Colin Atrophy Hagendorf's Blog

This blog is very infrequently updated these days, but check out my newsletter page for an archive of some monthly writing. Tysm ily bye bye.

NAME CHANGE

I have no idea what they’re looking at.

HI
Welcome to my monthly newsletter. This is mostly a solipsistic exercise, but I realized I'm a monster and need an audience to do ANYTHING, so here we are. You knew what you were signing up for.

RADIO HARVESTER
You know I do a podcast where I interview my friends and people I want to be friends with right? Last month's episode with Mya Spalter was great. She's been my best friend since high school and she just wrote a book about witchcraft that's so sick. This month we have Caroline Paquita, my best friend since less than high school but for probably like, nearing ten years. We talk about punk stuff, getting into and making zines, healthcare, interacting with queer elders through art. It's tight. Caroline is the shit. It'll be out before the end of the month, subscribe now so you don't miss it.
ITUNES STITCHER SOUNDCLOUD

BOOKS I READ
I read three novels this month. Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn, The Bull Loving Truth by Ian Lawrence Campbell Swordy, and Rat Bohemia by Sarah Schulman. They bear some similarities. They're all three about tragedy and loss; all three mention heroin addiction prominently, though only two of the three have characters who are addicts; two take place primarily in New York City, while the third ends there; two have multiple narrators, one is a memoir.

I read Dogeaters like 15 years ago, but barely remembered it. Honestly, I picked it up a couple weeks ago because Hagedorn's author photo looked like someone I'd be friends with and her last name is close to mine. I had a vague memory of enjoying it, but I don't remember much of what it was like because I rarely remember much of anything I've read, only vague emotional impressions. Part of this monthly exercise is an attempt to synthesize information better, pay more attention, be more alert. Or at least keep a record.

So Dogeaters. It takes place in the Philippines in the 1950s. The story is told from a number of voices--the daughter of a country club owner, a corrupt general, a junkie hustler/nightclub DJ, a young douche trying to make it in the movies--and documents chaos, corruption, and scandal in the political upheaval of that moment, a time and place in history which I know little to nothing about. For me what stands out here is Hagedorn's casual attitude towards sex work and drug use, neither of which seem to be deployed for shock value, but are dealt with matter of factly. It's a riveting story, well told, with gripping, realistic characters whose' inferiorities reveal greater insights into the human condition. There's also lots of seedy shit and I like that.

Jessica Hagedorn’s author photo

Next, or actually in the midst of reading Dogeaters, I read The Bull Loving Truth by Ian Lawrence Campbell Swordy in one sitting. Ian is my friend so I can forgive him that his name is too long and his book is too short. I can't, however, talk about it with any clarity because it's just too close to home. Ian documents his life from high school in Long Island, to now, living in Queens, and the distances he travelled, both physical and emotional, to make it there. He makes his way across the country and abroad, falls in love and gets married, drifts apart from his best friend, who dies of a heroin overdose. That best friend was also a friend of mine and his death was ten years ago. I dedicated my book to him. I've been on a weird nostalgia trip lately, largely reflecting on this decade, so coming home from New York for Thanksgiving to find Ian's book in the mail couldn't have been more serendipitous. It's good, I read it in one sitting, but I'm not sure how much there is to hold on to if you didn't know us back then, which may be honest critique or may just be me inscribing my fears for my own book on the work of a friend. I guess I'll have to get a therapist again if we wanna find that one out. This is a perfect snapshot of youthful bravado, a New York that old-timers were already saying was dead and buried but which clearly had some life in it still, and a glimpse into the emotional brutality of the art world in general, and rigorous MFA programs in particular.

Lastly I read Rat Bohemia by Sarah Schulman, which I kept calling "Rat Suburbia" to Becca, which she thought was very funny since Schulman hates the suburbs so much. Speaking of nostalgia trips! This is what Schulman does best, right? Evokes the gay 90s in New York City. Talks about the AIDS crisis in a way that makes it seem both banal and heartbreaking. Weaves interesting stories together with diverse characters that don't feel tokenized or forced. (Although I wonder if someone who isn't from New York would read her repeated description of a Puerto Rican woman as "Spanish" as racist rather than cute and colloquial.) I like reading Schulman because I love a Jewish wit, I love lesbian romance, I love to feel connected to my queer elders. Depending on the mood I'm in it can be either invigorating or deeply depressing to be reminded that people have been struggling with some of the same issues as me and everyone I care about have since we were kids. Not just institutional shit like homophobia and the machinations of global capitalism slowly eroding away vibrant local cultures, but smaller, more personal things like drug addiction and hating your fucking friends sometimes. I think right now it's both. It's comforting to know that someone else has walked this path before, but also frustrating and so fucking infuriating to realize that we've been fighting for the same crumbs for literal generations. It makes me think of what we've already lost, which is nothing compared to the last generation, who lost so many people to AIDS and our government's heartless lack of concern for their lives.

NOW THAT YOU'RE IN A GREAT MOOD LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE TV SHOW RIVERDALE
I watched over 40 episodes of Riverdale this week. Television is the thing I do most alcoholically in sobriety. I watched it on tv in my living room, on my laptop in my kitchen while I cooked dinner and did dishes, on my phone on the elliptical at the gym. Believe it or not I'd never watched TV on my phone before. Now I don't know if anywhere is safe. As far as compulsive behavior is concerned, this falls firmly into being rationalized as harm reduction. It's not ideal, it's a dark reminder that I'm susceptible to uncontrollably compulsive behavior. But like my old therapist Marty G used to say, "everyone has to touch the void somehow."

I have to save any clever critique for the "All Punks Watch Riverdale" group text, but here's a list I started keeping at episode 21.
Stuff I’ve shouted at the tv while watching Riverdale:
“SAY YOU’RE SORRY!”
“That is NOT giving her space.”
“Shoot him.”
A whisper: “Tell her.”
“You kissed Archie.”
Whispering again: “No. Say no.”
“Fight them. Fight the nuns.”
“WHO DID THAT?”
“Beat up that old man.”

Jughead Jones being angsty on the television show Riverdale

WHAT HAVE I BEEN LISTENING TO?
Gaz - DEMO
https://gazgazgaz.bandcamp.com/releases
Yumi and Golnar from IN SCHOOL doing hardcore again, with my old friend Sonrisa and this fourth person who's name I don't remember but Ben Trogdon introduced me them one time at a weird dance performance they were part of. Point is, to quote Vado on Speaking in Tungs, "we all fam here," which is to say, much like Ian's book, I'm not sure I can give this an honest review. Here's what I'll say though: as far as I can tell, this tape rips. Golnar is a beast of a singer, the rhythm section (and this is the type of hardcore where every instruments is in the rhythm section), is tight and heavy. I've listened to this demo on repeat for hours straight, and for me, the real banger is the closing track 1948. Fuck with this ASAP.

