It has been one month since Madonna released Confessions II, and I wanted to share some of my reflections.

My first night out was at a Madonnarama, in 2008, a week before my 18th birthday, at Houston’s South Beach megaclub. Hers was the face that greeted me, on every wall, as I entered the arena. Hers had been my very first CD (The Immaculate Collection) and her first Confessions had aligned my nascent queer consciousness to nightlife imagination.

In the Jewish numerical system, 18 spells out חי, life. That first Madonnarama, the arena of my unskillful first kiss, introduced me to the forces of life. 36 is 18 twice, so it’s known as double-חי, an even more auspicious year. This July, freshly 36, I turned up to an official Club Confessions release party, where many generations of revelers gathered to smile and sing to their favorite deep cuts. Drugs and the usual dissociation would not be necessary here. It’s Madonna, the sun goddess, who has brought happiness to each of us in our childhood bedrooms. She wants us to express ourselves, not hide behind post-modernism and posturing.

The DJ played classics before the stroke of midnight, then the bulk of Confessions II, and then all of the original Confessions tour: Forbidden Love, Music Inferno, Lucky Star, and that definitive version of Erotica. We danced and screamed, and a few things became clear:

Art is a gift to the world
…which saves us all. I saw gay men and women, trans younglings and hag elders, all touched by this woman’s music. It gave each of us a way out, a key to the door. “Burning Up” was mine, my very first night go-go dancing at Club Cumming. Don’t put me off, ‘cause I’m on fire. And I can’t quench my desire. So was “Into the Groove,” when I got into college and out of the suburbans. And “Back that Up to the Beat,” in Melissa’s apartment in 2023, and on and on.

Each song evoked smiles of recognition—each person had a story. The gift of life. Her tours, especially Confessions, have always had a messianic styling, as she emerges from the disco ball to spread the gospel. But it isn’t just about her; it’s in every creative person. Regardless of what the art does, whether it is “important” enough to address the heaviness of the present (as if it has to); regardless of if it endures; regardless of if I turn against what I’ve made and have it stricken from the annals of digital history. It’s a chance that must be taken. It’s the fire of Prometheus and the sun on your face. Of course it would be a Leo, the sign ruled by the sun, the king of the zodiac, Madonna, Ruby, Catherine, Kiko, who embody the pleasure of its delivery.

Labor is devotion
I now listen to Yasi Salek’s Bandsplain podcast on Madonna hours a day, and will not feel at peace until I’ve finished the saga. She and her guests break down every song, video, costume and controversy, and they’ve led me to watch videos I’d missed and revisit albums I’d taken for granted. What has stayed with me, and what has maybe always gone without saying: Madonna works. She has never stopped working.

At this point of the year, we’re nearing the end of the reading of the Old Testament. The Israelites stand at the threshold of the Promised Land. Moses, who has led them through their transition out of immiseration and into freedom, will not be joining them for the next chapter. His phase of consciousness, of setting forth and dreaming up the future, is closing. What comes next is the arrival, and the maintenance that comes with making it: what happens when you’ve found your place, your person, your thing? How do you not get lazy, or take it all for granted?

I have always believed that if fame would rescue me, then I could finally prove myself. If I was taken seriously, then I could really begin. But until then, I would await my arrival, embittered at my missed possibilities. The podcast has eroded at this delusion. Madonna made it young to the land of abundant success, and has since had to keep making it. She has learned new instruments and changed her sound, innovated and explored, so as not to stagnate into nostalgia.

Jupiter just entered Leo. More attention, visibility, and criticism. My rabbinical studies, a lark in the first year, are now becoming real, and I am being evaluated in the way I sing and interpret and speak and pray and lead. I write every morning, in a way I had once given up on. For the first time I feel like I really have to take my talents seriously, if I want to leave the realm of longing. In my twenties, I had a work ethic, but no grasp of how to take care of myself, and that longing for salvation sent me wandering in the desert, for years more than was necessary. I know that my ambitions always lead me to disease. But the doing itself feels pure, and I pray that if I commit and stop running, I’ll be able to handle real criticism, the sort that a working professional knows how to take. We’ll see.

We have no control
…of where it all goes. I once asked a friend of mine, after the release of her first book, how she copes with the feeling that nobody reads anymore. My own columns felt like dogfood for the anonymous. She told me: you have to think of it like a message in a bottle. Someone will find it, even if you don’t witness it.

Fantasmas ends with a celebration in the school bleachers, a reading of work deemed too bizarre for a mass audience. Scripts thrown into the ditch find miraculous resonance. New players take up your lines and connect backstage. The DJ plays a song from twenty years ago, or forty years ago, and it rips open a tunnel through time.

In 2021, we took acid and went to see the 25th anniversary tour of Jagged Little Pill, at Jones Beach. The crowd was rough: rode-hard lesbians tailgating in the parking lot, and a lot of straight women who once found liberation in Alanis’ lyrics, and who have in the years since have had to face compromise and crushing relationships. There was pain in the crown, you could feel it palpably.

Alanis took to the stage, never looking or sound better, and whipped her hair into infinity. She herself, the Gemini high priestesss, hadn’t aged, and had the power to heal the crowd, to bend time and fold away the hard years like the lungs of an accordion. She opened a channel, and signaled to everyone a chance at t’shuva, a return to ourselves. Confessions II did the same, in my earphones and on the dancefloor.

Creation is contact with the fifth-dimensional, and dissemination is a ripple in the static of time. It doesn’t age, and it’s not going anywhere. It’s always worth it.

Growing up in the halcyon hypocrisy of the Clinton ’90s, there was always something cringe about the bad guys you’d see on the screen: the camp, the cackling, the sloppy sidekicks. Where was the realism…or whatever?

The culture changed as I came of age, particularly over the last sixteen years. Thanks to the Neptune-in-Pisces boom in therapy, a true crime revival, and Hollywood pumping out prequels like fast food, everyone, including the vilest of the vile, is entitled to a personal history. Bad people don’t crawl out of pits in the earth; they’re made, formed by abuse which must be healed and understood, and here’s their side of things.

This was a necessary corrective to a culture of ruthless individualism, which teaches children that homeless people get what they deserve and that imprisonment is the natural response to, say, possessing a few grams of weed in your car. My parents really believe that if a waiter doesn’t provide good service, a poor tip will teach them a lesson. In a positive development, my generation discovered IFS, parts work, psychedelics and means of forgiveness to move beyond the reductive morality of the atomic age.

And then came 2011, 2016, and 2018, and Brett Kavanaugh crying like a baby, and the shock of the sort of venal, vile villain who wants nothing but power and pussy, who wins the masses by lacking that empathy which had to become performative by the time it became a reality TV tool, a prop of consumerism. With #metoo and its revelations, we all sought to make sense of our violators, on the big and small scale. How could this happen? What makes a person act this way? Trying to make sense of the election catastrophe, we all had to hear that same tired line of “reaching across the aisle” to understand one another.

Some dialogue helped balance the scales for the good. Women who had been publiclly defamed were granted public pardon (as if that matters) for the moralisms of the past. Restorative justice took hold of the monoculture, even inspiring Spider-man to help his villains, rather than just watch them self-destruct, in the multiversal salad Far From Home.

The global meltdown continued, the news became too overstimulating, and we needed soft textures. Disney and Pixar movies no longer featured classic foes, opting instead for bouncing emojies representing feelings, or something (I watched the last Inside Out movie on cocaine and can’t remember much of it). Everyone had a story, a Trauma Plot, and every TV show would have to inflict hours of flashback drudgery to explain its characters’ hard upbringing.

Of course, this fascination with what’s inside would take a pornographic swerve for the worse. So comes the supposedly highbrow serial killer documentaries, no less tawdry than Hard Copy and the work of Gale Weathers. We all want to get inside his mind, to understand what she was thinking when she did it. For three election cycles, the media played into the current president’s hands by reacting to his every word, by trying to make sense of what makes him tick. Like No-Face, the corrupted spirit of gluttony in Spirited Away, the president got bigger with attention—any attention, and his critics couldn’t help but feed him more.

At the end of 2024’s Furiosa, the road hard heroine faces the warlord Dementus in mortal combat, only to pause for a recital of his trite backstory: dead family, hard times, a turn to barbarism. Good and evil, forgiveness, redemption. Hitler wanted to be a painter. Sure.

Meanwhile, the real supervillains took the stage, celebrating irony and trolling against the false earnestness enforced in the wake of 9/11, twee culture and 2010s “love is love” gibberish. The new tech overlords and oligarchs have made their loyalties and priorities clear; there’s not much more to understand about what drives Sara Netanyahu and Mark Zuckerberg. Politicians have always been corrupt, but this class has demonstrated a total disinterest in human empathy, as modeled by a silent Reagan at the boom of the AIDS crisis.

And yet, in the public imagination, the villains couldn’t match reality. 2025’s Superman reintroduced the scheming bald business tyrant Lex Luthor to the world, and, despite Nicholas Hoult’s solid performance, he couldn’t touch the antics of his successor Jeff Bezos. Josh Brolin played a conniving executive running a dystopian TV slaughter arena in The Running Man revival, but he came off as fangless compared to our reigning reality TV plutocrat.

Finally, we got the new Masters of the Universe movie, and a final showdown between our hot-bodied, big hearted He-man and his cackling hag of an archnemesis, Skeletor.

He-Man: Skeletor, I have a proposition for you: why don’t we end this cycle of violence and talk? Just talk. You destroyed my world. You have caused so much pain and suffering. And maybe that’s because you couldn’t be king, maybe it’s because you weren’t loved enough as a child. It doesn’t matter who you are, what matters is what you do. So, do something right.

Skeletor: Oh, you boob! You muscle-bound milquetoast! There’s no nice that will reach down here! There’s no good in me that you might uncover! There is nothing you could say that will change my nature! I am the villain. And mmm, does it feel good!

