After I swim, I dry off and go for a drive, still in a towel, hair salty from the ocean, nose sunburnt, down toward Mākena, past Big Beach, until the road narrows and the trees start to close in, hills narrowing my line of sight. Soon, the coast melts into the road, the sea separated from the land only by a pile of jagged, black lava rocks. Waves spray onto the car and I make the bend toward La Pérouse Bay, my tires inches from the edge, and the Pacific opens up into the sky, clouds hanging low, a handful of snorkelers belly down. When the paved road ends, I turn around, taking in the view from the other side.

I’ve been coming to Maui for eight years now. On the first trip, Tara and I zipped around the island, eating butter mochi with our hands, swimming in waterfalls on the Road to Hāna, drinking warm beers on Secret Beach, where a woman who introduced herself as September the Mermaid made us pose on the rocks for Instagram pictures. Everywhere I looked, I couldn’t believe my eyeballs. The lava rocks, the water, the sunsets that looked like tropical Renoir paintings, the sky dripping colors into the water until the sun was swallowed by the horizon and one million tiny stars I had never seen before on Earth appeared. I was happy. I felt real.

I came back with a coworker in 2019 after the El Paso shooting and Beto’s campaign ended and I had no idea what was next, but we partied in Lāhainā and climbed on the Banyan Tree after leaving the bar; and then again in 2023, for my first real solo trip, when most of my friends were vacationing with their kids or in-laws or whatever it is that married people do; and then again at the end of 2024 with the same coworker, after losing another campaign and in between moves from DC to New York, when we woke at 2 AM to drive to Haleakalā for sunrise on New Year’s Eve. I had made a habit of coming to the island when something had ended and I didn’t yet want to face what it meant, when what I needed most was to stay connected to reality: to swim, to eat fish, to look at stars.

This time, I booked Maui a few weeks after I came home from Sicily early, where something had ended suddenly enough that the whole island seemed implicated. This was obviously unfair to Sicily. It was also annoying, because I had liked Sicily first. But I didn’t want to turn hurt into a worldview, and by August, I was ready to go somewhere I already knew how to be, what to eat, where to sleep, where the roads ended.

On the morning the Lāhainā fires started in 2023, the wind was so strong my SUV was blowing into the other lane. I kept both hands on the wheel and drove towards Pāʻia. My bag was packed to spend the night in Hāna—pajamas, an extra bathing suit, a kimono from a roadside shop in Bali, Maui Onion chips. I had spent the day before in Lāhainā, first shopping on Front Street, and then at D.T. Fleming Beach, the waves too rough to really swim, dipping my body in and out, looking across the water to the land in the distance, littered with spiky Cook pines.

The Hāna Highway starts wide, the ocean massive and blue to the left. From Kahului to Hāna is only about 52 miles, but the road contains 620 curves and 59 bridges, many of them only wide enough for one car at a time. The point has never really been going to Hāna. The point is the road and the stops you make along the way: waterfalls and swimming holes, rainbow eucalyptus and roadside banana bread, black sand beaches and jungle, the Pacific appearing and disappearing between the trees. It can take all day if you let it, and you should.

I, however, following my previous two trips, had become fascinated with Hāna. Not because I didn’t love the drive—I did, I do—but because Hāna itself seemed unlike anywhere I had ever been before. The drive in gets quieter and quieter, and the jungle starts to encroach inwards, creating a dark canopy in places. It starts to rain and stops even more quickly, and water runs from the roads, off bridges and into streams below. Cell service stops at the start. You pull over and behind you is a bamboo forest, and look over to a 400-foot waterfall. Without large wild animals moving through the jungle, you get the sense you are slowly becoming more and more isolated. And when you finally emerge, there is Hāna, improbable yet almost unremarkable, sunny but also gray, heavy yet sparse, ordinary yet sacred, purgatory, full of secrets.

Hāna, to me, is not only the end of the map. It seems to be the end of the world, the last stop on Earth before whatever comes next. It is not one thing or the other; it is embodied suspension, a pause, a place that exists for no reason other than it does. Children play and laugh on the streets in front of their homes, and people go to the beach, the general store, other places that I will never know, living their ordinary lives between infinite ocean on one side and thick jungle on the other. Remote seems too casual a word. I always feel in Hāna like I am somewhere I’m not supposed to be, like I’m getting too close to the edge of the living world, to the edge of existence. In Hāna, the boundary between where the world ends and where I end becomes difficult to locate; and after long enough, I stop trying to.

Around five, I checked into the only full service hotel in Hāna and connected to the Wi-Fi. There was a fire in Upcountry and a fire in Lāhainā. People were being evacuated, but everything I could find still seemed to suggest that it would be okay, that the fires would be contained. I was nervous about the drive back the next morning, especially alone, especially without cell service, but there was nothing I could do until then anyway. Most of my things were still in Wailea, and I wasn’t going to drive the Hāna Highway after dark.

I had dinner. I sat by the pool. I went down to the beach. Most everyone I knew was already asleep on the East Coast, and I spent the evening alone, thinking about being alone. I was 35 and most of my friends were married now, vacationing with husbands and children and in-laws, while I had driven myself to Hāna. I drank some wine and wondered what this meant about my life, if I should get used to being alone in beautiful places, get used to making tough decisions on my own, before realizing there really wasn’t anything to get used to. I was already doing it. I had always been doing it. Whether I had chosen this life or it had chosen me seemed increasingly difficult to tell.

I took a bath. I got ready for bed. I checked my phone.

People were jumping into the Pacific Ocean.

I started scrolling. Lāhainā was burning. People were trapped. Evacuations were too late. Whatever emergency management system there was, or lack thereof, had failed. The National Guard was being deployed. Every time I refreshed there was something worse: another video, another report, another place on fire, another family engulfed in smoke. I tried to figure out what roads were open, if the fires were moving, whether I could get back to Wailea in the morning, whether I should try to get to the airport instead, whether I should stay in Hāna. Where even I could stay in Hāna. I searched for instructions. There weren’t any. I texted people who were asleep. I refreshed again. Underneath my own fear was something worse, a sick disbelief and rage for the people on the other side of the island whose homes and lives were disappearing while I, and the entire world, watched.

Midnight passed, and then one. I was still staring at my phone, trying to make the information resolve into something I could do. Instead, I drank the rest of the wine and passed out in my kimono, alone in the middle of a king-sized bed.

I woke up to 36 missed calls and 72 text messages.

There was more information, but still no answers. Lāhainā had burned through the night, and the flames raged on, consuming whatever they could reach. The fires Upcountry were still burning, too. Roads existed in two states at once, open on one website and closed on another. The internet had filled with rumors, conspiracy theories, maps, names of the missing. I couldn’t keep my room in Hāna. Friends answered my calls from offices and apartments on the East Coast, where it was already afternoon. Even friends who worked in the government knew no more than I did. The most practical advice came from Mario, Alyssa’s husband: “Just try to keep your eyes on the water. And if you need to, jump in.”

Outside, Hāna was still Hāna. It had rained overnight, and everything looked wet, green. The ocean seemed rabid, choppy, slamming into the rocks at the edge of the property. I walked down and stared at it. On the other side of the island, behind me, a town I had walked through two days before was gone.

I couldn’t stay in my room, and I didn’t want to become one more person stranded in Hāna, one more person the island had to take care of if the fires spread or the roads closed. As far as I could tell, the airport was still open. Somewhere in the accumulation of things I did not know were three things I did: I had a car. There was a road out. It was daylight.

I decided I didn’t need to know yet whether I was going to Wailea or the airport. I only needed to try to get back to Pāʻia. There, my phone would work again. If the road south was open, I could try to get my things and wait until I could leave without getting in anyone’s way. If it wasn’t, I would try to turn towards the airport.

I pulled onto the Hāna Highway, heading towards the other side of the island, towards the fire. Soon after, the bars on my phone disappeared, even though my terror did not. There was no longer anything to refresh.

I drove.

We light candles for the dead and bless the heads of the newly born. We ring bells, bring flowers, dress in white and black, gather around beds and memorials and graves. Humans are very good at marking the moment something begins and the moment it ends. It is the middle for which we have almost no ceremony.

At least 102 lives were lost in the Lāhainā fires. Others survived, but lost their families, their homes, their lives on the island as they had known them.

But for a while, Lāhainā belonged neither to the living nor the dead. It belonged to the fire.

Fire has no memory. Neither does water. They take the shape of whatever will hold them and abandon it just as easily, and it means nothing at all. Maybe transformation happens somewhere in between, when something is no longer what it was and not yet whatever it will be next.

Fire and water pass through this space without knowing it. We cannot. We are matter that remembers being matter before and matter that worries about what we will be next. We rush to name what has happened, to decide what it means, to know what we are becoming. We wake up screaming in the night, calling out, resisting what has already happened. The living drag old worlds behind them, invisible and impossibly heavy, insisting that because something no longer exists, it has not entirely disappeared, afraid that if it has, they have, too.

But the middle is not empty. Suspension is not a void. Reality can claw inside of us, leaving only the shred it forgot to consume, indifferent to what came before and what comes next. But there is a moment before memory, before the photograph, the scar, the shrine at the altar, before anyone knows which version will be remembered or what it means. In that moment there is only the body and whatever it does next.

There is no game of chess, just a road around an island, each turn opening only after we have chosen to take the last.

We spend our lives trying to escape the middle. Maybe it is the only place we are free.

I made it to Pāʻia that morning in 2023. The road had been open, but almost empty, as if it were abandoned, and I drove the entire highway in a little over two hours, taking the hairpin turns wide but carefully. The Road to Hāna, without stopping to see the rainbow bark of the eucalyptus trees or pulling over to jump in a waterfall, became one continuous blur of changing landscapes: green, then blue, yellow flowers dotting my peripheral view, a winding path of black asphalt meeting my tires. I drove in silence, looking for any indication of smoke on the horizon, but instead was met with intermittent showers. I kept my windows down, smelling the rain, immediately aware that others on the other side of the island were smelling burnt land, structures, lives.

I made the left turn onto the highway toward Wailea and rolled up my windows. Behind me, over the mountains, flames, still engulfing Lāhainā. To my left, Upcountry, also on fire, the smoke dark, rising. But sunbeams infiltrated the sky, creating a haze, a shield, a blanket over the dry, straw-colored brush that rolled from the road up toward the mountains, swaying in the wind, not yet destroyer or survivor.

I finally turned up the stereo. boygenius was on from a playlist I had made earlier in the week.

Always an angel, never a god . . .

On the last day of February 2009 in Pittsburgh, the sun was out. The rays reflected off the frozen piles of dirty white snow, pushed high against the curb. I bundled up and went to the grocery store, half-awake, half-alive, seeking normalcy before another day under the encroaching fluorescent lights, listening to nurses’ sneakers squeak on the sticky floors, my body moving up and down from a pleather-stuffed chair to my grandmother’s bedside, where she lay swollen and seeping on paper mats over the sheets, tubes sticking into her body everywhere, the largest of which was down her throat, held in place by surgical tape as a machine helped her breathe.

When I wasn’t at either of my jobs, my internship, or class, I had been spending every moment in the ICU. The memory of my 21st birthday, in a sequined dress on New Year’s Eve, surrounded by all of my friends who screamed “Happy Birthday” as we toasted to the ball on TV, seemed like something I had read about in a book once instead of lived only two months before. On New Year’s Day, my mother, my aunt, and I brought a cake to my grandmother’s hospital room to celebrate, too. She was still mostly herself then, recovering from surgery on a blood clot in her leg, and since she was only 70, I thought she’d get to go home soon. When she kissed me goodbye, she told me to stop at her apartment—the one she raised me in for most of my childhood—on the way home and look under the phone in the kitchen. There I found a birthday card with five twenty-dollar bills, each with a $1 bill stapled to it, that she had thought to put there before she left.

At the grocery store, my eyes were heavy and adrenaline had killed my appetite weeks ago, but I perused the produce and told myself I could buy whatever I thought I’d actually eat. When I got to the register, I unloaded my basket: two apples, some pine nuts, and a bag of peanut M&M’s. The cashier was making small talk and I was pleasant, but every second that dragged on I felt more and more guilty that I wasn’t yet at the hospital, so I took my blue plastic bag the minute my credit card with the $300 limit cleared and whirled out, almost crashing into an old man sitting outside, strumming a guitar, singing Let It Be.

I can’t, I thought. I never could.

When I got to the hospital, she was asleep, and I was relieved. I loved when she was awake, but I also hated when she was awake, because then I knew that she knew what was happening, and that was more unbearable than any of it. I dampened a washcloth and began wiping her face, her arms, pressing the back of my hand to her forehead. The ICU doctor, a brusque, short, younger guy, poked his head in and motioned for me to meet him in the hall.