Orphanage - Man, Beast. Man, Machine.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/2u8m5f21e2fmpi0/Orphanage.zip
I recorded this tape over ten years ago. Orphanage, née Oogle Orphanage, are the perfect band to sum up the Party Anarchist world of gentrifying Brooklyn of the mid-00s. I think I did a pretty okay job recording it considering I had no idea what I was doing, although the one song about MTV (and the holocaust somehow) sounds like it was recorded in a tin can. Not sure what happened there. ANYWAY, it's genuinely good and also cutely anachronistic. The hook of one song says "the forest has a right to remain silent tonight... and so do I." Peer into the dark souls of young men who hate society. Cute time capsule elements aside, I think this tape bangs. Haus of the Sun, the song about Bronx squat Casa Del Sol getting burned down by the FDNY (possibly at the behest of ACORN but this is getting too deep into conspiracy territory) is the stand out hit, imo. Also there's a Wipers cover.

Cardi B & Pardison Fontaine - Backin' It Up
https://youtu.be/hDfsD6G8E_g
You guys know I love Cardi B, right? The last time I was in New York I heard this song like 40 times a day on Hot 97. I noticed it initially because on the first verse Fontaine raps "looking better every day you on your Benjamin Button," and wanted to play it for Becca because of an elaborate and longstanding joke about that movie we share that it wouldn't be worth it to bother recounting to you. Upon subsequent listens, I realized that Cardi at one point says "all these bitches fuckin with me must be sick in the head." And listen, you can take all the memes about Timbs and pizza and whatever, but calling someone "sick in the head" is THE most New York shit a person can do. When I finally watched the video and saw the visual nods to Crush On You it was a wrap.

Honorable mention:
Lil Wayne - Uproar
https://youtu.be/GQ2juiyXk-s
Swizz may cosign selling off the Bronx to developers but he hasn't forgotten how to make a beat yet.

“I know you seen me on the video”

A RECIPE AS PROMISED
Typed this up for the homie Bryony Beynon after she texted me that her boyfriend Ben couldn't stop talking about the chili I made their band BB & the Blips when they stayed over here, and now I'm sharing it with you, my adoring public:

Very easy, but very long, makes like 15 servings. Total cook time, like 6 hours or something nuts like that.

Ingredients:

1 med sized onion

4 cloves garlic

3 14oz cans black beans

3 14oz small cans kidney beans

1 28oz can crushed tomatoes

5 corn tortillas

2 cups dry tvp OR 1 cup tvp 1 1/2 cup fantastic foods brand chili starter which they have in the bulk bins at many co-ops here in the states, but who knows?

Some hot peppers. What kind do you like? I like scotch bonnets or habanero if they’re fresh or dried Thai chilis. Whatever works, or leave em out entirely.

As for spices, I have never measured a spice in my life, but here’s what I put in:

Smoked salt

Regular ass salt

Black pepper

Chili powder

Hot smoked paprika

Oregano

Some cayenne in case the other peppers didn’t do the trick

I think that’s it?

Use a big ass pot or slow cooker or whatever because this is a lot of volume.

To start, brown the onions and garlic in the bottom of the pot.

Turn the flame down to a simmer. Add the beans, draining the water from two cans. Set the bean water aside in case you need it later.

Add the crushed tomatoes. Add whatever peppers you’re using.

Chop the tortillas really small—this is super gratifying—and drop them in.

Now you wait for hours. Like literally three hours or something. Stir it occasionally. Anxiously taste it though it doesn’t taste like much yet. This is when it’s nice to use an electric slow cooker because then you can just like, take your dog in the woods for an hour and then go do the rest of your grocery shopping and not worry about an open flame in the house.

Once the tortilla crumbs have more or less dissolved, throw in the tvp. This is when you might wanna add that extra bean water. Does the chili look hella dry? That tvp needs moisture to plump up.

You can also add all the spices now. Pour them on liberally, stir around and taste. Now let it cook for another hour or two. Really let those spices get in there. Keep tasting it, keep sprinkling incrementally more of each because you’re nervous you did something wrong. Scrape whatever is sticking to the sides off and mix it back in with the rest.

You will know when your chili is done, because you will either need to leave to bring it to the party you are taking it to, or your guests will have arrived.

OKAY THAT'S IT
Bye. Please don't unsubscribe from my newsletter I don't think I could handle it. Hope you had a good Hanukkah.

xoxo, C

I wasn’t gonna write this review because it’s truly unnecessary and not super important but I’m doing it anyway so bear with me while I start explaining something you probably already know in a truly roundabout fashion.

We'll start when my dad’s mom, my grandma Sylvia, died. I was thirteen. Her and my grandpa Sam were best friends with this other couple Sidney and Bernice, and Sid died within like 6 months of Syl, so naturally, Sam and Bernice grieved together. And we all know where that leads.

They were married in their apartment on Miami Beach when I was 16 or 17, judging by my hair in the photos. It wasn’t a legal wedding but they did have a rabbi come bless them and then they threw a party where I got drunk and had the old man band play Summer Wind by Frank Sinatra while I sang.

Anyway, time passed, they went on a lot of cruises, hung out by the side of a pool in Miami, had a very nice life together. In 2012 Sam died and shortly thereafter Bernice moved to Scottsdale, AZ to be near one of her kids. I had visited her all the time in Miami but by the time she moved to Arizona it sort of dropped off. I recorded an audiobook for her, and I called her on the phone plenty, but I just never prioritized getting out to Phoenix. I was talking to my mom about it the last time I was in New York and we decided to go. We planned a short trip, only 48 hours really, but we’d hang out with her the evening we arrived, the entire next day, and the morning before we flew out. 

Before we left I got a text from my mom—“Bernice wants to eat pizza. Figure out the best slice in Scottsdale.” So I asked twitter, and twitter told me, almost uniformly, that there’s this place called Pizzeria Bianco that’s in some strip mall in Phoenix and they make the best Neapolitan pies in America. Who would’ve guessed. I texted my mom this article and was like, "I think this is the place."

So I fly in, meet my mom at the airport, whatever whatever. I had intentionally forgotten my toothbrush because I knew that might be the only way to get me to finally buy a new one, so we're driving around having that New York Jew conversation about "I'm hungry are you hungry?"
"I'm not hungry hungry but I could eat."
"What are you in the mood for?"
"I don't care, really I have no preference."
"Burgers?"
"I don't know about burgers."
"How do you feel about chinese?"
"In Arizona? Never."
Etc.
It could've been either of us having either side of it. We paused our lunch convo to stop into a strip mall that had a Walgreens to get my damn toothbrush. I ended up driving so far afield looking for a spot big enough that I wouldn't be scared someone might scratch our rental car that when I finally pulled into one we were across the parking lot from where the Walgreens was. That's when my mom was like, "isn't that the pizza place you were talking about?"

I didn't take a picture of it, because like I said, I wasn't planning to write this review, so you'll have to settle for this screenshot of a map. Suffice to say, this is NOT what I expected the place that serves "the best neapolitan pizza in America" to look like. But we went in anyway and ordered three pies.

