I don’t know whether every year limps on the way out, or if I am blaming the shapeless, faceless dream of an idea of a time (“time”), or agreed upon block thereof, for weak and turning ankles that are mine alone. All I can be sure of is the wincing. But it’s over now. Or it just began. A race gun gone off but the starting line is in kid’s watercolor paint, and warbly. Warble-y. Willowy. Wet. Happy New Year.
It’s a gold drenched January afternoon and Major League Baseball still has the players locked out. This is a month for force feeding yourself vegetables and counting the minutes spent on your phone, getting a foot fungus at Planet Fitness, trying, striving, and I’ve always liked that, even though this year my muscles hurt more than usual from the reaching, and there’s not even a pitchers and catchers report date to pin my spirits on. I don’t have a real job. I wake up and beg on websites with cloying names. I talk to strangers on the phone and feel nervous all day. My hair is so dry. Conditioners bring hope, then leave behind a candy-scented glaze on top of the same old kindling, spider wires I wrap over my fingers like battle armor. But at least it’s a project.
I know I’m flinty in the new year. Unlikable, a serrated outline of a girl. It takes some time, perhaps, for my kidneys to clean Christmas from the blood. I never can tell if I grow testy and uncomfortable—damp around the edges, stiff, soaked denim—at the holidays because my brain takes in pretty lights and turns them sour that way, makes them sting, the call for celebration creating a cavern of disappointment, or if it’s only that that’s become my habit, and I know all the moves, the sit-stand-kneel of it, the fingers to head, heart, left shoulder, right, not praying, not exactly, though there’s reverence in the gloom. Regardless, I do grow grim eating green sugar on cookies my dad made, and I do wallow for a while later. Am wallowing. Just a little. Just because I can. And the plague does make it easier to be spoiled and sad and mean, to feel wronged by the hands of fate or God or Dolly Parton. And I do have so much more time, inside, to touch my tongue over and over on the spot where it hurts; to stare sideways at the mean pictures in my head of my own cracked up wantings; long; stew.
But there is good! I scream, throat stretching, a mouth behind my mouth, below—and bellowing, stinging, taffy pulled, and ashamed. I like starting. I’m unreliable like that. Worse at endings. And for all my groaning I remain, ultimately, fortunate, remain, mostly, flush with dumb luck and soft color. It’s just easy to forget that I like white winter suns and that I’m alive and I’m in love. I’d like to be more grateful. Running feels good. Polar seltzer burns perfect all the way down. There’s a show about gay cannibal soccer teens on TV. I’m a real brat. We’re not actively embroiled in the world’s worst game of capture the flag, fighting and dying live on Tiktok in the desert for a bottle of awful Dasani water yet. For a minute or two it seemed all right to go to the movies. Rich Hill got another one year deal for next season, if there is a next season. It really could be much worse.
These are some blessings and favorites and truths.
Rereading The Boys of Summer at the beach with sun in my eyes and a giant sandwich in my lap.
The sublime Will Craig fiasco.
Max Scherzer unbuttoning his pants with gusto. Just absolutely whipping that shit out. If it so happens that the planet does not explode in the next decade I know it will be only because Max worked things out.
The Cody Bellinger red, white and blue “Bellibomb” spiked seltzer, which fulfills its all-American promise by tasting like too many things to taste like anything. It goes and goes and goes, metallic fantasma for the tongue.
Chris Taylor’s Wild Card game homer.
Shohei Ohtani’s big shoulders and sweet little face. An overgrown baby of unbelievable skill! Remember when he kind of flopped in the Home Run Derby and it wasn’t even disappointing, really, because he is so sweet to look at and the balls that he did connect with, though fewer than expected, flew off the bat as if exploded, singeing the air on the arc toward the seats.
Lakers Day at Dodger Stadium, badly hungover, buoyed by a fountain diet coke from a Walker Buehler cup, holding hands on the walk home.
Kissing.
Whole months at one point, or so it seemed, of wearing only bike shorts and t-shirts with the sleeves cut off to keep my arms cool and the sides of my boobs out.
My aunt sometimes mailing me instant soup in bulk without explanation or request.
