on the menu at Court Street Grocers. They should deliver at 10:32pm at night because that’s the time it is now… and I want a sando…

LONG:

In college I went on Omegle and asked a bunch of people if they loved themselves and then printed out all the responses and put them in a gallery. Most of the responses were people telling me to go f*ck myself.

Should I write a play about that?

I’m going back to school this week.

Before going back, I decided to watch How I Met Your Father, an incredible sociological study of straight people desperately trying to feel something (most television is a beautiful sociological study of straight people desperately trying to feel something and even sometimes gay ppl trying 2).

There’s a lesbian on the show, and midway through watching, I realized that How I Met Your Father is actually a horror series about how the straight people make her go out with them to straight clubs in Manhattan.

She rolls with it and seems happy… but violence and horror often doesn’t appear as so at first… slash in school I once read a theorist that talked about violence being most dangerous when it fails to appear as so (or something) – and that’s what I think this show is.

Love Hilary Duff tho.

And the actress who plays the lesbian is amazing.

And she recently made Hilary read The Argonauts and she posted it on her story and I laugh thinking about Hil reading horny dyke/trans theory writing and being like, “yes mm powerful”.

Speaking of dyke/trans theory writing, I had to watch South Park for the first time in my life for school and all of them look like white nonbinary kids.

My girlfriend watched with me and mouthed along to every word and it was really special.

Is “mouthed along to every word” the right way to say that?

I don’t care. Nothing is real.

My therapist knows a playwright who I think is so smart and brilliant and who I wish I was as talented and cool as.

What do you think I should do about that?

Probably nothing.

This week I told him that being 5’4 means I’m always feeling like that little kid with the glock in Euphoria.

The trans girl suicide museum book talks about how, “If we lived in a culture that was less obsessed with embodied desirability — and that didn’t so violently value some bodies over others, trans people would probably feel less disgusting”.

I think that’s probably true and probably teen trans-dykey virgins on Tumblr would maybe be less depressed and feel like like freaks who have to cling to the first shred of love they find (in tv shows or bands or people) with a tight grip as to not lose the small but new and sudden sense of self worth and belonging and okay-ness and security that has allowed them to take a breath for one single second of their lives.

That being said, there’s something beautiful about queer teen obsession and the tight-grip. For example: my ferocious love of Adam Lambert and Glee and my girlfriend’s One Direction obsession.

The other night, we were watching a video of “the boys” backstage before their big One Direction concert and she pointed to their security guard and said, “that’s Paul” and then talked about how she met him once and it was almost as cool to meet him as it was to eventually meet “the boys”.

I want to find my Paul and my One Direction and my tight-grip thing of today.

It can’t be comedy or writing. Or television.

Something else.

Because unfortunately we do live in a society obsessed with embodied desirability and being desired gives you a greater sense of yourself and your power no matter how hard you try to deny that that’s the case or “unlearn” things. And I think if you yearn for / pine after a fun thing like One Direction, you take the energy you would have wanting to be desired and put it into desiring someone or something else and that’s sort of cool and subversive and protective?

Does any of this make sense? If not, I don’t really care because it’s 10:49 and Court Street Grocers doesn’t deliver at this hour and I want a sandwich soooo bad.

Sometimes I look at picture of people I idolize and think about them not thinking about me and not knowing I exist and it makes me feel like someone kicked me really hard in the stomach, or like threw a soccer ball at my face, like someone did one time in 3rd grade at recess, and I want to throw up and cry.

I get the same feeling when I think about high school or California or diving or whatever. Or if I think about stepping onstage and singing in front of people. Or doing standup. Like the moment before.

Maybe that’s just the feeling of feeling something.

Or the anticipation of a potential feeling.

Wanting something and praying to god you’ll get it but probably sort of deep down knowing you won’t truly and wholly receive whatever it is you need, so you’re like already anticipating the fact that you won’t get it and that you will ride home on the train or in a car looking out the window feeling sort of empty but I guess happy you tried but ultimately disappointed.

Does THAT make sense?

Whatever.

Last week I did that show where I sang musical theatre earnestly in front of a lot of people and I shared green room with hot guy I used to be obsessed with as a teen bc he left ucla baseball team to pursue musical theatre and I was like “he’s me” (someone who fully did not walk away from sport and did not pursue musical theatre).

Right before the show, I spilled an entire vodka soda on myself and looked up and saw that the gay park slope rabbi and his boyfriend saw me do it.

C u next Tuesday.