Finally. I hate to sound cynical, because as a rabbinical student I am actively learning about the value of all life and the contribution that each of us has to offer, one way or another. And yet, in reckoning with a family member who has committed calculated murder; and, more mundanely, in encountering those typical parasites who will always seek to hustle, scam and screw to ascend to the top, there are times when one has to step away and accept the truth: not everyone can be saved. And if you look deep enough, you may find that there’s nothing in there.

We spent three hours studying “the origin of evil” in my Zohar class. There are plenty of takes. Evil is a part of the whole, and comes in some package deal with the good. It’s part of the balance. Looking at the ten spheres of the Kabbalah, my teacher said that evil emerges when any one sphere, any one part of the system, spins out of balance with the others. The sphere of wisdom gives us structure and intellect, but left uncorrected it becomes prescriptive and totalitarian. The sphere of the womb, where we go for love and understanding, can subsume us in incest without proper boundaries.

The balancing, then, is the entire project, micro and macro, in ourselves and for the larger society. And it’s in short supply, apparently, in our current borderline rules of engagement, a mirror hellworld in which each of us (inspired by our digital coaches) banishes away anyone “toxic” for their obvious narcissism, never questioning what they reflect in us. Of course the shadow is my own, and has something it wants to say to me: about what I don’t want to see, and what I could be capable of, be it through the best or worst execution of my power.

In my childhood, the villain was the best part of the movie, and the confrontation was essential to the hero becoming integrated, whole. Something’s off now. We either hold them too close, give them too much of a backstory, or ostracize them, never to be faced. Whatever the new balance is—of discernment and compassion—it will make us into more complex, creative heroines, no longer fools to feeding the devil.

Interested in the spheres, the stars, or your own shadows? Let’s do a reading! Books are now open for August and September. I hope to see you soon.

All my love,

David

“Where’s the fucking?”

At a critical turning point, a question must be asked. My friend Dexter introduced it after Everything Everywhere All At Once. And then Emily, that same year, when Catwoman Zoe Kravitz and Batman Robert Pattinson ended their movie with no more than a kiss.

Two weeks ago, my rabbinical school class went to Friday night services at a reform temple, to see how it was done. A massive synagogue, with a big community. And yet, the usual: liturgy led by old men, singing old crowd-pleasers to a passive audience. My classmate beat me to the punch before I could say it: “Where’s the sex?”

I loved the new Odyssey movie because it was by no means definitive: it’s a version of a version of a myth, and these artists made it relevant to what we are dealing with, collectively, in 2026. It was fulfilled my one standard, in that it was a movie, with fabulous set pieces and stunting, and finally gave us the return of Anne Hathaway in her grand vamp form. As for Samantha Morton as Circe…she had a packed theater of men (some even straight!) sitting bolt upright and stunned silent. And Lupita N’yongo doing a double-gag for the classicist gays…as usual, she comes ready to annihilate.

The Odysseus of myth is wily, witty, a smooth-talker and a heartbreaker. Matt Damon’s Odysseus cruises through the more somber mythic imagination of 2026, facing with the consequences of marital barbarism, and its obvious implications of sexual violence. It’s a mature corrective to the glorified pornography of Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead and all that other “post-modern” masculine indulgence of the last twenty years.

So he’s not to sleep with every goddess he meets, and in this version, it’s fitting that Samantha Morton’s liberated bog hag doesn’t find him particularly charming. Fine, so long as we can make it to Charlize Theron, cast fittingly as the campy seductress Calypso, with whom Odysseus classically falls into a sex daze for seven years. This time, it’s as if he’s been coerced and fed opiates just to stand her company. Really? That’s it? And even when he does return home to Anne Hathaway’s Penelope, we don’t make it all the way to a proper embrace on their marriage bed. The end of last year’s The Return, with Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes, centered around this fabled pieced of furniture. If not for the bedroom, there’s no point to the preceding bloodbath.

My Zohar teacher always pressed this on us: everything, everything, everything is about the sacred masculine (kadosh baruch’hu) and the divine feminine (shechina) coming to face each other. According to the myths of the Zohar, if the two sides of the divine erotic do not come find union, if they stay askew and aloof, ashamed and afraid, then the world slips into chaos. It’s the knowing judgment of their queen that Matt Damon and Ralph Fiennes most fear; and, indeed, Juliette Binoche and Anne Hathaway are righteously fucking fearsome. To overcome that fear and face the force of life incarnate is to complete one’s ascension into mythic hero.

Ruby, a few years ago, said that she fears that men and women don’t really have anything in common anymore. A dear person told me that after attending a chemsex party in a gay guy’s apartment, at which everyone was high but few could stay hard, he got the sense that they all just wanted to cuddle but didn’t know how to ask for it. The source sphere of the Kabbalistic tree of life, Tipheret, is associated to Jacob, the forefather who frankly fucked a lot, and who resolved an age-long biblical family feud by meeting his brother and embracing him in a hug.

What is beauty if trapped in stasis? What is an odyssey without a proper reunion? What is an epic road, a personal transformation, without an ecstatic celebration, a dance on MD to “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)?” Why do therapy if it doesn’t yield a climactic breakthrough? What are we doing so far apart from one another?

The Odyssey brilliantly delivered an ancient myth into the present, into a new dark age of stunted desire, warped masculinity and terrorized bodies. How those bodies come together again, how those spirits come alive, is up to the audience, and to the potential of our own erotic imagination…

For ten days more, all readings on my site are 20% off with the code SUMMER26 and SUMMERGIFT26. Books are now open for August. I hope to see you in the sunshine…

Love,

David Odyssey

My first year of Rabbinical school is complete. I would say that school’s out for summer and I’m free, but many of this year’s hardest lessons concerned my penchant for escape, for lunging away from reality and into some delusive horizon. In the winter, I dreamed that I was a turtle swimming in the ocean, my shell protecting me in the pitch black current. My rabbi, a hot Jungian analyst, told me: the turtle is the Torah. He got me!

Over the past months, I staged a classic tantrum about how this wasn’t my path, how I’m an artist, and so on, ad nauseum. But in reality, this binding and submission—in the style of Wonder Woman’s lasso fetishism, and the Jewish leather tfillin—has forced me into my own life. It’s brought me love, awakened my talent and given me a shot at daily creative ritual. The chances of my sabotaging it are still high. All I can do is turn it over to the higher ups.

The tea is that I studied Zohar, the text of the Kabbalah, and my consciousness will never be the same. The Zoharists were a group of ancient mystics who would sleep all day and then set off on midnight walk-and-talks, contemplating the bible and its mythology. Essentially, they were the original ravers. You can learn more about Kabbalah via my podcast (video below). The Kabbalists delivered to the world the concept of the ten spheres of the tree of life, a system just like the planets or chakras, whose aspects can reveal our own divine nature. And I’ve taught myself how to “read” the spheres.

These readings are wild: we connect to your Old Testament archetypes, angels, elements and beyond, to make sense of whatever you’re going through. It’s very fun and I hope we can play around with it together. You can book one here.

In that spirit, I’m offering a 20% discount on all readings, with the code SUMMER26 and SUMMERGIFT26. Books are wide open and I want to see you already!

All my love,

David Odyssey

The underworld descent? The seduction of the Innocent? How do you describe this genre, in which the innocent heroine is seduced by the dark master, becomes culpable, and breaks free? At the end of Mean Girls, Lindsay Lohan’s Cady accepts that she is a bitch. She can no longer judge the Plastics, but coexist with them in a new, harmonious ecosystem. Toni Collette’s Muriel stages a pageant of lies to make possible her becoming in Muriel’s Wedding, but at great cost. Her racy Sydney lifestyle cost her every one of her relationships, and she must make amends. But that doesn’t mean she’s going back to her shitty hometown. She was right to go to the big city, right to cut her hair and strike out. It’s time to hit the road. Same with the novel Bones & All, which ends with the wandering cannibal Maren alone, unreformed in her bloodlust, but at least owning what she is and always has been.

It takes a steady hand to stick such a landing, to not enforce a moralistic summation at the last minute. It’s this level of mastery which keeps the original Devil Wears Prada from becoming a classic. Anne Hathaway, the master of the movie makeover, plays the tedious Andy Sachs, who must embrace her potential to meet the demands of her dominator, Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestley. The work fuels her, but she can’t succumb to the savagery of the industry, and so Andy leaves Miranda’s world of manipulation behind.

And then, she crawls back to mediocrity, and to the arms of Adrian Grenier. For his approval, she has to take it all back: the ambition, the devotion to her career, even the embrace of high style. It’s a silly surrender of power, considering that Grenier plays a chef in Manhattan—a class of swine who, as anyone who has worked in a New York restaurant can tell you, are not exactly moral arbiters. It’s cheap.

Pillion, I am delighted to say, takes us to hell, but this Eurydice won’t look back at the last minute. Harry Melling plays Colin, a virginal dweeb who catches the eye of Hades Incarnate on Christmas Eve. His new overlord is Ray (Alexander Skarsgard) an aryan phantasm who recruits him as his new sub, servant and houseboy. Ray rules over a small and specific kingdom (one I know nothing about), a pack of BDSM bikers in small town England. His treatment of Colin is cruel, even in the world of domination and authority, and, fortunately, we’re spared any dramatic monologues or flashbacks to his childhood. Pluto is Pluto, and his majesty comes from mystery. It’s Persephone whose transformation we’re witnessing, and it feels like Colin wakes up before us, each chakra coming online a little at a time, until he’s a real person, with his own desire and destiny.

Pillion’s writer/director Harry Lighton doesn’t write off BDSM, or wrap up Colin’s descent in a trite lesson, as with Winona’s lame final voiceover in Girl, Interrupted. When Colin introduces Ray to his supportive, but sexually infantilizing parents, we’re not force-fed false acceptance. This isn’t about coming out, but coming into one’s own, and happens by fucking. Some doors can’t be unopened, nor should they be. Colin has only just begin his initiation.

As for Andy Sachs, twenty years later? We find out, in The Devil Wears Prada 2, that Andy has indeed made it as a journalist, chasing hard stories around the world, fighting for her values, choosing her job over family and relationships. Sounds like an interesting evolution, one that Hathaway has the flint for. This self-realization would make a middle-aged Andy a powerful foil against her former tormentors, Emily (Emily Blunt) and Streep’s Priestley.

But, regrettably, Hathaway pounds hard on likeability, and her character remains impossibly dough-eyed and devoid of complexity. In one scene, we see the real Hathaway, the side which made her such a fucking phenomenal Catwoman. But it’s a mere flash of Lilith, and then back to Disney Land.

By 2026, The Devil Wears Prada 2 has solved its politics: this time, its women don’t apologize for loving their work. But what are they working for? A dying industry? A leg up? A legacy? There may be an interesting movie here, glimpsed intermittently, about a queen watching her kingdom crumble. We have a lot to base this one on: years of reportage on the fall of media, and, more interestingly, on the false lifestyle that Condé Nast’s staff have long lived, even without the capital to finance it. But, be it in deference to nostalgia or to its predecessor, The Devil Wears Prada 2 fears change. The costumes and soundtrack slap, the players show up, and some of the one-liners made us laugh. But what’s the point, if after 119 minutes, or even twenty years, we’re to end up back where we started?

I wanted to share my latest two podcast episodes (now in higher video quality), of which I’m very proud. You can subscribe on Spotify and Apple as well.

The first breaks down the pagan holiday of Beltane (May 1), and talks, without much subtlety, about the power of the penis as a paintbrush, and the lost potential of the sacred masculine.

And then I get into AI, The Comeback, and the future of human originality, with an exploration of Pluto in Aquarius. I hope you like it.

Books are open through June. You can claim 20% off a spring reading with the checkout code BELTANE.

See you around the May Pole, and at the burning of the Tower,

David

I’m writing the day before the annular solar eclipse, when the moon partially obscure’s the sun’s light, creating an illusory “ring of fire” in the dark, evoking Mount Doom and the bondage of marriage. I love a Mordor. I write this as I drink cold coffee out of a plastic cup; next to me, an influencer films herself as she applies her makeup.

On the 20th, Neptune and Saturn come together in Aries, the first union of the respective planets of authority and imagination since 1989: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the protests at Tiananmen Square, the end of an era. In a recent podcast episode about the conjunction, I talk about 1989’s dominating cultural artifacts: Queen Latifah’s Ladies First, Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814, Madonna’s Like a Prayer, and, of course, Tim Burton’s Batman. The assignment was to take those forces of domination—nationhood, authority, race, religion—and make love to them, meld them into something malleable and beautiful.

The ring of fire, Sméagol, Sauron. When Lord of the Rings came out, just after 9/11, the specter of an eye in the sky, a surveillance supervillain, inspired fear in the hearts of lesbian hobbits and their viewers. Now, we are on all fours for the Dark Lord. It’s just the way of the world. But the way is changing.

The debut of these planets in Aries simplifies everything to a battle against ultimate evil, a relief after years of processing and unpacking and apologizing. The boot of the monolith stomps down on the innocent, and shock troopers act as emissaries of the Free World. Go topple them. But the work of the dreamers will be to make sense of what is. We fuck in the factory, dress superheroes in dungeon garb, and summon our inner overlord, oppressive parent, or vengeful god. We face them in loving union. From there, we create something new.

I don’t want to be too cruel about the new attempt at Wuthering Heights, but, suffice it to say, it takes a lot of emotional work, and the earned cultivation of a point of view, to understand the beauty of ruin, and to not smooth the edges when contemplating the worst of what we do to people we love. Apparently, an erotic imagination (and not just a penchant for laying out tumblr stills) is a rare marvel to cultivate. But the world may need it now more than ever: to evoke, to unite, to collage the crap and cruelty into an orgasm. These creators tried valiantly, and failed. Consider that to be your invitation…
____________

IN OTHER NEWS…

All readings are 20% off, now through the 22nd, with the code ECLIPSE. Book here.

I got to hang with my beloved Emily Olcott and Kiko Soiree (and receive love advice) on my favorite podcast, Saviour Complex. I know you’ll get something out of it.

New episodes of my podcast, Heavenly Bodies, air every Wednesday, and I promise, I’m only just getting started. If you enjoy it, please become a subscriber (and tell your hot friends to check it out). Available on Apple, Spotify and Youtube.

I’m honored to have been mentioned on . It’s a really good read, and puts into clarity a lot of things I often feel when people talk to me about astrology.

See you on the dance floor, in the dungeon, and down the way…

David Odyssey

Sunday marks IMBOLC, the festival of the fire goddess Brigid. In the dark of winter, she builds her biceps, pounding her mallet at the forge of life, dipping buckets into the well of creation. In the fire sign Leo, on the night of Imbolc, the moon goes full, capturing a pure surge of the sun’s inexhaustible light, reflecting our future selves: immortal engines of possibility, never burning out, always finding a new solution. It’s pitch black and shitty at the present. We must find the motivation, and the mission, to keep looking ahead.

I’m on semester break from rabbinical school and want to catch up with my people. I miss readings and want to hit it hard, Brigid style. So from now ‘til Monday, I’m offering an obscene $50 discount on all readings, with the codes IMBOLC for personal readings and IMBOLCGIFT for gift readings. You can book here. I’ll probably never do this again.

If you want to know more about this mythic moment in time, I hope you’ll check out the latest episodes of my new podcast Heavenly Bodies, available on Apple, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. I am very proud of it, and promise that it’s only going to get better and better.

All my love,

David

New era, new players, new podcast. I’m delighted to unleash Heavenly Bodies: A Trip Through the Cosmos with David Odyssey upon the world. This is my first truly-produced, actually-edited podcast, brought to you by the wise queers of Pride House Media. We will cover astrology, culture, politics, mysticism and personal metamorphosis, as per usual, but in a style more refined than before.

This time, I’ll be on youtube, spotify, apple podcasts and beyond, every Wednesday. Here’s our first episode, which talks about Lilith in Sagittarius (and yes, motherfucker, I do celebrate Teyana Taylor). Next week, I’ll tell you all about the astrology of 2026, before we get into angels, horoscopes, psychedelia and much much more. Please tell all the chic people you know, and leave me a glowing encomium (I really will cherish it).

Also, readings are back. What can I say: I missed working with my people. You can book a reading here. I’m glad to be back in cahoots. Much and more to fill you in on…

Ever,

David

THE GRANDATHER CLAUSE
It was January, and on a Saturday night like any other, I found myself in a melange of shirtless bodies, eye-to-eye and tits-to-tits with a dark beauty. We kissed, I allowed myself to hope, and then I saw, upon his wrist, a tattoo. It read:

1998

Not again. I’ve been alive since the crucifixion, and yet here I am, falling for the same fantasy every time.

But the dancefloor is where I come to clarity. So I made a new law, that night: no more kissing strangers. Of all the self-imposed interdictions for my so-called emotional sobriety, this one would prove to be one of the most essential. It’s not substances I lose myself in, but other people: my ideas of them, and of what I need to be to lose or keep them.

Since then, for the most part, I’ve honored the rule. If someone is interested, we can exchange numbers—and then it’s open season. I’ve spared myself a lot of grief on the dancefloor these last few months, restoring the innocence of the night.

And yet: what do we do with those who are grandfathered in, those boys with whom I’d already gotten messy on the dancefloor, before the law was instated? Their entitlement, and my inability to say no, sometimes makes me feel like there is no way out, no matter how severe the restrictions.

But with time, and without the option of total self-abnegation, I’ve gotten a bit better at a firm hug and a passing goodbye. Perhaps this is how Elizabeth II, or Patty Buckley felt at state functions. It’s nice to see you. Excuse me, I must inspect the cheese table. And, among those cronies whom I still do share a song with once in a while, there’s a feeling of camaraderie, like we’re old friends from a porn shoot ten years ago.

There’s one I always get down with, one of the best dancers around. It doesn’t matter if it’s to Britney Spears or Faithless—once it’s on, it’s like we’re in a Jamaican dancehall. He’s married and works in tech; we have nothing in common. In the past, I tried to play the part, keep him satisfied. Last Thursday night, we danced as friends, and it was the best time I’d had in ages. He helped me come down from my thoughts and into the moment. It was all the thrill of dirty dancing, with none of the neurosis.

I still wonder, every time, if by doing this I’ll never know true freedom. Maybe I’ve only further consigned myself to stay alone, forever. And yet: I’m not reenacting the past like I used to, not playing out the same tale of self-abandonment. Any price to be relieved of shame.

THE TRADE-OFF
We haven’t spoken since last June, which was your decision. We thought we could be friends after breaking up. When we were together, I was harsh and distant, like Buffy to Riley. Only when we’d split, when I wasn’t afraid of being assimilated, could I see you and admire you, and finally fall in love with you. In those months of trial friendship, I revealed myself to be a loyal puppy dog, the kind who always gets shot at the end of the movie.

You were right. We couldn’t be friends, and I could barely see you at the gym without shutting down. I can’t say why, but everything from Sex & the City to Babe made me think of you and cry over all my mistakes. I went over it a million times, over the next months, working as a dogwalker. We weren’t a match/I wasn’t ready/you weren’t mine/I wish I had you back. But you were right. In this year without you, I’ve started to find my people, the ones who really speak my language. And you found real love.

Nearly a year later, there was one thing left unresolved, one relic which bound us together, as if by magic: my book. I turned it in last May. I’d had three weeks to edit it, the hardest thing I’d ever done (professionally). I broke down many times, fearing that I might not make it, that this thing with my name on it would be an embarrassment. You were my champion, and I made that clear in the acknowledgments. When I wrote those lines, I never would have guessed that within a matter of weeks, we’d be strangers.

So, on the day of publication, we met for coffee, and I handed it to you. It was no feeling of triumph. You’ve found your soulmate, and you’re living together in a nice neighborhood. Anyway, here’s my book. I’m the same as I was. I know you’ll never read it.

My only victory was the melodrama, the season-finale closure in an overwritten life. Nothing on the horizon, but this chapter has at least been edited and concluded, definitively.

