Before I went to the Aero last night, I made a stop at Goat Global Westwood to pick up some edibles. When I am not trying to game the First Time Discount system (fairly ubiquitous across Los Angeles dispensaries), Goat Global Westwood is my go-to. I’m still learning about the legal weed market here—I left New York state right when I’d finally settled on some favorite brands (MFNY, Ayrloom, Rolling Green)—but I find they’re the nearest spot that consistently sells fresh, high quality cannabis products across the board. I’ve only bought flower from them before, so I did some edible research before heading to the shop.

The only edibles I have otherwise bought since moving back to California are “delights” from Rose Los Angeles. These “delights” are small-batch flower rosin (read: rosin means concentrated cannabis—pure, strong THC, baby) candies in the style of Turkish Delights that are delivered directly to your door. They are my edibles of choice, but I finished a box (Chokeberry Yuzu Peppercorn) recently and, unwisely, failed to immediately re-up. This is how I found myself in the position of needing to buy edibles from an actual storefront mere hours before I needed them, and is how I learned about Space Gems, an edible that is similar in style to Rose Delights (small-batch gummies, solventless rosin, weed from northern California), but use ice water hash, instead of pressing the rosin out of the flower directly.

Like many weed companies, Space Gems doesn’t offer a ton of “sativa effect” options. We get it—you all want your weed to help you “relax.” I, however, am an intellectual, and am only interested in the most “sativa effect” weed available. Indicas, on the whole, make me feel weird—a vague buzz in the chest, some brain fog, and that’s it. Yes, I know, it’s probably time I started learning about terpenes. I’m increasingly encountering literature about how sativa/indica binaries don’t make sense and we all need to be categorizing our weed using terpenes, actually. Fine. I’ll get back to you on the terpenes situation.

With that disclaimer aside: I usually go for strains labeled “sativa” because they most often provide the sort of weed experience I am looking for: to put it in Leafly-friendly terms, I want to feel Creative, Euphoric, Joyful, Giggly and/or Energetic. A good “sativa effect” is almost psychedelic; it’s the pleasure of feeling my thoughts warp and twist without committing to an hours-long acid trip where I can’t figure out how to text or turn on the stove.

I’m considering starting an informal Substack series where I try different weed products while doing various activities around Los Angeles. I like doing stuff in public stoned and I think it would be good for me psychologically to do some low-stakes writing where I let myself go long and risk being boring. The series would speak to the quality of both the weed product and the activity but would ultimately not really serve as reviews of either on their own because they are, necessarily, reviews of the weed product and activity combined. Anyway, that’s how this first one is going to go, which may be the only one of said-series if publishing this flops for me emotionally.

I don’t know anything about Lion’s Mane. Normally I avoid weed products that are “enhanced” by extras like these, but in this case, I was on a deadline and they were the only sativa-ish Space Gems Goat Global had stocked. I didn’t expect that they’d replace Rose as my go-to edible brand, but I skimmed some Reddit reviews and figured they were worth a try, especially given the exigent circumstances of having bought non-refundable tickets to THE ODYSSEY in advance.

I ate one gummy (5mg THC)—I can’t say I noticed a distinct Sweet Cherry Lemonade flavor, but I thought they tasted good, like those sour belts I’ve only ever bought from gas stations. Again, this is something I don’t honestly care about with weed—as long as it’s not fucking disgusting, it doesn’t matter to me what an edible tastes like. It’s a bit stressful to me, even, when edibles taste too good, because I then have to actively resist the urge to eat more of them as The Munchies set in (I capitalize the term because when I get The Munchies, it’s serious), which requires a degree of vigilance that I don’t want to be part of the high.

Anyway, I ate the gummy and got in the car and drove to Montana Avenue. I parked a few blocks north of the theater; on my walk down the hill I narrowly avoided head-on collisions with two different people texting-while-walking and I overheard a woman tell another woman she was “taking two years off to be with the baby.” Classic Montana Avenue.1

I entered the Aero lobby still feeling totally sober. Friendly teens were working concessions as an older security guard in a clean, blue uniform looked on. The Aero is one of the rare theaters I’ve been to in LA that doesn’t have assigned seats, and I was surprised to see much of the theater was already full, even with the film’s advertised start time still twenty-ish minutes away. At first I picked an aisle seat in the middle of the (otherwise empty) left-hand section of the theater, but quickly moved to a seat in the center section—dead-center and, in my opinion, unnaturally close. Not my typical preference, but it seemed in the spirit of what Christopher Nolan intended for his audiences. It might’ve been a little bit of that familiar self-destructive drug urge on my part, too.

Growing up, my father insisted we only sit on the left-hand side of the theater for movies, with him in the aisle seat. It was never explained to me why we did this, but that is how it was done. Soon after I chose my center seat, though, two young girls (high school age? middle school?) sat directly to my right and I realized I had perhaps bit off more than I could chew with the choice. It’s not so much a problem with close quarters in general—I’m fine with a B seat on an airplane—but with close quarters at the movies. I’m an emotive viewer of movies. Even alone, I emote; not in a loud or even verbal way, but I will certainly make faces and do things with my hands. The real issue, though, is I don’t know how to behave in the dead-center, near-middle section of a movie theater—I don’t know the etiquette, I don’t have the muscle memory, it’s not how I was raised. And when you’re stoned and alone in a public place, clear rules of etiquette, muscle memory, and the like are absolutely essential to getting through the experience and/or having a fun time.

I had finished most of my Barq’s Root Beer and about half my popcorn when the movie started. A TIME OF APPARENT MAGIC… appeared onscreen; this is when it occurred to me that I was already high. Somehow this is how it always happens with me and weed—I “wake up” to the high, in a sense, rather than feel it coming on consciously; the high pulls me under and then at some point later I emerge into a new state of awareness, an awareness that the high is beginning, or, more accurately, has already begun. This is a speedier onset that I am used to—the high made itself known to me about an hour after consumption, whereas usually with the Delights I’d say the onset time is closer to an hour and a half.

I knew I was already high when A TIME OF APPARENT MAGIC… appeared onscreen because I laughed out loud. I think I laughed because I found the font childish—sans serif, blocky letters, robin’s egg blue—and also because I couldn’t imagine how Christopher Nolan and Co. expected this message to enhance anyone’s viewing experience. I’ve come to think what’s bad about THE ODYSSEY is mostly distilled here, in these first few seconds of the movie—are we meant to understand apparent in the sense that the magic of Odysseyus’s world is abundant and obvious, or that it is only a magical world from a certain perspective? Why won’t Christopher Nolan give us clearer prompts on how to make sense of his movie?—but I wasn’t thinking all of this just yet.

By the time Tom Holland came on the screen, I was uncomfortably high. I would call this an “edgy” high—I find myself batting away familiar intrusive thoughts like I can consciously stop my own heart beating with my mind, and then I scratch or press on the skin above my heart compulsively while I try to mentally latch onto something else. I get twitchy; I shift around in my seat more than usual (the very old seats at the Aero didn’t help). I also started to feel more aware of the chronic pain in my neck, so I started stretching out a little, being careful not to inadvertently invade the space of the teenage girl to my right. I soon realized, though, that she was moving around a lot too: every few minutes she put her hands over her ears.

Yes, THE ODYSSEY is loud. I got used to it after a while but I don’t think the loudness achieved anything that using a normal volume wouldn’t have achieved. The truth is, THE ODYSSEY is genuinely immersive during its loudest scenes anyway—the monsters, the battles, the ship on that wine-dark sea—because the novelty factor of seeing these ancient whatevers depicted with the most sophisticated special effects known to man is just that high. I didn’t go to see THE ODYSSEY because I wanted to listen to sad Matt Damon with a sad white beard squint at sad Charlize Theron. I went to see THE ODYSSEY because I wanted to see Christopher Nolan’s Cyclops (scary? Kind of, right?); Christopher Nolan’s Scylla (HADES II did it better); Christopher Nolan’s Charybdis (I know, it’s supposed to just be a whirlpool… but come on!!).

One afternoon last year I got high and wrote down in my journal “weed makes you think in metaphors,” which is one of my favorite fake-deep ideas of all time, so funny that I can’t believe I myself authored it. What I really meant, I think, is this: what’s fun about being high—and what you forget at your own peril—is that whatever you focus on seems to bear symbolic resonance. It’s not so much like you’re presented with the truest, most accurate metaphor possible for a given thing—more like you feel like you’re seeing the symbolic potential of the thing anew.

Let me try again: When you’re stoned, anything can mean anything. You apply significance to stuff generously and indiscriminately. The part of your brain that decides what to interpret literally vs. metaphorically semi-collapses—when you’re stoned, it’s kind of all metaphor, all the time. Anything and nothing can be a metaphor. This is a confusing state of mind in which to watch THE ODYSSEY, because it’s difficult to track what the movie itself wants you to read metaphorically. Some of the dialogue is shockingly bad—but maybe it’s supposed to be bad, I found myself thinking, then tried retroactively reinterpreting it: It’s not that the dialogue is bad, it’s that the dialogue is only good if you appreciate it beyond its literal meaning. Hunting's nothing but fighting with stealth, Matt Damon says assuredly. It’s got to be a metaphor, I assure the teenage girl next to me2, but she is still covering her ears.

Pretty much the main thing I was excited for about THE ODYSSEY was the depiction of the sirens. I would say me and my fellow siren-heads out there got totally shafted on the siren front. What is the value of not letting us hear the siren song, of choosing not to let us see the fucking sirens or hear the siren song? We’re meant to imagine it in the privacy of our own minds…? We all have a siren song to specific to our siren selves…? Fine, but I maintain this was a (non)decision made out of fear. Christopher Nolan did not want to “get the siren song wrong,” so instead he left it to the audience to fill in the blank. This is not why we go to see THE ODYSSEY by Christopher Nolan. It is why we read Homer’s THE ODYSSEY. Or, to argue this point from another angle, why we go to see LOST IN TRANSLATION.

