Hello my darlings! My name is Raquel. I am a moody writer navigating the awkward world of books. Come here to watch me crack a few jokes at my own expense and otherwise fuel my compulsive need to write everyday.
As many of you know, each year I do a photoshoot with my best friend Padgett. We take photos that make their way into my holiday cards and onto this blog.
It’s always so much fun coming up with how I’m going to do it. I get to pick an aesthetic, I flip through magazines to get inspired, I make a playlist, and I try to cajole my cat into taking one decent photo with me (which goes about as well as it sounds).
This is what we managed to come up with:
A classic black and white photo on a black and white tile floor:
Here’s how they stack up to the black and white photos of years past:
Processed with VSCO with kc25 preset
Here’s the best photo I was able to get of Calypso and me:
Some random photos:
Some BTS photos:
Every year, the front of the card is a royal portrait and every year the back is something fun that I did the year before. This year, I went with a photo of myself at the Golden Gate Bridge, a shot of my beloved cat, and a picture of myself on the cover.
I hope that many of you received a card in the mail, probably getting to you well after all of the holidays are completed.
Happy New Year!
The Tragic Queen,
Raquel
P.S.: Check out my post on all of the books that I read throughout the end of the year.
FCC: psst! As an Amazon Affiliate I earn money off each qualifying purchase. Embedded in the book titles are links to a place where you can purchase a book and I will get a commission. Buy yourself something pretty.
This year, my goal was to read 50 books, nearly one for each week of the year. Instead, I blew that out of the water with a whomping 62 books.
Most of the 62 books
This list is an amalgamation of what I had to read for school, New York Times Bestsellers, and whatever I purchase off the guy who sells books on the street near my apartment.
Hopefully, I won’t ruin any of your favorite novels while recommending you your new favorite one.
You kids enjoy…
Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier–This book is awesome. A pregnant 18 year old pizza delivery girl becomes fascinated by an eccentric mother who buys the same pickle-covered pizza for her son every week. It is at times melancholic, making you feel for the desperate people who were struggling in very real ways as the novel careens toward its inevitable ending.
Twisted Love by Anna Huang– Y’all need therapy. The male love interest belongs on a watch list and I would have had a restraining order against him by page 40. He spends the entire novel policing the main female character’s sexuality under the guise that he has to “look out for her because she can’t look out for herself.” He protects her from an abusive stalker by being an abusive stalker himself. He belongs in prison and that’s where he would be if he wasn’t rich or white. The female character is an absolute doormat and allows this to go on without sticking up for herself and I’m so disappointed that this depiction of women persists in so many examples of contemporary women’s narrative fiction. This novel also brings all of the melodrama. From a crafts perspective, it is poorly-written and meets the skill level of a YA novel, reading like a first draft, but no one is reading this novel “for the craft.” That would be like reading Playboy for the articles. Oh and one of the main character’s best friends is a princess.
Coco at the Ritz by Gioia Diliberto– this is an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny novel about Coco Chanel’s Nazi ties. It is a fictionalized dramatization about what Coco Chanel may have been up to during the Nazi occupation of France, which has been the subject of much speculation over the years. Meticulously researched, this novel does not stray away from investigating her sordid relationship with a known Nazi, slotting in nicely with our modern-day discussions about complicated legacies. It recognizes Coco Chanel as the creative genius who popularized the Little Black Dress, costume jewelry, sun tans, female suits, and not wearing evening gloves, all of which have changed my day-to-day life, but characterizes her Nazism far too gently in my opinion. You can enjoy it as the rompy and entertaining book that it is, or you can question the ethics of taking the spectacle of a person and relitigating history through them. It depicts Chanel as a complicated woman, but this posthumous defense is nullified by the fact that Coco Chanel was an anti-semite before, after, and during this time in her life, calling into question how much it even matters if you clear her name of Nazi-sympathies. You decide for yourself whether or not it matters.
The Margot Affair by Sanae Lemoine–I nearly closed the book on the third page when I encountered the first line of dialogue that didn’t have quotation marks. But I was the one who paid for the book, so I kept reading. I understood at times why she omitted the quotation marks, although I still disapproved. The characters kept talking, passing the narrative baton to whatever character was speaking, thereby transforming the novel briefly into an omniscient narrative that dips into everyone’s perspective. This blurs the line between a character speaking and experiencing the story that the character is describing, as the characters speak in a way that no one ever talks; every person you encounter is not going to describe a beautiful, lush scene in vivid detail, using the same linguistic style and tone of voice. I think that this is just Lemoine playing around with form and I will be forgiving, because as I have learned, this is really, really hard.
Highlands High by Victoria Okonek– My coworker self-published a YA book that she asked me to read. It is a proper teen angst book, like if Jay Asher and Laurie Halse Anderson had a love child. It was a quick read, making it a great choice for what to buy your teenage reader.
Summer Sisters by Judy Blume–If you have any strong, negative feelings about Judy Blume, keep them to yourself. This bitch helped raise me. Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret was a rite of passage for me and so many other girlies over the decades. Tiger Eyes traumatized and educated me in equal measure (I learned the word rape from this book at age ten). Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing made me feel an unnecessary amount of hurt and then there were all of the other Fudge and Sheila Tubman books, which dominated my bookshelf when I was ten. So, when I learned that a few years ago, she’d published another book that hit number one on the New York Times Bestseller’s List, I snatched it up in a heartbeat. The main character Vix experiences the biggest twist in fate when she befriends Caitlin, the most popular girl at school, setting into motion a series of events that promises to change the course of both of their lives forever. Years later, their friendship has fizzled, but they come together for a reunion. With this novel, Judy Blume did what she does best: writing a coming-of-age-novel about young girls who are waiting with bated breath for their breasts and sex lives to begin. It’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret but with teeth, as she takes a look at privilege, the different directions life can take, and the choices that befall women and girls.
No One Left to Come Looking for You by Sam Lipsyte– This falls into that genre of white suburban kid that wasn’t hugged enough as a child and no that’s not a criticism. It depicts what I imagine was a big part of life in the 90s and 2000s. I swear sometimes, all of my professors had the exact same adolescence: one where dabbling in the world of punk rock and the pseudo-politics it spouts was the height of cool.
The Ask by Sam Lipsyte– Is a novel about that time in your life when you have accepted that you will never be a great artist, despite it being what you worked toward in college and believed with every fiber of your being. Somewhat of a have and have-not story that takes a look at a crumbling marriage and the disappointments of life.
The Wildest Sun by Asha Lemmie– As you all should know, Asha is my friend from Columbia, making me super biased in my review of her sophomore novel. This book made me want to read Hemingway. It also made me want to travel to Cuba. And Paris. Anyone who reads this book will know what I’m talking about, as it is a love letter to all of the above. It is a story about a woman plotting her own course through life and has a satisfying, rewarding ending for the protagonist in which she gets her cake and eats it too.
Good Morning, Destroyer of Men’s Souls by Nina Renata Aron– This book, with its slightly clickbaity name, is actually a memoir about “women, addiction, and love” by its own description. It looks at what it means to have a partner and a family member who is an addict, the angle of which is the gendered expectation of women and girls as caregivers, priming them to be codependent. By comparing her devotion to her drug addict partner, she highlights the intersection of codependency and addiction, as she struggles to stop enabling her boyfriend’s behavior.
The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth– I don’t mind work that is deeply offensive when it is in the service of making a broader point. This novel, in which a man fantasizes that the hot woman working in the house that he is staying in is actually Anne Frank after she faked her own death, falls into the category of offensive-but-for-the-sake-of-a-good-story. It isn’t just there to make people squirm. What is the point he’s trying to make, you ask? Read it and decide for yourself.
That Time of Year by Marie N’Diaye– similar to The Castle by Kafka in the way that the story’s meandering flow makes you realize that the protagonist isn’t going to get where they need to go and neither are you, as the reader.
Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns– This novel was read for my “Elastic Realities” class, in which I had to read about the vastly different worlds we all live in. This book was no exception. Please read and let me know what you think happened to the grandmother. I have my theory.
The Ravickians by Renee Gladman–all about language and architecture and society. This book doesn’t just do world building; it is world building.
The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante– I need friends who have read this book so that I can discuss the ending with them. What was up with the ending? (not that I dislike it)
Bad Cree by Jessica Johns– If you don’t enjoy dream sequences in novels then don’t read this book. It is chock full of them. A young Cree woman wakes up with the severed head of a bird in her hand after waking up from a terrifying dream. Her dreams continue and in order to make them stop, she needs to confront her past family trauma.
Luster by Raven Leilani– I love a good messy woman story. Edi, a self-proclaimed “office slut,” embarks on an affair with her coworker in an open marriage and finds herself in the unique position to help raise his adoptive daughter who has no other Black influences in her life.
Duplex by Kathryn Davis– When reading this novel, it’s hard to find your footing. There’s an elusive narrator, an amorphous plot, and the fact that the novel never feels the need to explain itself. The novel’s robots, centaurs, fairies, and sorcerers are all treated with a “nothing to see here” attitude. On top of all of this, the novel has a strong American lilt, emphasizing the suburban setting, which lends itself to the title. This is not a skimmable book. If you zone out while reading and miss the wrong sentence, you will be lost at sea.
Elizabeth of East Hampton by Audrey Bellezza and Emily Harding–A modern day Pride & Prejudice. With sex. Lots of sex. It gets a lot of things right: the embarrassing family, Elizabeth Bennett’s confidence, Mary’s sanctimoniousness. The Pride. The Prejudice. It is extremely clever, taking place in the Hamptons.
Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby– In this essay collection, Irby dissects the intricacies of porn, gives forensic detail analysis to the show Sex and the City, discusses the trials and tribulations of being a dog mom to an unruly dog, exposes the lack of bladder control as you approach middle age, and takes a look at overly-elaborate lingerie, all with a no-holds barred attitude. She is unyielding in her frankness. This is the first book I have ever read that made me have to pee. Do with that what you will.
Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls–A story about profound loneliness. A woman falls in love with a sea monster in what was clearly the basis for the film The Shape of Water. Oddly, this novel reminded me of Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell, in the way that it shows the unfulfilling life of a housewife, albeit in the most interesting way possible.
Love by Hanne Ørstavik– This book, with its extremely ambitious title, is a Norwegian novel about a mother-son duo. It will make you feel cold in 90 degree weather as the author describes the Norwegian winter. This novel was depressing.
Henry and June by Anais Nin–“A desire for orgies.” This comes up frequently in this memoir, which is a diary of the year that author Anais Nin spent having an affair with Henry Miller and his wife June. There is much about being a writer, being a woman, and exploring your sexuality.
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me by Adrienne Brodeur– Having finished this book on December 30th, I was able to get it in under the wire as my final book of 2024. Brodeur was right about one thing; her relationship with her mother was “wild.” It is hard to conceive of a mother as self-absorbed as the narrator’s, as she unwittingly drags her 14 year old daughter into her extramarital affair with her husband’s best friend, making her daughter a co-conspirator in all of her life’s problems.
Usually when it’s beginning to look like Christmas, this fact brings joy. Instead, once you’re an adult– and you’re no longer waiting up at night to try and get a peek at Santa– Christmas becomes more about your dwindling bank account and the family members you still haven’t bought any gifts for.
Cats break beloved Christmas tree ornaments. Every song on the radio is either a Christmas carol from the fifties that you’ve heard a thousand times before with dated lyrics like “take a look in the five and ten” and “children will listen” or a modern pop monstrosity that is basically Silent Night with a beat behind it.
The instinct to just get through the season takes over.