GENERATIONS
For a brief spell in the summer of 2023, I fell in love. It was at first sight, at a rave, and, before the month was over, it went down in an instant. In no reality were we compatible, and it’s likely I chose him because I knew he’d someday disappear. After our last night together, I got home and pulled cards. The Two of Cups. Lord of Love. Reversed. I knew I’d never see him again. This had not been a real relationship, and yet, I’d still run through an airport for him any day. Finally! The one that got away! What anguish could be finer?

A few weeks ago, I met someone on the dancefloor, and, observing my new rules, got his number before walking away. We met for coffee and had a decent time together. Only after, did I realize: he was a clone, a reincarnation, of my long-lost love. One could note some differences in the ethnicity and height ranges, but otherwise, it was all the same: the big brown eyes, thick lips, bad style. They were even both in medical school, and total martyrs about it.

It was like a movie sequel: one that isn’t half-bad, but still kills the nostalgia for the original. It finally hit me: the one I’d lost, the one in million…wasn’t. It’s time for a new concept.

RIPPING DOWN THE VEIL
I had a Grindr—or as my friend Molly used to call them, a gringo—over, on the eve of Purim. We’d chatted a bit, and frankly I’d forgotten what he’d looked like by the time we’d made a plan. I’d just read from the Megillah reading, where I’d danced like a lunatic to ABBA. The Rabbi wouldn’t let us leave the dancefloor. I was wiped, but he was already in his car, so what was I to do?

No matter how many pictures you see, you never really know who will walk through your door. Sometimes, someone comes in and changes the music—maybe permanently. I haven’t seen him since that night, I know nothing about him, and it’s possible he’s even closeted. We didn’t bond in that way.

But it felt for a few hours like someone was actually paying attention, and like I couldn’t put up the same reruns that have been playing for years now, which haven’t been remarkable for a long time. I just thought: for someone like this, for some reason I don’t understand, I would change. I don’t mean that in the usual codependent, code-switching way which has defined every interaction of my life so far. More like: maybe I could finally play a different role. Maybe all this has just been an armor, and it’s not so relevant anymore.

I doubt I’ll ever see him again. But I saw a different side of myself. So there is more to discover, still.

UPDATES:
I wrote a piece about dark wellness and spirituality for ’s Cracks in Pomo (to which I hope you’re subscribed). This will be a print-only banger, in Cracks’ third zine. You can order it here. I’m really honored to be included.

My book is out and it’s real. I am so grateful to every person who has bought one and told me about it! I hope you’ll enjoy it, and, if you can spare a minute, share a review on Amazon and Goodreads. It goes a long way.

Astrology and Tarot readings are now open for the summer. New offerings include SATURN RETURN readings and SATURN IN ARIES readings. I am looking forward to working with you.

Ever,

David

Finally, after a heady two years, I’m proud to present you with my first book, When Saturn Returns: Surviving Your Astrological Coming-of-Age. The book features stunning art by Satwika Kresna, and is now available wherever books are sold.

Though this book is ostensibly a guide to your Saturn Return, it’s meant to be a resource for every chapter of your life, featuring my usual cultural commentary and personal history. It’s designed to be referenced again and again, through both the intimate and collective challenges ahead.

Someday, I’ll share on what this process has been like, and all the ways I wasn’t ready for such a turbulent emotional ride. But suffice it to say, my people got me through the pitching, signing, writing, waiting and reckoning. So thank you. And with that said…

…it would mean the world to me if you could:

Buy the book. Early sales make a huge difference.

Leave a review on Amazon and on Goodreads. Critical to reaching a bigger audience; my dream is to have Japanese schoolgirls buying this book, and reviews on this site will lead them to me!

Tell your chickens. Word-of-mouth has led me to some of my favorite clients, and I’m counting on it for this book as well. What you do reverberates.

I hope I can see you soon, sign your copy, and crack open a bottle of champagne to properly celebrate this. Who knows what happens next. For now, I can only say thank you for helping me make it here.

Ever,

David Odyssey

My mother and I agreed: the Poland leg was a joke. Three grand, to walk around Auschwitz with J.A.P.s in Ugg Boots? Instead, I’d take the week off and meet the rest in Tel Aviv, where my grandmother—a living Holocaust survivor and not an a tour guide—would be waiting for me with open arms.

Most of the class went on the march. Only a few of us holdovers stayed back in Houston. It was a great time. Miriam and I went to see Iron Man at midnight. I got my wisdom teeth removed, and watched Buffy DVDs over frozen yogurt. I blasted Madonna’s Hard Candy as I drove around in my uncle Jerry’s hideous Cadillac.

My 18th birthday would be the first week of May, by which point the ten of us who stayed behind would join the rest of our class, and our hot headmaster, in the holy land. The celebration would have to go down now. I wanted to go to South Beach, Houston’s mega gay club. But how? I didn’t have a fake ID.

But Sam P did. I didn’t think we looked alike, and unlike me, he had abs, the eternal marker of social superiority. But any way you shook it, we were two twinky Ashkenazi boys in one of the most diverse cities in the country. Who would look twice?

We must have taken my mom’s white Ford Explorer that night, and thank God she was so open-minded. She’d also paid for two rounds of Accutane, a dermatological dark magic which did God knows what damage to my organs and psyche. But still, I cleared prom night without a blemish—unlike the year before, when I’d had to wear so much cover-up that I stained my tuxedo rental.

And now I had a clean face for my first night out. I looked like fresh meat, though there wasn’t much of it on the bone. My growth spurts and weight fluctuations have always been jagged; come senior year, I was insatiably hungry all the time, skinny in a way that makes me cringe to look back on. I was a friend to everyone, agreeable and smiling, an affable eunuch. I’d been out for years by then, but hadn’t had anyone to kiss. It would be a decade, at least, before I’d really explore my authentic sexuality.

What I did have was Queer as Folk, which I’d be introduced to at 14 by my closest friends, the twins Tina and Tanya. Their mother, Anne, was chic and discerning, and knew it was harmless for her daughters to watch hot gay Canadian men fucking on Showtime. I’d never seen anything like it. I wasn’t out to my parents yet, though considering how many times my dad and I watched Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion together, I can’t imagine that they saw that ambush coming two years later. Tina and Tanya opened the door to my cinematic queer awakening, and now it was for me to cross through.

I checked the mailbox with rabid enthusiasm come sophomore year, waiting for the Queer as Folk DVDs to arrive one-by-one, sleeve-by-sleeve, from Netflix. “It’s Battlestar Galactica!,” I’d screech, when my mom would ask what I’d gotten this week. Then I’d fly up to my room and slam the door shut.

When I slipped in that first disc, I put it on at the lowest possible volume, waiting for my parents to head to bed. In the dark of my room, I stared in awe as the gates opened to the show’s signature nightclub: Babylon. Pink confetti and laser light doused the screen, as endless pornstar bodies danced to “Let’s Hear it for the Boy.” I knew nothing about gay nightlife. Could this be real?

When you are 17 and standing at the club gates, at midnight, with a fake ID, you really do think that you’re about to die. I’m in my mid-thirties now, when the rush of a first time is a rare luxury. The other week, I saw a hot daddy at my gym, went up to him, and asked for his number. It made my afternoon, certainly, and got my blood pumping, but the stakes didn’t feel so climactic that they’d kill me. What’s the worst that could happen: I go home and take a nap?

But here I was at 17, shitting bricks as the bouncer checked my credentials, a vein bulging in my forehead. Agony, and then, in one miraculous instant, they let me and my crew of Jewish girls through. I couldn’t believe it. The Jew switcheroo had worked; I owed Sam P. my life, and, depending on the night’s events, perhaps my virginity.

It was better than Babylon, bigger than Babylon, open and spacious and packed with real men. A stripper beckoned us over; my friend Jennie tipped him and he let me rub my hands over his chest. He was hairless and impossibly firm, hit muscles juicy like strawberries. I’d never seen skin so tan, teeth so white; a touchable version of my straight brother’s hot goyish roommates.

There was a charge in the air. Even if it was my first time, I knew this was no ordinary night. I looked up and around and saw a familiar face, projected onto the screens. I heard her voice, beckoning us to the dancefloor. No way. Awareness came all at once. Unknowingly, by god’s grace, we had stumbled into a Madonnarama.

My first CD, given to me by my mother: The Immaculate Collection. The video I watched every morning before fifth grade: Don’t Tell Me. The song I danced to when I got my college acceptance letter: Into the Groove. My yearbook quote: Like It Or Not. The patron diva of our household now presided over my commencement into adulthood.

This was but a few months before Lady Gaga would debut Just Dance, and Katy Perry “I Kissed a Girl.” We were in the final year of the Bush presidency, during which time Madonna was all we had. Hard Candy may have been forgettable, but Confessions was like a missive from Professor X’s Cerebro headset: if you were gay when it came out, and conscious, it changed you.

So we danced, probably with as much sex appeal as you’d expect from a high school cast of Fiddler on the Roof. The Madonna hits kept coming—no remixes—and the party got wild. Who knows what I wanted. But Jennie was on a mission, gleefully introducing herself to any stacked man I had my eyes on. “IT’S MY FRIEND’S BIRTHDAY,” she yelled in their ears. “WOULD YOU GIVE HIM A KISS?”

Naturally, this is the sort of behavior I would today condemn: a sexless young fag and his straight handler. But god damn if a little J.A.P. insistence didn’t go a long way. Three men came my way, and planted ‘em on me. The kisses were wet and toothy, leaving my lips cut and beer on my breath, which I’d never once tasted. And that was that.

Should this have been my first experience? Would it indeed define years to come of performative, overblown sexual theatrics, dancefloor encounters which could almost serve in place of genuine intimacy? Weren’t there some deeper blocks apparent here, never to be fully healed?

Who cares. I’d have my twenties for therapy, and my thirties for writing personal essays. Even if the dancefloor would expose me to violation and reenactment, fantasy and delusion, first kisses full of empty promises, those would be passing phantasms. My prince may never come, but the dancefloor itself would prove to be one of the great loves of my life. And that night, we met for the first time.

