The melody floats like a lullaby. Up and down, melodically, majorly, in no rush. 

The song starts with the sound of a match sparking.

From there, without accompaniment, she sings: 

Once upon another time 

somebody’s hands who felt like mine 

turned the key and took a drive

was free… 

I hummed this melody throughout the week of my brother’s funeral, because I had discovered the song only a week before his death, and it had stuck with me. 

My mother’s car had five seats, then, which was perfect for a family that went from six to five overnight. And, sandwiched between my brother and sister-in-law, behind inconsolable parents, I would hum: Once upon another time. As if it were all a dream. As if it were truly someone who felt like me going through the motions. That person turned the key and took a drive away from their brother’s funeral. Not me.

Once upon another time, my brother died and I was fine. 

I kept humming the little lullaby: after I picked out the casket, as we pinned photos to a velvet board, when we got in the car after the hearse drove away, the night of the funeral that I slept alone in a twin bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to my parents and my brother and his wife hold each other and weep. 

No enemies to call my own

No porch light on to pull me home

And where I was is beautiful

Because I was free

* I Wanna Dance with Somebody by Whitney Houston

On the second floor of my college’s largest lecture hall, I used to sing for six hours a week with an a cappella group. There was an out of tune, light brown, upright piano on the floor in front of the rows of rising seats with swinging desks, and around that piano, the group would circle and sing and make music and laugh. 

I auditioned for and joined the group my second week of undergrad and stuck with them until my graduation. That’s a lot of hours in that lecture hall, a lot of songs, a lot of semesterly concerts. 

Of course, we’re talking about my best friends here, too; There’s something here to be said about ‘where you invest your time and attention, you invest your love.’

I loved these people – I still do. 

Put the music and singing aside – we were just a group of friends. (But you had to audition to join the group. And, yes, we sang at our parties. Sorry). 

Should I ever have children of my own and should they ever go off to college, my greatest hope for them will be the same as the most important advice I’ll give them: Join some sort of group that has a common goal, i.e., some sort of team: Robotics, rugby, orchestra, theatre, debate, student government, film, Habitat for Humanity – anything but Greek Life. 

Because, to this day, when I hear I Wanna Dance with Somebody by Whitney Houston, I’m taken back to the euphoria of singing it as loudly as I could in a lecture hall with my best friends, the people who watched me learn how to drink as a messy 18 year-old, who actually convinced me that I belonged where I was, who gave me reason time and time again to show up for myself and for a team. 

The first time I hear the song at a gay bar in Boystown, I’m new to Chicago, and somewhere around 24 years-old. 

The dance floor is, as always, packed shoulder to shoulder on a Friday or Saturday night, and I’m in awe at the largest, most joyful gathering of gay men I’ve ever seen: Everyone, to me, glows. Glistens. The entire environment makes me feel like I wholeheartedly belong, in all of the gayness I spent decades trying to dim. This feeling will change drastically as I start to peer behind the curtains that make Boystown so sparkly, but for now, everything shimmers. 

I Wanna Dance with Somebody comes on and I think of who I was when I was 18, 19, 20: in that lecture hall, with those friends, singing a pop song as the tumultuous practice of becoming an adult waited for me on the other side of everything. 

When the chorus hits, the gay bar erupts. 

I am tipsy and beautiful and proud of myself. 

I love the road I’ve taken to get here. 

I have memories and friends that shine. 

* Awake My Soul by Mumford and Sons 

People love asking queer folk, “When did you know?” 

Which I think is a curious enough question, especially when it’s well intentioned, but perhaps, “When did you accept it?” is a more interesting question. 

Because I’ve known I’m gay my entire life, but it was m\ore a question of vocabulary and environment. I knew I was so different from the other boys around me and from the way my brothers were being raised that it had to mean something bad, right? And then the nuns confirmed that, yes, it meant something bad. 

So I dated all my girlfriends and I prayed as hard as I could and I went to confession when I was supposed to and I would bargain and bargain and bargain with the god in my head. I told myself I was not gay, that it would pass. 

By the time I was almost fifteen, though – still a freshman in high school – I was in love with one of my best friends. It was an all-boys school. 

It ate away at me, slowly: Not his never loving me back, but the undeniability of what I had been avoiding. 

I assume there comes this moment in every queer person’s life, when they’re alone, and probably terrified, but brave enough to say the words to themselves: I’m gay. 

Lying on my back in my family’s living room, everyone else already asleep, I had my moment. 

Mumford and Sons’ 2009 debut, Sigh No More, was turned up to maximum volume in my earbuds because someone had shared it with me earlier that day and the movement in the album from rage to heartbreak to love to fear was helping me process something that my adolescent brain couldn’t figure out. 

“Awake my Soul” came on. 

I thrashed around on the living room’s green carpet – “On my knees and out of luck, I look up” – and let myself jump headfirst into the moment I knew, even then, that would change my entire life – “I’m scared of what’s behind, and what’s before” – and I told myself I was gay. 

There will come a time, you’ll see 

with no more tears 

and love will not break your heart

but dismiss your fears

get over your hill and see what you find there 

with grace in your heart 

and flowers in your hair

That green carpet is in my apartment now, and I’m not afraid of being gay anymore. But I still think coming out was one of the bravest things I’ve ever done in my life, even if it was all in my head, even if I was still just a child – especially because I was still just a child. 

* Wherever is your Heart – Brandi Carlile 

When I crossed the border between Nebraska and South Dakota, all I could see was sky and grass. Not a car, a home, or a streetlight in sight. Just earth for miles, a sky that was somehow bigger than the one I had lived under for 23 years. 

Prior to this drive, I had been living at my parent’s house for a few months because the pandemic unraveled every plan I had held for myself previously. 

My brother had only been dead for a little over a year, and I had somehow found myself living in the room that our cribs had been in. I had to get out. 

One of my closest friends in life, though, was living in South Dakota, and had an empty room in his little 700-square-foot home in the hills of the Pine Ridge Reservation. 

The idea of space, of quiet, of solitude was intoxicating. 

This was at a time when my driving anxiety was getting better, but still considerably noticeable: I was avoiding highways, white-knuckling the steering wheel, sweating, holding my breath, and getting blurry vision nearly every time I drove. 

A counselor told me, though, that if I ever took a break from driving because it scared me so much, that I’d most likely never drive again; That when folks with driving anxiety take a break, they almost never come back from the break.

So I decided to drive from Detroit to Oglala, South Dakota, because, with my brother being dead and the world seemingly collapsing around me, I truly figured I had nothing to lose but fear itself. 

The drive wasn’t easy, but it was important. I felt like I had a purpose, something to prove to myself: That I was as strong as everyone had been telling me I was. Grief was a big enough feeling to acquaint myself with, I had no room for fear anymore. 

I had made a playlist for the drive, obviously, and given where I was heading, the theme of the playlist was definitely Americana, bluegrass, leaning country. Hence, Brandi Carlile was a big hitter in the lineup. 

Brandi’s voice has this iconic raspiness to it: It’s round and loud and gritty and pure. 

James Baldwin says that music doesn’t start as a song, it starts as a cry. I can think of no more apt way to describe Brandi’s voice, or maybe no more apt way to describe how it makes me feel, at least. 

When I crossed the border between Nebraska and South Dakota, all I could see was sky and grass, and my windows were down, and Brandi’s voice and the fresh air of the plains promised me something that, amidst my grief and the pandemic, I had forgotten I still possessed: freedom. 

She bellows, “Wherever is your heart I call home,” and there I was, searching for a new home in the middle of nowhere, going 85 mph, scream-singing with Brandi, my cheeks wet with tears of pride and hope.  

Though your feet may take me far from me, I know, 

wherever is your heart, I call home

It’s my own heart that I can always call home. My own heart, where my brother lives – that’s my home. No matter where I go or where I’m heading, home is a feeling I take with me. 

When I arrived at my destination in Oglala, the sun was setting, and my friend was waiting for me, and I was not afraid. 

* Dancing Queen - ABBA 

My parents saw the touring cast of Mamma Mia when the musical came to Detroit in the early 2000s.

As a souvenir, my mother brought home the cast recording. 

She could not have known that that CD is all I would be interested in listening to for the following year. 

And I’m being serious – the only music I was interested in listening to for months was the musical version of Mamma Mia. The CD in its white case might as well have been chained around my neck. 

Once, when leaving hockey practice, after putting my bag in the trunk of the minivan, my mother politely asked me if we could not listen to Mamma Mia on the way home. 

(You understand, now, why my mother might have said, “I knew it” when I came out to her, or why my brother might have said, “Okay, and?”)

This was so long ago that I can’t quite remember what it was about the music that enthralled me so entirely. The theatrics, perhaps, the harmonies, I don’t know. 

But, still, decades later, those iconic descending chords in the chorus of Dancing Queen call for nothing but surrender. I have no choice but to smile, dance, and sing along. 

The summer after I turned 21, my college roommate and I went to a bar on the outskirts of town that had carpet on the walls and a disco ball over the dance floor. They were hosting a theme of “ABBA vs. Queen.” It was June, and the world was entirely, entirely ours. 

When Dancing Queen came on, we were all already covered in sweat, and our smiles were those smiles that you can’t fake – no inhibition, stretched across the face, crinkling the eyes, the whites of the teeth shining in the flashing light of the disco ball. 

Sweat seeped through my little sheer shirt as we all threw our pointer fingers at one another and screamed: “YOU can dance, YOU can jive, having the time of your life.” 

Whether at a disco party with your straight friends, in the middle of a gay bar, or at a family member’s catholic wedding – I can think of no song that riles up a crowd quite so much. 

