​Monty and I just had an epically shitty walk to school. As we were leaving the apartment, I saw Rabbit laying on the floor near the couch and almost asked Monty if he wanted to bring her, but we’re trying to break him of that habit, so I let it be. By the time we got down the two flights to the first floor, he realized he had left her and wanted to go back up. I made the monumentally poor decision of saying it was too late and assured him I would bring her with me to pick him up this afternoon. By the time we were halfway down the next block, he was in full tears, reaching his arms out toward our apartment like Jennifer Holiday at the end of “And I am Telling You,” sobbing, “RABBIT!!!” He then threw his backpack and himself respectively on the ground and wept.

I stood there, while neighbors watched, trying to decide if I needed to pick my battles and relent, or stand my ground and not reward the behavior. I told him that if we went back home, he would be staying in his room the whole day by himself. “I want to snuggle you!” he cried. I told him snuggling wouldn’t be possible.

Have you ever had to say no to a five-year-old who just wants to snuggle? It’s fucking awful.

When I was maybe seven or eight, I would occasionally forget my bus pass. The bus stop was about two blocks from the house, and one morning, when I had forgotten my bus pass, my father decided that rather than pay the $1 fare (maybe he hadn’t brought his wallet?), he was taking my back home where I was to spend the rest of the day in my room, with the door closed. I don’t know where he went, he didn’t have a job. My mother was a freelance journalist who worked from home in her study. The rule was, if she was in her study with the door closed, she was, essentially, not home. She was not to be disturbed. As a mother who tries to get writing done at home, I get it. Midway through the day I remembered a nightmare I’d had the night before. I was so frightened by it, it took me a few minutes to steel myself just to cross my own bedroom to get to the door. I went downstairs and knocked on my mother’s study door. I don’t remember what the dream was, but whatever it was, it was scary enough that I was willing to brave the consequences of disturbing my mother to possibly get some comfort. She was warm enough to let me sit on her lap and tell her the dream as I cried, but as soon as I was done recounting, she said she was sorry, but I had to go back to my room and stay there.

I spent a lot of time in my childhood alone.

But what the fuck? When I get down two flights and realize I’ve left my water bottle, or my hat, or my Metrocard, do I have to spend the rest of the day locked in my room? What is the lesson I’m trying to impart? Though, to be honest, most of the time, when I look back up the stairs, like Harold and Kumar, I decide I’ve come too far already, and it isn’t worth it to trudge all the way back up. But you know what happens the next day? I fucking remember to take my hat (and inevitably forget something else).

I heard my father this morning when I told Monty that if we went home, he would be staying in his room. I heard my mother when I told him I wouldn’t be snuggling him. It didn’t sound good.

I told Kurt that I had threatened the same punishment my father had. Kurt reminded me to ask myself who I want to be in those moments. In that moment I wanted to be someone who was punching Kurt in the face.

Abbi Jacobson apparently said that if people don’t want you to write shitty things about them, they shouldn’t do shitty things.

​In 34 years, do I want Monty writing about being sent to his room for the whole day because when he was five one morning he forgot his comfort object? Or, do I want him to say, “Gee, my mom was swell. She always made sure I had my rabbit in the morning before we left for school”? Of course, he’ll also be writing, “On the other hand, I’m 39 and I still have to carry this fucking rabbit around with me because my fucking mother never helped me separate from it. Also, I left the house this morning without my water bottle, hat, and Metrocard.”

Notes from the Road
Part Twelve: Los Angeles
Two


I’ve been thinking a lot, A LOT, about gender. Gender identity. Gender presentation. Gender conformity and nonconformity. And this is going to be a little unwieldy because I’m kind of working it out as I go.

When Ryan and I first met, they were considering taking T and having top surgery. They had their period on our second date and felt embarrassed and ashamed. They’ve talked about preferring their body when it’s less curvy. My ex also hated her hips and wished that shorts fit her they way they fit some men. This is so foreign to me. Ever since I could remember, I wanted “womanly” hips. Personally, I find curves to be delicious. There are few things more satisfying to me than resting my hand on the curve of a hip. But far be it from me to tell other people how they should want to look or feel. Ryan could take buckets of T and have top surgery and be a beanpole and I’d still love them. I’d probably still be wildly attracted to them. There would be things that I missed, but those would all be physical. Ryan would still be Ryan and that’s enough for me.