Another 17 years have passed—a full lifespan for me back then. I’ve switched cities five or so times, changed my name and my hair and my career, learned much and resolved much less. And yet, just this last Saturday night, when the DJ put on Hung Up , I was back where I started: dancing the same dance from that night with the fake ID, the same dance when I’d blast Lucky Star and play Sailor Moon in my childhood bedroom. “Time goes by, so slowly…” The clock ticks, Madonna sings, and I have only just begun.

…In other news, here’s an essay I wrote about oatmeal, for my brilliant friends at . It’s one of my favorite pieces I’ve ever written, a paean to the mythic cauldron of my lived experience: the morning.

You can read it at the link below.

The Gullet

Gruel the World

By David Odyssey…

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2 years ago · 2 likes · The Gullet

With love,

David

I’m delighted to share this new piece with you, an essay on fandom and devotion, via and his beautifully curated Cracks in PostModernity. We also talked about cult and celebrity on Stephen’s podcast. Let me know what you think.

Cracks in Postmodernity

Has God fled the Church of Fandom?

Listen to David, Stephen, and Țara Isabella Burton’s Interintellect salon on the cult of celebrity [Spotify, Apple, YouTube…

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2 years ago · 6 likes · David Odyssey

Meanwhile, I’m proud to feature this conversation with the wise one Emily Olcott, on my podcast. We talk about death, grief and dealing. I will be relistening to it…forever.

I’ve just opened my books through February. These prices won’t last much longer, so I hope we can work together soon. Book a reading here.

More to come.

Ever,

David Odyssey

It’s been 21 years since we bought that cardboard cut-out of Buffy. The house has since been flooded, the primary players recast. I look back on it all as if it were someone else’s life. And yet, some totems remain. I am known.

This specific incarnation of Sarah Michelle Gellar could only have been from the fifth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, my favorite show in the world. This effigy of Buffy would debut at my Bar Mitzvah party, standing next to a cardboard Legolas and Gimli.

My Bar Mitzvah came near the end of the school year, along with the final episodes of Buffy. It had been a hard season, on and off television.

The show had recently betrayed me. The week before my Bar Mitzvah, an episode titled “Dirty Girls” aired, featuring the mutilation of a main character. The show had been scary before, but this eyeball-related maiming crossed into the perverse. I couldn’t close my eyes, couldn’t sleep without seeing it over and over again. I became too frightened to watch Buffy.

It felt like I’d been kicked out of Sunnydale, my purest sanctuary, my escape from seventh grade. I’d long dissociated and ducked out to dream worlds, but this was different. Buffy and Angel were mine, a world of my own discovery. This was pure to me. And now it had taken on the vulgarity of reality.

I was fat, weird, and praying that puberty wouldn’t corrupt me. The sweet Jewish boys I’d grown up with had been seduced by post-9/11 bravado: they now stunk up the locker room with Axe body spray and performed the exotic masculinity of Eminem and 50 Cent. On the eve of my Bar Mitzvah, my older brother handed me a stack of Playboys. I politely refused. None of us were who the other wanted us to be.

My stepfather had died the summer before. My mother, grief-scorched and overworked, would indulge me, cooking us dinner and sitting down so I could show her Buffy. But she was exhausted and dazed, and usually passed out midway through an episode. I was fed up caretaking for the grieving, and didn’t want to talk about how his death affected her, or me. I could only communicate through this show, and needed them to watch it, so that they may see me through it.

And they did take it seriously. For my birthday, my mom got me a membership to the Buffy fan club. It entitled me to receive a quarterly issue of the official Buffy the Vampire Slayer magazine, and an autographed picture of Michelle Trachtenberg. It had been my stepmother who’d shown me my very first episode of Buffy, my dad who’d bought me the first season on DVD. They knew this mattered to me.

If you go to a Jewish school, Bar Mitzvah year is a greasy carnival, an endless durge of Baha Men and Sir Mix-a-Lot, a pubescent reenactment of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Every weekend, another classmate—or two, or three or four—has their Torah service, and the requisite party, and you are expected to attend every one, for the sake of not hurting someone’s feelings. It’s mortifying in every way you can imagine: gaudy assimilated Jews shelling out shekels on ice sculptures, so they can outdo one another; the smell of sizzled hair following every J.A.P. with a CHI iron and a disdain for her ethnic sexuality; metal-mouthed boys, the size of munchkins, wearing Air Force Ones and screaming Nelly lyrics. At least the themes were tea: “Diamonds Are a Girls Best Friend,” “Candy,” and, of course, my own “David Goes to Hollywood.”

I was in a phase in which I only wore Hawaiian shirts to parties. Who knows. I was angry and sensitive: when my feelings were hurt my cheeks would burn red and my eyes would well up. I didn’t have the language for my rage, or shame, or the desire to disappear. Mostly I just wanted to play in my room, but in the light of constant exposure, I flailed for attention. I wasn’t well.

I’d seen my parents speak to each other only a handful of times, which made the planning of my simcha a minefield. It was decided that my mom would handle the Friday and Saturday services; my dad and stepmom, the Sunday afternoon party, for all my classmates and a few honored teachers—Ms. Cassack, Ms. Latham and Mr. D., the ones who’d seen in me an original, and took the time to encourage my expression.

On Saturday night, my mother was to throw her own party, for the family and for out-of-town guests: the mishpucha. My dad was not invited, so he decided to throw a party for his out-of-town guests. It was explained to me that I was now an adult in the eyes of God, and, therefore, could decide which parent I wanted to celebrate with. It was Christine torn between the Phantom and Raoul all over again, Meryl Streep with a Polish accent and a choice to make.

That happened a lot, that sort of imposition of impossible responsibility, and in much worse ways. Still, I had two whole families who wanted to celebrate me, who would even buy me a cut-out of my prized Slayer.

I know I wasn’t easy, either. Willful insouciance. Daydreams of Sunnydale, ideations of suicide. I terrorized my Hebrew teacher, was too spoiled to wash a dish. When my dad visited me at school, I mostly ignored him. I was bullied and could bully plenty more. Am I the sum total of all my acting out, or was it just a series of performances, and me the conduit, the consumer? Do I accept it all as me?

The Bar Mitzvah was meant to mark my initiation into adulthood, but it mostly had the opposite effect. The party was a blast: my parents let me be a kid at the arcade with my little friends. But I wasn’t ready to cross over into adulthood. When I was given a cell phone for my 13th birthday, I burst into tears. I had wanted a Transformer.

It was time to return to Sunnydale. I watched the Buffy series finale with bated breath. At every commercial break I’d race to the ringing landline, to recap with my friend Michael Schwartz. An era was ending, and we were experiencing it live.

There’s so much of that time that I won’t write about, and so much I’ve disavowed, because disavowal confers distance. I could write that my mother’s house would be devastated in a flood, that by the time I’d return for my high school reunion, my childhood home no longer existed, and neither did the person who’d grown up there. The deluge had smashed away the bonds of the past. Buried history had been dredged up. It was all a lie. That was never me. You never knew me!

To quote my stepmom’s iconic throw pillow: Blah, blah, blah. Here I am, at 34, writing about Buffy, just like I did at 21 and 29 and 32, still dancing with dissociation, tearing myself out of fictional realities. Over the years, Buffy and Angel have been invoked in therapy and my solo show: they’ve directly helped me face and forgive the past.

The show was meant to be an escape hatch from the hell of that time, from my family, but it always leads me back to them. My mother preserved the Buffy statue, she passed the Beanie Babies and Pokemon cards as hallowed heirlooms to my nieces and nephews. The family doesn’t cringe at fat photos of me, or look away from the failures. They wish to keep watching, and rewatching, in this world or in the fantasy of my choosing. They wish to see me.

It’s been ten years since Valerie Cherish cut the cameras and stepped into reality, on The Comeback’s revelatory series finale. I wrote about Valerie as the prophetess of our performative surveillance panopticon, for W. Rest assured knowing that Hannah Horvath, Dawn Weiner and Amber Atkins will be invoked along the way. You can read it here.

Last week, I welcomed the incandescent Matt Rogers to my podcast, for a guided tour of his Saturn Return saga. It’s an all-timer for me, an unexpected heart opening about a transformative period.

THE BLACK FRIDAY DEAL:

Start your loved ones’ year off with optimism and clarity. 25% off all gift readings with the code GOBBLE at checkout. Expires December 7th. Or pre-order them a copy of my book, When Saturn Returns…

To be continued,

David Odyssey

The central story I’ve been telling, or retelling, or reenacting, is that I am a whore. Not a slut, but a whore; there is a difference. Sluts live free, answering to no one, and for those nights when I’ve enjoyed what life had to offer, and met desire head on, I regret none of it.

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In Hebrew, you call your grandmother Savta. That was her name to me, though, apparently, she had a few others, which got scrambled through and beyond the second World War. She had one in her native Poland, where she survived the Lodz Ghetto, the massacre of her family and the erasure of her culture during the Holocaust. She and my grandfather would later cross the Alps to secure boat passage to the free land for Jews, only to be turned away by the British and interned in a camp in Cyprus. Finally, they’d start over in Tel Aviv, where, sixty years later, I, her entitled American grandson, would come to snatch shoko be sakit—chocolate milk in a bag—from her refrigerator. 

It’s possible that my grandmother had fond memories of her childhood kitchen, of beloved family recipes passed down from her mother, but those were snatched away, along with her childhood and education. She would be a young woman marked by the experience of acute and indefinite starvation. Suffice it to say, she was an ambivalent cook, but nonetheless a devoted one. No matter what everyone had gone through in the war, no matter what they’d lost and where they’d landed, they could count on the archetypes of man and wife, mother and father, as pillars to cleave to. She kept a kitchen and kept her descendants fed. 

Certain constants awaited me upon landing for a visit in Tel Aviv: clean, salty sea air; a cabdriver who felt obliged to share his regressive political beliefs; the rickety ride up an atomic age elevator; and my grandmother, standing at the door of her sweltering apartment, in a fresh blond wig and pressed skirt. And, of course, a perfectly set table. 

This is a given for families who come out of war or crisis, but food is never, ever thrown out. Which is to say: if you don’t finish your tuna “salad” today, you’ll be eating it again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, because to waste food, after years of having none, is not an option. Down the hatch, then.

Grueling, to sit and stuff down gruel, sure. But in some domains, her cooking couldn’t be topped. Egg salad, in amateur hands, can be overdressed, drowning in too much mayonnaise. Hers was dry and elegant, with enough dill to evoke a motherland I’d never know. And then there was the soup, a scalding gauntlet through which one proved their authentic Polishness. Only a reptile could drink it down like she could, her tongue undaunted by the infernal heat. It was thick, well-blended and covered in soup nuts, to be enjoyed through winter and summer. She leant me Jane Austen novels and told me stories; she scratched my back and taught me Hebew and Yiddish. But soup was the most direct means of transmitting love. 

My image of Jewish life before the Holocaust was a dull painting of carts and donkeys, but apparently my grandmother came from Polish aristocracy. This means that her standards for dining were high. She once expressed her disappointment in my cousin Keren for serving tea without a saucer and cozy. Savage. For her, dining was an art: to cross one’s legs, to trade barbs and recall witticisms from the old days, to talk shit about girls you went to elementary school with in the 1930s. It’s holding court. It demands proper form. I think I made for a good conversation partner.

Safta and I had a few favorite haunts for a dinner on the town, namely Olga and Batya, Polish restaurants no longer extant in this current age of bourgeois tapas blandness. Olga was staffed almost entirely by the owner’s daughters—some ugly, some comely—like the five girls from Fiddler on the Roof. We would tear it up, eating stuffed cabbage, kasha varnishkes and meaty goulash. I have no connection to Poland, no feeling of a homeland lost. They showed our family the door, and we never looked back. But sitting down for tzimmes with my grandmother, I could share with her in what it is to be a Jew: we move around, we adapt, and these are the dishes we pick up through the eons. 

When it came to eating out, or eating anywhere outside her own kitchen, my grandmother had a predictable act. Tiny as a little elf, she’d come off as frail, and when it came time to order, she’d wave her hand wiltingly, as if she were too weak to even lift her fork. We’d order her a hamburger. And then, she’d proceed to lick the plate clean. One by one, we’d each burn through our meals, while my grandmother would slowly attack hers with precision, devouring mass quantities like a silent predator. My stepmother took it upon herself to fatten Safta up, heaping food onto her plate, knowing that she couldn’t refuse a morsel. 

“Did you eat something today?” That’s how most phone calls start with my dad. Food is a status, a baseline, an essential. It’s how we, in our family, understand the quality of lived experience. My grandfather was said to be an ever-gracious eater, considering every meal to be the best he’d ever had. He was just happy to be eating, period. My dad shares that delight, and was sure to only marry good cooks, to ensure the sensation was genuine. 

But every serving is heaped on with history, with a broken heritage and undigested grief. I can’t imagine what it was like for my dad and his brother growing up in the ’50s: new country, no grandparents, and a mother who just came out of a genocide, buttering the bread and playing housewife. There must have been questions too frightening to ask. These were stuffed down with food, not all of it so palatable. 

I can often be as ambivalent of an eater as my grandmother was a cook. It’s not such a clear and celebratory channel, but static for dissociation. For years, my own raging anxiety would register in pangs of hunger—in the middle of sleep or even sex—a feeling like I’d not eaten in weeks, and needed to quell this panic now. I never learned how to deal, growing up, just to keep eating. Only in my thirties have I begun to stop and taste the food, to sit with my thoughts. Or so I so say here.  

Regardless of its quality, it’s happening every day, many times a day. We are eating. Whether every bis is to be savored or trudged through in agony, the meal will be honored and dished out dutifully. History is cruel, the past a loaded inheritance. All one can do is fit on their best wig and lay out the fancy tablecloth. The next generation are coming up the elevator. 

JANUARY 23, 2020
The final months before the world shut down, and New York City never was so fun. It felt like that delicious final semester of high school; my friends and I were nearing 30, all bound by creative ambition, but few had really made it. We were still playing around, recording podcasts, trying on ridiculous outfits. Soon, the pandemic would set us on new paths: some would get sober, some would start Instagram Live series. But not yet.

In the fall of 2019, Melissa and I gathered at my place, took mushrooms, and put on Public Speaking, the 2010 Fran Lebowitz documentary (you can watch it for free here). Neither of us had really been exposed to Fran before, besides a few clips here and there.

It was like facing God, or watching the Statue of Liberty speak. She woke me up. For years, I had been writing about my performer friends, and had attended every solo show and stand-up experiment in town. I’d performed little bits and pieces, but not announced myself as a creative force like the rest of them. Melissa had made a few big shows, even taking them to the Kennedy Center. With her, and Fran, beside me, I knew it was my turn. I pitched a show to the Duplex. They agreed, and the date was set: January 23rd, 2020.

The preparation for the show was purifying. I was working as a waiter in SOHO, lifting weights and pounding out pages to send to my director. I’d start the morning with an episode of Buffy, just like I had every day of middle school, and end the night with Six Feet Under.

In the days leading up to the 23rd, my immune system started shutting down. I thought of the end of All Star Superman, when, in order to save the dying sun, Superman has to fly straight into it, his solar-powered cells functioning as power batteries to relight the star. I was firing into the event horizon, and everything extraneous burnt away like ash in the periphery. I lost my voice the night before the show, and texted Lulu, desperate for advice. Her ancient showbiz secret: gargle with Chloraseptic.

There is an unspoken rule among performers in New York. If you know someone who is putting on a show, you go. You hang out in the back, kibbitz with your friends, and when it’s over, you get into your fake furs, smoke a joint, and head to the afterparty. You do not offer any feedback unless the performer asks you. This is what community is. They would do the same for you.

That night in January, in the dead of winter in the West Village, Society came out for me, not knowing what they were about to be exposed to: a confessional, even harrowing reading, which divulged an entire life’s story in 60 dense minutes. I’d recently talked to Ruby, after she saw Shia LaBeouf’s Honey Boy. She told me that it was less a movie than an Al-Anon qualification. I’d done the same: it was clear I was crying out for help.

And yet, they got a show. I was decked out in a shimmering silver jumpsuit, my arms looked stacked, and I gave it my all.

Our crowd headed to Julius. I hadn’t realized, but that night was also Mattachine, the long-running vinyl-only dance party. The legends were there, the downtown council: Amber Martin, Angie DiCarlo, Sammy Jo, Michael Cavadias. They played Bette Midler’s “My Knight in Black Leather;” another revelatory first for me and Melis.

I was just a pilgrim in the hot pursuit of love/
Wandered from disco to disco/
That's all my life was/
Suddenly you danced up against me/
It felt warm and smooth/
I knew in an instant/
That you were my moment of darkest truth

Jake Shears was at the bar. I’d interviewed and hung out with him before; he was my first rock star crush. I told him where we’d just come from, showed him the outfit I’d worn. If this was an initiation, a Bar Mitzvah, he was my Rabbi, and his grin of approval made me a man before my people.

After an hour or so, most of the girls headed home. Those of us who stayed were here to dance. Marie, holding court at the bar, pulled out a tin of mints from California: one for me, for Melis and for my friend Jack Bartholet, the cabaret powerhouse. The three of us took our communion, and now we were bonded. No matter what happened, I knew they’d take care of me. I’d earned this afterparty.

It hit before we knew it. There was an impossibly beautiful young man flipping patties at the bar’s burger station. His skin glistened, making even the grease shimmer with the light of God. We stood silent, gaping at him like hillbillies, for what could have been three minutes, or an hour, until I finally asked: how long have we been here?

The opening stomps of “The Chain,” by Fleetwood Mac, snapped us out of it. I raised an eyebrow towards Michael Cavadias, at the DJ booth. Really? This song? But he was right. As Lindsey and Stevie began their vocal showdown, Spirit entered the room, a sonic presence gliding in and encircling us. We were soon enraptured, possessed, pounding our feet in pagan ecstasy.

It was a perfect high. It was also 3am, and I felt ready to eat a table. There was only one place to go: The Waverly Diner.

Late at night, the West Village often becomes a demon feeding ground, where sobbing J.A.P.s and wannabe Mansonites coalesce. But the streets we crossed were silent, pristine, like a Hollywood set of the West Village. We spun around in awe, inside the cinematic snowglobe of our own lives.

The bliss was broken upon entering the diner, an assembly hall of ghouls yelling for more ketchup. We did our best to ignore the wails of the dead and dying all around us. Then, we ordered the entire menu.

It was the best meal I’ve ever had: a panoply of waffles, eggs, pancakes, french fries, rye bread, cream cheese and Coca Cola.

There is a sort of loyalty among friends which often expires after our teenage years, our hearts harder, our time more monitored. But with Melissa and Jack, I felt like a theater kid again, going to the pancake house after opening night. I dissociated through my high school graduation, college was a dud, and I didn’t see myself ever getting married. This felt like so much more, because it was mine, populated by the people of my choosing, and I was actually there for it.

MARCH 10, 2020
It all went down from there. A cousin invited herself to the show, and had “notes” to share with me. The criticism was unsolicited and shattering, violating the rules hallowed among actual performers. I’d grown up under castrating surveillance, and this ambush felt like the mafia had found me out in my hiding place. Nothing could be mine again.

A week later, I was recording my podcast at the studio, which was essentially a cubicle in a midtown office building — this was when Zoom interviews were inconceivable — when another aunt texted me. It was harmless, but something in me snapped. I blacked out, coming to in one of those sushi-smoothie hybrid gas chambers that only exist on 14th Street. I made my way to gay Al-Anon and breathed again.

The confessional nature of the show had been cathartic, but all exorcisms leave exit wounds. My solar will had evaporated. I’d been groped by another waiter, and the restaurant did nothing. I was sliding back, out of the picture of my life, and I didn’t know what else to do but trudge along. I scheduled another date with the Duplex, for March.

Rent was way, way overdue. I had to ask my brother for a loan. At the first of March, I moved into a railroad apartment in Bushwick. The moment I met my roommate Harry, it felt relieved, like I could crash the spaceship for good. This was home now.

My director was in another show that night, so I’d be on my own. Ticket sales weren’t as iron-solid as the last time, and by the tenth of March, there’d been talk of a virus going around.

I was broken before I made it onto the stage. Half of the ticket-buyers didn’t show up, on account of this novel virus, which I took personally. The new video component of the show, which I’d invested so much in, didn’t work. There were problems with the sound system. My dance breaks, once triumphant, were now set to barely-audible music. I dissociated to get through it.

Because so many people hadn’t shown up, I had to cover the bar’s drink minimum. My debit card was in overdraft, and Melissa had to step in and save the day. It felt like a deserved humiliation; I’d pushed too far, and this is what I got.

Nevertheless, we went to toast the night. On March 10, 2020, Julius was not what it had been two months before. Was something really going on? The Village had been silent last time, but tonight it was muted—a more unsettling feeling entirely.

We didn’t stay long. Harry, Melissa and I walked to the train, Harry wearing a jumpsuit worthy of Jackie Collins. As we passed the Waverly Diner, Melissa grabbed me.

“It’s her,” she gasped.

Like a king of Hell, Fran Lebowitz scorched past us, savage exhaustion marking her face as she trudged through the dreck of humanity. She had come to close this night, this chapter, this era of human civilization.

Looking back, we agree: she knew.

Of course, the next morning, all theaters and public spaces were shut down. I spent the next few days serving in an empty restaurant, where only the French had the chutzpah to dine. One day, two losers ordered take-out, then decided to eat in the restaurant, with the plasticware. “This is the future of dining,” another server said to me, grimacing. If only she knew. By the time the restaurant closed, I’d certainly caught the virus, and would spend the next few months in bed.

It was a relief. The convalescence was certainly long, but I knew that something had broken in me when I did that show. The next months were spent taking long baths, watching movies like Vegas in Space and What’s Love Got to Do With It? with Harry, buying fancy loaves of bread from the French bakery. Unemployment allowed me to sleep, to smoke pot and stare at the ceiling, watching the rays of light pass.

That first summer after high school was one of reinvention. “Let’s Dance” and “I Kissed a Girl” had just debuted. I got my first magazine job. I lost my virginity and discovered the dancefloor. The sudden embrace of sex and dance and danger were necessary to mark a new chapter.

And so, the last semester of my twenties now complete, I’d do it again. The world had blacked out, allowing me to ditch my history and cruise around in the dark, exploring my authentic sexual desires through the anonymous portal of Sniffies. I discovered astrology, then changed my name, then got into recovery.

I never wanted to think or talk about that show again. I was ashamed of who I’d been, what it had represented. But it had to big, celebratory, pyrrhic, traumatic, even, to burn away all that had been before. But now it can be fondly recollected, a chapter in a history of a person, and a city, which no longer exist.

1.
I can’t imagine I had coffee before the age of 32. Perhaps myopia drove the aversion, but more likely it was spite. My older brother would often tell me that it was my destiny to drink coffee, that I would be like everyone else in the family, that I had no choice but to succumb to my heritage.

It was like Vader lecturing Luke, at least in my tedious, protagonistic view of reality. My brother and I would repeat these face-offs through the years: hummus, tehina, and even olives would ignite screaming matches. To prove the mettle of my will, I abstained from anything forced on me, holding firm to the kid’s menu like Pharaoh hardening his heart.

I was a child with a powerful mind, capable of shutting anything dangerous or challenging out of consciousness. If I can’t see it through my keyhole, it has no meaning. I still don’t really know what wine is. Or money. I know they exist, but by the time I’ve typed a sentence about them, it’s like I’ve already forgotten. What were we talking about?

As a child, I’d hear stories of the gradual shifts that come with adulthood. When I’d complain about the gap between my front teeth, my mom assured me that she used to have the same, and that with age it closed. Then there was my stepmom’s rebuttal. “Gapped teeth are considered lucky,” she’d say, “in Japan.”

It seemed impossible that those valleys could be bridged: familial, conceptual, dental. I believed that people can change, but not necessarily that I could.

2.
Coffee was occurring all around me, though I was the last to know.

If café society is the last bastion of civility, my dad and stepmom are its paragons. By 8am every morning, they’re at the same joint, with the same cast of highbrow characters, holding court. They met at their favorite café and even held their wedding reception there. My stepmom wrote the copy for the invitation:

He is coffee
She is cream
She is water
He is steam
Their latte love is caffeinated
Their brewing marriage celebrated

So no, it’s not like I was raised under the table of a Maison Kayser. There’s some pedigree here, lost on a child prone to dissociation and fantasy. These blind spots around coffee would prove inconvenient when I worked as a barista.

3.
The first café was in Crown Heights, owned by two sweet gay men in their fifties. One, Felipe, had owned what used to be called a “card shop,” where men could go to buy smut and cruise one another in the aisles. His business partner, Paul, was a volcanic Rhode Island Italian who hadn’t slept in years and was somehow still ripped from his circuit party salad days, which must have been circa Erotica, or maybe Bedtime Stories.

As with any job I’ve had, it’s a miracle they hired me in at all. I’d just moved to the city a few months earlier. I was incompetent, and certainly not allowed near the food. Suffice it to say, at my hands, hordes of gentrifiers were disabused of their latte art. Once, Paul made me cry—he shouted at me when he realized that I didn’t know how to count bills. One time Kathy Bates came in, and I waited on her, shaking and stuttering in awe. It was 2014. She was kind to me.

But for all my ineptitude, the elder gays adored me. Felipe told me that he lost the love of his life to AIDS, and that holding him as he died in his arms was the most important thing he’d ever do. Paul would call me “my David” in the voice of that synagogue hag from Sex and the City, or just refer to me endearingly as “thingy.” We laughed a lot, doing Miranda Priestly impressions, and his stories of White and Black Parties past are now the stuff of oral legend. At one edition, in Miami, some DJ made a mess of their set. Paul stomped up to him and hissed: “you’ll never work in this town again.”

It only lasted a few months, before I pulled one of my usual leaps into oblivion. I became a busboy at a bourgeois restaurant, then quit, then did an IndieGogo for my comic book, which imploded, then I got a magazine job. The café was gone within a year.

4.
That was the beginning of my time in New York. The end, nearly a decade later, came in those liminal years after we got the vaccine. The city had changed, and it wanted me out. By this time I’d come into my sensitivities and gifts, and it felt like long COVID was becoming my identity. Through the wonder of Obamacare, I had a Russian neurologist check out my migraines. I was offered free weekly IV drips, which my father assured me would do nothing. “They give those to French women in their seventies,” he said, “who wanted to sit in the Alps.”

Maybe coffee would help with the migraines, he suggested. Why not? I went to a diner in Bushwick, which my roommate had long ago forbidden me from entering. “It’s a front,” he said, without looking up, as he filed his nails. I took a seat in a cinematic red booth and ordered a cup of coffee, feeling like Kyle McLachlan. I sipped it triumphantly. It was harsh and unforgiving, and kept me up until 4am.

Ultimately, it would not be caffeine or acupuncture or vitamin drips that would cure my migraines, but getting the hell out of Bushwick. “You’re too sensitive to live in New York,” my Akashic reader said to me. It felt like permission to start over.

5.
We mark great change in the company of others; it’s why initiatory rites require an audience. But there are some revelations which hit us when we’re out sight, some syntheses which can’t take form under surveillance. They have to be felt, experimented, without meaning or commentary.

My first sip of coffee was a private rapture. It was the summer of 2023. I’d gotten a lucky break after working a high-paying corporate tarot gig. When the paycheck came in, it afforded me a few months of security. I could live a healthy, happy person’s life. Without the hustle, the martyrdom, and any-minute-now delusions of success, I found my vital life forces rebounding. I even had the first shadow, the first whisper, of abs. Everything felt possible.

My brother had just come to visit, and, out of nowhere, we had the best time together, the best time we’d ever had. There was no need to define myself in opposition to the world anymore.

It was August, and I was dog-sitting my cousin’s dog Nicole, walking the boulevard like the Marvelous Mrs. Odyssey. Nicole and I strolled past the Paté & Puff, where the pastry chefs looked like Lebanese Gaultier models. I was ready to sip from the wellspring of life; this couldn’t be some bullshit hibiscus ice tea.

I ordered an ice Americano. They let me pour my own almond milk. It was like watching a lava lamp, a psychedelic watercolor bloom before my eyes. With that first sip, I became an adult.

6.
That same August, I took too much ecstasy, too late at a party, and was awake for 43 hours. The next night, at an anti-Netanyahu protest, I was still grinding my teeth, even dancing a little to the cheers of SHAME, SHAME, SHAME around me.

Caffeine would prove to be similarly exhilarating, and devastating. I felt like I could lift houses and write entire manuscripts in a matter of hours. And then came the crash, which would render me dazed and paranoid, like Renfield eating flies in the asylum, waiting for his dark master to return.

One night in February, my then-boyfriend and I stayed out until sunrise. It was a beautiful rave, but the surge of shirtless bodies set off the usual Auschwitz oven flashbacks. He was crashing with me, in my studio, and wanted to bring someone home, who clearly wasn’t into me. I had officially been up for 24 hours, and hadn’t eaten in ten. I thought a coffee would perk me up for the coming shenanigans.

Nobody ever taught me how to take care of myself. And so I more or less ended up in a fugue state, between sleeping and waking, watching two other men make love in my bed, like Diane Keaton at the beach house in Annie Hall. Eventually, they cut it short, and someone had to fetch me a bagel. I swore never again: to the drugs, the circuit parties, sordid sex, and to coffee.

7.
In the spring, I flew to Croatia, to meet my friends Henry and Lulu. I booked through Lufthansa, which I’ve long considered to be the pinnacle of elegance. But the flights were licensed through Austrian Airlines, those bastards, whose service can only be described as anti-Semitic. We were herded through the airport like mules. On the flight, when you opened the air conditioning valves, nothing came out. It was like a mummy movie, when they creak open the sarcophagus and dust spews out.

At the Croatian airport, I was stopped by four stunning lady security officers, who looked like they came out of a Fascist-Chic spread in Vogue. They know about the acid I stashed in the Tylenol bottle, I thought, it’s over. But they let me through. I called my dad from the cab, and we talked in Hebrew. “Better switch to English,” he said, “they haven’t had Jews in that country for seventy years.”

I got to Split, where I rolled my luggage over cobblestones, through charmed alleys, great and powerful cats watching my every turn. And there, at a café that looked like an old set from Roman Holiday, sat Lulu and Henry, enjoying an afternoon espresso.

It’s rare that I can afford airfare for a trip, or enjoy myself once I’ve arrived. I hadn’t seen my friends in months, and in this country I knew nothing about, none of the old rules applied. I sat down, crossed my legs and ordered one for myself, feeling like Bruce Willis in Hudson Hawk. I could handle it. I didn’t have to be afraid of myself.

8.
Without cultivated intention, all discoveries become mundanities. Over the last month, I’ve had an iced Americano—single shot, so that I don’t turn into the mom from Shameless—every day. I fear that the magic is gone, and when next I see my brother, he’ll have scored the final victory.

Lulu and I laugh when we talk about eating in Manhattan, recalling how many times I’d be caught eating Whole Foods sushi above a trashcan on 14th street, running late for something I deemed important. I don’t want to do this to coffee, not when it’s still precious. It has only just arrived into consciousness, and should not be rushed back out into the blind spot, flattened as all things are by addiction and repetition. It deserves a languid morning, a table at the corner, a pastry shaped by a pornographically hot chef, and the time to sip it down, without fear of mania, observing the rustle of the trees and the drool of a sleeping dog.

This summer, I’ll be writing an essay every week (or so), ideally around 12 in total. These will be personal and non-astrological, a book-in-progress fed by your input and insight. I hope you’ll become a paid subscriber to support this new project. Here’s the first one:

5870 W. Olympic Boulevard

I never had heating, in any of the apartments I lived in in Los Angeles. I suffered plenty in Boston and New York, through the sort of cold that would gather between your toenails. But the buildings were heated—often oppressively so, the dermatological consequences of which would require full tubs of Aquaphor, to be slabbed on nightly. But I never shivered at night as I did in Los Angeles, the pads of my feet hitting tundral linoleum in the morning, each tip-toe to the bathroom an exercise in agony.

It’s the winters I remember most fondly when I recall working at the Westside Jewish Community Center, on Olympic Avenue, in L.A.’s Pico-Robertson neighborhood.

When I was 22, I got a job with my Jewish spiritual community, my de facto mishpucha in Los Angeles, whose base of operations was at the JCC. On Shabbat and holidays, we’d make over the gymnasium into a prayer space, where the percussionists pounded and the Rabbi delivered fire from heaven. And on weekdays, we’d occupy a few rickety offices in the back. Since that time, the community has grown, and found better digs. This moment in time feels like polaroid footage in a documentary — that dingy studio where the band recorded its early hits.

It was me and a cadre of Ashkenazi women in that chilly building. If we’d kept to the diet of potatoes and buttered rolls which sustained our ancestors through winter in Kiev, we’d have been fine; but alas, this was L.A., and we all had some cross to bear about gluten. While davening at services, we’d clutch our talit for warmth, like they were mink stoles. At the office, we’d sit at our desks in sweaters, and sometimes gloves. I would recall my seventh grade math teacher Ms. Farley, who wore white gloves while attacking the chalk board. “I HAVE ROSACEA,” she’d announce. WE KNOW, I wanted to say. I was a pest in her class, taking out my worst mommy issues on her. She never forgave me. When I’d run into her, years later, I’d have to hear about my menacing dark days. The shame would make my cheeks burn red, as if I were the one afflicted with an inflammatory skin condition.

But I never got in trouble at this job, and was loved unconditionally. As the only male of the lot, I was afforded great leniency, and I regret how I took advantage of my status as the little prince. I can’t imagine that I was a good employee. I’d wander off, and my manager, so like an older sister to me, would ask: “where is he always going?” One Purim, I lost 100 mishloach manot, gift bags meant to go to the community. I was spoiled, talking about my destiny as a writer of comic books and movies. Life hadn’t sufficiently humiliated me enough to make me a good worker. But they kept me around, for my joie de vivre, and for the way I could, with great pleasure, greet congregants on Saturday mornings.

To get to the bathroom, you’d have to walk the long way from one side of the building to the other. I felt like one of Bluebeard’s brides, crossing into a forbidden wing of the castle. The center had been considered state-of-the-art when it was constructed in the ’50s. Now, there were stairways that led nowhere and haunted closets. Still, considering that most of the state’s Jewish Community Centers were shuttered, this one, and its people, were something of survivors.

I’d pass the gym, where Russian septuagenarians would meet for boot camp training, their fortysomething coach clearly atoning in some Fitness community exile, longing to find his way back to Equinox. “I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” he’d yell at them, as they’d raise frail bones for leg lifts. “One,” they’d moan, “two…” I laughed them off at first, but inevitably came to regard them as triumphant, turning up in purple nylon sweatsuits, their eyebrows pencilled and bouffants sprayed to solidity. The building could fall down at any moment; the city could often felt like a fading hallucination. But there was something unyielding in the Jewish women around me, something hard and joyful. They endured.

In the cavernous bathroom, I’d ready myself for the bracing sting of cold porcelain, and then find myself lingering in the hollow, watching Vines or scrolling gay sex apps like JACK’D. Sex for me was a map of embarrassments and “stories,” obvious cries for help. I had no map of myself yet, no understanding of why my moods careened and collapsed, why my life didn’t yet make sense. I was the fourth son at the Passover table, the one who doesn’t know how to ask.

One night, I got lucky. I caught a Crossfit instructor on Scruff, and had him over to my moldy apartment. He was built like a minivan, with light eyebrows and a sweet, innocent smile. I thought he must be in his mid-twenties, but he told me he was 38. It wasn’t just that he looked young, but that he was progressing through a life without friction. When did this begin, this blurring? How would you know when it was too late?

I played dead for much of the sex, as was my way for most of my twenties, but in the end, came to orgasm in his arms. “You just needed someone to hold you,” he said.

Certain days at the JCC brought us to new levels of humility. There were the N.A. meetings, directly next to the Rabbi’s office. She’d come out of harrowing familial mediations, political dialogues, or from writing the sort of sermons which would change history, only to find outside her door a gaggle of lost souls, a motley crew resembling a police lineup — or actor’s callback. The women who ran my shul worked beyond selflessness, but in conditions like this, you couldn’t take yourself too seriously. Most of the time, all we could do was laugh.

I was taken in by the whole community, invited to Shabbat dinners and seen as something of an adopted son to many of the chic women who populated services, wearing fine linens to discuss climate change with the Rabbis. Despite my insistence that I was going places, it was clear that I didn’t have the thick skin to work my way u the industry. But at shul I thrived, and greeted morning services with elan. I’d meet writers and directors within the community, but would come off as obsequious, obviously wanting a taste of their blood. It didn’t occur to me that they were now in my turf, that within these frozen walls I was for once secure.

Working in a Jewish community, you experience every life cycle, of every congregant. With so much grief, there had to be celebration, which meant that there was always a birthday cake to slice into. Women have a thing with sweets. It’s not to say that I haven’t terrorized myself over body standards since I was 10. But it’s not the same as what girls get. Every box of pastries sent by a grateful Bar Mitzvah mother would inspire tortured hesitation, hands shaking before giving into rapture. Sugar was a fetish, and to bite into that gooey sufgania was to take a lashing from the sadist’s whip. But when one of the Rabbis baked, I was always game, never wincing as I licked the icing.

The winters had been disenchanting, but somehow, the summers felt like even more of a betrayal. Endless light cast a heavy contrast. I was depressed, and saying it out loud to my mother for the first time made me burst into tears. I didn’t look like the other men at the West Hollywood Crunch, and I couldn’t see my way in this world anymore, in any of the nice houses I went to for Torah study. When I’d meet middle-aged writers whose moment still hadn’t come, I felt myself fading deeper into the netherworld, the dusty bungalow of purgatory. Girls and Broad City had freshly debuted. My idols were in Brooklyn and Manhattan, stomping around, pissing people off. I had a new dream, or delusion, to cleave to. New York was calling.

I got an interview to be a production assistant on a Marvel series, and even met with the showrunner. After, I sat in my Jeep on the Disney lot, and made myself a promise: If I got the job, I’d stay. Otherwise, off to New York. The job didn’t happen, and, concurrently, my apartment building was sold. The owners offered each tenant a few thousand dollars to pack up and leave. I knew it was my time.

We held my final cake ceremony in the Rabbi’s office. I don’t think I deserved that much love, but I got it anyway. That last Shabbat felt like a season finale; they even wrote a goodbye to me in the Torah study leaflet. After services, the Rabbi caught me on the stairs of the JCC, looked me in the eyes, and told me that I was making a mistake. “Why would you leave a community behind that loves you so much?” It was devastating, a living legend asking me to wake up: this is your life, and you’re missing it.

It broke my heart, but I made the right choice, moving on. I return for high holy days every few years or so, at the shul’s new digs, and I’m hugged and fawned over as if I’m still the synagogue orphan, forever the lost child in the mall these women took in. The country has devolved, and the women of this temple have only gotten stronger and harder and more loving than ever before.

I’m not built like them. The rooms within me are at once cavernous and cramped, overly exposed and poorly heated. There would be warmer days for me, in New York and beyond, but the chill always sets back in. All that remains is for the lost to be held and fed, before they continue to wander the ruins.