Simply The Best: My Favorite Things That I Wrote In 2016
My writing output in 2016 was smaller than in 2015, largely because I spent 2015 writing at an unsustainable volume and with far more writing obligations than I had in 2016. I was afraid at first of putting this list together because I feared that I’d produced so little worth remembering. But a closer look at what I wrote in 2016, I’m especially proud of it. Proud of giving myself permission to write some of the stranger, less easily consumed stories I have been longing to write at publications I trust. Below are my favorites.
“Songs I Mourned Men To,” Brooklyn Magazine, January 2016
I kicked off the year with this somber reflection on a collection of moments in which I have grieved over the loss of men, though not always to death or departure. I liked much of what I wrote for Brooklyn this year but this stands out as my first sincere attempt at writing about the relationship between music and memory.
I cannot decipher the sounds of different instruments within a song or name notes that were hit or how to aptly compare a voice to honey or smoke. I do not know how to write about music so much as I know how to dwell in it. I know how to let the voices and hums and rhythms reverberate in dark moments and in the memories that follow them, the musicians serving as unwitting narrators to a life they have not witnessed. What follows are stories that narrate them back.
“The Clique Imaginary,” The New Inquiry, May 2016
God, I love writing for The New Inquiry. Their editors are smart and generous and so many people whose intellects terrify me with their brilliance write there. This piece was not without its shortcomings but I am proud of it.
Women who orient their social lives around a select group are held in distrust, as if women’s duty is to cast their friendship nets widely and superficially. The expectation that they do so signals that a woman’s social life is not considered her own: it must be arranged for the benefit of the family, of strangers, anyone really besides herself. “Some had joined this activity expressly to be together,” writes Barth in her tale of gymnastics-class cliques. That the women in the class have elevated the value of their social circle over her demand to befriend a stranger for the sake of her son’s possible, projected sense of rejection should be celebrated as a victory for women, who often are obliged to forfeit friendships during motherhood. Instead these women are reduced to “mean girls,” their interior lives and their intentions made into unflattering speculative fiction because they would not perform the emotional labor of actively expanding their social circle.
“Jesus Christ and the Superstars: How the Holy Rolled Mainstream In Pop Music,” Religion Dispatches, August 2016
Religion Dispatches was the first publication to accept my writing on religion and culture back in 2013 and it was really exciting to return to working with them on this story about the way Christianity hides in plain sight in modern pop music. An excerpt:
Perhaps it’s that the aftertaste of the aforementioned politicized religious right is still too bitter to consider that there was something salvageable beneath the hateful rhetoric. Or perhaps to admit being moved by explicitly Christian music — not despite its Christian themes, but precisely because of them — is too much to bear for a generation that’s crafted an identity around its alleged immunity to grace.
“Beavis Was The Wokest Bae,” MEL, July 2016
I fucking love Beavis and all I want is for others to love him too. The exceptionally fun Serena Golden at MEL let me show that love with this rehabilitation of the keep of the Great Cornholio.
Beavis is unwavering in his support of sex workers, speaking of them without any attendant stigma or moralizing. When Mr. Van Driessen calls on Beavis to present on the woman he most admires for Women’s History Month, he declares, “Uh, my mom.” Followers of the program are familiar with the fact that Beavis’ mother, who does not appear on screen, is a sex worker. When Butt-Head attempts to mock him for this, Beavis speaks matter-of-factly of her wages rather than distancing himself from the very labor that keeps him in nachos, cable, and short shorts.
“Showtime Saints,” Brooklyn Magazine, March 2016
I have always loved “Showtime” on the New York City subway but the episode I recount in this particular story is what has elevated it in my mind as one of the city’s most important pastimes, a communal ritual combining charity and art when we briefly pause our mutual ambivalence to watch the show.
Signs now line subway cars admonishing riders against tiny infractions. My thoughts turned from broken hearts and cosmetics to contagious charity and rogue philanthropy and the brutality of outlawing dancing by children. That trip across the bridge made evident that one’s home city is the most likely destination for witnessing hope materialize and disappear again, which is itself a kind of magic. It is magic most often found on the other side of bad love stories and indiscriminate laws, alive momentarily between the shore of the past and the shore of the possible.