Neither Ryan nor my ex are males. My ex is a woman and Ryan is nonbinary (they use the term “enby”, which not all nonbinary people do). But they both feel uncomfortable with certain “feminine” aspects of their bodies.

I am fascinated by how trans people “know” they were assigned the wrong gender at birth. I have no idea what it means to “feel like a woman.” I never felt “like a girl” when I was growing up. I was a tomboy. I’m now a grown-up version of a tomboy. Tomman? But I didn’t feel “like a boy” either. Maybe the point is that it never occurred to me that anything was out of place and I was lucky enough to have parents who weren’t interested in hypergenderizing me. But it seems to me that when people say they don’t feel like the gender they were assigned at birth, what they’re actually saying is that they don’t necessarily feel like being categorically treated the way our culture has decided their assigned gender is supposed to be treated.

And maybe there is something deeper than that. Ryan says that they feel like there’s something deep, deep inside them that told them their gender assignment was wrong. Maybe that’s the thing that would determine what “gender” we were if we were all raised equally. Personally, I don’t have a strong feeling in any direction. I use she/her pronouns because it’s what was assigned to me, but I don’t feel any allegiance to my womanness. I don’t feel fundamentally female or like a woman. I don’t have anything in me telling me I’m a man, either. Maybe that’s my privilege as a cis gender person. But if you asked me what it is to be a woman, I would be at a loss.

Side bar: Someone I know recently announced via intsagram that he and his wife are having a baby, with a picture of pink balloons, pink baby shoes, and a pink sign that read “It’s a girl!” Really? Really?

Ultimately, I think it’s impossible for anyone to know what it feels like to be a man or woman. All of our gender “norms” are cultural. Being brave or meek or tough or sensitive; Liking trucks or dolls; Liking to bake or liking to grill. Those aren’t genetic traits. Those are culturally prescribed behaviors. A person who has female reproductive parts and who grows up liking trucks, and being scrappy, and wanting to play football, and, I don’t know burping, farting, and jerking off with abandon, who gets to say that that person is male or female?

We have a strong desire to classify things. And I understand the purpose of classifying humans based on their body parts. It is, in truth, the only thing that makes us different from each other (along with the accompanying chromosomes and hormones, but even those things are being found to be less clear cut and have less determining force than we thought). So, we came up with a classification system. The fact that different cultures, over human history, have managed to come up with more than two genders should be proof that gender is subjective. And yes, yes, I know humans have gotten plenty of shit wrong scientifically. Like, we used to think that our veins were filled with air and that diseases were caused by spirits or some dumb ass shit like that. But gender isn’t science. Sex is. Gender is not. Gender is a completely made up social construct to help us classify people. Gender, like race, is a MAN-made construct. No one can tell you what it feels like to be White because “white” isn’t a thing. (Which is not to say that “Trans-racial” is a thing. It’s not. I can’t explain it. But, it’s not. Rachel Dolezal, sit down.) I can tell you what it feels like to have my period because that’s a sciencey thing that actually takes place in my body. But I can’t tell you what it feels like to be a woman. I can tell you what it’s like to be treated like a woman. I can tell you what it’s like to go through this world being treated like a woman (it’s not great, guys, it’s not great). I can tell you how I feel being treated like what my culture has decided a woman is. But if I were somehow teleported to The Isle of Lesbos and I was like, “Ladies, don’t you hate feeling terrified of walking home alone at night,” they’d all be like, “A. What’s a lady, and B. What?”

This is not to say that all cultural constructs are useless and should be disregarded. Some constructs are truly useful. Having shame around pooping and peeing serves to prevent us from pissing and shitting directly into our drinking and bathing water. Not raping and not murdering are cultural constructs that serve an actual purpose (and people disregard those constructs constantly…).

It is next to impossible to extricate ourselves from our culture conditioning. There is no need, for example, for makeup. But I like the way I look with makeup on. And I know that’s because I have been conditioned to accept certain standards of beauty. I understand that rationally. But I still like it. I prefer to have my legs and armpits shaved and I KNOW that serves absolutely no evolutionary purpose. I KNOW that it’s just my culture telling me that’s how women should look. But I like it. Ryan doesn’t feel like a woman, so they present in a way that is culturally less feminine. In their nonconformity they are, ironically, consciously or unconsciously conforming to cultural ideas of gender, albeit, that gender being “not” male or female. Because they like how those things make them look. It is unspeakably difficult to separate ourselves from our cultural norms.