The moment that it’s time to buy something for my family members, they suddenly become humble beggars who couldn’t possibly ask for anything, giving me no clue as to what I should buy them for Christmas.
In the days leading up to Christmas, I want to be cocooned in a warm house, tripping over presents in my living room and drinking out of a highball.
Instead I find myself rushing to finish work before the year ends, putting together last minute holiday cards, sniffling through a head cold, ugly crying at It’s A Wonderful Life and The Family Stone, and then wondering how I’ll ever pay down my credit card once the holidays end. I’m like a woman in a Hallmark film who needs to be taught “the reason for the season” by a guy in a flannel shirt in my hometown.
Then Christmas day comes and the whole thing is like a pregnancy: you forget about all of the agony that came with bringing it to fruition and the whole thing suddenly is a beautiful, life-affirming experience you would do all over again.
For me, it’s not Christmas until Linus explains the true meaning of Christmas to me. There’s nothing like a kids Christmas special that tackles seasonal depression and commercialism, like the Charlie Brown Christmas Special does. Even if you don’t think that that is the true meaning of Christmas, I always love at the end when Linus says “peace, goodwill towards men.”
Happy holidays to this queen who insisted on getting in my selfie
In all seriousness though, I love Christmas time and I love my family, who always make it special. I sat on my couch on Christmas morning, hemmed in by a bunch of really great gifts, because I am not a humble beggar who has any problem asking for what she wants.
So happy holidays. I hope you have peace, and goodwill towards men (and women and those outside the binary).
The Tragic Queen,
Raquel
P.S.: Check out how I kicked off the holiday season, when I went to go and see my first ever burlesque show.
Before going home for the holidays, I watched my first ever burlesque show at The Slipper Room on the Lower East Side.
It was a festive holiday burlesque show, presided over by a woman wearing a thong and knee-high socks, who was ready to show us “the reason for the season.”
This was not the kind of burlesque show where the women wore Santa hats and have tassels hanging from their nipples, but the kind where the women do trapeze stunts over the audience.
I spent the evening with a good cocktail and a nice date, watching half-naked women fling themselves through the air like it was nothing and then unravel onto the stage.
My favorite performer was a woman who was dressed like Eve, which is to say that she was in a nude bodysuit wrapped in fake ivy, as she swung from the rafters with an apple in her mouth while the song “MOTHER ATE” played. For those unfamiliar, MOTHER ATE contains the lyrics “crazy how the very first sin was a woman who ate” and “devoured, no crumbs left in sight.”
Another woman hung from her hair and acted like it was nothing, even though I had a headache just looking at her.
I felt like I did when I was 14 and watched a street performer in Italy hula-hoop with a ring that was lit on fire. I was impressed by the talent and the artistry, with a dangerous sense of “I could do that.”
“I could wind up in the hospital” is more likely.
There was a puppet show. The poodle puppet was wearing cheetah print pants, a cheetah print coat, and black, knee-high boots. I have that exact outfit at home.
I’d had other plans for the night and seeing the burlesque show ended up being my back up. It’s not often that you think you’re going to see a movie and then end up watching women hanging from silks while a Chapell Roan song plays.
“All of this has something to do with a girl named Marla Singer.”
–Fight Club
Halloween when you’re a child is one night of the year and it’s the highpoint of your calendar. Halloween when you’re in college is a month of festivities every weekend once you hit October. By the end of the month, you’re pining for the next holiday.
For Halloween this year, I went as Marla Singer from Fight Club.
My brother and I watched Fight Club when we were in middle school after we found it on TV and caught hell from our mother for being up so late watching TV.
I read the book in high school but didn’t finish it.
The reference photo
One of my teachers told me that it would be hard to read a book about how capitalism was destroying our society when you still listen to One Direction.
Regardless, I went as Marla. I love a messy female character, which makes Helena Bonham-Carter’s body of work perfect every Halloween. Everyone thought that I was someone from The Devil Wears Prada or a witch of some kind.