“Dancing Queen” reminds me that that kid who left hockey practice and wanted to listen to Mamma Mia is still very well alive inside me. 

And god, I love to dance. 

6. Daylight - Matt and Kim 

In the room my brother Joey and I shared, there was an iHome where we would charge our iPod nanos but, more importantly, where we would set the alarm that would wake us up for school in the morning. 

The beauty of the iHome, remember, was that you could queue a song on your iPods to wake you up, instead of the radio or a ringing alarm. 

Setting the song for the alarm was always a conversation for Joey and me. One of us would sit on the desk and face the other, already in bed, to consult: “low” by Flo Rida or “Somebody Told Me” by the Killers? “Soulja Boy” or “the Sweet Escape?” 

(Yes, these are all songs we spent a dollar on on iTunes). 

I’d like to think we grew to be quite diplomatic about the decision making. One time, I even got to choose a show tune. That was very nice of Joey. 

Our beds were only bunked like this until 2008, when our oldest brother Tommy moved out and Joey moved into his old room. 

Just before that happened, though, Matt and Kim released “Daylight,” this punchy, indie-pop song that was made to live in the first decade of the 2000s. 

Joey and I both loved it. I’m sure it was our alarm-clock-song for many weeks in a row. 

We cut the legs off of our pants, 

threw our shoes into the ocean

We watched and re-watched the music video, Matt and Kim being these visions from the 90s in stop-motion singing about being free. I learned how to play it on the piano. We were just obsessed with it. 

I’m sure the obsession only lasted a month, tops, and then we were in our own rooms, and I was waking up to Mamma Mia and Joey was waking up to Modest Mouse, but, still, we had “Daylight.” 

In Chicago, not so long ago, I was on a run, heading south, the skyline before me and Lake Michigan on my left. 

It was a dreary day out and the lake-path wasn’t busy.  

I let Spotify generate a running playlist for me based off what I usually listen to on my runs, and “Daylight” came on. 

And suddenly I went from being a 26-year-old without a plan to a fifth-grader with their eyes set on the world and with a brother asking what song I wanted to wake up to in the morning. 

I had to stop on my run to weep, to welcome the memory back and not rush it. 

I miss yellow lines on my roads, 

some color on monochrome, 

maybe I’ll paint them in myself, 

maybe I’ll paint them in myself

I finished my run with “Daylight” on repeat for maybe half an hour. 

The tears kept coming, whether from sadness or joy or pride or gratitude – it’s always hard to tell with grief. 

But I kept running faster, and I just couldn’t stop. 

7. November Blue - Avett Brothers 

I heard, once, that the band you fall in love with when you’re a freshman in high school is the band you’ll love the most your whole life. 

Exhibit A, for me, is the Avett Brothers. 

My good friend, Isaac, introduced me to them in the winter of my fourteenth year, and I’ve adored them ever since. They’re the only band I’ve seen live more than once (four times now). 

When I think of the Avett Brothers, I think of picking at an acoustic guitar, I think of signing with Isaac, of mowing my parent’s lawn, of covered porches on rainy summer nights, of cold Corona beers, of flying home a couple hours after hearing that my brother didn’t make it, of driving through the farmlands of Ohio with my first boyfriend.

One late fall, when I must’ve been nineteen, this boyfriend and I were heading to or from Cleveland, where he’s from. I don’t remember the context. 

I just remember the sunset being beautiful, and my hand on his neck from the passenger seat while he drove, while we sang “November Blues.” 

My heart is dancing to a November tune 

and I hope that you hear it 

singing songs about you

My life,I felt, had finally begun, and I was in love for the first time: Something you can never take back or change or fight. 

And the band I loved the most when I was a freshman in high school was there to bear witness to it all. 

8. Hallelujah - written by Leonard Cohen, made famous by Jeff Buckley 

For some talent show in some grade, I sang Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley because I had learned how to play it on the piano and its popularity was soaring thanks to the cinematic masterpiece known as Shrek. 

I only sang a few verses – all the PG ones – and it wasn’t until much later that I listened to the song in its original version, with all of its verses and its pain and its glory. 

Talk about music that starts as a cry: A cold and broken hallelujah. 

I’ve been singing this song for years, and I think it means something different to me each time I visit it. Even before I could’ve possibly known what Cohen was talking about, I still felt the poem and the melody move in me. It’s just that good. 

My cousin Steven, at family gatherings, is known to have a guitar across his lap and a crowd circled around him. 

And years ago, when Joey was still alive and I wasn’t even 21 yet, Steven started to strum out “Hallelujah” and I started to sing. We immediately clicked into the pain and beauty of the song and gave every verse its due diligence. The family – wherever we were – shut up and listened, and Steven and I – the performers of the family – realized we had a showstopper on our hands. 

It became a sort of ritual: whenever the family got together, and when Steven and I were both present, we’d perform Hallelujah. 

And I do mean perform. 

It wasn’t a singalong, and Steven and I took the song quite seriously. 

I don’t know what it’s like to be an older brother and I never will know. I’ll always be the youngest – a title, mind you, that I’m quite proud of. 

My brothers and I, like all brothers, have fought and made up and grown up in a multitude of ways that only the three of us could ever, truly understand. 

So imagine my love for them on this, our last Christmas together as three brothers, in 2018, when Steven and I are singing “Hallelujah,” and I look up to see Joey watching me with a smile and Tommy recording me on his cell phone. 

and even though it all went wrong, 

I’ll stand before the lord of song 

with nothing on my tongue but 

Hallelujah

My brothers, who by this point, have heard me sing this song countless, countless times and still sit and watch and listen with an awe that is proof enough of the love and pride they have for their little brother who turned out to be so entirely different from them but, still, so entirely the same. 

My brothers, my brothers, my brothers, watching me, watching over me —

Hallelujah.

###

honorable mentions: Fallingwater, Maggie Rogers. What a Wonderful World, Louis Armstrong. I and Love and You, Avett Brothers. Shine a Light, Rolling Stones. First Day of my Life, Bright Eyes.

“Why not leave some stuff here?” my mom asked. I was living at home. 

I didn’t know where I was going next, though, and foresaw the hassle of her having to potentially send the remainder of my things across the country. 

“Nah,” I said, acting nonchalant, “I don’t have that much stuff anymore anyways.” Which was true. Most had been left on a curb in Milwaukee. 

I would move another two times before the pandemic ended. Six in total.

***

I re-signed my lease this morning for my apartment in Chicago. It’ll be year three here. 

Prior to this place, the longest I’ve stayed put in one apartment was in Milwaukee, during my last two years of undergrad, in a place not much bigger than a standard dorm room. 

I cleaned off my bookshelf just to the left of my desk a few days ago because it was in dire need of dusting. Everything came off, the shelves were bare, and the little trinkets I’ve somehow held onto for longer than any job or lease were laid across my bed – a collage of what’s important to me, spread out like a rug. 

And in-between so many of the books, and inside so many of their stained spines, I found scraps of paper with my familiar dive-bar scrawl on them – messages from the past. 

That’s when you know you’ve lived somewhere for a while, when the past starts to tell you your own stories from where you’re sitting. 

My desk is small, just a slab of light wood on top of a metal frame. No drawers, no embellishments. My favorite pens rest in a mug that my ex-boyfriend bought for me next to a daily-meditation book of Hafiz poems. There are always candles, somewhere, and plants, too. My bedroom juts out from the living room. There’s a singular window to the right of my desk where I can look west down my street and two more that the desk sits in front of, meaning I have a wide-angle view of this small slice of Chicago. And, as you know, the bookshelf – newly dusted – is on my left. Trinkets and all.

This is my nook, my nest, where you’ll always find me sitting. 

And from where I sit is from where I write, from where I practice what my creative writing professor in Cape Town called “bum-discipline,” or, the practice of keeping your ass in the chair and the pen in your hand, your palms hovering over the keyboard, even if the words aren’t coming. 

Lord only knows in my two years of sitting here, staring out these windows, I’ve done more sitting than writing, more watching than storytelling. 

When I moved into this apartment, there was massive construction happening across the street. It juxtaposed nicely to my starving artist aesthetic of bed head, unmade bed, black coffee so strong you could chew it, red wine ringlets staining the pages and the desk from the night prior, dead brother’s oversized flannel around my too-slim shoulders, the a Portrait of the Most Interesting and Poignant and Mysterious Boy in the World, et cetera. 

I enjoyed watching grown men eat sandwiches on the backs of huge trucks. They fist-bumped a lot and showed their teeth when they laughed. A lot of them became familiar to me. I had stories for them. They were working on a group project and I was supervising from my second floor across the street. I watched them build something with their hands of brick and glass and concrete. 

It became clear they were building luxury apartments on the day hundreds of washers and dryers arrived wrapped in thick plastic on a ginormous flat-bed semi-truck. Huh, I thought to myself as I sprayed my gym clothes with Febreeze, in-unit laundry. Nice. 

Now, as I write this, I’m watching someone move into the second floor corner unit that’s directly across the street from my desk. A family used to live there, with little kids who’d leave their handprints and nose-smudges on the windows, low enough that you might think they had a dog. 

Another family must be moving in — there’s a twin bed leaned against one of the bedroom walls. They have a large, healthy monstera plant in the corner of the living room that I’m admiring while a man in a ball cap carefully scissors apart the plastic wrapped around a leather couch. All the kitchen cabinets are open, the things they drink out of and break bread upon scattered on the marble countertop underneath them. 

How much is their rent? Why this unit? Why this building? Why this street? And for a family? God, the stories I won’t tell them. Not that I’ll ever, ever meet them. 

