Editor’s Notes: Bubble Trouble
Bubble Trouble // Header by Viv Le
This is the fifth Editor’s Notes I’ve written for Autostraddle since becoming the Managing Editor. I previously wrote them for Time Zones Week, for the 2022 Pride package, for Diner Week, and for Horror Is So Gay. They’re always a joy to write; it’s incredible to know our members care enough about the creative work we produce to want to glimpse behind the curtain a bit, learn about the editorial process, and see how the soda gets made. They’re also tricky to write. It feels navel-gazing to examine my own editorial process. It feels vulnerable, too. This job is hard! It’s also the best job I’ve ever had. As a lot of the essays and pieces in Bubble Trouble explore, many things can be true at once.
This is the work I most wanted to do when I stepped into this editor role, over a year ago now — wtf is time! Well, this and expanding our literature vertical. But publishing strong and strange works of creative nonfiction is absolutely tied to the goal of expanding our literary coverage. Working at Autostraddle means seeing how everything’s connected — in both the figurative sense of finding queerness in so many crevices and corners but also in the literal sense of seeing that every category and subcategory of this website, every department, touches all the time. We’re not a monolith of a magazine but, as Nico has been putting it so eloquently lately, a quilt. It’s patchwork, and sometimes you can see the seams, and sometimes not every patch is specifically for you, but then sometimes you’ll find a patch that feels as if it’s peering into your soul because it’s so for you.
Bubble Trouble is just one microcosm of that queer patchwork. In this weeklong series, we had stories of sobriety, a Willy Wonka-inspired satire, canned wine ratings, contemplations of individual identity, interpersonal relationships, grief, grind culture, youth, failure, and folly. Every piece had a different point entirely, a different vibe. And yet when I looked at them all together in the weeks leading up to the series’ launch, I felt like I had a coherent spread. A lovely quilt.
I say it every time, but it bears repeating: I can only do these “weird” themed packages because of the support from our A+ members. This is not work that sells ads or gets what I like to call “crossover clicks” (straights — perhaps accidentally — ending up on Autostraddle dot com). It’s work we do from a place of passion, curiosity, and playfulness. Broad prompts like “diner week,” “time zones week,” and “bubble trouble” (which started as “soda week” before I decided to spice it up) allow for experimentation, expansion, and exploration on the page. It’s so fucking fun to edit this shit.
And yet, every single time, there’s at least one writer who worries what they’ve written isn’t “gay enough.” It doesn’t matter how many times I say that isn’t really a thing; it’s an easy insecurity to have. As queer writers, we’re so often trapped in the double bind of feeling like we have to suppress our queerness in certain contexts or package our queerness into tight, pretty, digestible narratives. But at a publication like Autostraddle where the writers are queer and our intended audience is also queer, we can and should be queer on the page in the exact way we want to be. Loudly, at times. With more subtlety at others. We don’t have to over-explain certain language the way a mainstream publication requires, but we also don’t have to over-explain more abstract things. When a queer writer writes of struggling to differentiate between what she wants and what she believes other people think she wants, a queer reader intuits that THAT’S GAY — without it needing to be explicitly said. The queerness found in a lot of these Bubble Trouble essays isn’t necessarily surface-level fizz but something deeper in the gut.
I wanna keep making some weird patches for this quilt. Thank you for your support in helping me do so.
Bubble Trouble is a series helmed by Autostraddle Managing Editor Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about the nostalgia, effervescence, and never-ending appeal of carbonated beverages.
Quiz: Escape This Bad Date and We’ll Tell You Which LaCroix Flavor You Are
Bubble Trouble // Header by Viv Le
Bad dates are unfortunately part and parcel of the entire dating experience. For every good date, there are at least three bad dates. I made that ratio up, but it feels right. Usually, what qualifies as a bad date varies from person to person, but I think that the bad date I’ve described below is universally bad! To make it worse, imagine that it’s a first date!! Good luck trying to escape, especially if you’re a Sag (commitment issues) <3 (Sorry to the fire signs in the room, there is some fire sign hate in this piece but just so everyone knows I am a Sag sun and Aries rising so I am allowed to make fun of fire signs!!)
If you make it through, I’ll tell you which LaCroix flavor you are!!
Bubble Trouble is a series helmed by Autostraddle Managing Editor Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about the nostalgia, effervescence, and never-ending appeal of carbonated beverages.
Ranking All the Lipsmackers Chapsticks in the Coca-Cola Party Pack
Bubble Trouble // Header by Viv Le
I bought the Lip Smacker Coca-Coca-themed variety pack of chapsticks, and the first bit of feedback I received on Instagram upon posting this incredibly important not-at-all-a-cry-for-help purchase was: Where is the Dr. Pepper?
The Dr. Pepper Lip Smacker, you see, apparently still has many of us in a chokehold. And for good reason. That shit not only smelled and tasted delicious but also possessed a certain je ne sais queer about it…the coolest, most desirable girls in the late 90s and early 2000s seemed to have an endless supply of Dr. Pepper Lip Smacker chapticks. The perhaps quieter and nerdier girls who envied and desired said cool girls also kept Dr. Pepper Lip Smacker nearby, the nerdiest among us wearing it on a chain looped through our jeans belt loops, dangling at our side like a cowboy’s pistol. We could taste how their lips tasted without ever having to kiss. The power of Dr. Pepper Lip Smacker is impossible to describe, but it is undeniable and, apparently, lasting.
But Dr. Pepper is not a Coca-Cola entity, my friends! So of course it is not featured in the Coca-Cola Lip Smacker party pack. But the stream of complaints I received about its absence led me down a research rabbit hole. WTF HAPPENED TO DR. PEPPER LIP SMACKER? The Pepsi party pack does not feature it. It’s nowhere to be found. Apparently, it was unceremoniously discontinued in 2020 after a license between Dr. Pepper branding and Lip Smacker expired. Why not just renew the license! Why must we be punished! Now the only way to get your sticky little fingers on Dr. Pepper Lip Smacker chapsticks is to purchase old ones on eBay, which is not something I’d necessarily advise.
And with that bit of chapstick lesbian lore, let us now take a very scientific look at the Coca-Cola Lip Smacker party pack. I went down the line in the order the flavors came in and journaled my thoughts as I wore them. I’ve compiled those gay thoughts into the mini essays/evaluations below. Chapsticks were rated on a scale of 0 to 5 Obsessive Crushes, because Lip Smacker chapsticks just instantly conjure the aromas, sounds, and fluttering feelings of Obsessive Crushes from my youth.
COCA-COLA CLASSIC
My first thought upon removing the cap from the Coca-Cola Classic Lip Smacker is wow they really made it the color of Coke. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was not that! More specifically, it’s the color of Coke from a fountain running low on its syrup — you know, when you realize too late that you’ve filled a cup with soda water with merely a whisper of Coke flavoring. That’s the color of this chapstick.
A confession: I specifically like weak Coke when eating Jimmy John’s — I think because the fountains at Jimmy John’s are always running weak so it’s what I expect, much like I expect a Coke from McDonald’s to be crisp, flavorful, and somehow the best thing I’ve ever sipped in my life every single time.
The chapstick smells exactly like the Haribo cola gummies, and while that is not exactly the scent of an actual Coke, I’ll take it! I apply some and instinctively lick my lips. These bad boys are just as sweet as I remember — basically a sugar bomb for your mouth. As far as tasting notes, I’m getting…sugar. Do they put actual sugar in these? I refuse to investigate.
Tbh, not a ton of flavor and certainly nothing like drinking a Coke, but I imagine there is a scientific explanation for why you cannot perfectly translate a liquid soda to a solidified waxy stick whose purpose is cosmetic rather than gastronomic.
I’m wearing this chapstick to a gay Capricorn’s birthday party, but he has been very adamant about the fact that it is not a birthday party. Instead, we are instructed to refer to it as a “Thursday evening fire pit soiree with balls.” We have been instructed to bring “foods shaped like balls” to this party. I have made grape jelly chili sauce crockpot meatballs, and someone else has made homemade arancini. We have also been instructed to wear all black, and I have just seen the feature film M3GAN, so I don a black ribboned doll-like Selkie dress, add more ribbons, and part my hair in the middle. Tbh, Coca-Cola chapstick is the unexpectedly perfect match for this ensemble. I look like a haunted doll, and I smell like the past.
Chapstick Rating
3.75 out of 5 Obsessive Crushes
Scores some points for nostalgia in its simplest form, but I wasn’t attached enough to remember to regularly reapply at the Thursday evening fire pit soiree with balls and promptly forgot I was wearing anything on my lips at all.
COCA-COLA CHERRY
This one is, spiritually, the closest to Dr. Pepper (RIP). I know Dr. Pepper as a soda does not technically feature cherry, but there were cherry undertones to the chapstick, were there not?
I apply this one and immediately ask my fiancé Kristen to kiss me, perhaps subconsciously brainwashed by the Katy Perry cherry chapstick lyric all these years later. The year That Song came out was 2008, and I had technically only kissed girls up to that point in life and yet identified rather adamantly as a heterosexual woman. In other words, That Song was my anthem. (And I still think it kind of slaps, sorry.)
Chapstick Rating
4.75 out of 5 Obsessive Crushes
The only thing keeping it from a perfect 5 is its color, which is bright red, and I preferred the realism of the original Coke chapstick more. Cherry Coke is not bright red!
COCA-COLA VANILLA
Y’ALL?????? Are these supposed to be soda-flavored or soda-scented????? Is it supposed to be both??????? So far, in every instance, I do get a distinct aroma, but the flavor tastes the same! It just tastes sweet! The package itself says “best flavor forever,” and I do agree that that aptly describes a Coca-Cola, the soda with such sensational flavor that every time EVERY TIME my fiancé has a sip of one she reacts as if she is tasting it for the first time and says something to the effect of damn, that’s good. But flavor-wise, these chapsticks leave a lot to be desired! And also, so far, all taste the same!
I wear this one to our neighborhood farmer’s market and then later to our favorite natural wine shop for a tasting, and I realize I sound like a very particular lesbian cliche, and I will not apologize! Wearing this chapstick while tasting wine makes for an experience I’d describe as interesting but would not exactly recommend.
Chapstick Rating
2.75 out of 5 Obsessive Crushes
It probably would have scored better if it hadn’t been paired with a punchy pet nat.
SPRITE
This smells like summer and chlorine clinging to wet hair and sidewalk chalk and mowed grass and lemon Italian ice. I mean, not literally. It literally smells like Sprite. It’s probably the most accurately scented one in the party pack so far. But when I smell it, I smell all those other things, too. This shit is pure nostalgia in a tube. I never even wore Sprite chapstick in my youth, and yet I feel like I’m returning home as I swipe some on my lips.
Chapstick Rating
4.25 out of 5 Obsessive Crushes
I want to go on a three hour bike ride with this chapstick that ends right at dusk and then split a grilled cheese and an actual Sprite with it. Does that make sense?
BARQ’S ROOT BEER
This is by far the best scent so far, and this might also be the first one with a discernible taste difference, but if I were to describe that taste it would just be…tingly. Not quite as tingly as those “lip plumping” lip glosses that were popular among the meanest girls when I was in middle school but definitely a touch of effervescence.
I’m in Louisville, visiting my sister who moved here for work over a year ago, and I’ve just asked her and my best friend Becca who is also on this trip to be not my “bridesmaids” but my “VIP” at my wedding, because these semantics have suddenly become important to me as someone who is trying to navigate the push and pull of planning a wedding that will employ a lot of cultural traditions and not wanting to be boring and heteronormative. I frequently feel like I’m failing at finding whatever the fuck the balance should be here, but I shall stop thinking about this now, because I would like to think merely of root beer chapstick and how it prickles my lips rather pleasantly.
This is also perhaps the most I’ve actually needed chapstick since this experiment began, because Kentucky is much drier than what I’m used to in Florida. My lips are genuinely chapped!
After a couple glasses of wine at the natural wine and tinned fish bar here that I’ve already decided to make part of my personality despite not living in this city nor this state, I notice my lips are chapped. I’ve briefly forgotten about the root beer salve in my purse. So I ask to borrow my fiancé’s chapstick, which is nice, because its minty taste always reminds me of some of our earliest makeouts. Then I remember I’m “supposed” to be wearing the root beer chapstick for a piece I’m “writing” for my “job.” And root beer and mint chapstick, it turns out, do not mix well!
Chapstick Rating
4.25 out of 5 Obsessive Crushes
Lots of points for the novelty of the slight tingle and probably would have scored more if not for the mint mishap.
FANTA GRAPE
Okay, now we’re talking flavor. This shit tastes like grape soda for real. I apply it in our kitchen, and Kristen points out it’s the first to have a hint of a tint. Once upon a time, I wore really dramatic lipstick colors — blues, blacks, dark purples. But once Kristen and I started dating, I stopped on account of all the making out. I know there are allegedly some lip stains that stay on, but it all just seemed like a lot of work, and since I already do dramatic eye makeup, I was fine giving up lip colors. So any time I wear something with even a slight tint, it’s obvious! And this has a whisper of purple to it, almost like I’m somewhere cold or have been obsessively biting my lips.
Speaking of tinted lips, before she decided to propose on Christmas morning, Kristen almost proposed a few days before Christmas when we were alone in a cute part of the city where my parents live, but I was so cold that my lips were blue, and she realized that a proposal might not be the most romantic vibe in that moment.
This chapstick also reminds me of the time Kristen and I went bowling in Austin and the “drink special” was a $3 concoction made with vodka and…Sprite Grape?! I didn’t even know Sprite Grape was a thing outside of Coca-Cola Freestyle machines? And according to my Google search just now, it in fact IS NOT a thing outside of Coca-Cola Freestyle machines???? Was there some sort of underground soda operation happening at this Texas bowling alley? Were they just calling Fanta Grape “Sprite Grape” in that way of like calling all soda “coke” in the south? Help?
Chapstick Rating
5 out of 5 Obsessive Crushes
Taste! Tint! She’s a winner.
FANTA ORANGE
Not to get all I Live In Florida Now, but I have absolutely been citrus-pilled and think orange is one of the best flavors the planet has to offer. This smells like orange! But it admittedly has a blandish taste that’s back to just the “notes of sugar” of the early chapsticks in the pack. Still, it’s not a bad option! Kind of feels and tastes like I had a creamsicle, but like half an hour ago, like the memory of eating a creamsicle.
Chapstick Rating
4.25 out of 5 Obsessive Crushes
If it were more prominently orange-tasting, it could easily score a perfect five. This is like having a crush on your bully — hot, but there’s something that’s undeniably off.
FANTA STRAWBERRY
And so, folks, we have arrived at the conclusion of our little experiment. We end with the Fanta Strawberry, which is the only chapstick in the pack for which I have not tasted the soda it is based on! It sounds like it would be refreshing, and I in fact recently had an artisanal strawberry rhubarb soda that was absolutely delicious. But I have never tasted the strawberry-flavored Fanta, and now I want to!
It’s late. I’ve been trying to put on these chapsticks during times when I’m doing something at least moderately interesting, but the thing I’m doing right now is writing this piece, because I’m down to the deadline wire, so yes, that means I’m writing this section in real time, essentially live blogging the experience of applying this strawberry chapstick at my desk, smacking my lips, and…immediately feeling like I want to dance?
Fanta Strawberry Lip Smacker is Hot Girl Chapstick. The scent is subtle, but it smells femmey and mean. I feel like I’ve put on a costume, and I like it.
If the point of this experiment was an exercise in scent-memory and nostalgia, this does feel like a fitting ending. Nostalgia is heady and can feel like a quick hit of joy, but ultimately, it’s muted, a blunt blade, something that’s not quite real but a hazy simulacrum.
Chapstick Rating
3 out of 5 Obsessive Crushes
The scent is faint and fades quickly. But when I do get a whiff of it, I feel sunkissed, so it’s not a complete bust.
Want to go on the same adventure I did? You can for about $10!
Bubble Trouble is a series helmed by Autostraddle Managing Editor Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about the nostalgia, effervescence, and never-ending appeal of carbonated beverages.
It “Happened” to Me: I Went to the World of Coca-Cola and Barely Made It Out Alive
Bubble Trouble // Header by Viv Le
The following events are as true as you want them to be.
I.
It started like any other day.
I was up too late doomscrolling on Musk’s Twitter, so I canceled a hot yoga class that the more optimistic version of myself had booked earlier in the week. To celebrate the fact that the sun miraculously came out again (I suppose that is its one job, isn’t it), I popped into a nearby bodega for a soda.
As I perused the soda offerings, I noticed one bottle of Coca-Cola slightly different than the rest. I didn’t know what exactly was different about it, but something was off. I decided to buy that one, because different doesn’t mean bad, and maybe it was a secret new flavor or from a more recent delivery than the other bottles in the store.
As the cashier rang me up, his eyes widened. He informed me that I had in my possession one of the Special Bottles, bottles Mr. Cola himself had wrapped (Mr. Cola is a bit of a legend in these parts). The cashier told me if I scratched off a portion of the label, and I saw a bubble underneath, I won a behind-the-scenes tour of Mr. Cola’s house and the attached World of Coca-Cola. He then showed me six bottles he had tried his luck at, to no avail.
He held out a penny, inviting me to do the same — but just then, a virtual therapy reminder showed up on my phone. I was late. I bid my cashier goodbye and promised to let him know how my scratch-off went (realistically, this was an empty promise). The bottle and I went home, and trudged through a fairly routine therapy session (work was fine, my partner and I were doing well, I did not have anxious spiral thoughts in the past week, it’s okay to charge me for this week’s co-pay thank you for asking).
I had sipped my way slowly through the 16-oz bottle of Coca-Cola during the session, and was about to recycle it when I remembered what the cashier had told me. I found a butter knife (pennies are surprisingly hard to come by when you need them) and began to scratch.
A bubble appeared.
II.
Mr. Cola met us outside of his eyesore of a house. By us, I mean the lucky four winners of Special Bottles. Through some miracle, we were all queer.
Veruca, a tall femme with mini hot sauce bottles for earrings, was the most talkative. She and her partner had just read Polysecure, and had anyone else read it? What was everyone’s attachment style? Aug was her opposite, a quiet masc who (it seemed) didn’t really want to be there. Mic, an investigative journalist, had bribed a stranger for his Special Bottle. He said the truth was more important than his 401k — which he had emptied to gain access to the World of Coca Cola. The stranger did not think it a wise decision, but also now had a retirement fund of his own, so he didn’t press too hard.
Mr. Cola gave us a quick tour of the house. It was a little too heavy on the Coca-Cola decor for me, but I kept that opinion to myself. Well, until now, anyway. It just felt a little too on the nose for a man whose name is Mr. Cola!!
He then took us to the basement and locked the door behind us, which I thought was a little odd but I hate confrontation, so I went with it. Our phones were taken from us, presumably to prevent us from recording (Mic was visibly unhappy when this happened), and once we were deemed sufficiently “safe”, we were permitted entrance to the real World of Coca-Cola.
Not the one in Atlanta — that one is a decoy, as I learned during my backstage tour. This one exists in the subterranean depths of Mr. Cola’s home, safe from prying eyes and screaming children. This one is both a factory and a workshop, but not operated or run by humans at all — save for Mr. Cola. The workers in The World of Coca-Cola are all ethereal bubble-like creatures, unlike any that I’ve encountered before, floating along the red brick paths that line a suspiciously sunny windowless environment.
Nic asked if the workers were paid a living wage. Mr. Cola evaded the question.
Instead, he led us down the brick path to a grassy plain, where a screen and four chairs were set up. He instructed us to sit down and then pressed play on a remote I didn’t realize he had on him.
The short film was an overview of how The World of Coca-Cola (the real one) came to be. Mr. Cola’s ancestors found the world, which was then passed through the Cola generations until it landed in Mr. Cola’s hands. Mr. Cola paused the video, then let us in on a little secret. He was queer.
This was not a secret to any of us, because as fellow queer people, we knew the whole time. Mr. Cola’s presence at circuit parties was well known among the New York queer scene. Nic had matched with him on Grindr.
Mr. Cola then shared another secret, this time one we didn’t already know. The four of us were meant to make our way through increasingly risky challenges to inherit the Cola fortune. He wanted the fortune to go to another queer person, he said. We asked if we could share the fortune, but he said that’s not how billionaires were made, and that if we asked more stupid questions, he’d find four new gay people to do this.
At this point, Aug asked to leave, and Mr. Cola let him go. The rest of us stayed.
III.
Mr. Cola’s tour continued. Nic peppered him with questions, some of which Mr. Cola answered (yes, the sunlight was artificial, no, it was not hard being a billionaire, yes, Nic could take home a Coca-Cola for the road). Veruca and I walked together, taking in the vast world with wide eyes.
We came upon a large body of what I thought was water, but upon closer inspection, revealed itself to be brown and bubbly. Mr. Cola remarked we had found the River of Coca-Cola, and that we could taste it if we wanted.
Veruca and I knelt and dipped our fingers in. Somehow, this wasn’t a health code violation or at least not one that the bubbles felt like warning us about. Mic knelt as well, but where Veruca and I were using our fingers, he cupped his hands and drank his fill from the river. He was thirsty. He turned around to ask Mr. Cola another question, but it seemed Mr. Cola was done with Mic. He made the slightest, almost imperceptible movement with his head towards Mic, and three bubbles charged towards Mic, and plunged him into the river. They then floated upwards, lazily, while Mic was pulled away from us by soda currents.
We never saw Mic again.
IV.
Neither Veruca nor I were offered much in the way of condolences. Mic was our friend, our ally in this weird world, and it didn’t seem like Mr. Cola cared. Instead, he continued the tour.
We walked further along the road, away from the river, and began to trek up a hill. We found ourselves on the edge of a waterfall (a soda-fall?) and Mr. Cola invited Veruca and I to pose for a picture. It was important that the tour be commemorated on social media.
Veruca asked Mr. Cola if he thought it was weird to have us smile immediately after one of our party had been lost to the river. Mr. Cola didn’t like that. He made a small, imperceptible nod (once again) to a nearby bubble, and that bubble pushed Veruca off of the cliff and into the waterfall.
Veruca was gone.
V.
It was just me and Mr. Cola in this weird, bad World of Coca-Cola and I needed to get out.
Mr. Cola held out his hand. I suppose he thought I wanted to assume the throne, to be his successor. I grasped his hand, and he pulled me up from the side of the cliff where Veruca and I had once dangled together.
I was shaken, but otherwise unhurt. He congratulated me on my victory, and asked one of his bubbles to bring over the contract that would seal the deal. I saw my opportunity.
I pushed Mr. Cola off of the same cliff that he used to kill Veruca.
Bubble Trouble is a series helmed by Autostraddle Managing Editor Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about the nostalgia, effervescence, and never-ending appeal of carbonated beverages.
Ranking Prebiotic Sodas by Taste (and Asking a Doctor What They Even Do)
Bubble Trouble // Header by Viv Le
When I was a kid, I drank a lot of pop. Usually Pepsi, or my favorite: the diet cherry vanilla Dr. Pepper, which I’m not sure is still around. Many studies and doctor’s claims have led to the admonishing of pop as a drink; it’s high in sugar from sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup or table sugar. It’s got all manner of dyes and additives in it. If you are a child of the 90s, you’ve probably been exposed to the campaign against pop and the subsequent rise of diet drinks that ensued.
Now, in the 2020s, there are new drinks on the horizon, drinks that make big claims about what they can do for your health. One such drink is the prebiotic soda, a soda that contains prebiotics and sometimes probiotics that are supposed to boost or enhance gut health. My best friend Shanai turned me on to prebiotic sodas, one brand in particular that we’ll cover later. But are these drinks any good — for you and taste-wise?
After I got sober, I was on the sparkling water train and still am. I drank cans and cans of it a day, undeterred because it counted toward my daily water intake. Finding drinks that scratch the alcohol craving itch for me is essential, and right now that thing is prebiotic sodas.
Right now, the three big brands in the US are Olipop, Poppi, and Wildwonder. These are the ones you’ll most likely find at your local Target or any health food store in your area. So, I’m here to give you a rundown of these sodas, the ones I’ve tried, which ones are worth buying, and which ones you should stay away from. Then, I talk to Kira Newman, MD PhD about some of the claims advertisers make about these drinks.
Olipop
Strawberry Vanilla
I’d rank this one probably a 6/10. Very heavy on the strawberry but light on the vanilla.
Cherry Vanilla
Absolutely perfect, no notes on this one. 10/10
Vintage Cola
Very good cola flavor, perfect when ice cold. It really tastes like a Coke, but with something a little extra added. 9/10
Classic Root Beer
My favorite of the bunch. Pair it with your fav vanilla ice cream to make it even better. 10/10
Orange Squeeze
Olipop also makes an Orange Creamsicle flavor that I imagine is divine, this one is kind of a miss for me. Good orange flavor but it’s just lacking the jenny say qua. 5/10
Tropical Punch
Great if you, like me grew, up on Hawaiian Punch, this one is obviously carbonated, so it fulfills that fizzy drink craving. 8/10
Poppi
Raspberry Rose
This one is the first one I tried, and it’s pretty good. I love the raspberry. The rose barely comes through, which is a good choice in my opinion. 8/10
Strawberry Lemon
Reallllyyy good, tastes kind of like candy, Sweet and tart and fizzy, what more could you want? 8/10
Ginger Lime
My favorite one, it tastes soooo good. It’s like a Moscow mule but without the booze, so perfect for my sober ass. 10/10
Orange
It’s good, but it isn’t wowing me. Maybe I’m not an orange soda person. 6/10
Doc Pop
It’s giving Dr. Pepper. It’s giving Bubble Trouble, but in a good way. 9/10
Classic Cola
Again, how are these drinks really delivering on the cola flavor when they are just made of berries and twigs?? 7/10
Root Beer
They got me gal. 10/10
Wildwonder
Guava Rose
This was…horrendous. Lmao. I couldn’t even finish it, it’s in my fridge.
I love guava, so I had high hopes but all you can taste is ROSE. And I’m not averse to floral flavors; my new fav restaurant has a lavender lemonade that is to die for. It’s all about the balance for me, and this one is uneven. 1/10
Peach Ginger
Far better than Guava Rose, the peach in this one is so juicy and refreshing. Great on its own, but I’d add a squeeze of lime to it for a little punch. 7/10
Now, let’s talk doc. Kira Newman is a board-certified internal medicine physician who is finishing her third-year fellowship. Her work focuses on the gut microbiome and all things gastroenterology. She is a physician-scientist with an MD Ph. D., but she has a Ph.D. in epidemiology.
Listen y’all, Kira’s (sorry, Dr. Newman) got credentials, so I was so interested to talk to her about this stuff. Let’s start with the basics: What is a prebiotic?
“A prebiotic, broadly speaking, is a food component or a food additive that’s not digested by the human host,” Dr. Newman explains. “It is broken down by microbes often in the gut with the target being to enhance the growth — or the beneficial behaviors of — a select group of microbes called probiotics.”
So, that gets into our next point: What’s the difference between prebiotics and probiotics? Dr. Newman puts the difference plainly:
“Prebiotics are in lots of different foods. When we say prebiotics we are talking about lots of different kinds of fiber and carbohydrates. So there’s inulin that people often talk about that is found in fairly high amounts in chicory root. These are fibers that we don’t have the enzyme inherently to digest.”
To my understanding, probiotics are the naturally occurring bacteria you find in the gut, which are often also found in foods like dairy products and other things. Prebiotics sort of serve as the “food” for this bacteria, and they are often found in plants like chicory root or cassava root. Together, they keep the “good bacteria” in your gut healthy and thriving.
So, I investigated a little and found some claims or blurbs from the websites of Olipop, Poppi, and Wildwonder that I talked with Dr. Newman about. One thing she said that really struck me was that “these claims aren’t false advertising; they’re vague advertising.”
Why use vague advertising? Well, to sell you shit. Cassava root isn’t found plentifully in the American diet, but it is a good source of prebiotics. If I just tell you, “this drink contains cassava root,” you’re probably not going to care. But if I say “this drink contains cassava root which keeps your gut healthy and keeps you regular,” you’re probably gonna raise an eyebrow and pick up the can.
So, here’s the breakdown of each drink and its claims:
Olipop: (main ingredient – cassava and chicory root) The hunter/gatherer lifestyle was best suited for digestive health.
While this isn’t a direct quote from Olipop, it’s the gist of what they use in their marketing language. Dr. Newman points out one really good discrepancy with this claim, and that is it is impossible to quantify what that means. Hunter-gatherer communities varied in their diets all across the world. They didn’t all eat the same thing, so citing it vaguely in this way isn’t doing a lot of work.
“Is it the diet that’s healthy? Or is it the walking miles a day? Is it living in a close-knit community structure with a reliance on natural circadian rhythms? It’s not a provable claim,” she adds.
Poppi: (main ingredient – apple cider vinegar) “Allison had been looking for solace from her chronic health issues, and ACV answered her prayers — after drinking it every day for a week her symptoms all but vanished.”
Apple cider vinegar is one of those trendy ingredients that has grown in popularity these past few years. Hell, people even drink it straight. Dr. Newman says there is not a lot of quality data on its benefits yet, partly due to the difference in quality across products. Some products have highly refined ACV, some products come in tablets, and it’s unclear if there really is a quantifiable amount of ACV in the tablet, and other products are fermented with live active ingredients.
One thing both Dr. Newman and I noted is that the chronic health issues Allison had that all vanished are never discussed further. Was it back pain? Was it gut related? There’s not a clear answer here.
“I hope that this person feels better. I hope that for everyone who’s taking any medicine or any supplement or engaging in any kind of healthy behavior. I hope it makes them feel better. Would I, based on that claim, recommend this to a patient in a medical or scientific capacity? No.”
Wildwonder: (main ingredients- Chicory Root and Jerusalem Artichoke) “Superfoods inspired by ancient nutrition, such as ginger, turmeric, and rose, work effectively with prebiotics and probiotics to boost your immunity and gut health. From aiding digestion to reducing inflammation, and preventing disease, these magical herbs give you superpowers.”
Dr. Newman and I previously talked about chicory root and how it has high amounts of inulin. She definitely is interested in the comparison to ginger and turmeric, for which there is a lot of data to support those two ingredients’ impact on health, like the anti-inflammatory properties of ginger.
She says that studies on the effects of ingesting prebiotic products like these have mixed results. Many of the studies are not long-term and have small sample sizes, which isn’t to say they shouldn’t be taken seriously at all, but perhaps with a grain of salt.
“There’s often some element of truth. And a lot of that is based off of some lab data or preclinical data or often in these cases, not very large. And these studies of prebiotics in humans have had mixed results as to whether they see effects or not, likely because the effects of prebiotics may be very specific to certain types of bacteria. And whatever someone’s baseline daily intake looks like,” she explains.
She says the question of whether these products work is one of nutritional epidemiology. If a person is replacing their daily cigarette with an Olipop, is it the addition of the Olipop that is having these health effects, or is it the lack of the cigarettes? Not much has been concluded on this in scientific terms, yet.
One thing we did come to as a conclusion? None of these sodas are gonna kill you. They’re not bad for you. So if you enjoy them, keep on sippin! Just be mindful of the claims they make, especially when it comes to your own personal health and your wallet. A four-pack of Poppi is $10, which is a lot of money for a drink. Individually, they sell for around $3. Again, not cheap. If you like them, drink them. Everything in moderation, as they say.
And hey, if you like a regular soda or pop, have one of those, too! I’m over placing value judgments on food and beverages, and sometimes I want a real Dr. Pepper, so I have one. You should feel that freedom as well. Happy Drinking Friends!
Bubble Trouble is a series helmed by Autostraddle Managing Editor Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about the nostalgia, effervescence, and never-ending appeal of carbonated beverages.
Cherry Coke Triptych
Bubble Trouble // Header by Viv Le
February 18, 2020
“I got you a Cherry Coke,” she says with a smile.
I’ve only been seeing this woman for a couple weeks, and this is the first time I’m over at her apartment. She got us lunch, and I was shocked when she placed the bottle in front of me. Had I even mentioned how much I loved Cherry Coke? Maybe she had seen the bottles lined up on the kitchen counter and just assumed? Either way, there it was. I already knew I liked this woman a lot, maybe even loved her, and this was definitely adding to that feeling.
If I did mention Cherry Coke in one of our conversations (and there’s a strong chance I did), it wasn’t something I said intentionally. So if she remembered enough to make sure there was one waiting for me at her apartment, then that means she was listening to me when I was talking. Really listening. It made me feel good to know she was listening.
By making sure there was a Cherry Coke waiting for me, she was trying to make me feel comfortable. We were still learning about each other; we’d only been hooking up for a little more than a week, and things were moving very quickly. I don’t always do well when I’m not on my home turf, but she was telling me not to be scared because she was trying to make me feel at home in her home, too.
I didn’t get a chance to finish the Cherry Coke before I had to leave. But I stuck it in the fridge, and the next time I went over, it was still there waiting for me. It was flat, and I poured it out, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that it was still there.
November 28, 2017
55,058 words. Somehow I’ve done it — I’ve written an entire novel in 28 days. I take a swig of the Cherry Coke sitting on my side table. I can’t remember if this is the first or second one I had tonight. Everything became a blur as I got closer and closer to the end, a goal I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to reach. I certainly didn’t think I’d be done with two days to spare.
This isn’t the first time I’ve attempted to do NaNoWriMo, but it is the first time I’ve successfully completed it. My novel for the year before never made it past the initial idea phase. Now that I’ve done it, my life can begin to get back to normal. My late nights will no longer be a furious race against the clock to make sure I’m hitting my daily word count so I can go to bed before the sun comes up (and with it, my son waking me up.)
I drain the bottle of Cherry Coke and take it to the kitchen. One small square of the counter is where I pile empty bottles for recycling. I feel like I just filled the recycling bag, but yet again, the counter is near full. The meticulous rows of empty bottles are there to remind me I accomplished something really big. I wrote a whole freaking novel in 28 days.
There is no way I could have done it without Cherry Coke. It wasn’t always about the caffeine, though that certainly helped. After writing all day for work, I needed something to keep my brain busy when it was time to work on my novel. The slow hiss of opening the cap was the call to arms to get ready for the night. Sometimes, it was the physical act of drinking that kept me awake and focused. With each sip, Cherry Coke became my cheerleader, telling me, “you got this, just one more sentence, one more paragraph, one more page, then you can rest.”
September 17, 2013
CRACK. The can pops open as I push down on the silver pop top. I take a long swig, and it burns so good as it goes down my throat. This is the stuff, I think to myself as I place the can down on the coffee table. I haven’t had a Cherry Coke in over six months, and it was TIME. I look at the sleeping baby bean in the car seat next to me and rub his little head before taking another swig.
Giving up caffeinated soda was one of the hardest parts of being pregnant. It’s true. Cherry Coke is my lifeline. I started drinking it in high school; I had one every day with my cinnamon raisin bagel for lunch. When my period was coming, I’d always eat peanut butter M&Ms and chase them down with a Cherry Coke; it helped my cramps. When I was having a bad day, I would buy a Cherry Coke on the way home. Once, my coworker needed me to switch shifts, and she did it by bribing me with a Cherry Coke.
But when I see that little face, it feels worth it. Cherry Coke may have been the way to my heart, but it had to make room for this little guy to move in.
Decaffeinated sodas like Sprite and Orange Fanta do not scratch the itch when you need a Cherry Coke. I know as soon as I give birth that the first thing I want to do when I get home is have one. And let me tell you, it’s everything I wanted it to be.
Bubble Trouble is a series helmed by Autostraddle Managing Editor Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about the nostalgia, effervescence, and never-ending appeal of carbonated beverages.
On 2018’s Britney Spears Diet Pepsi Cans and the Most Intense Gaslighting of My Career
Bubble Trouble // Header by Viv Le
We walked to the coffee shop at the corner, down the cobblestone sidewalks of the old neighborhood dominated by row houses. I’d been distracted at work. Two people in my life had died, and I’d also recently left my abusive ex husband, all in one late winter to early spring period. I was untethered in all the best and worst ways. Oblivious, I chatted with the marketing head at the museum where I worked in the fundraising department, asking her how her weekend had been. It was warm, almost in the 70s. I ordered a coffee. The head of marketing didn’t. Hadn’t she invited me out for a coffee? I shrugged it off, took my drink, and followed her outside to the parklet across the street where we sat down in iron bistro chairs. Then, she told me.
I had come back on that day after a long weekend off, spent visiting my mother and family. It was 2018. I’d cracked a diet Pepsi at my desk, a little embarrassed by my tastes, and got to work. My desk, a large L situation with multiple neat filing cabinets, sat between my boss’s desk and the assistant’s and intern’s area. The third floor of the museum’s offices were bisected by glass, where the sole woman who made up the marketing department sat and worked. The Founder of the museum made sure the fundraising department was well-staffed, especially with the capital campaign that was in the quiet phase, for which I was diligently working on prospect research. The marketing head sent me a Slack message. Did I want to go grab a coffee? Sure, I could use a coffee. I said yes.
When I interviewed for the job, it was a three-step process involving two rounds of in-person interviews as well as a written round. In the first round, I had to impress my thin, blonde, heterosexual boss (for whom this was a personality) — and I did well enough. In the second interview, I was starving in more ways than one. My clothes hung on me. Something was wrong in my relationship, and the only thing I could cling to was restricting eating — one of the only markers of my reality wound up being counting calories. In the blazer leftover from the last batch of interviews I’d gone on a year and a half ago, I told the truth about my abilities as I understood them. As Hannah Gadsby once said, “I’m a compulsive truther.” It’s…just…more of a hassle for me to lie, but I also don’t often lie in the socially acceptable ways that would really really help me. I was interviewing for a position that would be incredibly challenging. The museum had been gifted the plans for an artwork, the plans alone worth over a million dollars, and the capital campaign required to build it totaling to several times more than that. That’s why they were expanding their development department. The conference room was cold, and contained a model of the future artwork. A gentleman across the table with a monogrammed and pressed shirt, a fundraising consultant of significant pedigree, shook my hand. “You’ll do well,” his eyes crinkled.
While I sat in the parklet with the head of marketing, the first flowers of May peeking out around us, I welcomed a sense of freedom and relaxation at last, after years of the effects of an abusive relationship floating around me like the perfume of the new buds, I learned about a thing that had been rotting within the walls of the museum for some time.
One of our coworkers had finally broken her silence.
She’d told the rest of the museum workers about her experiences with a male coworker of ours. She’d already told her story to the museum’s Co-Director, and that was months ago. He had assaulted her, violently. It’s difficult, for many reasons, for sexual assault and abuse survivors to come forward — they have to relive trauma, they are often blamed or not believed, they have to let other people into an experience that is incredibly intimate and private and upsetting. In spite of all that, this strong-ass woman spoke out because this man had started hanging around my young assistant. She didn’t want the cycle to repeat with her. Not only had our coworker approached The Co-Director about this, but she had also gotten in touch with four or five other survivors — most of whom had worked for the museum in some capacity, several of whom left the museum because of this man’s abuse — who approached the Co-Director and shared very personal accounts of their abuse, assault, and rape at the hands of this man. After an “investigation,” the museum and Co-Director concluded there was nothing much they could or should do, reasoning that the majority of actions had occurred off museum property, despite the fact that this man used the museum as his personal hunting grounds, despite the fact that there was apparently a whisper system where employees would warn each other not to be alone with him or to leave a function with him. I’d also noticed that he and the development assistant had started going out after work, but his reputation had evaded me. Because no one wanted to be around my boss, and because I was married for a while, these whispers never made their way to my ears — they didn’t need to. I floated in a little bubble of untouchability when it came to him.
What did the museum ultimately decide? The predator was told he had to take a one-day HR training.
The pay at the museum was meager for everyone who worked there. Still, they obscured that fact as best they could with artworks that dazzled and frequently available free food. The museum played host to numerous events as a part of its revenue model, and the leftovers were turned over to staff who would supplement our grocery budgets by eating day-old danishes with apricot and raspberry filling — discards from someone’s brunch-time wedding — or by digging into the olives and cheese that remained after board and committee meetings, uncaring about the fact that the food we put in our mouths was the literal discards of the people who ruled our work lives. Except for the development team who attended board meetings and worked closely with board members, the people who guided the museum’s future and budget often did not know the names of most of the people who worked in its brick and stone rooms, who patched holes in white walls, who unclogged toilets after parties, who took small children into the mirror room or who helped artists to build the artworks — sometimes a single fiber or a sequin at a time.
At the board meetings, we drank wine because that was part of how you treated the people who showed up. One time, when the employee who normally drove to the Walmart in West Virginia to pick up cases of $3 / bottle cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay was on vacation, we ran out of wine and I had to go pick some up, but with the same budget and no time to spend three hours round trip. I provided them with what was honestly decent boxed wine — which turned out to be a grave error. The Co-Director — who’d lived in the museum since he was in college — pretended like he’d never seen wine come in a box before. It was silly. I think it was more important to him that the wine we serve come in a glass bottle and appear elegant than it actually taste good and present in an unappealing container. Some board members took my side, I think, themselves, not believing that The Co-Director had never, ever in his life encountered wine from a box.
Oh yes, that’s right. My bosses lived in the museum. Where I worked. The Co-Director was mine and my direct boss’s boss, but the founder and Executive Director of the museum, The Founder, at 88 years old, was in charge of it all. It’s my belief she got things done because she balanced both hard and soft, an open curiosity about other people, combined with a legendary Aquarian stubbornness that had held the museum that she helped shape with her own hands up for four decades. She bought the place, a six floor warehouse, in 1975 and renovated it, turning it into a space for artists, taking residence on the sixth and top floor with her daughter. In the 80s, The Co-Director, a student at what is now Carnegie Mellon University, showed up, glommed onto the museum, and never left. Eventually, he would become her right hand, living with her in the loft. They split it down the middle, two beds, two bathrooms, two sitting spaces, with the dining room and kitchen on The Founder’s side and the elevator on The Co-Director’s. It was easy to see the line, because they decorated their own side completely to their own tastes. The Co-Director thrifted relentlessly and filled his side of the loft with mid-century modern clocks and sleek modernist furniture. He had a case full of valuable gifts from artists who’d exhibited at the museum, like a book/artwork by Damien Hurst, for example. The two had a Yayoi Kusama glass pumpkin balanced on a shelf and Alexander Calder mobiles hanging from the ceiling. On The Founder’s side were heavy wooden cases packed with her utterly delightful collections of antique toys. Think: dolls with bright lead-painted faces, those monkeys with cymbals staring out with sinister beaded eyes, puppets and wind-up tin animals. Where The Co-Director’s space dealt in clear lines, hers reveled in a curated claustrophobia that was creepy and cozy all at once. They used their unusual living quarters to their advantage. Whenever we needed to encourage someone to join the board or do something for us, the evening of discussion often ended up in the elevator, on the way to their loft, where they would open up their home and host, putting their guest in a place where they would be far more likely to succumb to the hypnotic quality of this inconceivable space. I don’t know that they would have been able to convince the rust-belt city of Pittsburgh to play host to their weird-ass art experiment if they hadn’t been something like a Fae royalty, able to charm you out of your mind.
It was the 90s, and I stared at a poster of Britney Spears looking at me sultrily over a can of Pepsi on the side of the dance studio where I was sent by my parents to make sure I didn’t get fat (their philosophy, not mine — I didn’t want to be there) and also because I kept running into walls (I had to admit I could use a little more grace). This small hall led to a fire exit in the back of the studio, past the mirrors and the bar. There, we lined up to embark on the exercises where we would, one by one, traverse the entire floor of the dance room and for the teacher’s assessment. Britney kept smiling over her regular Pepsi at me, a huge poster among a series of posters of pop artists and dancers, layered one over the other, corners curling up. A poster of Janet Jackson claimed its own large place on the wall, her face set into an expression of concentration among a ring of backup dancers.
Our dance teacher told us a story about a time when she had worked in a practice studio and Janet Jackson came to rehearse for a music video. Janet and her team arrived, wearing sweats. They nailed their moves, ran through the routine several times and got out on schedule. Then, according to this dance teacher, on the very same day, Britney and her team arrived late for their time slot. Britney was in full costume. She and her crew spent an inordinate amount of time figuring out how a guy was going to pull off her clothes from behind while she danced to reveal what was apparently a skimpier outfit. According to the teacher, their dancing was sloppy.
Whether or not this was true, it told me all I needed to know at a young age about what kinds of women were taken seriously. Janet Jackson was a woman deserving of respect because she wore sweats and desexualized herself. She took herself and others and punctuality seriously. Britney Spears was to be discarded because she wore sexy outfits, was a mess, regardless of what her handlers and team might have done or not done to enable her and push her into that role. Looking back, the comparison doesn’t hold up well. Janet is about 15 years older than Britney. In the 90s, Britney was anywhere from a teen to her early twenties. Weren’t we all messes then? Not to mention that Janet, as a Black woman, isn’t given the kind of leeway a white woman like Britney is, the opportunity to party publicly and unapologetically and to come back from that in the public eye and still have work. Even then, they’re both women, and Britney would later run up against the limits of the extent to which she was allowed to push against the grain when she lost her freedom to a conservatorship. Her party girl persona worked for her PR until it didn’t, until a judge decided, against all usual practices when it came to conservatorships, to strip her of her autonomy.
Britney, in an interview after she kissed bicon Madonna, a real relic of a video, states that she drinks “regular” Pepsi, smacks her gum, and tells Tucker Carlson that she watches CNN “all the time” while seeming pretty tired of his whole deal. It’s an interesting piece of cultural study. You can watch as Carlson (who now displays “she/hers” pronouns on his Twitter as a way of mocking queer and trans people) honing his craft in this interview, working to undermine any political statement Britney and Madonna’s kiss could have made by treating Britney like a little girl. Britney, however, seems to be in control of herself, to the extent she can in this situation. She’s adept at playing her character, at making herself in the interview a caricature of herself, leaning into audience expectations and subverting Carlson’s attempts to pin her down. In the interview, she says she is herself at home. In the interview, she is not at home. You can, therefore, assume that everything outside the home is a performance. The end of the interview features Anderson Cooper and Tucker Carlson being super gross about her, making fun of her, and Carlson insisting, again, that she appeared to him to be like a child. To this child, she represented an ideal I wanted to chase, someone who was flawed and fun, entertaining and loud in so many ways I craved permission to be. In that era of low pants and midriff-baring shirts, my parents never bought regular pop, only diet. I still can’t stand the taste of pop with sugar in it. The chemical coating on my throat is what tastes like home.
The first time I tried to visit the museum, it was with my stalker and rapist when he made me accept his visit to my college. We never found it. Now, I feel like that was fate. It was like I was meant to experience it on my own. When I finally entered this museum, I was in college. I remember, more than anything, a piece by the late artist Greer Lankton, a recreation of her Chicago apartment. As a sexual assault survivor, as a self-mutilator, as someone with a history of various eating disorders, as a queer person who at the time felt not cis but had no real language for it, her art held me in a vice grip for years while I worked through school, for years after when I taught at an art studio and gallery for adult artists with intellectual disabilities, for years while I struggled to scrape by mentally and physically in the Bay Area. When I returned to Pittsburgh in 2015 and made it back to the museum, it was the piece — an installation in the permanent collection — I sought out, getting as close as I could to the glass of Greer’s false house, peering so deeply my glasses clicked on the glass, my heels digging into the astroturf surrounding the aluminum sided false-room. My eyes scraped over the familiar textures of the painstakingly constructed dolls, the torsos with bloody crosses carved out in the chest, the images of unrepentant queerness, the glamor inhabited by a woman who hung photos of herself by Nan Goldin and Peter Hujar up on her walls like I might display snapshots from moments spent with friends. Was this home?
In the 90s, my mother also took me to Saturday art classes, where a group of kids painted with acrylics all day in a farmhouse somewhere far out in the countryside. It cost only $10, and this woman would watch us for what felt like almost the entire day. We even packed a lunch. We used magazines as source material and drew and painted for hours. At one point, a teacher asked a couple of us to work on trying to draw the three dimensional ice cubes of a Pepsi ad. Another student whispered to me about the infamous Coca-Cola blow job ad and subliminal advertising. In a room that smelled of wood smoke and acrylic paints and the turpentine the eldest boy was allowed to use for his oils, we spent a long time crawling the ice cubes for messages, finding nothing. Still, forever and ever, cola advertising would be linked to sex in my mind. Once Britney came onto the scene and signed onto the brand, it became a surety. Pepsi leaned further into sexiness than the wholesome Coke. In 2012, Lana Del Rey would make this indisputable when she sang, “My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola.” Pepsi was synonymous with a certain sexually forward American girl sensibility, whether the brand had fully intended it to be or not.
The same year I went to see the museum and visited Lankton’s piece for the first time, Britney Spears’ single and accompanying music video “Womanizer” came out. It was still a time when new music videos premiered first on TV. I honestly can’t remember if it was MTV or VH1, but a friend group of gays and lesbians I hung out with organized a small Britney Spears music video premiere party. One of the gay men declared a drinking game — whenever Britney did something “ridiculous’ in the video, such as steering a town car with her foot while completely facing the man riding in the back — we took a shot. That was too many shots! Following the release of that album, late nights in the art studio or in my apartment working on papers were accompanied by Britney’s infectious beats.
We’d travel downtown together in a group on weekend nights, venturing into what was a dark and deserted neighborhood, long before its “revitalization.” There, after walking down dark and way-too-quiet downtown block after block, we’d get to Pegasus, the gay club that let anyone over 18 in. Their solution was found in a chain-link fence that stretched from the top of the ceiling down to the dance floor. At night, I ground against fellow not-quite-of-drinking-age queers against the flexible chain link while older patrons at the bar looked on and Britney remixes blared across the speakers, and we would scream when Lady Gaga’s music videos would pop up on the video screens across the bar. And during the day, I dreamed of installation art and threw myself into my sculpture classes, determined to make it to the higher levels so I could take the department head’s rare and beloved installation art class.
One aspect of working in the offices of the museum was that I was also expected to be deeply familiar with the artworks. It was easy to forget my lunch only took up a few square inches when I was alone in a dark room with a few painstakingly placed beams of light that formed a box that leapt out from the wall. The museum was, in a sense, also a residency where visual artists were given an apartment, a stipend, a huge gallery space, all the supplies they needed, guidance and gallery assistants — all of which was free to them and dedicated to aiding them in creating original site-specific installation artworks. It was a magical place and remains a concept I deeply believe in. When we were stuck on something, sometimes, one of us would just go off to “meditate in the Turrell,” an artwork by James Turrell who I can best describe as a light-based contemporary artist. The piece shrouded the visitor in near-complete darkness. You had to follow the right wall to enter and the left to leave. If you sat for long enough, a light would slowly appear. Visitors would leave, wondering if it was ever really there or if it was a hallucination.
When I got married, the founder of the museum gifted me a champagne toast for my whole wedding party. She got all the staff she perceived as women and presented me with stacks of crates of sparkling wine. I was overwhelmed. The installation art teacher, who was also on the museum’s board, officiated our wedding. We toasted the museum after we toasted ourselves, thanking the not-present but beloved Founder for her gift. It would not be long after that I would notice — distinctly notice — while my ex and I stood in the kitchen that he did not seem to live in the same reality as me. I told him about something he’d done, something he’d said that hurt me. He replied that it didn’t happen, a conversation we had had, that I remembered, had never happened, was no more real than a popped bubble. This incident stands out in my mind because it is so simple and because it would later be one of the things I could recall when I wrote down my six years worth of “evidence,” trying to prove to myself again and again that I wasn’t crazy, or really, that even if I was losing it, it was because I had become so destabilized.
From the spreadsheet I made that year, I wrote:
“Insists frequently during arguments that I have a faulty memory of past events. Insists I do not remember events correctly. Says that I misinterpret things, misunderstand his motivations, misread events and words, and that I blow things out of proportion.”
And:
“Says that he is not gaslighting me. Says that gaslighting-like behaviors could exist on both sides.”
And:
“Seems to have expectation that I would not ever want to leave relationship. Said he had not even considered that, despite being the one to leave me for several days.”
The hilarious-to-me note:
“Mistrusts and judges others. Has frequent interpersonal conflicts, including with staff. Has trouble making friends. Relies on gift-giving, paying for things, and peacock-like pageantry to woo friends.”
And, among others, is a note about the fact that he explicitly told me not to work at the museum. That was where the escalation took off, I think, in part because we had both idolized the space, but I was the one who gained some level of access. He would rather me fail than have me succeed in a space that was important to him, even one he never had any intention of applying.
After I left my ex, I would wake up in the house I shared with roommates and walk my dog Mya in the dark mornings before work. The sidewalk wound along a cliffside with a rotting and abandoned apartment building, vines creeping everywhere, holding up the dirt with their Virginia creeper roots. Just beyond it, I could look out and see the neighborhood where the museum rested below, the light-up sculpture on top of it glowing up at me, reaching out like a hand in the dark.
Because when I’d woken up in our bed each morning, rubbing my eyes, reminding myself that I had to keep packing, keep throwing stuff out, keep hiding my important papers when I found them, then, rubbing of my eyes felt like rubbing raw veins. We were so dysfunctional and though we had, in theory, dressers we could put together, I’d never moved beyond just having a giant plastic bin as a night stand. I still remember scuttering my fingers across the blue plastic in the morning, reaching for my phone, looking to the door, making sure nothing was moved. It had only been a month or so before when, for my birthday, I’d taken several days off to finish my novel and had pounded several two-liter bottles of diet Pepsi in the process. My body ached, and it craved it — that dark fizzing thing — now, in my most depleted moments.
It was all garbage bags each night and morning. I would stash them in closets, and take them out early on trash day, when I was certain he wasn’t about to show up out of the blue and spy my planning. Because everything I knew told me that leaving was a dangerous time and I had to keep it as secret as I could for as long as possible. It was something else, too, as I lost the ability to eat at work. While I packed at night, I flinched by day at the barbs thrown by my immediate boss who held her position over me like a cudgel. Multiple of my former colleagues said that they (the art installers and educators) were all afraid to come to our floor. One of them would, later, over drinks, aptly describe her as “a walking knife.”
And then, The Founder was also dying. She stopped coming downstairs. Sometimes, after an event, I’d have to help lock the museum up. The basement, with its damp stone walls and cool air that left the taste of limestone on your tongue, gave me chills when I turned off the lights and made my way to the elevator. I’d once asked The Founder if she’d ever encountered a ghost in the museum. She laughed, her bright blue eyes sparkling in her face, a blend of white skin and ice white hair, her bold black glasses standing out in stark rings. “It was a warehouse. No one died here! No one’s wandering around.” The Co-Director began to take over her duties. We kept hoping she would recover, but her illness stretched on for weeks, then months. The fate of the capital campaign hung in the balance. Could we even raise millions of dollars without her spark, her fervor?
Still, while the museum’s founder was actively dying, that did not stop the urgency of our task. We had begun to organize around seeking some kind of transformative justice and repair regarding the presence of the predator, starting with a letter demanding the predator be fired and asking for the museum to institute more progressive HR practices that actually prioritized the wellbeing of their most vulnerable employees. I joined them and asked to see the letter they had written. That night, alone in the attic of the house I shared with my roommates, I booted up my computer and put my head in my hand. I had only just gotten settled, reached a point in my therapy that felt like progress, and was ready to dig back into the fantasy novel I was writing, but here I was, instead, saddled with something that would consume my life for a year and a half.
I revised the letter. The shakes from adrenaline kept me awake that night. In the morning, I shared the document with my colleagues and packed my bag full of cans of diet Pepsi from the 12-pack I kept chilling in the fridge.
We’d planned to sign the letter on a Friday, but the timeline was sped up when the predator’s parents showed up at the museum, where they found and berated my colleague who had come forward. She called us to a park, in tears. I got up from my desk and left when I got the text, my boss peeling the skin off my back with her sharp, wide eyes. Together, we decided to print the letter as it was and to each sign it and hand it to The Co-Director before the end of the day. I looked down at the letter and, as the most senior person there with the most power and arguably, the greatest cushion, took a pen and signed it first. We passed the letter around, room to room, person to person, throughout the day and collected 21 signatures. I photographed it and we made copies of the original before handing it over. By the time three of us handed it to the Co-Director, he was livid and accused us of “making it a thing.” He’d heard the letter was coming, no doubt from my boss.
The Co-Director didn’t speak to me after that. When he came up to our department, he would pull his face into a mask of disgust, corners down, nose up, eyes locking in mine like I was so far beneath him that my existence was offensive. It was a look I recognized because it was so much like my ex’s when he wanted to put me in my place. I couldn’t get feedback on grants, couldn’t do my job. It was a far fall from the champagne toast, from being told he liked that I was honest. He just liked it when I was humble, and challenging him did not fit the person he’d thought he’d hired. My boss acted like nothing was amiss, like it was not in any way her job to attempt to reconcile things between her boss and me, to help me do my job. I just had to keep working like nothing was wrong. I couldn’t afford to quit outright and so had to stay and endure, sitting at my L-shaped desk, writing grants and planning the few events left on my plate. I began to relish the moments I was left alone on the third floor because I was specifically excluded from planning meetings that everyone, including the assistant, attended. I’d open the door to the fire escape and let the spring air in and count the minutes until I could go visit my dog on my lunch break.
The Pepsi felt like a jab at never-seen-boxed-wine-in-his-life Co-Director, at the place’s worst qualities. Drinking pop with Britney on it — Britney who men like him wouldn’t take seriously ever in their lives, something that wasn’t healthy, something that was an outer physical manifestation of trashy insides — was a small act of defiance. It was okay to put white trash aluminum siding and astroturf in Lankton’s art exhibit — she was an artist — but I was supposed to unmake myself and re-mold myself as a sleek and small, black-clad member of the museum’s staff, a bisexual vampire sophisticate who was expected to keep my criticisms to myself. Those criticisms should, especially, stay buried when the Co-Director went out of his way to defend a[n alleged] rapist, when he let a grown man’s parents into his office so they could yell at him on a sexual predator’s behalf, when he was happy to disregard the safety of large numbers of his staff in favor of some kind of twisted solidarity with one scumbag man.
The back and forth dragged on for months. The predator left his job shortly after the initial letter, but I suspect he was “taken care of” with some kind of severance (intel I picked up from something the board chair said). The fight wore on as, unsatisfied with the museum’s repressive tactics, the museum’s staff pushed back as the director chewed out individual gallery attendants in closed-door meetings, threw a temper tantrum and a stack of papers at the head of marketing, and screamed at the volunteer coordinator just yards away from the museum lobby before they stormed out, quitting that day. At events I organized, board members would ask, glass of wine and hors d’oeuvres I’d shuttled to some mansion or other in my old Subaru in hand, whether the staff was “over it” yet, assuming that the expectations of my position infiltrated every cell in my body, that I was on their side, that I was a class traitor because they felt they were paying me to be one. “No,” I would say, “not until we get the change we’re after.”
I would lie on my bed, recounting to myself over and over what was true, what had happened, that I was not crazy, that I needed to believe the survivors, that I was losing my mind, that they were trying to make me doubt myself, to believe I was just some kind of woman-child, that I was what they saw me as. At once, my recent escape from an abusive relationship where I’d spun out hard enough from gaslighting that I’d started seriously contemplating suicide, fueled me, an irrepressible anger and ability to just say fuck it because I had nothing to lose mixed together with my having spent years doubting my own perceptions of reality. I used every source of divination at my fingertips and the cards and more reassured me that yes, yes, yes, I was right, but I let the gaslighting hollow me out anyway. I didn’t have a choice. I sat in a cold and silent office day in and out for months. At one point, a gay man, an ally, spoke to his mother who was a lawyer about our predicament. She advised contacting the Women’s Law Project. We did. When the response came through that they would help us, pro bono, something settled into my bones. This was a legitimate enough situation that a lawyer was willing to dedicate her time, her energy, free of charge, with no expectation of compensation, to this cause. Even then, with representation, the process of gathering materials for a potential NLRB filing was long. In the meantime, the museum wound up just creating more evidence for our case by marching forward boldly and brashly and retaliating against staff to an even greater extent.
I used to love grocery shopping after my divorce. I would buy things that only I liked. It was then that I saw them, the 2018 limited edition Britney Spears diet pepsi cans. An illustration of Britney danced on the aluminum can in shades of blue and white and silver. I bought them and put them in my fridge. Sadie and I had started dating then. One night, after she’d stayed over and we’d been up until the early hours again, I dumped a small pile of Britney-adorned diet coke cans into my bag.
“Are those…?” Sadie looked at them. At the time, she still held this image of me, an elegant museum worker who wore only black. I smiled wide and said “It’s Britney!”
“Don’t you know that stuff’s toxic?” she said, waiting for me to get the joke.
At the time, we were ten years into Britney’s conservatorship, into her complete and total control by her abusive father. He controlled the narrative. She was not allowed to speak. And I engaged in the funneling of money to her father by buying this Pepsi with her name and face on it, with my meager wages, because I needed something to keep me going when I was so sleep-deprived and dehydrated and fearing for my own sanity that my head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. That, and I still liked Britney.
Eventually, the retaliation got to the point where they’d taken away most of my job duties, but nevertheless, I had to show up to work for eight and a half hours. I was no longer allowed to communicate with the board. No one in my department talked to me. I stared at the can of Pepsi and read Autostraddle articles on my phone and pretended to be busy at something while applying to other jobs and emailing all of my documentation to myself, BCC-ing my personal email on complaints I sent to the board of directors, and collecting every scrap of evidence I could for the NLRB charge. Just before I left, my boss had been watching The Handmaid’s Tale. She, as with many straight women like her, deeply identified with June. What I didn’t say out loud was that if the book’s events came to pass, my boss would most likely be wearing blue. Earlier, she’d told me discussing sexual harassment policy at work was enough to get me fired. She was aggressively heterosexual, not just as a sexual orientation, but as an alignment with the patriarchy. She had clawed her way close to power, and she wasn’t about to let it go, even if she had to sacrifice other women and their wellbeing and safety to keep her arts administration job.
When I gave my two weeks, I caught the Co-Director smiling. After the meeting where I announced it, I saw him practically skipping down the hall, all in black, his satchel at his side, stark round glasses on his nose. Two weeks and three days later, three days into my new job at a local immersive theater company, the NLRB charge and the local NPR/WESA article the survivors and employee group had collaborated to bring about dropped. From my desk in the lamp-lit basement windowless basement of the theater, I watched my coworker crack open a Coke Zero. I drank the Britney-branded diet Pepsi and relaxed into the fact that, for now, I was at a place that suited me, that felt safe. My heart was beating fast, our texts were firing, but I had real work again, tasks to concentrate on, documents to read and institutional history to learn. I had missed working for real. Three days later, the Co-Director was put on leave by the very same board who wouldn’t listen until we held their faces and names up to public scrutiny.
From coworkers in the exhibitions department, I had heard a rumor that a male artist had threatened to pull his work if The Co-Director were not reinstated. Because this is a story about men’s loyalty to men as much as it is about anything else. Because it is about the legitimate and political actions of women and nonbinary people and less-statused men being made out to be the squalls of children. Much like Carlson and Cooper’s snide remarks post-Britney interview, much like my ex, my boss, like so many men throughout my life, I got the sense from that artist, the board, the Co-Director’s actions that he felt that he, a real man, the only acceptable kind of logical adult, understood what was actually going on. I still can’t look at that artist’s work.
It would be almost a whole year more until the charge would come to its ultimate conclusion, and it would rest, forever effervescent and unresolved in my chest. The Founder had died just as we began to take action. I mourned her with the other two deaths I’d experienced that spring, breaking down, when I could, in dark corners of the museum and back stairwells. The Co-Director blamed a lot of his actions on her death, but it doesn’t hold up, not really. I’d suffered three deaths that spring, and at no point did the experience make me sympathetic to rapists or hateful toward sexual assault survivors.
On my last day of work, they put me in a back room where I had to fold packets printed with the founder’s memorial ahead of a big party in her honor. A lawyer who was on the board who worked for a union-busting firm became interim director of the museum after the charges came through. I don’t know what happened to the predator, and I don’t know that anyone does. Not weeks after the article came out, our lawyer would be contacted by a worker at a small film festival who’d been sexually harassed by her employer, and details would come to light about his allegedly serial predation upon the young women he hired. Years later, museum workers in Pittsburgh would vote to join the United Steelworkers Union. I have to wonder if our labor action, though moderately successful, at the very least, was another log in the fire, something that helped keep the spirit of labor organizing burning. I’d go to work for Autostraddle. Britney would eventually win her freedom back in court.
Even now, I know that it was worth it, but I still replay all of the events. Being made to believe on some days that I had the mind of a child, the silent treatment that made me ache for it to end, the quiet of being at my desk with no work while everyone else gathered around meeting tables, feeling the walls of something that had once brought me so much joy, that had felt like what my life and career was leading toward suddenly became a cage — it stays with me. The guilt I always feel for going against my indoctrination into our culture lingers like the aftertaste of aspartame clinging to my tongue. I follow Britney on social media, read her posts when she first won her freedom back, watched her own the fact that she is unafraid to speak to what she survived. Her resistance and anger is, again, a foil to her bubbly persona, but I know that so many people have welcomed it because it is her, actually her.
Anger is helpful when it comes, cleaner. No matter how much work I do, I’ve never gotten comfortable with all of my actions in this time. I’ve had to hold that thorny bundle of contradictions and move forward anyway, letting myself feel satisfaction in the rare moments it comes, icey and cold and crisp and dark.
Bubble Trouble is a series helmed by Autostraddle Managing Editor Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about the nostalgia, effervescence, and never-ending appeal of carbonated beverages.
Coca-Cola Used To Be Fifty Cents and We Used To Be Close
Bubble Trouble // Header by Viv Le
Like a character in Mad Men reaching for a cigarette in bed, after sex you always want a Coke. Not a cigarette. Not water. Coke. Something that feels like cleaning solution in your mouth, foaming and noisy. Something with a taste you desire. Something to suck down all at once.
Speaking of Mad Men, your version of interior decor is to tear out the photos in a 2011 Mad Men calendar and tape them to your walls, to the back of your dresser that serves as a semi-barrier between your room, an expanse of neutral space, and your atticmate’s room. Yes, you live in an attic. An uninsulated attic in Michigan. “Room” is a stretch. It’s just an open attic. The rent’s cheap, and your atticmate is a good friend. She doesn’t comment on your ugly Mad Men “decor.”
The attic’s especially fine, because you don’t spend much time there. From classes, you go straight to the newsroom where you work on the student-run daily paper. Even when you’re not actively working on production for the newspaper or editing or writing articles, you can probably be found in the newsroom or on the lower level of the building that houses it. The attic is where you sleep, but the newsroom is home. You turn up your nose at Greek life on campus, but isn’t this your own version of a sorority? A clique skewed cult-like in its rituals and codependent relationships and very. specific. power structures.
On that lower level of the building, there’s a Coke vending machine with prices that haven’t been updated since the 90s. This makes it almost mythical. You can’t think of another vending machine on campus that slings soda cans for just fifty cents. TWO QUARTERS? Sometimes, even if you’re not heading to the newsroom, you go out of your way to walk past it so you can snag a can of discounted Coke.
(Stop writing about the Coke when what you’re really trying to write about is the end of a friendship and then another and then another.)
Well, no, the Coke is important.
She drinks diet, and you drink regular.
You’ve long been known for drinking Coke, the hard stuff that comes in the red can, none of that silver bullshit that lingers on the tongue too long. Like any small thing you can cling to as yours, you’ve wrapped your legs around this association and squeezed, hoping to absorb something into you. You’ve done this with Mad Men, with Vampire Diaries, with sour gummy worms, with mozzarella sticks, with regular Coke. These interests define you, even if they don’t make you special.
She drinks diet, and you drink regular.
You belong to two different trios with her, the two of you a constant, package deal. Two boys fill in the rotating third slot. You all work at the paper, and in theory, you’re sometimes a quartet, but no, it doesn’t work like that for some reason. It’s always you and one of these boys, a buffer maybe. One boy is gay and one is straight, and the gay one likes to make lesbian jokes about you, and you laugh with him, and it isn’t faked. You can’t say it bothers you, because it doesn’t.
(When you do come out to him, it goes horribly, something you don’t see coming at all, because shouldn’t he remember how much this sucks?)
The other boy is not gay, but he does have a girlfriend. In other words, neither third in your trio provides a buffer in a sense of romantic viability. But maybe that’s what makes them perfect buffers.
Between the four of you — and yet, not a quartet! — you’re always passing around the same fifty cents. Whoever’s got quarters that day is the banker, loaning out coins so you can all keep your respective dependencies in check. You crave the breaks downstairs to the fifty cent Coke machine the most.
Trips downstairs with her get longer, and then you’ve suddenly claimed an entire room down there, not technically part of the newsroom but part of the office where the people on the financial side of the newspaper work. They work regular hours, and you work newspaper hours, so it’s always vacant down there by the time your shifts start in earnest. You name this room. It is a much realer room than your one in the attic. Time slows in this room. You’re spending a lot of time in there doing nothing.
Just drinking sodas and coming up with a compendium of inside jokes that swells so big you can’t even keep track of them all.
When you’re not physically with her, you’re probably writing something untranslatable from this ever-expanding inside joke language on her Facebook wall.
(God, 2011 was a mortifying time for crushes, especially closeted ones. Playing out so publicly, so visible to everyone else but yourself.)
You start fighting, and you don’t know why, but you do know it usually only happens when you’ve both been drinking — and not soda. Soda’s when you’re always at your silliest. Beer and tequila pulled from plastic bottles bring out something different.
She has a boyfriend who you don’t like, and you’re not sure if she even does either, but it’s fine, because he’s far away. Soon, you’ll be far away, too. You want to move to Los Angeles after this.
Then, the straight boy in your trio breaks up with his girlfriend. A pressure valve you can’t see opens, begins to hiss.
Your friend is mad at you. She’s mad at you, because, she says, you’ve changed everything. You’ve confessed feelings for the boy, and now you can’t be a trio, but she won’t explain it further. You try to do the math over and over, but you’ve never been particularly good at math, have you?
The fights worsen. One night, she deletes her entire text history with you and this, for some reason, feels huge. It was just a swipe of her finger, a press of a button, but she may as well have told you to fuck off.
“Are you guys breaking up?” the gay boy jokes at a party about you and her after another one of your fights. It’s cold, but everyone’s drinking outside, because that’s just what you do here. He asks because you’re fighting again, this time in public, and you realize that is probably exactly what it looks like, a couple’s quarrel, and this amuses you, but only if you let the icy beer fog your brain. Don’t look too closely.
She is wearing a henley and a thermal vest and a backwards cap, because she wears the same thing almost every day, like a cartoon character. She hates when you call her hair red or even strawberry blonde. Your secret language is still expanding, but sometimes the words sting.
You’ve already had sex with women at this point, but nobody knows that. You’ve barely held onto the memory yourself, not because you literally don’t remember but because you’ve decided it was a fluke. Something far away, long ago, because even one semester ago or last summer feels like a distant past. You never wanted Coke after sex with women.
You start having sex with the straight boy, and after, you crave Coke more than anything. Dorm room sex is a little debasing, but the attic isn’t an option. You don’t even have a real door, the ceilings are low, creatures live in the walls. In the dorms, Coke costs more than fifty cents. You should probably start stocking up.
This is ruining everything, you’re reminded, often. And the truth is, you agree. But you keep doing it anyway. Every time, you choose a quick hit of fizz, even if it goes flat fast.
It all feels very complicated, the explosion of both trios. You wish you could map it out on one of those murder conspiracy boards. The ends of these friendships happen in either slow-motion or hyperspeed, you can’t decide. You all shared more than just quarters, every combination of you. You’ve never been very good math, but it turns out there are three different ways to pair off in a group of four, so maybe you were a trio all along, a trio of pairs. You were taking more than that from each other, too. You aren’t the only one who doesn’t know what you want. All four of you are grasping at something, and badly.
This is when you still think you’re cursed, still actively tell people so. It started in high school, and you’ve carried your curse all the way here, to the attic. This is how you explain your curse: Everyone you desire is unavailable to you. You really believe this. You cry about it sometimes, this curse you’ve invented.
It’s so easy to believe in magic. In a cursed princess atop her uninsulated tower, in shiny coins that extract elixirs, in merry bands of three, severed so easily. It feels like this to you sometimes, like a story you’re floating through rather than living in. Online, you live a second life separate from all of this, one you won’t let any part of the trio into, even though they’re recurring characters in the stories you share there. It’s getting harder to keep track of which life is more real. You miss your three friends, and they’re not even gone yet. Graduation looms. Everything is about to change, again, fizzy fast or in slow motion, you can’t be sure. In the end, you lose all three.
Bubble Trouble is a series helmed by Autostraddle Managing Editor Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about the nostalgia, effervescence, and never-ending appeal of carbonated beverages.
Uncommon Pairings: Canned Sparkling Wines and the Chips That Go With Them
Bubble Trouble // Header by Viv Le
Two important things you must know:
- My partner does not drink.
- The PR campaign around strawberries and champagne has gone on for too long.
Let’s discuss the first one. My partner does not (usually) drink alcohol, and when they do, they reach for a small pour of a dark stout they then leave unfinished. Me, on the other hand? I, unfortunately, like wine, which is a tough thing to like solo unless you’re comfortable having an unfinished, mostly-full bottle sit in the fridge for days on end. I’m also a dabbler, which means drinking five to six glasses (depending on how heavy your pour is) of the same thing is my personal nightmare. “Personal nightmare” is a little dramatic, I suppose, but I’m not exactly enthused about six glasses (my pours are light) of the same thing.
Enter: canned wines.
Canned wines have solved the problem of me not wanting to commit to an entire bottle of something. Usually containing 150-375ml — anywhere from a fifth to a half-bottle — it’s so much easier to crack open a cold one (I’m assuming I can borrow beer lingo) than reach for my corkscrew, find a stopper, and make space in my already-full fridge for a bottle of wine I decide I’m over after a glass or two.
Honestly, canned wines are just great in general. You can bring them to a picnic without needing to worry if someone remembered a corkscrew. You can toss them in the fridge sideways, without worrying that they’ll roll out, fall onto the floor, and shatter into a million pieces. I got my hands on an extremely lithe can of sparkling rosé — more on this soon — and stuffed it into a cross-body bag (a small cross-body bag!!) so I’d have something to sip on at a party that wasn’t hard liquor or beer.
Now, on to the absolute farce that is champagne and strawberries.
Individually, they’re excellent. I love strawberries! I love sparkling wine! But something about them together just makes these two individually good things kind of terrible — not unlike a bad-for-each-other TV couple (my favorite is Reneé Rapp and the bitchy blonde she dates on The Sex Lives of College Girls).
And yet!! Despite my best efforts, strawberries and champagne continue to be A Thing. You know what should be A Thing? French fries and sparkling wine. I guess this is already A Thing in my world, because fries and bubbles are a top-tier pairing for me! (This actually brings me to a third important thing that you should probably know, that I forgot to mention earlier, which is that I have some wine opinions. I took the equivalent of WSET 1 in college, and it started me on a wine journey that I have been on ever since.)
I decided to take what I know and love one step further. Potato chips are basically the french fries of the grocery store. Some might even argue, controversially, that they’re two sides of the same coin: salty, crunchy, potato-based deliciousness. But what if other chips could stand up to the high bar that french fries have set, one that potato chips can likely meet? What if the ever-elusive perfect pairing for a sparkling wine was something to be found in my local grocery store?
There was only one way to find out. I simply had to drink a bunch of wine and eat entire bags of chips — all in the name of science, of course. Given the impetus behind all of this was champagne, I limited my criteria to just sparkling wines. And then, because of all the aforementioned reasons to love canned wines, I chose only those sparkling wines that were also sold in cans.
The Contestants
Turns out… that was hard.
I popped into five different wine shops while writing this piece, and only three of them sold single cans of sparkling wine (as opposed to multipacks of the same kind), and even those shops only had one or two distinct options available as singles. Granted, I was a little picky. I wanted some nonalcoholic options, definitely something traditional, and then something kind of funky. Eight phone calls and several round-trip bus rides across Brooklyn later, I wound up with the following:
- Picnic Punch White Piquette
- Underwood The Bubbles
- Avinyo Rose Petillant
- House Wines Limited Edition Rainbow Rosé Bubbles
- Eins Zwei Zero Sparkling Rose Alcohol Free
- Sovi Non-Alcoholic Sparkling Rosé
Chips were much easier to procure. I did have some already, because we’re a snack-forward household, but I wanted to get a greater variety to make sure I wasn’t leaving anyone — or any chip — out. Two potato chip varieties — kettle-cooked standard and the thin salt and vinegar ones — some off-brand Takis, Tostitos Cantina Thin & Crispy, Ruffles Cheddar and Sour Cream, Cheez-It (both regular and white cheddar)… like I mentioned, we’re snack-forward.
I put together this spread, enlisted the help of fellow gays, and started to deduce which chip might pair the best with a particular wine!
yes i made these mugs!! pls ignore the glaze job on the middle one thx
The Findings
Underwood The Bubbles x Salt and Vinegar
375 ml, 11% ABV, $6
For a wine that has “The Bubbles” in its name, the bubbles in this canned wine were barely noticeable. And I like a big bubble! That being said, though, it’s surprisingly acidic and medium-bodied, with green apple on the nose. At $6 for a half bottle, I’d say this wine is a steal, and it paired extremely well with salt and vinegar chips! Something about the acid in the chip and the acid in the wine really worked for me. I could see myself reaching for this wine the next time I want a French 75, an Aperol spritz, or a negroni… sbagliato… well, you know the rest.
Picnic Punch Piquette x Takis
355 ml, 6.9% ABV, $7
On its own, this piquette tasted absolutely horrible. As one of my friends aptly described it, “it smells like kombucha and it tastes like salt water”. I expected some weirdness because it was a piquette, but the saltiness was completely unexpected. The piquette did not get any better with the introduction of potato chips, but in a shocking turn of events, actually improved when paired with Takis — and significantly, too. The Takis changed the piquette entirely. Somehow, they muted the saltiness and allowed the sour to shine through! Also, I know this is not technically a wine but it is wine-adjacent and still fizzy so I think it counts!
Avinyo Rose Petillant x (also) Takis?
250 ml, x.x% ABV, $9
This one was… not bad. I hesitate to say good, because from a value perspective, I think there are plenty of sparkling wines that you could purchase for way less than $27 (the can works out to 1/3 of a bottle) that give just as much as this sparkling rosé did. HOWEVER. I was able to fit this wine into a really skinny crossbody bag, and I think there is something to be said for that! I really wanted this wine to work with a kettle chip, mostly to prove my potato chip theory correct, but instead it just fell flat when paired with a standard potato chip! In fact, the only thing it worked with was a Taki. I was a little worried at this point because this was the second wine in a row that I thought worked best with Takis (maybe I just like Takis?), so I moved on to the third wine in the hopes that I’d get some more clarity.
House Wines Limited Edition Rainbow Rosé Bubbles x Kettle Chips
375 ml, 12.5% ABV, $6
I think House Wines missed a branding opportunity here. They call it Rainbow Rosé, but I think that’s a little too on the nose for a can that is covered in a giant rainbow. Why not name it Gay Rosé? It rhymes! Anyway, this Gay Rosé is just as fun and flirty as the can suggests. It’s got a bit of berry in the nose, and it feels GOOD on the tongue. I liked this one much more than the other sparkling rosé in the bunch (the Avinyo). Also, $2 from every case sold goes to the HRC (this is technically a House Wines x HRC collab). It’s a little sweet, but thankfully disproved the Taki Theory. In terms of chips, this wine pairs best with neutral kettle chips — but if you want to branch out of chip world (which yes, I know this is technically a chip piece, so ignore this if you want!) this wine was excellent with peanut butter. I could see it really shining next to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or a roast squash tahini dish. But as a chip pairing, I have to go solid kettle on this one.
Eins Zwei Zero Sparkling Rose Alcohol Free
250 ml, 0.0% ABV, $8
This one might be my new favorite non-alcoholic sparkling wine. Sure, the bubbles were a little small, but this wine has bite and body and was surprisingly balanced. Also, it would definitely fit into a crossbody bag. Mostly off-dry, a gorgeous pale pink in a glass, and perfect with a cheddar and sour cream Ruffle. No notes, honestly, other than a reminder to myself to buy this again.
Sovi Non-Alcoholic Sparkling Rosé x Tortilla Chips
250 ml, <0.5% ABV, $8
Considered against other non-alcoholic sparkling wines, I’d say the Sovi is decent. The nose is fruity — my partner said it reminded them of Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice, and I thought it was closer to Hawaiian Punch but to be fair I haven’t had Hawaiian Punch in years — and it tastes exactly like it smells. Tortilla chips won this round, narrowly beating out the kettle chips, though I suspect a saltier potato chip would take the crown.
In Summary
Honestly, I thought potato chips would emerge the victor across all wines, but as we’ve learned, that was not the case and I stand corrected! Just goes to show that a well-placed Taki can change public opinion.
Bubble Trouble is a series helmed by Autostraddle Managing Editor Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about the nostalgia, effervescence, and never-ending appeal of carbonated beverages.
Grind Culture Made Fizzy Energy Drinks My Toxic Writing Partner
Bubble Trouble // Header by Viv Le
This is a fragmented memory of the year I drank sparkling caffeinated beverages and took a lot of stimulants in order to try and become a better worker. This is not a cautionary tale or a poignant anecdote about finding myself amid waves of imposter syndrome. And this is certainly not an advertisement for caffeinated sparkling drinky drinks, but I’m not gonna stop you from living your life.
I always get to the office too early because of my fear of being late and semi-irrational fear of having to say hello to each of my coworkers individually if I walk in when everyone’s already settled at their desks. I also know I can leave early if I get to the office first to get a jumpstart on work. This is my first “big girl” job and, like most necessary jobs, I’m giving it slightly more than the bare minimum.
This job is not the publishing house or the film archiving collective I applied to. This is the Financial District on a winter day, and I am a glorified intern shoving overpriced pineapple jerky and organic muesli into my tote bag for dinner.
I’m still in the phase of my life where intermittent fasting appeals to me for some reasons you might be able to assume, so when my stomach gives me away, I opt for a drink instead.
I mosey over to the fridge stocked with various beverages and skim past a handful of flavored still waters and a row of La Croix, picked over with only limoncello and coconut left. Chapstick flavors, yuck. Not a pamplemousse, tangerine, or lime in sight. If there’s one thing these people know how to do best, it’s take everything and enjoy it first.
What’s left at the bottom of the fridge is a small party of fizzy yerba mates. Ah, yes. What I’ve come to know as adderall in a can! My late night savior and early morning treat! I probably shouldn’t be doing this on an empty stomach but, bottoms up!
Despite what I wished, this sparkling can of caffeine did not make me better at my job or more confident that I knew what I was doing.
For me, writing is as much a practice as it is a pony show. I’ll write something that awes myself one day, and the next, I feel like I need someone or something to slap the nuances and sensitivities that should come so easily to a writer out of me. For the perfectionist I try to keep dormant in this vessel of mine, writing can feel like a chore. And at times, housing sentiments of that kind can mean “forgetting” to check your post’s comments — even if that means missing a gorgeous compliment or two advertising men’s leather shoes or online casinos. Or, stopping yourself from going too deep into what you want to say in favor of being aloof. Both stemming from the fear your work isn’t as good as you want it to be. And why not? Aren’t you supposed to be a writer?
And that’s where the mundane aspects of work feel so good to succeed in. Like, yes I did in fact finish a week’s worth of work in two days. All thanks to this little can of caffeine! And perhaps if I chug an entire can of yerba mate before I sit down and type for pleasure, my words will also be significantly more clear and enjoyable.
But the main character of that story was fated to end up as a horrible self-insert, and the love interest was just a figment of the girl I thought I loved for a few mere years of my adolescence. I didn’t write it. It was immature to believe I was a teen prodigy of Pulitzer Prize proportions. I fell in love with another girl, moved to a different city, and began my second year of college somewhere new. Always seeking another story I felt too afraid to put on the page.
At college, I learned about ways to pass classes you hated and how to participate enough to where it seemed like yes, you did the reading. I learned the best energy drinks for productivity and how long they would last. Celsius was good, but it was too much like pre-workout powder and gave me the sweats. Bang energy drinks worked, but only if you could stomach the taste of sugared food coloring. But Yerba Mates were solid. They came in a sleek little can and tasted like better versions of La Croixs. The classic flavor was reminiscent of Coke and the grapefruit one had those small bubbles I always liked in a Perrier. Plus, when I was on them, I typed more accurately and came to conclusions faster.
These little cans made me feel like I could write anything well. Like all this potential was building inside me over the past few years, and it was just the right time to let it out. And my worthy subject? Some six-page essay about a poem I can’t even remember the name of now. For the last years of college, I let this dependency hold me. It kept me up through finals season and late night shifts at my university part-time job. It gave me the confidence to power through even the most boring of subjects and carried me into my first job outside of college.
In these drinks was limitless potential and I was tipping the can to get every last drop.
The things I was writing became sloppy — at work and in my personal practice. I was more irritable and cried at every botched draft and lackluster poem. I’d just started dating someone new and felt less like myself when I was “working.”
My body meant too much to my mind. So, I stopped. Not cold turkey, but I spent less time searching out methods of curing my writer’s block and fear of mediocrity with consumables.
And the healing still goes on. It doesn’t end because she no longer lives inside of you.
Bubble Trouble is a series helmed by Autostraddle Managing Editor Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about the nostalgia, effervescence, and never-ending appeal of carbonated beverages.
Seltzer Tastes Like Punishment
feature image: art by Autostraddle / photo by Chirag Manga / EyeEm via Getty Images
Bubble Trouble // Header by Viv Le
There are so many good songs about drinking but none about seltzer, have you noticed that? Actually there is probably some niche lesbian microcelebrity who only yodels about Topo Chico and yes, I can probably say that even though I don’t know if she actually exists I might like her, I might, I might. And isn’t that what it’s all about?
I never saw my grandmother drink anything but Coca-Cola and coffee until I left for college and came back. She used to drink it in cans, but then switched to the little bottles, then the big bottles, then the little bottles again. Once, on a terrible high school home economics trip to Atlanta, we went to the World of Coca-Cola and got to take a glass bottle straight off the production line with us. I had never been so far from home, and the simmering panic that I had been born with made me irritable and tired. Not to mention the fact that my friend, the one I shared a room and a bed with on the trip, told me in the dark, but not quiet, the city would not stop humming, that her uncle had been abusing her for some time, and had sworn me to secrecy. I had all of this inside of me when my mother and grandmother came to pick me up, asked me how it had gone. I sighed and said it was okay, it was fine, can I tell you later? Which, of course, was the wrong answer. I didn’t mean it to be. My punishment was to never be asked about the details of the trip, even when I brought it up, ever again.
I gave Nan the glass Coke anyway. I had been thinking of her when I grabbed it off the line, had made sure it was tucked away carefully in my luggage. She put it on the shelf with our baby pictures on it. It’s still there.
My family was a Coke family, but they were especially a name brand Dawn and Clorox family, despite not really being able to afford any of those things. My mother would laugh and say Nan would scrub down their shanty shack with name-brand bleach, that she thought the cheaper kind didn’t work as well. I wonder if this is some kind of lineage, if I, too have that inside of me. I have frequently been accused by the people that raised me of having expensive taste despite, you know, all of it. In another essay, not this one, I admit that I do. In this essay, I will —
The first time I remember trying Dr. Thunder I was ten or so and at a birthday party. I recognized it, obliquely, as the Walton family’s equivalent to Dr. Pepper. It tasted fine, I liked it, though I mostly liked the strawberry cake and vanilla ice cream. I didn’t think it was something to be embarrassed about — weren’t we all poor?
But apparently we weren’t. There was teasing involved, harsh words, cruelty in a way that only little girls who learn from their mothers are cruel. And though I didn’t participate in it, I didn’t say anything in defense, either. I just sat on my hands and tried to stay quiet. I took what I was given. So, it goes.
When was that first pop of cheap champagne or cheap Aldi sparkling?
I’ve been on hold for therapy at the Indian Clinic for so long that I’ve started imagining conversations with the therapist in place of actual discussion. She asks that and she asks which of my parents is the Native American and I think about lying and saying neither. She asks which one of my parents is the alcoholic and I tell the truth and say, neither. Can you still be an alcoholic if you’re dead? Asking for a friend. She asks what my own relationship to substance is and I make a little dog shaped shadow puppet and make him answer for me. He talks and talks, mostly about Jung, and I say okay, alright now, hush.
Either way it didn’t taste very good and I’m not sure I liked the way it made me feel but I don’t think that mattered as much as that it felt like some kind of secret horror show being unlocked and I liked the punishment of it all.
No, I don’t think I’ll reschedule for a next appointment, thanks.
I try to dress up seltzer and sparkling water in a way that makes it drinkable but have failed to find a way to do so. Sometimes, I drink it anyway because it, too, feels like punishment. I hear people on the coasts like it, which I think is another kind of lie about the coasts.
I tried all of it, Polar and AHA and La Croix and Spindrift and thought, Why is something that tastes so bad so expensive. All the cool and uncool queer people I am friends with rolled their eyes at this and sipped their little sips, and I cracked open a Ginger Ale which had the double benefit of soothing my crackling, colonized stomach and keeping me on the wagon I made for myself. Hop on, partner!
This is where we lose the thread, I’m afraid. Just close your eyes, let me take you down the bubbled path. Here are the memories. Fragments from my notebook. All thoughts from when the [REDACTED] stopped flowing.
My genetics have bred me this way. Today, I have a migraine. I look terrible. Even if you didn’t suck in a breath and say holy shit you look terrible, I would have known. My hands shake always now but I hold them steady to flip you off. You kiss the tip of my finger lightly, take it between your teeth. Everything is a circle.
My allergies are terrible this year. Perhaps they are terrible every year. How the fuck would I know?
The SSRIs help. Dad’s dying, that doesn’t help. He begs for liquor. It makes my head pound. I want to say, shut the fuck up we all want a drink, but I don’t, and Janet 2 says that’s a good thing.
What did I always say? Just a little something to take the edge off. What edge? All of them. Boundaries of my body erased, hiding the key.
I’m trailer trash from white trash and territory land reservation by any other name trash.
Without the… the sun is too bright and everything is too loud. I go to bed early and wake in the quiet hours. I have to take multiple naps a day. I walk through the woods. Therapy is making me sicker, I reckon. One by one my layers are being stripped away until I am one raw nerve. Stinging. Janet 2 says this attitude is unproductive.
I wake with dust in my mouth and a headache like a hangover. I had dreamed that Teacher had brought three bottles of booze into the woods with us and made me drink them one after the other. They had said whole sentences in the dream, though neither of us has actually spoken in days.
The birds are singing at night, everything is upside down, I wrench myself upward and get immediately dizzy, nothing is clear. I’m in my own dorm. I take three Advil and drink an open, warm Pedialyte before I dare turn on the light. Home sweet home.
There it is. Come here. There, there.
POP! POP! POP!
Fine. One more thing. Did I scare you? I didn’t mean to. Once I tried to write a short story about a balloon fetishist and his wife. The wife hated the balloons. But, when the man died, she couldn’t bear to pop them. Then: in a fit of rage, she did, all but one. This balloon held his breath, whatever was left of him on this earth, so she started carrying it around. They didn’t have any children, so she wore it under her shirt to mimic a ripe belly. When I shopped it around, everyone was like, you are a really good writer but this is REALLY gross. I laughed, then, because it was.
These days, I only drink Coke when out at breakfast, or dinner, or lunch with friends or when visiting my grandmother. I have it alongside a glass of still water. I like the way, and this hasn’t changed, the bubbles burn my throat in a familiar way. Like they’re caressing me. Like they’re saying, oh Autumn, we remember you. You were such a good child. What happened?
That, too, is its own kind of sweetness.
Bubble Trouble is a series helmed by Autostraddle Managing Editor Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about the nostalgia, effervescence, and never-ending appeal of carbonated beverages.
Beers I Drank From Ages 14 to 20 That Made Me the ‘Man’ I Am Today
Bubble Trouble // Header by Viv Le
Goldschlager with Natural Ice Chaser
It seems ridiculous in retrospect, but I honestly didn’t think I was going to get as drunk as I did. It was the day after school let out at the end of my eighth grade year, and some of my friends from the neighborhood and I were plotting for the summer days to come.
“We should get drunk!” one of our friends said. “Come on, you guys have been drunk before, haven’t you?”
Everyone in the group was of different ages and young life experience, but we all lied and enthusiastically said we’ve been drunk before even though most of us hadn’t.
Being newly teenaged is so strange in this way. You’re too young to have done half the stuff you lie about doing and everyone seems to know the truth about each other’s lives but we all just act as if that’s not the case. Better not to show all your cards until you have to at some point.
One friend offered to steal a bottle of liquor from his parents’ liquor cabinet. “Something from the back,” one of us said, “That way, it takes them a while to figure out it’s gone.”
Another friend said he could snag a few beers from his older sister. Then, we agreed to meet by green electrical box a few streets over that we always hung out around the following night to take turns taking shots and drinking beers.
When the next night came around, we all took our spots around the box and started passing around the bottle of Goldschlager our friend stole from his parents’ liquor cabinet. The stinging cinnamon sweetness of the alcohol made it feel more like a candy you’d dare your friends to eat than something that could alter your mental and physical state in any way. The bottle made its way around our little circle a few times, then one of us suggested we take a “Natural Ice break” because they were getting tired of the flavor of the Goldschlager. We only had three cans of beer, so we passed those around the same way we did the bottle. In a little less than two hours, we took down the entire bottle of Goldschlager and the three beers. We hung out around the box making jokes and listening to the radio of the boombox we always carried around with us. Every second of laughter made my head feel as if it was going to float right off my body, and I could barely dance without tripping over my feet. But there was something about the way the laughter came so easily and my body feeling so light that I didn’t want to let go of.
After a while, we were all exhausted and, though we didn’t know what to call it at the time, we were wasted. We all walked to our separate homes, and by the time I got to mine, I felt like I was dying. I walked up the stairs to my mom’s room where she was sleeping off a night of drinking of her own, and I told her I wasn’t feeling well. She yelled at me to go downstairs because she didn’t want me to throw up on the carpet, then brought me a blanket and bucket and advised me not to try to run for the bathroom.
“Just use the bucket,” she said. “And we’ll figure this out in the morning.”
I threw up twice that night, and swore to myself I’d never drink hard liquor again. The next day came, and all my mom said was that it doesn’t take a lot to get drunk when you’re young, so it’s best if I just drink a little then wait a little while and see how I feel before I drink more. I liked the feeling of the night before, but at that moment, I wanted so badly for her to tell me I was wrong, to say that I was grounded, to call my dad and tell him what happened so he could be upset, too. I knew I did something that required correction, and I was angry she didn’t want to correct me.
Mickey’s
By the following summer, the one after my freshman year in high school, my friend group got a lot larger. And we had all been drunk several times over. I made friends at school, and I made friends by going to local punk shows almost every weekend. Somehow though, I still never made friends who were exactly my age. The other punks I rolled with ranged in age from 16 to 19, and they weren’t as interested in staying in and watching movies like I did with my school friends almost every week. They were constantly looking for a party, which means I was also constantly looking for a party, or they were planning on throwing one at whoever’s house was going to be free because their parents were going away or whatever.
Every punk party — whether it was in Ft. Lauderdale or Lake Worth or North Miami — had the exact same drink options. Either you were drinking Mickey’s or you were doing shots of Jack Daniels. I imagined there was some weird punk obsession with choosing the nastiest beverages in existence because we were above the creature comfort of drinking something that actually tastes good. I’d carry those little Mickey’s barrel bottles in my hand feeling so grown up. I’d take swigs off of them with a kind of flare I thought screamed out that I was just as tough and cool as anyone else at the party. When the craving arrived, I’d tuck the bottle into the crook of my underarm to pat my jeans down for my pack of Marlboro Menthol 72s and Bic lighter, then I’d hold my Mickey’s and my lit cigarette in the same hand until I was finished with both. Without fully realizing it, I adopted the demeanors and behaviors of the dudes who surrounded me a lot of the time, and it felt good to be one of them even if I really wasn’t.
At one of the parties not too far from where I lived, I was going for a Mickey’s in the giant, bright red backyard cooler when I bumped into D. We apologized to each other, then immediately struck up a conversation about ourselves, who we were there with, and what we did when we weren’t at punk parties. She was easily one of the hottest girls at the party, but my attraction to her was dampened by the anxiety I had about being attracted to her. During our conversation, I kept trying to sneak little glances at her thigh through the slit in her already wildly short, plaid skirt, but she kept touching my forearm as she spoke which made me even more anxious to look.
I’m not sure how much time went by but at some point, my friends called me back to them, and I had to leave her. We all stood around and listened to music and cracked jokes about each other until we had to leave. I slipped away to go to the bathroom before we left, and D followed me in. She grabbed my wrists, then kissed me so hard I thought I might fall over. It shocked me, but instead of saying anything, I just turned around and walked as fast as I could back to my friends. I was too scared to talk about how excited it made me, so I pretended I was irritated by it instead.
Coors Light
There was always Coors Light in D’s fridge because that’s what she and her roommates always drank. I never asked why but they were in college, so I figured it had something to do with cost and I knew Coors Light was a lot cheaper than a lot of other beers. And that’s what she would always give me to drink when I went to see her because it helped “set the mood.”
Not long after she kissed me, I ran into D again at a show where she asked me about that night at the party. She explained she got the feeling I was “into girls” and into her because of the way I looked at her when we were talking. She was right about both, but I was terrified to admit she was, so instead of agreeing, the best response my mushy, 14-year-old brain could come up with was “I mean, yeah, I think you’re cool.” We exchanged numbers and AIM screen names. I didn’t have my own cell phone at the time, so I told her the times it was acceptable for her to try to call me — always after 8 p.m. since my mom was usually passed out by then, but always before 11 because I didn’t like to stay up too late. I told her to not even try on the weekends because even if I could talk, I was rarely home to get the call.
We talked on the phone and on AIM for a week before we realized she and her roommates lived within walking distance of my house in a small apartment complex that was kind of hidden from view if you weren’t familiar with the area. It was another couple of days before she invited me over. We were on the phone talking about music, as usual, when she asked me if I knew who Sleater-Kinney was.
“No, I’ve never heard of them. But I can ask [my friend’s older brother] to burn a CD for me tomorrow.”
“You can come listen to some of their stuff at my house, if you want,” she replied. “I’ll be home around 4, and we’ll have the living room to ourselves to play it as loud as we want.”
That one day turned into another 100 days of doing the same thing. Of getting home from school and work and immediately walking to D’s apartment to hang out. In the beginning days, everything was new for me. Making out on her and her roommates’ couch, making out in her bed, undressing her and touching her body, learning how to make her come. I thought she was a patient teacher, though I know now it was more that she knew exactly what she wanted and knew I would do as I was told. She’d show me where she wanted to be kissed or licked or touched, she’d explain tempo and pressure, she’d take my hands in hers and show me the softest spots on them and say “Here, when you hold me, hold onto me with this part.” And I’d do what she asked.
I wasn’t ready to be touched the same way, because I wasn’t as in tune with my body as D was. Years of fatphobia from my family and the world around me and the fact that I never, not once in my life felt like the girl my body was telling me I was, made me hate my body. From what I could see, D loved her body. She moved in it with a kind of ease I didn’t even know existed.
She was the first person to whom I admitted both of these things after drinking five or six Coors Lights with her on her and her roommates’ couch one Saturday afternoon. And she didn’t push me to be any different.
She complimented me, as she usually did when I was feeling down about the way I looked, and then said, “You know, you don’t have to be a boy to be like a boy. There are so many ways to be, and you can choose your way.”
It was the first time I’d ever heard anything like that in my life.
Vodka and Soda
This was my mom’s drink.
This is not a beer, because she didn’t drink beer. She said beer and brown alcohol made you fat, so she tried her best to stay away from both of them. She started drinking heavily when I was 12-years-old, and by the time I got to high school, it felt like she was always drinking, and I never got any confirmation that she wasn’t. Her alcoholism drove us apart and was a contributing factor to her early death at 62, but that’s not why I’m bringing up her drink right now.
After almost a year and a half of going to D’s apartment whenever I could, I started to crush on A, another girl from the scene who was the same age as I was. We met at a party on the jetties at Ft. Lauderdale Beach where everyone was taking big swigs of vodka out of plastic water bottles and chasing their gulps down with even bigger swigs of Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew. Everyone was sweating from the top of their heads all the way down their legs, and the spring night humidity was bearing down on us so hard that the moisture in the air felt like a chaser in and of itself. The boombox was blaring Aaliyah’s “Rock the Boat” when I decided to finally pull A away to talk to her about my feelings and ask if she felt the same way. We ended up talking and walking for about 45 minutes before we collapsed together on the sand to make out and hold each other until our friends came to find us and poke fun at us for leaving the group to “neck each other down” on the beach.
Our first official date wasn’t until about a week and a half later when we met up at the mall to get lunch at the food court and meander around various stores we liked until the movie we were going to see together started. We spent the whole time in a googly-eyed stupor, holding hands and putting our arms around each other as we walked from place to place, kissing in corners where we pretended people couldn’t see us. A was much more brazen about sex and her sexuality than I was, but I followed her lead because I didn’t want to seem like a coward. Really, I envied how free she felt to hold onto me and kiss me in rooms full of people, and it made me want more of her and to give her more of myself. We skipped the movie altogether to go fuck in her car on the top floor of the parking garage. Afterward, neither of us could stop smiling as she drove me back home and told me to call her in a few hours so we could figure out when we’d finally see that movie we missed.
When I walked through the door, I felt the best about myself I’d ever felt in my young life, and I was immediately greeted with screeching sounds of my drunk mother asking me if I was a “dyke” or not. I wouldn’t find out until weeks later, but I’d been outed to her by my little brother, whose friend was at the mall earlier that day and saw A and me galavanting around in our lusty teenage trance. My brother’s friend came over to the house that afternoon and asked my brother if he knew my girlfriend, and shit hit the fan from there, I’m guessing. I honestly still don’t even know all the details.
Vodka and soda in hand, my mom kept screaming at me as if I just killed someone she loved. I guess, in a way, I did, but I couldn’t see that in the moment, and I couldn’t understand the reaction. I ran to my room and called my dad, who I had already come out to via my stepmom the year prior, and then packed a bag and drove to his house to stay for a while. My dad wouldn’t reveal this to me until I was much older, but that night, she called my dad endlessly, leaving him slurry voicemails asking if he knew I was a “dyke” and what he intended to do about it. My dad never called her back.
The next day, I skipped school to go to the beach with a few friends to shed the drama of the previous day with the light of the sun and the weightlessness of being in the ocean. They brought two Zephyrhills water bottles filled with vodka, but I couldn’t even smell it let alone take swigs of it again. All I could think of was my mom’s face as she yelled at me and then raised her glass to her lips for another sip of her drink. I never got into trouble for anything I did wrong like I did for being a “dyke” and it was haunting me. There were so many times when I needed a mother to tell me that something I was doing was wrong or dangerous or just generally harmful to my well-being, but she was never there to do that. And this time, it was me who was wrong. Just me. Part of the core of who I was. I’m still trying to figure out what the fuck I’m supposed to do with that.
Miller Genuine Draft
After the blow out with my mom, I spent the last of my high school years trying to be home as little as possible. I spent more time at my dad and stepmom’s house or spent the night with friends or whatever girl I was fucking around with at the time. I dated A for a little while, and then I dated other girls, too, until I ended up in a relationship with someone I’d stay with for the next several years, even after it got stale and unproductive for the both of us. I was out to everyone who knew me, and I became even more militant in my personal beliefs and politics. Gender dysphoria was constantly breathing down my neck, but it was 2006, and I couldn’t identify it or talk about it in a way that made sense to anyone but me. I had no idea why I felt the way I did, and when it got really difficult to even get up and get dressed in the morning, I tried to remember what D had told me all those years ago when she was teaching me how to touch her.
As college started, I made a lot of new friends, but they weren’t much different than my old ones. Most of our nights together were centered around how many beers we were going to drink before we had to go home and get at least three or four hours of sleep before the next day began. Miller Genuine Draft (“MGD”) became our group’s signature drink for some reason I can’t fully remember. I think it was because the advertising campaigns for it at the time were all hypermasculine, so we’d buy it and joke around that we were “real men drinking real beer.” Within a couple of months of the joke starting, we were all able to polish off 12-packs of MGD on our own without falling when we got up to walk or dance or whatever. My drinking never got in the way of my work schedule or my ability to do well in my classes, but I started to feel more and more like I needed it all the time, and with all the emotions I was already dealing with plus the pressure of the people I was spending so much time with, I just gave into the feeling without thinking too much about what I was doing.
One night during the second semester of my sophomore year, a small group of us was drinking MGDs in the backyard of the house some of our friends shared. Everyone brought beer with them when they came. We must’ve had about 80 beers at our disposal. I was having a particularly rough day — I got into a fight with my partner, I got a C on a paper that I thought was solid as hell, and I had a shift at my shitty customer service job I hated going to. I wanted so badly to feel relaxed for a few hours, so I just kept cracking can after can after can. I’m not sure how much I drank that night, but it was well over the 7 to 12 beers I usually drank with them in that same spot most weekends and a couple of days out of the week. I still don’t remember much about what happened that night, but I know the next morning, I was sleeping outside my friends’ house in my car, and I woke up with the worst headache I’d ever had. I tried to put the pieces together as I laid there thinking about how to greet my friends after not leaving their house the night before. But then all of the pain in my body came rushing to my consciousness, and I knew I just had to leave. On the way home, I pulled over to vomit on the side of the road, and when I got there, I crawled into bed for the next 14 hours.
At first, I blamed the MGD for making me so drunk and sick, but after a few days, I was finally ready to admit it was all me. And then, I started thinking about my mom’s drinking and how it started. I worried I was taking the same wrong turn onto the road that led her to drink so much in the first place. My 21st birthday was a little over a year away, and I decided I’d stop drinking that week until whatever my friends and I planned to do to celebrate my birthday the following year. I drank one last MGD that night with one of my best friends at the time and went to bed sober for the first time in a long time.
Diet Coke
It didn’t feel good not drinking when my mind was so busy trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted all the time, but my body felt better than it had in years. Struggling through all the feelings I had about myself, my relationships, my family, and the trajectory of my life without the aid of substances made this truly one of the harshest and cruelest times of my life. I never mentally punished myself as much as I did during the first four months of that year without drinking. And there was no amount of coffee or Diet Coke that could help me through it, but I mainlined both every day as if they wouldn’t be available the next.
It wasn’t until the last day of the fourth month that I finally started seeing a therapist. This was my first time in therapy, and I didn’t think I’d get much out of it. Of course, I wasn’t fixed by the time my 21st birthday came around, but something did turn in me those last seven months before that. I still didn’t have the language to describe the way I felt about my gender, but I leaned into the masculine and feminine parts of myself and the parts of myself that float outside of those categories as hard as I could. I started figuring out how to forgive myself for being so unrelentingly unkind to myself for so many years. I started figuring out how to forgive my mom and my dad for their individual failures as parents and as people as I was growing up. I started getting closer to other friends, finding people who would love and respect me without crossing my boundaries or pushing me to do things I didn’t want to do. I started standing up for myself in the areas of my life where it was the easiest first, then later, the harder ones. I was learning how to clean up the house where my life lived, which was some of the hardest work I’ve ever done. But it still felt better than leaving it a mess.
Bud Light Lime
When my 21st birthday finally came around, I actually wasn’t thinking about drinking at all. I decided to celebrate with some old and new friends at the karaoke night of a diner that was close to where our college was instead of going out to some bar or club like I originally planned the year before. We got there and ate our greasy diner burgers and all kinds of diner pies and, much to the dismay of everyone there, we sang at least four songs each. Toward the end of the night, the waitress came over to ask if we wanted anything else and I asked what kind of beer they had on tap.
My friends looked at me skeptically and, after the waitress finished listing them, one of my friends said, “OK, let’s share a couple pitchers of Bud Light Lime and sing two more songs each and then go home.”
So we did. We sang our songs and squeezed extra lime juice into our freezing cold mugs and drank our BLLs and toasted to each other and to being alive despite the pains we’d all experienced. Despite our parents and families letting us down. Despite our economic difficulties. Despite the forces of the world that were against us constantly. Despite it all.
Bubble Trouble is a series helmed by Autostraddle Managing Editor Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about the nostalgia, effervescence, and never-ending appeal of carbonated beverages.
My Seltzer, My Self
Bubble Trouble // Header by Viv Le
Do you remember the first time you stumbled upon a satisfaction you tried to make entirely your own? The rush of realizing you’ve found a thing you love that could, maybe and finally, distinguish you from everyone else? As good as it feels to find people who share your interests, there’s something delicious about homing in on something that feels more distinct and specific to yourself, and then doubling the hell on down.
Or at least that’s what I thought, before the dentist told me my signature seltzer habit was rotting my already squishy teeth.
It wasn’t the first time a dentist had tried to warn me that drinking quarts of seltzer instead of any still water whatsoever was a corrosive mistake. But that day, the combination of my exhaustion and her alarm as she traced the white outline of my x-rayed jaw cut through my usual defenses. “Ah, well,” I thought, burrowing deeper under my weighted smock. “Another defining personality trait bites the dust.”
Unlike most of the kids on my close-knit street growing up, my household didn’t partake in “drinking milk with meals” culture. My Ohioan dad might’ve, but my Iranian-Armenian mother, grossed out by the very concept, preferred something with a bit more bite. In our New Jersey suburb, replete with Jewish delis and New York City transplants, the clear tonic of seltzer was extremely accessible. We bought bottles in bulk so she could drink sparkling water every night after (never during) dinner, a habit that seemed to me like the height of sophistication.
At some point during the first grade, I went to a friend’s house and was presented with a bowl of spaghetti and a truly enormous glass of quivering milk. I recoiled, then saw an opportunity to put my own stamp on the meal. I refused the proposed pairing, eyeing the splattered sauce and opaque glass with contempt until my friend’s exasperated mom gave up and swapped the skim out for seltzer.
High off the success of bullying an exasperated parent into submission (apologies, Andi), I started experimenting with the form until I concocted a signature drink not even my mother could claim: the incredibly complex and sophisticated cocktail of “orange juice and seltzer.” Water (i.e. “plain water”) didn’t have shit on orange juice and seltzer, a treat that, at its best, was so tart and bubbly it made my eyes screw up in delighted pain. If you’ve ever enjoyed the exquisite touch of chasing a meal with a nightcap or a coffee, you might understand the smug joy I was bringing to my tiny suburban days with orange juice and seltzer.
Better still, when I wasn’t being a brat to parents just trying to give hyperactive kids a snack, they were visibly tickled by this 7 year-old ordering a spritz with her cereal. I loved it. I ate that attention right up. Orange juice and seltzer became my biggest triumph — until the day I went to a grocery store and saw shelves lined with dappled bottles of Orangina, the sparkling orange drink that fancies itself a luxe alternative to Fanta. I was so convinced they plagiarized me that I cried.
Once I got over my outrage, I ditched my principles and got on board with Orangina, whose elite glass bottles quite literally felt fancier than any soft drink I’d ever handled. But my overarching devotion to seltzer and refusal to drink plain water like I was “supposed” to (always air quotes on that irrefutable medical fact) only intensified over time.
Seltzer followed me from elementary school to high school, where I bonded with my best friend over belonging to Sparkling Water Families. (That and Dashboard Confessional, but seltzer proved the more permanent similarity.) Seltzer followed me to college, where it became my favorite hangover cure. (Hard seltzers like White Claw and Truly hadn’t broken through yet, but when they did, I miraculously knew better than to let myself get lost in their deceptively smooth bubbles.)
Seltzer followed me across the country to Los Angeles, where new brands and spins on my beloved beverage kept the obsession fresh. (There’s just no competing with a Topo Chico from a taco truck.) Seltzer followed me to my last, shabbiest west coast apartment that saw me at my lowest, overwhelmed and inevitably surrounded by empty seltzer bottles. (It only took a week of living together for my roommate to make a game of finding half-drunk seltzers in increasingly strange places, from the freezer to the bathroom cabinet to inside a toppled cowboy boot.) Finally, seltzer followed me back to the east coast, where I settled in New York City and had more seltzer to choose from than I’d ever dreamed possible. (I christened my new rooftop with a bottle of champagne that promptly exploded its cork straight into my jaw, thus requiring a frozen seltzer ice pack.)
No matter where I went, the fastest way for new friends to demonstrate that they knew me was to tease me about my love for seltzer, or even become infatuated with it themselves. Again, I embraced it. Everyone needs a Thing, I figured. Loving, spilling, and evangelizing seltzer had been mine long before it became a cultural touchstone, and for as long as I could remember. I’d made sure of it.
At this point, I should acknowledge an unavoidable truth: Seltzer, by its very definition, is not very interesting on its own. It’s just water with bubbles! Put another way, though, it’s water that sparkles, which is just so clearly better than water that doesn’t. To anyone who dared ask why I had spent so much time, energy, and money integrating carbonation into my daily life, I’d heave a weary, self-righteous sigh. “Water’s just so boring,” I’d say to them. Nothing, I’d say to myself, could be more damning than to be boring.
I’ve always been jealous of people who’ve always known what they like. Whether in food and drink, decor and entertainment, or sex and relationships, having a defined sense of taste always seemed the easiest way to figure out who you are. But it feels like I’ve spent most of my life fluctuating between trends in hopes of landing on my own. If I didn’t know what I wanted from myself, I could at least suss out what other people did. I even followed that path to the extreme of becoming a professional tastemaker, turning my love for TV into a career of breaking shows down for others so they could discern if they liked them or not. Maybe that, for a while, would be enough.
As much as I’d love to blame all this indecision on being a bisexual Libra, that’s just growing up, isn’t it? Finding out what you’re actually into and want, even (especially) if you think you already know?
Sitting in that dentist’s chair some 25 years after I first latched on to orange juice and seltzer as my brightest personality trait, I looked back at my lifelong devotion to seltzer and saw so many other things I’d tried to make My Thing just for the sake of it, or else the approval of other people. Sometimes it was as innocuous cutting matching bangs with my friends. Sometimes it meant underlining exactly how closeted I was by amassing an impressively banal collection of sweater vests, “just because.” Other times, it meant commiserating with coworkers while chain-smoking American Spirits (bleak) or ordering whiskey on the rocks at corporate happy hours in the hopes of impressing married men (bleaker). All the times, it was exhausting. Far flung from my childhood home and certainties, nothing came as easily as orange juice and seltzer.
It became an instinct to throw together a pile of interests, desperately hoping they’d assemble a human being other human beings would want to know and love. All the while, [Carrie Bradshaw voice], I couldn’t help but wonder: What if all these obsessions and attempts to differentiate myself didn’t assemble anyone worth knowing at all? Who was I underneath the detritus of abandoned hobbies and TV shows and labored drink orders? Who could I be without the habit of picking a path for its shape rather than knowing if I actually wanted to go down it at all? As I left the dentist, I didn’t know. Sore and half-numb, I just grabbed a bottle of plain, flavorless water and headed home.
And lo, we’ve reached that part of the personal essay where I tell you what I’ve learned, what I intend to do going forward, etc etc. Now that I’m firmly in my mid-thirties, and a year removed from that harrowing X-ray and ensuing existential crisis spiral….well, it’s still hard to say for sure. True personal growth is never linear as “person minus coping mechanism equals cured.” But it’s probably not a coincidence that in the months since, I’ve found myself in a completely different place: jobless (by luxurious choice), calmer, brighter. I’ve had the time and space (and therapy) to ask myself all those questions and sift through the answers — as messy as they may be — for any scraps of gold lurking therein.
So here’s what I’ve found, as best as I can say it:
I’ve done my best to embrace what I love without glancing sideways to make sure everyone else agrees.
I’ve given myself more time outside my career and daily responsibilities to understand what lights me up rather than worry so much about what lights others up that I snuff myself out.
I’ve cut myself more more slack when it comes to knowing exactly what I want (or don’t), and more permission to like what I like so long as it doesn’t hurt me.
And as for the biggest question of all: Yes, I have stopped using seltzer as my primary hydration vehicle. I even got one of those reusable (plain) water bottles. I’ll drink seltzer when it’s on offer, usually with lemon or bitters or as a swift kick to my senses on a foggy morning when coffee isn’t enough. But I’m also much more aware of what I can leave behind without losing myself with it. For now, that means releasing the pressure to always be sparkling, granting myself grace when I feel too plain, and believing myself capable of landing somewhere in the middle.
Bubble Trouble is a series helmed by Autostraddle Managing Editor Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about the nostalgia, effervescence, and never-ending appeal of carbonated beverages.
Crack Open Something Fizzy — It’s Time for Bubble Trouble
Bubble Trouble // Header by Viv Le
In the mid-18th century, a dude — ok, a scientist — named Joseph Priestley lived next to a brewery and became obsessed with the bubbles in beer and the gas that produces them.1 He wasn’t very popular. Mainly because he was highly critical of the Church of England.2 A 1700s baddie, if you will. He is often credited with the discovery of oxygen, which sure, important stuff. But more importantly, he invented carbonated water. Then some Swiss amateur scientist named Johann Jacob Schweppe with an awfully familiar last name swooped in and said let’s bottle and sell this shit to the masses.3
But enough about the literal history of carbonated beverages. Here’s an incomplete personal queer history of carbonated beverages.
In fifth grade, I drank Diet Pepsi because Kelsey did. I hated its flavor, my palate forever sensitive to the gummy aftertaste of aspartame and other sugar substitutes.4 But I had to drink it. Because she did. We were both fifth graders, but in my mind she was like a cool older kid. She didn’t even have an older sibling, but there was something about her that seemed further along than me, already middle schoolian in her knowledge of pop culture with swear words in it, in her tendency toward diet sodas, which I thought were only for moms. Hers had fewer rules than mine, and in fact, Kelsey was allowed not only to pack a Diet Pepsi in her bagged lunch for herself but also a second just for me. They come in silver now, but the cans then were a piercing blue. It sounds cliché to say the cans were the color of the sky on a sunny day, but they were. We were once something like sisters, but then I lost track of Kelsey or she lost track of me or she left me behind or we departed each other. Her mother recently added me on Facebook, and a part of me wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what.
Senior year of college, I sometimes slept in an old, massive house full of boys plus two girls even though I didn’t live there. I was sleeping with one of the boys, dating him even, which I continued to do even after coming out to him in a bizarrely public way as not bisexual but a lesbian. Weird times. A billion people shared the one fridge in this old house, which still had murals on its walls, depicting the original German owners’ family’s journey, or so that’s what someone drunkenly told me after they got Iced5 at a party. The one fridge was always overfull and underchilled. A group of us had a ritual: Prep a Coke. It meant put one or two cans of Coke in the fridge for later. There wasn’t room for much else. Prep a Coke for me, won’t you?
When my now fiancé was first flirting with me, before we’d even met in person, she asked me what my favorite booze was. I could have been normal and said wine or even something slightly more specific like sour beers or maybe given a brand like my beloved Bud Light. But nope, I had to be the most me possible. I told her my number one choice of drink is txakoli, the slightly effervescent and dry white wine from the Basque region of Spain. She had two bottles delivered directly to my door within two hours.5 I had been me, and she liked me.
I guess what I’m trying to demonstrate here is that it’s easy to tell stories with bubbly beverages at their core, whether they’re about a childhood friend crush that fizzles out or a confusing time in one’s journey with queerness or falling in love — such a heady, pétillant experience in and of itself. The above are vignettes more than they are fully realized stories, but that’s because I don’t want to distract from what’s to come. The intros to the special series I put together here are always meant to be just a taste.
You can expect a fun mix of things from this series: playful lists, longer essays, work that spans tones and scopes, maybe even a satirical queer retelling of Willy Wonka 👀. We’ve got your light bubbles and your heavy bubbles, too. All carbonated beverages were fair game: sodas, seltzers, tonics, beers, sparkling wines, etc. We also manage to get into a decent amount of trouble along the way — from identity crises to smuggling sodas to porous teeth. Expect nostalgia, discovery, and so many little bursts of emotion.
Editing these pieces made me thirsty; I’m sure reading them will do the same. So have something bright and bubbly nearby as you pop the tab on Bubble Trouble.7
1. Joseph Priestley and the Discovery of Oxygen
2. The Great Soda-Water Shake Up, by Sarah Laskow
3. The history of sparkling water
4. To this day, if I take one accidental sip of my fiancé’s Splenda-laden coffee, I have to spit it out immediately.
5. While we’re speaking sparkling, Smirnoff Ice was bubbly, too, wasn’t it? I honestly can’t remember. Do people still get Iced at college parties? Lmk.
6. God what a Move. Again, we hadn’t even met in person yet, and this made me melt with desire.
7. The series was originally titled Soda Week, but that felt restricting and boring. I did almost call it Cracking Open a Cold One With the Gays but it was a bit of a mouthful.
Bubble Trouble is a series helmed by Autostraddle Managing Editor Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about the nostalgia, effervescence, and never-ending appeal of carbonated beverages.