You know under an Instagram post?

It’s 2016 and you use all the 2,200 characters Instagram has to offer. We wrote a story about the crazy night we had at the club, the love note to a friend on their birthday, a caption about the terrifying and sticky yet rewarding first year of motherhood.

I used to frequent Instagram like a patron at a local bar enabled by the bartender, never to be cut off no matter how drunk I get. I now only log on to check and see if my favorite clothing brand has restocked the only pants I wear. It’s been a few years since they’ve “ discontinued” the pants but I’m trying to muster up hope, specifically 2008 Obama running for president, kind of hope.

I would name the brand, but I think I want to uphold gatekeeping. Who’s with me? Right ? We should all do it. Let’s hold on to the last remaining bits of personality we have left. Where someone isn’t telling you to buy something that isn’t even your style.

When I first downloaded Instagram it was the early 2010’s I was a femme, definitely in drag, it was somewhat uncomfortable but I put on a damn good performance. Indie sleaze is naturally androgynous and a rejection to conformity, so it was the perfect time to be femme in New York City.

Hipness Purgatory, Anti-folk bands, mustache tattoos on your index finger, rappers defying genres and experimenting with electronic pop.

What a time, before Instagram re-branded and created a clean minimalistic look for itself.

I didn’t know shit about Instagram at the time, but I was influenced by a beautiful brown eyed dyke named Jazz, who had a gap in her teeth that I hope she never closes.

She put me on to this MySpace adjacent app like it was a new drug that only the cool kids could get their hands on. Which it did feel exclusive because Android users couldn’t even join for the first two years of the app’s launch. It was giving “ The Facebook”

I had heart eyes for the king of the scene, Jazz was Butching the door like a true descendant of Stormè DeLaverie ( the iconic Black Butch who threw the first punch at stonewall, yes this is true Google her)

During this time I was claiming bisexuality because I thought maybe God would let me into heaven on a technicality that I only half- sinned.

Oop! Surprise ! I’m a lesbian and heaven is the club! You can’t lie to God kids, she knows, she fucking knows.

I run into Jazz here and there, because New York is a small town and the universe thinks it’s funny for you to bump into your past. Her tatted muscles can be spotted a block away before you make out her face. When I see her she always gives me a wink, I like to think it’s a wink of her letting me know that my secrets and crimes are still safe with her.

Or she knows how cool she is that she can get away with winking at people.

And while I have you all here, don’t ever wink at me…unless you’ve lived.

Jazz built the scene in New York City, broke up fights between drunk couples, it was always a justified spicy femme and a flirty masc.

Stay with me here, I know I’m nostalgic. I just want us to remember the freedom we all took for granted when we could yell and tussle on the sidewalk with our fuck buddies and there were no cameras recording us.

We could resolve the issue and go to sleep knowing we wouldn’t go viral on the internet the next morning for being human. We kept things for ourselves. We honored each other this way.

Jazz was the first person I posted to my Instagram page, it was a photo of her leaning against her silver Honda Civic smoking a cigarette, and under that photo I wrote a short sentence: It’s been 3 days.

A cryptic caption was very in at the time. I was also letting the other girls who were crushing on Jazz that our first date (like in true lesbian fashion) lasted 3 days. I wanted them to know I won. Get in line !

16 years later I now go on these internet breaks not because I think I’m holier than thou, although I do think I’m cool because I have a landline.

The breaks were needed. Social media left me dependent on it, waiting for it to give me connection and joy. I used to love the internet. I kept scrolling hoping each scroll would feel different. But it’s time to admit that social media found a new consumer to love. And millennials, don’t lie to me— the feeling of change sucks for us when it doesn’t feel like progress, but a change that leaves you confused, paranoid and anxious.

When I come back to social media I feel super disconnected, the language online changes, I can’t understand what anyone is talking about, everything is out of context there is no nuance and the art of storytelling is now drama.

I’m addicted to chaos now, I became a cop, I have unjustified suspicion of others and let’s not forget the schadenfreude.

The interent created urgency and panic in my real life.

So yes, the breaks are needed.

I went on a Gen Z rant towards my 16 year old niece who visited us this summer. She sat next to us by the pool, her blonde box braids pulled out of her face so she could scroll on her phone without interruption of the wind blowing her hair in her face. I told her stories about hooking up with musicians, gossip blogs, going viral on the internet and other growing pains for those born between 1981 and 1996. I explained how the internet used to be a place where we liked a post, we laughed, we commented and we separated it from our real lives. And if there was a tv show we didn’t like we changed the channel we didn’t make a five-part video diary critiquing it!