I think the psychologically fun part of the Space Gems high burned off after the first hour of the movie, which meant I spent the rest of the movie waiting for the lingering physical anxiety from ingesting so much THC to fade. 5mg is usually too strong a dose for me to take in one sitting, but I do it with a 5mg Rose delight sometimes because the peak of the high is just that fun. The level of bliss I reached with the Space Gem gummy was simply not worth the edginess. If the Lion’s Mane had any impact, I wasn’t able to track it, but I also didn’t know which effects to look out for.

When I exited the theater, it was 10:30pm, when it is illegal to be out on Montana Avenue, so I hurried to my car and drove off. I was not even a little high when I started driving, which is an appropriate edible timeline, I think—nearly four hours after consumption—but I still went home and had a small bowl of ice cream with crumbled grocery store cookies on top before bed, so, you know. Something was still happening there.

Do I regret seeing THE ODYSSEY stoned on 5mg of Space Gems? Probably, yeah. 2.5mg would have been more appropriate for the situation. The movie was too loud; I didn’t know Zendaya was supposed to be Athena until the credits rolled; I burned through my concessions too fast. I think next time I try a Space Gem3, I will bite a gummy in half and just head to the beach.

If there’s a weed product and/or LA-based activity you want me to review, let me know in the comments and maybe I will do it. Thanks for reading, this was long.

It’s hard to imagine what you want from publishing a book before you’ve done it. It is hard to imagine just how different it will be than publishing in only journals and anthologies. I’ve spent a lot of the past several months trying to piece together a sense of “how/what the book is doing,” which involves looking at sales, yes, as well as reviews and Goodreads and social media, but—and this turns out to be the most wonderful and most infuriating part—it’s impossible for me, or for anyone, to fully account for how or what a book is doing in the world. Sometimes I’ll hear from someone about what they thought of CRAWL—sometimes a stranger, sometimes an old friend I haven’t spoken to in years, sometimes a close writing buddy who’s only just now gotten around to reading it—and they reconfigure my understanding of the book all over again. Most people buy physical copies of CRAWL (rather than the eBook), which doesn’t surprise me—one reason I fell in love with Graywolf Press, nearly fifteen years ago now, is the physical beauty of the books themselves. But I have also been deeply moved to see CRAWL stocked in so many libraries, and how often I hear from people who have gifted/loaned out their copies of CRAWL to friends. A book is an object that moves in ways we can only sometimes see.

Pride Month is all about visibility, though, right? Pride Sunday, in particular, makes an appearance in one of CRAWL’s stories, “Moon Over Denny-Blaine,” which is based on my experiences going to the titular queer/trans nude beach on many Pride Sundays during the 2010s. That story in particular reflects a major concern my friends and I had back then, not just for Denny-Blaine but several queer spaces in Seattle—an influx of straight people who threatened to outnumber us and make the space their own1. This week, here in 2026, is the beginning of the trial to keep Denny-Blaine park open, thanks to a lawsuit that argues all this queer/trans nudity is a “public nuisance.” It is a testament to Denny-Blaine’s cultural power that, rather than becoming a place that straight people can trample over and remake it into whatever they want it to be2, the desire has shifted into total eradication. May these rich freaks never de-gay Denny-Blaine.

I love living in Los Angeles, but this Pride Month, it feels hard not to be in Seattle. I just wish I could be there. The Seattle LGBTQ Commission is asking for Mayor Wilson to declare a civil emergency to deliver resources to community organizations struggling to accommodate the influx of trans refugees coming from red states. At the same time, trans people everywhere are mourning the horrific murder of Juniper Blessing, a 19-year old trans woman and UW student, in her off-campus apartment complex’s laundry room. I wish I could be there to mourn our dead and to welcome our new neighbors. I wish I could be there to fight for Denny-Blaine to stay open and to stay what it is, what it has been.

If you’ve read CRAWL, you know that it is does not have a happy ending. It is overall pessimistic in its view of what Seattle can be for trans people in particular. The Denny-Blaine story is meant to be one small, utopian glimmer amidst a lot of absurdity and disappointment. So my dream is that, sometime this Pride Month, there’s a naked trans person reading CRAWL at Denny-Blaine. I hope someone new to Seattle gets given a CRAWL to get a sense of what the city was like a few years back, when pronouns were still in the bio, yeah, but rainbow capitalism poisoned everything it touched and queer bashing in even our gayest districts surged. I hope someone’s seen reading CRAWL on the bus this Pride Month—and the light rail, sure, and the streetcar, if people are actually using that now? I hope someone’s reading it on the grass or the turf at Cal on an especially sunny afternoon. I hope someone spills a Buttery Nipple all over their copy at Pony just before last call, or does a line of K off their copy at [redacted]3. I hope CRAWL is out in the city this Pride Month; I hope you see it in the hands of readers. I hope CRAWL helps someone make a new friend or get laid or get in an overdue argument with a cis loved one. I hope this happens this Pride Month and for many Pride Months to come. I am not my book and my book is not me and I do not live in Seattle anymore. But I hope it keeps moving there. I hope it keeps moving.

This is the email in which I tell you that my book is coming out in one month (October 21st, 2025) and that there are multiple, concrete steps you, yes, YOU, can take to ensure its enduring success. Every little thing counts, every little thing moves the needle on sales, exposure, and my chances of one day being invited to talk about my book on late-night TV, should late-night TV continue to exist through coming weeks. I will give you those action items in a second—feel free to scroll there now, in fact, because I am about to miserably attempt to put my book in today’s political context.

I am hundreds of years old. I may not look it, but I have been alive for hundreds of years. And it is for this reason that I am able to so expertly keep my eyes on eternity when it comes to my work. Hopefully I go viral on TikTok or something before the book comes out and the launch makes a big splash—if you have the power to make Crawl go viral on TikTok, please do so, and hurry—but it is far more important to me that this book is one that endures. I don’t know what the future holds for trans people in America. I don’t understand what role trans art has played, is playing, or will play in that future. All I know is I tried to write the book I wanted to read—lyrical, realist fiction exclusively about transmasculine people. I wanted a book that honestly, rigorously depicted a present-day transsexual man’s consciousness.

I wanted literature about trans men because I didn’t know how to think about myself when I transitioned. All I had was desire, raw and immediate and wordless and true. The desire for women, then the desire for men. Desire is undeniable; a truth of the body. I have been obsessed with the concept of truth for as long as I can remember—as a trans person with OCD, how could I not be? Truth is elusive when you have OCD. You can’t trust yourself to know what’s true all the time. Did I lock the front door? Am I really straight? Am I really cis? Truth is mandated when you are trans. Are you sure you want to transition? Does your therapist agree? I didn’t have the language. All I had was desire. With this book, I tried to put language to desire—the desire for sex and romance, the desire to be understood, the desire for respect, the desire for privacy, the desire for safety, the desire for certainty, the desire for peace, the desire to live as a man.

There will always be trans men, and trans men will always have to confront the task of executing their vision of ideal manhood for themselves. I hope this book is one trans men everywhere can look to for ways to think about their lives and their place in their communities. I understand the situation for trans people in America is very bad right now and not exactly poised to improve. My book is not for the people who are responsible for escalating the bad situation. My book is for trans men, now and in the future.

Okay, okay, the not-trans-men reading this? The book is for you, too. All the stuff anyone comes to literary fiction for—beautiful sentences, surprising insights, bonafide freak shit—is the stuff of Crawl. Hopefully the blurbs from George Saunders, Torrey Peters, Carmen Maria Machado, Andrea Lawlor, Mona Awad, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Dana Spiotta and Grace Byron have convinced trans men and not-trans-men alike. But if you’re thinking I paid these people off or something, you might be swayed by this starred review in Kirkus Reviews or this glowing endorsement from Publishers Weekly. You could wait until the tour, I guess—it’s shaping up to be a 13 city marathon, featuring events in New York City, Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, Boston, Syracuse, Austin, Seattle (again!), Ann Arbor, Madison, Chicago, and Las Vegas, among others. If you’re STILL not convinced the book is inarguably good, well, stay tuned on Instagram, because I’ve got more shit to brag about that I can’t share yet.

All of the above is very promising for Crawl's success. However, the best shot this book has of exploding onto the scene and finding readers far and wide is in your hands. Here’s what you can do now and/or when the book comes out next month:

1. Preorder from your local bookstore. Listen, I know we’ve already done this. If you’ve already preordered, THANK YOU, I LOVE YOU. If you haven’t, please specifically preorder from your local bookstore, because it will help convince the bookstore that my book is good and that they should stock it. Don’t have a local bookstore? Get it from one in Seattle, then, where every story in Crawl takes place. I recommend Elliot Bay Book Company and Third Place Books, who are hosting me for my two Seattle-based launch events. Bookshop.org is good, too. Crawl is a paperback original, which means it only costs $17 before tax. $17 is how much I paid for a sandwich in Santa Monica yesterday. A sandwich! It was a good sandwich, but come on.

2. Request the book through your local library. You’ve got a library card, right? RIGHT?? Well, go to the little website for your library and see if they’ve ordered Crawl. If they don’t already have it, put in a request. If they do have it, check out the book! If you forgot how to read on purpose, a choice for which I’d fault no one, that’s completely fine. Don’t even read the book, whatever, just check it out from the library and then return it later. Checking out the book from the library boosts library sales, which are a huge deal.

3. Rate the book on Goodreads or The StoryGraph. Seriously, you don’t even have to write anything if you don’t want to, just rate it—or you can shitpost, I don’t care. I mean, I really care about the wonderfully generous reviews I have already received on Goodreads/The StoryGraph, and I will really care if you write something wonderfully generous. But if you just write, like “lol this rocked” or “sickos.jpg” and give Crawl five stars, I’ll think that’s awesome. Not as awesome as this review, for instance, but still very, very awesome.