He knew my family and me well—my mom, my aunt, and my two uncles. He had had many rounds, sometimes screaming matches, with all of them except me at that point. Her condition had begun deteriorating rapidly, at a speed beyond what anyone could comprehend, and they had begged him, repeatedly, to exhaust every option. He pulled me past the room and into a corner, and even though I was taller than him, he seemed imposing, exasperated, curt.

“Look,” he said. “You seem like the most rational one.”

Me, I thought? The 21-year-old party girl who just bought pine nuts for breakfast?

“I need to be honest with you.” He explained that they couldn’t keep her intubated like this much longer. If we continued, they’d have to trach her. She hadn’t eaten in two weeks, and they’d need to put in a feeding tube. Then there was dialysis. If she survived all of that, they’d probably have to amputate at least one of her legs. They had already removed her colon.

I started reading between the lines and my mind started spinning with how we’d even get her to dialysis in a wheelchair, how we’d clean her colostomy bag, how my grandmother would deal with sitting at home for the rest of her life, even though I knew I’d sit there with her. Death, as I was coming to understand it, was not like the movies, where eyes fluttered shut and a vision of an angel carried you off. Instead, it was violent, painful, undignified, full of tubes and beeps and bright lights and people poking you and exhausted doctors fighting with your family and cutting your throat and sawing off your limbs.

“If we do this, it probably won’t work. And if it does, her quality of life will be very, very poor. Do you understand what that means?”

I looked at him. I did.

He gave me a tiny nod. “Good,” he said. Finally, a faint trace of sympathy on his face. “Now get the rest of them on board.”

When I went back into her room, the sun was shining through the windows, and she was awake now, her bright blue eyes looking right at me, grimacing at the pain of the ventilator, or maybe her hunger, or being suspended between anything at all. I told her to blink if she could hear me. She did.

“I love you,” I said. She fell back asleep, and I went and hung my head in front of the bathroom mirror, gripping the metal supports around the sink. We shared a room until I was 16. She had given me a home. I had never existed without her.

My family trickled in. I got them on board.

This latest trip, on August 8, I woke up in Wailea with the urge to drive to Hāna, for the fourth time. The hairpin turns and one-lane bridges no longer felt daunting. I found I had to move over to let locals pass less than before. Still, the further I got into the jungle, closer to Hāna, I found myself getting quieter, letting myself be held by the road, the vines, the rushing water, knowing that at some point when I reemerged, this version of me would no longer be the one who had driven in.

I pulled over in Keʻanae to watch the ocean, and there was a festival happening in the park. I wandered through the stalls of crafts and food and paused in front of one before a man called out to me. “Aloha,” he said joyfully. “Come have a plate lunch!” I paid him and sat under the tent in the center, watching the hula dancers, listening to the ʻukuleles, the waves beating against the rocks in the distance. I ate the shrimp. I watched the sky. I wiped my face. Hāna waited 16 miles ahead, but I was in no rush.

I have two recurring dreams about Maui.

I’m sitting alone, cross-legged on D.T. Fleming Beach at dusk. The ocean churns, silky blue-gray waves spreading over the sand in a rush before they contract, like an invisible hand is pulling them back, fingers drifting over the water as if pulling back the sheets. A gust of wind lifts me into the air and carries me gently across the water to the strip of land curling away from the shore, the rocky coast cradling open, dark caves. The wind and I edge toward the very tip of the land, the grove of Cook pines that look like needles from the shore looming larger and larger, and before I crash into them I’m set gently down, standing before a glass house inside the trees with two huge, dark wooden doors. They open for me, slowly, and I walk to the bedroom. Waves lap onto the rocks and slosh against the glass as I walk down the hall. The door is open, and in the room is a big bed with fresh white linens, a bright contrast with the dark wooden floors.

She stands from the singular chair in the corner, black robe trailing behind her, and moves to embrace me. She helps me get into the bed and I look at her face, beautiful, and I cannot tell if it is my grandmother’s from the past or mine from the future. Her eyes are kind, sad, steady. I know she knows that what I need is not to talk, but for her to stay awake so that I can finally sleep.

I sink into the sheets, listening to the waves, drifting in and out of consciousness. Every so often I feel her kneel at my bedside, press the back of her hand, soft and warm, to my forehead to take my temperature, to stroke my hair. She doesn’t fuss, returns to her chair, looks out of the glass walls. When I toss and turn and my eyes start to crack open, I see a warm, golden light spreading across the darkness, over the sea. Lāhainā, burning in the distance.

I’m in Wailea, standing barefoot in the dirt in front of the black, jagged lava rocks that litter the coastline. The sea is calm, waves gently rocking, splashing the rocks. It is pitch black. There are no resorts or manmade structures in sight, and the only light is from the moon and the stars, millions of them, spread like spilled white pepper across the sky. I’m wearing a long, white cotton gown with many layers and bell sleeves and a row of buttons down the back.

The torches ignite in a flash, and suddenly I am facing a half-circle of men, warriors in ceremonial attire, holding the lights, the flames, in their right hands. I get the feeling I am being initiated, and I am pleased, curious, ready to belong. I catch the eye of the one closest to me, and I know he is familiar, but he looks away before I can call out to him.

Suddenly, the men start inching toward me. I move to join the circle, but they do not stop, inching closer, and I walk backward, the bottoms of my feet catching on the rocks. I try to slow down, but the flames get closer and closer to my face, and this time I do catch the eye of the warrior that I know I know, and he gives me the tiniest nod, and I jump in backward, not thinking, my hair and dress billowing around me as I fully submerge, sinking to the bottom. I realize I do not know if the men were protecting me so I could jump or if they had pushed me in.

One morning, when I wake I realize I’d never know, because I always jumped.

In late June, a creator shared a multi-minute voice memo her friend received after a first date. In it, the man explains — in clear, almost PowerPoint-laced corporate speak— that he had a great time and is down for a second date, but only if she agrees to what he calls “physical intimacy.”

He goes on to make his case. “Respectfully,” it’s important for him to know, “for his own sake,” whether they are “physically compatible” and have “that spark.” Otherwise, he doesn’t see the point in spending more time together. If they aren’t going to “hook up or cuddle,” and that’s not what she wants, then they should just “end it here” because he doesn’t want to continue seeing someone “without knowing if that’s there or not.”

How does he close the memo, you ask?

“Up to you. Let me know. If you do want me to come over, I’m happy to do so. I’d love to fuck and have a good time! But if you’re not trying to hook up, then we should just go our separate ways. Let me know!”

Phew.

I have some thoughts.

I don’t think Voice Memo Guy is the story.

I don’t even think sex is the story.

And while important, I don’t think the story is about consent, or even honesty vs. coercion.

Modern dating has become obsessed with clarity — but only when clarity serves us. Voice Memo Guy wanted certainty about sex while offering uncertainty about virtually everything else. He asked her to eliminate risk while preserving his own. And I think that asymmetry makes this a case study about the way we’re dating now.

A few observations:

On Consent

Much of the internet debate has centered around consent. On one side, folks argue that this is what clear communication and “boundaries” look like. Many queer creators noted that this sort of communication is common in some gay and queer spaces, where establishing expectations up front is considered normal and helpful. On the other are arguments that consent can’t be pre-given, can be revoked at any point, and that this was essentially an ultimatum—or at least light coercion to get what he wanted. Some have even gone so far as to argue that he was creating legal cover because he intended to be aggressive once he got to her place (which, honestly, feels like a stretch to me).

I land somewhere in the middle. He did, however crassly, name his expectations up front and give her the option of declining. But because this was a voice memo and not a conversation, he left no room for questions, discussion about contraception or protection, or even what his intentions would be after sleeping together.

That’s what makes the memo feel less like radical honesty than an ultimatum. He asked her to make an immediate decision about sex without answering the questions that might allow her to make that decision. Was he looking for a relationship? Something casual? If they had great sex, would he continue seeing her? He reserved the right to remain uncertain about all of that while expecting her not to be uncertain about sleeping with him.

Which begs the question: can consent ever be fully informed when only one person gets to decide what information matters?

On Asymmetrical Clarity

The thing that bothered me most about the voice memo wasn’t that he wanted sex. Plenty of people want sex on a second date. It also wasn’t even that he said it out loud.

It was that he demanded clarity from her while offering almost none himself.

He wanted her to decide, immediately, whether she was ready to have sex with him. But what, exactly, was he offering in return? Was he looking for a relationship? Something casual? A friends-with-benefits situation? Did even want sex with her in particular, or just anyone?

If they had great sex, would he continue seeing her? Would he disappear the next day?

He never said.

Instead, he framed her uncertainty as the obstacle. If she couldn’t answer the question of sex right now, there was no point in continuing.

But why was her uncertainty the only one that needed to be resolved? Why wasn’t he required to state what he wanted out of it? Seemingly, what he wanted was to eliminate risk and the loss of control.

He was allowed to be completely undecided about where this might go. She wasn’t allowed to be undecided about whether to sleep with him.

That isn’t mutual clarity. It’s asymmetrical clarity.

One person is asked to eliminate uncertainty while the other – usually the man – gets to preserve it.

Ironically, this is often framed as emotional maturity. As “being upfront.” As knowing what you want. But I don’t think clarity is simply about stating your expectations. It’s about being equally clear about what you’re asking someone else to risk — and what you’re willing to risk yourself.

Voice Memo Guy wanted certainty where it benefited him and ambiguity where it protected him.

Which is, inherently dishonest.

On Trust

A few years ago, one of the buzziest conversations in dating centered on men not being honest about their intentions. A man would take a woman on a few dates, they’d sleep together, and then he’d disappear. When confronted, he’d say something like, “I never said I wanted anything serious,” and the woman, understandably heartbroken, would ask: Why can’t men just be honest about their intentions upfront?

In some ways, it seems like men took that feedback. Now, sometimes before a first date — or even on the apps themselves — they’ll ask what a woman is looking for or declare that they aren’t looking for anything serious. For women dating with one clear objective — to find a long-term partner as soon as possible — that information can be genuinely helpful. And for the man, if he eventually ghosts or doesn’t follow through, he has cover. “Well, I told you I wasn’t looking for anything specific!”

But not every woman dates that way.

Some women don’t know what they want with a man after one date because they don’t even know whether they trust him enough to sleep with him. Will he be physically attuned? Is he safe to spend the night with? Will he be honest afterwards? If something does happen – a breach of privacy, a pregnancy, some other mishap – will he be reliable? Those questions are impossible to answer right off of the bat.

That’s where the disconnect begins.

The decision to have sex is, on average, inherently riskier for women than it is for men. Women face the possibility of pregnancy, higher rates of sexual violence, and far greater social stigma around casual sex. So many men can decide from photos or one date that yes, they’d like to sleep with someone. For many women, physical attraction is only one piece of the equation. Trust has to catch up.

Men often interpret that need for time as rejection — as evidence that she simply isn’t attracted enough. Women often interpret a man’s inability to wait a few more dates as confirmation of the very thing they were trying to determine in the first place: whether he was trustworthy enough to sleep with.

In trying to be more honest about what they want, many men have accidentally created a new stalemate. They see waiting as a lack of attraction. Women see the refusal to wait as a lack of trustworthiness. Both think they’re responding to the other. Neither realizes they’re answering different questions.

On Courtship and Control

I’ve thought a lot about modern courtship. In the era of dating apps, courtship has become something to optimize instead of something to experience.

Courtship used to be the period where attraction, trust, and desire are allowed to unfold. It’s where two people discover whether they want the same things — not because they negotiated them beforehand, but because they spent time together. Today, because of the illusion of endless options and the new expectations of what a date is or isn’t, courtship has become more like scrolling until you find a TikTok you want to actually watch the whole way through instead of reading a book and turning the pages as you go. Men become wary of wasting their time and money. Women become wary of just being another dopamine hit.

Again, the tragedy isn’t that he wanted to have sex. If you like someone, wanting sex and being hopeful that it will happen is the point. It’s that he seemed unwilling to let the experience itself determine whether sex made sense. He wanted to predetermine the outcome instead of allowing the encounter — even one only two dates old — to reveal it. Somewhere along the way, we’ve confused controlling uncertainty with emotional maturity.

Voice Memo Guy didn’t want another evening of discovery. He wanted the answer before the experience. And that makes courtship feel like a transaction. It makes romance feel like a negotiation. And that is, if nothing else, deeply unsexy.

Discovery is not inefficiency. It’s the point.

On Identity

I have written, and thought, a lot about the role of identity and how it factors into modern dating. And to no surprise, after many listens to the voice memo, it started to sound more to me like a man expressing his authentic self and more like a performance of the man he thought he ought to be.

Men (and women, but in a different way) are increasingly taught to date this way. This is one of the pillars of red-pill content. They encourage men to date not by asking, What do I actually want with this person? but by asking, What would a high-value man do? What would a high-value man get from a woman with little to no effort?

Don’t chase. Don’t wait. Know your worth. Be willing to walk away. State your standards.

The problem is that we’ve started confusing the behaviors associated with confidence for the thing that creates confidence in the first place.

A man with an abundance of options may genuinely not wait around. He may genuinely have many options, women who are approaching him, and very little to no friction when it comes to getting a date or having sex. But that doesn’t mean refusing to wait is what gave him those options. It’s usually his status, or money, or looks, or something that is already established about him. But more often, and especially because people can fake entire identities on social media or an app, people borrow the posture before they’ve built the life. They imitate certainty before they’ve earned it. And then are confused why it doesn’t work. The woman wasn’t ever responding to his declared standards. She was responding to who he already was.

Voice Memo Guy wasn’t just asking for sex. He was demonstrating — to himself as much as to her — that he was the kind of man who doesn’t need to wait. The woman became secondary to the identity he was trying to perform.

Ironically, that’s the opposite of confidence. Truly confident people don’t need every interaction to prove who they are. They can respond to the person in front of them instead of the character they’ve decided to play.

One Last Thought

At the risk of sounding shallow, can we all just agree on something?

A PowerPoint-esque voice memo about “physical compatibility,” complete with bullet-point logic and corporate disclaimers, is incredibly unsexy. If you read the comments on any follow-up TikTok about Voice Memo Guy, you’ll find woman after woman saying some version of the same thing: I’m now drier than Death Valley in July.

Seduction has somehow become another thing we’re trying to optimize. It now sits somewhere beneath a pile of iPhones, Stanley Cups, Oura Rings, Substacks, Hinge likes, and productivity hacks. And men want to sleep with women even sooner?

If he’s not offering a relationship, and his instinct for seduction is to send a voice memo, what exactly is he offering?

Not, it would seem, even great sex.

Bring back flirting. Bring back tension. Bring back wondering. Bring back the possibility that another person might surprise you. Bring back the ability to be moved by another person instead of trying to control the outcome before it happens.

Somewhere along the way, we decided that the emotionally mature person is the one who knows exactly what they want immediately. We have mistaken certainty for maturity when in many cases, it’s just the inability to tolerate risk.

And maybe that’s the real takeaway. The very thing Voice Memo Guy was trying to secure — desire — is one of the few things in life that has never responded well to certainty.

It has, ironically, usually responded to discovery.

No voice memo will change that.

I usually binge watch reality TV to dissociate from reality. 90 Day Fiancé — or one of its spinoffs — is usually my vice of choice. But I’ve made room in my heart (or pod) for Love is Blind. I very much appreciate the interactive spirit of the show — the group chats, the Reddit threads, I’ve even started whole Slack channels at work to ensure I maximize every opportunity to psychoanalyze and discuss with whomever is willing. I have long thought the show has been an accurate reflection of American millennial culture – specifically American millennial dating culture — and I’ve found it smart in that way. Even so, I’ve always been able to file it away as good fun, a binge watch, forgetting about it the minute the episode ended.

Not this season.

While my first reaction was massive disappointment over how underdeveloped the men seemed to be this season compared to the women – even for reality TV standards – a new fascination and sense of familiarity emerged quickly. This seemed to be more than interpersonal immaturity, and rather, structural. Regional. The producers, maybe accidentally, captured a snapshot of the cultural and political tensions of the Rust Belt as it currently stands, bringing to light something Democrats have been trying – and mostly failing – to grasp for years.

Love Is Blind: Ohio shows a region still reorganizing after industrial collapse. Democrats keep campaigning in the region as if the only thing that broke was the economy. It wasn’t. The masculine script — provision, authority, inevitability — cracked too. The jobs dried up, but the gender roles, ethnic loyalties, and family hierarchies calcified. The rupture in the Rust Belt has been emotional and cultural as much as it has been economic.

No one denies Democrats have a problem with men in this region. Campaigns know this. They look for hyper-masculine surrogates. They book candidates on Joe Rogan. They spend time at union halls. They’ve started inserting football visuals everywhere. None of this is unserious, or unstrategic. They talk about jobs, about training, about a vision for the future that sees men as integral.

But rarely do they address these men emotionally.

What you’re seeing on Love Is Blind: Ohio isn’t new misogyny. It’s leftover legitimacy. There was a time when the racism, rigid gender roles, and deference to God, sports, and family felt defensible because the economic bargain worked. Men provided, and women followed along. Now the money is shorter and the status smaller — but some of these men still reach for control or ethnic insularity to feel central again, as proof of completion. The problem is that the women aren’t living in that world. They don’t need survival marriages; they want partnership. And no one handed these men a new model. Their parents didn’t live it, and still expect them to replicate it. So they keep reacting as if the past is intact — and it isn’t.

That’s what “Make America Great Again” means to them, and why it resonates. And until the left is able to not only acknowledge the grief of the loss of the past and articulate how their lives can have meaning, agency, belonging in a way that doesn’t involve putting anyone – whether that’s immigrants, other races, or even the woman they love down so they can find their footing – they’ll never win them back.

Ok, phew. Now. Let’s explore.

We go to Jordan’s house. There are bananas on the counter from before he left for the show. Open the fridge — more food from three weeks ago. The bathroom? Borderline biohazard. Still, he questions wanting to move into Amber’s beautiful home because it’s “too far from the bars.”

Then we go to Conor’s. No real lock on the door. The Christmas tree is still up. A keg in the backyard. His gaming setup is noticeably larger and better outfitted than his workspace. When Bri points it out, he sweeps his arm and says: “This home is your oyster! It’s an open canvas for you!”

That line says it all.

The disorder isn’t just immaturity. It’s role residue. In the past and likely in the present in the homes of their parents, men didn’t have to make homes livable — they just had to make money. Domestic order was the woman’s job.

These men feel cheated because they were sold a future that once guaranteed a home where women would do all the labor, with a smile. And no one on the left has ever tried to sell them the only worthwhile alternative.

Emma meets Mike’s parents. Mike is dark haired, big eyed, tattooed, gold chain swinging. His and his family’s entire identity seems to be being Italian-American. They’re warm, loving, they call her honey. They tell her she would blend in beautifully with their family. They also poke at her for not knowing the difference between sauce and “gravy,” they press her on having kids, and his mother’s face falls as soon as she says she’s not sure. Her dad, his tone kind, oblivious, asks her where she was adopted from. “Oh, China,” he says.

Ethnic identity in the Rust Belt is something Democrats used to understand intimately. Campaigns swung by the Polish Falcons of the Sons of Italy. They knew that if they could lock up the support of Local 1211 they’d effectively earn the votes of every Slovak and Croatian in the region. Certain parishes were almost all Irish or all Italian and their summer bazaars reflected that. These communities were tight-knit, multi-generational, and served as the social, political, and cultural centers of daily life.

But as many of those clubs have shut their doors and parishes have condensed – young men in the region struggle to find their social footing in the way that their fathers did. There’s no swinging by the Sons on a Friday night and having a beer, maybe placing a bet on the game, knowing the name of every other guy in there.

It’s not racism in the outward, skin tone-forward-white-supremacy sense, (although that is prevalent, too) but it is an insiders first mentality that causes fear of anyone who is different and could disrupt the preferred order.

You’d think the collapse of this social infrastructure would make men branch out, make new friends of all backgrounds, but in many instances, it causes them to dig in harder. To still look to their families and their ethnicity for belonging. And no one has offered them an alternative social script, no incentives to build their own community beyond the ones they were grandfathered into, that are now drying up.

And, even if he falls in love with a woman outside of his family’s origin, who could maybe broaden his horizons, like Mike with Emma?

Well, she’s expected to blend in beautifully.

Next, we cut to Devonta and Brittany. Brittany is effervescent, a smokeshow, and a nurse who tells him that helping babies be delivered is the most beautiful thing in the world to her. Everyone watching is falling in love with her, and can’t wait to see how smitten Devonta will be when he sees her for the first time in the reveal.

Except, he isn’t. At all. He seems off. And then, during a pull aside, he tells the camera that Brittany is the first woman of color he’s ever dated, even though Devonta, seemingly, is biracial. But Devonta’s problem isn’t just that he’s seemingly struggling with his own identity – it’s that his grandfather just died.

And we watch Devonta, blank, lifeless, distant, float through the next episodes. He doesn’t open up to her about his pain. She reaches to him for affection, he repeatedly pushes her away. Tells her he needs space. In one especially startling scene, he tells her that when she asks for compliments or affection, it makes him want to give it even less, because then he feels forced.

And we’re left to conclude Devonta is either shutting down because of grief, not attracted to her because of her race or other reasons, or is the internet’s favorite word – a dismissive avoidant. In any case, he is unable to communicate his feelings like an adult man, leaving this poor woman to spiral over what’s wrong.

But here’s the harder truth: in this region, masculinity was built on control and composure. Respect came from not needing anything. You didn’t narrate your feelings to your fiancée – because that’s what women did. No one taught these men that emotional openness was strength — and nothing in their world has rewarded it. So when something destabilizing happens, they don’t reach for language. They retreat. Silence feels more masculine than vulnerability ever did.

This, of course, often hurts men as much as it hurts the women they are with. But Democrats keep telling them that their pain is economic. That if the jobs come back, they’ll feel better. Somewhere inside, they must know this isn’t true. A better job doesn’t bring your grandfather back from the dead. And it doesn’t give you the skills to open up to the people you love.

Lastly, we bring forth the internet’s current favorite villains: Alex and Chris. Alex we won’t spend too much time on because given his background I actually don’t see him as a product of the region, but his story does touch on an important theme of the region: identity that is wrapped up in sports. Alex’s whole entire being seems to hang on the fact that he was *almost* a pro soccer player, but due to injury, never got to live it out. Is it sad? Yes. Does this man seem to have other trauma? For sure. And in the Rust Belt, sports still function as one of the last socially sanctioned masculine identities. When that path collapses — as it did for Alex — what replaces it?

And now, Chris. Everyone has seen the viral clip of him telling his fiancee Jessica that he is unhappy with her body and is used to dating women who do crossfit and pilates, despite her being a beautiful, in-shape medical doctor. Women around the world watched horrified as this conversation unraveled – because so many have been there before, thinking things are going well with a man only to have him suddenly nitpick you, revealing that they’ve resented you all along.

But when you’re Chris, who grew up in Ohio, short, average looking, average job, and you are told your whole life the ultimate marker of success is to be a “man” – how do you tolerate being with a woman who is objectively more attractive and successful than you? How, when she brings you to her 4 bedroom, beautifully decorated house, are you able to feel like you are the provider, the masculine one? We all but get his insecurities confirmed later when he, wasted, tells Bri that he thinks she should be with someone like him over Connor – someone more “dominant” with a “Charles Schwab account”, who will effectively take control and tell her what to do. We see the inner workings of his probably red-pilled identity fantasy that he’s reliant on — one that was never going to work with Jessica.

Would better jobs in the region seemingly solve his problem? Maybe. Maybe he’d then make as much or more money than Jessica and his insecurities could quiet down and they’d live happily ever after, like the men before him did, their meaning and masculinity intact. But I suspect, in 2026, it wouldn’t fully scratch the itch – because women, as they’ve proven on this show, with Jessica getting up and leaving, and Amber sticking up for her — are saying that without growth, real growth, they’re done participating in the facade.

Love Is Blind: Ohio isn’t just reality television. It’s a region mid-transition — emotionally, culturally, relationally. The economy broke first. The identities are breaking slower. The mistake Democrats keep making is thinking the Rust Belt is waiting for the old model to be rebuilt. It isn’t. The old model came with rules — about who provides, who defers, who belongs — and those rules don’t hold the way they once did. More women than ever aren’t waiting to be stabilized. They’re already stable, or at least trying to be. And men aren’t asking for the mill back literally. They’re just asking — often inarticulately — for a version of adulthood that still feels legitimate.

And if Democrats fail to grasp this — if they keep campaigning only to the economy and not to the identity — they’ll keep ending right back up in the pods, drinking out of a rusty goblet, blindly making a case for love.

There is no escaping, no reprieve, only a steady drip of new men to be disappointed in, new horrors to uncover, and that same sinking in a stomach that hasn’t finished recovering from the last drop.

The emails, like the patterns any woman who reads them is able to recognize, seem endless.

Women, of course, are reacting to the emails from different entry points. Some—many, too many—are the actual victims being discussed in the emails. I cannot imagine the emotional torture of not only holding the memories of these scenes, but now having the entire world replay them inside of their heads. The loss of consent in those moments, and now the loss of control over the narrative of the lived experience, feels incredibly suffocating to imagine, let alone live through.

Others are reminded of their own experiences—direct abuse, near-misses, or even just the familiarity of the script. The emails feel like receipts for memories so many of us were told to minimize. It’s not mass hysteria—it’s pattern recognition at the correct scale. The trigger isn’t the novelty of the details. It’s the familiarity of the architecture of the conditions in which they arose.

Many of the men I grew up around were not often labeled as “good.” Even though they went to mass and had tattoos of their mothers’ names on their arms, they drank, they smoked, they gambled. They hit each other and sometimes women, too. Many had children they rarely saw, to different women, and rarer still was any kind of financial support. I tried to mostly stay out of their way. At their worst, I watched them ruin the lives of the women around me—depleting them physically, mentally, financially. At their best, they were just dead weight: shuffling, slurring figures in the shadows who appeared for dinner before drifting back out to the bar, the garage, to who knows where.

These would not be the men I’d surround myself with, I told myself. The world I was headed for had a different species: men who helped take care of the women in their lives, who protected them, who had respectable careers and 401ks and families they loved too much to gamble on a cheap dopamine hit. Men who could think long-term, who could control themselves around women. Men who were grown ups with power—real power—who didn’t need to borrow it by belittling or dominating someone smaller.

I want to laugh at my naivety, and then I remember it’s that exact innocence that makes so many women and girls prime targets. Not only because carrying the belief that men of a certain social status, education level, or even plain familiarity should be “good” makes manipulation almost effortless—but because destroying that innocence, feeding off that naivety, slipping through the cracks and taking something from someone who had no idea they even needed to protect it to begin with, is often exactly the point.

Unlike the men I grew up with, the men in the Epstein files had everything they wanted—billions of dollars, yachts, private islands, beautiful families, seats on boards, their own TV shows, royal nobility. They had no economic anxiety; they weren’t systematically displaced. They had the most freedom any human being on this planet can have: endless opportunity to achieve milestones, build personal empires, leave legacies. They were presidents, visionaries, CEOs, doctors, academics—even princes. They spanned religions, races, political parties. They could have expressed joy any way they wanted to. They could have had, quite literally, anything at all.

What did many of them choose to pursue? Sex with teenagers.

In one exchange, Elon Musk practically begs Epstein for an invite to one of his parties on the island. Later, Epstein tells him that because the UN General Assembly is happening, there will be many interesting people to socialize with at a party in New York. Musk rebuffs this—says, in too many words, that he is too important and too busy to hang out with lowly diplomats. Epstein asks if Musk thinks he’s “retarded” and clarifies what he means: there will be “no one over the age of 25 there and all very cute.”

Diplomats were not important enough for Elon Musk to spend time with. Young girls were, though.

We keep treating this as a mystery of libido. We pretend that men who can run countries and build rocketships are unable to control ordinary arousal inside of their own bodies. But they are not stupid. They know an attractive young woman could have almost any man, and that is part of the thrill: the idea that she could have chosen anyone and he, uniquely, gets to have her. Her desirability becomes a verdict he gives himself—proof he has beaten the other men in a game no one admits they’re playing.

He becomes annoyed that he has to compete for what he believes he should be entitled to. Power enters and the fantasy sharpens: he doesn’t need to win her; he can simply take what others must ask for. The excitement isn’t her beauty, or his desire. It’s the exemption from consent’s inconvenience. And once he has her, she then becomes currency he can spend— at parties, in group chats, over emails– proof to other men that the rules bend for him, that he lives outside the ordinary bargaining the rest of us call adulthood.

People keep feigning surprise that these men were “stupid enough” to take photos, to put these acts in emails, to leave proof. Really, it’s not surprising at all. That’s why they wanted to go to these parties in the first place. The proof isn’t a mistake, or oversight, or, sloppiness. The proof was the point.

All at the expense of a young, living, breathing, fellow human being.

The reality is this has very little to do with desire at all, and is really a question of self-esteem. Too many men are not built from the inside; they are assembled from the manufactured witnesses of a power fantasy they made up in their heads and are now acting out in real life. A young woman’s body becomes proof that he is who he thinks he should be. Who he is entitled to be.

That is why, despite what I once hoped to be true: wealth doesn’t cure it. Power doesn’t cure it. Education doesn’t cure it. Adulthood doesn’t cure it. Those things only expand the stage on which the same small drama can be performed: a man proving to other men– and himself– that he, without consequence, can take something he has no right to.

And once you accept that, then comes the final blow: how many other men– and sometimes women– have to lie, manipulate, or look the other way to ensure the truth of this cognizant, deliberate cycle of abuse never comes to light. The shock isn’t discovering this mass manipulation exists; it’s realizing how much of everyday life is reorganized to make it feel normal.

During the #MeToo movement, women were told repeatedly to be careful—to make sure to emphasize that we knew it was “Not All Men.” But if it seems to be the men I grew up with, the men you probably grew up with, presidents, cabinet secretaries, CEOs, the spiritual guru Oprah herself trusted—then who, exactly, is it not?

And where are those “Not All Men” now? Have they spoken up? Why aren’t they clamoring to separate themselves from the disgraced? Could it be because none of this is shocking to them? Or worse—because, given the opportunity, most of them wouldn’t have acted much differently at all?

Could it be that this has never been about politics, or morality, or even breaking the law, but about a belief system of misogyny embedded so deeply across every facet of our society that the ability to abuse women—girls—without consequence has become not just a hidden sexual desire but the ultimate marker of manhood and success?

And does speaking out not only risk exile from his fellow men, but threaten the identity he has built for himself—just as Elon Musk did when he begged to be included, revealing that, given the opportunity, he wanted to be one of the men who got to do what Epstein and his friends did to women, too?

This belief system runs so deep in our culture that I would be lying if I said even I wasn’t squeamish about publishing this. I worry about being labeled a man-hater, a shrill, dramatic, undesirable. That I will ruin my chances at finding love, or be exiled from modern society altogether. But every time I open my phone and see a new email, I get closer to swallowing the truth that I—and so many other women I’ve spoken to this week—have been circling for some time: that there really is nothing to lose.

What exactly am I risking? Exile from a society that protects these men at any cost? The chance to say I was “picked” by someone who, even if he never touched what is documented in those files, almost certainly sat in a locker room or a group chat while the same sorts of stories were told—laughing, nodding, lending his silence to a fantasy built at a woman’s expense?

Am I supposed to fear either losing a hypothetical life with a man like the ones from my childhood, who wreaked havoc on women in broad daylight, or with the more polished version who might, if given the chance, trade everything for the opportunity to participate in the same kind of ruin—only this time behind tinted windows and on private jets?

I think of Melinda French Gates—beautiful, brilliant, stepping into a life she could not have pictured on her wedding day, a future that must have once sounded like a dream and then ended as a nightmare. I look at her now with awe, deep admiration, and gratitude for the way she advocates for the victims in the files, alluding to the betrayal and disbelief she feels about the man she once loved, and with a clear, unsentimental understanding: I do not want her fate to become my own.

Tomorrow I and women across America– even the world– will open our phones and see a new email with a familiar name, another victim on the news begging to be believed. It will stir something almost ancient inside of us. Our jaws will tighten, our breath will go shallow, our shoulders will rise and fall in unison knowing this isn’t only moral or political—they are bodies remembering what they were asked to survive. The shame, disgust, rage, and grief are not opinions. They are evidence.

We’ve been taught to treat those reactions as overstatements, to call them dramatics instead of recognition. But trauma only loosens when it is allowed to close the loop– when the flinch becomes a boundary, when the sinking gut becomes language rather than silence. Until then we’ll keep mistaking symptoms for arguments and calling our own survival a debate.

And yet we keep looking around for an adult to intervene. For someone with a title or a famous name to steady the table and say: enough. The files should cure us of that habit. The people who were supposed to be the adults were already at the party, already in the boardrooms, behind a desk in the Oval Office, already answering the emails. The authority we imagined was mostly décor, an illusion of a man in a fancy suit, tired choreography of respectability rather than genuine integrity.

Maybe that is the final lesson: healing does not come from the system that created the injury. It comes when we stop waiting for its permission to tell the truth. When we stop borrowing safety from institutions that never offered it, and begin acting as if we are already the adults in the room—because, inconveniently, we are. Most of us always were.

And adults don’t wait for permission to name what they can see with their own eyes.

What happens next will not be led by the names that keep arriving on our phones each morning. It will be led by those willing to live without the fantasy that power equals protection, and to build something steadier in plain sight. The illusion has run out of oxygen. The body already knows it. The rest of us are only catching up.

I’ve been here for 9 months now and I’m starting to establish rituals. Lounging outside at the Lincoln Center; matchas from the offbeat coffee shop on the corner; walks to the Maman that is actually further than the one closest to my building because it gets me outside and moving longer. I see friends for dinner, for martinis, for tacos near my office in Midtown, for long nights out that usually end with me alone in my bathtub in the middle of the night, processing, reminding myself that I still have somewhere of my own to rinse off. And that afterwards, like the bronze statue in the water, I’ll still be here, solid, me.

I try to keep my windows open as much as possible. I’m on a high floor, and the fresh air feels more important than ever. I don’t really hear the sirens or shouting from below anymore, but I can if I choose to tune in, if I need a reminder that I’m not alone. That there are 8 million people out there that know everything and nothing about me. I am a statistic, a mash of predictable demographic data, an ordinary trope. I am one-of-one, a contoured soul, a mosaic of experiences that now hangs from a wall inside of a tower on the Upper West Side.

New York has a way of making one acutely aware of the physical space they take up. Of the physical space everything takes up. Huge skyscrapers, tiny bistro tables, your physical body on a crowded 5th Avenue in midtown on your walk home from work. Relationally, I am humongous, and too small to matter at all.

Every day I open my eyes to a pang– a longing. Get out there, New York says. Go do what you came to do. I don’t want to admit the truth, for fear of excommunication– that I have no idea what I came to do. I spiral. I wonder if I’m going to stay. I flip between telling myself I’m taking this far too seriously, that I just need to exist and that I’m wasting every second I’m awake, and some that I’m asleep, by not trying as hard as I can to build a perfect New York life. To fit in. To make it. To earn my place. I can feel the city rolling its eyes. Are you done yet? I have seen and heard this all before.

Time moves differently in New York. You blink in March and then it’s October; you do anything, and sometimes everything, to pass the time and you cannot get the day to end. You get on the C, hear the wheels rolling over the tracks in the dark, screeching, and you are oblivious to your body– suspending, gently, over the blue plastic bench, moving with the train and the other liminal hovering figures— some with grocery bags, with backpacks, with children. The doors open to Brooklyn and you emerge into another realm, slipping even further away from the world you once knew, yet you feel like you are finally entering the only place that ever existed at all.

Each day I find more of my footing and each day I feel like America loses a little more of hers. New York looks on at us both, perseveres. Does its best to set an example and protect its people. People, both native New Yorkers and those from every end of the earth, who fill into the Subway together, eat burgers shoulder to shoulder at bars, who attend neighborhood soccer games and pack Madison Square Garden. Who help grandmothers up stairs and give holiday bonuses to their doormen. Who go for late night strolls in blue and white baseball caps with their dogs to the fountain at the Lincoln Center and return the next night for the opera. People who move with intention and an endlessly renewed commitment to being fully alive.

I see all of them. I watch, I’m here.

They see me, too.

“LOOK AT THE WAY HE LOOKS AT HER!!!!!!”

“HE’S LITERALLY CUDDLING HER ALBUM!!!”

“ARE THEY ENGAGED?!”

“DID SHE GET A BLEPH?!”

“IS JASON CRYING?!”

“HOW CAN I FIND A KELCE BROTHER?????”

All important takes. But one thing, in particular, albeit small, stood out to me. Travis, almost in passing, when talking about him watching her perform during the Eras Tour– referred to her as an athlete. Taylor almost rolls her eyes, insists that she’s not, and tries to move on. Travis keeps insisting that she is. It made me pause, and I realized that what he meant wasn’t just that she runs or lifts weights or about the incredible stamina she needed to do the Eras Tour night after night — although that is all true.

What I took him to mean was: you’re like me. You train, you’re disciplined, you endure. You understand that success at that level comes not just from talent— but from dedication, and the ability to push your body and mind to the limit in service of your craft. He saw her in a way that maybe she never even saw herself.

Taylor Swift at the Eras Tour, Acrisure Stadium, Pittsburgh, PA, June 17, 2023

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That framing — athlete — stuck with me because it dawned on me that it was likely no man she’s dated has ever seen her in that way. Joe Alwyn, Harry Styles, Matty Healy — they may have seen her as an artist, a muse, a partner in tortured thoughts or creative angst. But none of them (to my knowledge, I of course do not know these people) named the part of her, out loud, that actually makes her singular: not just the raw talent, but the resilience, the stamina, the capacity to build an empire brick by brick, lyric by lyric, night after night on the stage. Travis didn’t just see her talent; he saw her excellence. And not only did he see it— he honored it.

That recognition matters more than it looks. Because women — especially ambitious women with depth — are conditioned to think their best chance at love is finding a man who “matches” them emotionally: equally artistic, equally intellectual, equally tortured. The idea is that only a man like that could truly understand them. But here’s the trap: men are rarely required to cultivate the same endurance women do. They can dabble in depth, write a song, brood in a bar, be all consumed by their emotions at any cost to other people— and still be celebrated. Zach Bryan comes to mind. But that doesn’t translate into the capacity to support a woman who is carrying both emotional depth and the weight of real responsibility. And if a man is only capable of seeing emotional depth— but not what it costs to build success— does he really see her at all?

Women, on the other hand, are required to do both. They’re asked to feel deeply and to perform, to project stability, to keep growing even while under scrutiny. How many times has Taylor Swift been criticized simply for having a breakup, a friendship end, or for speaking out at all? Meanwhile her supposed “equals” — not just Bryan, but men she’s dated like Matty Healy — can stumble drunk, make racist remarks, womanize pathologically, never grow up — and still be celebrated as artists, as rockstars. A woman cannot. Because she’s required to develop the emotional maturity to self-regulate— despite how deeply she feels.

When a woman ties herself to a man who is able to comprehend her feelings, under the guise of feeling like he’s someone who will “understand,” she usually ends up carrying the whole weight and work of the relationship alone. And eventually, she starts to believe there must be no one out there who can meet her. Or worse, that the flaw is in her– when actually, it’s that she’s developed a whole other skillset that he’s never had to at all.

Taylor’s own trajectory maybe proves the point. Seven years with Joe Alwyn. He was an actor, a writer, in theory — someone who could understand her depth and artistry. But what did that equality look like in practice— at least to the external world? He rarely was beside her in public. He hid his songwriting with her behind a pseudonym. Even when he contributed to her art, he demanded that his name be obscured. That doesn’t present as equality. It presents as fragility.

And fragility is the enemy of creation. What good is emotional depth if it collapses when it’s needed most? Automatic understanding of your inner world is a fantasy anyway — the role of a parent, not a partner. What matters in adult partnership isn't having the exact same feelings. It’s the willingness to listen, to co-regulate, to show up again and again even when you don’t fully understand.

This is where Travis’s “athlete” comment feels seismic. It’s not just support, it’s recognition of capacity. He sees not just what she feels, who she is, but what she can do. And he doesn’t flinch. He admires it. He names it in his own vocabulary and, in doing so, he honors her in full. That’s the quiet, radical shift: recognition through effort, not ego.

And the partnership is generative, not reductive. With Travis, it’s expansion. Together, they are not just loving each other, they are building something bigger than either one. Taylor is rewriting the standard of what it means to be an American pop star. Travis is rewriting the mythology of masculinity and American football. By standing side by side, they’re fusing two of America’s most powerful cultural institutions into one story.

Some dismiss it as unserious — a pop star and a football player, a homecoming king and queen. But that critique misunderstands the scale of what’s happening, and the power at scale. Pop music and football may not carry the tortured prestige of “art,” but they are the beating heart of American culture. They are its myths. And right now, no two people are more famous, more watched, or more consequential in shaping that culture than Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce.

This is an example of what modern, equal, partnership can actually look like for women like Taylor Swift. It’s not two artists staring across a candlelit table trading metaphors about who feels more deeply, or draped over a bed with red wine listening to Cigarettes After Sex and musing about how no one else understands them, but two people standing in the arena together, building a mythology— a new ceiling for power— that neither could build alone.

Equality is not in the mirroring of emotion. That is a static action. It’s in the recognition of capacity to build — the ability to see what the other person is capable of doing, and the strength to stand there, steady, while they do it. And then, to do it together. To actually make it happen.

In a way, you could argue, in the same way that Travis calls Taylor an athlete, this makes him an artist. Not because he writes songs or thinks deep thoughts — though maybe he could, if he wanted to, I don’t know — but because he has let go of ego in the name of co-creating something bigger than himself. He can stand on the field or in the seats— do his own thing or celebrate without flinching— an in turn, be half of their combined power—- which is greater than either would have had on their own. And in doing so, he is participating in the creation of a new cultural archetype.

For women, the lesson isn’t to choose a football player over a poet. Although – I won’t be the one to stop you. It’s: stop confusing tortured ego for depth. Depth without resilience is fragility. And fragility is not equal to you. Equality is found where ego falls away, and recognition takes its place. Maybe a man doesn’t need to mirror your inner life exactly to love you, but rather has to have the humility and steadiness to keep trying to understand it— and the strength to stay with you even if he doesn’t. And if he has that capacity — then he sees you in ways that the “deep guy” never could.

For ambitious women especially, this is a cultural earthquake. We’ve been fed archetypes where love requires shrinking, a binary choice: either be the quiet wife to the great man for stability, or be the muse to the artist to be understood. What Taylor and Travis are modeling is something else: a partnership where he understands that seeing and honoring a woman’s capacity— her ability to build with him— is actually what will set them apart.

That’s why I keep coming back to the “athlete” comment. Travis sees Taylor not just as talented, or emotional, or brilliant, but as disciplined, resilient, enduring — like him. He recognizes her capacity because he has cultivated it in himself. That’s the equality. That’s the foundation. And it points to a new American power dynamic: one not built on traditional gender roles, but on the recognition of shared capacity — the ability to do hard things, to be brave, to keep showing up when the work is grueling and the pressure is on. It’s not about mirroring feelings, it’s about matching endurance. That’s what makes their partnership feel like more than a romance. It feels like a reimagining of the American spirit itself.

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My red flag antennae went up that perhaps we were looking for different things. I asked outright, told him I wasn’t interested in pursuing anything casual, and he assured me it wasn’t like that. Because I already knew him offline, admired his work, and knew his circle, I chalked it up to awkwardness, not malevolence. Maybe he was just feeling out whether this was platonic. Despite my hesitation, I proceeded, cautiously, not wanting to cut off what could be a real connection.

But still, despite the consistent messaging, there was no mention of a date. After a week or so of texting, he suggested drinks that weekend. Relief. I agreed enthusiastically. But as the weekend approached, there was still nothing concrete. I wrote him off in my head — maybe he’d lost interest, lied, or I’d misread the situation entirely. Then, Thursday night, my phone lit up with his name. Finally, I thought, a plan.

Instead: a selfie.

Half-shaven, one eyebrow raised, blank eyes, the camera angled from below so I could see up his nose. A slight grin, or maybe a grimace he thought was a grin? No caption or context. Was I supposed to notice the car? Where was he going? Was he on his way to get me? How do I respond to this?

I heart-reacted to the photo, assuming he’d explain.

We never spoke again.

In dating– whether my own, my friends’, strangers’ on TikTok — I’ve noticed the same disorienting pattern. Flirtation without follow through, sexual attention without intimacy or even a plan to meet in person. Initiation that goes nowhere. Obsession, and then ghosting. Encounters that leave women feeling like men were not interacting with them at all– but rather, an NPC version they created in their heads. What I’ve come to believe is that for many men, these interactions aren’t about getting to know a woman at all — in any capacity — they’re about using her as raw material to build or reinforce a crumbling sense of self.

At first, I thought it was coincidence or bad luck. But I’ve found that these antics don’t just happen to women like me. It is not a trend, or a snapshot in time. Women I know have told me tale after tale — a friend chased for years by a man who vanished the moment she agreed to meet. A coworker stuck with a false story about herself that a date wouldn’t drop, even after she corrected him. A married friend whose husband still introduces her as “the homecoming queen,” decades after high school. All brilliant, beautiful women who have felt erased in their own love lives—across demographics, geography, even marital status.

It’s systemic.

Much has been written on the male loneliness epidemic. I, for what it’s worth, am a skeptic — not only that it exists, but that it explains this breakdown. While people are lonelier post-COVID, I don’t believe it’s gender-specific. Men, at least in American society, have always been less engaged in their communities than women. And although women may be better equipped to weather a more digital, post-COVID landscape through hobbies, community, and friendships, the dismal dating scene we have now doesn’t just affect men — it leaves everyone feeling unheard and unseen.

What I do believe is that we are in a male identity crisis. Born in 1988, growing up in the Rust Belt during the collapse of the steel industry, I am no stranger to this phenomenon; I have seen the canaries in the coal mine before. I watched the men I knew and loved — the men who raised me — once anchored by a sense of purpose tied to their ability to provide, begin to crumble. They turned to opiates, adultery, gambling, isolation, and finally, to Trump, who promised a return to the self-worth they once felt and the future they had envisioned.

That identity has only eroded further — and it’s not only Rust Belt, middle-aged men who are suffering. For many, the economic anchors of manhood — stable jobs, whether through union wages, trades, or entry-level white collar positions and a clear path to finding a partner and supporting a family — have all but vanished, replaced by a fragmented gig economy and the relentless churn of late-stage capitalism. In this void, an entire social network has risen to tell men what they should be. Enter the manosphere: red-pill influencers, YouTubers and podcasters who spit out catch phrases like “alpha energy” and “high-value men” – all trying to explain to them why they feel so lost.

And without a vision for what modern masculinity is supposed to look like, these voices thrive on the confusion, selling — literally selling — a vision rooted in dominance and sexual conquest, even as men fall behind in education, now earning fewer college degrees than women, and feel more hopeless than ever about their futures. There is no clear, collective path to becoming a man in a culture that still demands they “provide” or “lead” but offers almost no structural way to get there.

And so, it seems, they turn to fantasy. Lacking stable roles, emotional fluency, or a purpose beyond performative dominance, many men now seem to approach women less as people to know than as symbols through which they can stabilize a crumbling sense of self. Maybe not always consciously, but as a survival strategy. When traditional identity markers disappear and no new ones take their place, fantasy isn’t just tempting — it becomes pathological.

This, of course, isn’t new. Men have always projected onto women: the trophy wife, the status symbol, the “girl on your arm.” But these roles were once meant to complement an identity a man already possessed. They didn’t define, but confirmed his social rank.

Now, for many, the dynamic has shifted: women aren’t just an accessory to a life he’s built, they’re the raw material from which he manufactures the fantasy of having one at all. The internet has made this easier, turning projection into a 24/7 feedback loop where a man can curate and consume images of women without ever engaging with their reality. And because women no longer need men for financial survival, they’re approaching relationships expecting mutuality, not dependence.

The mismatch is stark: women seeking partnership, many of whom have done the work to integrate their own identities, achieve career milestones, and have thriving social lives–meet men still locked in an older script — using objectification not to adorn a stable sense of self, but to conjure one from nothing.

Thinking back to that up the nostrils selfie– my first reaction, admittedly, was a little sexist. I got the ick– why is a man sending me a selfie? Isn’t that my job? But upon further thought, it becomes almost obvious what he was trying to do. When a woman sends a man a selfie, she gets a compliment, he tells her she’s pretty. She feels desired. He wanted the same: a request for reflection, for proof he was attractive, interesting, wanted. It wasn’t an invitation to go anywhere; it was an invitation to hold the mirror steady so he could see himself as he wished to be. The compliment-fishing, the awkward sexual comments, the awe that never became effort — all of it aimed at reaffirming him, not building anything between us. When the validation didn’t come, or came in the “wrong” form, the connection evaporated. Because, I assume, he wasn’t really seeking it at all. He didn’t want me– he wanted to be wanted by me, and that’s a big difference.

What looks like an isolated disappointment is, in reality, part of a much larger unraveling: fueled by late-stage capitalism, the hard-earned advancement of women’s sovereignty, and the collapse of an old masculine script without a new one to replace it — men are left to reach for fantasy, and women are forced to live in constant defense against being flattened into projections. And in that space between, trust frays — slowly, devastatingly — between two groups who must not only coexist, but co-create, if society is to endure.

I once dated a man who was fascinated by politics, though he didn’t work in them. From our first conversations, he seemed eager to turn every interaction into a debate — trying to spar, backed up with half metabolized talking points he had gotten on Reddit or X. I, on the other hand, working with the media all day, have no desire to treat my personal life like a cable news panel. So I’d nod, agree where I could, and gently steer the conversation elsewhere — books, movies, travel — anything that didn’t require me to be “on.”

When we broke up, he told me that he’d pictured us debating more — and that I didn’t engage him enough so that he could feel “smart.” And although I didn’t have the words at the time, looking back, it makes sense now that he hadn’t been dating me so much as the woman he’d scripted in his head, the one who existed to sharpen him, challenge him, and, by doing so, confirm his intellect that he was insecure about. The real me — the one who values peace over scoring points– especially in intimate relationships— never fit that role, and never gave any indication that I was going to. I’d been cast in a play I hadn’t agreed to perform in, based solely off of the work I do, and when I didn’t follow his lines, the story he’d built for us collapsed. I only heard from him once again– the day President Biden dropped out of the race, fishing for insider info.

We talk about identity, economic collapse, gender dynamics — but at the center of this mess, as with many things, is sex. Not just the act, but what it’s meant to hold: mutuality, desire, surrender, presence, power that’s shared instead of performed.

For many men in the wake of this identity crisis, sex, or sometimes even just the option of sex– has become proof — a way to reassert control, feel wanted, or outrun their own emptiness. It’s not connection; it’s consecration of the man they want to believe they are. There’s nothing inherently wrong with fantasy. In healthy relationships, it can spark anticipation, deepen longing, and keep connection alive. The problem in these dynamics is that the fantasy isn’t rooted in the woman herself and a consensual act of play — it’s about what she represents to him.

It can take many forms: being desired by a woman of a certain race or body type; by a woman also desired by a particular kind of man; by a woman deemed “strong” and “independent,” just to prove he can wear her down. In each case, the fantasy affirms something he hasn’t yet believed about himself — that he’s attractive, masculine, even heterosexual. The woman could be anyone who checks the right boxes; her own wants and desires are irrelevant.

Often, it’s not just a fantasy about who she is, but about how she should behave toward him — how she should perform desire. He writes the script in his head, then resents her for not playing the role he never asked her to accept.

The digital era has made this worse. Porn often introduces sex as something performed, condensed into ten minutes where desire is instant and uncomplicated. Social media conditions men to register their desire instantly — a like, a comment — and expect women to display theirs just as immediately and visibly, forgetting that attention is not attraction, and that everyone shows desire differently. Dating apps make people disposable, knowing that someone who is closer to the perfect fantasy may only be a swipe away. And when he finally finds her? Time to perform, pursue– to chase the validation that will feed into the delusion of who he wishes he was.

For women, at first, that attention can feel affirming, even addictive. How could it not? He’s already decided he likes the version of her he’s imagined, and acts accordingly. And after enough failed attempts at connection, sustained interest can feel like being seen, like being chosen. She reciprocates, dives in — and more often than not, the encounter implodes.

Because now sex isn’t a space for pleasure or discovery — it’s a performance review. You’re measured on how much you want him, how eagerly you affirm him, how well you mirror the fantasy, how closely you stick to the script you’ve never seen. Your own desire, your complexity, your actual body, is invisible — or worse, inconvenient.

This is where the inward male gaze turns dangerous: men aren’t having sex with women, but with a fantasy they’ve projected onto her without consent, treating the act as proof of the man they want to be. That’s why so many encounters feel disembodied, even when they’re physical. Why women can feel ghosted while still being touched. How a man can be next to you and never see you at all.

And when women pull back — not just from bad sex, but from the entire dynamic — men experience it as rejection not just of their bodies, but of their identity. Because they’ve never learned to separate being wanted from being worthy. And when she tries to name it? The fantasy has no script for that. That requires emotional labor he never signed up for. NPCs don’t have feelings, or need care. So it ends: in ghosting, coldness, or confusion.

Part of this dangerous pattern is men’s refusal — or inability — to do emotional labor. Not the endless, one-sided kind women have been taught to give, but the basic work of attunement and self-examination. Too many men enter relationships emotionally underbuilt, expecting women to be not only the mirror, but therapist, the teacher, the mother.

And the cycle repeats– eroding trust even further each time.

I write this essay not from the perspective of a man, not from the perspective of a psychologist, or even political strategist– but from the perspective of the fantasy.

At first read, that can sound glamorous. And sometimes it is. When men are pursuing you from the urgency of validating their own identity and self worth, they will make grand, loud, gestures. They will take you to concerts and Michelin-Star restaurants, they will fly you to exotic places, they will send you gifts and money. They will tell you how special and beautiful and wonderful you are. How no one else is like you. They will hold your hand and kiss your forehead and paint a picture of a future you’ve only imagined in your dreams. And despite how many times you’ve been down this road before, how many times you’ve been reminded that you actually aren’t special, that these types of men will do this with all sorts of women– after a while, you will start to feel really seen. And no matter how slow you try to take it, you will think to yourself – he has to really mean it if he’s putting in this much investment, this much effort. And then, you will begin to let your guard down, to let him in, to reciprocate. To invest. To connect. Or so you think.

And then, one day, the mask begins to slip. Not a dramatic reveal, but hairline cracks: an off-hand comment that doesn’t match the man you thought you knew; more time between contact; resentment that you’re not showing desire the “right” way — without ever telling you what he needs; sex acts dropped in out of nowhere, lifted straight from porn you never expressed interest in. When you reach for repair, for shared humanity, you’re met with coldness, gaslighting, or disappearance. You realize you hadn’t made it all up — but they had.

Sometimes, the fantasy is solely about what you look like, or they think you look like, based off of a few pictures on a dating app or Instagram. Sometimes it’s about one (or two) body part/s in particular. Other times it is about the work you do. Other times it’s quite simple– your race, your nationality, your hair color. Other times it’s more sinister – a fantasy about rescuing someone who didn’t grow up with wealth, or knocking someone with confidence down. Never, ever, does the fantasy have anything to do with who you are as a person– only their projections in reference to what it means about them. What they are trying to prove. You are a prop, a vessel, a cardboard cutout, a slot machine that makes golden coins of delusion rain down upon them if they play it right. And when the coins don’t dispense properly, or he hits the jackpot big enough to cash out and move on? He leaves, and what does it matter anyway? You’re not a person, just a slot machine.

You were never seen, never cared for, only consumed as a concept, a shell. And with that, comes a different kind of grief, and resolve to never let it happen again.

Can you blame women for beginning to opt out of dating entirely?

Many women have recognized this pattern and flipped it — monetizing the fantasy on platforms like OnlyFans or, outside of sex work, adopting defensive dating strategies that treat romance as a transaction from the start. Some have used these platforms to become wealthy on their own terms; others simply protect themselves by taking advice from creators like Shera Seven and demanding material proof before emotional access. But these defenses carry risks — from harassment and violence to deepening the distrust between men and women. In a loop where men seek identity and women guard against being used for it, authenticity disappears entirely.

We’re now starting to see the tangible effects of this collapse play out in real time. U.S. birth rates have fallen to historic lows, with more than 45 percent of women projected to remain single into their 40s. Marriage rates have plummeted, cohabitation is down, and even casual sex among young people has declined sharply in the last two decades. Loneliness and disconnection are no longer abstract cultural anxieties — they’re measurable demographic trends, reshaping everything from housing markets to workforce participation to public health. The feedback loop is vicious: the more trust erodes between men and women, the more people retreat from intimacy altogether, and the less likely it becomes that the next generation will even form in the first place.

The same craving for identity without the work — the one behind so many of these intimate projections — is the one that powers Trumpism and every movement promising the comfort of a past that never really existed.

Trumpism and the broader conservative movement have stepped in with their own answer to this identity crisis: a wholesale return to the way it was. It’s a national fantasy projection — and, like personal fantasies onto women, it promises identity without doing the work. In their telling, the solution is not to evolve masculinity but to rewind it: reassert the traditional family, limit women’s reproductive freedom, push “trad wife” aesthetics as aspiration, and place men back at the head of the household to guarantee them an identity.

Of course, this vision isn’t built for the present. It’s an inheritance from an imagined past where men’s power was unquestioned because women’s autonomy was constrained by law, culture, and economic dependence. It offers a clear script — but only if women hand back the sovereignty they’ve fought for, and men agree to play a role built for a world that no longer exists.

The fact that this is so often the only organized, widely broadcast “solution” is itself proof of a deeper problem: the structural failure of American politics to produce a viable, future-facing vision of gender that matches our economy, our demographics, and our lives as they actually are.

If the old masculine script has collapsed, it’s not just the Right trying to resurrect it — it’s that no one, anywhere, has written a better one. And maybe most devastating — for me in particular — is realizing that Democrats haven’t offered an alternative. I suspect it’s not because they lack imagination, as me and many of the women I work with are discussing these issues all of the time – but because they’d have to admit it isn’t just men on the Right. It’s men everywhere — in blue states and red states, in boardrooms and in dive bars, with Ivy League degrees and minimum wage jobs— who still cling to this version of masculinity: an entitled identity built at women’s expense, dependent on outsourcing emotional labor without ever doing the work to become whole; refusing the vulnerability and risk of real connection; avoiding accountability; resisting the self-examination that would dismantle this system and allow them to finally recognize women as equals– once viewing them as property, but now choosing to flatten them into fantasies instead.

I know good men exist. They are not a myth to me. Despite not having a relationship with my biological father, good men have been present and cared for me my entire life. My uncles took me in when I needed somewhere to live, helped me apply for college, made my birthdays special, and told me they were proud of me. My grandfather cosigned my student loans. I have deep friendships with men who treat me as thought partners, respect my autonomy, don’t objectify me, and show up — who push me to be better and expect the same. Male mentors have given me feedback and career opportunities while asking nothing in return. Every time I’m down on dating or men in general, I think of them.

Many are partnered with wonderful, opinionated women (or men!) I also love dearly, but their identities aren’t built around masculinity or women alone. They’ve built careers rooted in their skills and passions, hobbies that bring them joy, values that keep them grounded, and social networks they show up for. Full, whole, expansive lives.

While writing this, I reached out to a few I particularly admire to ask what shaped them. The same themes came up: older sisters, mothers, good parenting that centered seeing women as people. And one that surprised me — communities where they saw healthy behavior modeled by other men. That realization brought a different kind of relief: these men aren’t just my friends, they’re my comrades in this work of building a more just society, part of a long lineage of men who not only show up for women but push other men to grow.

They aren’t perfect. No one is. But there are men who live every day a version of masculinity that refuses to feed on women’s labor or shrink them to fit a fantasy. In that refusal, they prove the old script was never destiny — and show that a better one is already being written.

They can’t do this work on their own. Because the crisis isn’t just individual. It’s structural. Men must do the work of building identity — emotional fluency, self-reflection, purpose beyond being chosen — but we also need a culture that makes it possible.

We once had a framework that gave men identity: jobs, civic belonging, pride in work. But it came at a cost — women boxed in, queer people erased, Black and brown men excluded. That model gave some men purpose by denying it to others. We can’t go back. We can only build forward.

We need a new masculine ideal — rooted not in domination, but in contribution. Leadership without control. Pride without projection. Intimacy without performance. A society where men find identity through building, mentoring, protecting — not possessing. Where manhood means being accountable, whole, and real.

That work starts on two levels:

• Systemic: Economic policy that creates dignified work. Community infrastructure that gives men a place. Emotional education from boyhood that teaches connection and attunement – without shame.

• Individual: Men must opt in. No one can do this for them. They have to stop seeking mirrors and start building selves. Stop demanding praise and start asking who they are when no one is looking. Not because women are asking, but because without it, with no mirrors– they’ll keep sending selfies into oblivion– remaining hollowed out by the very gaze they once controlled.

But women, although we’ve been doing identity triage for men for generations, have work to do too.

We’re not immune to fantasy. From birth, we’re fed our own script: that if we are good enough, pretty enough, agreeable enough, we will be owed a man who fits our private vision of “Prince Charming.” For some, that means tall, wealthy, and established; for others, a particular look or lifestyle. And while attraction and standards aren’t the problem, mistaking a checklist for character is. We can’t demand men do the work of becoming whole, then reward those who refuse simply because they fulfill a childhood story about our own worth.

Compatibility and attraction are important—no doubt. So is connecting with people who make you feel good about yourself. But now, no matter how good they sound on paper, from casual encounters to friendships to potential long-term partners, nothing overrides my one true north star now: Can this person, right now, meet me in our shared humanity?

Author’s note:

1. I do not imply that every sexual interaction between a man and a woman is a projection. I am well aware that sometimes, two people are just physically attracted to one another and activities ensue. We are sex positive on this Substack— and in fact, in cases where any kind of sexual encounters are consensual and both emotionally and physically safe— they are encouraged. We need more of it these days, I think. Please go forth and have fun and enjoy your lives.

2. I do not mean to erase queer people from this conversation — and in fact, I’d love to hear your perspective. I just can only write about my own experiences — and I’d hate to speak for a group that is already marginalized and under intense scrutiny. But I suspect these sorts of dynamics play into relationships all across the spectrum of gender and sexuality. And they are important convos to have. So please share and I’d love to amplify.

3. The same goes for men. While I did my best to talk to men I know and trust about this and to make an informed theory of the case — I recognize that a lot of this — as it goes with personal writing — is projection about being a projection. So speak up, and I will listen!

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

I often joke that the first love of my life wasn’t a man—it was Las Vegas.

When I think of that first love, I think of its high, bright sun—its beams like golden lasers surging heat across the Strip. I think of the endless neon lights, an electric paradise with voltage you feel inside your own veins—a shared nervous system. I think of the maze of a casino: red and purple swirls of carpet, thick glass bottles full of amber liquor, the sound of coins falling from the sky.