I know, I gave her a very “ back in my day” talk.

She took a break from scrolling, looked over to me and my wife and cut me off mid rant. She blamed us for birthing a generation of softies that we now complain about. She told me how we are a generation easy to scare, too sensitive, and we care about what others think.

She ate me up with that read, ( but I won’t admit that to her) she was right, we curated our photos neatly, created borders that kept our images intact, we went beige, removed imperfection and call me crazy, but I believe the internet collapsed into our real lives, we influenced a culture where the feeling of discomfort feels like an attack, our obsession with boundaries created rooms that have no friction.

My niece goes on saying that I am so scared of what people think, that I wont even post a photo of me by the pool because it’s out of touch to do so during this political climate.

Listen, this kid wants to go to NYU but she may be booked and busy before then. I promise you she will throw the first punch at the revolution, because all of us will just stand there afraid to be perceived as violent, as if that isn’t an American heirloom passed down to us.

This era that we’re in is stifling our creativity, we’ve put guard rails and disclaimers in front of art we don’t get. Politicians are already doing that to us and now we’ve returned the gesture towards each other.

I’ll be devastated if the next generation never experiences underground parties, standing ten feet away from Santigold and Azealia Banks ( the OG scene girls ) and dancing like no one is filming you.

I fear they won’t have a love affair with a butch at the door of their favorite club. They won’t make mistakes. Which means they won’t learn.

We’re teaching the kids to be cops, we’re hung up on morality and purity, which is just our unspoken desire to punish each other. The app of surveillance has hijacked our imagination and taken away our color! This is coming from a masc lesbian who only wears black.

And it’s not solely our fault that we’re in a culture that has told us watching every move our nemesis makes will give us the control we’re seeking.

We don’t have control in our own lives, everyday an injustice is happening near and far, the control we lack in our interpersonal lives we’ve replaced with punishment and chaos, we hit record on our phones and it becomes a new way to heal.

And listen, punishment drama and chaos has a high success rate of going viral on the internet, so we will continue to eat each other alive on here. That will be our new source of nourishment—which perfect timing since we can’t fucking eat anything right now.

Is anyone hungry ? I have two front row tickets to the guillotine!

The corners of the internet have made us small, kept us safe in our echo chambers that we forgot people are allowed to be complex and have colorful stories. Social media does not provide a multi-dimensional space, it’s flat. Leaving us to project any story that soothes us onto the faces that we scroll past.

I need millennials to stand up and take back what you birthed! Post your weird art, be cringe, and save the children from their fear of embarrassment!

Seriously though, I forgot to live, I went beige, I lost color, I spent so much time anxious about social media that my toxic relationship with scrolling, and holding court without context in comment sections and other drama I partook in led me right into conservatism, and unexamined fear. After much reflection of my first introduction of popular social media apps, (thank you Jazz.) The internet feels like a bad break up with an ex who keeps re-branding but I’m not afraid to say there are times I want it back, because the internet used to be mine.

-C

Remember when Donald Glover interviewed himself in Interview Magazine? We dragged him a bit on every online corner we could find to type in, yet all he did was fill out his version of a Proust Questionnaire, you know the one in the back of Vanity Fair magazines, the French parlor game? I remember reading them as a pre-teen while sitting in Dominican hair salons, it was a great distraction while my ears felt like they were being barbecued under the hooded dryers set to an unhealthy high temperature. Reading the answers from your favorite actors and feeling relatable to what they penned down was the entry into someone’s life before reality TV. Well more like a peek under the crack of a closed door into someone’s life. We all thought they were so cool! And I forgot about this questionnaire, so I am doing that right now.

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

   I think I’m here, right now.

2. What is your greatest fear?

   Losing a fistfight

3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

   Wanting to resolve everything.

4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?

   Moral superiority & mealy-mouthed personalities

5. Which living person do you most admire?

   It’s hard to pick one but currently, I have to say Phaedra Parks and Nara Smith ( I will defend Nara she is a genius)

6. What is your greatest extravagance?

   Eyeglasses. Hats. Rare books.

7. What is your current state of mind?

   Optimistic

8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

   Being honest

9. On what occasion do you lie?

   On the occasions when I interact with people and there isn’t a shared sense of safety.

10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?