Side bar: I was watching Fear the Walking Dead last night and Kim Dicken’s character (who, btw, is (or was? I’m not caught up) the most badass woman character on television) does a bunch of badass shit to protect her children and this dude calls her more of man than some other men, and she says nothing in response. Really? Really?

Ryan and I have talked a lot about these things. I have told them that I will support whatever they decide to do, but I have also asked them to think about who or what is telling them how their body should look or what it should do. And since then, Ryan has looked more deeply at their gender presentation and what it means. I think, when they realized they were non-binary, about a year ago (because they finally had a term that sort of fit how they had felt their whole life), they felt pressure to conform to whatever they thought a non-binary person “should” look like. And more recently they have started looking deeply at what it means and who they are, as opposed to who they thought they were and who they were supposed to be.

There should be no shame in who you are. If you like the way you look in a shirt with a binder on and also love having breasts when you’re naked! Awesome! Live your best (breast) life. I like my silhouette in clothes with breasts. But I have no emotional attachment to them. They don’t signify anything for me. I wouldn’t be devastated if I had to lose them. But I do like they way I look with a bra on under a shirt. For me, getting my period is a pain in the uterus, but it doesn’t make me a woman. When I stop getting my period, I will still be a woman. I think. Who knows what I’ll be by then? If you want to grow a beard, take T! But a beard doesn’t make you a man. And neither, incidentally, does testosterone.

If gender is not science, then no one should be able to tell anyone else what gender they are or how they should present or behave. If, tomorrow, I realized that I was, in fact, a man, I shouldn’t have to change a single thing about myself. It’s no one’s business if I don’t have surgery or don’t take T or don’t even change my name. I get to be whatever I want to be. Someone else’s discomfort at that because it challenges their ideas of gender is not my business. If the day after tomorrow I realize that I’m not a man, that’s okay, too.

Be who you are. Look however you want to look. But do it for you. Life is hard. Getting from point a to point b is a fucking slog. You don’t have to make everyone else comfortable while you’re doing it.

Thank you for your time. I will now spend the rest of the evening burping, farting, and jerking off.

P.S. If you've gotten this far and enjoyed what you've read, please consider sharing this with your social media pals. Thanks!

Notes from the Road
Part Twelve: Los Angeles
One



First some light housekeeping.
 
1)      I should rename this blog “101 Excuses for not Writing.”
2)      I’m going to skip the part where I give my excuses for not writing.
3)      We have a lot of catching up to do.
 
I’m in L.A. for a recurring role on a new TV show, which is amazing and awesome and what I’ve been vision-boarding in my head for years, but it means juggling a lot of logistics including flights, places to stay, transportation, child care. As the great philosopher, Bret Michaels once said: “Every rose has it’s thorn.” He also said, “Unskinny bop, bop, bop, bop/Unskinny bop, nothin’ more to say.” And I think we should all remember that.
 
I don’t celebrate my wins like I should. When I tell people about this gig I find myself downplaying it. “It’s just a recurring guest star. We’ll see.” I hear myself saying it, and I know I should be proud. I got this job myself (with the help of a couple friends). I heard about the role from a friend, called Jordan who happens to be close with one of the producers and got her to talk me up, casting reached out, I made them a tape and booked the gig. I did that. On Monday I was sitting in therapy saying something had to change. That I couldn’t keep banging my head against the wall. That I had a hard time being present with Monty because I’m always worried about my next job. I resolved to keep reminding myself that I am doing what I need to do in my career to book work; To stop constantly stressing; To do what I can to book work and then turn away from it and focus on the rest of my life. Less than 48 hours later I was on a plane to Los Angeles.
 
Life is weird.

I’m back.
 
I’ve been back in NYC for a little over a month. I got home and immediately felt overwhelmed by the task of unpacked my room which I had literally just finished unpacking when I left for eight months to go on tour. It is a right mess in here and every time I tell Monty to put away his toys, I FULLY recognize that I’m being a hypocrite.
 
The walls in this apartment seem to be made of particle board and hope. So, hanging anything is a Sisyphean feat. Also, I’m unemployed and yet I seem to have no time to get shit done.
 
