My latest essay: "Are New Friends More Exciting Than Old Friends?"

My latest essay The Frisky on new friends vs. old friends. Didn't quote it but will always remember Girl Scouts and "Make new friends but keep the old/one is silver and the other gold." What do you think? Is there a friendship equivalent of "new relationship energy?"

At the same time, my friend K. was just in town from England. We met in 1998, via a Sleater Kinney mailing list, and have since visited each other a handful of times. I have a comfort with her that goes very deep, and we’ve seen each other through all kinds of relationships. There’s definitely something wonderful about friends who’ve seen you at your best and worst, who know how your past informs your present. I don’t want to sound like I’m throwing my old friends under the bus for younger, cooler versions. It’s not about age or “cool” per se, but perspective. Sometimes I get stuck in a rut of how I see myself, and that comes across with old friends.

Lately I’ve been so busy working that I’ve barely had time to see my closest friends, and sometimes I feel guilty about that, and like I shouldn’t be hanging out with new friends when I haven’t even hung out with my old ones. But I don’t think it’s a competition; true, there’s limited time and we may not get to see everyone we want to, but different friendships provide different sources of support. There are friends I mostly see movies with, friends I gossip with, friends I can tell my deepest, darkest secrets to without worrying about them judging me. One isn’t necessarily better than the other, but together they form a network that, collectively, props me up.

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A Memorial for Cheryl B (is for Beautiful)

One thing that has helped me this week is having so many conversations about Cheryl with friends, with strangers I met at the funeral home, with people I only see once in a while, like Blaise Allysen Kearsley, who told me that How I Learned The Hard Way, which Cheryl read at, was one of her favorite of her series How I Learned (which was awesome and is one you should totally attend) and Goddess Perlman, with whom I discussed over the top Catholic flower arrangements (something I'd been previously unaware of). So many people loved, cared about, and were moved by Cheryl. I met super funny lady Andrea Alton. I'm looking forward to seeing her friend Tim Wells while I'm in London; I know she would've liked that. I believe the people you surround yourself with are just as much a statement about who you are as anything you yourself do, and Cheryl knew a lot of amazing, beautiful, talented people. My instinct in some ways is to be alone, but I've realized this week that obviously nobody can bring her back or stop the awfulness that was her illness, but we can celebrate her life and her spirit and her talent and creativity and generosity.

I reread Cheryl's poem "Lizzie" in a book I was so grateful happened to be next to my bed (along with, okay, probably 30 others), The World in Us: Lesbian and Gay Poetry of the Next Wave, before I went to Staten Island and I heard her voice in my head, in that accent, with all that it held. I remembered that her story "Break" appears in my anthology Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z 2. I am hoping I will have the opportunity to publish another of her short stories in an upcoming erotica book. I hope that more video of her reading surfaces because of course the words live on on the page, but with Cheryl, that were most vibrant when summoned by her, in her voice.

So here are the memorial details; read more at WTF Cancer Diaries and Facebook, and please spread the word. I hope to see Dixon Place, where I was in the audience with Kelli and Cheryl and a bunch of other queers, on their first date, packed extra full.

If you’d like to remember Cheryl with a donation, we are in the process of negotiating with an LGBT arts organization to provide a writers’ scholarship in Cheryl’s name. The details of this should be settled in the next few weeks, so please keep checking back. If you’d like to financially help out Cheryl’s partner Kelli, who lived at the hospital and rehab 24/7 from April 5 until the time of Cheryl’s death, you can do so here.

A Memorial for Cheryl B (is for Beautiful)

July 23, 3-6 pm

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street
New York, New York

I get jealous over at The Frisky

I wrote a piece for The Frisky called "Girl Talk: Should I Be Jealous of His Female Friends?" about my new guy and his many female friends. So far (in 2 days), it's spawned 80 comments (and a few conversations between me and said guy) and certainly hit a nerve:

The other night, after having sex with the new guy I’m seeing, he said casually, “I’m going out for a drink with my friend. I’ll be back in half an hour.” Fair or not, it bothered me that he was going out with a female friend (I’d still have been a little miffed it had been a male friend, but not in the same way). The fact was, I was exhausted after having flown home on a red eye that morning, so perhaps I was overly sensitive, but still, I was jealous … especially when three hours later I woke up and he wasn’t there.

I almost left, but he apologized, telling me his friend had some major issues to discuss and they’d lost track of time. He rushed back and we fell asleep together. The next night, I got to meet the woman I’ll call Alice when we all went to dinner. She was fun and sweet—and has a boyfriend. In just a few minutes, I could tell she wasn’t a threat to my relationship, but still, the fact that the majority of his friends are women, and there are lots of them, has given me pause.

Read the whole piece at The Frisky.

Belated birthday wishes to my favorite Funky Brown Chick

photo by Stacie Joy

I'm too tired to be more coherent, so I will just say that Twanna A. Hines, better known to many as Funky Brown Chick, is one of my favorite people in the world. She's like my sister in crime, and cupcakes, and art, and lateness, and misadventures, and sex, and SXSW, and on and on...seriously. Kindof hard to explain but just try to get in the middle of the two of us when we are having a conversation, or when we are, I don't know, being driven around Atlanta totally lost, and you'll see. It's funny because we have many differences (like babies - I want, she doesn't) but also so many similarities (see above).

Tuesday was her birthday and she went to celebrate her Senator's inauguration! (She lives here now but is a Chicago girl at heart, I think, though I think we now have a pact not to talk about moving out of New York and making the other person sad.)

Happy Birthday Twanna! I shall feed you a cupcake next time I see you.

And if you're going to SXSW Interactive, don't miss her panel, "How to Protect Your Brand Without Being a Jerk!" on Monday, March 16th.

Snapshots

Happier moments...

Victory over the piping bag with cupcakes from The Cupcake Crew



With my old Williamsburg pal who has now gone all LA on me (but I still love her), Carrie Schultz (remember that name, TV watchers):



Even though I'd just been there, I went back to Batch for a little cupcake bloggers get-together with the fabulous Blondie and Brownie and Nichelle: