It's true, I'm still alive

You all right, babes?

Tina Turner in her Paris hotel suite, 1979. Pinterest

Last week I got an email from my high school friend Caroline that opened with “It's true, I'm still alive,” and it obviously stuck with me, especially during this holiest of weekends. It’s also how I plan to introduce myself from now on, entering each room as if I’m my own ghost. I mostly communicate with a rotating cast of five or six characters these days so it was a treat to catch up with someone new, especially someone who knew me so long before I knew myself. We talked about life and the pandabear and going to yearbook camp together, and I spent the rest of the afternoon privately reminiscing about all the dumb shit we did and desperately missing the days of getting away with doing dumb shit. Then I burned some sage and watched Daria.

Spring has sprung, have you heard? Word on the street is that the pannacotta is almost over, but she’s also giving us mutations and adaptations in the fourth quarter so I’m loath to believe this hype. My neighborhood is “trending critical” but it’s also getting critical for me to leave this neighborhood on a more consistent basis, you feel? I braved the MoMA on a rainy day and decided maybe everything should be open at 25 percent capacity. Not all the time, just while I’m there. There were several moments that I found myself alone in an exhibit and it was like, wow, this is the perfect amount of people to be around today! Other than that, a couple of park days, and buying all the ranunculus they have at Trader Joe’s, I have been Staying Home and Staying Patient until I can get vaxxxed and waxxxed and tiptoe into my long-awaited “Diana Ross at Studio 54” era.

I’ve gotten messages from friends checking on me in the wake of Meghan and Harry’s Oprah interview and my official statement is: that was a loaded piece of toast! I anticipated it being hard to watch, of course, but I wasn’t prepared for how much hateration and holleration was in that dancerie. The triggers, the trauma! It kicked up dust for me, and I spent the next day with an emotional hangover. I cried and laughed while scrolling through reactions on Twitter, which is never the way you want to spend a Monday morning, but memes give me sustenance. I followed the aftermath for a couple more days before fatigue set in and I had to log out.

It took a while for me to gather my thoughts about the whole situation, which is newish for me. Typically I am a ho for sharing my opinion but having ~*takes on things*~ is so exhausting these days, especially when it involves having to argue facts, and the fact here is that white supremacy ruins everything. Absolutely everything. It’s a science. On that note, “while recollections may vary” was such a dark-sided response to this. It has the same energy as “I’m sorry you feel that way,” which is what you say when you know you fucked up but have too much hubris to admit it. I won’t even go near “We are very much not a racist family.” This is diabolical behavior.

By the time my pal Michelle reached out for a royal rant, I had unwound enough to chat for her Vogue piece. In it, she explores the Kate vs. Meghan conundrum and whether the fandom should be mutually exclusive in light of recent tea. And as a person who came of age during the Great Britney-Christina War and has the lower back tattoo to prove it, I was honored to chime in. Expecting women to be the best of friends while simultaneously pitting them against each other is not a new or effective media tactic but like white supremacy, it is a science. Some will argue that there are other, “more important” things to worry about in the world right now than which of these women made the other one cry, but then I’d have to counter that the racism and misogyny at center stage in this mess is a perfect reflection of what’s going on in the world right now. Anyway, regardless of my feelings about Kate and what she represents, I will continue riding for Charlotte until further notice.

Life is duller since Drag Race UK and WandaVision ended, and I know I can watch them over again but that’s not the fucking point. It was about the anticipation. Things have felt equally hopeful and horrifying out there lately, but I’m reading and writing and paying attention to things and finding small moments of joy and generally treading water, babes. When I was in my 20s, Kathryn Hudson asked me if I ever felt like a plastic bag drifting through the wind wanting to start again, and I never thought much about it past “that’s bad for the environment” but can now share publicly that I identify with that bag and probably always will. That’s pretty much all I have right now. I didn’t say I’d be focused!

Currently keeping me afloat:

• Taking a break from social media and struggle music. I’ve been logged out of Twitter and Instagram on my phone for three! whole! weeks! and am exclusively listening to music that puts me in A Good Mood™, like Remi Wolf, Laura Mvula, and French pop across various decades. I am also fucking with Dula Peep very heavily. Don’t worry, I’m still depressed!

• The elaborate fantasy I’ve created of Symone winning Drag Race. As a fellow Black person who owns 51 percent of the flag f’ctry, I have no choice but to stan. If she comes in any other place than first, check on me.

• An NYT piece on this late-stage phase of pandemic burnout and how the prolonged tedium of the past year has hindered our ability to form meaningful new memories. (It is a more hopeful read than it sounds.)

• Soleil Moon Frye’s Kid 90 documentary, which made me laugh and cry and look back fondly on being a teenager. Leonardo DiCaprio with a topknot! Jenny Lewis mouthing off about cops! Charles Sheen?! I was a Punky Brewster stan and SMF was always low-key an It girl to me, so this validated it.

• The sheer scammery and rich white flimflammery of Operation Varsity Blues, Made You Look, and that terrifying WeWork documentary, which I watched in one afternoon for maximum effect. I highly suggest Tina and Black Art: In the Absence of Light on HBO Max as palette cleansers.

• Opening my purse for Red Canary Song, a grassroots collective offering resources and mutual aid to AAPI and migrant sex workers. Donate if you can.

• The fact that a few people have actually asked me to share more of the candles I’ve been burning. I am nothing without my fans, so here they are: Cole’s Trane from Olphactory; Diptyque Roses; Cavo’s After a Good Cry (a most thoughtful from my friend Amanda); and famously, the Boy Smells x Kacey Musgraves Slow Burn, which I’d buy 12 at a time if I could.