From left to right that's your classic Margherita, a Sonny Boy (a red sauce pie with hot salami and kalamata olives), and the signature Biancoverde (a white pie with fresh ricotta, fresh moz, arugula, and olive oil). If you can't tell from the pictures, these pies were fucking perfect. It's a rare thing in this awful world to experience a moment of perfection, and it can be a little unsettling. Ma Harvester and I looked from pie to pie, shocked, unable to speak for a few moments after our first bites. I have never in my life tasted a pizza dough this delicate. It was crisp and firm on the bottom, though there was still that nice elastic pull that a good bread has, but it was so light. The other ingredients were top notch. The red sauce on the Margherita was incredible. Lightly spiced so that the full flavor of the delicious tomatoes they use could really shine. The mozzerella tasted fresh and had a wonderful texture. The basil leaves seemed like they could've been picked moments before they hit the pie. The Sonny Boy had the same base as the Margherita, but with hot salami and kalamatas, both fantastic as well.

But the real standout was the Biancoverde. This is probably the best ricotta I've ever had. The moz and dough are the same high quality as on the other pies, and the absence of a sauce let the olive oil's round, green apple flavor really shine. Ma Harv, a master gardener btw, was really impressed with the quality of the arugula and claimed she had never had a white pie with arugula on it before. I was unsure, but she checked me, "I've had prosciutto arugula pies, but every white pie I've ever had was made with spinach or broccoli rabe. The sharpness of the arugula really makes for a nice contrast with the full rounder flavors of the cheese and olive oil." I'm still unsure if arugula on white pies is common or not so if you wanna @ me just to tell me my mom's wrong why don't you just go fuck yourself instead, huh? The important thing is that these pies were so good we had to bring them to Bernice. We got three more of the same to go and headed over to her place.

I'm really glad we got to eat them fresh out the oven, because they certainly suffered a bit in transit. Neapolitan pies are meant to be eaten fresh, but they were still good and Bernice didn't care, and that's the most important part of all this. I'll leave you with her review. Notice her start to talk shit about all the other pizza in Phoenix and then stop herself. That's because she's a classy lady who doesn't relish every opportunity to badmouth people for cheap laughs, unlike me, a jerk. Let's all be more like Bernice and less like me in 2018.

Listen. I end up in all different parts of America that aren't New York all the time, and sometimes I end up eating pretty bad pizza in those places because I forget where I am or I hear a place might be good or I'm with a group of people and they want to eat pizza and who am I to argue? I ate a terrible quattro formaggio in a strip mall in Houston like two years ago after going to the opening of a contemporary Mexican art show at the MFAH with Becca. When we got to the museum I was still all revved up from the drive and then Becca went to a panel and I was wandering around the museum alone and there's a James Turrell tunnel in the basement. (And if you don't know, which probably I wouldn't if I wasn't in love with an art historian, that's the dude who all the sets of Drake's Hotline Bling video are based on.) And I was alone in it except for the security guard, and I was like, "DUDE would you please take a video of me on my phone doing Drake's Little Teapot dance?" And he was like "absolutely not." And I was like, "c'mon man, my girlfriend is gonna think it's so cute and funny." And he was like, "if I do it for you, I gotta do it for everyone." And I was like, "There's no one else here! No one will know!" And he looked at me very seriously and said "I'll know."

Anyway, after that we got pizza and it was absolutely awful, but I didn't write about it then because I don't write about every bad pizza I eat. But every so often, there is a pizza parlor that's such a perfect storm of bad food, bad service, bad aesthetics, that I feel like I gotta warn strangers to stay away. And King Dough in Bloomington, Indiana is such a place.

I went to get lunch at King Dough with a friend who I believe wishes to remain anonymous because Bloomington is a small town and he doesn't need to be the recipient of any Midwest passive aggression. We were in the middle of running errands and right nearby and I didn't think pizza was a bad idea, it seemed quick at least. And I'd noticed King Dough on a handful of other visits. And besides, it's not all Houston strip malls. I've had some pretty decent pizza, or at least really fun and pleasant experiences, in pizza shops all over the place. But not so with King Dough. I didn't know what I was getting myself into when my Anonymous Compadre and I walked inside, and I certainly wasn't expecting to have my mind blown, but I didn't expect to be punished either.

The decor was a red flag right away but I'm a pretentious urban sophisticate so I just chalked that up to the quaintness of a college town. But like, if you're gonna disrespect that Dan Higgs drawing at least do it well, right? And I'm all for keeping holiday decorations in a place of business to a minimum (I've served six tours in the War on Christmas), but I was in a Target the other day buying shitty winter gloves an ice scraper for my car because I didn't know where else to get both of those things in a city with no bodegas, and I literally saw almost that exact same display in their like, quirky tchotchke section. Maybe it's an ironic reference? Whatever it is, it's not working.

The menu looked fine, though, even if I think "Vegan Pile" sounds fucking gross as a name for a food, and I find the "Kilmister" befuddling for at least two reasons. (1. Capicola and fucking BBQ SAUCE? Why? 2. What is it about this pizza that is supposed to evoke Lemmy?) But like, whatever, right? My friend and I got a Margherita and a Prosciutto Arugula pie to split, as those seemed like safe and hard to fuck up options. The place wasn't that busy so we figured even if it wasn't great we could eat and get on with our errands.

Little did we know King Dough had other plans in store for us. It took 35 minutes to get our two pizzas. 35 whole entire minutes. Longer than an episode of Seinfeld, shorter than an episode of the L Word, too long for pizza. The place had a wood oven, and feel free to fact check me on this, but I think a properly used wood oven cooks an entire pizza in like two or three minutes, right? So why did it take over half an hour to get me and my friend two smallish pies in a restaurant that wasn't very busy and where half the people inside were already eating? I'll tell you why, because they don't know what they're doing. 

Our pies finally arrived though, and they did not look too good. Wood fired pizza is supposed to be slightly charred. The char adds a smokiness and depth of flavor to the pie that can't be achieved in a gas oven without burning. When I get a wood or coal oven pizza, I expect it to be a pretty dark in some spots. But like most good things, char is only useful in moderation. This pizza's crust was burnt blacker than the Sharpie dick you drew on your ex-best friend's picture in your middle school yearbook. It was burnt blacker than the cover of Smell The Glove. This crust was burnt so black King Dough might get sued by Anish Kapoor. (Just in case you're thinking I'm smart for knowing who Anish Kapoor is, don't worry. I literally typed "black paint that only one guy is allowed to use" into webcrawler.com to find out his name.) And to add insult to injury, this disgusting crust formed the border of a pizza that wasn't even cooked through all the way in the middle!

Look at that! You can straight up see bits of translucent, uncooked dough on the bottom of this floppy mess!