How odd that their blinds are open as they settle into their new lives. And how grateful I am to have something to look at and write about.

Of course, my blinds are open, too. 

Good for the plot. 

***

There is so much to write about from where I sit, from this one-way street lined with trees far more than twice my age. 

Like, just out the window to my right, earlier this summer, there’s the spot where I confronted the man who was following me home. I was out for a nighttime walk with my dog. It was dark out, the concrete was still radiating heat from the day, and I was in my pajamas. I kept making my walk longer to avoid him knowing where I lived, but at some point I got tired and too brave and I turned around to shout, “What’s up?” My mother would call me stupid and crazy but I knew what he wanted – any gay guy would, just by the way this man was looking at me. I was annoyed and tired, not scared. He mumbled something at his feet, my dog’s tail wagging as I kept her close to me. 

“Excuse me?” I asked, too loudly. 

“Are you looking?” he whispered the last word. 

“No.” I turned away, wanting so badly to call him a creep, this broken old man, my neighbor. 

From where I sit, I can point out the spot on the curb where I found a grown man crying last winter. Thirty-something, drunk. It was a quiet sob, tears running down his red cheeks, but with even breath. I went home and mixed him a water bottle with an electrolyte mix. I sat next to him. He put his head on my shoulder and drank what I offered him. We didn’t say a single word to one another. His sobs became the occasional sniffle. I asked if he was okay before I went back home, and he nodded in the affirmative. My fingers were numb. 

From where I sit, I can see where, on my street today, walking home from work, I passed two guys on a walk with their dogs. I’ve gone on a date with one of them and matched with the other on Tinder more than once. None of us acknowledge each other. Each of them probably doesn’t want the other to know how they know me. I stay invisible, trying to be happy for them. Not that I care, right? I don’t care. I wouldn’t have paired them together. I’ve been here longer than both of them. I walk home, imagining their “soft-launch” on Instagram, thinking of the time I kissed one of them and he called me fascinating. 

Or, from where I sit, I could write about the family a few doors down from me, on the other side of the street, on the ground floor. They’re my favorite. Our routines always align. Dad is tall and skinny and awkward in the most endearing way possible. He’s muscular without looking like he exists off of protein powder. Mom has curly hair and cute sweaters. She bikes to work and is so much shorter than Dad. They kiss in front of their kids – two boys, maybe 4 and 6. The little one still rides on the back of Dad’s bike when they go for their family rides. The older one is always impatient before take off, pedaling back and forth in front of the apartment complex before everyone’s ready to go. The boys always ask politely if they can say hello to the dogs that pass. Most dog-owners ignore the boys’ requests, though, as they’re wearing headphones, and looking down, and trying as hard as they can to not care about anything other than everything happening inside their own heads. (I jot something down about kids and puppies learning the feeling of being ignored). The older boy's pants don’t quite touch his ankles like they did four months ago. I’d be so embarrassed if they knew I could see them. But, every morning, my desk calls in the same way that work does, or daycare, or school, or a Saturday bike ride. I wonder what Mom and Dad think of this street, of this neighborhood, what they would say to the family moving in next door. 

From where I sit, I can see the stoop I sat and cried upon. And there’s the tree I threw up behind. And the new folks to write about in the unit directly across from mine. And there’s where the boy I thought was so beautiful held his hand against my neck and kissed me against cold, red brick. There is so much here.

Sometimes I wonder if I could focus on my writing more if I would just close my blinds.

***

I don’t love Chicago the same way I see people do on social media. I don’t fly the flag of four-stars, I don’t have a sketch of the skyline anywhere in my apartment. It’s not that I dislike it. But maybe I could like somewhere else more. Maybe. 

I just want to be in love. I want to write a book. I want my plants to have the sunlight they need to grow, and I want the same for myself.  

What I do dislike is the neighborhood I live in: It’s like a not-that-big high school but with income and BMI requirements. And you have to pretend to not see people when you pass them on the street, even if you’ve held them at sunrise and listened to them tell you about their siblings.

But, yes, I re-signed. I tried to listen to my gut, my heart, and everything was quiet. Is this the feeling of being stuck or being settled? And where do the questions without answers go but onto the page, into the things we create? 

All I know is that the lake is close, I can walk to work, my desk is in a great spot, my plants are happy, my neighbors have become some of my best and only friends in the city, I have too much shit to move and can’t afford movers right now, there are so many stories left to write here, and mostly because I’m old enough to know that Nothing Happens Here that Doesn’t Happen There. Your problems will follow you, whether you’re in Boystown, Chicago, of Missoula, Montana. I really do believe this. There will be bars and boys to get too far caught up in, too fast, and too recklessly. No matter where you go. So I’m staying, with my blinds up and windows cracked open, the fresh air coming in, my pen on the paper, waiting, paying attention. 

###

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My tote bag is packed with all I need: My tattered journal, one pen, chapstick, and my debit card. I don’t need my ID – this bar hasn’t asked for it in well over a year. 

But I don’t pull out my entire journal when I sit down at my favorite table. Rather, I rip out a piece of paper from it and fold it into quarters to feel less self-conscious, to be less conspicuous. And onto this two by three inch piece of paper – four quadrants, two sides –  I write in my smallest handwriting with my sharpest pen everything that comes to mind. 

A man comes up to me and calls me pretty and sad. 

“The poet’s curse,” I joke, feeling cliche and pompous. 

He responds, “And just my luck.” 

Of course, he’s forty-something, and if I’m lucky he’ll buy me a glass of wine and if he’s lucky, I’ll let him kiss me on the cheek before I leave, alone. 

Do I look sad? Or is my prettiness tragic? Am I making the people around me sad? Folks should be more careful when they say things to people holding a pen. I have a lot of questions for this man, but I’d rather answer them myself than lead him on. 

Can you imagine? “Sir, did you mean that I physically appear to be sad? Am I bringing down the mood? Am I likable, still?” 

****

Back in May, Samantha ran into me reading alone at a local restaurant. I was just signing my bill, and she had her phone open, staring at the approaching car’s red dot on her Uber app. 

“Come with,” she insisted. 

“What? I –” 

“This is way too serendipitous to pass up – you’re coming out with me.” We hadn’t seen each other since graduation. 

So, I agreed. 

In the back of the Uber, catching up, giggling, drunk on the sheer spontaneity of the moment. 

At the bar, my book still hanging heavy from the bag off my shoulder, Samantha’s friend Bryan kept his hand on my low back and bought my beers. 

And later that night, drunk enough, he pleads with me to let my walls down, to trust him. He says he isn’t going anywhere. His hands cup my face and I know better than to believe him but I still do, because wouldn’t our meeting be such a great story? And isn’t there supposed to come a day when one guy is actually telling the truth? Or something like that? 

Well, that guy wasn’t Bryan. 

Two days of short responses later and he says he’s too busy with work, and not looking for anything serious. 

I demand an apology, which he grants me, and I spend weeks calling myself a weak bitch in the mirror for letting my guard down, even for one stupid, spontaneous summer night. 

****

I’m on a crowded dance floor with my dodgeball team –  this group of lovely guys I randomly met this Christmastime through a LGBTQ+ sports league. 

We’re bouncing around as much as we can, given the space, and we’re all peripherally aware of the group of guys next to us: Most shirtless, all over 6 feet tall, and so muscular – so fit – it’s hard not to stare. 

“We’re next to the living Ken Dolls,” someone jokes, yelling in my ear over the pulse of the lyricless club music. 

“No, the G.I. Joes,” I correct him. 

A new, 6’4” something model walks onto the dance floor. When our eyes meet, I realize that – without a doubt in my mind – I’ve attempted to match with him on the dating apps before. For two seconds I let my stomach do a flip, thinking, Maybe he’ll come say hi. 

He joins the G. I. Joes and my friend John turns to me, yells, “The pretty ones sure do seem to find each other, yeah?” 

I want to turn to him, to yell, “John, you are beautiful, and funny, and you’re perfectly fit, and you’re kind, and we’re the pretty ones, too, and I love you!” but instead, I shout back, “yeah, they do,” because I understand what he’s trying to tell me, and maybe his stomach did a flip, too. 

***

It’s August, and Peter and I are on my back porch, getting to know one another over the serenade of late summer cicadas. I want to ask how he knows Bryan – our one mutual follower – but it’s our first date, and I know the answer will be as trite and simple as it always is: They’ve hooked up. 

But Bryan does come up on the second date, organically, after I ask Peter, “When was your last relationship?” 

Peter explains it wasn’t so much of a relationship, but a ghosting situation that stuck with him for long enough to feel significant. 

And then he tells me my same story – of Bryan and beers, of hands around a face, of walls coming down, of Bryan’s busy work, of things not working out just as fast as Bryan saying they would this time, of Peter’s being surprised, and shameful. 

He’s reaching the end of his story and his tone shifts into that of nonchalance. He waves his feelings away, trying to make everything he just told me about Bryan a joke, or worse, trying to make it commonplace. “What can you do? That’s life!” he seems to suggest. 

“Peter, you did nothing wrong, and I’m sorry you were hurt like that.” 

Peter, I want to tell him – I want to believe, we’re not the problem. 

****

Just a ten minute walk of Boystown, Chicago, due East, rests and roars Lake Michigan. 

Jutted against the water are fifty feet of descending concrete steps. But before the 2000s, these steps were just huge motley rocks, fit together like a puzzle, that one-by-one found their way beneath the water. They were called the Belmont Rocks, and they were beloved as the space on Chicago’s 20-mile lakefront path that was safe for LGBTQ+ folk. 

The stretch of Lake Michigan formerly known as the Belmont Rocks is still referred to as such here and there, but not as commonly as it’s called the Chicago AIDS Garden. 

The Garden, a memorial to the countless lives ignored and lost during the AIDS epidemic, is right where the Belmont Rocks used to be. 

But, as history would have it, the space is still overwhelmingly LGBTQ+ and queer-safe. After all, Boystown is still right where it was, and the Lake certainly hasn’t moved, either. 

So that’s where I was today, lying stomach-down on a blue and white striped towel, watercoloring pink and yellow flowers. 

And I was happy to be alone in public, as I’ve learned to be, yet not oblivious to the fact that I was one of very few who weren’t a part of a gaggle of giggling, glowing, gorgeous men. 

I started to tell myself that I am not giggling, glowing, or gorgeous, and then I told myself to shut up and paint my damn flowers. 

I feel emotionally cognizant enough to recognize such a voice as untrue, but still, I don’t know where the voice comes from, and still, just like a bully’s words, I can still hear them long after I brush them off my shoulder. 

I am happy to be alone, I whispered to the concrete. I am choosing to be exactly where I am. I do not need to be included in order to like myself. I am not ugly, nor annoying, nor dirty, nor bad. These men just don’t know me, that’s all. 

On some steps above me, this gorgeous couple has their eyes closed, their faces to the sun, their arms around one another. They’re tall, and I watched them get out of the water a second ago – every muscle of their legs identifiable, and flexing, and toned, and fucking big. They’re both just slightly hairy, and well-groomed. (In how many ways can I describe conventional attractiveness?) One with a mustache. Both with great smiles. Just, beautiful men, in each other’s arms, in the sun. And I want to be anything but angry at them. Good for them. I should bless them, not roll my eyes. But fucking Christ. If the pretty ones find each other and I’ve never been found, then… I’ve never been good at logic riddles but I know how this one ends and I don’t like the answer. 

Those words – the bully’s words – they echo when they hit the floor. 

If I were over six-feet-tall with just a little bit more chest hair, would my entire life be different? 

What a stupid question. 

But would it? 

****

Griffin reached out to me because I needed a place to stay in Cincinnati over a long weekend in early August for a friend’s wedding.

Having over 175,000 followers on TikTok can certainly be a blessing and a curse, but one such blessing is having people willing to help you out all over the country. 

So, to save some pennies, I went to Instagram and asked “Anyone willing to put me up for a few days in Cincinnati in early August?” 

For those questioning my choices here in regards to finding a stranger to stay with, I’m happy for you that you’ve never experienced the financial insecurity that precedes such recklessness. But I prefer to call it adventuring, and good kindling for storytelling. 

Griffin was quick to reach out and we were, of course, quick to fall in love through our silly little phone screens. 

He had been watching and following my content for a while, and I was enamored by his appreciation for what I had to say, and by his generosity in hosting me, by his style, by his legs.  

At first, I was going to be a couch visitor. A hostel guest. 

And then we started talking everyday, and Facetiming, and then I received a last-minute plus-one to the wedding and Griffin bought a pale green suit to match my floral shirt. 

But I went to the wedding alone. I hung my suit coat on the empty chair next to mine at dinner.  I bought a last-minute AirBnB for $600 because a week before I was due to arrive, Griffin stopped responding to me. 

And I wish there was more to the story but, no, that’s it, save for the ludicrous detail that the day he decided to begin ignoring me was the day of my grandmother’s funeral. 

And, no, he didn’t die, either. I checked. He continued faithfully watching every story I posted on Instagram until the day I blocked him. 

***

Observe, now, at the gay bar, Adonis. Adonis, the eternally youthful god of beauty, the desire of all, the epitome of gorgeous. 

He’s drinking a beer, which, of course, has to mean something to gay men in that space, because we make everything mean something. Everything is coded. That beer means he’s probably not counting calories, which means he’s already confident, which means he’s bulking, which means big arms, which means “top,” which means the kind of guy to make your internalized homophobia rear its shaggy head, which means masculine – the kind of guy you can bring home to dad. Backwards cap and everything. Biceps stretching shirt sleeves. A sharp, smooth jaw. Curly hair bouncing over thick eyebrows, big eyes. 

He stands on the elevated platform and the guy on my immediate left – tall, skinny, red-cheeked, blemishless, maybe twenty-two – says, “Oh my god.” We’re bouncing shoulder to shoulder on the dance floor, clearly looking at the same specimen. 

I turn to the kid and blurt out, “Don’t! No. Stop it.”

Skinny Kid turns to me, confused. He has a little septum piercing in his little, perfect button nose. His face asks: Was that for me? 

“He knows what he’s doing,” I explain to Skinny Kid, motioning towards Adonis. “He knows he’s hot.” 

“Yeah and I would do anything for him,” Skinny Kid jokes. 

“No, no, no! We have to stay strong.” Suddenly Skinny Kid and I are in solidarity, I decide. “You think that man would care if you finish? No. He’s gonna grunt and roll over and call you by the wrong name on his way out and open Grindr before he’s left your stairwell.” 

Skinny Kid laughs, surprised by my fierce and fast assumptions. 

I continue: “This guy is gonna dance up there until he finds his pick of the lambs, then he’s gonna get exactly what he wants, and walk away, and literally just do it again. A slaughter in his wake.” 

I don’t know why I’m getting worked up. I take the bit too far and I flick Adonis off. We make brief eye contact and he sees my finger. 

Skinny Kid is still laughing. I’m being audacious, and I know it. 

Collecting myself, I tell Skinny Kid, “Good luck out there,” and he repeats the sentiment to me. We’re still shoulder to shoulder but we turn back to our friends. 

I’m with my straight girlfriends and they ask, “What was that?” 

I tell them, and in my telling, when I motion to Skinny Kid, I turn around. Skinny Kid and Adonis are making out. 

My mouth hangs open. My pulse quickens, grows louder than the beat of the music I can feel through the floor and in my teeth. My friends ask what’s wrong. I tell them, “What’s wrong is you either look like that, or that. There’s no in-between.” 

My girlfriends are confused and I don’t want to cry. I need a water. 

“Jacob,” they say, “You know you’re beautiful, right? And you’re here with people who love you, and you know that that’s more important, right? Don’t be shallow.” 

“Right, right, right,” I say, shaking my head, looking at the floor, “And you know I love you all but Jesus Christ maybe – for one second, on this dance floor, in my stupid little shirt, at this age – I want to be shallow, I want to be chosen, I want to be wanted before the lights come up. I want to be having fun. This is the part that’s supposed to be fun.” 

****

I don’t think people have “crushes” very often anymore. A crush, here, meaning genuine infatuation, that feeling of exciting, uncontrollable interest in a person that’s hopeful and reminds you of being young and unburned. 

Nowadays, we go on dates that take weeks to finally set up, we have sex maybe once or twice, and then we nod at each other in passing if we look up from our dating apps long enough to actually make eye contact. 

I think I’ve had one actual “crush” in two years. 

After four weeks of sporadic dates with Rob, when I told him I liked him, he hit me with the “we should just be friends” line. 

Spoiler alert: We did not remain friends.

And while I understand that you can’t make a person like you, that you can’t be everyone’s cup of tea, I still stop dead in my tracks when I see Rob’s Summer 2023 photo recap featuring a gorgeous, tan, smiling boy with his arms around that one guy who didn’t like me back. They are so couple-y. And his arms are so big.

I want to ask Rob why it couldn’t have been me, though I know that’s not how dating works, nor how timing works, plus it’s none of my business. 

Still. I want to ask Rob if it’s because he saw the poems I have taped to my bedroom wall. I want to ask Rob if it’s because he saw too much, if it’s because he knew he’d become a pseudonym one day, if it’s because I wasn’t chill enough. 

****

At the gay beach, there’s a lot of skin. It’s not a nude beach, no, but goddamn, we’re gonna push that boundary to its limit. 

I’m here, reading, thinking, “wow, this is not the type of beach you read at,” considering it’s more the type of beach where you get drunk and dance. 

My towel is set up next to this group of guys I sort-of know, having hooked up with, I think, two of them. One of them is making out with a guy I’ve never seen before. They wave at me, casually, because we’re all friends here at the gay beach! 

The guy I’ve never seen before goes into the water while the rest of the group packs up their stuff and leaves. But when the swimmer returns, he’s looking around, clearly wondering where his group had just gone. 

He approaches me, “Hey, did you see where those guys went?”

I didn’t. 

“Damn,” he says, his hands on his hips, the bulge of his speedo in my face. “I really liked that guy.” 

“What guy?” I’m curious. 

“The guy I was just making out with. We met at a bar last night and I’m new to town, his friends were cool.” 

If I were a different person, I think I’d tell this guy to grow up, that those boys left without a second look back, that they do not care about him. 

But I say, “yeah,” and “I’m sorry,” instead, because I genuinely am. 

****

I stand in my bedroom before a man I met at a bar who asks me, in a tone of feigned awe, “How are you single?” 

A question I loathe. 

He sees the tightening of my eyes, the furrow of my brow. He shakes his head and reaches to grab my hips, assuming his question will be released as rhetorical, as compliment.

“No,” I stop his hands, push them back to his sides. I’m tipsy enough to tell him, “You don’t know me,” annunciating my words like a stage-whisper. 

He stammers, “Huh? No, I know, I’m –” 

“‘Why am I single?’” I quote him. “Why? Because you’re gonna take me out on a date and treat me like a gentleman?” 

“I mean, Jacob, I really –” 

“Oh, he remembers my name, at least.” 

