Today, Emory sent me a meme so good, I had to put it on our letterboard. It’s a pretty good summary of what I’ve been up to while Emory works. I’ve been loving the house husband life—I work part-time teaching and part-time doing our household chores and cooking. The rest of the time, I’m building out a classifieds-style local newsletter for queer folks, sending Freedom Of Information Law requests to state agencies, delivery driving, organizing volunteers for a Palestine solidarity march, rehearsing for the gay chorus’ upcoming performances, or editing the review I wrote while still in grad school for publication. Emory has been diligently working on his novel draft most evenings after work,1 hand-illustrating a choose-your-own-adventure zine, and collaging a stained-glass inspired artwork. The winter and spring are starting to give way and we’re doing our best to be intentional about how we use the extra energy that comes with more sunlight and warmth. We drew up our daily routines and set time blocks for the things that matter to us, a step to solidify the importance of carving out time for pleasure in our lives, including marking out time for the things that we did this month that we want to make more of a habit. So here’s to our pleasure in April and a lot more STEM (heavy on the S) in May!

XOXO, Jozef

Emory

Confession: I haven’t been doing much reading. Aside from the many newsletters I love to read, the only other reading I’ve really been doing is reading Station Eleven aloud to Jozef.

Jozef

I’ve read about a third of David Wojnarowicz’s, Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration, even though Emory hasn’t gotten a chance to read it yet and it was my birthday gift to him last year. I love the spaciousness of the prose and the way Wojnarowicz weaves together the observed, the imagined, and the in-between makes me feel like I’ve been invited to pull up a seat in his consciousness for a while. The essay “In the Shadow of the American Dream: Soon This Will All Be Picturesque Ruins” is dogeared in several places, the passages I wanted to revisit were too long and too beautiful for selective underlining. I also read Loving Corrections by adrienne maree brown and a chunk of The Selected Works of Audre Lorde edited by Roxanne Gay in preparation for a conflict resolution workshop.

Emory

At one of our Thursday dinners with N and A, Jo and I showed them Jacqueline Novak’s Get on Your Knees, which is a truly phenomenal one-woman comedy show slash soliloquy. Watching it again was an absolute pleasure—how could I not love a hilarious, at times moving monologue on the nature of the blowjob? But what really made it special was the particular sort of pleasure that comes from sharing a piece of media you enjoy with someone and having them enjoy it just as much. A sense of pride in your own good taste, I think. Plus it being a comedy special meant I got to hear my friends and husband laughing for an hour and a half, which is yet another joy.

I also really liked watching “Taylor Lorenz DESTROYS Sean Hannity over healthcare” (lol). If you don’t follow her work, is a journalist the conservatives love to hate. She agreed to go on Hannity’s show “because I feel like if they’re going to talk about me anyway, I’d rather be there to make a few points about our healthcare system.” I was awed by her ability to stay cool and collected, making her points without getting caught in any of the emotional traps conservative pundits love to set.

Her appearance on Fox News reminds me of ’s recent appearance on the podcast Flagrant, which he describes (very fairly!) as “a podcast with an almost all-male viewership, which prides itself on rejecting political correctness and is skeptical of all things ‘woke.’” He pointed out the importance of “seeking out audiences that may have never heard our message at all.” It is difficult—at times terrifying—to enter into these kinds of spaces and conversations, and as Buttigieg points out, not everyone needs to. What Lorenz and Buttigieg are doing on a national (perhaps global) level is something that a lot of us can and should do on an individual level.

These are the kinds of difficult conversations I have with some of my family members and acquaintances. Now, I don’t stay nearly as calm as Lorenz does—which is why I admire her skillset so much. But I believe that what she and Buttigieg are doing is an important part of liberation work. As Mahmoud Khalil said in his letter from a Louisiana ICE detention center, “I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear.” How can we liberate our oppressors if we never speak to them? I grew up in a conservative household and accepted those views without any real questioning throughout my whole childhood. I’m deeply grateful for the many people who had many conversations with me that helped broaden my worldview and shift not just my perspective, but my core values and beliefs. My own capacity to learn, grow, and change is what gives me faith that other people can learn, grow, and change.

But I’m getting off track here. Back to our pleasure.

