What I Eat, Part 3 (but not really)

I veered off here. Nathan Fielder, sex room, fancy clothes, money etc.

A reader wrote to the chat asking how to navigate work after sleeplessness from perimenopause. She writes:

If I have a particularly sleepless night due to Night Sweats or just randomly waking up at 3 AM. I am a total wreck the next day.

Work starts at 7 AM with back to back meetings. It was rough today, I could hardly articulate myself. So relieved they are done! but I wish I could just scream “give me a break. I am physically, cognitively and chemically changing right now. There is a lot going on!”

The group quickly and warmly responded with suggestions (I love the group), but I was reading her comment after my own sleepless night and worried that there was no singing bowl or amount of Progesterone that would help us (and maybe she felt the same, since her question was actually about how to deal with working after not sleeping.) On those days I tend to cancel and push things that I can, but even in my very unique, privileged postion I have to do things I’m not really up to, and make mistakes, and grind through the kind of exhaustion that almost burns, like a sunburn.

There are almost a hundred sleep suggestions in the chat (in respomse to a query from me) and I’ve tried about ten of them in the last couple weeks. The night before last I took the emergency Gabapentin that some of you are on and had my first full night’s sleep in maybe six years, meaning I didn’t even wake up to go to the bathroom. I was ecstatic (though groggy) when I work up and wrote down a bunch of ideas and new perspectives. I would later find out I took triple the dose you’re supposed to, whoops. Here are my notes:

Woke up (from gabapentin, full nights sleep but groggy as fuck) thinking how I could actually post, on IG and substack, a casting call for a man. A butch would be more progressive but a man would be easier on my relationship and also I have a butch. I thought about how I would write the post. How would I put that they need to be able to have sex. DTF? And I could even tag men who I like the look of, famous men (the idea being: I can do anything I want) although it was open to any man, definitely didn't need to be an actor. I could work with a DP and sound person to rig the room for endless (?) recording (remote, like they rig it and leave) and a lighting person to make both of us look beautiful and thus be more comfortable. A lot of the interaction w the man might be about trying to be at ease. We might watch tv in bed. Order food. I could suggest multiple different role-playing scenarios (you give me a massage pretending to be a massuse and then be innsapropriate in how you touch me). We have sex. The whole thing is filmed. I edit it so it's not quite porn and release it on my substack. Control all around and freedom every which way. Could also just shoot on a phone.

Ha, that really makes it sound like I haven’t moved on from Davey, but honestly I think this is more a filmmaking idea. Before bed I had watched the great trailer for Season Two of Nathan Fielder’s show, The Rehearsal, and I went to bed thinking about my version of that sort of thing, working with strangers, non-actors. It often has to do with intimacy. I exchanged clothes with an audience member, undressing together behind a screen, at this event in Portland last month.

His name was Jesús; I chose him for his great outfit. Very kind and respectful. Thank you, Jesús!

Kind of wild the photographer was shooting behind the screen — did he shoot us in our underwear? I hope not but also I would want to see those pictures. Photos by Mario Gallucci, who I have no hard feelings towards, for PAM CUT.

Most of my dreams are sex dreams so I often wake up with a kind of slanted sense of reality that diffuses over the course of the morning. (I’ve learned not to reach out to anyone from my past before noon.) (I feel I should add that I’m not this interested in sex when I’m awake. The endless sex dreams might be something deep and pyschological or they might have to do with how my bladder sits on my cervix.) In any case, it’s a little hard to get back in the head space of this idea written-upon-waking-and-drugged, but I like the sense of freedom, like I'm an actual goddess who can do anything she wants with no shame or fear. Here are the ideas that came after it:

I pay two readers to write guest posts: one post from a broke woman all about her money and finances, how she lives, and similarly one post from very rich woman about her finances and how she lives. Since no one talks about money and that doesn’t help anyone (except maybe the very rich.)

I’m trying to learn about money these days; I pay a woman to teach me about it and advise me financially. It’s possible I wouldn’t have to pay for it if everyone would just tell me exactly what they do, how they spend and save and budget etc. This topic is even more siloed than the inner workings of everyone’s relationships and the two things dovetail in a way that doesn’t help women. Keeps them paralyzed and believing that the reality they are in is the only one.

Film trying to pick outfit for the gala.

This one is just fun. Maybe on the day I’m trying on a bunch of fancy, loaned outfits I should film and post, because some of these pieces are actual works of art and while I ultimately have to pick one, I’m always amazed I even get to touch all these clothes (actually often I don’t. Often another celeb has just worn the outfit publicly, and even when I say Who cares? I can’t have it. Or, more often, the outfit is already loaned to another, bigger, celeb. Almost anyone would be bigger. Why is there only one of the outfit? Is there really only one or is this just a polite way of saying No, you are not fancy enough and seem sort of off somehow. We heard about the sex room film idea.) Anyway, it’s a sublime pleasure to see these clothes up close. (There might be rule against filming this, I have to check.)

Basically just do anything I want for ss. Why have I made these rules. SS should be an exercise in breaking them

If there is a point to this post, it’s that. I pray that this last point sticks. That I stop feeling like I have to post twice a week and in a familiar and consistent manner. Everytime I stray from this regularity I lose hundreds of followers and that’s stressful, financially. But it’s not going to work, creatively, if I approach substack like other people do. I need to post too much, too little, strangely, I can’t spell, whatever and yes, thousands of people who don’t know much about me will stop their subscriptions, worried they are not getting enough value, and that’s ok, that’s their right. I’m financially stable now; I don’t have to have scarcity mindset.

I started writing this at 4:30am, after taking the correct amount of Gabapentin. Too bad. It would have been nice to know I had an emergency pill that wasn’t an opiate.

In closing, here are some recipes. This part was going to be more filled out, with links (and desserts) but I’m not in the mood so I just put what I had and elaborated on the ending:

Sometimes I’ll sit down and pick three recipes from the internet and put all the new ingredients into my cart when I’m ordering groceries (yes, I order them almost every time. I’m much more likely to eat like this if I shop like this) before re-upping on all the usual staple items. And sometimes I’m not up to that and I’ll just throw some random proteins and vegtables into the cart and then find a (mostly) fitting recipe after. Both ways feel pretty impressive to me, as does squeezing a meal out of the odds and ends of a barren kitchen, like half a lemon, can of tuna, an old apple, etc.

Here are some favorite recipes:

There were going to be five pictures here, of all the meals, but gabapentinm sex room etc.

Tom Kha, Coconut Miso Salmon Curry, Asparagus, Spinach and Leek Soup, Three-Cup Chicken

Alison Roman's Internet Famous Spiced Chickpea Stew (this one I got from one of the cooking nannies. Eating their food taught me a lot, a little like being reparented, food-wise.)

I also make shreded chicken tacos and use the Kitchen Aid my gf got me for Christmas to shred the chicken in seconds (have yet to do anything else with the Kitchenaid but open to ideas!)

Pesto from the store + cannelini beans + greens. No recipe there, and so great when you’re tired.

Also this ragù recipe that I made for my friend Augusta the other day. I miss you Augusta! Augusta is in China now, for work. And she’ll still be there next Thursday when the 34% tariff on all U.S. goods begins, China’s response to Trump’s tariffs. A (war) plan he made spontaneously, consulting no one, probably after taking a lot more Gabepentin than I did the other night. My Nathan Fielder sex film might not be bulletproof, but at least it won’t crash the stock market and throw us into a recession.

See you at the nationwide protest today, x,

mj