I think of the smoky air, the thumping bass, the way time starts to melt. I think of driving into the desert at sunrise after a long night out—and the sense of awe that cascades when the lights finally flicker off and the sun returns, rising slow over the mountains.

I think of the mountains, always there—once just patient energy between fault lines, now rising tall and jagged above the flat desert. They seem to nod, acknowledging, gesturing, that Vegas is living proof of what I've always suspected—and what they've known all along: that you can make something—someone—out of nothing.

I’ve been to Las Vegas no less than 30 times. Bachelorette parties, work trips, conventions, and many, many weekends spent with friends who worked as leadership in the nightlife industry. I’ve celebrated two major birthdays, my college graduation, and countless other milestones in Vegas. I can navigate the casino floor of Caesars Palace with my eyes closed. I know what restaurants are worth it, and how to get into the club. I have loved many iterations of Vegas, and it has loved many, many iterations of me.

What has always been constant is not only the excitement I feel when landing at Harry Reid—but the reverence. When done right, a weekend in Vegas isn’t just vacation or escapism—it’s a ritual, a ceremony of reinvention, indulgence, and a commitment to belief in the possibility of transformation.

It is an embodied sacrament to the American Dream: the idea that one can arrive with nothing and leave as someone new. It has always mirrored the spiritual promise of American life—desire hard, dream big, risk everything—and maybe then, win.

This past weekend in Vegas, I was shocked at how empty it was. I wondered if it was just me, or if I had remembered wrong. There was hardly any traffic. On a Friday night, a casino bar was completely empty except for my friends and me. A too-easy-to-get reservation at a brand-new restaurant. No line at the club. And when we got inside—people were seated politely at their tables, nodding along. It no longer seemed to be the city of The Hangover—just a quiet, eerie shell of what once was.

It turns out it wasn’t just me. Tourism in Vegas has collapsed—not from a brief downturn, but because of systemic erosion. By May, total visitation had declined by 6.5% year-over-year, with hotel occupancy slumping to just 66.7%. Meanwhile, hospitality workers—especially casino dealers, bartenders, and service staff—report that tip income has fallen by more than half, even with recent tax relief efforts in place. Analysts attribute the downturn not just to inflation and rising costs, but to a broader cultural fatigue with the American fantasy that Vegas represents.

Growing up in a predominantly Italian-American working-class town, Vegas was the dream vacation. To go, dress up, see a show, gamble without worry, eat good food, live like a king or queen. Like you were on top. Like capitalism had upheld its end of the bargain. The American version of La Dolce Vita—but instead of slowing down to enjoy simple pleasures, it was about speeding up and consuming more. Glamour as proof you’d made it. Earned and celebrated indulgence.

It was easy to believe in the dream when it was built to include us. Harder to see, back then, how many it had always left out—though now, it couldn’t be more obvious.

Some might say a weekend in Vegas is gluttonous, frivolous, fake, or self-destructive—that it’s the opposite of discipline or purpose. But I would argue the opposite: trying on a new life, pushing yourself to excess, learning what’s too much—is how you begin to dream. That’s how you reach for a life closer to your purpose. That’s how fantasy becomes direction, and that direction becomes freedom.

But the American fantasy—especially for Millennials, Gen Z, and younger—is now out of reach.

We’ve inherited debt, burnout, anxiety. Most believe they have no pathway to ever owning a home. Young people aren’t dating, and are having less sex than ever. They’re not drinking. They spend insane amounts of time behind a screen. They go to work and can barely pay their bills—let alone save for a vacation. Fantasy has been reduced to its crudest forms: porn, online gaming, dating apps, DoorDash.

Risking anything real at all isn’t fun anymore—it’s too dangerous. And dreaming has become naïve at best—and a liability at its worst. To put it simply, the game is fixed.

Vegas used to push us to answer the question: who are we when all bets are on?
But now, we’re being forced to reckon: who are we when all bets are off?

Vegas, in its best moments, gave us a reason to yearn for more. It reminded us that reward could feel good. That if we worked hard, it might all be worth it. That America, with all of her flaws, still offered the pursuit of happiness as a fundamental right—whatever that happiness may be.

What we need now isn’t just a return to Vegas. Although I’d be the first to push for it—the city and its people deserve it.

What we need now is nationwide. It’s a culture and a government that makes dreaming possible again. An American agenda that encourages the conditions for risk by giving people relief. An economy that works—at least enough to grant working people a safety net. A political imagination that sees transformation not as a luxury, but as a right—for everyone.

Because dreaming—real dreaming—requires risk. And risk requires trust.
You can’t ask people to reach for a better life if the fall will actually make them lose it all. If it can kill them.

When all bets are on, we get to ask: what kind of life am I willing to reach for?
And when all bets are off? When the stakes are too high to play, or the game is rigged?

We stop reaching.

Before I left for the airport, I drove into the desert again, toward the red rocks. Behind me, the Strip—quieter than before, but still humming, buzzing, charging. Waiting.

The mountains still cut the horizon in the distance. Still tall, proud. Immense and unmoved.

Still proof, like Las Vegas, like so many Americans, that you can make something—someone—out of nothing. That with fantasy, with risk, transformation is real.

For ourselves. For Las Vegas.

And for an America that makes dreaming—and winning—possible again.

Not just for the lucky, but for everyone.

For the first time in over two and a half years, I don’t have my next flight booked.

This morning, I put my suitcase—a black monogrammed Tumi Voyageur Léger Continental Expandable Carry-On with gold details—in the back of my closet in New York. I bought my first Tumi on sale from the outlets in Vacaville, CA in 2018 when I began frequently traveling for work with my new billionaire boss and quickly gathered that my canvas zebra print luggage from TJ Maxx just wasn’t going to cut it.

That suitcase and I went everywhere together the last seven years. First on many cross country work trips to New York and D.C. from San Francisco, where I then lived. Then to Katowice, Poland during my first trip to Europe for COP24, then to Paris on a stopover back home, where a friend living in Berlin met me to explore Christmas markets and walk the Seine and drink champagne under the Eiffel before a five course tasting menu—my first—at Le Châteaubriand where I confirmed that I, despite my desire to be seen as someone with an advanced palate, do not enjoy sweetbreads, even in the most glamorous of circumstances.

It came with me to my first adult vacation, to Maui—on United miles and Marriott points —and on my first trip to Italy with colleagues when we had some downtime after that same boss decided he was in fact not going to run for President (but before deciding that he actually was going to again). It came with me on weekend trips to Vegas and Cabo. To London and Oxford and Dublin, on my last work trip for that job.

Leaving that role was hard. Not just because I loved living in California—which I did—or because of the friends and community I had—which I also did. It was hard because, for the first time, I felt like I was getting to be the type of person I thought I had always wanted to be.

Before San Francisco, I was rooted in Pittsburgh—a three bedroom house with red shutters and Magnolia trees in the front yard, an incredible professional and personal network cultivated by years of local political organizing and late nights with the same friends I’d grown up with, a community that I knew and knew me. My family was near, only an hour away in the small rust belt town I was from.

Everyone else’s lives started to fall more permanently into place —weddings with tiered cookie tables made up of pizzelles and lady locks, babies tucked into onesies that resembled Terrible Towels, baptisms with the same priests who had dunked us, screaming, into holy water, too – but I didn’t yet feel ready to really put down those kind of roots.

The San Francisco job came —bigger and better paying that I thought possible. I left my little house in Pittsburgh, and moved across the country to San Francisco—which I’d only visited once, for the interview. The night before I left, my friends came over with dinner. I was quiet, shaky. At some point, I fell asleep, and when I woke up, I found both of them– one in bed next to me, and one on the couch, still there, curled up in whatever comfortable clothes of mine they could find. They didn’t leave until I pulled out of the driveway, car full.

With that move, came things that helped me form my new identity: a national role in politics, access to elected officials, CNN reporters, a blue check mark on Twitter. Weekends in Napa and Tahoe. Peers who had Ivy League degrees and trust funds and parents with Wikipedia pages. And, the first time, maybe smugly–I didn’t just feel like I had a seat at the table—I felt like I had a place in the larger, real, world. That I had made it out.

When the opportunity came for an even higher profile national job, I doubled down and took it. My suitcase, of course, moved to El Paso with me, riding in the back of my 2014 Ford Escape, stopping first in Joshua Tree where I cried over my last California sunset, and then to a five star resort in Scottsdale (Amex points — great deals in Scottsdale in the dead of summer FYI– who else in their right mind would go?) where I spent the fourth of July alone.

New Castle, where I grew up, has been dubbed the firework capital of America because of the two major fireworks factories— Zambelli and Pyrotecnico that are headquartered there. That time of the year is really New Castle’s best– festivals and church bazaars with fried dough and homemade cavatelli in red sauce made by little old church ladies sold by the quart, high stakes poker games under tarps in parking lots, and the annual “Baby Doll Dance,” when a man in a giant, red, white, and green dress—the colors of Italy—with a papier-mâché baby doll head marches into the middle of a large, blacktop parking lot, with people gathered around. When the tarantella starts, the doll begins to dance, and its arms– sticking straight out and strapped with fireworks, begin to explode. In America! To this day. In 2025.

That year, 2019, I wasn’t in a plastic lawn chair, splitting cavatelli out of a container with two forks, watching sparks fly past a painted doll face with the people I loved. I was in between homes, watching fireworks in a robe from a hotel balcony while eating room service, both excited and scared for what was yet to come, hoping the tiny collection of Napa wine in my trunk didn’t explode from the heat… and that I wouldn’t, either.

I made it to El Paso. The suitcase was with me in Las Vegas during my first work trip with my new boss, nestled in the back of the staff van while we were at a labor union event when we got the news that there had been a mass shooting – at a Walmart in El Paso, his hometown and my new residence– that left 23 dead. It was in the overhead compartment on the first flight out when a young man approached us and told us that he was headed back because his mother, grandmother, and aunt had all been shot – and he had no idea who was still alive. It rode again in the van that picked us up from the airport and took us to the hospital to meet the young man, waiting for news in the waiting room, watching the door swing open with priests delivering last rights, surgeons running, sons and daughters and mothers and friends sobbing, gulping for air on their knees.

After the primary, it came with me to my mother’s house in Western Pennsylvania, where I spent the bulk of 2020 during the pandemic, where I worked on my fourth presidential campaign—this time, the general, working on strategy for Pennsylvania from a desk made out of a cardboard box in her spare bedroom, while she still went in full time to the Post Office. I told myself it was the right thing to do because she needed help with the dogs and the house. That may have been true, but the more pressing truth was that I, at 32, had nowhere else to go.

The suitcase sat in the corner of that room in a town full of working class swing voters that I had grown up with who we were so desperate to reach. I saw them, masked, at the grocery store. I waved to them on their porches while walking the dogs, Trump signs blowing gently in their yards. I answered their questions, with space between us, about why I was back in town. Stuck between two worlds and socially distanced from everyone and anyone at all, I still pored over the data as if I didn’t know exactly what they were eating for dinner or where their children went to school.

I was different, too. It wasn’t just the zebra suitcase that I had shed—it was the thicker black eyeliner, gold jewelry, demeanor that often got me labeled by a manager (sometimes fairly, sometimes not) as too emotional. I had a new diet, my groceries untouched by anyone but me, tucked away in a drawer in our now shared fridge, next to leftover meatballs and pierogies, and a new wardrobe, useless, now packed away due to remote work.

The suitcase’s contents—along with a few bags in my SUV—were most of what I owned. I was still paying rent in El Paso, thinking I’d go back during the pandemic. I never did. I left the keys to the apartment with my former boss to use as an office, and a coworker graciously cleared out the rest. But then, finally, the suitcase and I moved to Washington, D.C., after a win in Pennsylvania that tipped the electoral college, to a loft where, for the first time in years, I slowly filled a home with furniture of my own, and went to work at the White House, which, for a moment, made all the upheaval feel worth it.

I stayed in D.C. for four years—the longest I’d lived anywhere other than Pittsburgh. I don’t think I realized, at the time, just how much of my new identity had become tethered to movement—forward, upward, elsewhere. And even when I moved into a new job I loved – without a campaign or the White House or the next goal, the weight of the last years sank in: leaving Pittsburgh, San Francisco, El Paso, New Castle. Three failed campaigns and one winning one. A pandemic full of week-long stretches and holidays spent totally alone. An upward trajectory that had delivered me—but then slipped out quietly.

And I was left with a beautiful loft, bills that were paid, a dialed back tone of voice, and a quiet grief for the version of myself who brought me to the gate, and then didn’t get to come.

When I first arrived in El Paso, I used to drive down I-10 and look through the fence at the colorful houses. There’s no way Mexico can be that close, I thought. It was! It is! How different any of our lives– our identities– could be if our mothers simply started labor on the other side of a border – a made up line that exists only because humans insist it does.

