The supreme whateverness of upward moving depths

December roundup

Dec 13, 2024

It’s Friday and I haven’t been sleeping. I stay up late, revising a novel in my head and reading beautiful, sad books about abuse and addiction and generational trauma by Native writers that make me wonder how long the tail of genocide can stretch. The more I read, the more it becomes an ouroboros—a snake eating its own tail in perpetuity.

I was in a bar once in Tucson and met a Yaqui guy with the same last name as my mother. I joked that we might be cousins but because I look very white he didn’t understand what I was saying. I kept talking but I’m a mongrel and tan like an aspirin and sound like a girl from Clueless. My mom worked with the Yaquis but she’s not Yaqui. She’s Mexican and Indigenous but we’re not enrolled tribal members and yada yada assimilation, colonialism, passing, and why do I bother when I could just say I’m white and move the fuck on. Especially to some rando in a bar.

But it matters. Some days it matters more than others.

The year is almost over. I wrote 3.75 novels, but sold zero. How does one measure output against progress, if that is, in fact, a worthwhile metric at all?

The novel my agents pitched this year died on submission—that is, it was sent to editors at publishing houses but no one bought it.

(This isn’t to say it will never become a book, but for now, back in the drawer.)

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t impatient, but things take as long as they take and until they do, I’ll be here, writing.

I want to write a funny erotica that’s a parody of Toy Story, aka Sex Toy Story. I wouldn’t even have to rename the characters: Woody? Buzz? It writes itself!

But I can’t do that until I finish revising my current work-in-progress, so TBD.

I’m now the same age my mother was when she had the brain aneurysm that almost killed her. Things were hard for her at the time—she was the sole person making up the mental health department on the reservation.

She was separated from her husband, and had moved into an apartment on the west side, next to a Super Kmart, which is where we did everything—got haircuts, got eye exams, ate “nice” dinners, bought clothes, rented VHS tapes, etc.

When her brains blew—her words—three men showed up at the hospital. Her ex-husband, her current husband, and the man who was with her the night she collapsed. They were all fighting over her, which I didn’t see then but do see now, was a kind of love.

She wasn’t expected to live, but she did. Then she had a stroke. And another. And another. And another. She’s still alive, but on bad days, sometimes her aliveness feels like a technicality.

In the hospital, they gave us pamphlets about how the stroke rates for women of color are four times higher than for white women.

I looked down at my pale arm holding the pamphlet and wondered if my skin would protect me.

(It has, in more ways than I probably know.)

Being 12 or 13 when my mother had her brain aneurysm, I didn’t entertain the notion that she might die, even though death was not a stranger—three out of four of my grandparents were dead already, as well as my father’s friend, who had recently died by suicide.

That man’s granddaughter got my dad’s name tattooed on her calf when he died. Grief is a curious bird.

I didn’t get a tattoo, but I did convince myself that my father would live if I found him the perfect coffee mug in Fez.

I still have that mug, though I never use it.

I’m not sure what my point is exactly, except that I’m thinking about second chances and third chances and endings and almost-endings and wondering what 2025 will bring other than political turmoil.

I’m largely avoiding the news. My news is “whatever Kathryn Hahn is doing,” and I recommend this as a life strategy.

Agatha All Along stars Hahn and is the queer dirtbag witch series I didn’t know I needed. Aubrey Plaza from Parks and Rec plays her toxic ex! It’s Marvel, so lots of blasting with purple rays and stuff, but they know how to tell a good story.

After we finished that, we had to watch WandaVision to understand all the gaps in Agatha All Along, and also to see the wink that launched a thousand memes, so if you have time, watch that first. It gives Agatha more context.

Then, we watched Tiny Beautiful Things again, and this week both Bad Moms movies, (ahem, Bad Moms and Bad Moms Christmas) which I did not anticipate liking, but did.

Hahn has the best lines in those movies, which are like: “Hey Jerry, that beige windbreaker is really lighting up my board.”

And: “Get those tits right up!”

And: “I fucked Vin Diesel… it might not have actually been Vin Diesel, but I definitely fucked a bald guy.”

And then she makes out with approximately 14 PTA moms for no reason whatsoever. (HERE FOR IT.)

I’m participating in I Heart Sapphfic’s reading challenge, and as such, Courtship is on sale for $.99 until… probably Sunday, or whenever I remember to change the price back. The quirky characters are senior citizens who wear “Liberté, Egalité, Beyoncé” shirts and partake in sex toy conventions. They were really fun to write.

If that’s your jam, then hop on poppa.