I made slutty brownies for the party. Slutty brownies, for those who don’t know, are brownies that have oreos and cookies in the mix. They’re indulgent, hedonistic brownies and they’re a big hit.
The next night, I had another party to go to. The assignment was to come dressed as your favorite writer, so I went dressed as myself.
I wasn’t sure if it was iconic, cringey, or just pretentious, but I thought it was funny and easier than putting together an Edgar Allen Poe costume at the last minute.
So how did I dress to be myself?
A black turtleneck, black boots, cheetah print coat, red nails, and giant sunglasses on my head. In other words, I dressed as a parody of myself.
I also thought that there was a 90% chance that everyone else would dress like themselves as well, but no. David Foster Wallace, Nabakov, disgraced J.K. Rowling (a person wore a bag over their head), and Edgar Allen Poe, just to name a few.
Disgraced J.K. Rowling
Continuing the festivities, my friend Julia and I carved a pumpkin, whilst watching “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown,” a proper Halloween tradition.
Olivia and I went to a party in midtown in which I knew no one there, but I nonetheless walked around, explaining my costume to everyone anyway.
On Halloween night, I went with my roommate, who was dressed as Chef’s Kiss, and her friend, who was dressed as Reverse Cowgirl, to Columbia’s gay-straight-alliance party at a nearby bar. We spent the night getting free drinks from a bartender that was dressed as Bob Ross, and meeting people who did not get our costume references.
Then, I brought the curtain down on my Halloween season, 2024.
It wasn’t a wild Halloween filled with an in-costume bar crawl, but I did damage to my liver as part of my favorite holiday.
I can’t wait for Halloween 2025.
The Tragic Queen,
Raquel
P.S.: Read about the Halloween that I spent in Italy and went to a nightclub dressed as a character from Rocky Horror Picture Show in Creature of the Night
There are many ways to observe that period where summer ends and your new semester begins.
One of the ways is to spend an evening at Le Bain, a nightclub that more than lives up to its name “the bath” by having a hot tub carved into the dancefloor, where fully-clothed patrons go for a dip and (possibly) contract HPV. Not really folks, calm down.
Another way is to enjoy a night of Bossa Nova and flamenco dancing, the kind that’ll maybe make you question your sexuality, at a tapas bar for your cousin’s 21st birthday.
A final way is to go to a rooftop party with your friends from Columbia to listen to a mutual friend DJ to a crowd of interesting people.
This is what I was getting up to when I met Zac Presley, one of the curators of Vibe Fine Arts. Vibe Fine Arts is a dreamy new SoHo art gallery that would be making its debut a month later.
I hadn’t been to an event like this since I went to see Mahmoud Hamadani’s work in undergrad, so I was thrilled when I made the list for the grand opening.
I was excited to see the artwork of Jule Waibel, a German artist who I also met at the aforementioned rooftop party, and whose work would be on display like a jewel in the crown of the art gallery (pun very much intended). When I met Jule at the party, she had her infant son strapped to her chest. When I saw her again at the opening, I found her, sans baby, standing in front of her artwork.
She explained her pieces to me, how she made one of the paintings after her mother died and processed the grief through her art. The painting, which is of two women crying in their underwear, shows their grief and vulnerability. Stomach rolls are visible as one woman lays on the other woman’s lap and she tenderly places a hand on her friend’s back, the tears gently filling up her eyes.
Another painting of Jule’s captures her life in Brooklyn, with a vibrant scene that brings vitality to the simple domestic task of a mother and daughter getting groceries.
Her work is beautiful and fortunately there are four pieces currently on display at the gallery that proves this.
The gallery more than lived up to its name. There was finger food, champagne that kept flowing, and men respectfully hitting on you. I wanted to take home several of the paintings, but knew that that would mean having paintings to hang in an apartment I could no longer afford.
The paintings weren’t the only type of art on display, as people milled around the gallery with coach bags, black sequined party dresses, and the SS22 Oscar De La Renta dress that Taylor Swift wore at the Grammys (or a really good knockoff of it). It was like walking through the style section of the Sunday New York Times.
