The Gleeks, The Eight, and The Wardrobe
How Glee and the cyclical nature of time are important to trans Brooklyn residents right now.
Good morning Babbilettes!
How’s the inbox feeling upon this day? If you’d like to live life in the way I have chosen to, consider archiving and/or deleting some important messages accidentally without reading them.
I bring great tidings to the world: the second episode of the Babbling On podcast is out today. It focuses upon the Fox television program Glee, and it features cultural commentary from the divine hot blonde lady with the glistening brain, the one named Molly Montgomery, the one who knows so much about Glee it’s actually low key kind of weird of her. She’s that type of woman who watched Glee through to the end, long after Quinn got hit by that truck and several cast members were dead and Rachel and Kurt were basting turkeys with Sarah Jessica Parker off the Montrose stop. Go listen and enjoy yourself, sweet-as-pie.
I also want to take another quick moment to shout out last week’s episode, The Eight, featuring Mrs. Alec Cohen. That’s where we unpacked The Eight: Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, Samantha, Jessa, Hannah, Shoshanna, and of course Marnie. One thing I must blurt: Alec is the most amazing friend in the world and truly wants to see the faggies around him succeed. He’s always thinking about ways to support other artists, and he’s an incredible loyalist who can see past when someone is being annoying (me) and still love them just as much. I just j’adore him infinitely and I’m so grateful for his endless hilariosity and understanding, I’m honestly speechless, he’s just amazing. Today I’m extremely hungover twitching in my Brooklinens so I’m having a more difficult time crafting scintillating sentence structure, but you get it. He’s everything and so funny, go listen to that too.
These days I’m working at a wine shop to pay the bills on my new apartment (which is in Bed-Stuy, there seems to have been some confusion within the twinks-at-parties community regarding which coast I’m on). The wine shop is called Big Nose Full Body Wines and it’s in Park Slope. Stop by if you’re ever Down South, I can give you discounts and/ or kill your vibe for the rest of the day, depending on a variety of factors including how flirtatious you are towards me and whether or not you’re wearing a T-shirt that says “come to the dark side, we have cookies” (a good thing). Things at Big Nose Full Body have been going pretty smoothly, and I bike to work beneath the green canopies of Prospect Park’s 5K loop, and I listen to Chemtrails and reflect on the past while wheeling steadily into the future, and I drink smoothies that the gay guy working across the street gives me 3 dollars off on, and I wear my hand-cut asymmetrical jorts and my Lana hoodie that says “pretty when you cry” and I basically pop off and redefine what it means to be a wine saleswoman in Park Slope.
I bring this up because I was considering assigning a wine pairing to each of The Eight — Samantha a full-bodied Spanish Rioja, Carrie a crisp German Grüner, good for drinking between cigarette drags, Charlotte an Olga Raffault Chardonnay, Miranda a L’Umami Pinot from the Willamette Valley, Hannah a cheap Pinot Grigio, Jessa an expensive funky orange, Shosh a smart twenty-dollar Pet Nat, and Marnie, of course, a Chateau Diana wine product — but then I got to thinking about Sue Sylvester again, and what wine would she be? Probably the most expensive in the shop, some French Champagne that makes the other bottles taste like skunk pee.
I’ve been thinking about the cyclical nature of time, almost feeling like I’ve stepped backwards as I’ve moved forwards, in a way that doesn’t feel regressive but rather pays homage to the parts of my past I want to keep while shedding those that no longer serve me — by all this I mean to say I’m back on an iPhone 6S.
But seriously, it’s haunting how much the past is looming over me lately. Without going too deep into it here, we’re coming up on a year since my father’s death. I’ll talk about that more when I feel ready, but I wanted to note that my dear, dear bestie Peyton Dix threw an event this past Sunday called Daddy Issues, where she had different writers read father-related pieces for Father’s Day. I read The Ache, a piece I wrote for this newsletter last summer at one of the most critical turning points in my entire life thus far. It was extremely emotional, and I wept through the entire thing, and the hot host at The Standard who brought me a glass of water and a tissue is a person I’m still fervently hoping to betrothe myself to by summer’s end. I’m sure there will be more to say about Peyton’s fabulous event soon, photos, videos, I don’t know, but for now just that I love her so much and thank her for trusting me and giving me a safe environment to have that much-needed catharsis on a very painful day. She’s a brilliant writer and friend and person and, to return to my musings on the cyclical nature of time, she knew my Dad well and was there for many of the misadventures alluded to in The Ache.
I live in my new apartment in Brooklyn and I’m loving it. After over a year and a half without a place to call my own, I’m settling down and watering my plants and spray painting my chairs and laying on my shag rug from eighth grade staring up at the pipes on the ceiling and whispering the Lorde lyric “I love this life that I have, the vine hanging over the door” to myself over and over again until my nose bleeds. I’m going for evening jogs and I’m stretching my legs until they crack and pop and I’m getting really drunk at open bars and I’m twisting my innards into confusing curls with anxiety and I’m having uncomfortable awkward interactions (or lack thereof) with gay guys, and I’m surviving and doing my best. For me, right now, life is about embracing cliché, moving through The Hours one at a time, making it from a Tuesday to a Wednesday, not necessarily unscathed, but applying Neosporin to my injuries and taking a deep breath and making some pinto beans and eating some strawberries (with the green part?) and forgiving myself and forgiving others and addressing my problems with people head-on and apologizing for my mistakes while not apologizing for my feelings.
Anyway. Glee is everything, Glee is terrifying, Glee is perhaps the most insane show ever made, it was a delight to talk to Molly about it, she’s truly an exceptional thinker and cultural commentator, and to be honest I was like “Queen, can you be slightly less interesting and hilarious because people are going to wonder why this isn’t your podcast,” and so I highly recommend you go take a listen. I’m a Mercedes/ Santana/ Sue Salesperson, and I hope that you’ll do me a favor and conduct yourself similarly. Oh, and Brittany. Love and respect to our daughter.
And that’s how Sue C’s it.