A pause. 

He says, “That’s not fair.” 

It’s not this guy’s fault he picked up some sour fruit with shiny skin, I tell myself. Don’t take it so seriously, I tell myself. You’re twenty-something and having fun, I tell myself. So have fun, I tell myself. Have fun, be cool, nothing matters, it’s all casual. This is the fun part, the part you’ll want back one day. Don’t wish all of this fun away. 

I stare at the glow-in-the-dark sticky stars on my ceiling as I listen to him snore, supine. I can’t tell if I feel insane and naive for wanting someone to actually like me, or insane and naive for wishing I actually liked someone. But, God, to be held for a night. To feel important to another person for just a moment. Does this guy feel the same? 

Has any giggling, glowing, gorgeous gay guy in one of those gaggles at the Lake ever felt the same? 

Has any emotion ever had one answer? 

****

I found a quiet space on the concrete steps of the lake to jump rope, at least thirty feet of space between me and the next groups of sun-bathers. 

And I’m happy to be working out alone until a group of about eight men started crossing the grass from the walking-path straight towards me. 

And wouldn’t you know it – they laid out their blankets and dropped their picnic baskets directly on the steps above where I was. 10 feet away. 

And wouldn’t you know it – they were all gorgeous gay men, who took out their seltzers and took off their shirts to reveal their stunning physiques.  

How did I know they’re gay? Because the straight guys further down the rocks tossing a frisbee around have beautiful, healthy bodies that look like they’re well taken care of, meaning, they’re exercised without being hurt, they’re not neglected from want. Versus, these bodies – our bodies – which look like machines, because that’s how we treat them, our bodies. Something to be used and polished and broken. 

Besides the point of their bodies, though, I knew that I follow most of them on Instagram. I knew most of their first names. I had “swiped right” on their smiles on the dating apps through every iteration of my downloading and deleting and redownloading them. 

Loudly jumping rope ten feet in front of them without a glance from the pretty peanut gallery, I thought to myself, almost with disbelief, “Oh my god. I am actually invisible to them.” And, “When did every single man on the earth become 5’11” or taller?” 

But I was there first. And I am – I told myself – a cool and normal person who doesn’t read into where people set their things down at the lake. Nor do I care if they’ve all rejected me from their community of camaraderie, even just by social media exclusion. Everything is peachy.

I had a great workout. I hoped they enjoyed the show. They know where to find me – me, their adoring little Instagram fan. 

That night, at home, still thinking about the weird social experiment at the Rocks that afternoon, I took my cynicism to Instagram with two glasses of wine under my belt and the world at my fingertips. 

I was trying to comment on the social currency that is Instagram: For as much as we say “compare and despair,” or, “none of that shit actually matters,” I was trying to say that, yes, it does matter. It’s a way of communicating: Who are you opening the door to versus not? We don’t just follow our friends. We follow people in accordance to how we perceive ourselves. If Andrew Garfield followed me, I would follow him back. He’s famous, hot, and interesting. But of course we’re not “friends.”

I said, on my public story, that if you’re missing the point in my tangent, then you’re probably just too pretty to have ever felt the subtle sting of simply not being followed back, of being covertly told that you’re perceiving yourself at a little too high of a level, and you need to knock it down a few notches. 

Well, one of my followers, Adam, didn’t like that. 

Adam – the kind, tall, perfectly hairy and perfectly sculpted surfer boy from California. Adam – yet another Adonis. 

Adam didn’t like being called too pretty for pain. 

He told me that he just flew out to meet a boy he adored whom, upon his arrival, decided they were better as friends. 

Adam told me to not make assumptions. 

And I said, “You’re right. That’s fair. Okay. And I’m sorry.” But I wanted to say, “Not the point.” And I wanted to say, “Lemme see what this other guys looks like, for data collection.” 

But I poured myself another glass of wine and deleted the whole Instagram tangent, telling myself to calm the fuck down, to be cool. This is the part that’s supposed to be fun. 

**** 

I saw my neighbor walking down the street today, holding another guy’s hand. They were walking a dog in the sun, looking comfortable, happy.

Later that night, my neighbor messaged me on Instagram and asked if I wanted to “come over” to his apartment. 

I ignored the message, but he noted that I saw it by sending another: “Okay then? Cool.” 

****

My therapist says, “You know it’s okay to like Adonis, right? There is nothing wrong with wanting Adonis.” 

“What do you mean?” I ask her. 

“What if you allowed yourself to want him instead of building up defenses? You convince yourself he’s awful so that should he not desire you in turn, it hurts less. You immediately started picking him apart, making fun of him. Hell, you flicked him off. Yeah, he’s going to come down and chat with the boy who was smiling at him instead of the boy who was yelling with his middle finger in the air.” 

Touche. 

****

My best friend and I are splitting a bottle of wine, talking about the guys we’ve recently been seeing or talking to. My tone becomes exasperated, hopeless, and he asks, “Why do you want a relationship so badly?” 

“You put so much pressure on yourself,” he adds, “to not be single. Which is surprising. Since I don’t know anyone who enjoys going out to restaurants alone as much as you do.” 

Out of nowhere, I feel compelled to tell him about my brother’s wake, about how my mom and dad leaned on each other, and my brother and sister-in-law leaned on one another, and how I fell to the floor. How, that same night, I laid alone in a twin bed and listened to these couples weep.

“I’ve gotten good at being alone,” I tell him. “It’s not what I want, though.” There’s a difference. 

****

It’s called the Dog Days of Summer because of the star, Sirius –  the brightest in the Greater Dog Constellation – being aligned with the sun during this time.

I had to look this up. 

Previously, I thought the Dog Days of Summer referred to the hottest, groggiest days of summer, observed most astutely by panting, lethargic dogs. 

I also thought “dog days of summer” was just a chic Instagram caption for literally anyone posting a good photo of themselves between the months of August and September. 

A couple of weeks ago, in mid-August, Chicago had three days of gorgeous, early-Autumn weather. I wore a sweater on my back porch at sunset and I was glad to be a little bit chilly. 

But today, the waistband of my cotton underwear is wet when I get home from my morning walk with the dog. My stomach and back are dripping, and it’s September 4th. 

The Dog Days of Summer.

I feel like running away, like I usually do after being in one place for longer than a year and a half.. 

Last December, when the sun began to set at 4:30 pm, I ended a poem by saying, “Yes, I know winter can be so painful, so cold / so long, so dark, but / can we not call what’s happening here / Beautiful? Cyclical? Peaceful? Necessary? / And have you ever, ever seen / winter do anything / but end with spring?” 

And has Summer ever ended in anything but Autumn? 

What to call where I am now, then, but a season? 

It’s just a season. The leaves will fall, the snow will, too, and then there will be wet and wild color, and then – and then – everything will shine. 

This is what I tell myself now, as the leaves die, as one thing becomes another, as such things always have, and will. 

###

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And, come morning, grandma, usually first awake, would go to whatever starched curtains were available for her to fling wide open, and as groggy bodies rolled in the jarring light pouring in, she’d exclaim, “This is the day the lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it!” 

Without fail. The 118th psalm — our wakeup call, our call to action, my grandmother’s internal alarm clock, her fight song. 

To start the day in gladness, of course, is no small thing. And such gladness — such thankfulness, such joy — is not to be ignored. 

Poet Mary Oliver says, “If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, Do not hesitate. Give into it. Life has possibility left. Very likely you notice it in the instant love begins. Whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy was not made to be a crumb.” 

Grandma Terry knew how to celebrate joy — how to treat is as something miraculous, how to not rush it out the door, how to fling the curtains of the day open wide and let the light come in and fill her heart with the sound of music. 

To be glad in it — to be glad in it all:

In a sunset over a freshwater bay with her ever-growing family, in an afternoon spent painting a full moon over a snowy landscape, in a bubbling pot of homemade pasta sauce, in a bus-trip to Windsor to hit the slots, in a Sunday afternoon spent delivering communion to the sick, in attending any of her grandkid’s events — whether they be on a stage, a field, or a freezing ice rink. Joy. 

Seldom was my grandmother not a joy-filled woman, even against the odds of grief, loss, loneliness, injustice. 

What was it? 

Too easy, perhaps, to accredit her love for Jesus and leave it at that, but you know that that’s what she would tell you. I once asked her if she ever got lonely and she said that, no, she didn’t, because she had a best friend with her at all times — Jesus. 

And I’m happy she had that friend. And I admire that she had that strength in her faith. 

But she also had her art, her entire family, her songs, her musicals, her various church groups, neighbors, any baby she could get her hands on, her books, her movies, her word searches and yard-sales… 

We’re talking about the woman who introduced me to The Sound of Music with Julie Andrews, to “do-re-mi,” to “My Favorite things,” to the question: How do you hold a ray of moonlight in your hands? 

Oh, How? 

Grandma, thank you for my mother, my rock, and for my aunts and their doting and heavy pours of red wine. For my uncles and their storytelling, their jokes that always come at exactly the right times. For my cousins who have known me longer than I’ve known myself, who will know me when I’m an old man .. an old man with hopefully more hair than my uncles have. 

You, grandmother, are in it all, and always will be. Every story we tell starts and ends with you, because who are any of us without you? 

Thank you for teaching us to cook, sing, laugh, love, pray; how to get back up; how to forgive; how to care for one another. 

When I heard grandma passed, the word “wow” came from my lips and not much else. Of course, it was time, and expected. I did not cry, not for a while. But then I thought of siblings being reunited. And I cried, joyfully, out of happiness for my grandma. 

