The Church of Nowhere to Go
It’s Sunday morning, and this one feels especially lonely.
I’ve always regarded November and March as the loneliest months. Not the unloveliest—that honor is reserved for February—but the loneliest. November bombards you with the myth of the nuclear family, but also is rife with mystery and magic. March, my mind, is nearly charmless. Taxes loom, chickens come home to roost, snow storms–and with none of that December magic.
This year March is especially intolerable. The weather is starting to shift, and for that I’m grateful, very grateful. The sun is brighter, the days are longer, there’s a sudden promise in the air. But that promise is painful.
Maybe because half the people I know are vaccinated while I am not. Maybe because my back is too wonky for me to drive very far. Maybe because the cold in March is harder to bear. Right now everything is on the horizon—spring, shots, opportunities, freedom— and it still doesn’t feel guaranteed that horizon will become a Now. I want somewhere to go, someone to hold, someone with whom to sit unmasked on a soft scratchy couch, someone to jostle without consequence on a gloriously crowded street.
It’s Sunday morning, and this one feels especially lonely.
‘It’s a Sin’: AIDS as Generation Black Hole
I inhaled the HBO Max/Channel 4 AIDS dramatic mini-series It’s a Sin in one day and am still thinking about it.
As someone who was in ACT UP and moved to the West Village in the early 90s, AIDS is never off my radar. I’ll never forget my beautiful young friends who seemed like ghosts even before they died. I’ll never forget equating sex with death even before I lost my virginity.
The London-set series has charisma to spare–hip-strutting, head-strong boys; head-spinning montages; spot-on 80s and 90s set and costume design; catchphrases! But it spares no soundtrack cliches nor no 90s-era micro-aggression: witness its centralization of white characters; the lack of sex life for the sole female protagonist, who seems to exist solely to caretake men.
I resist the critique that It’s a Sin fast-forwards too quickly, though. While I was still in my teens, the transition from carefree club life and wanton fucking to hospitals, funerals, and activism took place in the blink of an eye. Gender/sexual harassment/trauma was so widespread it was background noise–something you white-knuckled through if you wanted an apartment, job, not to get beat to a pulp. Believe me. As someone who has often called out aberrant behavior—who confronted the landlord who stuck his tongue down my throat, who refused to work for the newspaper editor who licked his lips while asking if I had a boyfriend
–my career and livelihood suffered mightily.
Gen X is too hard on Z/millennials, but we resent younger people’s assumption that we’re oblivious to trauma. My generation of queers just was swamped with too much macro-aggression–mass extinction and existential horror–to tackle micro. Oh how this show captures that giddy ghastly time.
Astro PSA: Full Moon in Virgo
Clear out your schedule—at least emotionally—because today’s full moon takes place in Virgo. Often misunderstood as obsessive and controlling, Virgo is really about Divine Mother energy—purification, healing, and service. Coupled with Venus and Sun in Pisces (the other big healer of the Zodiac) and that no-joke Uranus-Saturn square invoking systemic changes, this is an ideal time to purify through trauma release techniques, meditation, prayer—and holistic cleaning products, if you’ve got them. Drink warm lemon water. Clear out a cabinet. Make a list of ways to practically demonstrate care. And take a a big, voluptuous bath. You may feel unusually antsy or experience a resurgence of plaguing physical and emotional symptoms over the next weeks, but rest assured it’s just a detox. The key is to go gently and methodically. It’s the Virgo way.
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