death to the primacy
an intro post
I was walking down the aisle in my gown when I saw it in my dad’s hands: white posterboard, handpainted block letters. Death to the Primacy of Romantic/Sexual Relationships, it read. The sign1, along with a few other decidedly less provocative ones, was a surprise orchestrated by my friends for my MFA graduation, a ceremony in which my friend said I was “marrying my writing.”
My dad had asked my friends what the sign meant, causing my friends to engage him in conversation about about a way of thinking, and living, that’s important to me but isn’t exactly easy to bring up: That there are other ways to love beyond longterm romantic partnership, ways that are equally valid and meaningful.
The rest of the summer, the sign’s message lived on as a kind of short-hand.
While on vacation with my brother, he asked, why does everyone think we’re married? The primacy, I told him. So how are you feeling about the primacy? An ex asked me, which I read as a rather elegant way of asking if I was dating anyone.
After a summer of cohabitating with a friend, of cooking for her and washing her sheets as she ran meetings, of walks with her Boston Terrier and bedtime Love Island, she wrote to me, in silver shimmery marker: We killed the primacy.
And now, I’m using the sign once more, to introduce this newsletter.
Welcome to Other Kinds of Intimacy, a newsletter about relationships in the most expansive sense of the term.
I’ll write and report about intimacy from my homes of Philadelphia and Manila: intimacy with the self; the intimacy of the interview; fleeting connection with near-strangers. Every other Sunday morning, expect a mix of reportage, personal essay, and cultural criticism, plus lots of thinking through what journalism can be.
Intimacy is not only the beat, but the lens through which I’ll examine the different things I’m interested in: from alternative ways of family-making to Tagalog to Filipino college basketball.
I’ll be honing the vision as I go, with help from you: Write me to let me know who I should interview and what you want to read more about.
I’m approaching this newsletter as a reporter who worked in local media for more than a decade and as a creative nonfiction writer working on a book of essays about (surprise) intimacy. I loved journalism and pursued it singlemindedly for pretty much my entire career so far, but after landing what I considered a dream job at my city’s daily paper several years ago, I realized I wasn’t happy. I quit last year. It is, of course, a longer story but this is just a humble intro post.
What I’m trying to say is that I’m building a new relationship with journalism and the newsletter is a big part of that. I want to see if I can apply what I love about reporting to the creative writing I’m pursuing now.
Beyond that, I hope the newsletter can help people think through how to be in relationship with others, with places, with themselves. I want to showcase all the ways people are creating intimacy and reimagining relationships, as a way to inspire other ways to live. Ultimately, I see it as correspondence, my favorite kind of writing.
Thanks for being here, I’m grateful for your attention.
Till Sunday,
Juliana