Yoga with Adriene.
McDonald’s Diet Coke.
I got (am allowed to possess and use only under the condition that I make a monthly payment to a mildly shady loan service) a new (originally sold in 2019 then refurbished) Macbook and can text on the computer for the first time in like five years which is genuinely life-changing for me, a person who sends villainously long text messages almost daily, and often many times in a day.
The teen boy who looked at us holding hands walking on Hollywood Boulevard and said, “You gay?” in the flattest tone. Just curious, only collecting the facts.
My oft-abandoned but useful pledge to read at least one new poem each day.
Letting my hair in the California sun get light and a little ugly, the burned up bronze of fake gold earrings worn in the pool all summer. Dyeing it again with a box from Rite Aid, getting inky stains on all my sports bras, brown caked under my nails.
Eighty dollar nike skateboarding sneakers I acquired as an emergency salve. Stupidly tall underwear from ARQ with little matching bras. A Nalgene water bottle like it’s 2007 and I’m late for sophomore English. A handful of teeny bottles of decanted perfume bought on the internet when I’m blue. I like Maison Margiela “Soul of the Forest” best, so naturally it’s discontinued.
A perfect clam roll at a roadside stand in Maine. The spicy peanut stew with tomato over rice that Megan made as one of the many perfect dinners I’ve lucked into having by her making the mistake of wanting to date someone who normally just eats toast. Cranberry mimosas by the pool at our Palm Springs Thanksgiving, my primary contribution to the feast and day.
The part in Mare of Easttown when Evan Peters is drunk and afraid, explaining to Kate Winslet that he doesn’t know what the point of his life is while “Mr. Brightside” plays in the bar. The part in Yellowjackets when Van is fervently explaining the plot of While You Were Sleeping to the other half-starved teenage plane crash survivors. The part in the The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills season 11 reunion when the fallen star Erika Jayne, wrapped up in shiny pink and gloss, is explaining that she couldn’t have left her allegedly cruel and definitely criminal little prune of a husband because she wouldn’t have been able to support herself, and Andy Cohen, the TV exec turned on screen superstar, the impish silver boy king of the ever-expanding Bravo empire, looked right at her and said, “I know what you make on this show.”
The acoustic version of the song “Like I Used To” by Sharon Van Etten & Angel Olsen. The original version is good too but I’m annoying. The little pop punk song “transparent soul” by Willow featuring new Kardashian boyfriend Travis Barker, a track that I thought was a Paramore song every single time it came on the radio even though it came on the radio a lot. The song “Haunted” by Taylor Swift which my friend Catherine inexplicably chose to perform at karaoke last month, an event which I feel confident has unwillingly bound all who were present into some sort of longterm death contract, like if The Ring took several years rather than a week and was also much, much worse because instead of being followed around by a creepy wet brunette for a few days and then peaceably dying you think about “Haunted” by Taylor Swift for untold months and only maybe ever get the blessed release of the death rattle.
Anyway whatever yes also the perfectly knowing yet sincere re-do of the famed “Hey Stephen” laugh on cursed maniac project Fearless (Taylor’s Version).
The Lucy Dacus album. Screaming along to “Thumbs” in the car. The Julien Baker album. Seeing Phoebe and Paul standing together at the Julien Baker show at The Wiltern and all going ghost pale and sick with fury, glee. The Big Thief EP. Putting “Certainty” on the deranged playlist I made to commemorate my own 30th birthday.
A lovely, tiny New Year’s Eve birthday party and me crying at the end of it just after midnight, but even that was fine, good, probably, because it was nobody’s fault but my own and maybe the champagne’s, and I felt so clean in bed after.
The View Was Exhausting by Mikaella Clements & Onjuli Datta, the fake dating event of the summer, the year, the decade. At long last, a winning argument in favor of heterosexuality as a concept, a practice, a lifestyle.
see also: Beach Read by Emily Henry. The most devastatingly sexy novel of 2021, 1975’s Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object by Laurie Colwin, a story about wisely trying out both halves of a pair of brothers. The TV show Starstruck. The 35 minute Roman & Gerri compilation video on Youtube that Megan agreed to watch with me one night in the fall only because I was really and truly the sickest I have ever been in my entire life and was the most pathetic little worm and nothing but the most disturbed kind of horniness could soothe what ailed me. Legally, this qualifies as “straight” “content” but, of course, it isn’t really. The trailer for the new Jlo romcom where she plays a real pop star (I love an actor!!!!) who marries Owen Wilson. Plus Bennifer 2, 2 Ben 2 Jen, Gigli Fully Loaded!!!!!!!
And any time Kirsten Dunst has spoken about working with her partner Jesse Plemons on The Power of the Dog. And The Power of The Dog. And the part in The Power of the Dog when Jesse Plemons says to Kirsten Dunst, “I just want to say… how nice it is not to be alone.”
Though, of course, The Power of the Dog is not about straight love, but gay loathing.
Olivia Colman being a sick freak in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter.
Also eternal favorite and underrated classic of American cinema Marie Antoinette, which I tried to show my girlfriend this year, but it isn’t streaming anywhere, so if anyone who is in charge of one of the devilish media conglomerates is reading this newsletter, please, please could you consider adding it to one of the movie websites so we can see it on the TV, and also would you consider divesting yourself of your ill-gotten gains by giving them to me to spend on little skin oils and cute Baggu face masks or wine and sour gummies from Trader Joe’s. If you do not own the rights to Marie Antoinette or, in fact, any creative product originating from the Coppola family, but would still like to be a good citizen of the world and friend to your fellow human (sickening to say but I think that’s basically what I want most) you might consider buying an item off of this list to be distributed to Angelenos who need it most. But, again, if you’re, say, a Roy sibling-esque figure, I need my movie and also, like, seventy tents, at least, plus also you must buy and reopen The Arclight today.
Driving to North Hollywood alone and vaccinated in the spring to watch the entirely pedestrian and perfect very pink Zack Snyder zombie movie, which was bad but good and my first film in theaters in more than a year. Going to see Licorice Pizza in Westwood and everyone looked ridiculous in the same way including me. Our little outfits. Ugly coats. Running people out of the theater with our hysterics over House of Gucci. Missing the bus and racing, sweaty and a little nauseous, to get to a matinee of the James Bond movie and stopping to buy popcorn on the way in even though it meant we missed the beginning. Walking out of C’mon C’mon at the Chinese Theatre and into the new dark, all bright, the bells and songs and Santa hat clad cheerleaders of the Hollywood Christmas Parade.
Watching the film Dune after so many months and months of joking about watching the film Dune without ever knowing a single fact about the film Dune and then being shocked and delighted to really like the film Dune a lot. Shoutout to the glamorous pervert & comedy extraordinaire who thought to put Timothée Chalamet and Jason Momoa in front of the same camera at the same time and wanted me to see that. Thank you.
Summer Catch is a part of the proud history of the sports romcom. It centers on Cape League baseball and stars Sarah Michelle Gellar’s husband as a winsome, working class, wannabe pitcher who mows lawns for a living and the late great Mary Camden* as a fancy girl with token snob parents and perfect, soft, girl next door hair. Charming and unstylish, too sentimental, this film understands that baseball is really about being horny and sad in waves and turns and sometimes at once. Consequently, I suspect that neither Rob Manfred or the various fat cat members of the MLB ownership class have seen it. My beloved Matthew Lillard appears as a sweetie pie college boy catcher who goes through a horrible hitting slump upon his arrival on the coast, which is very romantic and fateful. I saw this barely pre 9/11 gem in theaters when I was nine, but my girlfriend wasn’t allowed to, which gave me the chance to insist upon showing it to her way back in the part of the summer when the days are longest and when we liked each other but had not said so. We didn’t hook up that night but the formal record will for all time indicate that it was the first step. It’s important to state, though, that while I was undeniably trying to do a psychosexual scheme, Summer Catch rips on its own merit. If you have not watched this movie, you are willfully living without the most wonderful Brittany Murphy’s powerful turn as good-natured town slut, and to live like that is really no life at all.
*she’s not dead she just married Justin Timberlake