Asking My Fiancée Questions I Don’t Know the Answers to a Month Before Our Wedding

I’m marrying the love of my life, Kristen Arnett, next month! We’ve checked so many things off our list over the past year in anticipation of the big day. We found a queer wedding photographer! I found not one but two outfits for the big night, because I can’t resist a costume change at a major event. We got Kristen a custom suit made by a queer tailor. We figured out a color scheme, did a photoshoot on the beach for our invitations, and put a lot of energy behind menu brainstorming with our caterer. Along the way, we found ways to make planing a wedding sexy.

Surely in our past nearly five years of knowing each other, Kristen and I have uncovered a lot about each other’s lives, interests, fears, etc. We’ve told and retold each other the same stories, the same jokes, developed many stories and jokes that our ours, together. We lived under lockdown in a city where we knew almost no one in early 2020. We moved to another city where we knew almost no one, and then we moved to the place she has always called home. We’ve been through a lot. We’re naturally curious people as writers. And yet, there are always things you don’t know about a person, right? That’s the basis of 90% of the horror I write.

Not exactly in the spirit of horror but rather in the spirit of comedy, I thought it would be fun to ask Kristen a series of questions to which I genuinely did not know how she might answer. By the end, I still very much wanted to be her wife, so nothing was TOO earth shatterringly shocking!!!!

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Kayla: Hello. I’m going to ask you questions that I don’t know the answers to.

Kristen: I doubt it.

Kayla: Maybe I’ll ask some and it’ll turn out I do know the answers.

Kristen: I bet you will.

Kayla: But I’m sure there’s plenty of things I don’t know about you.

Kristen: Mystery.

Kayla: Mystery. Okay. One, what’s the first work of fiction you can remember writing as a child?

Kristen: Baby-Sitters Club. I was at church. We had church bulletins where you were supposed to write down… Did I tell you this already?

Kayla: No, I’m nodding because I used to remember writing on my church bulletins.

Kristen: There was a section that was filled out for where you’re supposed to write down notes about the sermon. And in the sermon part, there’s lines inside the bulletin where I could write down my thoughts about our Lord and Savior. I wrote a Baby-Sitters Club, let’s call it a fan fiction, but I was in it.

Kayla: Ooh. self-insert.

Kristen: Self-insert. I was one of them. It was like, you know how all the Babysitter’s clubs are like, “Kristy on the blah, blah. Mary Anne on the blah, blah.” This was like, “Kristen…” And I remember there was something about tennis balls in it. I don’t remember why.

Kayla: Just the balls?

Kristen: I mean, and children, you’re babysitting. And then I was just like, “Hah-hah-hah,” that I wrote myself in, and there’s only so many lines you can work with in a bulletin. And then I was going down the sides of it and around. But that’s the first work of incredible fiction I can remember writing.

Kayla: Did you get in trouble for not writing about the Lord?

Kristen: I was never supposed to be writing in church, because everyone knew I wasn’t writing about the Lord. My dad was always mad at me. My mom was up in the choir loft all the time, but I was always down sitting next to him and my brother Michael. My sister Rachel was a lot younger than us, so she got to leave and go be with the little kids. But we had to stay and fix our minds. And if I was writing something, my dad knew that I was not writing about the Lord.

Kayla: You could have been writing Bible self-insert.

Kristen: No. He basically thought I was trying to write a note to a friend or something, but that time I was writing a little self-insert story. Hold on. I got to take this thing from the cat. It’s a piece of tinsel. Here we go.

Kayla: So you wrote a book called With Teeth. Can you remember the first time you lost a tooth?

Kristen: Yes.

Kayla: And what happened? That’s it on that story?

Kristen: A lot of these are going to be church stories, I realize.

Kayla: Wow. I guess, yeah. Because I realized I really had to go back in time for things I don’t know the answers to.

Kristen: My friend Bethany was coming over after church on Sunday and we kept doing that thing, no one’s going to know what this is, but it was this old hero villain thing where it’s a little lady being like, “I can’t pay the rent.” And then a villain saying, “You must pay the rent.” And the lady going, “I can’t pay the rent.” And then the landlord being like, “You must pay the rent.” And then a guy comes in, he’s like, “I’ll pay the rent.” And she goes, “My hero.” And I was doing that in the back seat of the car with my best friend Bethany, who was coming over to stay with us after church so we then would bring her back to church that night to her parents. So she was coming for the day to hang out and have lunch. And my tooth had been wiggly. And I kept joking around and shouting in the car, “My tooth fell out, my tooth fell out.” And people were like, “Oh, did it?” And I’m like, “No. Gotcha.”

Kayla: Classic.

Kristen: Classic prank. And then I got to my grandparents’ house, and my tooth actually fell out in my mouth and I was like, “My tooth fell out,” and no one believed me because I had done boy who cried wolf about my tooth falling out that many times.

Kayla: That was a better story than I was anticipating.

Kristen: It is what it is. It’s my life, Kayla. This is my life.

Kayla: Did you ever have an imaginary friend?

Kristen: No, I really tried. That was a thing I really wanted because I thought it’d be cool. I didn’t have a ton of friends all the time when I was young. The first time I can remember trying to have an imaginary friend, I believe was in fifth grade, which I think is too old to have an imaginary friend. It might have been fourth or fifth grade. Maybe fourth grade. It was-

Kayla: I guess, I’m curious, how do you fail at having an imaginary friend?

Kristen: Because I was like, “This isn’t real.”

Kayla: Oh, okay. You didn’t believe enough.

Kristen: It’s hard when you’re a Christian and you’re already trying to imagine that God is real and you can’t do that.

Kayla: So is God not your first imaginary friend?

Kristen: No, because God scared me. I was like, “That’s not my friend.”

Kayla: Yeah, I guess that’s true.

Kristen: That’s my boss. And I’m not doing a good job. I’m going to get fired.

Kayla: Like your corporeal landlord.

Kristen: Yeah, I’m going to get fired or evicted. So in fourth grade, I think, there was this television show, which I know I’ve talked to you about, that I think is one of the horniest shows that was ever on television, and it was on TGIF. It’s called Just the Ten of Us. It was about a family that had a bunch of teenage daughters that were all hot and horny, and then they’re like, oh no, we have to go attend an all-boys school because our dad is the basketball coach. And I was expected to watch that and not turn gay. Honestly, it’s like, what did they expect? If anything was going to turn somebody gay, it’d be watching that fucking show.

So I was like, “I’d really love to have an imaginary friend.” And I am trying to imagine the two twins who are on that show, the teenage girls named Cindy and Wendy. And I tried to imagine one of them was my friend, and I thought maybe Cindy, because she was the smart one. She was the smart blonde and her twin sister Wendy… No, Wendy was the smart one. Cindy was the dumb one. But I was like, “I’m going to imagine that Wendy is my friend.” But then I was like, “This isn’t real. That’s not a real imaginary friend.”

So first one, my Lord, but not really, that’s my landlord.

Kayla: When you were in sixth grade, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Kristen: A lyricist.

Kayla: I knew this one. I forgot. I knew this one.

Kristen: My friend at church wanted to be a singer. And to be fair, to bring the petty into things, I did not think she was a very good singer and I did not think she was going to make it, but I knew I did not want to be a singer. I could sing, but I was like, “Ugh, I don’t want to do that. That seems terrible. But you know what I would like to do? I could write the lyrics. I could be a lyricist and then I could write the music that you sing.” Did I ever write a song? No, not a single line. Not a single time, but I was like, “I could be a lyricist.”

Kayla: Yeah. Not a composer, but just-

Kristen: Classic Sagittarius.

Kayla: I don’t know if I know the answer to this one. What was your first word?

Kristen: Oh, I don’t think I know that.

Kayla: Oh, okay. Mystery.

Kristen: Mystery. Yeah, I don’t know that.

Kayla: What’s the highest note you can hit when singing?

Kristen: Not that high.

Kayla: Do you know off the top… Or do you know what it was when you were more actively in choir?

Kristen: I was never asked to do descant. I was like-

Kayla: You were a soprano though, right?

Kristen: No, I was not a soprano.

Kayla: That’s right.

Kristen: I started off in high school as an alto II, and I was not an alto II, which is basically a tenor I if we’re being honest. That’s the nerdiest thing I’ll say this whole time. But then I moved to alto I, and alto I was more comfortably in my range because that’s some middle low notes and then some notes that are basically feeding into second soprano. But I don’t think I could have been a second soprano because second soprano, they ask you to do a lot of that mid-range high stuff and that’s just not where my voice wants to sit.

The cat is crying. He wants to show me up and I think that’s rude.

Kayla: I hope the recording picked that up.

*Timmy Tomato the cat yowls in background*

Kristen: Oh my God.

Kayla: Who is your first crush? Like a real person?

Kristen: Crystal Gayle.

Kayla: What a name.

Kristen: That’s right, you don’t know who Crystal Gayle is. When I was, I think maybe even before I was in school, I know I’ve told you this before maybe, but the first time I got a haircut, they were like, “What do you want your hair to get cut like?” And I said, “Cut my hair like Crystal Gayle,” meaning I wanted my hair to get cut and add more hair onto it.

Kayla: You wanted it longer.

Kristen: Because Crystal Gayle had hair to the floor. She was a country singer who had hair down to the floor. It was long hair, and I wanted to have long, luxurious hair. And what did I have? I had short little hair that I would rip out of my own head because if my mom put a barrette or something, I would yank it out with all the hair still in it because I didn’t want a barrette in my hair.

Kayla: So you wanted a haircut that actually elongated your hair?

Kristen: Yes. I wanted to cut hair onto it, but I thought Crystal Gayle was beautiful because she had beautiful long hair.

Kayla: Okay. This will be a little burst of lightning round.

Kristen: Oh God.

Kayla: Have you ever called someone the wrong name during sex?

Kristen: No.

Kayla: Have you ever seen a moose?

Kristen: On TV?

Kayla: No. In person.

Kristen: No.

Kayla: Have you ever seen a mongoose?

Kristen: On TV?

Kayla: No.

Kristen: No.

Kayla: Do you know any facts about mongeese?

Kristen: What’s a mongeese?

Kayla: Isn’t that plural? Mongooses?

Kristen: I think just mongoose.

Kayla: Do you know any facts about mongooses?

Kristen: No.

Kayla: Have you ever gone on a date with a Republican?

Kristen: If I did, it was accidentally.

Kayla: Have you ever lied to someone on an airplane?

Kristen: Yes.

Kayla: Oh, wait, now I do want to know a follow-up. Can you think of a particular instance?

Kristen: No. Just a million times.

Kayla: Just a million times.

Kristen: You’re not going to see those people again! It wasn’t anything that mattered. You could just tell a little white lie.

Kayla: Would you rather have brain freeze or hit your funny bone?

Kristen: Funny bone. Brain freeze happens too much in Florida. Drink a lot of Slurpees or whatever, have an ice cream, something cold here, it hits you worse.

Kayla: Have you ever seen the movie Doubt?

Kristen: No. I read the whole plot synopsis on Wikipedia.

Kayla: You love to do that.

Kristen: I love to do that.

Kayla: That is something I know. Oh, this is not a yes or no question. When was the first time you went to a sex shop?

Kristen: I was 19.

Kayla: Wow.

Kristen: My kid was three months old. I went to the sex store as a-

Kayla: A teen mom.

Kristen: Yeah. It was overwhelming.

Kayla: I bet.

Kristen: There were a lot of signs up that were like with people’s faces on them.

Kayla: Who?

Kristen: Because if you shoplifted there, they put your face on something. It was just a lot of weird looking dudes.

Kayla: That’s a funny thing to remember though.

Kristen: But then I started to have this worry about what if I stole something? What if my face went on something.

Kayla: By accident?

Kristen: I don’t know. It’s one of those things where you just start freaking out, and I was like, “Oh my God, my face could be on here,” but you have to steal to do that. And I didn’t steal anything.

Kayla: Did you buy anything or did you just look around and get overwhelmed?

Kristen: I looked around and got overwhelmed. I also did not have any money, so.

Kayla: You could have stolen something.

Kristen: I should’ve. No, I was afraid for my life.

Kayla: What was your first screen name? Like AIM.

Kristen: Oh, I can’t reveal that.

Kayla: You can’t reveal it?

Kristen: No.

Kayla: Is it like an embarrassing fandom thing?

Kristen: No, it’s not.

Kayla: Can you tell me after?

Kristen: Yes.

Kayla: Okay.

Kristen: Don’t include that one.

Kayla: Well, I’m going to include that exchange that we just had. Did you ever own any of My Little Ponies?

Kristen: A million My Little Ponies. I had one called Strawberry Shortcake, and she was my favorite. She was white and she had strawberries, red, red strawberries that went all down her…hindquarters. That sounds wild and just very sexual. And she had shiny red hair. And I loved her. She was my favorite of my regular sized ponies. And then my other favorites, I had twins that were called Buttercup and something else, and they were a little pale yellow, and they had purple hair, and they were twin baby ponies. And I was like, “That’s the mom and those are the babies.”

Kayla: The hindquarters.

Kristen: I’m sorry I said that so sexually.

Kayla: Did you ever own a duct tape wallet?

Kristen: No. My brother had one though.

Kayla: I’m kind of surprised.

Kristen: Some of the things of my gayness were like, I didn’t have to do that, my brother did it, it’s fine.

Kayla: Gotcha. Did you ever have a Yahoo account?

Kristen: Yes.

Kayla: Did you ever answer a question on Yahoo Answers?

Kristen: I’m sure that I did, but I shouldn’t have. I’m sure I didn’t know.

Kayla: Did you ever ask a question on Yahoo Answers?

Kristen: I did not ask any questions.

Kayla: Have you ever had a sexual dream about Jeeves of Ask Jeeves?

Kristen: No. Jeeves of Ask Jeeves seems a little like a top.

Kayla: Yeah, that’s probably true.

Kristen: Oh, he’s a little too condescending in that kind of way where I’m like, “I don’t need that.”

Kayla: Not interested.

Kristen: Not interested.

Kayla: What is your social security number?

Kristen: That’s on you if you don’t know. The cat is screaming. He’s telling me not to answer.

Kayla: Have you ever ridden on a motorcycle?

Kristen: Yes. My first time riding on the back of a motorcycle was when I was six.

Kayla: I kind of had a feeling you had, but I didn’t actually know the answer. I was just like, this just seems like something-

Kristen: The cat is caterwauling.

Kayla: But six years old though?

Kristen: My dad had a motorcycle.

Kayla: Oh, I didn’t know that.

Kristen: And he rode us around the house we were in that was next to the topless bar. He rode us all around it, and then he rode my brother, and I was on the back of the motorcycle, not in a helmet or anything. I was holding onto my dad’s back on the back of the motorcycle.

That same day or not, if it wasn’t that same day, that same weekend, my brother and my dad had peed outside and I was like, “I’m going to pee outside.” So then I tried to pee outside and I pulled my pants down. I just peed all over my pants.

Kayla: I also did not know that story.

Kristen: And then I just shoved those in the laundry.

Kayla: But I love that you were like, “Well, they did it, so I’m going to do it.”

Kristen: That’s what you do when you have to ride on a motorcycle, you got to take a little whiz. I was like, “I whizzed all over myself. Oh no.” I was behind the house. I was outside the house and then just peed all over my pants.

Kayla: Have you ever won a spelling bee?

Kristen: Oh, I came in so close. I misspelled scissor.

Kayla: Oh, right. We’ve talked about this because I misspelled scissor on a spelling test.

Kristen: That was in third grade, and I had depression in third grade.

Kayla: Yeah, I did know that.

Kristen: So then I misspelled scissor and freaked out. Everybody else went to something, and I was like, “I’m going to stay behind.” And then I glued a note to my desk saying that I was the stupidest person. I glued it to my desk, and then I cried. My teacher came in, and then I had to go to therapy at school.

Kayla: I knew about the note glued to the desk, but I don’t think I knew it was a result of a failed spelling bee.

Kristen: Those things were all connected. Third grade was a tough year.

Kayla: Yes.

Kristen: Third grade was a tough year for me.