So now that we've established that this pizza takes forever to arrive and is poorly cooked, let's take a moment to talk about how much the ingredients fucking suck. The mozzarella on the Margherita pie tasted like fucking butter. The more I ate it, the worse it got. And it was drowning in a sea of runny, bland sauce. "But what about the dough?" I can hear you thinking. "The dough from which this place derives its name. Surely that part is at least palatable?" Well dear reader, I can't tell you how the dough tasted because it was either burnt to a crisp or nearly raw. I'll tell you this though, the part of the crust that were edible tasted like they needed salt. When I asked my friend what he thought, he took a bite and chewed in silence for a moment before declaring "well, I've had worse pizza." Well that might be true for him, but I'm not sure I can say the same.

At the end of the day, the Prosciutto Arugula pie was at least edible, but you could put prosciutto and arugula on a turd and I'd probably like it, so that doesn't really count. It still was cooked bad, the sauce still sucked. But the Margherita really stands out to me as one of the worst pizzas I've ever eaten in my entire life. And so it's really an appropriate pizza to close out 2017--the year Prodigy died, Woody Allen didn't (prayer emoji that this awful, old fuck finally drops in 2018), Donald Trump became president. The pie at King Dough is not the pizza that we want, but it just might be the pizza we deserve.

What's good, internet. Remember when I used to review pizza? Well I'm doing it again, perhaps just this once. Back in the saddle. Lemme give you some context:

Two years ago, a few months after my popular and charming NYC memoir was released, I moved away from Queens, NY, my ancestral homeland, to Austin, TX, a wonderful place to visit but terrible place (for me) to live. I ate very little pizza while I was there. Never found a great slice, though I did find an amazing bar pie (shouts to Li'l Nonna's), but I didn't care, I was happy and in love and I just ate pizza when I was back in New York.

Two month's ago, my partner and moved to Pittsburgh so she could do a PhD here, brilliant genius that she is. A few days after we got here I went to the pizzeria in my new neighborhood (not gonna name names), took one look at the slices, and ordered a gyro. I kinda decided that day that I just wouldn't eat pizza in Pittsburgh, but then my good buddy Justin Bender told me about a local feud and I realized I had to weigh in.

Well yesterday myself, Bender, and our friends Cindy and Miguel went and ate at both places and I'm here to report back. Bender is an old friend from WAAAAY BACK at this point, a nice Jersey Boy. He's played in a bunch of cool bands over the years and I recently learned that in the early 2000s he briefly lived in Virginia where he drove a puke green Delta 88 with vanity plates that said "SCUMDOG." Cindy is Cindy Crabb of Doris zine. She's been a frientor (friend/mentor) of mine for many years and we've always had an easy rapport and a nice time hanging out but Pittsburgh is the first time we've lived in the same place and had a go at being IRL day 2 day friends and I think so far it's going great! I initially met Miguel because he’s Cindy's partner, but I would say at this point we have a friendship in it's own right, which was easy to do because he’s one of the most charming, effortlessly positive people I've ever met in my life.

As we walked up to Mineo's, Bender told me what he knew of the rivalry. "So this place opened up in like, '58 or something. A long time ago. In '78 the kitchen manager got in a fight with the owner that they couldn't resolve, so he quit and opened up a new place like three doors down. That's Aiello's. We'll go there next."

I couldn't believe that this feud had been going on for almost 40 years. I was so giddy I could barely contain myself. Luckily, right then Miguel biked up (Cindy would be joining us a little later), and we headed inside.

I was immediately glad Miguel was with us because the first thing he said when we walked in the door was “woah, sick Four Loko clock.” I never would’ve noticed that Four Loko clock, but it truly was sick. It’s this kind of astute observation that is vital in a Harvesting Companion.

Right off the bat, Mineo’s looks like a classic pizza parlor. Orange formica tables, the walls are hung with pictures of a toddler, presumably related to the owner, posing as a pizza chef, 20 year old plaques and accolades, and press clippings from newspapers and magazines.

Bender was first up to the counter, and he order “a cut,” which is apparently what they call a slice here in Pittsburgh. The woman working the register complimented his sweater. “He made it. Very talented guy,” I interjected.

"Men used to do all the knitting until about the mid-nineteenth century. But then, ya know, the patriarchy…” she trailed off then pointed at Bender’s Coneheads button and said, “you from France?”
“No why would you think…” he began, but was interrupted.
“CONEHEADS. The movie Coneheads. They’re aliens but they tell people they’re from France. It’s a lampooning of American xenophobia.”
We both laughed. “It’s a band…” Bender started to explain.
“OBVIOUSLY,” the woman interjected. “You’re gonna have to be a little quicker on your toes if you wanna make it around here. NEXT.”
I ordered my “one cheese cut,” thoroughly charmed by the cashier knowing immediately that Bender and I were the kind of people who would probably enjoy a little kind-hearted ribbing.

Now let me just say, this isn’t New York slice. I think approaching it with different expectations is important. So, first things first, Pittsburgh slices are smaller than NY slices, but they’re also cheaper—$1.80 seems to be the going rate, and that seems like a fair price. Second, the ratio expectations are different. There’s more cheese and more sauce on the pizza here. Maybe it’s a Rust Belt thing.

I bit into my slice, though, and it was good. It had a spicier sauce than I would ever like in New York, but here, it worked. The cheese was plentiful and delicious—they grind their own mix of cheeses in house. The dough was crisp and salty but couldn’t support the weight of all that cheese. Not really a huge surprise and not really an issue for me. The reason a New York slice needs to hold up is because it’s meant to eat and walk. This slice is clearly an eat in affair. I took my dog for an hour walk in the neighborhood after we were done Slice Harvesting and no one outside on Murray Ave was eating a slice while they strolled around.

The crust, however, left something to be desired for me. The outside was crispy, but the inside, instead of being fluffy and cooked through, felt dense and wet. It was heavy in a way that didn’t quite work for me, but not a deal breaker.

Bender said he loved his crust, that it seemed to be gushing with olive oil, and that he appreciated that the sauce tasted like real tomatoes, but for him, the cheese at Mineo’s was the real thing. Miguel also liked what he called the “Ninja Turtle Cheese,” and also appreciated that the sauce was clearly made from real tomato and wasn’t overly processed. For Cindy, the sauce was the key. She liked that it wasn’t overly sweet. “I like it when you eat your pizza and it tastes like pizza rather than candy.”

Overall, the slice at Mineo’s isn’t the best I’ve ever had in my life, but it’s good, they use quality ingredients and clearly care about their product. The real reason I’ll come back though, is because it’s just such a perfect place. Between the charming counterwoman, and the classic pizzeria atmosphere, this is somewhere I felt very at home.

Aiello’s was a different story. Before I get into my review, I just wanna admit that going into this, I wanted to like Aiello’s better. First, the name makes me think of Danny Aiello and I love Danny Aiello. Second, who wouldn’t automatically side with the disgruntled employee who hates his boss so much he quits his job and then opens up a competing business literally three doors down? A jerk, that's who. But Aiello’s was, ultimately, a pretty big disappointment.