“Feeling Lonely When You’re Single Doesn’t Mean You’re Weak,” New York Magazine, March 2016
I wrote about a period of loneliness that I had once been ashamed of and it resonated with a lot of readers, which is what I aim for so I’m proud of this piece. Some people really thought the piece was irresponsible and accused me of being a drug-addled depressive. They were right, but those aren’t crimes so much as…predilections.
Solitude demands that an individual body be the holding vessel for all of a day’s pain and uncertainties. Unwelcome solitude manifests as a sickness whose primary symptom is quiet, persistent panic. The lonely are beset with fears that they are unlovable, despite the deep reservoirs of love they have to give. Their overflowing hearts are the party that no one wants to show up to.
“Adrian Grenier Will Proudly Serve Our Octopus Overlords,” Elle, June 2016
This was my first celebrity profile and I didn’t fuck it up! I also talked to my middle school crush about aliens and the malevolence of octopuses so it was a win all around!
Toward the very end of our conversation, we move naturally to aliens. Grenier pulls up an image on his phone, and says, “Always collecting memes, obviously,” setting my heart aflutter, seeing as memes are the one and only key to my heart. The meme features an alien and the text, “You mean to tell me humans have energy resources such as solar power, hydroelectricity, biofuels, wind power, and geothermal energy and they kill each other over oil?” That this is an earnest environmental meme and that he doesn’t even know what “Crying Jordan” is returns my heart safely to Earth. “Alien life forms are looking down at us and thinking we’re fucking idiots,” he says, then considers the idea for a moment. “But I believe in us more than the cynics.”
“10 Breakfasts With Men I’ve Known,” Extra Crispy, June 2016
I was skeptical at first when my friend Ryan told me he was going to be an editor of a site exclusively about breakfast. I had never written about food and hadn’t much invested in reading food writing but working with Extra Crispy (silly name, great site!) has opened the door to the genre in ways I like. This piece was about how breakfast and love, and its lack, intersected across several relationships this past decade.
Food arrives quickly, still sizzling and dripping with hot grease that the proprietors of any other brunch option on the block would sooner die than serve. I bite into a sausage and hit a pocket full of oil and involuntarily grimace and panic at the cholesterol flood in my mouth. My boyfriend must cover half his reddening face to stifle a good-natured laugh at my plight. I wonder how dependent falling in love is on witnessing how a new person experiences everyday things and being roused to affection by it. I wonder how dependent staying in love is on witnessing how a familiar person experiences new things and having affection renewed by it.
“The Loneliest Job In Cinema: On Film’s Friendless Female Sex Workers,” Hazlitt, August 2016
I was glad to have an opportunity to blend my background in writing about sex work in my newly focused plan to write about popular culture in this piece. I am also still forever-mad that sex workers on-screen so infrequently have friends.
It joined a beloved cohort of films representing friendship dynamics between male sex workers, from the Oscar-winning Midnight Cowboy to the cult classic My Own Private Idaho. These are emotionally resonant films that pushed social and artistic boundaries by portraying the multiple dimensions of male sex workers’ lives and how their work informed their relationships with friends. These men do not require redemption narratives to earn our love. And these sex working men do not have to fall in love with anyone for these films to be love stories. They have earned their status as classics. But there’s a painful absence of similar films portraying friendship between female sex workers.
“The Spirit Is Holding You,” Pacific Standard, June 2016
I’ve been wanting to tell the story of my experience going to a faith healing for years now and my trusting and thoughtful editor at Pacific Standard, Ryan Jacobs, was a great partner in helping me bring the story to life.
I lose count of how many times Turner yells “Fire! Fire! Fire!” as he forcefully holds the head of the woman cowering before him. “Devil, I break your power,” Turner commands as her posture grows more defeated against his cries. She has just confessed to involving the occult in her child’s divorce proceedings. In an Eastern-European accent I cannot place, she explains how she and her husband have been visited by a number of ailments since they turned to witchcraft in their attempt to be helpful. “There’s a wicked spirit, the spirit is holding you,” Turner tells her. Despite my skepticism of the basic premise of the event, his words crawl under my skin in a way I had not expected. I cannot shake the visual of a demon latched onto this frail woman’s body as she cries out but finds no relief in Turner’s healing methods. Takes one to know one, I think to myself before suggesting to Kurt that we leave.
Alright, that’s enough out of me. I have like, six pieces of writing that were supposed to come out this month but the holiday has got editors behind on things so I can’t include those here but please stay tuned for when they do come out. I hope everyone has a creative and joyful coming year. Love and be loved, you guys.
