It's all ephemera

Nothing matters, and yet...

I’m opening this – the first edition of Shelf Life – with a disclaimer: I don’t have a plan for this space. No rules of engagement, clear topics or themes I want to explore, even a format I expect it to take. Maybe it will be stream of consciousness void-screaming, or lyrical snapshots of simple moments in my quiet little life, or hot takes on the latest discourse (don’t get me started on Man’s Best Friend). In any case, it’s all ephemera – urgent and fleeting and entirely temporary. Everything has a shelf life. Nothing matters, and yet… what’s the point of keeping it in?

Since we don’t quite know where we’re headed, let’s start with how we got here:

For months, I’ve been dropping hints that I want to be writing more often, especially to fellow writer friends. They have been kind, patient, and encouraging, inviting me to workshops, author talks, and book clubs, and asking to read whatever I’ve got. And I keep skirting them, albeit subconsciously, feeling deeply and viscerally “not ready.”

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I was sitting at the Botanic Gardens with a friend, exchanging book titles, analyzing Season 2 of The Last of Us, catching up on almost eight months of life lived between visits. I admire the way she spends her time — crafting cat sculptures and noodle mugs with her own hands, competing in a bowling league, trying to out-garden her neighbors who outsource the best parts of the work. She has long-abandoned Instagram, which means there’s no way for us to feel like we’ve caught up without actually putting in the time. As she took down notes in her phone of all of my recommendations, she suggested I start a newsletter to spread the good word. It’s not the first time I’ve considered it, but it is the first time anyone’s ever asked for it specifically.

Rory, on the other hand, has been begging me to write a book for the entire 12 years we’ve been partnered. They’ve gotten tired of my shit and, being a Virgo, finally put a deadline on it. The first three chapters are due on their birthday — about two months from now. One would think I’d take that as a cue to get my ass in gear and hunker down, not to split my focus between projects. While I don’t half-ass anything, I think in this case whole-assing is going to look like writing often, about a lot of different things, and to some semblance of an audience to get my flow back.

So I’m working to overcome perhaps my biggest growth edge — getting comfortable sharing the unpolished, imperfect, messy middle, rather than squirreling my words away in the darkest corners of my Google Drive. And here we are, in this gentle forcing function we’ll call accountability.

When I thought about what I wanted to say — and especially the tone I would set in my first post (the pressure!) — my instinct was to acknowledge the things that weigh heavy on my heart: the Chump administration removing specialized LGBTQ+ services from the national crisis hotline, and the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a ban on gender affirming healthcare for trans youth, and ICE terrorizing and detaining immigrants all over the country, and all of the fucking unrelenting bombs and and and. They are telling us, in no uncertain terms, that they want us dead — by our own hands would be even more convenient. The cruelty is the point. There will be time to dig into all of that, but we don’t have to start there today.

Instead I’ll share that, after all that dodging of any kind of commitment to picking up the practice of writing again, I recently joined a queer, creative nonfiction workshop led by a brilliant writer, community organizer, and dear friend (who you can also follow here!). Following discussions of works from Akwake Emezi and Carvell Wallace, they offered a few prompts, including one that felt like it was just for me: “What does your gender taste like?” (little known fact: for a final project in college I handed in a playlist of songs that captured my gender at the time). My riff feels like a more authentic way to end this introduction to Shelf Life, hopefully giving some insight into who you’ll get to know if you decide to hang around these parts:

Sticky sweet, like macerated berries, sugar gritty on smooth edges as it buries deep under the skin. The flavor of a primary color, nature’s truest pigments, simple and objective – like an ice-pop called only by its hue, capturing its essence so much more aptly than the pseudonym “cherry” or “blue raspberry” (whatever that means). Summer heat, salty and forbidden, an intimacy I can only achieve when no one is watching, the curl of my tongue reaching just beyond my top lip, a reminder that I am mostly water, essentially ocean.

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The Mix Tape

Since I’m thinking of this channel as something of a mix tape — personal and chaotic and meant to be shared — and music is so central to how I make sense of what it means to be alive on this planet, I think I’ll sign off with some recommendations:

i quit - HAIM

This album is giving slutty Lou Reed summer — the simple grounding bass lines, raw but somehow disaffected lyrics, like if a beat poet and a valley girl had bastard pop children (clearly a good thing!). With a little Sheryl Crow flair, the Haim sisters aren’t trying to hide how constantly and unavoidably in-relation-to-one-another we are, but as the title of the album suggests, we’re done giving a damn and we’re “down to be wrong, don’t need to be right.” We are so back.

Echo - Oliva Dean

This song just might be the antithesis of the “i quit” ethos, but there’s something so sexy about a soft, crooning, desperate plea for mutual affection. Isn’t that what we’re all doing here? Living and dying to be seen, known, and held. “No man’s an island, do you not see that I need you as you need me?”