4. Post. Yes, I am calling on you to Post. I don’t care how many followers you have or on what platform. Please, for the love of God, if you like the book, just post. My ideal post about the book is trans men taking shirtless selfies with physical copies. That is a pretty specific ask, I know, but somebody already did this and now I am hungry for more, so I’m going to put it out there. If you need an excuse to post a thirst trap, I am begging you to make my book your excuse. If that’s not your speed, post a photo of a page or paragraph you like. Post a tirade about how much you hate the book on your Instagram story or your Blogspot. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE… DON’T PROVE I’M RIGHT/POST!!!!

All right. I think that’s plenty for now. I will tentatively plan to send another newsletter on or around pub-day, which I’ll remind you is Tuesday, October 21st. I’ll have more stuff to brag about and maybe more tour dates to announce. You can learn how to RSVP to various book events/generally keep track of the tour here. In the meantime, be kind to yourself.

PREORDER CRAWL PLEASE I AM BEGGING YOU

I think you should pre-order this book. I think, if you’re subscribed to this newsletter, this book is gonna include all kinds of stuff you’ll enjoy. But hey, don’t take my word for it…

…take the word of any one of these authors, who have written some of my favorite books of all time. I’m still having a lot of big feelings about these incredible writers saying in writing that they liked my book this much, and it’s paralyzing me a little, in terms of what I say here. But the good news is the book doesn’t come out until Oct. 21, 2025, so I have lots of time to gather some more coherent thoughts about the book’s literary lineages and influences, like Detransition Baby, Tenth of December, Friday Black, and Eat the Document (!!!!!!), in the interim.

For now, I’ll just offer an initial, heartfelt plea to consider pre-ordering the book. It’s a paperback original, so after shipping it’s gonna be like $20 total for most people. Pre-ordering is a huge deal for authors, especially debut authors—it’s a strong signal to everyone in the book industry (publishers, booksellers, etc) that this book should be promoted in media, stocked in bookstores, and generally worth their time. I hope I can continue to write books like CRAWL for a long time, and pre-ordering is the single most helpful thing you can do to support that.

What do I mean by “books like CRAWL,” exactly? Well, to put it simply, books about trans people, specifically trans men. That is what I do, that is what I care about. CRAWL is a book about trans men and is for trans men, above all else. None of my blurbers, you’ll notice, are trans men, so don’t worry if you’re not a trans man, I think you’ll like it, too. But there’s a shortage of books about trans men in the world. More on that soon. For now, thank you all for reading this far, and for considering pre-ordering the book, and for caring what I have to say. Most people subscribed to this newsletter have been here reading my work for a long time and have seen it in a lot of different forms. Get ready for my most-polished, edited best.

….Here’s that pre-order link one more time!

I have signed a lot of petitions in my life, and especially in the past year. Forgive me if I’ve grown a little jaded with familiar forms of protest. I guess I’m not the sort of person who’d canvass, anyway.

If you’re receiving this email, it’s because some time ago, you signed up for the newsletter Max Practice. I got rid of all paid subscribers in 2020; I’m sure we’ve all changed a lot since then. I have no intention of bringing back the paid subscriber model, or of posting to this newsletter regularly. All posts will be free, and will go out when I feel like it. If I do bring back the paid subscriber situation (unlikely), you’ll be the first to know.

The main reason I am writing is to share that, in a little less than year, my debut collection of short stories, Crawl, will be published by Graywolf Press—October 21st, 2025. I will use this newsletter to promote the book, especially as we get closer to publication day. Don’t be shy about unsubscribing if this isn’t of interest to you. There is also a form on my website for those who want to be notified when my book is available for pre-order. I will only email that list about pre-orders, so sign up for that if you just want that notification; stick around here if you want that notification AND my sporadic commentary on Books and Writing. I will certainly write a heartfelt newsletter about the importance of pre-orders at some point, as is literary Substack tradition.

I’ve been thinking about how I’ll talk about my book when it comes out. Why I wrote it, what it’s “about” other than the concrete facts: trans men, 2010s, Seattle. I keep coming back to the concept of truth. I think my book has value because there is truth in it—because a reader picking up the book will, I hope, encounter truth. When I was first coming out as trans, I searched voraciously for these kinds of encounters with truth through art that was specifically about being trans, or realizing that you’re trans; while I’m eternally grateful for what I did find, it didn’t feel like enough, or quite what I was looking for. It didn’t feel like I was finding art or writing in general that spoke to my experience of transmasculinity, or of making the decision to transition. I was looking for a way to think about my own transness—art to think about transness with so I could figure out how to live the rest of my life, now that the possibility of transition had occurred to me.

So, in less than a year, my book will come out. I also want to acknowledge that a couple weeks ago, we passed the grim anniversary of one year of Israel’s genocide in Palestine.