Kayla: How did you use to kill your Sim in the Sims?

Kristen: I never played Sims.

Kayla: I can’t remember if I knew that or not. It seems like a shocking fact. What’s your-

Kristen: I was too busy having a child, Kayla.

Kayla: Okay. That’s true.

Kristen: Some of us had to raise our own Sims. They were real people.

Kayla: The ultimate Sim. A baby.

Kristen: You can’t just let them be like, “I need to pee. I need to pee.” You have to let them go to the bathroom.

Kayla: You have to give them a ladder if you give them a pool. What’s your favorite city that we’ve traveled together to?

Kristen: Oh, I like so many.

Kayla: I know.

Kristen: Can I name a couple?

Kayla: Sure.

Kristen: I’ve really loved Chicago. Chicago’s so fun, and I really liked it. Portland, Maine. It’s been a lot of fun. I didn’t really have a feeling about New York, one way or the other, until you and I started dating, and now I really like going there. I liked going to Pacific Northwest with you. That was a good time.

Kayla: Yeah. We’ve been to a lot of places.

Kristen: Seattle.

Kayla: That’s why I was like, “I don’t know her answer to this question, because we’ve been so many places.”

Kristen: Yeah. And I like when we go to North Carolina together because that’s a thing I did as a child, but now when you and I do it, it feels special.

Kayla: That’s something I really like, because I’d never really spent any time there, especially that part of North Carolina where it’s almost Georgia.

Kristen: Yeah. What is it? Western, Southern?

Kayla: It’s not that far from where I grew up.

Kristen: Yeah, I’ve had a lot of fun with that.

Kayla: What’s something you thought about me early on that turned out not to be true? If you can think of anything. Either before we even met in person or even just before we didn’t know each other that well.

Kristen: I thought you might be a little mean.

Kayla: You thought I might be mean? From my social media persona?

Kristen: No, you just were kind of like a hotness that I thought maybe you’d be a little mean.

Kayla: Yeah, I can be petty, but not really mean.

Kristen: No, you’re nice.

Kayla: Yeah.

Kristen: Complimentary.

Kayla: Have you ever accidentally eaten expired ham?

Kristen: I’m sure that I have.

Kayla: I think you would remember. I have. And I’ll never get the taste out of my mind.

Kristen: I’m sure I’ll do it again in the future.

Kayla: It tasted like nail polish remover.

Kristen: Oh, okay.

Kayla: It’s pretty bad. Tell me something I don’t know about library work, and it can even be boring.

Kristen: That so many people who work in libraries don’t know anything about books.

Kayla: Oh, yeah. That’s interesting.

Kristen: Myself not included. I just shouted that.

Kayla: There’s this assumption that if you work in libraries, you’re a bookworm.

Kristen: Or that you’re a reader or something like that. And it was like, that’s maybe not true. I’ll never forget working one time and having a librarian be like, “Oh, what are you reading right now?” And I was reading something for school that time because I was taking night classes and I was taking that Faulkner class. So I was like, “Oh, I’m reading this Faulkner book..” And she was like, “Oh, who’s that? What’s that?” And I was like, “Wow. Wow, wow.” You can be a whole ass librarian with a master’s degree and you don’t have to know shit about books. Although, I will say this, you should.

Kayla: It does seem kind of important.

Kristen: I had a whole fight with somebody who was a librarian at the time, and I was still just working staff, and they argued with me for close to 20 minutes about what day Christmas Eve was. We straight up have Google for any of those issues.

Kayla: Yeah.

Kristen: So yeah, there’s plenty of people that work in libraries that maybe don’t know anything, but not me. I’m a genius.

Kayla: Gay and literate.

Kristen: Yeah.

Kayla: If you could have any skills that you don’t currently possess, what would it be?

Kristen: Time management.

Kayla: What?! That’s not what I was expecting. I thought you were going to be like sword fighting, welding.

Kristen: I can do either of those. What I can’t do is time management.

Kayla: Well, that is something I know about you.

Before and After the Library

feature image photo by Kilito Chan via Getty Images

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I’ve used a lot of words to describe myself in the many years I’ve lived on this planet. Some were nice words, others were not. But the descriptors that have stuck with me the longest are the ones tied up in my expectations of myself. They reflect who and what I love.

Lesbian. Novelist. Librarian.

It’s that last one I want to talk about now. The library! It’s where I spent all of my twenties and most of my thirties. Working, sure, but also doing a lot more than that. I found my best friends at the library. I discovered my voice there along with a real sense of self-worth. Most notably, I penned my first novel in a library, typing furtively on lunch breaks. I’m no longer the girl who took her first job there out of sheer desperation, but I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that part of that person stays wedged inside me, always. And for the sake of this story, there are two iterations of self to consider: pre-library and post-library.

These “before” and “after” versions hinge on the birth of my son. In the before, I was 18-years-old and beginning my first year of college. In the after, I was a young mother in dire need of a paycheck. Thankfully, I found employment at my local public library — a small city branch that was basically four rooms duct-taped together with stacks holding up the tiled ceiling. What did I know about libraries before I began working there? To be honest with you, not very much. I had grand notions of dusty rooms and carefully selected tomes, peace and unending quiet, some grey-haired spinster steadily shushing everyone like a balloon slowly leaking air.

I was wrong about almost all of that (there was still a good amount of dust — libraries tend to have terrible cleaning services). In my two decades of collection work, I became an integral part of the library’s intricate machinery: public, academic, and law. There was shelving and reference and weeding. InterLibrary Loan. Puppet shows and flannel boards and glitter covering the floor as well as the soles of my shoes. There was shelf reading, a seemingly never-ending task. I didn’t just work at the library; I worked with the library, my brain and body employed in tandem with other necessary library cogs. I was one of many, part of an expansive community that fought (and continues to fight) an increasingly uphill battle when it came to securing community spaces and rights for users.

Banned books bridge the pre- and post-library versions of myself.

Growing up, I wasn’t allowed regular access to books. We were Southern Baptist, strongly evangelical, which meant that unless you were cracking open a bible or something biblically adjacent, the written word was something that had to be approved before it could be viewed. I received textbooks in school — ones handed out each year in classrooms, battered things I pored over religiously — but we hardly ever went to the library, and any media center materials had to go through my parents before I could read them. We were also poor, which meant I did not have money to buy any of my own. Unlike my brother, who would have rather done a mountain of chores than be forced to read a book, I was desperate to get my hands on any. I craved the smell of them, their weight and texture. I wanted to fall inside their pages, get lost in worlds that looked vastly different than my own colorless existence. Because falling into a book meant my own world disappeared. I didn’t have to think about the things that made life harder, my queerness, my otherness. I could simply cease to exist.

Sometimes I stole books from classrooms. I can admit that now, positive my teachers have likely forgiven (and long forgotten) their theft. I snatched paperback copies of things, Matilda and The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle and Island of the Blue Dolphins. These books I snuck home, shoved beneath the dresser I shared with my little sister. Stories made me ache and cry and wonder. Libraries, inaccessible to me, but stuffed full of books — things I considered holy — became exponentially more significant than the actual biblical texts my parents wanted me to read. If church meant submission to something greater, then the library was a place where a person could be given complete autonomy and control. Freedom to learn. Freedom to grow.

So yes, it makes perfect sense that when I think about the term “banned books,” my mind immediately slinks back to my childhood. To ban is to refuse, to expressly forbid. And I’m unable to separate the way books are banned in the political sense from the way books were denied me in my childhood. After all, isn’t it the same argument? The notion that a child couldn’t possibly know their own mind well enough to make important decisions? These political parties cry “think of the children” and “moral objection.” Well, so did my parents. But this kind of pointless rhetoric never stopped me from reading. It only taught me how to hide things better. Learning how to stop hiding — my thoughts, my feelings, my identity? That took years to undo.

Libraries are repositories for books, but they’re also a place where you learn your voice is valuable and important. I was technically an adult when I gave birth, 18 and old enough to vote, but mentally I was still a child. I’d grown up very sheltered and had no resources, no skills outside of those learned in the church. I couldn’t legally drink for another three years. I wasn’t able to rent a car on my own. I had a baby, one who needed lots of time and attention, and I knew almost nothing about how to take care of him, much less how to take care of myself. That first library position — the one that paid twenty thousand dollars a year, plus stolen toilet paper and leftover food from events — saved me. It wasn’t just a job, it was access to information. Access to community. I grew up there, alongside my son, and the passing years sped by in a flurry, like a snowball tossed downhill, steadily picking up heft and momentum.