I woke up last night some time between 4 and 5am (I think?) and could not get back to sleep. Monty was up and ready to go at 6:30. I got him off to camp and even managed to have breakfast. I wore a dress (period piece), which I haven't done in eight months, so I felt a bit like a gorilla in a tutu. Then I made the grievous mistake of getting to an audition an hour and a half early… By the time they brought me in, I was hungry and exhausted and wearing a dress, and I am 100% sure I made a complete and total ass of myself. This was for a casting director I’ve known for two decades, a director I would love to work with, and an artistic director I’ve been forging a friendship with. Guys. It was a stinker. And there were no windows in the room, so they won’t even be able to air it out. Words were coming out of my face and I was like, “Why are you talking like that? What happened to the fucking choices we just spent the hour and half going over?” I am MORTIFIED. If you catch me on the subway today randomly yelling “fuck!”, you’ll know why. I hate this feeling.
 
And so, it’s 1:30 in the afternoon and I’m lying in bed, writing this, and having a beer before I take a nap. Yes, my room is still a disaster area. There are bins and boxes that need to be gone through and their contents put…somewhere? But I want to crawl UNDER my bed (which I can’t do because I haven’t put the frame on risers yet because time, so there’s no way to get ANYTHING under it (except dust…)).
 
That’s it. That’s all I have. I’m swear I’m going to post more frequently. Because I have a lot to share about gender identity, single-parenting, NYC, etc.

​And because it’s a great excuse to not unpack.

Notes from the Road

Part Eleven: San Francisco

One


Six shows left.
 
I have been trying and trying and trying to write something, but nothing is coming out. Which is to say, lots is coming out, but none of it is post-worthy.
 
I didn’t fall asleep until after 5am last night (this morning). When I was younger, my insomniac thoughts inevitably let to spiral of suicidal ideation. I’m happy to say that doesn’t happen anymore, but I still just lie there for hours on end, worrying over shit I need to do.  Or things I want to do but “can’t.” Or things I should have done but didn’t. Or things I shouldn’t have done but did. And before I know it, it’s 4am and I don’t want to take melatonin because it’s too late, even though I don’t officially have anything to do the next day until 7pm and could easily sleep all day if I had to. And I know I’m supposed to get up and do something to make myself sleepy, but that always seems counterintuitive. So instead I just lie there.
 
I live in a constant state of panic that I won’t get enough sleep. When Saint WhoeverItIs meets me at the pearly gates, he’s going to show me a tally of how much of my life was wasted in sleeping or trying to sleep.
 
I have to keep reminding myself that I am working right now, and I’m preparing to be a full time single parent again, and I’m in the middle of the end-of-the-run panic; That panic that comes with the end of any job, but is compounded by having to pack up eight months-worth of crap (What do I do with loose packets of Throat Coat tea? And what does this random cord go with? And why are there so many pennies at the bottom of my tour trunk??). So, it’s not like I have endless actual or mental time and space for creativity. It makes sense that my brain isn’t creating during my “free time.” It would just be nice if it would shut down at night. Maybe that’s when I should be trying to write.
 
Here’s evidence:
 
False Start Number 1:
 
I left my…back massager in Charlotte. I don’t know how I could have managed that. It’s a massive piece of technology that plugs into the wall. But somehow, I left it on the floor by the bed and got all the way to the airport before I realized what I had done.
 
One would think, after more than 20 flights in a year, I would know how to pack a suitcase. Inevitably, however, I’m standing with a TSA agent as they go through my carry-on, saying, “I don’t need that. Just throw it away!” I swear to god, if there were a zombie apocalypse, I’d be the one bringing up the rear with a Smarte Carte™, going, “Don’t worry about me guys, I’ll catch up!” That’s assuming I woke up in time to escape the zombies in the first place.
 
So, as the TSA agent is fingering my belongings in the Charlotte airport I’m suddenly aware there’s no “back massager” in my bag for me to be embarrassed about. I mean, we’re all adults here, and we all know that we massage our own backs from time to time, but still. And afterward, as I’m racing to the bathroom to relieve myself of the 16 ounces of water I downed in the security checkpoint line so I wouldn’t have to throw away another official The Humans Water Bottle™, I’m frantically looking up the phone number for the Air B&B host to ask him if he found my back massager. He didn’t.
 
He didn’t find a foot long VIBRATOR left behind in an otherwise empty apartment.
 
Hopefully whoever *didn’t* find it, cleaned it before they *didn’t* massage their own back with it. I mean, I have a very clean…back. But still.
 
Anyway, the point is, I had to buy a new vibrator. I did a bunch of research and settled on one I think I’ll be happy with. So, I find it online, enter all my info, spend five minutes deciding where to have it shipped (Tempe? San Francisco? Seattle? New York? Where the hell am I going to be when and do I need to add another thing to my suitcases?), and hit “Submit” and suddenly find myself wondering when I’m going to have time for that particular form of self-care. I will be spending at least the entire summer sharing a bed with my five-year-old. And yes, I know I have a shower, but the issue is more complicated than that.
 
At 38 I am just figuring myself out. I have a child to raise. I’m going to be living with his father. What am I going to do? Bring a parade of gender queer folk into our house and have super quiet queer sex and then get up and take my son to school and go about my day?
 
It’s been a super fun, interesting ride, guys. I started out kind of Bi and ended up full on poly queer. Polyqueer? Is that a facebook orientation choice yet? But I think the ride is over. I think I have to get off the carousel and watch from the sidelines. I don’t have $5 to ride again. I didn’t get enough in while it lasted.


                                                    ************************************ 

 
False Start Number 2:

Something very strange is happening. Or maybe it isn’t happening. Or maybe it is happening but it’s not that strange. Or maybe it’s not strange that it is happening.
 
Or maybe I’m strange?
 
I tried on a button down the other day and Ryan told me to button it up to the top (universal non-femme Lesbian calling card). I turned to look at myself and got hit with a wave of feelings that were hard to grab ahold of. Looking at myself in this shirt buttoned all the way up I felt giddy, confused, unattractive, attractive, handsome, pretty, ugly. And turned on. And sad.
 
I saw a pair of knee-length, baggy shorts and thought they might look good on me and felt flooded with sadness.
 
I see sequined dresses and think how pretty they are but can’t imagine myself ever wearing one again.

Why is it making my sad? 
 
I tried on one of Ryan’s binders and hated my silhouette.
 
When I was young I wanted breasts so badly. I thought breasts would be the signal to the world that was no longer a little girl. I was a woman. The ones I got are small, but they get the job done. And after nursing my son, I’ll admit, they don’t stand at attention quite like they used to. But they make a nice shape and I like them. I don’t want to bind them.
 
The concept of “gender nonconforming” is complicated. To say that you don’t conform to a prescribed gender is to implicitly admit that there is something normative to conform to. And I know we live within a system that relies on language to convey ideas, and in this system, we have generally operated under the assumption that women are one way and men are another. I think a more accurate term would be “nonconforming to made up gender ideals,” but economy of language is important, so we’ll stick with “gender nonconforming” until we can all agree that there is no such thing as a gender norm to conform to.

And in the meantime, I'll try to figure out what damn clothes I want to wear.
 
                                                       **********************************
 
Maybe if I chose to write about a TV show, or food, or puppies I’d be having an easier time. But, no, I’ve decided that I need to have an identity crisis in public.
 
I need a nap.

Notes from the Road
Part Ten: Tempe
Two
 
I think I’ve written before about feeling like a vague person. I’m not sure if I have…
 
Once, when I was a teenager, a friend of mine told me what his favorite restaurant in NYC was. I had lived there all my life, but I couldn’t point to my favorite spots. To be fair, NYC is always changing, and restaurants come and go before you get a chance to love them most of the time. But still, I felt like, as a native New Yorker, I should have deeper roots. I felt like I was from there, but not of there. Is that a thing?
 
Anyway, that got me thinking about other things I could try to point to as being definitions of who I was. I am Daisy. I like… Did I have a favorite color? A favorite band? A personal style? I felt like loose kelp on the surface of the sea, just going wherever the tide took me. I am Daisy. I am like loose kelp.
 
Evidence of this vagueness can also be found in my knack for letting others’ reality become my own. In grade school the boys teased me for being weird. So, I thought I was weird. Kids called me nosy. So I decided I was nosy and worked to be so not nosy that I became the person who knew everything months after everyone else. A shithead I dated in my late teens told me I wasn’t the singer I thought I was, so I decided I was a bad singer, and then worked to make that a reality.
 
It works retroactively, too. A few years ago, I had a traumatizing fight with my parents in which my stepmother counted the ways I had made her life miserable when I was a teenager. She painted a picture of me that made me look like every “bad kid” in an afterschool special. Never mind that I had achieved the highest honor in my profession, stayed in school, still worked professionally, maintained…grades, never got arrested, generally came home on time, went to college early, and didn’t even live with her for the vast majority of her time in our lives. I was a nightmare, she told me. I was married and divorced, and a single mom in her mid-thirties who was asking her parents if she could stay with them for a few months because she was in crisis. I was a failure.
 