    I really like my appearance a lot. Like I’m obnoxiously confident.

11. Which living person do you most despise?

    My new mailman. Just a curmudgeon, I should break him with a gift of flowers.

12. What is the quality you most like in a man?

    The audacity.

13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?

    Passion

14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

    I often say “ Are you well?” when someone is doing something that is annoying me.

15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?

    My current love of my life is the greatest love of my life.

16. When and where were you happiest?

    Last summer, swimming in the pool with my kiddos.

17. Which talent would you most like to have?

    The ability to rob a bank and leave alive. Yes, this is a talent.

18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

    To be less agreeable. The internet told me to be upset or love this thing/person/event/viral moment so naturally I must follow suit.

19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

    Carrying a child for nine months and not smoking a cigarette.

20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?

    I’d be a music album specifically The Emancipation of Mimi by Mariah Carey

21. Where would you most like to live?

    The only place I want to be in is New York, but outside of America— Ireland, or Berlin. Or that pink single-family home that is sandwiched between two gentrified developments in Denver.

22. What is your most treasured possession?

    I’m going to keep that to myself.

23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

    Having everything you’ve ever asked for and still not being happy, or longing for people that don’t want you back.

24. What is your favorite occupation?

    Definitely not being a writer.

25. What is your most marked characteristic?

    Complaining

26. What do you most value in your friends?

    Their grace and lack of judgment.

27. Who are your favorite writers?

    Jamaica Kincaid, Claudia Rankine, Deeshaw Philaw, Maisy Card and so many more!

28. Who is your hero of fiction?

    Niklaus Mikaleson - look at you all ready to judge me. I will break this down in a separate post if I need to.

29. Which historical figure do you most identify with?

    Anne Lister and Pauli Murray- yes Christian queers

30. Who are your heroes in real life?

    My friends who are lawyers

31. What are your favorite names?

    Ava, specifically Ava Cherry ( the singer)

32. What is it that you most dislike?

    People who don’t know how to walk on the sidewalk. It’s so simple follow the system follow the flow.

33. What is your greatest regret?

    I can’t give things I’ve done such a title or power. I give myself grace for things that probably weren’t the best things to do. Having regrets as an adult doesn’t make sense to me. I did what I did! I said what I said!

34. How would you like to die?

    Something dramatic, something camp! Something that will haunt my enemies.

35. What is your motto?

    I’d rather flex than shrink.

Thank you to who inspired me to do my own Proust questionnaire, and also note that you can sit around with your friends and assign them these questions as well! Something different for really bad taste, I think we all need that once in a while.

-C

Share really bad taste

When I see people revolt I sing this song. I can’t help it.

Tories, Radicals Whigs, conservatives, reform bills, political riots, and Anne Lister! UK politics are excitingly horrific and my favorite conservative Anne Lister was involved in it all!

Anne Lister is an Aries, and also everyone’s only favorite landlord and probably won’t be after reading this. Born in 1791 in Halifax West Yorkshire.

I am fascinated by Anne Lister, I’m a fan, I am embarrassed by how much of a fan I am of this 18th-century-born white lady from England, but this is not a love letter nor a hate one, but the more I read her diary which is taking years my friends, years, and as the season finale ended, (go watch Gentleman Jack!) I am realizing how complicated she was. Progressive in many ways then conservative in many many others.

She was a diarist, a scientist, she knew different languages, she studied philosophy respected and learned about other religions, deeply into politics, a landowner, she got married to a woman Anne Walker in a church! A daughter a sister and a niece, and a lesbian. She wrote every day in her diary in code, as she knew that her love adventures with women were criminal if ever found out. She was masculine and only wore black, many people called her odd and a curiosity due to her taking the lead in spaces where men were.

This woman was writing every 5 minutes, just writing and writing and kissing very elite women and then writing again, she has 14 volumes of travel notes. She is the first person who completed the challenge of climbing the first ascents of Mont Perdu in the Pyrenees in 1830 and Mount Vignemale in France in 1838. She traveled which was not common for women to do during this time, she had status and refined taste and was among the most elite of people during the 18-19th century. She even met the Queen of Denmark.

She was a savvy businesswoman, she often offended men with her smart brain, usually knowing more than them, she received harassment, jokes, and other cruel comments from men in the coal business, an industry she was well versed in.

Her childhood was described as friendless and during her boarding school experience, she was pushed into the attic to stay away from the girls as her masculine appearance could influence the other girls. ( a wad of BS, I know) She began being a diarist at 15 when she met a mixed West Indian girl Eliza Raine who had wealth but was an outcast due to her race, Eliza was also fetched to live in the attic, which worked out surprisingly perfect for the pair, as Eliza became Anne’s first girlfriend.

Some bits of words from Anne’s diary:

‘I love and only love the fairer sex and thus beloved by them in turn. My heart revolts from any other love but theirs.’

“I know my own heart and I know men. I am not made like any other I have seen. I dare believe myself to be different from any others who exist,” wrote Anne Lister in August 1823.

She was never going to marry a man even if it was for show or for money or to just to get the rumors of being “unnatural” off her back, she explained that it would be a sin to lie to God.

“…to act in any way against it would be more of a sin than living my
life in accordance with the nature God has given me.”

Anne brave and firm and holding confidence in her identity continued to have social expectations and aspirations when looking for a partner. In adulthood, she looked over Shibden Hall, her family’s estate that had been in their family for two centuries. She took on the role of the landlady and wasn’t messing around kicking out tenants after giving them a lot of grace with their late rent, but adding new tenants quickly. She had daring spending habits she had servants and did everything she could to hold onto the lifestyle she wanted even in her debts.

Now how can Anne Lister born in Halifax from Shibden Hall defy all societal codes during this time and still sound like a white man! She was a complicated-ass person! And was certainly not here for women's rights! Anne was not trying to have the girlies vote yall I’m sorry and that’s not the worst of it. Her conservative views were disappointing the more and more I read.

Historian Helena Whitebread who is the person to go to if you’re looking for an Anne Lister fan account said:

“ She didn’t think women should be very highly educated, particularly in the classics. She said it would draw a curtain aside which it is better for them not to peep behind,” “Of course, she meant all the sexuality in the classical texts she read. She also didn’t think votes for women were a good idea unless they were women of property – which meant herself of course.”

Anne inherited wealth so she benefited from how society treated wealthy people, she was politically against many reform movements. She was a Tory, which were England’s most elite, aka conservatives. The Whigs are the liberal party and the Radical Party are well the radicals who dare dream of factory reform food, money, and a better life. I know the basics right? how dare they?

And we know if people are poor and hungry neglected hiding in plain sight after building a city it’s not gonna end well. So windows were broken, and things get set on fire. The Window Breaking Election of 1835 also known as the Halifax Election and Anne Lister had many thoughts on these whippersnappers setting her town ablaze, but there are parts of me that believe many of her views were absolutely real but also a front, a bit of an act to keep up in the presence of those who were higher than her in rank ( I’m not making excuses, maybe just a little) she held on to social hierarchies they were very important to her.

There was a scene in Gentleman Jack where she tells her wife, not to ever speak to her like that in front of a servant, I was quite shocked. but there were many of her conservative friends that had a soft spot for the poor people in Halifax. Like John Waterhouse talks with an angry Anne who is offended and just devasted by the radicals protesting in the city, talking with John she says “nothing justifies terror.” John also an elite England Tory is like okay Anne I know we’re rich and all but “ Hunger, poverty, the misery some people must feel in this bitter weather… Maybe it does.” He ate with that line he got her together real quick!

I think some friends of hers were surprised that Anne did not always share the same sympathetic sentiments. In her diary Anne writes about feeling obligated to keep Halifax conservative, she needed a Tory to win the election and even went so far as to actually find tenants who shared the same political views as her. Kicking out the ones who were Whigs. The more conservative people in Halifax meant more votes. And with her problematic efforts, the Radicals lost by one vote.

Anne looking down on the radicals felt a bit silly to me, as she knows what it’s like to be outcasted to not fit in to be unheard and judged. The people she shared a class with barely accepted her, were homophobic and tried to ruin her and she kept up these appearances, maybe to survive may be to say to them hey no I’m just like you but then that contradicts the brave person she is so I just have to accept Anne being a conservative. Anne presents as a complicated person, but one who if possible, politically, would wear blue ( the color for the political right in the UK) if she didn’t wear black.

Anne Lister gaslit and girl bossed, and also was not very kind to her Miss Walker.

Listen, can we overlook the unethical landlord situation? no? Okay fine. But Anne accomplished many great things, but there is one thing that bothered me, she has also been titled the first modern-day lesbian… but was she? Is there evidence of a lesbian other than Anne Lister before 1869?

Stay on the lookout for part 2!

-C