My family – picture it! this woman who has just as much, if not more love, waiting for her on the other side. Her many siblings, her parents, countless friends, her own child and two grandbabies. 

This is the day the lord has made, this is the family this woman has made, this is the only life we are each given to celebrate joy as much as we can, per the example of our matriarch. 

Joy, Jesus, Garage Sales, Clip-on earrings, acrylic paints, musicals, the Detroit Tigers, 40 acres of land in northern Michigan, communion, Cucidati — don’t get lost in the specifics of the words, my dear ones. It’s all the same poem. 

How do you catch a moonbeam in your hand? 

You fling the curtains open wide, let the light in, and try again. 

You rejoice, and be glad in it all. 

Be glad in it. 

Bless ’n keep you, Grandma Terry.

##

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The words disciple and discipline wound up in the same paragraph of a journal entry I was working on recently, and the similarity in letters stood out to me. I stared at the words and in my recovering Catholic core, I knew that there was something – something probably awful – to discover in their relationship.

The faith that raised me taught me to associate pain with goodness, suffering with reward, and meekness with blessings. Even joy was not a good Catholic person’s possession; it was something to give back to God, from whence it came. Suffering, though? That’s yours to keep, babe! It’s only because you deserve it, though. And don’t you forget it. Amen. 

My study began with the word disciple, not to be confused with the word apostle. There were 12 apostles, and those fellas were selected by Jesus to spread his teachings and to join him for the Last Supper. But there are numerous disciples of Jesus Christ – even today, a follower of Jesus’ teachings can rightfully call themselves a disciple since the word means “student,'' or “learner,” essentially. In latin: Discere, discipulus, discipul, deciple. Tomato, tomato. 

However, when I think of the word discipline, I do not think of learning. I do not think of Jesus. I think of running faster, adding an extra thirty minutes to a workout, skipping a meal, saying no to another glass of wine, or hitting “stop” instead of “snooze” on the alarm. 

“That’s learning, though,” I thought. “Isn’t it? Learning by doing. By practice.” 

And, surely enough, the word discipline translates to a sort of training by punishment. Put gently, from our Middle English ancestors, the word means “mortification by scourging oneself.” Self-flagellation. 

Ah, there it is. The connection. 

***

I first heard of intermittent-fasting from my Aunt, maybe three or four years ago. 

“Jacob,” she leaned in closer to me with her eyes on mine, like she was delivering someone else’s secret to me, “you have to try it.” 

“Your window,” she explained to me, “refers to the hours of the day during which you can eat whatever you want, and as much as you want. Start with a big window, like 2:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., so that you’re only fasting for 15 hours, and then gradually make your window smaller, so that you end up fasting for 17 or 18 hours. Black coffee and water are all you’re allowed to have when you’re outside of your window.”

“So you skip breakfast and eat, what? A late lunch? Aren’t there calories in coffee?” 

“When you’re hungry,” she plowed through my questions, “your body will naturally start to rely more on its fat supply. It burns up. You lose weight. You train your body to crave less. It takes discipline, but it works.” 

I don’t think I’ve ever been above the 15th percentile for either weight or height. 

Still, though, to this day, by habit, I seldom bring a parcel of food to my mouth before 3:00 pm. 

***

My English degree speaks for itself, but one thing I remember of A.P. Biology is that, when you finish sprinting and are panting for breath, it’s called lactic acid fermentation. 

That’s my goal every time I lace up my sneakers. I want to not be able to breathe. I want the inhalation of air to physically hurt my throat. I hit the one-mile-left marker and think, “Only faster from here on out. Why slow down? Who does slowing down help? This is when you get stronger” as if my legs weren’t on fire, as if I weren't dizzy and dehydrated in the midday sun, as if I hadn’t already been running for seven miles. 

***

Once, I got sick after a weekend of drinking and making out with strangers. Strep throat. I had a miserable week. And the entire time, I thought, “this is my penance.” I thought, “I deserve this sickness, this fatigue, this pain, this discomfort.” 

My therapist was baffled: “Why?” she asked. 

“Why what?” 

“Why do you deserve strep throat? Or pain, in any sense? Or discomfort?” 

I had no answer. 

“Is it…” she continued, tepidly, “because you had a fun weekend? Because you left shame at home and danced in the dark and felt beautiful and free?” 

“Yes.” 

***

At my all-boys high school, we had to go to confession twice a year: Once before Christmas and again, before Easter. Our dirty high school souls had to be clean for Jesus’ big days. 

The priests of the school would each pull two chairs into the four far corners of the second-floor chapel. One theology class at a time would quietly scatter in the middle pews and, one student at a time, we’d drag our feet to sit with one of the priests and confess our sins. 

The lights in the chapel were off. Sunlight filtered in through the 12-feet stained glass windows. Calming piano music played loudly from a boom-box (with a plug and a CD-rom!) in the middle of the room to help muffle the students’ quiet asks of forgiveness for being mean to parents, for cheating on geometry and chemistry tests, for masturbating, for masturbating, for masturbating. 

When we left the chapel, we’d compare penances as a means to discover who among us was the worst. Turns out, though, two rosaries were the ticket to salvation for all of us. 

“Huh,” one boy said, “that’s it? Guess I could afford to sin more.” He grinned at his own added emphasis. We all laughed, thinking about porn not even an hour after we had just said we were sorry for watching it. 

***

The most recent time I saw my doctor, she pursed her lips at my chart when she walked into the room. 

“Oh god,” I thought, “my liver enzymes are finally betraying me.” 

But instead, looking up to meet my eye gaze, she said, “You’re really at the lowest weight I’ll ever be comfortable seeing you at.” 

I didn’t respond. 

She sat down in the rolling chair without a back that seems to be ubiquitous in every primary care physician’s office. “Tell me about your eating habits.” 

I told her what I knew would be safe for her to hear: I don’t buy junk food or chips. I walk my dog four miles a day and coach fitness for a living. “I don’t eat, like, a ton,” I told her, “but when I do, it’s usually beans, meats, eggs, protein powders, vegetables – that sort of thing.” 

“Good,” she nodded, looking back down at the chart. 

A beat. 

She added, “So, I don’t need to be worried?” 

“No,” I told her. 

When I had to take deep breaths in-and-out with her cold stethoscope on my sunburnt chest, I thought I was going to faint. I hadn’t eaten all day. 

From somewhere sick came a voice in my head – “Good job. You’re at your perfect weight.” 

Blessed are the meek. 

***

Sister Helen, one of the nuns who taught me until 8th grade, once said, “Stigmata is the holiest gift a person can receive. It makes you an automatic saint if God sends you the stigmata.” 

Stigmata is, in Christianity, when a person bears physical wounds on their body that correspond to the wounds of Jesus’ crucifixion.

Holes in the hands, a pierced rib cage, a bleeding back – God’s greatest gift. 

I prayed hard during this time in my life – mostly that I’d not like boys. In fact, I prayed so much, and with such fervency, that I thought, “What if I wake up with pierced feet one day? Then I’d be a saint! Not damned! Not gay! A saint!” 

Researchers at UCLA in the last decade have found stigmata less of a religious miracle and more a phenomena of hysteria, dissociative personality disorder, anorexia, and self-mutilation. 

What would Sr. Helen think? 

***

Saint Pope John Paul II apologized for the Catholic church’s apathy during World War II. He said that marriage is between a man and a woman. He spoke out against communism and wasn’t entirely terrible to folks of other religions. For this reason, Catholics of the 90s and 2000s absolutely adored him. Many still do. 

So, when it came out that JP II occasionally self-flagellated –  knelt naked and whipped his own back – zealous, lay disciples of his began following suit in order to remind themselves that there are more important things than their own pleasure. 

The church – and the Pope’s office – had to issue statements: Easy, there! Please don’t whip your own back without the supervision of a master spiritual advisor. You are not the Pope. 

Blessed Mother Teresa (St. Mother Blessed Teresa?) was – and is – beloved amongst Catholics as well. She was fearless. Simple. Her prayers are digestible. Her reported miracles are impressive. She was so small, you’d think a gust of wind would knock her out, and yet the entire world knew of her and her goodness. 

The entire world seems less aware that she wore a barbed-wire garter around her thigh – some reports say for two hours a day, others say at all times. 

Behold, the Lord’s most devoted disciples. Behold, their discipline. 

***

I went to a Jesuit high school and a Jesuit college. 

The Jesuits are a sect of Catholic priests devoted to education in urban areas. 

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, or, For the Greater Glory of God, or, AMDG, is the most commonly known motto of the Jesuits, next to magis, “the more.” 

When I was 19-years-old, I got the letters AMDG tattooed on my left wrist during a time when I was blacking out four nights a week and bawling by myself in the back pew of a gigantic cathedral every Sunday afternoon. 

No one warned me that having fun came at such a steep price. I felt far from my faith, from the suffering of my childhood. 

***

Now, I manage a fitness studio. We offer 50-minute classes of low-impact strength training. It’s a killer workout. Your muscles shake. People report being sore for two or three days afterwards. It hurts. And it works. 

There are words painted in white letters around the blue studio walls: Strong, Empowered, Committed, Community, Bold… “Disciplined” is not one of them. 

I try to take two, 50-minute classes a day. 

“You must have a lot of time on your hands,” someone said to me recently, coyly. 

“You have time for what you make time for,” I responded. 

They caught onto my tone. “Sorry. I can only imagine that level of discipline.” 

***

On a recent run, I saw a group of men around my age playing volleyball. They all looked like the old Abercrombie models – tall, sun-kissed, nothing-but-muscle. 

When I got home, I journaled, “I see what I’m supposed to look like, and I don’t know how else to get there.” 

Is it discipline? Genetics? How could those volleyball players’ discipline be greater than mine? 

I put my pen down and did 100 push-ups on my bedroom floor. 

***

“They lack the discipline,” has often been the retaliatory comment to the countless men in my family who physically struggle to stop drinking once they start. 

***

Everything about discipline sounds like it hurts. 

***

In Broken Wings by Kahlil Gibran, there’s a sentence that reads, “And God said ‘Love Your Enemy,’ and I obeyed him and loved myself.”

What could take more discipline than this singular, vital work?

*** 

A man I enjoy spending time with laid behind me in bed recently and kissed my neck and shoulders as we listened to the birds sing outside my window, as we breathed in the scent of the coffee brewing drip by drip from down the hall. 

He left and I cried – not because I missed him, but because it felt so good to do something so bad. 

I hear  my therapist hypothetically asking me, “What made it bad?” 

And I see myself – hypothetically – not responding.

She says, “Because it felt good? Because you felt cherished and loved? Is that what made it ‘bad’?”

“Yes.” Yes. 

##

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I used to read descriptions of “older” characters in novels and think, “Really? How can skin be papery? Or thinner?” 

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But now, I understand: The skin moves with more ease. In certain light, it looks like – were I to pinch it together – the folds would stay, and my skin would be not exactly wrinkled, but crumpled. 

Here is where every person who’s even one single year older than me rolls their eyes: This kid. What does he know? He should see my wrinkles. He’s got another thing coming. Look at him! The epitome of youth, still, and whining about fragile skin. 

I’m not claiming the title of “old” or to have wrinkly skin, I’m just saying that I can see it starting, I can see how the skin we stare at our whole lives could resemble something fragile, breakable. And before you accuse me of fishing for compliments or being naive, consider that your oak tree might have more leaves than mine, but it doesn’t mean the buds on my oak tree point to anything other than what nature promises. You and I are both a day older than we were yesterday, no matter what year we were born in. 

***

I just got back from a week in Northern Michigan spent with my family. My whole family. On the Saturday night of our long trip, around 70 people sat down for dinner. (I didn’t get an exact headcount. Everyone kept moving around. And there was wine). 

We were at the Property, which is what my family has always called the 40-acres of woods my grandpa acquired in the 1960s. (Some future novel will detail the acquisition; It’s a great history & even better story). And since this acquisition, my mom’s side of the family has flocked to these woods for a long weekend every summer. It’s become as much a tradition as our cuccidati cookies at Christmas or our hour-long goodbyes. 

A photograph that’s always been framed in my parent’s house comes to mind: My mom is in a navy blue crew neck, holding me in one arm, crouched low to Joey’s eye-level – Joey, my late-brother, who wasn’t even two at the time this photo was taken. I’m swaddled against Mom’s chest, wearing a Winnie the Pooh hat. Joey’s hand is outstretched to her and me, holding a small bouquet of pink and yellow flowers. My eyes are closed. I was four months old. 

Then, time played the same trick it plays on us all: 

Suddenly, I’m 26, at the Property camping alone in a one-person tent, with the people who know me best, leading a toast to those we miss, emceeing family karaoke, teaching my cousin’s kids how to put up a tent, mooching coffee and wine off the same folks who used to change my diapers, piling the best rocks I can find around the spot where we spread Joey’s ashes. 

Time moves fast. Healthy oak trees never stop growing. 

*** 

When I think I’m getting old, I remind myself of two things: Firstly, that I can drink a bottle of wine and wake up the next morning and run 8 miles at a 7:00 minute pace. Secondly, that my parents had me when they were 41-years-old. 

42-years-old will be the age at which I’ll officially have lived half of my life without my middle brother. 

We sang “happy birthday” and “sto lat” to my dad this past weekend. He turned 67. 

***

I have a warm memory of being at my grandmother’s condo with my brother Joey. We’re at her kitchen table, somewhere in elementary school, painting. (My grandma always loved painting). She puts in the CD of Disney’s Lion King and turns the volume up. We all sing along: “Oh I just can’t wait to be king.” 

Simba ran into the flatlands and made a wish to be older. Then life hit him in the ass and gave him what he wanted. 

At least the circle of life didn’t break for Simba, though: Parents shouldn’t have to bury their children. Ever. When my friends lose a grandparent, I’m the fucker who says something like “that’s beautiful” or “that’s the way it should be.” 

My grandma wasn’t at the Property this past weekend on account of her being in hospice. At her funeral I’ll sing a song of praise that she finally stopped out-living all her loved ones younger than her. 

***

This past weekend, around a picture perfect bonfire, someone mentioned Jamey, my uncle who died of cancer a month after I was born. He played the guitar and was – apparently – my mother’s most likely sibling to sing, to make everyone laugh, or to pull a joint out of their pocket. I think we would’ve gotten along. I think I would’ve loved him madly. 

The next morning, I woke up in my tent-for-one, hungover. 

***

We were talking about relationships this past weekend. My cousin said, “Wait.” It sounded like a demand. “I was married at twenty-four,” she continued. Two years younger than I am now. “Too soon. I didn’t know who I was.” 

“I read an article,” another cousin piped up, “that the best age to get married is right around thirty, because you know yourself well enough but aren’t too set in your ways yet.” 

“No pressure, though,” I said back, laughing to hide something like fear, or unease, or eagerness. 

The next day, I went into the little nearby up-north town with two of my cousins and their families. 

These cousins used to babysit me; I stood behind my mom’s legs as she took photos of them with their prom dates; I watched my brothers have secret sips of beer at their weddings. 

Now, their kids are seven, ten, thirteen years old… 

We arrived in town and the kids were all exuberantly eager to spend their parents money: Souvenirs, ice cream, sweat-shirts, more ice cream.

At one point, in the slow procession of little-ones and their parents, I stayed in one store a little too long; Everyone moved on without me. I don’t blame my cousins – my little cousins’ parents – for leaving me. Because I’m old enough, because I’m able, because I have my own money, because a pre-teen who wants a new thing is a sheer force to be reckoned with. 

I had a moment of realization: No one was looking for me, no one needed me. 

There was no bitterness associated with this realization. If anything, I felt something like independence – a feeling I’ve grown so familiar with that it scares me sometimes. 

That’s not to say that, were one of my little cousins to pop out of a store down the street and wave their arms at me – Jacob! Come on! – that I wouldn’t have been overjoyed. 

I’d trade my feelings of independence for the feeling of being wanted, needed, almost every time. 

***

My uncle needed help putting on his shoes because he hurt his back. My aunt got her hair thinned and cut short after she started chemotherapy. My cousin’s gray stubble and wire-framed glasses make him look like an old European man. The same cousins who used to go to bed at 3am on the Property are tucking their kids into their sleeping bags around 10pm. 

***

Almost every definition I can find of the word “melancholy” includes the word “pensive.” 

I was searching the word because that’s how a friend recently described watching his parents get older: Melancholic. 

But there doesn’t seem to be enough room for joy in the word melancholy. 

To watch my parents become grandparents, to watch my cousins parent their own children, to be a part of something that’s growing, moving, sprouting new life — what could be more joyful? 

***

In this most recent trip up north I just returned home from, while no one was looking for me or needing me, I found an hour to sneak away into the woods to the creek where Joey’s ashes were still visible on the smooth, wet rocks of the riverbed. 

Above from where I sat, soft raindrops hit the treetops. 

I drank watered-down coffee from a thermos and felt complete peace. I thought of Joey, recently turned 28, and wondered where he’d be living, and if there’d be a girlfriend or fiance yet, and would she be my best friend, and would he babysit my dog on weekends, and does he remember the last time we were at the Property and our air-mattress deflated in the night and we woke up drooling on each other’s shoulders like we did when we were boys? 

From behind me, a cardinal sang. 

***

In watching the sunset over Grand Traverse Bay on the same rocks that I’ve been brought to since my infancy, with the same people who’ve loved me since before breath filled my lungs, tears swell in my eyes. I might not feel old, but I feel older, and thank God for that. With wet cheeks, I feel joy, and I give into it. All of it. 

One day, I’ll lay flowers on my grandmother’s grave, and I’ll cry, and smile, and hum a tune from The Lion King. 

And some other day, later, when my skin is more fragile and my smile lines are stuck, I’ll hold a little hand by the little creek where my brother will always be, and I’ll squeeze that little hand as I tell these stories of getting older that I’ve accrued like a bouquet of pink and yellow wildflowers. 

###

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Prior to my move there, I had ended up back at my parents, in the same room that my first crib was in, with a recently terminated work contract. Do you remember when the pandemic first started and we thought it’d be two weeks til things returned to normal? And then two months? And then we stopped using the word “normal” altogether? This was around that time. 

I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do next, but I had the following: a dear friend in South Dakota – in the middle of nowhere – with an extra room that cost $200 a month, some minimal savings from a summer of waiting tables at my parent’s restaurant, a sudden phobia of public spaces, and nothing to lose. 

Packing my little blue car with everything I owned and driving 19 hours away from Michigan seemed as good an idea as any. Maybe I’ll just keep going West afterwards, I told myself. 

On my drive to Oglala – the name of the single-stop-light town in South Dakota that I’d be living in – I spent a night in Omaha. It had been dark, already, for hours when I arrived at my bargain-priced AirBnB. I carried in my overnight bag, my valuables, some room-temperature Chipotle, and a mini-bottle of red wine (because I knew that, had I gotten a full-sized bottle, I would’ve drank the whole thing; I still had 10 hours of driving ahead of me the next day). 