I have not held back in voicing my support for Palestine, during the past year or before the genocide started. I will never forget the first time I made a Facebook post about Israel’s pinkwashing, which I first learned about thanks to Dean Spade’s documentary Pinkwashing Exposed. The post was about gay soldiers in the IOF, I think. I shared a lot of political posts like these on Facebook at the time (when was it? 2017, maybe?) and remember being shocked at the degree of vitriol I received from the Zionists in the comments section. They were friends of friends, mostly, people I didn’t know and would never meet in person, writing paragraphs upon paragraphs about why I was wrong to criticize Israel. I don’t remember arguing with anyone very much. I think I just left the post alone.

For the past year it has felt wrong to post/write anything that isn’t about the atrocities Israel continues to commit, or about the suffering of Palestinians. I haven’t tweeted about much else during the genocide, and I feel similarly unable to promote my book without reckoning with this context. I am proud of the book I wrote, and thrilled to publish it with Graywolf Press, which continues to feel like an absurd dream that cannot possibly be true. At the exact same time, I am profoundly ashamed at my complicity in this genocide and so many other instances of colonial violence. I do not believe Israel has the right to exist, nor do I believe the U.S.A has a right to exist. As a white American, especially, I believe there is something rotten in me that will never go away, because my life is made possible by these systems. Early in the genocide, I remember seeing this message from someone in Gaza: "Tell Muslim countries not to offer funeral prayers for us. We are alive and you are dead." It’s among the most powerful, truthful sentences I’ve ever encountered.

I agree with Andrea Long Chu: speech is a material act. There is no way for me to talk about the value of words and books and truth without talking about Palestine, about the violent suppression of speech about Palestine (from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free), the IOF’s deliberate targeting of Palestinians journalists, the W.A.W.O.G. call to boycott PEN, the canceling of the LiBeraturpreis award ceremony for Adania Shibli’s remarkable novel Minor Detail, Israel’s murder of Refaat Al-Areer, and Mosab Abu Toha’s revolutionary poems and essays. In the midst of this horrific genocide, the power of language has never seemed so clear.

This newsletter first started as a way for me to “practice” writing, to figure out if I was a writer at all. In less than a year, I will have the extraordinary privilege of calling myself a published author. In this sense, the time for practice is over. Time to sink or swim, say what you mean.

It’s August 9th today, which means my short story, “Sex is A Leisure Activity,” has been live at Joyland for a whole day! I was so excited to hear Joyland wanted to publish me—the wonderfully kind and brilliant Jo Barchi edited and they made the story so much better. Joyland also has a long history of publishing excellent fiction: I first heard about them way back in 2012, when I read one of their especially popular stories, a flash piece by Amelia Gray called “The Swan as Metaphor for Love,” but I really became obsessed with Joyland’s stuff when they published my genius friend and mentor Corinne Manning’s short story, “The Wallaby.” It was published there in 2017 (and in Corinne’s brilliant collection WE HAD NO RULES) and I remember feeling so alive and inspired about the possibilities of fiction and writing in general after reading it. I had never read a story that so candidly engaged with things like queer assimilation and messy butch-femme dynamics. There’s just no way I would be writing fiction, period, if I hadn’t read “The Wallaby” in Joyland.

Joyland also published a story, “I Want Too Much,” by the brilliant Mona Awad in 2013, my professor at Syracuse with whom I workshopped an early draft of “Sex is a Leisure Activity.” She completely got what I was trying to do with the draft and helped me get it into shape for publication. They more recently published stories by two beloved, genius writer friends of mine: fellow Syracuse MFAer and all around cool guy Nabeel Chollampat’s “Private Viewing Mode” and my Mineral School residency buddy and one of the funniest writers I know, Sara Jaffe’s “Today’s Problems.” Do yourself a favor and read both of these—so funny, so beautifully written, just so, so, so, fucking good. There are so many other writers Joyland has published that are doing singular, exciting work. Whenever I publish in a new lit mag I like to hang out in that mag’s archives deliberately for a while after and I can’t wait to go deeper into Joyland’s.

ANYWAY, THE POINT IS, getting this story published in Joyland means a lot to me and I wanted to acknowledge this little Joyland lineage because I think it rocks! I think lit mags rock and it’s worth it to point out the ones that are doing interesting things.

TLDR; I really hope you read my story in this cool magazine, Joyland—IF YOU DO READ IT, I would be so happy if you would share it on social media or text it someone or let me know what you think. It means so much to me when people reach out or I see my work reaching new readers, it’s the whole reason I do this obviously!!! Even if you hated the story or thought it was super boring, I would be psyched to hear from you…. But, hopefully, if you are at all interested in 1) fiction about trans guys 2) t4t stuff 3) navigating polyamory 4) super long and graphic sex scenes 5) regional comedy scene dynamics 6) clueless cis men 7) writing about weed 8) what I have to say about any of the above, you will find something in there worth reading. OKAY, THAT’S ALL FOR SELF PROMOTION TODAY. SEE YOU NEXT TIME!!!!! ENJOY THE STORY!!!!!! HERE’S THE LINK TO THE STORY AGAIN!!!

You may have noticed that Twitter has become a slow-motion car crash from which many terminally-online people like myself must leap. In truth, I will remain on the bird site until the bitter end, but I also think it’s probably smart for me to reinvest in my presence on Substack. If you’re receiving this post as an email, you are subscribed as a free subscriber—there are no paid subscriptions anymore for Max Practice/this Substack account. Everything I post here will be free for the time being, which I expect will just be Notes and the occasional writing update. If I decide to offer a paid newsletter in the future, I will let you know and you will need to re-sign up, but there are no current plans for that. Just mentioning to confirm there will be no surprise costs for anyone receiving this email!

My updates for the moment: I’m in the middle of my MFA in fiction at Syracuse University (In 2020-21 I was at The Ohio State MFA for creative nonfiction, but left after one year). My most recent short story was published in the 69th issue of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, but anyone who finds the cost of the issue prohibitive should email me and I’ll send you a PDF. I also have an essay in the upcoming Graywolf anthology Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games, edited by Carmen Maria Machado and J. Robert Lennon. That comes out in November of this year. Check out my website to read other stories of mine that have been published—I’ve got another one scheduled to come out at Joyland this summer. I’ll email you all when it comes out though, so PLEASE don’t panic. The biggest update is that I am closer to being done with a short story collection than not done with a short story collection, which is mind-blowing to me.

Anyway, just wanted to say hi and say yes, I think I am going to do the Notes, and I am going to use Max Practice to send career updates semi-regularly. Tell your friends or unsubscribe or do nothing at all based on your current newsletter needs. I have gone through and hidden (successfully? I hope?) almost all of the old Max Practice posts, save for a few favorites. Everyone should be able to still read, for instance, about how Cadet Kelly Was Lesbians.

That’s all for now! Write to me with questions, concerns, greetings, Cadet Kelly commentary. I hope you’re all having excellent days.

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I write to you from my dark, dark bedroom. Ours is a basement apartment and I have turned the lights off to set the mood. My shirt is off, too, but not in a sexy way. I’m mildly allergic to our new dog and I need my air passageways as clear as possible. I do not want inflamed sinuses while I write this sad note.

I’ve decided to stop my newsletter, the famous Max Practice. In truth, I had been discussing this choice with various loved ones for weeks before the pandemic started. As I’d hoped, I learned a ton this past year-ish about the kind of writing I want to do. What I’ve learned is that I am not a lightning fast content machine. I am a slow and ugly burn. It’s the same impulse that led me to stop stand-up a few months ago, despite my relative success: I can entertain on the spot, but I generally prefer not to (save for co-hosting queer live talk show Cruising with Clara, my one true comedy love). I like to savor an idea, look at it from all angles, let it marinate and get super weird. In just 8 weeks, I’ll move to Ohio for an MFA program. I am going to write and learn a ton, then publish work that (ideally) reads more confident and self-assured. As a writer, I am very concerned with wasting anyone’s time and money. I want to give you my best, and my best is slow.

For instance: In a couple weeks, I have an essay coming out at The Rumpus. It’s challenging and aggressive. It took me almost three years to get it right. It is 2500 words. I think it is the best writing I have ever done. Please check it out on May 11th, if you’re so inclined.

I am grateful for the incredible feedback and kind words you all have shared with me about my posts for Max Practice. So many of these little essay-things were a true joy to write. Some of my favorites were (I’ve unlocked all these posts, if any free subscribers want to read):

The Real Girls of Adventure Time

Cadet Kelly Was Lesbians

I Have Heard The Voice of Trans

I Played/Married Myself

On The Sexually Fluid Community

Do You Remember Fucking My Wife?

The Meaning of CATS

Thank you all for giving me the space to experiment, have fun and practice meeting deadlines. To be paid to write! About Are You The One?! Truly, I have now lived the dream. Anything after this is just gravy.

Here’s how this is going to work— New paid subscriptions are now closed. After sending this email, I will cancel all paid Max Practice subscriptions, thus ending all paid Max Practice content. If you had a paid subscription and would like a partial refund for any content you would have received in coming weeks/months, please email me, and I’ll send you that refund through Stripe as quickly as possible. I reserve the right to occasionally send a free newsletter via Max Practice sometime in the future, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Now I’m going to log off and take a long bath. Again, thank you all for the support, for sharing this newsletter with others, for reading my work again and again. See you IRL one day.

Love,
Max

Lights up on Washington Heights. No.

Lights up on a small room with one bistro table, two red chairs. A vase with a single stem red rose in the center. A man is sitting there. A woman is sitting there too.

MAN: Woman?

WOMAN: Yes, Man.

MAN: Fetch me some water.

WOMAN: What kind of water, Man?

MAN: What kind of water do you have?

WOMAN: Mineral, so…

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There once was a woman named Fiona Apple. She started making music when she was seven years old. Years later, she continued making music. She also did cocaine.

What you should know about Fiona Apple, beyond the cocaine, is that her music is good. How do we know it is…

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Aries by Gorillaz, Peter Hook, Georgia

Very seasonal, Gorillaz!! Cute of you. I sense this song was conceived of in Ye Olde World. Too buoyant, too obvious. 2-D may very well be “standing on a beach in the distance,” but some quality in his voice suggests genuine hope this situation will change. Future G…

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Good afternoon. I have depression. It’s fine and normal and, in addition, I feel fine about it.

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I got a dog recently. Started playing Don’t Starve Together again. I fagndskgndfhieqjrwt;2wd

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That being said, FIADSUG9-QR3O[4JL2YNQR3BEWFJOHM43Q and I’m looking …

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• how good the song itself is

• how elaborate the concept of the video is

• how thoroughly the video centers/appreciates Jade

I want to acknowledge that I agonized over rankings 2-7.

10. Move

I don’t enjoy this song at all. Weak video conceptually. If Jade weren’t in this, maybe unwatchable, but her lipstick manages to redeem everything. Pink Lipstick Jade.

9. Only You

This is the only video on the list that does not specifically feature Little Mix themselves. You’d think this would immediately disqualify it from the top ten (obviously, No Jade), but hear me out: the song itself is excellent, AND it’s lesbians. Think Portrait of A Lady On Fire meets Shape of Water. As you might expect, Portrait speaks to all the good parts of the video, Shape of Water to all of the bad. Deduct points for making me cry, which no Little Mix video should have the power to do.

8. Change Your Life

Wholesome tour montage. “For the fans.” Blue Hair Jade. Supportive of Her Friends Jade. There’s a comment on this YouTube video that reads “One Direction make a song that every girl want to hear. But Little Mix make a song that every girl want to say.” 1,600 likes.

7. Love Me Like You

This is the first of our Little Mix concept videos. It hits the sexy/silly sweet spot in that even, measured way that only Little Mix can. The production value is so high and the colors are so bright. Campy Jade. Smitten Jade. The love interest guy is actually hot. Best acting Jesy’s ever done. We close on some light Sapphic energy (Leigh-Anne and Perry slow-dancing) and Jade looking unhappy with a cis man.

6. Think About Us

Arguably the best Little Mix song ever made. Jesy owns this video and proves, once and for all, she should only wear red. This song is too sexy to make into a Little Mix concept video, a choice I respect. Each of the Little Mixes look confident and sexually powerful in equal measure (do we call them Little Mixes? Little Mixers??). Ruthless Jade. Untouchable Jade. Bikini While It’s Snowing Jade.

5. Black Magic

Another excellent concept vid. Enormous sapphic energy. Nerdy witch girls who only hang out with each other, then become extremely hot via magic, then ignore all the boys that now worship them? Committing to the bit Jade, then Prep School Jade. Gossip Girl Jade. Gabby says, “this is the corniest video of them all,” but I don’t care.

4. Shout Out To My Ex

I wasn’t able to embrace Perry until this video. It’s inspired by her four year relationship with Zayn Malik, which allegedly ended via text message. She does genuinely look “over it.” More importantly, though: Unfazed Jade. Indulgent Jade. Jade with a toy gun. Jade in a neon pink one-piece swimsuit. JADE. Long shots of the desert and more ignoring of men. Be warned: Leigh-Anne around the 1:50 mark may stop your heart.

3. Woman Like Me

The Gang Does Lemonade. One of their better songs, plus the video’s got a particularly coherent theme. Dancing with books on their heads? Throwing vacuums and eating roses? Yeah, why not. We love a vaguely feminist theme. Indignant Jade. Rebellious Jade. I laugh every time Nicki Minaj does her verse and there’s a shot of all the girls just nodding in rhythm like, “Yeah, we got Nicki for this.”

2. Touch

“Touch” is a perfect distillation of the Little Mix sexuality. It’s joyous, bubbly and uncompromisingly hot. The bizarro pastel maze backdrop somehow makes the video hotter. I don’t totally understand it’s effect on me, only that it works. Flirting Jade. Follow Me Around The Bizarro Pastel Maze Jade. Ruin Your Life For Me Jade. The final dance sequence will break your brain wide open. BY FAR the best video to watch stoned.

1. Hair

When I set out to make this list, I initially thought several of these videos could easily rank #1. Upon further reflection, I realized “Hair” is the only video that could not rank anywhere but #1. “Hair” is Little Mix at their finest. Essential Little Mix. Crucially, Leigh-Anne stars: she’s goofy and adorable and makes you believe she’d actually fuck Sean Paul. Highest Sapphic energy possible here— sleepover parties, hot pink cocktails, lingerie, and is Jade wearing SILK?! 1:59-2:20 are 21 seconds that I return to repeatedly when I have to anchor myself, somehow, to this cruel and broken world. Specifically, Jade’s look at the camera at 2:18! There aren’t words! Nor there should be! Just da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da-da.

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Quintessential Messy Butch House— With this song Above & Beyond may well have written the book on it. Sun & Moon is the perfect storm of hypermasculine half-apology and frantically asserting her desired reality as inevitable. Picture this: it's autumn, 2011. It's raining. You're driving on one o…

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I…

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