I live in Florida — have always lived here. I’m third generation, and it’s common knowledge that we currently boast the second most book bans in the United States. This information isn’t surprising to me (or to anyone else who’s lived in a state where “otherness” means difficulty existing). You get used to the people in charge telling you what you shouldn’t want. Living with a bad thing for so long can lead to apathy; the way your eyes slip unseeing over objects you’ve owned for many years. But by pressing our fingers against the bruise of these “bad things,” we’re reminded they’re still there and still affecting us. I repeatedly tell the story of my relationship to books and libraries and my family because it’s not a new one, and I shouldn’t forget how it continues to impact me. Book bans are the same today as they were yesterday. Not much has changed when it comes to people thinking they know better.

Here’s what I know for sure: Talking and listening to each other keep communities closely knit together.

Storytelling. It’s what I’m doing right now, isn’t it? And by sharing the facts about my own relationship to libraries and book banning, a reader might get an opportunity to compare my experience to their own. Possibly they’ll tell some version of it to another person. And so on, and so on. When we continue to talk about book bans, we are sharing something bigger than the ban itself. We’re telling each other an uncomfortable story that needs to be heard and reheard.

So, here’s mine. Take what you need from it. Because telling each other stories doesn’t blunt the ache of our individual pain. It allows us, instead, to share the load.

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Autostraddle is honoring Banned Books Week 2023! Today is Let Freedom Read Day, the final day of Banned Books Week. For more information, visit BannedBooksWeek.org.

Queerness Is Messy, I Am Messy and That’s a Very Good Thing

The first time I thought about my queerness, I mean really thought about it, I was sixteen years old. I’d just masturbated for the first time. I’d had an orgasm (also my first), and as I lay limp in the steadily cooling bath water, I considered what images had gotten me off: women’s forms, warbled body parts and bleary faces struck senseless by ecstasy; a mosaic of the mind that mostly resembled scrambled porn. These were not the bodies I was supposed to be thinking about. I mean, I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about bodies at all! God wanted me to keep my thoughts pure for marriage (hadn’t I signed that True Love Waits card? Wasn’t it on file, somewhere in the dusty bowels of the Southern Baptist Convention Center?) But if I was going to think about a body at all, shouldn’t it be that of my future Christian husband? But I hadn’t considered that future spouse at all. In my garbled fantasies, it had been my own hands doing the guiding – touching other women – and the jolt of this realization struck me like a sucker punch to the chest. Oh no, I’d thought. I burst into hectic, horrified tears.

Coming out was a messy, confusing process. By the time I was ready to admit to myself that I was gay, I’d already given birth to a child. I had my son when I was eighteen years old, still wildly unsure about anything in my life, other than the fact I was not doing what I was supposed to be doing. I was not behaving in a way that made any sense to my Conservative Evangelical family, who’d envisioned a Godfearing husband for me and a life of service in the church. I was not behaving in ways that made any sense to myself. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew that I had to do something. To support myself and my son, I began working full time at a public library. I lived this way for nearly all of my twenties, closeted and overwhelmed and depressed — certain nothing would change. Finally, I began taking night classes at a nearby college that offered a scholarship for single mothers. I was broke and I was afraid and I was still very, very confused about my sexuality. I needed answers. It was time to do some research.

That’s my librarian’s mind in action, I think; that scavenging part of my brain that wants to mine sense from the chaos. If I could do research for library patrons, surely I could do that same kind of work for myself. I could excavate my queerness and understand it. I’d pin down exactly who I was and figure out what I really wanted.

But how? The small public library in Florida where I worked was severely lacking in LGBTQ+ references. And I had so many questions. Where was I even supposed to start? How to fuck someone the right way, perhaps. How to fall in love with a woman even though I’d never been able to enjoy the queerest, most hidden parts of myself. Since I couldn’t find what I needed in the stacks, I finally turned to the internet. And holy shit, there was a ton of gay stuff online! Piles of it, stacks of references, comics and articles and stories and fanfiction and essays and bulleted lists. Way too much information, I quickly realized. And not all of it was usable or correct. Most of it wasn’t remotely helpful.

And then I found Autostraddle.

I can remember exactly where I was when I found help: sitting hunched over my ancient library computer, cutting out stacks of cardstock dolphins for an upcoming Storytime. When I clicked on a link from my chaotic Google search (something having to do with The L Word, I’m 99% sure), I wasn’t sure what I’d find. But right away I knew Autostraddle was something special. They seemed to have everything I needed as a confused queer person. I found answers to questions I hadn’t even thought to ask! There was plenty of writing about sex, but there was also information on how to talk to other gay women. How to make queer friends! How to find and watch queer television. How to make queer art. And there were so many jokes! Gay people were funny! I initially hoarded this information like a squirrel with a particularly tasty nut, thrilled to finally feel like I was part of something bigger than myself. But then I shared Autostraddle with other people, which made it even better. I began to find joy in my queerness. I found love for myself and for the large, wonderful, startling queer world around me. I found community.

My work as a writer has always been centered on queerness. I’m a lesbian and my writing is gay; these things are inextricably linked. It would have been impossible for me to write the novels and stories that I’ve created without the help of Autostraddle. They were there for me when I was at my loneliest and my most closeted. Autostraddle made it feel okay to laugh at myself. They reassured me that it was okay to make mistakes. Queerness is messy. I am messy. And that’s a very good thing.

Every time I give to Autostraddle, I am giving to my present self, but I’m also giving to the Kristen who was deeply afraid and lonely. I’m giving back to the version of me that had so many questions and so few answers. By giving to Autostraddle, you are supporting the future of queer media, but you’re also supporting the younger, scared version of yourself. The less-wise you who needed help and support and finally found it. All the versions of us fit neatly together like nesting dolls. Autostraddle is for all of them: past, present, and future.

Go to the fundraiser!

Signing up for an A+ membership was one of the easiest decisions I ever made.

I’m happy to give to Autostraddle, continually, year after year. Without them, this letter never could have found its way to you. Autostraddle is currently fundraising for their survival, not just for the next couple months, but for as long as they can get. Every dollar extends the time until they will run into danger. I hope you’ll join me in supporting Autostraddle today. It’s never felt more important to give back to our community.

Because it’s ours, isn’t it? Messy and wonderful and alive. And that’s worth saving.

Give to the fundraiser!

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Interview With My Fiancé: Kristen

As you read this installment of Interview With My Significant Other, Kristen and I are away on our annual anniversary trip, which doubles as a joint writing retreat, in the woods. In fact, today is our anniversary, or the day we chose to celebrate as our anniversary. It was the day that Kristen first DM’d me on Twitter. Yes, it is Valentine’s Day. Her choice remains chaotic in my mind to this day. But oh how happy I am that this stranger many states away decided to get wine drunk after work and then fire off a message to the girl whose thirst traps she’d been hearting on Instagram for many weeks. This is a particularly fun anniversary year, because four is Kristen’s lucky number, and because it’s our first one as an engaged couple. We’re getting married!!!!!

In this very long interview, we talk about everything from the financial realities of being in a writer4writer relationship, laundry for a weirdly long time, the fact that I’d never used sex toys (none! ever!) before we started dating, top/bottom dynamics and our sexual compatibility, staying up to watch Yellowjackets until four in the morning, our 12-year age gap, having kids together, Bravo, the time Kristen made the worst rules ever for a Twilight drinking game, and making space for art.

Could I have cut down the part where we talk about laundry extensively? Probably. And yet, I did not. Enjoy!

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How do you identify?

Kayla: I identify as a lesbian.

Kristen: I would say that I identify as a lesbian and queer.

Kayla: Yes. And you use all pronouns.

Kristen: I do.

Kayla: And I use she/her. And I’m a bottom, and you’re a top, which we talk about a lot in this.

How did we meet and get together?

