A Summer Outfit Recommendation

And four examples of how that outfit performs in real-life situations

This is a video-heavy post even though I know everyone prefers writing to video on here. I feel the same way! But the reality is I am not only a writer (I’m also a doctor and a cunt. A lesbian and a lifter. A straight girl waving hello. Two tons of Agedashi tofu, my favorite Japanese appetizer).

The outfit:

I guess dressing is the same as any other kind of improvisation, like writing or dance — every once in a while it comes easily and a new outfit is born with no effort. Summer dressing is so hard that I felt it was my public duty to share the look:

I think this has all-summer-long potential. Once I wore a baggy, brown bathing suit from the 1930s for a whole summer in Portland (but I was 20 and more punk then.) If you do end up wearing the same outfit all summer, then you will be able to edit all your summer videos into a movie that takes place in a single day, with perfect costume continuity.

I thought of doing that when I realized that the last few days had organically produced alot of videos in the same outfit. (But instead, this post.)

The outfit while looking for the source of a terrible smell in my studio:

Like a lot of people, I sometimes have to film myself to get through hard things, video as a mechanical dissociation assist. And when looking for dead rats, I always sing Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, which is all the words I know to that song. Actually, this began years ago: I used to sing it while making a difficult left turn on the drive to school. I think it was a way to show my child that Mommy wasn’t stressed at all, she had this. I am holding my nose in this rendition because of the smell.

I couldn’t find the rat, but my brand-new assistant did, later. I started to scoot it into the dustpan with an old squeegee, but the rat kind of fell apart as I did that (I hadn’t been in my office for a few weeks). I really thought I could just power through, but I began gagging and had to go outside and regroup for a moment. My tyrant brain could not order my body around; it revolted! It was honestly kind of reassuring to see I had a mind-body connection at all.

Ultimately, I had to sing the song again and have my assistant video, in order to get through it (which was a lot for Day Two of a new job, sorry Scottie!). I’m not posting that video because it’s too gross. (For the record, I am working on improving my live/work environment; everything is on the verge of getting really beautiful. But this has been my office for 22 years and honestly rats are everywhere in this world.) Scottie wisely said: And that’s just the dumbest rat. The smarter ones are still alive.

I did send the video to my girlfriend, but she had trouble understanding what she was looking at

The outfit while having a couch delusion:

Ok, this next video is a deep cut, a follow-up to something that happened a year ago. If for some reason you were following my home improvement Instagram stories (for my new post-marriage rental), then you’ll recall that there was a couch on Facebook Marketplace that I was obsessed with but the seller wouldn’t write me back, and then one of my followers messaged me that she had actually gotten the couch.

That happened in January 2024, but last week this same woman messaged me that now she was selling the couch. I already have a couch by now, but I couldn’t resist seeing it in real life and meeting her. She and her husband were so nice; they were getting ready to have a baby and I could have talked to them all day (and in fact stayed for way too long, asking them everything about their lives). The couch was so strikingly different in my memory of the picture that I actually asked if it was the same couch and the woman was like, That would be really psychotic of us, to try to pass off a different couch? And I said, Right, right, I’m being paranoid. At the start of this video you can hear her saying, No, it’s the same couch… and then politely suggesting reasons why I might be having this switched-couch delusion.

I just texted her and, good news, the couch is now sold. If you’re the one who bought it, DM me and we’ll just keep this thing going forever. Before I left, her husband gave me a bottle of olive oil; his side hustle is working on his stepfather’s olive farm, Brosius Family Farms. I’m almost halfway done with the bottle, good stuff.

The outfit while introducing a movie:

The next video was made for the IFC Center; they were about to screen Me and You and Everyone We Know (my first movie) for their 20 year anniversary and asked if I would record an intro. I trimmed this, but you get the idea. It must have been interesting for the audience to go from this video to the movie, with me suddenly 20 years younger.

Obviously should have shot that (and all of these videos) horizontally.

The outfit while the child is my legs:

Lastly, we have a video made by my child. They have a real knack for coming up with cool ways to shoot things. This was the first of many experiments with their mirror split-screen (but the only one without their face).

Curious what your summer outfit is and hoping you understand that I, like you, am trying to find joy where I can, amid daily chaos — personal, national, regional. While I was writing this, a neighbor’s house caught on fire; I was alerted to this by the woman next door screaming Fire! and then all the other neighbors screaming Fire! Fire! to spread the word until we were all out of our houses. I ran back in again to grab “important documents” (which later turned out to be some expired passports and the instructions for the blender). But there was no wind so it didn’t spread; the firefighters got it out. As they mostly actually do, all day and night, all over the city.

Let’s hear about those summer outfits!