Archive | Etiquette Matters

The Ultimate Fool’s Errand

Only once has someone broken up with me in a way that I immediately and completely accepted. Really, this was quite an achievement, because historically I date people off and on forever unless they reveal themselves to be complete sociopaths or get married. (Although my aversion to marriage is well-documented, I am not in the business of making third parties miserable.)

But though this beau was neither married nor a complete sociopath, his breakup line was so effective that we never spoke again once he uttered it. In a low, caressing voice he said: “It seems this is not what we had hoped.”

In point of fact, he was absolutely right. We’d been dating for four months, which is exactly how long it takes for sexual chemistry to wear off when there’s no other glue in place. I won’t bog you down with the details (he did too much coke and considered me too much of a prude) but as I write this I can assure you that, 20 years later, the only real memory I have of that relationship are those nine magic words. Continue Reading →

Astro PSA With Tons of Quotation Marks

“Shantavia Beale II,” Kehinde Wiley.

After six weeks of retrograde, Venus stationed direct in the wee hours of this morning. What does this mean? That beauty and congeniality are back in the house. Does this mean that our country is going to miraculously return to civility? Not bloody likely, because what Venus Retrograde shows us is where real care, love, and compassion is disrupted. In other words, this time around it showed us what lived below the surface of “nice” and “normal” in the “United” States of America. So though a lot of “allies” are showing the inevitable signs of weariness, the point is not to return to business as usual so much as to integrate the lessons of these last weeks’ turmoil and transformation into your daily routines. A positive “business as usual” has always been a privilege unavailable to many, anyway. So petition reps AND go to the beach. Color roots AND attend protests. Buy oysters AND donate to social justice causes. Post about your cute pets AND concrete ways to topple institutionalized white supremacy. True change is a long haul, so we must pace ourselves so that we never let up. At the end of the day, social justice worth fighting for isn’t nice and pretty. Rather, it is kind and beautiful. Venus would approve.

I am scheduling intuition and tarot readings again beginning July 1; book here.

In Love and Anger: Larry Kramer, 1935-2020

That Larry Kramer lived to 84 was a miracle. But it was not a privilege. It was a victory hard-won through the sheer voltage and focus of his beautiful, ungainly will–the same will that saved millions of “othered” bodies through his dedication to activating the passive, the phony, the pious-all the institutions that didn’t give a fig about a virus mostly killing off queers, POCs, addicts, and prostitutes.

I always say when a public figure dies, we are re-acquainted with his legacy, so the timing of the AIDS activist and writer’s departure is not a coincidence. And it’s not just because we are once again grappling with institutional indifference to a widespread lethal virus. It is because Kramer showed us that we have to enact our righteous fury if we are to ensure the justice and protections that every human body deserves.

For all through Trump’s reign, we have been wrangling with the bloody legacy of the colonizers we still exalt. This dangerous dehumanization always has been the law of this land (literally and figuratively) but our evil reality TV oligarch has newly empowered it—much as Hitler liberated a long-simmering national anti-semitism just as German gentiles were feeling disenfranchised post-WWI. Due to new technology, some Americans are waking to what everyone else lacked the luxury to ignore: that freedoms, including the right to live, are only a given for those whom our fucked-up Founding Fathers deemed human.

As a white woman–queer, yes, but privileged in so many other ways– it is not enough for me to say I am devastated by the lethal entitlement endorsed and institutionalized in my country. It is not enough for me to just write something here, which is why I’ve largely kept mum. It’s not even enough for my heart to break, though it really, really has. Larry Kramer’s legacy must be honored.

He taught us it was not enough to prettily and politely express our objection to institutionalized murder. He taught us to love each other enough to rise against the machine of greed, willful ignorance, selfishness, hate, and violence. He taught us we must act as if every human body endangered by institutionalized oppression is our own. And he taught us that the goal is for every body to live long enough to tell their story.

We still have much work to do but you have earned your rest, Cousin Larry. Thank you for your messy, heart-forward resistance.

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy