It’s Friday, y’all

And this is the day I usually forget I do a every-weekday newsletter. NOT THIS TIME, BITCHES. I am large and in charge and in your inboxes. Super excited about this weekend. Lots of great friend time before my local boo gets back into town.

Last night I was reunited with my clique after being in SF, and we were at a bar and I was not having a great time and wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t a bad time, I just wasn’t fully engaged save for small intense conversations. Then we got back to the house we chill at. I sparked a bowl. I took my shoes off and put a blanket over my lap and suddenly we were yelling and being weird and making crazy jokes and references and it was absolutely wonderful. It was everything I’d missed.

I’m reading a lot, well, more than I was before, of Sweet Talk Conversation lately.  I guess I’ll point you to this post. It’s a tough blog to read because it’s very self-referential. And some of their authors like to skip the part where they actually explain their premises and just go straight to the conclusion assuming that you’ve recently studied X author, have a great memory, and have been reading every Sweet Talk post for years. Ahem. Some of their writers are better than others about that. I adore Paul Crider in a way that’s unusual for me. I love him almost like I love Alana Massey. The reasons are very different, but the enthusiasm and unreservedness of my love are similar.

After fangirling over her, I decided to make sure I hadn’t missed her latest column. I had. Fuck you Google for killing Reader. And no Feedly isn’t a good-enough replacement. The post is about how friends treat you when you’re single vs in a relationship. But I keep getting distracted reading it thinking about generally being single vs being in a relationship.

I’m finally coming around to the idea that even if I have a group of amazing friends, and great, but far-flung lovers, and access to sex locally, that I still feel like I am missing something if I don’t have someone locally who I am emotionally invested in and having sex with. Every fiber of my being rebels against the idea that I would want a boyfriend. Gah, how banal. How basic. It’s been a tremendous effort to just accept that that’s a thing I wanted. It’s terrifying to accept that this person in my life is not someone I can take or leave and it be all the same to me. I really fucked up previous interactions by putting so much effort into pretending I wanted less than I did. Sometimes trying to act myself into right thinking is alienating to the people around me, so I’m trying to find the right balance.

Okay, what I’m reading. I’m reading my friend @CoryMassimino sum up this election perfectly: “The right is torn between orange Hitler and two first generation Americans who get hard ons for deporting/blowing up brown people.”

I’m not even sure where to start with the Trump staffer who pulled Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields to the ground, bruising her arm. I guess I’ll say that it’s probably best for a free society for politicians’ staffers to not feel free to physically assault journalists. On the plus side, Breitbart suspended her colleague Patrick Howley after he accused her of lying about the incident. Full disclosure I’ve met both of these people and Howley can fuck right off.

“It seems that despite high-profile transgender activism and the brave new world of gender-neutral pronouns, most Americans are still clinging to a binary, essentialist view of gender that ascribes agency and leadership traits to men and nurturing, emotional tendencies to women.” From Gender Stereotypes Have Budged Little Since the Early ’80s: American perceptions about male and female roles, traits, and behaviors show little change since 1983. The latest in “things I could have told you but it’s cool that science is backing up.”

This is what kills me about alt-right edgelords going on and on about “PC culture.” Except in very rare situations (like very liberal college campuses and, nope, that’s about it) most people are very, very un-PC most of the time. Even young people. Read the write-up. You’re not being “edgy” by clinging to ideas that are the norm, and have been the norm for a long, long time. That is in fact the opposite of edgy. You are not brave or interesting for holding a binary, essentialist view of gender.

Okay, so a bit of good news: Utah fails to recriminalize polygamy! Both of the above by, and via, respectively, my beautiful friend and co-conspirator Liz Nolan Brown.