Kayla: So how do we meet? How long did we know each other before becoming romantically involved.

Kristen: We did not know each other at all before becoming romantically involved.

Kayla: No.

Kristen: You were a stranger.

Kayla: Yes. And this is a story that we’ve told on Autostraddle before. You tell the shortish version.

Kristen: I came home from work at my full-time library job on Valentine’s Day. And this is when I was just indiscriminately fucking around and seeing randos locally. And I had been looking at your thirst traps; you had been posting a lot at the time. And I had a bottle of wine, basically, and decided to slide into your DMs to tell you I thought you were good looking. Because that seemed like an appropriate time.

I remember I was in a recliner in my house with the wine next to me in a plastic cup. And the plastic cup, I vividly remember, was an old plastic Slurpee cup from the movie The X-Men. So it had Halle Berry on the side of it. And it was in my cup holder of my recliner. And I decided to send you a message and I was like, “This is a real move.”

Kayla: I remember receiving the message. I was in bed, but that was just because I lived in New York in a really small apartment with roommates, and so I was, most of the time, in my bed. I believe I was drinking orange wine.

Kristen: That sounds a little classier.

Kayla: Yeah, orange wine in bed, compared to whatever shitty 7-Eleven wine.

Kristen: Oh, it was 7-Eleven wine out of a very old plastic Slurpee cup of one of the X-Men movies. I think it was X-Men II.

Kayla: I do remember that you did not say I was “good looking.” You said I was cute. Because I remember being a little bit in my head at the time of, “Is this kind of friendly? Is it hitting on me?” Which obviously, yes, a random stranger isn’t going to call you cute and not be hitting on you.

Kristen: Oh, that is very funny.

Kayla: But yeah, you said cute, which to me was such a safe word, in a way.

Kristen: I truly think it’s because… I wasn’t going to say, “I like your titties, girl.”

Kayla: But then fast forward, how did we meet in person?

Kristen: I was not on book tour yet, but my publisher at the time asked if I would fly to Scranton, Pennsylvania to go to the distributor of my first novel, my debut novel, to sign 2000 copies of the book, because it got picked as a book pick for the Powell’s book club.

And they were going to fly me out there and I was like, “Could you…” I had this aha moment, galaxy brain, where I was like, “Well, instead of flying me home, could you get me to New York?” Because you and I had been-

Kayla: Sexting.

Kristen: Sexting.

Kayla: You were going to say talking.

Kristen: I was deciding what I want to say.

Kayla: Sexting, yeah.

Kristen: We had been sexting a lot, and we had not fucked. So I was like, “I can get a hotel room.” I didn’t say this to my publisher. I said like, “Hey, could you just get me there and I’ll get myself home?” And so Tony, who was my editor at the time, who is cool, said, “Yes.”

And so I messaged you and said, “Hey, I’m going to be in New York. I got a hotel room at the Ace. I’ll be here for this many nights. I’d love for you to come stay with me. If you want to come stay, you are more than welcome.”

Kayla: And prior to that, you had invited me out to Portland to go to AWP with you, which I had very seriously considered. But a couple different friends had talked me down. My straight best friend, her husband was like, “Don’t go meet a stranger across the country. Just because you’re queer doesn’t mean you can’t get murdered.”

Kristen: And you know what, he is right, and we are good friends now. I love him. And I would give the same advice.

Kayla: Yeah, he’s a big reason why I did not go to Portland.

Kristen: The Pacific Northwest is where a lot of murders happen.

Kayla: It’s true. You watch a lot of Criminal Minds, so you would know.

Kristen: I watch a lot of murder shows.

Kayla: But yeah. So I had had my chance to meet you. I’d passed on it.

Kristen: This I thought was a safer bet, because it’s where you live.

Kayla: Well, in my mind, too, it was the same, because part of why I didn’t want to go to Portland was not even necessarily the murder thing, but more so I was like, “I don’t really-

Kristen: Not even necessarily the murder thing.

Kayla: Not necessarily the murderer thing, but I was like, “I don’t know that many people here. What if I get there and we don’t have chemistry, or you’re boring?” And then I have nowhere to go. Whereas, in New York, it was my turf.

Kristen: Well, and for me, I was like, “I know people that live in New York.”

Kayla: Right. Same for you.

Kristen: And I was like, “If you don’t show up or if it’s not a good time, I’ll just spend the weekend hanging out with buddies, and it’ll be fun.”

Kayla: Yeah. So you invited me to a hotel. I had never met a stranger at a hotel before. That was a first for me.

Kristen: That was not a first for me.

Kayla: No, I know. And also, arguably, we weren’t even that much of strangers to each other. We had been sexting. We’d been talking.

Kristen: We had never met in person. We’d also never FaceTimed or anything like that.

Kayla: No. I think you had suggested it, actually, before we met in person, and I got nervous about it. I thought I was going to be too nervous to do it. Which is interesting because I’d always had internet friends and people that I had FaceTimed with. You did try to say, “Let’s do a FaceTime happy hour,” before we’d ever met in person. And I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I was too nervous, too shy almost. Which now in retrospect, I’m like, “Oh, you’re actually so extroverted that it just would’ve been fine.”

Kristen: But you didn’t know me.

Kayla: I didn’t know you. Just because you’re a certain way on Twitter or whatever, I was like, “That doesn’t mean that she’s necessarily extroverted FaceTiming.”

Kristen: I would’ve never offered FaceTime before to somebody. And I think I wasn’t thinking about stuff like that.

The week before I was going to New York and that I would see you, I had brunch with my best friend, Maria, and her brother, and our good friend Kristopher. And I was making a lot of jokes, which I do, just in any situation. But especially if I’m uncomfortable, because it’s easier for me to make a joke about something. And I was joking about our age difference. And I went to go to the bathroom, and Maria told me this later, but James, her brother, was like, “Why is Kristen joking around about this so much?” And Maria was like, “Oh, because she actually likes this person,” which is not something I had done or felt like in a while.

Kayla: And then, yeah, we met. One night turned into a whole weekend. And then we kind of right away made plans to see each other again. Which I think surprised us both, because I think we both went into that weekend being like, “We are going to have a fun weekend. Or even just a fun night.”

Kristen: Sure. I was like, “Okay, we’ve had a lot of fun talking, sexting. Let’s see how this goes in person.” I mean, also too, sometimes… I mean, we both know this. You can’t tell how sexual chemistry is going to be like until you actually are with another person.

Also, we had really good sex. But it’s one of those things, too, where it’s like, “Maybe I’m more toppy and aggressive, but I’m not going to be that aggressive with somebody I’m just having sex with for the first time.” But since sex was so good and we had such a nice time with each other, I was like, “I will go ahead and plan another trip back in a couple weeks and we can see how this goes”

Kayla: After that weekend, we pretty much immediately made plans for me to come to Florida to visit you. But then, which I feel like this is our version of U-Hauling, because we didn’t actually move in together quick enough for me to really consider it U-Hauling. But something that we did was, I was going to come see you in Florida, but it was too much time to wait, so you did another New York trip.

Kristen: No, I didn’t feel like it was me trying to do a U-haul situation. I think for me personally, I was like, okay, this went well. Since it went so well, I would like to come back sooner rather than later to see you and see if it’s like… I could be more specific.

Kayla: Yes, okay, sexual U-Hauling.

Kristen: And we texted about the kind of sex that maybe we would like to have this time, and we did. And it was very good.

And then I just had fun with you. We just had a good time. But our relationship came out of just mutually wanting to fuck each other.

Kayla: Yes.

Kristen: We did not know each other. I had no idea who you were or anything about you.

Kayla: We didn’t know anything about each other’s personal lives or anything like that. All we got was what we saw on Instagram and Twitter. That was it. Oh yeah. Truly. I was like, “I know she likes 7/11. And ravioli. That’s about it.” And you were still doing the “M’lady” bits then too.

Kristen: I think it’s just funny because that’s just how I came into the situation. But very quickly after these times, you came to Florida, and then it was obviously much more intimate. It’s hard to say when stuff turned into a relationship, because it was confusing to me, and I think for yourself as well, because you came out of a very specific relationship situation where it was a bad breakup. And for me, I’d been single for a while very purposely, because I was not trying to be in a relationship. And I think both of us were hardcore not trying to be in a relationship. Then when meeting each other, it was kind of like, how do we navigate these feelings of, we’re very compatible and it seems like we want to be in a relationship if both of us have been trying not to do that? And that made it a little more difficult to navigate.

Kayla: We were very much not looking for long term, and then we ended up in a long distance situation.

How do we feel about our big three astrological signs?

Kayla: I’ll go first. I am a Gemini sun, a Taurus moon, and a Libra rising. And I like being a Gemini, and I do often identify with Gemini traits. But I feel like you think that I don’t. Every time you see a Gemini meme, you’re like, “That’s not you.”

Kristen: Well, it doesn’t sound like you. Maybe that’s something we need to unpack. I think that is a thing too, because you’re like…

Kayla: But you also get a very specific version of me, and you have seen different versions of me.

Kristen: That’s true.

Kayla: The way I talk to my mother is shocking to you. Very different than the way I talk to you. I feel like you get all the kind of sweet and fun parts of the Gemini, and you’ve witnessed secondhand the other sides, but they’re not necessarily what you experience. I think that’s the disconnect there.

Kristen: I think you’re probably right. It just never feels like when I read something about Gemini, it doesn’t feel like how it is with my interactions with you. I’ll still read them to you sometimes because I’m interested in it, but it just never feels hardcore how you are. But maybe that’s a part of it being a Gemini, right?

Kayla: Yes.

Kristen: It’s very duality of man or whatever.

Kayla: But then, so what are your big three?

Kristen: I am a Sagittarius sun and very strongly identify with that.

Kayla: Yes. I feel like we never see something about a Sagittarius that is not true for you.

Kristen: Yeah. I’m an Aries moon and I’m a Scorpio rising.

Kayla: Yes, which is a pretty intense chart. I think my friend warned me about your chart when we were first hooking up.

Kristen: I feel good about that though. Because I think that a lot of me is very intense, but in a fun way for the most part, but with a lot of intensity. I can be exhausting. Even to myself.

Kayla: I didn’t know a lot of Sagittarians before we started dating, and I always joke that you guys come in packs because now I have so many Sagittarians.

Kristen: I literally have a Sagittarius group chat where it’s just a bunch of writers, and we’re all friends and Sagittarius.

Kayla: But before meeting you, I literally wrote something that was anti-Sagittarian for Autostraddle dot com.

Kristen: And I think the most Sagittarius part of my brain is that I accept that, and I think it is funny. And also flattering.

What do you enjoy most about your relationship?

Kristen: We genuinely have a good time together. Even though we have a lot of similarities, the parts of us that aren’t similar are still compatible.

Kayla: We’re very different people, but we hang out a lot. And in the beginning, that was out of necessity because we did move in together a month before Covid. Then it was just like, “Well, this is the only person I’m hanging out with for the foreseeable future.”

Kristen: It was kind of like, “Fingers crossed, hope it goes okay.” Which is a very Sagittarius feeling for me, Like, we’re doing it.

Kayla: But also, I don’t even really remember feeling that way at the time. It’s almost like in retrospect it became this thing of like, “Wow, yeah, we really went from this kind of long distance to lockdown life.” But yeah, we have a lot of fun.

Kristen: We still basically do that. We’re both people that work from home, and we see each other all day long, and we enjoy spending time together. I think from the moment we get up until we pretty much go to bed, we kind of riff off of each other. I like waking up and bouncing things off each other. Not everything has to be a joke, but you have such a good sense of humor. And I don’t think I could be with somebody if I didn’t feel like I could be silly and spontaneous and making jokes all the time. There’s times in which quite often I will say something, because I am a person who’s just very absurd and says a lot of things, and you’ll riff off of those things, and you’ll one up me. And I like that so much. It’s something that feels fun. It feels not competitive, but it feels like cumulative almost. It builds on each other, and it’s fun to be that way with another person who’s a creative person.

Kayla: I feel like we never really identified that or talked about it until recently when I said kind of jokingly that we should write a pilot together. And then you were like, “Yeah, actually we should.” And then we’re like, “Wait, we kind of just do weird punch up with each other all the time. This actually makes a lot of sense.”

Kristen: I think that it’s it because it becomes genuinely very playful, and it’s fun to me. It’s not boring ever. I am a person who gets very easily bored, and I hate being bored. It’s very fun. I’m always having a good time, and it feels surprising. I think another thing too for me that feels really good about our relationship is I am a person that doesn’t deal well with other people being jealous or having control issues. And you’re a person that is not like that at all from the moment we started talking with each other. It’s something where I constantly feel like I have a lot of freedom. Even though we’re with each other all the time, I never feel constricted or any kind of feeling like that.

Kayla: Both of those things you’re talking about are connected to something that I really value about our relationship, which is how aligned we are in terms of our writing and our creative passions being the number one priority for both of us and how we have so much respect for each other’s work and also each other’s process.

The jealousy stuff is connected to that too, because we don’t have professional jealousy of each other, and we never did, even in the beginning. We’ve even applied to some of the same things now. That was kind of a hurdle that we had to jump through that first time. Or maybe we didn’t actually have to jump through it because it was like…

Kristen: I kind of worried about that, too.

Kayla: Tell that story, actually.

Kristen: Because we both had applied for MacDowell, which is a fellowship, and it’s a big deal. And we both applied for it, and we both were anticipating responses for it during the same week. And I was laying in bed next to you, and I got my rejection from MacDowell, and I was like, “This is going to tell me a lot about how I feel.” And I was like, “I didn’t get in. Am I going to feel weird if Kayla gets in?” And then my feeling was, “No, I’m going to be really excited for her.” And that was such a relief, not that I thought that I would be upset, but we hadn’t gone through that before.

Kayla: No, that was the first time.

Kristen: And I was like, “I don’t know what that will look like.” And in my head, immediately being like, “Man, I hope she gets in”, was such a balm to me, because I don’t know what this would look like if I had immediately been the opposite. But instead immediately my brain was like, “Okay, great. I hope she does get it instead.”

Kayla: I didn’t though. We were rejected together.

I feel like we both celebrate each other’s wins, and I’ve never felt myself comparing myself to you. And I think both of us having never dated other writers before that, that’s not something we could have necessarily known about ourselves ahead of time, that we would deal with that well. But then just on top of that, not having the professional jealousy, it is something I never expected, to just love dating another writer, and not just another writer, but somebody whose work I really admire and whose work I engage with. It adds this level of intimacy. You don’t have that many people that you trust with your work, and you trust me. And that is so meaningful because I know that that’s hard for you to trust someone with unpublished work.

Kristen: I think I’m very particular. Some of it, too, is all writers have different practices. The exciting thing and nice thing about being a writer is that everybody’s practices and the way they create anything is wildly different. And there’s plenty of people that have a million readers or people who are engaged with their works in progress that they trust. And I think that’s a valid process, but that’s not my process. It’s a thing where I let the people that I feel like would be the best reader for it, be the reader for it. And that’s usually just one person, one or two people maybe. I feel like you’re my reader. Who we are as writers is like, “Who do we feel like our readers are?” And I feel like you’re my reader. And I would’ve probably felt like you’re my reader, even if we were people who hadn’t dated.

Kayla: I think that’s true. Absolutely.

What hurdles or obstacles have you overcome together in your relationship?

Kayla: I’ll start with my hurdle. It’s moving so far away from my friends. And it wasn’t a situation where you were like, “You have to move to Florida.” But I think a big part of being in a relationship with you is having a relationship with Florida. And whether we live here or not, dating you means dating Florida. And that was so new to me.

I’d never even been here before we had dated. I definitely ascribed to a lot of the dominant discourse about Florida of “it’s this place that we should just forget about and stuff,” which is crazy because I feel so passionately otherwise now.

But something that continues to be a struggle for me though is just being very far away from my communities. I’ve moved a lot in my life, and I always adapt to a place, and I’ve adapted to here, and I love it. But this is the farthest I’ve ever lived from my best friends. And I see them, but this is different. I’m used to having somebody literally down the street, and here, I have that, but it’s your friends who I’ve gradually become closer to. And that’s been hard and kind of ongoing.

Kristen: You and I process things very differently. And I had real worries about how we would get through if we had arguments or if we had differences of opinion, how those things would pan out. Because I am a person who very much previously, and it’s something I work on, shuts down emotionally. And I deal with things in a way in which either it’s very avoidant, conflict avoidant, or I have a hard time handling people when they’re processing emotions. That was something I worried a lot about because I didn’t want to be in a relationship where I felt like we weren’t communicating effectively, because that’s how previous things have felt for me.

And so I think I had a lot of very serious concerns in my own head about what it means to be a person who really shoves down a lot of feelings in a kind of, not to use gender terms, very bro-y way, where it’s like, “I’m not going to deal with this” and I’m going to be with somebody who is processing emotions, and how does that feel? And how does that work? But in reality, it’s really made me open up a lot more. I feel like I am better at talking about and understanding why I might feel a certain way about things. And with you and I, it’s shocking to me. We really don’t argue very much. We have very few fights.

Kayla: We definitely don’t bicker. When we fight, it’s definitely, it’s a fight, but we don’t bicker.

Kristen: Some of it too is, because we don’t bicker or have arguments, when we do have one, it’s hard to navigate it. Because we don’t do it very often.

Kayla: We don’t do it as much, because I feel like some couples have that learned behavior for better or worse.

Kristen: It’s something I dealt with in my previous relationship. We fought all the time, so I had a language for it. And I don’t think that’s very healthy. And this, since we don’t argue hardly ever, when we do have these situations that pop up, because everybody does, it’s a little more difficult. It feels hard because I’m like, “We don’t do this.” And so it feels very new.

But I also feel like, even when we do that, we’re very respectful of each other. And I think that it teaches me something new every time, and it’s something I really had worried about. I was kind of worried I was going to be a bad partner because of it. I was like, “I am a person that can’t deal with conflict, and if somebody’s emotional, I shut down.” And I really worried that it would make me not be a good partner, too.

Kayla: We both bring our own baggage to the table. You had been with the same person for so long and for such defining years of your life, basically most of your twenties, a lot of your thirties. It makes sense to me that you’d be nervous because you’ve never really experienced another person outside of that. I came into our relationship out of a really bad tumultuous breakup, and it was short compared to yours, but again, it was kind of a defining period of my life, most of my twenties. We both bring that kind of baggage to the table. I think that took a while, in the beginning, to figure out where certain things were coming from. But then once we were able to identify that, it helped us a lot, to just be like, “Okay, I know where this is coming for you, where it’s coming from for me.” It wasn’t us but moreso our histories.

Kristen: And I think that at the end of the day, those things are difficult, but they are not hard. I thought they would be. And also the thing I was most afraid of, which was that we would be harmful to each other in some kind of way, is not a thing that is ever involved. And we’re always deeply kind to each other, and that’s all I care about.

Where do you locate your relationship on the monogamy / polyamory spectrum? What philosophies do you have around how you handle monogamy / polyamory? How do you feel this impacts your relationship?

Kayla: Okay, so we’re very monogamous, and we came into this knowing that about ourselves.

Kristen: I think the thing that’s interesting is when we came into just fucking…

Kayla: We weren’t looking to be exclusive.

Kristen: No. We also weren’t looking to date, but also my feeling at the time was “I don’t want to be dating anybody.” And I knew that you were feeling the same kind of way. And that’s a different situation for me when I am in a relationship with somebody, I am a deeply monogamous person. I mean, I truly am a wife guy. It is completely in my nature.

Kayla: And I am whatever the femme version of that is. Yeah. Well, wife gal.

Kristen: It’s a situation that has not been a struggle for either of us, because we both are very much on the same page.

Kayla: I always have been. That’s been the case in every relationship that I’ve ever been in. I’ve never even really thought about it. I obviously don’t have a problem with polyamory, but I feel very secure in the way that I approach relationships for myself. Even in my last bad relationship, when things got bad, and even when we weren’t sleeping together anymore and there was no sexual component to our relationship, I still wanted to make it work, just us. It didn’t even kind of occur to me.

That said, I’m also very open to the idea of changing, technically. And I think that happens for people where maybe they change over time or what they want and all this stuff. I’m not ever the kind of person who’s says never.

Kristen: I haven’t ever been in any situation in a relationship with another person where I’ve been like, “I want to be open or I feel like I would maybe want to be polyamorous.” That’s not something that I have personally felt.

Kayla: Same.

Kristen: But I would literally never be like, “I would never feel like that way in my life” because I feel like that’s just who I am as a person. I can’t be like “I would never be a kind of way.”

But I do feel like it was very easy entering into a relationship together. Neither of us had to really have a discussion about this because both of us, for the most part, feel very monogamous,

Kayla: I will say I had some baggage of, my ex had cheated on me for a long time, lied about it before I knew the truth. She tried to ask to open up our relationship, and I said no, not knowing that she had done so already without my permission.

Kristen: I don’t know if I should say this, but then she sent you an Autostraddle article on it.

Kayla: Yes. Yes she did. She said, “Here’s this article about being monogamous and then opening up your relationship.” And it was literally an Autostraddle article. And I was like, “I can’t believe you’re trying to mansplain, gay-splain polyamory to me using an article from a place that I’ve written for for so long.”

But then not only that, she was not being truthful about the situation. I even remember telling her at the time: “I have legitimately poly friends who would kick your ass right now for doing this, because this is not what it is. It’s not lying. It’s not cheating. And then being retroactively like let’s so open the relationship.”

I definitely had some baggage, but I feel like I’ve always kind of known how I am on this regard. And it’s not because I’m a jealous person or something. It’s just not what I want.

Kristen: A big part of my life and continuing big part of my life is, my career is like my other love interest. It’s a very passionate part of my life, my relationship with my career and how I feel about writing and work and art. And I respect that about you, too. That’s so much of my time, for me, and how I share that with you. There’s not space for anything else, and there’s just not room for it. I don’t know how I would have more room, and also just who I am as a person and how I am with intimacy, which is that I am a very tough nut to crack. I feel like I’m extremely extroverted and very gregarious, and I have a lot of people that I love to see, but there’s very few people that get to have the small open part of me. And I’m careful with that. I don’t think I could do that outside of you and my work, and I don’t want to.

Kayla: I do think we’re both somewhat entertained by people hitting on each other. I feel like you often clock when somebody’s hitting on me, and I will not notice. But you think it’s entertaining. And I feel like the same way where I’m just, I know there are certain women on Twitter and stuff who have a crush on you, and it’s very entertaining to me. I feel like sometimes within monogamy, because that’s part of this question, “how do you handle monogamy” or whatever. Sometimes within monogamy, there are a lot of jealousy issues. But I don’t know, that’s not been a problem for us.

Kristen: You saying that is part of why I very much enjoy our relationship. Of course I appreciate the fact that people think you’re hot! You’re really hot. Yes, of course people are trying to hit on you or want to talk to you or have compliments for you, because why wouldn’t they? And it doesn’t make me feel bad or any kind or weird at all. I’m like, “They’re right.”

Obviously I want people to be respectful of you and your space, but it is not anything that makes me upset ever. And if anything, I’m like, “Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah. This is a person who is extremely attractive and worth your time.”

What’s your living situation like (together, separate, long distance with long visits, something else), how often do you see each other and why?

Kayla: We live together and…

Kristen: We see each other all day long.

Kayla: We see each other all day long. It was about, I think seven months into our relationship that we moved in together. And we kind of had a weird moving in situation though, because I was living in New York. You were living in Florida. We did the seven months of long distance.

We had the best long distance experience that I can imagine. It is a romcom almost. You were on book tour. I worked from home and had a lot of flexibility with my work life and was able to just meet you in different cities. And we literally met up in different cities all across the country and just had an incredible time. It was the best way to do long distance.

Kristen: It was basically having sex in a lot of different hotel rooms and going to restaurants.

Kayla: It was amazing.

Kristen: Going to book events.

Kayla: It was stupid. It was so fun. It was so good. And I feel like there’s something about that energy that has carried through in our relationship. We like to travel, we like to go out. Obviously, Covid has made that more difficult, which was hard because that was such a big part of our relationship.