I reached out to the therapist I had been seeing during the period of time in question. She saw me every week through most of my teen years, sometimes twice a week. I told her everything my stepmom had said, and she looked at me with surprise and said, “That’s not at all how I remember you being. And I just reread your file.”
 
Thank fake god I had her. If I hadn’t had someone so unequivocally challenge my stepmom’s account of me, I would have let that narrative take hold. I would have allowed her to rewrite my history. From then on out I would have been convinced that I had been a hellhound of a teenager and a failure of an adult.
 
Let’s pause here for me to say that my stepmother has since apologized for her words and we continue to work on repairing our relationship. I am not sharing this story as a means of garnering sympathy or inciting rancor. It’s just an extremely acute example of the power of someone’s opinion of me.
 
Something I’m learning (in therapy with this woman who saved my life retroactively) is that when someone tells me something about me that I know to be false, rather than remembering that their opinion doesn’t matter, I get livid. When I was younger I got guilty. Someone said I was shitty, and I would instantly feel guilty for being shitty. Today, someone tells me I’m shitty, and I’m instantly like, “You’re shitty, you shitty shit shit!” Though not actually out loud to them. No, instead I just let it fester in my gut and I complain about it ad nauseum.
 
Who has time anymore?
 
As I round the corner on 40, along with establishing and maintaining clear boundaries, I am also doing my best to not give a fuck what people think of me. I realize I’m an actor, and my livelihood depends on people’s opinions of me. So, let’s say, short of anything having to do with my career, I’m waving the white flag, putting in earplugs, and forging ahead.
 
My job, anyone’s job, in life, is to try to go through the world with compassion and love. That’s what I continually strive to do. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt (sometimes to a fault). I try to honor who people are and give them space to be themselves (Which should not be confused with accepting them into my inner, or even outer circle. I can honor you from afar.) I try to not let anyone walk all over me. And I’m trying to not let anyone tell me who I am. I am not perfect at it. Hell, I’m probably not that good at it.
 
But I am trying.

Notes from the Road
Part Ten: Tempe
One
 
I didn’t post from Dallas or from my lay off week in Los Angeles. Ryan was with me for the first week in Dallas and Monty and my stepmom were there for the second. Los Angeles was a blur of Disneyland, seeing friends, and getting food poisoning.
 
Sometimes I wish I were blogging under a pseudonym. There’s a lot I feel restricted from writing because of respecting the privacy of family and friends. Not that any of my friends read my blog. But, that’s okay. Also, sometimes I’d like to write about super sensitive thoughts that I know would be hurtful to put out into the world, even though we’re all adults and can agree that sometimes we think “shitty” things about people we love. Or sometimes we want to throw loved ones off a roof, but we can’t publicly admit that because the next week, when they “fall” off a roof, we’ll be the first suspect. But come on, who among us hasn’t fantasized in great detail about staring deep into the eyes of those we love the most while we watch the life drain from their face?
 
Am I right?!
 
ON A TOTALLY DIFFERENT SUBJECT:
 
My family of origin is in crisis. Again. I am working really hard on maintaining boundaries. Boundaries in general were somewhat lacking in my house growing up. It’s taken me nearly 40 years to be tentatively okay with expressing what I am and am not comfortable dealing with and not feeling like a villain for it.
 
I worked for a PhD in Psychology at a university who, when I told her I was trying to establish boundaries in my workplace she said, “But not with me, right?” She was a PSYCHOLOGIST. And my BOSS. So, I guess I shouldn’t fault my layperson family for not being able to handle boundaries.
 
Sidebar: My therapist at the time was like, “Hey, good job finding your family at work!” And she didn’t mean, like, my Fam. She meant, my family. Adult children of alcoholics have a knack for repeating the past over and over and over. And over.
 
In fact, here’s a boundary: If my family is reading this, I’m not interested in feedback. I apologize up front if your feelings are hurt, but I promise I won’t say anything libelous or personally damning. I won’t reveal anything personal or private about you. I will only talk about my own part. K? K. I recognize that we probably have different perspectives on this. Let’s agree that we have in the past and continue to this day to hurt each other’s feelings, and disagree about fundamental things, like how to communicate. And I honestly no longer care whether you think I’m healthy. Take it to your therapists. In fact, maybe don’t read my blogs for a while. Let’s agree that this is my outlet and you guys don’t necessarily need/want to know any of this. Cool? Great! Look how much work we’re doing!
​
Isn’t therapy great? Are we so lucky to have people we pay to listen to our shit and *not* judge us (they are totally judging us. I’ve been doing therapy over the phone while I’m on tour and I’m 100% convinced my therapist is rolling her eyes and making BJ gestures while I whine about my family.).
 