First of all, I hated being inside this place. Now, they were under construction, so it might feel like I’m not giving them a fair shake regarding ambience, but half the store was done and I really didn’t like what they were going for aesthetically. The menu was displayed on three giant flat screens, everything was glass or chrome in the same sort of disposable-looking futuristic nostalgia of like, a Steak n’ Shake or Johnny Rockets franchise. I just wasn’t feeling it, which would’ve been fine if their slice measured up, but it just didn’t.

This slice had something closer to New York ratios in terms of cheese::sauce::dough, but it still didn’t hold it’s own weight when I lifted it up. When I looked underneath, I realized it was because there was a seam in the dough that just led the slice to fall completely apart. This is unacceptable. A pizzeria, at the very least, should provide a doughy foundation to all their pies that is a solid, uninterrupted surface for the rest of the slice to rest on. No seams, no folds. Maybe a bubble is fine, but that’s it. Otherwise this dough had a great char and a great flavor, though the crust was too dense for my tastes, seemed raw in the middle, and looked like an ashy elbow. Maybe that’s just how they like it in Pittsburgh. The cheese was a fine quality. The sauce was a little on the sweet side, but I’m starting to admit that I kinda like that if the other flavors can balance it out. Eating this slice was not an experience I especially relished, but once it was done I remembered it fondly. 

When asked for their opinions, Cindy said “good char, but everything else was subpar.” Miguel said, “I can confidently recommend that people try this alcoholic Mountain Dew they serve here.” Bender said “it’s like they weren’t even trying,” and I tend to agree.

So the verdict is in. Regarding the feud between Mineo’s Pizza House and Aiello’s Pizza that’s been simmering in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood for going on 40 years, Slice Harvester falls firmly on the side of Mineo’s.

I began this statement at the start of the year when Milo Yiannopoulos’s book deal had just been inked, but after watching Yiannopoulos’s islamophobia and transphobia validated by supposedly progressive blowhard Bill Maher over the weekend, and then reading Monday morning about his ultimately rescinded invitation to be the keynote speaker at CPAC, I felt newly inclined to add my voice to the chorus of those opposing him. I spent some time Monday revising the statement and by the time I was done, I read that Simon & Schuster had cancelled his book deal.

Simon & Schuster’s decision to offer Milo Yiannopoulos a quarter of a million dollars, which further legitimizes his national platform, is nothing short of odious. This sort of enabling behavior is intolerable, opportunistic, and unacceptable.  Simon & Schuster’s statement on the matter “we note that the opinions expressed [within our books] belong to our authors, and do not reflect either a corporate viewpoint or the views of our employees,” is a cop out.

Paying a neo-nazi a large sum of money is a political act. Increasing the reach of a cruel bully who has used his publicity and notoriety to target individuals for harassment is a political act. Validating the perspectives of an islamophobe/ transphobe/ white nationalist is a political act. Simon & Schuster should be held accountable for this decision. A full boycott of their books—for review by critics, for sale by buyers at bookstores and individual consumers—would send a clear message to the company.

Simon & Schuster’s argument that Yiannopoulos is entitled to this platform on the basis of free speech is based on a flawed understanding of free speech as a concept. Publishers reject books every single day for a variety of reasons, many far more banal than the author being a hateful demagogue who has used his meager fame to encourage the targeted harassment of marginalized people, especially black and trans women. Rejecting a proposal is not a form of censorship. (If it is, then most of my classmates in the creative writing class I took last year are actively being censored on a weekly basis. Some of them are possibly even being censored multiple times a week.) The idea that there are no ramifications for spewing garbage misunderstands that speech is not an individual act—it's dialogic, an interactive process in the public sphere. Our response to such vicious and violent speech should be a very loud and very clear no. 

As an author on the Simon & Schuster roster, I whole-heartedly support this boycott, though frankly, it may not be enough. Perhaps simply boycotting until the dissolution of Yiannopoulos’s contract is short-sighted. The entire Threshold Editions imprint, which has published work by Glenn Beck, Bobby Jindal, Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, among others, both stokes the fears of and profits from the recently galvanized American Right.

Yiannopoulos’s presence on Threshold is not a coincidence. In an interview with Business Insider regarding his search for a publisher, Yiannopoulos stated “Threshold Editions at Simon & Schuster were my first choice, and I was thrilled they wanted me.” In a sense, Threshold Editions helped create the environment in which a Milo Yiannopolous could thrive, and they continue to expand his platform because it profits them directly.

Since publishing it’s first crossword puzzle book at the beginning of the 1924, Simon & Schuster has worked on a business model of predicting market fads and quickly publishing books to correspond. It’s no wonder, then, that they offered to publish a memoir based on my popular blog, for instance. But this mission statement, to simply exploit whatever market is available to consume books, has led them down the unconscionable path of collaborating with a narcissistic bigot, and while this is never a good look, it is especially heinous in the current political moment.

During the writing of this piece, Simon & Schuster nullified Milo Yiannopoulos’s book contract. This is good news. It’s very heartening to learn that a white supremacist is no longer going to be given a substantial sum of money. However, Simon & Schuster didn’t cancel the contract because of Yiannopoulos’s hateful beliefs. They didn’t cancel his contract because of he defended racists, because he targeted black women, trans women, undocumented people, and rape survivors for harassment by his vitriolic fans. They cancelled it because he made statements that were construed as advocating for pedophilia, and that has alienated much of his right wing fanbase. (The irony of a man who wants to “defend women and girls” from the phantom threat of transfeminine bathroom assaulters admonishing the mainstream to be more forgiving of some pedophilia is not lost on me, but that’s the subject of another essay.) Simon & Schuster caved, not because of ethical issues, but because he is no longer as commercially viable as he was before these statements came to light. As Roxane Gay pointed out, Simon & Schuster did not act according to conscience, they acted according to commercial interest.

In a way, the rejection of Yiannopolous by CPAC and Simon and Schuster only confirms their commitment to the entire neo-nazi and conservative Christian platform -including white supremacy, transphobia, islamophobia—by using Yiannopolous to corroborate all too common homophobic beliefs that queer men are dangerous and prone to pedophilia. Yiannopolous himself might suffer a momentary setback but the agenda he supports is furthered. To be clear, he was removed to preserve the growing ‘alt-right’ not to thwart it.

The boycott of Simon and Schuster should stand until the dissolution of Threshold Editions in its entirety.

 

This piece was co-authored with Rebecca Giordano. The matter was brought to my attention by Tom Leger of Topside Press, who has been a key figure in organizing the boycott since the deal was announced. For a concise list of Yiannopolous's previous actions, see this list compiled by Bitch Media: https://bitchmedia.org/article/bad-things-milo-yiannopoulos-has-done-case-his-new-publisher-cares-just-kidding-they-totally

I been thinking a lot about this one old friend of mine lately. He isn’t someone I saw with much frequency when I lived in New York. In fact in the past few years we really only saw one another twice a year, at Passover and Hanukkah. Other than that we’d run into each other at a show or a party, incidental meetings. Occasionally we would make a plan to drink coffee on a bench in Tompkins Square Park, something we had done often in our early-20s. But those rendezvous occurred less often as we got older and our lives began to take shape in more substantial ways than they had when we were young.

That said, there is an intimacy in our friendship and the way we communicate that feels profound.  There’s been an expectation of longevity that other similar relationships don’t have. During our afternoons on the park bench, we would often joke about our future as old men. It started because of an experience I’d had on bus. There had been an elderly gentleman sitting in a single seat, with an empty seat behind him, clutching a paper bag tightly in both hands. I sat on the bench opposite his and watched him intently. He seemed to have such a sense of purpose, clutching his bag like that.

A stop or two later, another elderly man got on the bus and sat in the empty seat behind the first man, whom he had nodded at familiarly as he’d boarded. While he lowered himself into his spot, he placed a hand on the first man’s shoulder and squeezed—a small gesture, but one that seemed significant. The first man opened his paper bag and removed two identical sandwiches. Tuna salad, by the smell of it, on untoasted white bread. He handed one to his companion, folded the paper bag and put it in his pocket, and then they silently began to eat. They finished their sandwiches right as the bus reached the park, where they slowly disembarked together. It was a brisk autumn day and I remember wondering if they would be cold. The ritualistic nature of their interaction fascinated me and for a time I thought about them incessantly. How close were they? How long had they known each other? Did they ever speak? Were they just friends because they lived on the same bus line and were roughly the same age?

Later that week I was in the city at the coffee shop all the punks used to hang out at on Avenue A and I ran into my friend. We took our coffee into the park and sat smoking on a bench. I told him about the two men and we joked that one day we would be the two old Jewish guys on the bus, moving slow, eating stinky food. “I can’t wait.” I told him.

“I can’t wait till we have to make the kid at the bodega heat our coffee extra in the microwave because we’ve been smoking so long we can’t feel anything in our mouths anymore.” he countered.

“I can’t wait until we don’t understand young people,” I replied as a group of teens walked by.

I’ve never been a Live Fast Die Young guy, but most of my friendships don’t include an expectation that we’ll be old together. My relationship with this particular friend is unique in that regard. And that’s part of why it was so jarring when he called me to tell me he was sick. “I’ve got ALS. I’m picking out my wheelchair today,” he said. We talked for a minute, about what had happened. He’d been diagnosed right before Thanksgiving but wanted to wait until after the holidays to let people know.

When I flew home in December for Christmas I went straight from JFK to see him. Sitting on the Airtrain, I started thinking about the decade or so that we’d known each other. I thought about the first time I’d gone to his parents’ apartment, before he’d even moved out. I thought about the first time he’d come over to my place on Lorimer Street when we were just beginning to become friends. I thought about all the times we’d hung out, but I also thought about the spaces in between, all the times I hadn’t seen him. One thing I’ve long admired about him is the fact that he never really pulled any punches. He was blunt and direct, in a way that wasn’t insensitive, but wasn’t necessarily sensitive either. And one of his complaints throughout the years was that he felt taken for granted, or worse, excluded. I never felt like he was leveling that accusation at me, but I always felt like he could have if he wanted to. That he was sparing me from hearing it because he knew I knew already.

And so sitting on the train I started to wonder what he thought about all these people suddenly coming over to see him. I thought about the fact that I probably wouldn’t have been going straight to his house from the airport if he wasn’t sick, and it occurred to me that this same thought had most likely crossed my friend’s mind as well.

When I got to the apartment I sat down at the dining room table and his mother wheeled him out from his room. We drank seltzer like good Jewish boys and shot the shit. We hadn’t seen each other since Passover, probably, so there was a lot of catching up to do. His band had just recorded a full length for a pretty big local label. It was during the recording process that he realized that something was wrong, because he was getting so tired and feeling so weak all the time. Doctor’s eventually figured out it was ALS, a neurodegenerative disease that slowly kills off the nerve cells in the body. Pretty soon he was using a walker and he just moved onto the wheelchair and that’s where it’s at now. “I’ve got two to five from the onset of the disease and I probably had it for a year before I was diagnosed,” he told me matter-of-factly. He’s got the same frankness about his own mortality as he does about everything else.

Conversation moved on to all the different friends that had been through and visited, and then we got to the point in the conversation I’d been afraid of on the Airtrain. “You know, these people keep coming over, people that I haven’t seen in forever, and it’s so great that everyone gives a shit about me. And I started thinking about how mad I used to be all the time at all these people that I thought weren’t calling me enough,” he paused to catch his breath and I waited for the indictment, the moment when he would force me to acknowledge that I was one of those people. “And then I realized I wasn’t really calling them either. I just think it isn’t worth it to be so mad all the time. At the end of the day I got a lot done and I had a ton of really great friends and all the stuff I felt so mad about seems pretty inconsequential.”

Other people filtered in, soon there was a whole crew hanging out. I ordered some pizzas, people told stories, it was a nice time. I left feeling sad but heartened, my friend seemed to be in high spirits, like he enjoyed all the company. It’s weird to say, but he wears his illness well, or at least as well as one can.

A few days later at my parents’ house I broke down crying. I’d been running around the city trying to catch up with everyone I don’t get to see in Texas and it wasn’t until I was stationary that everything hit me all at once. I felt so sad and so angry all at the same time. And listen: I know this isn’t about me. I’m not the one that’s sick, I’m not doing the day-to-day caretaking. I know I’m not the one most affected here and my perspective isn’t the most important. I just want to make sure that’s clear. But this is someone I care about and I’m trying to work out my emotions and I think this is an okay space for that.

I saw my friend again before I left town, at the tattoo shop our pal Sue works at. He wants to get covered before he dies, and Sue called a shop meeting where everyone that works there agreed to tattoo him for free. It’s so good to see people getting together to mitigate the fucking awfulness of all this, but it’s still so stupid that he’s sick in the first place. Like, it just seems incredibly unfair.

You know that Jack Palance Band song “How Can I” on the JPB / ADD/C / Queerwülf three-way split? I think I’ll leave you with a few lines from that. My records are still in storage in New York so the lyrics may not be right but here goes:

How can I live, when I know things are coming I just can’t take? / How can I live, when I know that my heart’s gonna have to break again? / It’s just like my buddy Mike Pack says / he says, “always tell your friends you love ‘em, because you never know when goodbye’s gonna be goodbye.”

Postscript: This column was about my friend Dan Klein who passed away this morning. I'm not sure what else to say right now, but I'm very grateful for the music that he recorded, the photos and memories I have. I'm so lucky to have been friends with this mensch.

COLIN ATROPHY’S 2015 TOP TEN (in chronological order):

1. Started this column.

            I turned in my first column on January 4th! It was my Best of 2014 list and it had way less stuff than this one. But listen! It’s really exciting to write this for you all every month. I feel like lately it’s been a little blah because I’ve been moving and retired and not really thinking too hard about writing but I have some exciting stuff starting next year that I think will give me plenty of fodder for the charming self-reflection and ruminations on the minutiae of life that you’ve come to expect from me. Mostly maybe I want to use this space to express my gratitude to Grace and the MRR people for having me and for everyone else who reads it every month! THANK YOU SO MUCH.

