If We Were Friends...

..these are some miscellaneous things I'd want to chat about (and if we actually are friends, this was a big time saver)

• I tried out a tiny vibrator that goes in your panties and is triggered by a remote control that looks like a car door opener:

It was funny, more like a gag gift than actually erotic – like a handshake buzzer. I wouldn’t recommend, but this was interesting with the vibrator end in another person and thus the “fluttering tongue” sticking out of that person who I was laying on top of. It felt kind of like how how you imagine intercourse will feel before you’ve ever done it. (My stance on vibrators hasn’t changed: I’ll use with another person but not alone because I don’t want to need one to get off. Everyone do what they want though!)

• A timely reminder that women who have been abused can take the Transcendental Meditation course for free, through the David Lynch Foundation. The link is here. Yes, I was gutted by his death and felt connected to him in special way, like so many other people.

• Sheila Heti has a new story in The New Yorker. Always so thrilling to get to read new writing from her very special mind.

• I had a dream last night that I was looking at my composer’s computer desktop and saw something titled “Huebler’s Index”. When I woke up I searched for that phrase and found artist Douglas Huebler, who was dean of Cal Arts when Mike Kelley was a student there. Did I know about Huebler before the dream? I guess on some level, at least collective unconscious style, because this work is part of a series predicated on the (fictive) premise of photographing “everyone alive.” An index, of sorts.

  

  Variable Piece #70 : 1971 (In Process) Global from The Met

  So Huebler’s Index, in my dream, must have been an index of everyone alive, that’s what my composer had on his desktop, or was making music for. And if everyone in your dreams is you (is it?) then really I want to make music for everyone alive. I sort of do.

• In LA we are all confused about if the seemingly clear air is clean enough to breathe and if the water is safe to cook with and bathe in. Some of us have literally left town, others of us are not even remembering to wear a mask most of the time (me). At least one person (also me) bought gas-mask style respirators for herself, her child, her ex, and her girlfriend but then just put them in the highest shelves of the kitchen cupboards, saving them for a real air emergency. If a consensus forms that this is a real air emergency, she will drag a chair over and get them down. Please advise if you know anything.

• Since you are my friend you already know that in the last few months I’ve grown slightly bigger all over and, now that I’ve adjusted, I’m into it. It feels creamy and luxurious like TM and in fact I think it’s a result of putting my entire focus on lowering anxiety over the last seven months, shifting from mind to body (it could also be that I’m almost fifty-one, lol). In any case, I have to get new pants and skirts etc. One thing I am looking for in particular is a replacement for these tap pants that I got a million years ago at American Apparel and are the basis for so many good outfits. Send leads if you have any! Must be black, high-waisted and this kind of brief-style. Not hot pants or shorts, I need the leggggg.

  

• A friend tipped me off to the new Instagram account of the mid-90s band The Need. I was in an early iteration of this band, only because my girlfriend Radio was in it and no one seemed to notice that I couldn’t actually sing or play an instrument. Eventually the band was just two people, Radio Sloan and Rachel Carns. It’s worth a look just to see their incredible style (and the first person I ever fell in love with.)

  

• Speaking of hotties, I see writer and painter Ali Liebegott just started a Substack called Dad Bod. What are some other good Substacks from butch/masc people??

• I wanted to mention that moms with trans kids can always feel free to write me directly. I’m in a group here in LA called Transforming Family but even I feel isolated and have made some panicked phone calls in the last couple months, gathering information to prepare for the next four years. Some of what I’ve learned has reassured me and some has simply given me the ability to act, to move forward on practical things that needed to be put into place asap. I’ve felt lucky to be working as a team with my ex but that has not stopped me from literally walking around in the night crying, once or twice. So reach out if you are anywhere near that place.

• Lastly, a couple little house keeping questions: do you guys mind if I sometimes take comments from the chat and put them here, tagging you? There was a great conversation about sex in your late 50s and 60s, and then another one about kinda wanting to be with women long after marrying a man. I respect that people are opening up in part because it feels safer and more contained (just paid subscribers). But I also want to stir the pot since you core readers are a very smart and sophisticated bunch and everyone can benefit. Also, I’m still on the fence on if I should throw dance videos up here (or maybe in Notes?) or if I should keep that to IG. I appreciate the writerly-ness of this place, that you really don’t even need a picture, and yet having a body is something I sometimes like to do for people, if see you what I mean.

  When my friends and I get off the phone, we always say what we are going to next. So in that tradition: I’m going to do the dishes and generally tidy, throw on some eyeliner and then go on a date to St Vincent de Paul. Keep in touch, I also like to say, with a burst of abandonment fear only tempered by my fear of being trapped on the phone forever. xx mj