There’s three weeks left to the tour. I am eternally grateful for this play, and for this experience, but I’m ready to break up with Brigid Blake. I’m ready for Stephen Karam to put me in another show. Stephen, I’m available as of June 18th. I’m ready to be auditioning again. I’m ready to live in my apartment that I hardly got to live in. I’m ready to unpack for the last time in a while. I’m ready to have Monty with me for the summer. I’m ready to be on Tales of the City. Lauren Morelli, I’m available as of June 18th.
 
I’m ready to be home.

Notes from the Road
​Part Nine: Charlotte 
One

(Composed in Charlotte. Published in Dallas)


Remember bookstores? I remember when Barnes and Nobles was opening stores everywhere causing small, independent stores to close. We resisted Barnes and Nobles for as long as we could, until our options were so limited that if we needed a book, more often than not, we had no choice but to put our politics aside and go to a Barnes and Noble just this once. But, look, there’s a comfy chair in the air conditioning I can curl up in for a couple hours. And, you know, I’m feeling a little peckish, I’m just going to pop into the Starbucks INSIDE the bookstore. And, oh right, I need to get some thank you cards, and my nephew’s birthday is coming up soon, I should get him a board game, and I definitely need this Hot Firefighters from the NYFD wall calendar, you know, this place isn’t so bad…

A few years ago, people were complaining on social media (which some of us cranks used to refer to as the enemy of true human interaction) about Amazon causing all the Barnes and Nobles branches to shut down. It was delicious irony (I think. I’m still not entirely sure how to use that word properly). I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything other than smug. Maybe I felt a tiny bit of dread. One company swallowing up all the others is…dreadful.

Oddly enough, the branch on West 8th St. in Greenwich Village closed in 2012 and that property has sat vacant for five and a half years. I wonder why the landlord decided having no rent income was better than reducing the rent to keep a business open. Soon enough I’m sure it’ll be a Whole Foodsmazon.

Anyway, now there’s no small or huge bookstores and we’re supposed to be boycotting Amazon, and where the hell am I supposed to go to buy a new book? (The answer to this question is here or here.)


I wanted to buy My New Gender Workbook: How To Become A Real Man A Real Woman The Real You Or Something Else Entirely for Ryan, so I looked up the nearest LGBT-friendly bookstore and took a long walk yesterday to a place called “White Rabbit.” I suppose I could have called ahead to see if they even had it (they didn’t), and I would have found out that it was less of a bookstore and more of a generic sex shop with a smattering of used books in the front, mostly from the early 2000s. But, had I known that, I wouldn’t have bothered taking the walk, and I would have missed the adorable clothing shop called “The Frock Shop” where I stopped in to see if I could find something for a wedding in Austin next month.

I suppose it’s precisely not ironic that I was looking for a book about gender identity and instead ended up spending a good half hour looking at myself in the mirror in a flowing jumpsuit and wondering if it properly represented my own gender identity.

Someone once sent me a link to a reddit thread (the first and last time I have ever looked at reddit) about my breast milk tweet. The discussion was mostly about how my tweet did or didn’t represent properly the current state of the U.S. economy, with a handful of comments about my looks, or that someone knew someone who worked with me at a survival job and said I was a pain in the ass. No, I did not read all 300 plus comments. But one I did happen to see said that I was obviously crazy and used another tweet as proof. That tweet was “If I leave the house in anything other than jeans, I feel like a drag queen.” Yep, any woman who feels uncomfortable in a skirt is crazy.

My reticence at wearing dresses and skirts has only grown since I sent out that tweet in 2012. The last time I wore a skirt was in November of last year. I can’t really imagine myself wearing one at all these days. I don’t know what it says about me. Or that it says anything about me. Or why it would say anything about anyone. But I keep wondering what it means. What does it mean that I finally realized I was GAY gay only a few months before I finally accepted that I hate the way I look in skirts and dresses? Am I subconsciously trying to signal to the world that I’m gay? And to be clear (because that’s what we have to do whenever we share any opinion on the internet now), I don’t think that lesbians don’t wear dresses. I’m not saying that. But, you know, stereotypes and all.

Who am I now that I’m becoming okay with who I am?