2. Hired an impersonator to sing to me on my birthday.

In my last neighborhood in Queens there was this guy I would notice around who had dyed black hair and kinda like, Queens Dummy Marky Ramone aesthetic. Sometimes he was dressed like a Swingin Sea Captain and other times he was dressed like a Swingin Guy At A Luau. He was always at the corner store buying 8 Mr. Goodbars, which intrigued me. One day I was hanging around at this new bookstore that my friend Cosmo and some other people were about to open in the neighborhood and in walked my neighborhood mystery man. He was walking through the store running his fingers along the spines of the books and he kept looking up at me like “can you believe this shit?” Finally he was like, “what the hell is this place?!” sounding legit dumbfounded. Cosmo was all, “it’s a bookstore,” and he goes, “pretty fuckin low brow neighborhood for a bookstore huh?” What an angel.

He was holding a big stack of CD-Rs and after a lengthy silence he slid one along the counter. It had a picture of him dressed as Elvis. “I’m a triple impersonator,” he told us. “I do the big three. Elvis. Tom Jones. And Englebert Humperdink. The musician.” My birthday was coming up and I didn’t know what to do but I hired him on the spot. The afternoon of my birthday I got really nervous that he was gonna say something transphobic or like super sexist, but instead he was just really needy and any time I’d try and talk to anyone while he was performing he would start bugging me and yelling my name from the stage, but luckily I love attention so that was alright.

A few months later I took my friend Daniel to this pretty great diner in Maspeth and he was losing his shit about how great it looked and then we walked in and Daniel was like “OMG check out that Elvis impersonator” in hushed tones and right then the Elvis turned around and he was MY Elvis and he was like, “hey Colin! How you been? How’s your father?” and I basically seemed like the coolest guy on Earth.
3. Troy Ave “Doo Doo”

Troy Ave is this rap dude from Crown Heights who Funk Flex was hyping like crazy all year on Hot 97 but who never really busted through to the mainstream. He has whack politics probably and definitely works really hard to affirm busted notions of what masculinity should look like so it’s not necessarily the worst thing in the world that he never got popular. But this song is a super catchy feel good anthem with no real politics beyond rising above the haters, which I think pretty much everyone can get behind. Plus the hook says “to the people who thought I was gonna flop / y’all a part of the reason I ain’t gonna stop / against the odds I went hard until I plopped…” and plop was my official word of 2015, so that’s obviously very important to me.
4. Sheer Mag “II” 7”

            The first Sheer Mag 7” was so perfect that I was like, “there’s no way the next one will be as good,” and then it was! I wasn’t gonna bother including this because probably everybody will, but then this thing happened that I gotta tell you about.

Last week I was making a pie with my mom and it was kind of a tender time because her baby boy moved away and now I’m back and it’s very emotional. ANYWAY I was chopping up apples or something and she asked me to put on music and so I put on this record, and as those first drum hits on “Fan The Flames” rang out in the kitchen I started crying thinking about how good the riff is and that I was about to share that awesome riff with the woman who gave birth to me. FYI, my mom 100% did not seem to care or be moved at all by the song.

5. Popper Burns “Popper Burns” Cassette

            OK! Gonna keep this one brief, but I really can’t understand why this band isn’t huge. Totally the best weirdo rockers I’ve seen in ages and their record is SOOOO GOOOOOOOD. Manic freaked out queers doing punk about gender anxiety, patriarchal damage, surveillance paranoia, war, fucking, etc. Frontwoman Patti Melt is one of the most intense performers I’ve seen in a long time and the rest of the band creates a dissonant, dystopian musical landscape for Patti’s ranting. Def go look them up and listen to their record if you like fucked up punk by fucked up freaks.

6. Book came out.

            My book came out. I threw myself a giant release party at Silent Barn where I read to like 200+ people including a bunch of my extended family and friends dating back to childhood. Then IN SCHOOL and DOWNTOWN BOYS played. I really felt like part of a community and like there was a sense of continuity to my life. I had been going through a bunch of stuff while I was writing the book and had isolated myself pretty intensely from the people who care about me. During the 9 months between when I handed the book in and it came out I spent a lot of time rekindling friendships I had let slip, as well as making new friends. It felt really good to care and be cared about. OMG also I been hanging out with this truly sweet babe from my past and she didn’t live in New York and the morning of my book release she surprised me by SHOWING UP UNEXPECTED ON MY STOOP. There were a whole bunch of reasons that she wasn’t gonna be able to get to town for it, but then she showed up anyway it was one of the nicest things anyone has done for me ever in my life.

7. Left New York.

            So then I moved to Texas to live with her! Well not exactly that fast, but almost that fast. I’ve talked about it a lot in previous columns, but I just wanna say again how glad I am to have finally moved away from the place I grew up and how exciting it is to be thinking about a new life outside there. Moving across the country to live with an excellent babe rules too. She’s the first person I’ve ever dated who is as nice to me as I am to her, which is a real good change and I highly recommend it. Date someone who is nice to you! You deserve it!

8. Met Eileen Myles.

            So this isn’t really that big maybe but I met Eileen Myles and I think that’s rad because she’s basically the greatest. I had a dream right before we went to go see Eileen read that I was in this kind of zombie apocalypse scenario where everything was scary and frantic but I ran into Bruce Springsteen in a sporting goods store where we were both stealing guns to fight zombies and I asked him to sign a baseball for my girlfriend, “in case we all make it through this.”

            Well, because of that dream and also because of this rumor I heard about Jimmy Shotwell getting a baseball signed by Noam Chomsky, I decided I would get Eileen Myles to sign a baseball and then I forgot to bring a baseball!!!! As if I own a baseball. OMG. But I had brought a copy of my book to give her and she was like, “well, I’m going to Europe and I don’t have room in my stuff, is it tacky if I ask you to mail it to me?” And I was like, “of course not.” And then I had her sign a copy of my own book, which I think is very funny.

            ANYWAY she was obvs super tough but seemed very nice and it’s not like we’re friends or anything, but there’s def something cool about meeting her because I’ve stared at the cover of Cool For You for a really long time thinking about how rad she is. I think like, a large portion of the way I perform masculinity is based heavily on the photo on the cover of that book. Not that I spread my legs that wide when I sit, but more in terms of ~ViBeZ~. Maybe one day we’ll be friends and I’ll tell her that in person, but at least for now I’ve got a copy of my book that she signed.

9. Returned home to visit after having moved away.

            Touched on this for a sec in the Sheer Mag section of the column, but I can’t stress enough how cool it was for me to return home. Having never moved away before, I’ve never felt the glorious enveloping warmth of return. For me it was returning to the place I grew up and my birth family, but I understand that I am one of the lucky ones and those places are fraught for many people. That said, living in a place where I felt comfortable, safe and cared for by many was pretty rad, but going back there to visit really takes the cake! I felt like a celebrity!

10. Suspicious Beasts “Might Die Tomorrow” LP

            SUSPICIOUS BEASTS main songwriter Yusuke Okada, is one of my favorite people and he drew my column header, so, you know, I’m biased. But listen, I love this record so much. I’ve been listening to demos of these songs that Yusuke emailed me for a while now, so hearing them fleshed out and properly mixed is super cool. Yusuke is one of the best and most prolific song-writers I know and his records have a timeless feeling to them that is hard to pin down. I asked Becca what she thought it sounded like last night and she said “guitar-based pop music. There’s a lead that sounds like the BYRDS but its pop, not country.” But also the last time they toured in America I saw them twice and learned that they are the by far the loudest band out of anyone I know! This record came out on the very unfortunately named label ALIEN SNATCH, which is in Germany. You can buy it from them or maybe from elsewhere too? I don’t even know.  Ask your local record store to order it if people even still do that anymore.

            I would also like to mention that Yusuke is in two other bands which both rule. One is called LOST BALLOONS and it’s his project with Jeff Burke from MARKED MEN. They have a record on ALIEN SNATCH too. It’s louder and more punk and has a toned-down MARKED MEN feel, which works very well with Yusuke’s style of self-loathing via song. Then he has another outfit called FRIEND where he shares songwriting duties with Nate Stark formerly of BENT OUTTA SHAPE (+ many other bands). The band is rounded out by Chuck Van Dyke (STUPID PARTY/ a bunch of Chattanooga bands) and Matt Callahan (BENT / YOUNG MEN / etc) on bass and drums respectively and listen up, they’re really good. They don’t have a record out so just go see them or something.

None of these are punk bands, per se, but they are weirdo rock by punks that fits well within MRR’s purview. Like Billy Childish. I dunno, just listen to this shit, okay? BYE!

It’s been a little more than a month since I moved out of New York City. I’m still living in Austin, still retired. Did I tell you I retired? It’s temporary, but basically it’s like this: I got this book advance a few years ago and I never stopped working my diner job. I wrote the book and it’s been published (it’s called Slice Harvester, buy it from the cool local bookstore if you want, or just pay an oogle to steal one from Barnes & Noble for you, it’s on a major label and there’s no way I’ll ever make enough to see any royalties), and I’ve moved to Austin and now I’m retired for the time being, which is partially code for “I don’t have a job yet” but also code for “I’m not trying that hard to find one.”

Things have been great! Aside from Austin’s two MAJOR flaws (no bagels, no rap radio), it’s really cool here. I go swimming all the time in natural bodies of water, I eat super well, I live with and am building a life with someone I love a ton and who does cool work and who I’m inspired by and stoked on just about every day.

And my cats, despite my fears that they would be truly scared, have taken the whole move in stride and seem to really feel at home in the new place. See, not only have I never moved out of New York before, but until two years ago I lived in the same apartment for almost a decade. Sal and Growler (the cats in question) lived in one other apartment for like six months when they were tiny kittens, but basically they had spent their entire lives up until that move in the first apartment, and let me tell you, they freaked out about leaving. I’ve had them since they were a few days old and during the first week they both would try and drink milk out of my nipples while I slept and I’m a big softy already but basically I mom them way too hard and get super worried about their well-being in ways that are probably about projecting because I’m unwilling to acknowledge that I need to be nurtured and cared for and I refuse to ask for that so I put it all on them.

ANYWAY, my cats. They live in Texas and they’re stoked. They live with two dogs and don’t care, which is crazy to me because the handful of times dogs came over to my apartment in New York they freaked out. These dogs are cool, though. Becca has a dog named Gus—who is a big, floppy, bloodhound with dwarfism so he has a giant body and little tiny legs—and our roommate Melody has a Chihuahua named Ace who just wants to hang out all the time.

So like two or three weeks ago Becca’s friend found a stray. She just wandered into his house and his dog was freaking out so we said we’d hang on to her for a couple days until we could figure out what to do to keep her out of a kill shelter. She’s a smaller pit mix and she was a real chiller. We named her Kira after Kira Roessler from Black Flag because we’re punks.

I was stressed about the cats, but they were fine. Kira was curious about them but seemed to leave them be if they would hiss or hide for two long. Having a new dog was kind of a pain in the ass or whatever—she would wake us up in the middle of the night or like, crap on the floor, (Puppy Shit, literally and figuratively)—but it was nothing we couldn’t handle.

Then the day before Halloween, we came home from some errands and like, five minutes after we let Kira out of her crate I heard this crazy sound and Kira was in me and Becca’s closet with Growler in her actual mouth and she wasn’t biting hard or trying to hurt her because if she had been Growler woulda been toast, she was just trying to play. But Growler didn’t wanna play and was in fact terrified and we got Kira off her and back in her crate and I picked Growler up and she was so limp and scared in my arms and covered in piss because she pissed herself, and I just lost it.

I kept it together long enough to wash Growler off, make sure she wasn’t hurt, just scared. I wrapped her in a blanket and hid her somewhere away from the dog where she could relax and decompress, and then I sat down on the bed and I couldn’t even think I was so checked out. Becca came in to see if I was okay and I could barely talk beyond apologizing that I didn’t want to go to the Halloween party we had planned on going to that night. She made it clear that I had nothing to be sorry for and tried her best to talk to me, but I was incredibly unreceptive to communication.

She went to the party after I told her I needed to be alone and I just lay there and stared at the ceiling for a while. Eventually I started walking around the room and then I started walking around the rest of the apartment and then I sat down on the couch and watched TV. Barely functional.

It seemed like everything was wrong. I wasn’t regretting moving to Austin, or taking in Kira, those things seemed incidental. It was more like, everything in my life had been wrong. I realized it was the four year anniversary of when I quit drinking and I wondered what the point even was, because if I was wasted at I least wouldn’t give a shit about any of it. I used booze for years to create a barrier between myself and my emotions. Even after four years off the stuff, feeling them can still be jarring.

Eventually I eased up a bit, realizing I wasn’t gonna feel better any time soon. Better not to fight it. I decided to explicitly name the things that were bothering me, articulate my interiority, something I wouldn’t have done four years ago. I was shaken because a living thing I love and who’s well-being I feel responsible for was put into a dangerous and scary situation that I had been unable to defend them from. I felt like a failure as a mother and protector. I felt an acute awareness of the fragility of life. I sat with those feelings, something else I wouldn’t have done four years ago.

Becca got home, we went to sleep. In the morning I woke up feeling fine. That was five or six days ago now and the shit feeling is barely a memory, but it was an unpleasant reminder of how I felt for a long time. I haven’t felt like that for a while, I thought I had gotten immune to it or grown out of it or whatever. But the truth is that my sense of well-being is incredibly precarious and I actually work really hard to keep myself not feeling like shit each day. So I wanna thank Kira the Dog for pulling the floor out from under me and reminding me of all the work that it takes to keep it there. It’s been four years since I’ve quit drinking and I’ve come a long way and I’m proud of myself.