Neither the overhead light in the living room nor bedroom would turn on – only in the bathroom. Using my phone's flashlight, I unplugged the bedside table’s lamp and repositioned it on the coffee table next to the couch where I ate and drank and doom-scrolled on my phone. 

Doom-scrolling: The spending of excessive time scrolling through excessively negative news. 

I slept on top of the comforter. My eyes stung. 

George Floyd was dead, Amy Coney Barrett was being fast-tracked to a Supreme Court appointment, social media was stock-full of unvaccinated folks packing dive bars, my family on Facebook and old neighbors were looking for every reason to not like Biden, and – from my little desk in the middle of nowhere with nothing but my phone to aid me – I made it my job to fix everything. 

On average, during this time, I would not be surprised if I had spent around five or six hours a day engaging in political discourse online. And I’m not even sure “discourse” is the right word here, because, more often than not, I was posting long-winded opinion paragraphs to a void of followers who agreed with me. I’ll be the first to admit that much of this behavior was most likey virtue signaling – proving to anyone who’d “look” at me that I was good, that I was following all the rules, that I was committed to social justice and equal rights and your immunocompromised grandmother. And it was easy, then, for me to throw shame around like Oprah during one of her giveaways because I was suddenly 1,000 miles removed: How dare you go to bars right now! How dare you have a wedding with more than 20 people at it! How dare you not publicly post your disapproval of Amy Corn-Dog Baret five times a day! Shame on you! 

The Facebook discourse was different: That script went more along the lines of my saying a basic tenant of the Democratic party (“A vote for Biden is a vote for marriage equality”) and someone my parent’s age whom I hadn’t seen or talked to in years commenting insane shit (“I don’t mind gay but my daddy taught me the greatest gift we have as Americans is the right to carry, so no.” “Purple lives matter!”).

I would wake up everyday, and while half-heartedly doing something else (a hike, selling art online, writing, reading, etc.), I would fight the entire world – or anyone I could find who’d put their metaphorical fists up – through my 3x6 phone screen. 

And keep in mind I was living remotely. We didn’t even have an address – our mail was delivered to a high school down the road a ways. The grocery store was about an hour and twenty minute drive into Nebraska. My external world was all at once quiet and desolate and beautiful and, still, I was willingly plugged into hell-on-earth and I made sure my connection was damn strong. 

One morning, nearing November, after a particularly draining online exhange with a family member, I had to close my laptop. I was wearing sunglasses inside to try and abate a four-day headache and they fell to the floor as my shoulders hunched over the table. My roommate came into the room, squeezed his hands on my shoulders, suggested I take a break. 

**

Now, It’s the last day of June – Pride month – 2023, and the Supreme Court decides it’s okay for businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ+ folks. 

Something about a webdesigner in Colorado not wanting to make wedding-sites for gay people. 

I’m at the lake with my dog when I see the news, and the water is still and cold and clear. There’s a learn-to-sail class happening about 100-feet off the lakefront path and the middle schoolers screaming with delight in the multitude of colorful sails makes me think of summer vacation fondly. 

And then I see the news again, and again, and again, and again. 

Different headlines, different words, same blow. Everyone is sharing it, some with additional comments: “What the fuck,” “Happy last day of Pride…” “America.” 

I put my phone deep into my backpack on do-not-disturb mode and return my attention to the little sailors who hopefully don’t know what discrimination really is yet and who certainly give far less of a shit about a person’s sexual orientation than the Supreme Court. Watching them do nothing short of play, I wonder how many just lost some rights they might not have even known they had. 

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Fuck, I think. I shake my head. When I was 12-years-old, I worked myself up to the point of nausea wondering how I would tell my priest during Confession that I maybe-liked-boys. I would watch “It Gets Better” YouTube videos on the family’s shared computer then delete the search-history. I bargained with whatever I thought God was at the time to keep me straight, to make me straight. 

And I trust that 12-year-olds in 2023 aren’t doing those same things, but who am I to say? And with headlines like this – with a Supreme Court like the one that’s supposed to be protecting our rights – how much “better” has it really gotten? 

I want to high-five every kid out there in Lake Michigan right now and tell them they’re worthy of a wedding cake and website no matter who they love. I want to tell them they’ll have their first kiss whether or not it’s legal in a decade and it will still change their lives in unimaginably exciting ways. 

And I want to be in love. And I want to host my family at my own wedding, one day. 

I suppose it’s not a guarantee those things will happen. I think that’s what a lot of straight folks don’t often realize. Not because of a dislike towards LGBTQ+ people, but because it’s a hard, negative, dark headspace to inhibit when one doesn’t have to go there. 

Three years ago, I think, I would’ve spent this entire day on Instagram and Facebook, publicly mourning, criticizing, yelling, fighting… 

Now, for better or for worse — whether due to a lack of hope or a more recent penchant for peace — I choose not to share, not to post. I disengage – Isn’t this exactly what we knew would happen? I save my precious words. I watch kids learning to sail in a freshwater lake just before me, under blue skies, and wish the best for them, for me, for us.

###

What’s this?

I recently spent too much money on an iron “bistro-style” table for my wooden “porch.” (I call it a porch but it’s just a large fire escape. And, yes, a wooden fire escape. Don’t think about it too hard, babe, it’s cute). 

“Too much money” is excused, here, because I liked the color, I knew it would fit perfectly, and I recently got my first-ever job not waiting tables! I have a salary, health-care, a Slack! – the whole shebang. I also think I have a mental illness when it comes to spending money. But that’s not for the free subscriber’s eyes. 

Look – I had to buy it. Because I’m writing a lot more lately. I know it sounds oxymoronic – he gets a new job and starts writing more? But that’s the interesting thing about routine: we build our lives around them. So, now, all of a sudden, I have this job where I’m expected to be up-and-at-em by seven or eight in the morning. Then, next thing you know, I’m going to bed at 10:30 p.m. instead of 1:30 a.m. And I’m having one glass of wine instead of two. Then, none. All of a sudden, I’m waking up before my alarm clock and 11 a.m. feels like the middle of the day. 

What? 

Understand that for almost three years, I’ve been waiting tables, where my day would start at 4pm, and the only “fun” I could have was between 11:30 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. (which sometimes turned into 6 a.m. depending on how much cocaine my coworkers had gotten their hands on and how afraid I was of missing out on being hot and twenty-something).

So, I’ve been waking up earlier and writing more. 

There’s a book called the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron in which she suggests “morning pages:” a practice in which a person wakes up and immediately cranks out three pages of fast, stream-of-consciousness, off-the-cuff writing. I’ve been trying to incorporate this practice into my life for well over a year, now, but only have recently found success with it. 

And then our cold spring slipped into a balmy summer as quickly as tipsy slips into drunk.. And I thought, “Why am I writing these pages at my desk in the morning with my windows closed when I could be sitting on my wooden fire escape in the sun?” and “don’t writers deserve nice tables, too?” 

Well, the table arrived, and it was perfect, and I was so excited to write at it every morning. And then I was put on an antibiotic that’s sun-sensitive to treat a bout of chlamydia (end STI stigma)! Well, the table faces East. So I was still writing at my desk. And then wildfire smoke blew into Chicago and we were advised to stay indoors! But let me tell you. Once this smoke clears? That bistro-style, olive green, iron table is going to be such a gorgeous home for all my intrusive morning thoughts. And I will stop being celibate. 

What was the question? 

Oh. I’ve just been writing a lot, is all. And it’s good. And I have this full-time job that I love – don’t get me wrong – but there’s also this voice in my head saying, “Okay, so you’re writing a ton. Why? What are you doing with this? Who is this for? Where does it live? Or is this just for you? Are you okay? When’s the last time you had a glass of water?” 

So. 

Let me write. Let me find themes. Let me tell my jokes and my cultural criticisms. Let me walk you through what I’m seeing and how I feel about it. Let me offer unsolicited advice. Let me tell you about heartbreak and how it can serve you. 

Let’s have fun. Let’s pay attention. 

I will publish it all here, for you, weekly, for 10 bucks a month. (I’m making a shit salary and I still find $24 a month to let Hinge try and find me someone who makes me fucking happy – I promise you can support a gay writer who has too much to say and not enough people in his life to listen). If you don’t got 10? Listen. Fine. You get the first week of the month for free. And I love you, still. 

What happened to Patreon? 

Patreon served me well for a while. That’s another subscription-based platform, but I felt immense pressure to only publish finished, polished, full-length works. 

Plus? It never took off. I think at my Patreon’s maximum subscriber count, there were 30 folks receiving my pieces, and usually five or six of them would actually click on the link to read it. 

It wasn’t the medium for me. 

I’d rather try infiltrating your inboxes on Monday afternoons so you can ignore your corporate jobs and pay attention to me for twenty minutes. Thanks Substack!

So much of being a creative — especially during this digital age — is figuring out what works for you & your audience. Thank you for bearing with me. And special thanks to those who are willing to invest in the journey. 

What happened to OnlyFans? 

And that’s all the time we have for today, folks. Tune in next week when – well, I haven’t gotten that far yet.

P.S. 

* Do you think I make more money waiting tables for 30 hours a week or managing a fitness studio for … so many more hours a week than 40? The answer is: I’m happier now than I was. But damn. 

* Can you believe I’ve never done coke? Would it make more sense if you knew I pour out milk the day before its sell-by date? I don’t know why these two things feel related. I am such a wuss. Doesn’t mean wusses can’t get STIs, though! And that’s what you missed on Glee. I wonder if my mom is reading this.

* I didn’t proofread this. Yeehaw!

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