My blue passport, my white skin, and my green dollars allow me to pass freely through borders with ease. Not just physically, but mentally, too. Through no doing of my own. Pure luck, privilege, chance.

Borders are man made constraints. They tell people who they can be. How they can move.

Identity is man made, too.

We all deserve the freedom to move through both—borders and identities—on our own terms.

At 21, on my first trip to Vegas, my best friend Tara, always down for the ride, and I, forever looking for guidance, usually from women, drunkenly stumbled behind a beaded curtain at the Palms, where we found a small woman named Rowena with a sign that said ‘Fortune Teller.’

Tara asked, “Who will I marry?”*

And when she looked at me, what did I ask?

Fuck love, I thought! “Will I ever travel?”

She said yes.

In late 2022, a chapter I didn’t plan for, but welcomed: extensive travel. Most was slower this time around, and less obvious in its purpose. A girl’s trip to Sedona. A month back in California for multiple weddings. A long bachelorette in Mexico City. A road trip through Sicily. An international client that took me to Asia repeatedly. Buenos Aires. Guatemala for no real reason, really, except that I had a friend who wanted to go. Me and my suitcase were back together—but now, it carried far nicer outfits and travel-size toiletries tucked neatly into packing cubes. A universal travel adaptor. And probiotics. Lots of them.

Travel, in this way, had always been the real dream. Not while chasing a well-intentioned yet overbooked man running for office with a Le Pilage on my shoulder overflowing with talking points and extra ties and Larabar wrappers– only seeing the insides of remote TV studios and union halls and vans– but real travel– to spend time in different cultures, learning and lounging, exploring. When I was five, I got a cat and named him Mexy Lex—after Mexico, of course, which I only knew from the occasional episode of Barney. In my kindergarten journal, I wrote that when I grew up, I wanted to go to China. I knew nothing about China, other than that I loved the placemats at the local buffet and memorized every Chinese zodiac sign on it. To me, it was another world, and I wanted to be in it. I wanted to be in them all.

And with each trip, with no core anchor to work or former self, I began to curate an identity based solely off of my own whims of the day, anchored yet again in movement. With no real next obvious goal to achieve, no real next self to curate, focusing on travel allowed me to suspend my two selves – the old and the new– or not be either at all. But curiously, they both found a way of popping up.

At first, especially after being cooped up in the pandemic, I wanted to go to every trendy, TikTok famous, Michelin-starred restaurant. I was on the constant search for the best restaurant possible– the best experience possible. I wanted to add it to my list, to be someone who had been to the right places—not only the current trends but the institutions, the bookmarks. When someone I knew from work asked, “Have you been to Pujol? Chez Panisse? Mother Wolf?” I wanted to be able to say yes.

And while I still do love going, especially when traveling with friends for a fun night out, I’ve found that even more, I love local, simple food. Bright red, fresh tuna poke from the deli counter at Foodland in Maui. A cannoli from a tiny shop in Scopello eaten in a bathtub. Matcha whisked in front of you from a market stand in Tokyo. Wine tastings in Provence at a back road, family owned Chateau that will stay open late for you. Dinner on the beach in Jimbaran, a spread of grilled fish and vegetables and rice, eaten with your hands and accompanied by water straight out of the coconut.

In the Mediterranean—I’ve loved going to beautiful hotels and beach clubs. Hotel Corazón, Dimora Delle Balze, Cap d'Antibes Beach Hotel– all stunning and worth planning a fake wedding around in your head. As someone whose vacations as a child were limited to a road trip to Lake Erie or Ocean City, Maryland, they are the types of vacations that were once as likely to me as living out a Hans Christen Anderson tale– my very own episodes of White Lotus, minus the murders (fingers crossed).

But in Sicily, the South of France, most recently Mallorca—I also like to find a low key, mostly locals beach, rent a chair, buy a Magnum ice cream bar from a corner market and then toast in the sun lathered in sunscreen purchased at the French pharmacy on arrival while reading the most charming yet silly romance novel I could find at the airport (think Emily Henry or Jasmine Guillory). I love to be around families, women in their 50s in one pieces, deeply tanned skin covered in tanning oil, playing with their grandchildren under straw umbrellas, listening to them speak in Italian or Spanish to their daughters and friends– not understanding most words but being familiar with the cadence, the tone, the love.

The last two and a half years, one trip led to the next—I said yes whenever I could, packed my suitcase, boarded United flights and zoned out (yes, I am a flight raw-dogger) without much of a plan beyond movement itself. Without campaigns or a defined role, even work travel felt unstructured; I wasn’t anyone’s staffer or angling for the next step—I just existed. When I add it up, I think I spent close to 7 months of that period on the road. And slowly, not belonging anywhere turned into belonging to myself, whoever that was at the time.

Each time I’ve landed in Paris, I’ve headed first to Breizh Café in Le Marais, originally a recommendation from a colleague I worked with in San Francisco, and ordered a buckwheat galette, and sat outside watching people and drinking coffee until my room is ready. Before I leave, I get a stick of Bordier butter (okay two) from the gourmet grocery store next door, and keep it in my hotel fridge and eat it for breakfast on a baguette I get from a nearby boulangerie deemed worthy. This past trip, it was Utopie in the 11th, who also makes an éclair sesame that might be my new favorite dessert in Paris.

In Bali, there’s a yoga studio that I’ve gone to most mornings in Penestanan, a small village only accessible by foot on the outskirts of Ubud simmering with incense, the offerings to the Gods decorating the stone paths, full of colorful fruit stands that are honor system only. It’s on the third story of a building built into the hill with floor to ceiling windows that overlook the top of the jungle below, and when it rains, you can hear the sound of the drops on the leaves, the smell of rain and volcanic ash and flowers seeping in.

Because I pack light— always with the Tumi—I rarely bring anything back. Instead, I collect perfume: hard to find in the U.S. or that smells unmistakably like where I’ve been. My dresser now holds Acqua di Noto’s Marzamemi, Le Labo’s Tokyo-exclusive GAIAC 10, Maison Godet’s Fleurs de Reine from Saint-Paul de Vence, and my favorite—Xerjoff’s Casamorati Italica, impulse-bought in Rome after a morning walk through Villa Borghese.

I never get homesick when I travel. In fact, I rarely think of home at all. The more I did it, the quicker I learned to settle in—finding tiny rituals, trying on life as a local, centering immersion (or at least my imagined version of it, stitched together from Bourdain episodes and TikToks and obsessive Google searches). Scenes that let me try on different selves, low-stakes identities slipped into for moments that were never meant to last. I became like the perfume I collected: curated, but ephemeral, never a signature scent, a series of suspended whiffs that could be recalled but always faded off by the end of the day.

In Ibiza, on the last day of a 2 week trip to Europe, I woke up tired. We had a big day planned – to take a boat to Formentera, beach hopping, day clubs. All things I love. Instead, I asked to stay back, and spent the day at the beach near the hotel, alone, forgoing lunch for a Magnum bar– my usual– and spent most of the day in the water, swimming. First as far out as I could, and then as far down as I could, and then just bobbed, looking at the coast line, blinded by the sun and the shimmer of the water, and then up at a lush, green, hill littered with white villas that overlooked the sea. I wondered who was in them. If they were vacation homes, or year round residences. I pictured families dressed in linen carrying colorful serving dishes full of bright, salted, tomatoes to a long table on the patio with a centerpiece of lemons and a faded, blue, tablecloth, lapping softly in the breeze. How nice it must be for them to have nowhere else to go, no one else to be.

In Bali in 2024, ever on my quest to seek guidance from small, mystical, women– my driver drove me deep into the jungle to visit the home and temple of Bali’s highest ranking woman priestess. Although I was skeptical, she was recommended to me by a trusted friend– a local. We drove up a dirt road and he dropped me off at the bottom of the driveway and told me he was off to find lunch and would be back in 2 hours and I– rarely scared– but a little hesitant, wandered up the hill and was led into the woods by the priestess and her assistant. After a long meditation with her and a water purification ceremony (a quite long one– my Catholic guilt really filled in the blanks there), where I tried with all of my might to keep my eyes squeezed shut so I didn’t lose a contact and tried to think not too hard about when it would be over, we sat down on cushions to talk– me, still soaking wet, disheveled, and her, poised, curious, open. “You still don’t trust people,” she said, curiously. “Or yourself.”

I nodded. I wasn’t going to argue alone in a jungle with a priestess on her own turf. “I know.”

“You can’t worry about that. There’s no point. The past does not carry into the future. You can trust someone one moment, and then not the next– because they no longer exist. People can change. They do change. All of the time.” I somehow knew what her next words were going to be, and I knew she was right, because there I was, not in New Castle, not in Pittsburgh, or San Francisco, or El Paso, but alone in the jungle with no cell service, no witnesses, sitting on a battered cushion in front of an altar in Bangli, Indonesia after letting a woman I’d never met pour water and chant over me for 10 minutes straight.

There was no CNN, no voter file, no aspirational goal here. There was no zebra TJ Maxx suitcase or anyone that knew that I didn’t have a passport until 2016. No friends, or suitcases, or dinner reservations. No resume or proof that I was somehow better connected to everyone in the room. There wasn’t even a room– just my choices, the things that had happened to me, the grass and weeds and an open blue sky thick with humidity and big black ants, marching in a line towards the altar.

She spoke. “You change, too. You’re not who you were even 30 minutes ago.”

If I’m being honest, the only reason I didn’t move to New York sooner was driving. The thought of not having a car, or dealing with the logistics of one in New York, made me feel claustrophobic and overwhelmed. I am, like most non-cosmopolitan of origin Americans, a driver. I have no aversions to being behind the wheel—in fact, I prefer it. Driving gave me freedom, but also suspension– when you’re in motion, you don’t have to be anywhere at all, and more importantly, you don’t have to be anyone at all. In the car, music up, windows down, destination unimportant – that is always how I have done my best thinking. With no pressure of perspective. Just as someone who exists without the constraints of who we are when parked.

Last fall, in DC, it was time to get a new car. The Ford Escape —along with my suitcase, a trusted companion, after two cross country drives, six homes, and countless roadtrips –had 140,000 miles on it and was beginning to show signs of old age. The undercarriage was dragging. I ziptied it, but then just had the mechanic take it off fully. It was making weird clicking noises when I turned.

I began car shopping, but nothing felt right. I got close to buying one—a used Cadillac CT4. American made, small for the city, an upgrade from the Escape, and I figured a small homage to my Italian-American roots. Still, I hesitated.

When it became clear the Escape wasn’t going to make it much longer, I knew it was time. I’ll go this weekend to buy it, I thought to myself.

Or, I could just move to New York.

When I arrived at the Newark Airport in January, the handle snapped off of my Tumi upon arrival. I thought it poetic. I took the strap off of my other bag and fastened it to the top, and then wheeled it through to the taxi stand, almost as if it were a dog on a leash on its final walk before being put down— my most trusted companion. I carried it in my arms up to my new empty apartment and laid it down gently in the middle of the living room, unzipping it one last time.

It, as always, was packed with what I was too scared to put into storage or wanted with me at all times, even as I was in transition — the handful of things that had survived every move, every transformation. The journal my grandmother, who raised me, left for me when she died when I was 21. My perfume collection. A copy of the New York Times from the day the vote was certified in Pennsylvania in 2020. A framed photograph of my childhood best friend, Quitisha, who has since passed, smiling in jean shorts on our vacation to Ocean City. A small box full of forever stamps that my mother gave me years ago that I still haven’t used. An announcement card from my goddaughter’s baptism. And my long wooden spoon, bought from a market in Napa, that I use to make sauce.

My apartment in New York has a pink couch, a bed, and a few other pieces of furniture. Since moving in at the beginning of the year, I’ve been slowly collecting art for the walls. So far, I have a large, framed picture of Mick Jagger with a chrome frame found at the Grand Bazaar on the Upper West Side, an original canvas done by Pittsburgh artist Baron Batch, thumbtacked to my wall until I remember to drop it off at the framers, and a quadriptych of black and white photos I took of desserts in my hands in Italy in the kitchen.

Somehow, growth no longer feels like grief.

When I bought a new suitcase from the Tumi store in Grand Central Station, the cashier asked if I wanted a bag. “No, thank you,” I told him. I wheeled it out, empty, and took it home.

*I feel obliged to tell you that this Las Vegas psychic, this small woman named Rowena, not only predicted the exact physical appearance of the man who Tara married, she also predicted the first initial of his first name. She also accurately predicted that they would work together. She also predicted some stunningly accurate details about me, including that I’d live in San Francisco and would work in communications. She did, unprompted, end up telling me about my love life, despite my indifference at the time and that I would end up later in life with someone older, well traveled, with an olive or darker complexion, who worked in business and that he would possibly have a son. I have yet to meet this person, so, if this sounds like you, please reach out. Thanks.