This month was a quiet one, even though it felt like I rarely spent two consecutive hours at home. Alas, the myriad things I did and places I went stolidly refused to turn into capital-A Adventures. I spent most of my spare time sequestered at home, alternately completing a grant application for my choir and working on a cosplay (scroll down for more on this).

Some highlights that don’t have enough substance for a whole write-up:

• I met a long-time Tumblr friend in person for the first time! We’ve been corresponding via DM, text, and, recently, snail mail for a decade, but had never been in the same city until now. We enjoyed a lovely brunch at Veselka, then stumbled into a very cute print shop en route to a park on the Lower East Side.

• I took a waltz class! Basic waltz is not cardio-intensive, so I was surprised when I woke up the next day with sore muscles anyway. Who knew that maintaining ballroom hold and stepping in triple time still involves major muscle groups?

• Some friends came up to NYC to see Stray Kids perform at Gov Ball, NYC’s annual music festival! It was interesting to see Kpop concert norms and festival culture clash. A lot of people seemed to treat Stray Kids’ performance akin to barricade at a large stadium with seated sections, rather than an open-arena performance with multiple artists. Still, we had a blast, and we waited out the rainstorm afterward rain at some random taqueria where we got a margarita punchbowl bigger than my head and stronger to boot.

Some lowlights that also don’t have enough substance for a whole write-up:

• Disclosure Day ⭐⭐ - to steal my Letterboxd review, this was fun to watch with my eyes but not with my brain. I suspect I’m in the minority for not liking this movie, but I found it comically insubstantive and unoriginal. So many fantastic actors were wasted on a nonsense script.

• Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh ⭐⭐⭐ - this claimed to be a queer space opera, and I guess it technically was both of those things, but the execution left a lot to be desired. The book’s blurb fails to mention that the protagonist starts the book conservative and queerphobic and remains staunchly unlikable for more than half the book, until she catches a glimpse of a lesbian alternate version of herself and accepts this fundamental self-truth without overmuch protest. I didn’t find her character development believable or interesting, and it greatly tempered my enjoyment of the space opera aspects.

• PrideFest - the day of the NYC Pride parade has always been one of my favorite days of the year. The colors, the community, the unapologetic self-expression and queer joy all speak to a piece of my soul that will never forget being demonized for being queer in a high school of 3000 students. But PrideFest, like so many other NYC institutions, felt sterile this year—corporatized somehow, even as corporations distance themselves in droves from Pride as a whole. There was more bootleg Heated Rivalry merch than actual queer paraphernalia, more dropshipping vendors than queer folk showing up for their queer brethren. It just didn’t hit the same.

When my friends made me watch The Secret World of Arrietty a few months ago, I knew instantly that I had to cosplay Arrietty. And I had a ready-made deadline in the form of San Diego Comic Con, which I’m attending in July. Arrietty seemed both simple and recognizable enough to pull together without too much stress.

I’ve spent most of June buckling down and working on this cosplay, and let me tell you, I severely underestimated the amount of effort required. The simplicity of her outfit belies the number of small details that you don’t notice until you try to replicate it. It also means that any flaws are starkly apparent, making the whole costume look like a vacuum-sealed off-brand fit you got at a Spirit Halloween.

I got my sister’s (and her roommate’s) help back in May to sew the body of Arrietty’s bag, as she’s got a sewing machine and some level of skill with it. Then, to procrastinate hand-sewing the bag strap, I painted and glued together a wooden sphere and dowel to form the sword, painted and glued some craft foam into her grappling hook holder, hand-sewed her belt, and carefully snipped and hemmed a white dress to get the right silhouette.

It’s comical how much time and effort went into creating this measly collection of accessories. And this was the easy half of the cosplay, too. I still need to dye the dress pink, sew the bag strap and finish the bag, and cut out her grappling hook from EVA foam—all in the next 2 weeks.

I’m starting to feel the pressure, but I can’t deny that I’m having fun with the process. There’s a tangible sense of accomplishment that accompanies the completion of each accessory. And I like solving crafting puzzles—how do I take something from a picture and make it real? How do I make each prop functional as well as accurate?

Keep an eye out for next month’s newsletter; I’ll share a photo of the full cosplay when it’s finally done!

My YouTube shorts algorithm has been drip-feeding me scenes from The Mentalist for months now, and I finally caved. Unfortunately, the algorithm has me dead to rights: Patrick Jane is the exact type of arrogant, competent, self-destructive character that I find compelling beyond belief. I blasted through the first 2 seasons in a matter of days.

Unfortunately, that rapid rate of consumption makes it impossible to ignore that the show is blatant copaganda. Jane and his team routinely deploy sketchy, if not downright illegal, tactics to provoke confessions and catch suspects red-handed, and any characters who oppose this behavior end up either dead or disgraced. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, given the copaganda-rife era during which it was produced, but I was taken aback nonetheless.

I’m hopeful, if not particularly optimistic, that the characters will eventually get their comeuppance. In the meantime, I’m having a lot of fun noticing when Simon Baker’s Australian accent peeks through.

A couple times this month, I’ve had occasion to reminisce about a mediocre-verging-on-bad date I went on last year, where I offhandedly said at some point, “ah, yes, the mortifying ordeal of being known.”

This was a reference to a quote that has gone viral online, at least in my corners of the internet: “If we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.” You may also be familiar with the paragraph that precedes this quote, wherein the author describes descending a staircase in which you can hear everything anyone has ever said about you, starting with the worst and ending with the kindest.

My date was not familiar with this quote. My date assumed I was being sincere, regarded me with wounded dismay, and launched into an impassioned argument about why being known is a thing of beauty.

I let him continue in that vein for some time, not quite knowing how to interrupt him to explain myself. Eventually, he turned to me and asked if I still thought being known was mortifying, and I confessed with some sheepishness, “I’m actually quoting an article from some guy who rented a herd of goats for reasons unknown a decade ago. I’m a little bit chronically online; I quote online things sometimes.”

He didn’t know how to respond to that. I didn’t know how to help him respond to that. The date never got much better.

Anyway, if you’ve ever heard this quote, I think the article it comes from is worth a read, if only for the sucker punch of opening it and immediately seeing, “I had rented a herd of goats for reasons that aren’t relevant here and had sent out a mass e-mail with photographs of the goats attached to illustrate that a) I had goats, and b) it was good.” The path from “renting a herd of goats” to “being loved necessitates being humiliatingly known” is not obvious at first blush, but it comes together with surprising coherence.

Read “I Know What You Think of Me” here

June kicked off an incredibly nautical moment in my life, as the city began to gear up for 250th anniversary celebrations. As my inaugural nautical event, I managed to snag a ticket for an afternoon sail on the Pioneer, a schooner¹ from 1885 operated by the South Street Seaport Museum.

I’ll confess, I really only joined the sail with the hopes of worming my way into the Seaport volunteer program, which purportedly teaches you how to sail the Pioneer from the ground up. But it was a surprisingly fun experience! We had gorgeous view of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and New Jersey, and the captain brought the boat right up along the Statue of Liberty, which afforded the opportunity for myriad cool photographs.

Also, I can now add “hoisting a foresail” to the list of ways I’ve broken a nail! It will surprise no one to hear that I raced to the fore of the boat the moment the captain asked for volunteers to help hoist the sails. I didn’t think I’d be able to contribute much, given my general size and lack of upper body strength, but it turns out that all the block and tackle² on a ship has a purpose, namely allowing weak sailors like me to hoist strong things like sails through the power of technical things like “physics” and “mechanical advantage.”