Jozef

After finishing The White Lotus with A, we started watching Fleabag. Emory and I have both seen it before (it was actually the first television show we watched all the way through together) but A hasn’t, and the last time I watched it was before I went to speech therapy to learn non-verbal communication. Y’all, the difference being able to read facial expressions and tone has made in my life is ridiculous. Subtext is everywhere!!! Fleabag is one of those shows where non-verbal cues are essentially half the dialogue. I’m lucky to have Emory, a highly-trained media literacy guide, readily available to answer my questions, but it’s been nice watching the series and being able to interpret the show with a bit more independence.

Emory

Forever Is a Feeling has been on repeat for me. Lucy Dacus has done it again. In a lot of ways, it feels like a departure from her earlier work—gentler, less angry? Which is maybe what happens when you’re in love.

MAYHEM is still going strong in our house. Once a little monster, always a little monster. And speaking of queer music, I’ve also been listening to George Michael’s Faith and Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 because I’m very much a George Michael fag. (The gays who get it, get it.) I love a good late 80s/early 90s ballad, I love religious imagery, I love lustful lyrics—I love George Michael!

And just in time for this writing, Lorde dropped her new song, “What Was That,” which I love.

Jozef

I’ve been on a full album kick recently. My recent listens: Wasteland, Baby! by Hozier, Bury Me At Makeout Creek by Mitski, Beethoven Blues by Jon Batiste, Masterpiece by Big Thief, Coyote by John Calvin Abney, Forever Is A Feeling by Lucy Dacus, MAYHEM by Lady Gaga, Little Plastic Castle by Ani DiFranco, and Taking the Long Way by The Chicks.

Emory

I’ve been loving playing Celeste for the first time. (Being completely honest though, I’ve tried playing it before and quit when I couldn’t get through the first level. The old lady is right—if you’re not ready to climb the mountain yet, it’ll be there when you are.) I have two profiles going at the same time, one for when I’m sober and one for when I’m not. Because I like to create flawed “experiments”2 to compare my sober and stoned selves like a gothic scientist. Right now, I’m on level seven in both save files—so no spoilers!

We went back to our local art museum for the first time in a while for a lowkey Easter. There were some new exhibits to check out, plus this gorgeous fabric art installation that caught the midday sun through the glass ceiling so nicely. I really enjoyed sitting under it to write.

Jozef

Despite the weather’s insistence on swinging between sunny 70s and frigid 40s, I have decided it is porch season. I got a patio furniture set for $75 on Facebook Marketplace and some chiffon fabric from the thrift store to make billowy curtains around our sitting area. We’ve been spending evenings and mornings outside more often, listening to the birds getting it on (or getting ready to get it on, birds are freaky like that) and doing crossword puzzles from back issues of New York Magazine. Marmalade has her own chair, but prefers to be sitting directly atop us on the loveseat, so I’ve been getting some good puppy cuddles in too.

I’ve also been working on two quilts: one is a custom appliqued wall hanging that I auctioned to benefit the gay men’s chorus and the other is a collaborative blanket made for Transmissions Quilts. I have lots of other quilty ideas spinning too, and I’m looking forward to finding new ways to make my artistic practice a bigger part of my life now that I only work a traditional job part-time.

Emory

See: Jozef’s discussion of A’s birthday cake below. I literally can’t stop thinking about it.

Also, I’m going to mention the Polish Breakfast Platter we had at the art museum’s restaurant because I’m truly shocked Jo didn’t mention it. I’m more of a sweet breakfast guy (which is why I loved the lemon brioche Danish we also ordered), but Jo is definitely a savory breakfast guy. He literally gave me puppy-dog eyes when he asked me if I would split the Polish breakfast with him.

Jozef

I made a delicious tofu fried rice on a whim this afternoon from leftover wild rice, zucchini, carrots, and peas—yummy and photogenic! This month, our menu has been pretty simple—it’s been busy and the tail end of the cold half of the year always calls for comfort foods: roasted kiełbasa and veggies over rice, orange tofu with bell peppers and broccoli, and lots of homemade pizzas. Hands down though, the best thing I ate this month was A’s birthday cake: chocolate with a heavy coating of caramel sauce, whipped cream, and smashed Heath bars on top. No photographic evidence of it exists because we tore through it with a quickness. So. Fucking. Good.