Hello, dear human,

Hoo boy. 2025 is a real doozy. These lines from “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver have been rattling around in my head all year:
“Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.”

I hope you find wonder, joy, and grounding amidst the tumult.

Here’s what’s going on in my literary world, how you can take action right now, what’s helping, and a little excerpt from my manuscript revision in process.

Lit Life

Absolute Pleasure: Queer Reflections on Five Messy Decades of Rocky Horror is coming out September 16, 2025, from The Feminist Press. Pre-orders are live and a great way to show your support for my work. You can also back the Kickstarter for some cool merch (including delightful Antici…pation patches), tickets to the NYC launch party on September 18, and more.

I am beyond thrilled to be part of this beautiful, wild anthology. My essay rewinds time and revisits some key moments of Rocky Horror in my life, including seeing a live theater production with my dad!

Take Action

This year, many of you have asked me what you can do to make a meaningful difference for queer and trans people. If you can show up with your money right now, it would mean more than you can imagine.

Thursday, June 5 is Give OUT Day, the only national day of giving for LGBTQ+ nonprofits. I’m fundraising for Equality Federation because I know how vital it is to have strong, well-resourced, state-based organizations working together for LGBTQ+ freedoms and protections.

Equality Federation is my political home because we’re building a movement by supporting 52 state partners in 42 states to build power, strengthen our infrastructure, and sustain the people doing the work. Can you chip in $10 to help us reach our goal of $5k? I’ve personally committed to raising $500. Every gift helps resource our state partners with the organizing training, funding, and policy strategy to keep our momentum going in the years ahead.

I understand if you can’t show up with your money right now. I still love you! But you could get involved with the Equality Federation member in your state by showing up to advocacy days, telling your story about why queer and trans people matter to you, signing petitions, or even just sending a supportive message to their general inbox! There’s a future where we all experience liberation and thrive wherever we call home. But it will take all of us to get there. What could you do?

What’s Helping Now

I recently attended book events for Spent by Alison Bechdel and Marsha: The Joy & Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson by Tourmaline, two of my artist/activist heroes. Being in space with such brilliant luminaries reminded me how critical it is to be in community—thinking together and sharing what is getting us through. The poet Ross Gay says, “Joy and delight are rigorous. More rigorous than misery.” I’m trying to bring that rigor to my practice of seeking joy.

What I’m Working On

I’m participating in Jami Attenberg’s wonderful #1000wordsofsummer project, using it as the kick in the pants I need to finish this round of memoir revision. While at the Vermont Studio Center last fall, I realized the manuscript has been missing Adult Mel’s voice and perspective. That conversation through time on the page isn’t easy, but it’s necessary. Here’s an excerpt I’ve been working on. Feel free to write and let me know what you think.
———

Linda was my first “other mother.” I came to think of a handful of women this way, mothers of friends or girlfriends, who loved me as though I were theirs and offered something my own mother could not. Even now, it feels unimaginable that someone with such a beautiful spirit could be gone from this world. I loved her then, and I love her now.

Sometimes, I’m bulldozed by how little I have processed the grief over her death in the long twenty-five years since she left this realm. But, of course, it was overshadowed by all the dominos that fell since that awful day. I have grappled more with guilt over my unfulfilled promise to Linda. She asked me to take care of her daughter, and I told her I would.

Shayna and I were good friends for a long time, but then she transferred to a different high school after our freshman year, and my life was chaotic every day. I still tried to look out for her, keep in touch, and show up to her parties. But I didn’t keep track of anybody when I moved to New York. I needed distance from my life upstate. College kept me in touch with the people I saw every day. Social media made it easy to track people who were farther away. I would like her photos and write “Happy birthday” on her Facebook wall each September. We even messaged back and forth a few times over the years.

I don’t think we ever stopped loving each other. I think we were both always grateful for the kids we were when our moms were both alive and sane. At least, I hope she felt that way; that’s the only feeling I ever had for her. I wish we could have had those conversations. I wish we’d kept in touch. Shayna was my best friend for six years, and I will miss her for the rest of my life.

There are people you meet who change the trajectory of your entire life. Shayna was one of those people for me. When we met on the first day of second grade in Mrs. Farnsworth’s classroom, I knew this person was someone special. I was in awe of her self-assurance, cropped hair, and Yankees jacket, and how she traded baseball cards at recess with the boys. Kids at school called her names for years, but somehow, she let it roll off her. She knew who she was; no amount of schoolyard bullying would change that. She made me want to be the same way.

For years, I badly wanted a letterman jacket. All the cool guys wore them: AC Slater, Archie, and every 1950s guy in movies and TV. Growing up working class meant I got some things sometimes, but it was hard to predict what would make the cut. Most of my clothes were hand-me-downs from my cousin, Sandy, or my brother. I couldn’t yet articulate my desire for short hair and boy clothes., but I found a purple and black letterman jacket in the American Girl doll catalog. Maybe it checked two boxes: a replacement fall jacket for school and a back-to-school present. My mother bought it two sizes too big so I could grow into it and wear it for many seasons. As soon as it arrived, though, I regretted wanting it at all. It was kind of like the letterman jacket I had pictured, but not it at all. I wanted something masculine and well-fitting, not this girly purple menace that covered me to my thighs. Besides, I liked American Girl dolls and had the good fortune to own two, but I didn’t want to broadcast that forever. I wore the jacket, but I hated it.

I’m wearing that jacket in the photos of Shayna and me on her family’s porch. Linda took the series of us dancing, laughing, kissing: two best friends enamored with each other. I always thought it funny she was so butch when we were in second grade, and I was so femme. But then she got older, her hair got longer, and those beautiful curls emerged. And the queerness and trans masculinity I found existed only because of a seed of possibility planted back in second grade. So many facets of the person I became were because of the doors that Shayna opened for me so long ago.

I have a memory of a sleepover with Shayna sometime between fifth grade and seventh. We took over the basement with sleeping bags and blankets on the floor, the kerosene heater keeping us toasty warm. We drank Surge, consumed an entire box of Lucky Charms and seemingly endless bags of microwave popcorn. We played Monopoly, and put on movie after movie in the background; Meet the Deedles and Dudley Do-Right stick out in my memory.

For as similar as we were, we came from different worlds. She grew up Reform Jewish, while I found myself in Catholic Mass every Sunday. She had a fancy wooden ship playground the backyard, swordfish for dinner, and access to the country club pool. But we loved each other and appreciated the differences. I remember feeling like I could tell her anything, and she would never judge me. I remember feeling like I wanted to stay up talking to her forever, a conversation that would never end.

In March 2024, Shayna went missing. She was living with a boyfriend in rural Arizona. The news reports indicated a fight between them, that the landlord was somehow involved. For months, her sister Kara took to social media to keep the search alive for her missing sister. I followed closely, Googling Shayna’s name every few days and talking about her in therapy. I contacted friends who had known her in school to see if they had heard the news. I even reached out to Kara to see if I could be of any help. The months ticked on, and nothing changed.

In late August 2024, I went to my first residency at the Vermont Studio Center to have focused time to work on this manuscript. One evening, while I was there, my wife Audrie called me. She didn’t want to interrupt my writing process but wanted me to hear it from someone who loved me. The local news upstate had aired a story that Shayna’s boyfriend and landlord had both been arrested for the murder and the concealment of her body. The shock numbed me; all I could feel was my heart pounding. I don’t know what I said, but I remember the crushing feeling in my chest. When we got off the phone, I walked to the Johnson Arboretum. The plantings arranged in concentric circles make it ideal for walking meditation. I started walking the gravel paths and called my mother. If she hadn’t heard, I wanted to tell her. And if she had, I wanted to talk about it with her. She had heard, but she hadn’t wanted to bother me. I lay on a bench as we spoke of Shayna and Linda, the tragedy and insanity of two lives cut so short. I looked up at the stars and hoped and prayed that Shayna and Linda were both at peace, finally together again.