By the end of the evening, I’d gotten a full dose of art and fashion and was ready to call it a night (by which I mean making a quick pit stop at the Marriott Marquis bar and then going to bed).
It had been a long night and an even longer summer of me being a woman about town, acting bougie at art galleries that I had no business going to. I’d finally experienced the SoHo art scene, a thing of legend in Manhattan that I had yet to explore. Now the only things left on my New York City bucket list are the Met Gala and an Eyes Wide Shut party. (I kid).
I’ll continue spending my time exploring the SoHo art scene and going to places with “vibe” in the name, two things that have yet to fail me when searching for a good time.
After much deliberation, I have decided that I am not meant to work for a living.
I respect the lifestyle, but it’s just not for me.
A glamorous headshot of me, taken at work
School’s back in session, so I can finally tell you all about the joys of my New York City job, how I was every inch the slick professional in chic pumps, ready to “shake up the game” or something like that.
A few weeks ago, I completed my summer gig of working as a receptionist at a zillenial fin-tech place, having found the job through a temp agency.
Photographic evidence of me working for a living
My parents told me to apply at a temp agency, something that I believed to be a thing from their New York City days that no longer existed, like subway tokens and paying a buck 85 for your coffee. As it turns out, temp agencies are still alive and well, unlike the other facets of their New York City days, when they could afford a walk-up on practically no budget with a job that they got by checking the want-ads one afternoon.
My mother requested pics of my work clothes everyday. Here they are
Through Taylor Hodson, I got a job as a receptionist at a company that, like most people, doesn’t even have a landline. My job was primarily to greet people and to shred meaningless documents, something that they trusted a 23 year old to do perfectly.
This was one of my first ever big girl jobs, not a part time internship that paid me minimum wage, gave me one day off a week, and let me roll in at 10 AM. Working a full forty hour work week for above minimum wage felt like graduating past that point in your school career where you get to have naptime.
A hardworking professional, as you can see
Unlike my previous part-time employment, I actually got off work feeling like I’d earned the right to a Friday afternoon happy hour drink as well as the right to yell at tourists walking three abreast on the sidewalk while I hurtled my body into my subway stop in the morning.
I filled out an I-9, a W-2, and an NDA, before completing a sexual harassment lecture and quiz that asked real head scratchers like, “is commenting on your coworkers breasts while she’s lactating sexual harassment?”
I practiced my route to work the day before in order to ensure that I could get there in a New York Minute. Then, I did some of new-job-pregaming-rituals the night before, like watching Anne Hathaway play a plucky career woman in one of her films (The Devil Wears Prada, The Intern, etc.). She is every woman… but she is a little bit more me than the rest of you. I’m sorry, it’s the big brown eyes and the long brown hair.
I’d wake up every morning and listen to Megan Thee Stallion rap about “holding a glock in her birkin,” two things that I don’t own, before manning a desk for eight hours.
I’d gotten a taste of rush hour traffic at my old job, but would now get to enjoy a long commute during rush hour in the middle of a heat wave. Every subway car was sardined with people, except for the one half-full car that has no air conditioning, making New Yorkers choose between personal space and heat stroke. We’re all hot and angry, trauma bonded from being jostled into each other’s half-naked bodies while sweat drips down our ass cracks. Nothing quite beats inhaling a wide range of body odors while trying to get to work on time.
This is being presided over by a conductor who was usually just as mad about it as we were and made that apparent by shouting at us to not only “STAND CLEAR OF THE CLOSING DOORS” but to “USE MORE THAN ONE OF THE DOORS” and “WAIT UNTIL THE NEXT TRAIN IF YOU DON’T FIT,” with the same energy as a TSA agent at LaGuardia who will yell at you to stand back if you approach them to ask a question that has already been answered.
I’m not sure whose fault this is, but I’m just going to blame Eric Adams. You can always blame the mayor of New York and then a decade after they’re out of office, they’ll get a couple of buildings named after them.
Commuting home at the end of the day, unreasonably exhausted from not doing much of anything, and then being responsible for making my own dinner seems cruel and unusual.
I now have a new respect for the people who work all day, come home to kids to raise, make dinner, and then sleep poorly, only to make a paltry sum of money the next day at work.
Like I said, I have decided that I am not meant to work for a living.
I’ve just started another year of school, so I won’t have to rejoin the workforce for another year. Corporate America will have to wait with bated breath for my return.
I think that if there is one thing that this blog has made clear, it’s that I am a very lucky girl: I have beautiful friends, I get to do the thing that I love by being a writer, and I have a lot of fun a lot of the time. I don’t want much else.
I never feel this more than on my birthday, when my friends and family come together to celebrate me.
Since my birthday fell on a Saturday this year, I planned a day of festivities.
First, my cousin Olivia and I started our day at The Mermaid Spa in Coney Island, a Russian banya spa with a reputation for being the best, most-authentically Russian place to spend an afternoon in New York City. Russian is the primary language spoken by the staff and patrons. Men spoke to me in Russian and then subsequently asked my blank face if I spoke the language.
If you ever wanted to eat borsch and inhale steam, this is your place. It costs $50 for 4 hours of spa time, making it girl-on-a-budget-friendly.
For these four hours, you can enjoy saunas, steam rooms, polar plunges, and a banya room where you can smack yourself on the back with banya leaves. All of it leaves your skin feeling supple and your mind feeling pleasantly empty. I’m shocked that some twenty-something Tik-Toker has not yet made this place outrageously famous to the point of not being able to get through the door.
We got massages from a masseuse who made questionable comments throughout. Pro tip: don’t make comments about your customers’ bodies when you work for tips and also just don’t do that in general.
I didn’t think that I held that much tension in my neck until my masseuse rubbed it and asked me if I’d had a previous neck injury. When I said that I didn’t and asked her why, she told me that she thought I had a bone popping out, but that turned out to just be a knot.
Following that, I set out with six of my main squeezes to go to Cafe Wha?, a live music bar downtown. Having previously gone out to Cafe Wha? with my workshop, I knew what to expect. The house band at Cafe Wha? always brings the house down.
I invited my friends from various walks of life, none of whom knew each other and therefore were in for a night of introductions and small talk, hopefully without resorting to ice breakers.
Once the music started, my table got lightly serenaded by the house band on account of it being my birthday.
I may have slightly undone the work of my neck massage by handbanging the entire night.
One of the best parts about being born during Pride month, is the festivities going on around me on the day of. Every Sunday during Pride month, Oscar Wilde, a 28th Street Bar, does drag brunch.
I wanted a drag queen for my birthday, so I set out for Oscar Wilde, feeling a little icky after being a tad overserved the night before, and then walked home, catching a piece of that morning’s Pride parade.
So far being 23 feels a lot like being 22. I’m still dealing with adult acne every morning when I wake up and look in the mirror, yet I’m at an age where it’s possible for me to get married, as many of my peers already have. I still have a million questions about what I should be doing with my life as people with whom I went to high school post about getting engaged on Facebook with increasing regularity.
Regardless, I’m in a good place.
Thank you again to the people who showed up for me. I will always remember and appreciate it.
A couple of weeks ago, as an early birthday present from my friend David, I went to see the Tony-nominated play Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, starring Sarah Paulson, during the final weeks of its run.
I was seated so high up in the gods that parts of the stage were cut off, but any seat is worth it for such an incredible play.
The premise of Appropriate is as follows:
When the patriarch of a family dies, his adult children must come together to go through his belongings for an estate sale and, in doing so, come across items that hint at his racist past. The family must then decide what they believe about him and reconcile the father that they loved with the man that they never knew.
It is a very warm and fuzzy play.
The idea of race looms large in this story, despite it coming from an all-white cast. It reminded me of The Thanksgiving Play in that respect. It is very apropos to our current discourse, in which everyone is subject to reappraisal and scrutiny, even when they were a product of their time.
