When you think of cannibals, which for everyone’s sake I hope isn’t often, you might think of the pioneering Donner family crossing mountainous terrain and faced with an unthinkable decision. Jeffrey Dahmer, too, is a popular readymade. But no matter how you slice it, the gays really can be cannibals. Last week, I had to choose between food and a haircut, and I went with the haircut because it had been four months since my last. A gay on social media took to my DMs to shame me for such an extravagance, then asked who paid for my trip to the barber then declared my memoir “terrible.” He obviously trolled deep and hard, which indicates some sick fascination or borderline obsession more than hatred or contempt. Opinions are like assholes, and some of those holes need to be plugged. Bless him, and change me. Jesus.
Regardless, in a world where everyone’s increasingly out to get theirs, let’s try and be supportive and constructive forces in each other’s lives. Even the most modest attempt at fostering some sense of shared reality and understanding will go a long way in building a better world. And who doesn’t want that? (rhetorical)
A note on the evolution of this newsletter’s design: If Elon can do it, so can I. Why stick to one aesthetic or set brand expression, when really a multi-weekend yard sale (or a 24-hr junque shoppe) is a better representation of a newsletter who’s still finding itself? After all, the Feral Fringe is a place that’s ever-changing — a place for experimentation and where failure is a teacher. It’s a place for making the most of your circumstances and where healthy, rigorous (but respectful) discourse can lead to healing.
Breathing and bending are two things I often forget how to do, as I re-learn the basics and un-learn a whole host of other things on the daily.
And finally, if you’re in a position to do so, please consider supporting this project by upgrading to any paid subscription. Thank you for seeing my humanity, which has felt constantly under assault the past few years. Being able to share my story will hopefully help others who also struggle with finding their voice. While the world becomes a place unlike anything we’ve ever known, it’s important to create spaces that uplift, celebrate, and re-imagine the idea of otherness. I’m grateful to Substack for providing such a platform.
We all have one. Whether it’s a kitchen drawer, a plastic bin, a cardboard box, or a New Yorker tote, the cords of our lives and lifetimes find their way into an inevitable tangle.
Place of Worship: The Charging Altar
Incense smoke wafts through the spacious teepee, which is where patrons come to grab a CBD beverage and plug in low-battery devices somewhere between the day’s second and fifth ’fits. You might light up the smudge stick while you wait, or strike up a chat with Fred Armisen, who’s already on can three of the latest lifestyle infusion. There’s a cluster of chairs around a small table where a few people are gathered. What appears to be a bowl of holy water sits alongside a potted cactus amid a mess of plugs and wires.
I pray this is a subversive Miranda July-flavored commentary on how to keep twee in late stage capitalism but fear the water-electricity-spirituality combo is something else. A laser-etched Steve Jobs stoically looks over the scene from the inside of his commemorative acrylic block, surrounded by a garden of semi-precious stones, crystals, and charging cubes. This is the VIP experience at your favorite music festival.
The first one I can remember doing was probably the most effective. It was also the most damaging. The formula was something simple, along the lines of multiply the calories by 6 and divide by the total grams of fat (I can’t remember exactly but don’t necessarily want to). The result was a number whose value dictated whether or not a food item should ever touch your bitter, white-knuckling, fat-starving lips. Who knew that a woman with a platinum blonde buzzcut and crazy eyes would leave such a lasting impact on my life, but Susan Powter has. What started as the careful counting of calories and number-crunching using her sinister equation — which basically told you nothing was safe to eat — became full-blown anorexia by the age of 13.
My mother had found some success doing Weight Watchers early on. I remember her losing enough weight to feel excited about my dad’s company Christmas party, for which she wore a new permed up-do and a cropped sequined blouse that really accentuated her boobies. This was around the time of Oprah’s first major weight loss. She showed us how simple and easy dieting could be. What my mother and I didn’t have was a team of 20, but we set out toward thinner horizons nonetheless. The summer between eighth and ninth grades, I lost nearly 60 pounds thanks to Susan’s foolproof formula and entered high school at my leanest and most svelte ever, fitting into a size 29 waist pair of Girbauds like nobody’s business. Over the next two years, my weight fluctuated wildly while my mother’s simply increased. We tried the South Beach diet, the grapefruit diet, more Weight Watchers, some Jenny Craig.
At the end of the day, it was hard to innovate past beanie weenies and fried potatoes. We leaned in to creature comforts like Doris Day and Rock Hudson Saturdays, and during summer break, we indulged in two glorious hours of our soaps, As the World Turns (hers) and Guiding Light (mine). We were never happier.
On a gorgeous day not so long ago, I realized that I haven’t been living — not for real and certainly not fully. Here I was, a fractional person who’d stopped aiming for wholeness, settling instead for something semi and dim. I couldn’t say for sure. In that moment, I hadn’t a clue as to my values or my boundaries. As for my place in the world, whether or not I even wanted one anymore became the burning question in my mind.
I chowed down a Fruity Pebbles Rice Krispie treat and ventured up Cricket Hill. I laid on my back staring skyward while a buzzy drone positioned itself directly overhead — the sounds of people playing, cavorting, and summering muffled by the aircraft’s whirring parts. Feeling surveilled, I fled my hilltop perch and made my way to the lakefront. It was a total zoo, but instead of panic, a tidal wave of grief consumed me. Here were families gathered to cook meats on tiny portable grills, groups of friends drinking canned hard seltzers fetched from styrofoam coolers, and shirtless himbos volleying for various things. Just how much I had become not a part of anything became heartbreakingly apparent. My loneliness stood front and center.
I picked a bouquet of wildflowers for my friend, whose birthday I’d missed the day prior. I laid the arrangement of purple coneflower, black-eyed Susan, thistle, and prairie dropseed next to a tree in the park and whispered “I’m sorry” into the wind.
