INFORMATIVE UPDATES! FASCINATING LINKS!
Oh, hi! You’re still here?
Oh, hello. It’s you all! Have you been here this whole time? Me? I was on summer break. Did you know that people who write Substacks get summer break? Well, we do I guess, because I took one.
Basically, after Pride was over, I went to Fire Island twice during monkey pox, so the less said about that the better. Also, I turned 40, which was…something I never want to do again. I dunno, are we supposed to admit to getting all weird about turning 40? Like, almost everyone I know thought it was pretty dumb that I was (still am?) having this whole mini-existential crisis about it. My mother thought it was hilarious. So…*shruuuugggghhhhh*
Also, while all that was going on, I took this new gig as a “churnalist” at LGBTQ Nation. Literally, Ron DeSantis’s actual insane press secretary called me that on Twitter! Basically, that means I write up gay news every morning, none of which is good apparently. It’s all hysterical Republican moms and white supremacists constantly being utterly wild at school board meetings and banning books and defaming drag performers and Republican lawmakers passing hideous laws banning gender-affirming care and making it harder to access HIV prevention medications (which I also covered for Fast Company recently) and making it illegal to talk about the history of the LGBTQ civil rights movement. Like, none of that is hyperbole it is all happening every single day. Ugh.
So, anyway, now I kind of live with this new constant anxiety that some MAGA troll is going to dox me because of something I wrote about, I dunno, human colostomy bag Matt Walsh or the emaciated husk of Carrie Prejean or whoever.
The upshot, though, is that when I’m not writing about Republicans being 100% out of their minds, I’ve been doing some other cool stuff.
The Joy of Queer Cooking
So, I tried my hand at some food writing recently. Anyone who knows me well, knows I’m a big Nigella Lawson fan. The week following Pride, I wrote about using her concept of “Templefood” as a template for a kind of post-Pride shenanigans detox. Definitely not a diet, because obviously diet culture is toxic! Then, in August, I wrote about the idea of queer cuisine. Like, what would that even be? I landed on disco fries as the ultimate queer dish, specifically a very bourgie version I remember from this 24-hour Chelsea restaurant that closed almost two decades ago, and which I’ve been trying to recreate ever since.
And last week I chatted with Queer Eye’s Antoni Porowski about his new cooking competition show on Netflix. What a charmer that guy is! Seriously, I take back anything snarky I may have ever said about him! He was fully into my truly innovative idea to replace the Fritos in a Frito pie with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos! Then at the end of our interview I asked him what I should have for dinner and he was like, “Chili!” And now I’m a little annoyed at myself for not commenting on the…absurdity of one gay dude telling another to have chili on a Friday night in New York City—if you get my meaning… Anyway, maybe I’ll write something about chili soon.
The Ecstasy of Gay Literature
I spent a lot of this summer reading novels by gay authors. In August, I gave myself a crash course in Edmund White’s work—his novels A Boy’s Own Story and The Beautiful Room is Empty, and his memoir City Boy—in preparation for a long interview that was just published earlier this month. Truly, what a privilege to get to talk to this brilliant, funny, salty gay elder!
I also got my hands on an advance copy of Andrew Sean Greer’s sequel to his Pulitzer Prize winning novel Less, which I absolutely adored. (Smart people, those Pulitzers.) Less is Lost may be a slightly lesser work—can’t imagine I’m the first person to make that joke—but it’s still a total delight. And I think I said as much in the intro to my interview with Greer, which ran in September. My editor had me re-write my original intro, which I like so much more I’m including it here:
Look at Andrew Sean Greer: a major American gay novelist—a Pulitzer Prize winner!—attempting to answer an interviewer’s questions over the phone. Attempting to convey what exactly he wanted to say in his new novel, Less is Lost, about relationships, about America, when suddenly he is interrupted by the doorbell at his home in San Francisco. It is his Instacart order. Not to worry though; it’s mostly vegetables, no ice cream or other perishables that need to be speedily unpacked and stored away.
It's not exactly a moment of Less-ian comedy, but I tell Greer that I’ll use the arrival of his groceries for color in the piece I’m writing about him. He seems good naturedly amused by the suggestion, and should he ever read this, I hope he will not take unkindly to my feeble attempt to echo the warm, gently satirical voice he employs in his Pulitzer-winning 2017 novel, Less, and its sequel.
Less is Lost finds its beloved hero, “minor American novelist” Arthur Less, once again at a crossroads. And once again, he takes flight. Or, rather, takes to the road, embarking on trip across the good (?) old (yup) U.S. of A. It is, I can personally attest, as much a pleasure to be in the company of this lovably hapless character again, as it is to speak with Greer about sequels, Pulitzers, and “bad gays.”
Andrew Holleran published a new book in June, so before picking that up, I figured it was about time I finally read his first, Dancer from the Dance. A close friend of mine has been urging me to read it for years, but I had this completely nonsensical idea that because I had read and loved Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City books in high school, I’d kind of already read the definitive account of queer life in the 70s—definitive for me at least. Somehow, I had completely missed the memo that Holleran isn’t just spinning some entertaining yarn about or misty-eyed elegy to Fire Island in the 70s. Reading Dancer from the Dance, I was just completely enthralled by his writing, his skill as a stylist. I mean, anyone who knows the book is like, Yeah, duh, Johnny. Welcome to the club. But, you know, we all find our way to things in our own time.
Holleran’s new novel, Kingdom of Sand, is something different. It’s the only other of his books that I’ve read, so I don’t know exactly how his style has evolved since Dancer, except to say that the new novel is written in a much more straight-forward, plain-spoken way, more a…document than an evocation. I don’t know if that’s the right way to describe it, actually. You know that Christine McVie quote where she’s like, “Stevie’s a poet and I’m a prose writer,” or something? I feel like Dancer is Stevie Nicks and Kingdom is Christine McVie. Anyway, this one hit me hard with its unflinching depiction of a particular kind of loneliness that may be specific to gay elders. I don’t know. I think I’m still processing it all, but there’s a real part of me that wonders if I may have now seen a version of my future, which really didn’t help with the turning-40-existential-crisis stuff…
The Perplexity of Queer TV
That’s the title I’m considering for a new sporadic recap feature on here. Sporadic in the sense that, you know, I’ll recap some queer TV as and when it happens and if it seems like it deserves the read-cap type treatment. Maybe Uncoupled if it comes back for a second season? (God help me, I genuinely enjoyed that dumb show! So did my mom! Hahaha uuuuuggggh.)
I was planning to cover AMC’s Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire here, but then Queerty decided to pay me to do it! We’re three episodes in, and I can just tell that you are all extremely eager to catch up on those recaps at these essential and thoroughly useful links:
Interview With the Vampire Episode 1: How gay vampire babies are made
Interview With the Vampire Episode 2: Full-on fang-bang mode
Interview With the Vampire Episode 3: Is Louis maybe the absolute worst?
The Agony of “Gay” “Cinema”
Finally, because I’m sure you’re all like, What about my very hilarious and eminently insightful gay-balls film recaps though??? Relax! I’m totally working on what I now think of as Season 2 of The Agony of “Gay” “Cinema,” I swear! Films on the docket include: All Over Me, Kiss Me Guido, Get Real, and maybe even a special Halloween edition later this month! Tell all your friends and also people you barely know!