The father is the main character, despite never appearing in the play. It is an impressive sleight of hand from Jenkins who wrote a play that crackled with wit and verve.
There are plenty of funny moments to inject some levity into an otherwise deadly-serious play and there were more than a few audible gasps from the audience.
Appropriate is a many-layered play. Annoying, unlikeable characters are proven right when it comes to the character’s racism and characters who are proven wrong about it aren’t always annoying or unlikeable.
Sarah Paulson was incredible, making her voice hoarse to convey how run-ragged her character has become, while delivering monologues that most stage actors only dream of.
The ending was perfectly cinematic and unless you’ve seen it, you won’t know what I’m talking about.
Following the show, I did the same move that I always do and made a pit stop at Jollibee. Like all sane people, I avoid Times Square like the plague and only venture in that direction when going to see a Broadway show. I always think to myself, if I’m already in Times Square, I might as well go to the Jollibee for dinner, the only thing I like about Times Square.
Regardless of what your Broadway show-ritual is, you should go and see Appropriate the next time it’s on Broadway and judge for yourself.
“Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I’m not Mick Jagger”
–Billy Joel, Madison Square Garden, June 8, 2024
When Billy Joel announced that he was ending his decade-long stint as an artist in residence at Madison Square Garden, I spent the next couple of days on StubHub making sure that I got a pair of tickets. I’d wanted to see him in concert for the past five years at least and never got around to it.
With Bill being in his 70s and his residency about to wrap up, I really couldn’t afford to drag my feet on seeing him in concert.
He was scheduled to give 150 performances and my cousin Olivia and I went to see number 149. We were seated behind the stage, watching it on a partially-obscured jumbotron, but we could hear everything perfectly.
It was a pretty good crowd for a Saturday (wink, wink). Everyone else was about a quarter century older than us, but you’re never too young to appreciate good music. A juicy crowd showed up to see him perform and once the crowd had fattened up enough, he took to the stage to earsplitting applause.
He performed with such assuredness, making it look easy. For the record, he is also very funny, telling us that his eyes were leaky because he was 74 (the crowd cheered for this fact) and that his eyes started leaking when he announced his retirement from Madison Square Garden, causing numerous news outlets to report that he was crying.
I did a lot of off-pitch singing and shaky camera work throughout the night. My personal favorite of his has always been Vienna, which he did almost right out the gate. On more than one occasion, I thought I was going to cry, but kept it together through Vienna and New York State of Mind.
He’s gotten over his aversion to performing Uptown Girl, which he did about midway through. His 8 year old daughter, Bella joined him on stage for several of his songs, rolling around the piano and the floor, while her dad performed above her head.
Finally, as the night started to wind down, he sat at his piano with a harmonica and did “Piano Man.” On the line “it’s a pretty big crowd for a Saturday” the audience went wild.
At one point during the chorus, he stopped playing and listened to us sing his song to him. He listened to us shout “sing us a song, you’re the piano man, sing us a song tonight, because we’re all in the mood for a melody, and you’ve got us feeling alright.”
Afterwards, he exited the stage to chants of “BILLY! BILLY!” and then returned to give an encore of We Didn’t Start the Fire, It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me, and a whole smattering of others.
He played all of his hits, except for Just the Way You Are, but I will live with this.
Olivia and I left shortly thereafter, our ears ringing, as we weaved through the throngs of people selling fake, overpriced Billy Joel t-shirts outside. I bought a “149th” concert t-shirt that will serve as a pretty comfortable sleep-shirt for years to come.
So, what to say to sum it all up when you’ve witnessed a rock-and-roll legend giving one of their final performances at one of the most famous venues in the world? I can’t sum it all up; I can hardly even describe it. I just enjoy the memory of having seen it and remind myself of how lucky I am to have done so.
Olivia and I walked away from Madison Square Garden, in a New York state of mind.
The Tragic Queen 