As far as long distance goes, we had a great time. We did want to move in together though. We didn’t love the time apart.

Kristen: My editor at the time, his wife, who is Karen Russell, the author of-

Kayla: Name drop.

Kristen: She is incredible and literally one of my favorite authors of all time. He was like, “Half the time, Karen has to live in Texas,” so they were trying to rent out their house. I was like, “They’re only renting it out for six months. What if we tried it out living in Portland for six months?”

Kayla: Because then we were even thinking, “If we like it, we could stay.”

Kristen: I had messaged you, we talked about it. I was like, “What do you think, since you’re able to be freelance and move around, if we went to Portland and lived in this house for six months?” You had said yes.

Kayla: I had said yes. I had already put in my notice at my part-time job at Eater New York, where I was a restaurant reporter. They knew that I was leaving, and then I told them I was moving to Portland. I was actually on the way to my going away dinner with those coworkers. I love those coworkers, they were taking me out to dinner, I was on the way there, and I got a phone call from you, which was weird because at that time we only ever FaceTimed.

Kristen: That was our first call on the telephone.

I was on the book tour still. I was in Madison, Wisconsin, in a hotel room, and I received an acceptance to a residency I had applied for. I received the Shearing Fellowship in Las Vegas at Black Mountain Institute. It was something I did not think I was going to get, and it was for the exact same timeline that we were talking about being in Portland. I was like, “I have to take this fellowship.”

I was like, “I want to take this fellowship, but I can’t just sign this person on to be like, ‘Guess what? Psych. You’re going to…'”

Kayla: Portland and Vegas are very different.

Kristen: I wanted to talk to you about what it was, and I needed to make a decision, so I needed to call you right away.

Kayla: Yeah, and I said yes. I was like, “Yeah, I’ll do an adventure in Vegas. Why not?” Definitely a weird situation, because basically we moved in together for your fellowship, but that was also January 2020.

Kristen: We had a great time.

Kayla: We had an amazing time.

Kristen: It was so wonderful.

Kayla: We were already talking about extending our time in Vegas, and I always joke like, “We caused COVID.” I was like, “Let’s stay in Vegas longer.” And then we were trapped in Vegas.

Luckily, the fellowship was nice enough to let us stay, because we had both left our living situations. I had moved out of New York, had left my apartment there.

Kristen: And I left my house in Orlando.

Kayla: We had nowhere to go, technically. We were thinking that we were going to maybe apartment hunt in places while you were doing your fellowship.

Luckily, they let us stay longer. It did mean being stuck in Vegas during the majority of a summer, which neither of us were really prepared for that. That was a very intense move-in-together thing, but it was also funny, because before COVID, before all that, we were going out to Vegas as a temporary situation. The fellowship gives you this gorgeous apartment, but it’s furnished. Normally, people would just have what they have there. We ended up buying all this stuff for it, because we were nesting. We’d never lived together, so we were like, “We want to have nice shit.” We were just buying stuff, which was so silly, but in retrospect, nice, because once we were stuck, it felt more like home and not just this weird place that we were staying just because it was free.

It worked out, but it was funny, because we were obviously very eager to live together, so we were immediately like, “Let’s go to Target, let’s go to Bed Bath and Beyond.” We had never lived together. It felt like a novelty.

From there, we moved to Miami, because Miami weirdly felt like a compromise between New York and Orlando. You wanted to still be in Florida, or at least close to it. I wanted to be able to order takeout at 2 a.m.

Kristen: Also, South Florida is not a place that I had lived previously.

Kayla: Yeah, so it would be new to you. New to us both. It felt fair, because again, me moving to Florida was a big decision, and it felt fair to pick a place that was new to both of us. We’re both going to have to learn new things, find new communities.

We did choose it before COVID hit, which was not a great choice. It was so hard for us to make friends moving there, and we would’ve maybe made a different decision given all the circumstances. Even though we didn’t do the move until after COVID, it almost felt like, “We already decided this, so we’re going to follow through on it.”

Kristen: I definitely don’t regret it. It taught me a lot about myself and about how I feel about Florida. Also, we made such good friends. The few friends we did make-

Kayla: Are lifelong friends, for sure.

Kristen: Yeah, absolutely.

Kayla: You needed something new. We also needed a little space from your old life. You had had a marriage here, and I think you needed a little bit of space from that.

Kristen: My family was here, and I’m estranged from them. There were a lot of things going on, so it seemed it was a good idea. And now we’re back in Orlando.

Kayla: We were always going to end up back here, but I think it happened faster than either of us expected. I think it would surprise a lot of people to know that I’m actually the one who accelerated the timeline. I can remember sitting outside on the balcony in Miami and saying, “When our lease is up, let’s move to Orlando. Let’s not sign again.”

Kristen: You were the one and I was like, “Are you sure?”

Kayla: Yeah, because I think you were going to want to sign again, because you haven’t moved as many times as me either. Another move so soon seemed daunting to you.

Kristen: Every time we would come back here when we were in Miami, we’d be getting an Airbnb once a month and coming to Orlando.

Kayla: Yes, we basically were treating Orlando like our weekend getaway. We spent too much money.

Kristen: I was deeply homesick. Every time we’d come back here, I would have a couple beers, get teary-eyed.

Kayla: Also, there’d be an uptick in your writing and your productivity in your creative life. Even when we’d just get back from Orlando, you’d be working so well. I could see all that, but the reason why I pushed it, it wasn’t just because of that even, I was like, “We fit in better in Orlando. This is where we belong.” I don’t regret Miami, and I think it was necessary to do, because Orlando would’ve been a harder transition for me if we hadn’t baby-stepped into it.

Kristen: Mentally, I felt immediately terrific once we moved. I just feel good being outside here. A big part of me, connecting with work, art, and creativity is being outside, especially in a personal space. We have a yard here, and I just get to be outside.

As we’ve been sitting here, there’s a raccoon that comes in our yard every night to drink out of our bird bath, a possum that crawls across the fence, there are rats that are crawling up in the tree, and our dog is smashing her face against the sliding glass door. You can hear this chirping sound of night insects. It feels so vibrant to me, and I need it. I feel like I need it, and when I don’t have it, I don’t feel great.

How do you all share expenses or work out finances? How do you share or split up labor in the relationship? Can you talk about why that is?

Kristen: I think this is a great question. I feel like we have very solid, strong responses to this.

I’m a person who would never share a bank account with another person. But that doesn’t mean that finances can’t be split. When you and I started dating, my writing career was in an upswing. I’m significantly older than you, but for a majority of my life, I had been working strictly library work. Also, I had a kid when I was a teenager, I went to school non-traditionally, at night. I didn’t have any money, I was poor and grew up that way. When you and I met, it was right on the cusp of me coming into this writing career. Writing is not a tremendous amount of money, but in this specific instance of my writing career, I was like, “I’m in a comfortable space, and you’re more freelance.”

Kayla: You were fluhhhh-husssssh with caaaaa-haaaash. [ed. note: i rly did the voice]

Kristen: Yes, exactly. No, I was not, but I was in a place where I’m like, “I have stability right now for this moment.” I had just gotten a book deal with a Big Five publisher. I was like, “You and I dating, we’re both creatives, we’re both writers. Our circumstances are going to change over time consistently.” I was like, “There are times where my writing career is going to be flourishing and times when yours is going to be. That means, if we’re in a relationship together, we can take those ebbs and flows and be like, ‘For right now, I’ll be paying more, and then when you’re in that situation, then maybe you are.'”

Kayla: I have always been very honest and open about the fact that I did grow up with money, and I have a safety net in the way that you never have. At the beginning of our relationship, you were like, “I’m making more money now,” and I was like, “I’m not making that much money, but I could borrow money from my parents if we get into a situation where we need it.” You were like, “No, I understand that if things change and you’re the one making more money, then things will shift.”

At the beginning of our relationship, you paid for everything. You paid our full rent in Miami until I got this full-time job at Autostraddle, literally.

Kristen: It’s possibly because I grew up very poor and also for a majority of my adult life have been poor, but I love transparency around money, and I wish that people were more transparent about it.

Being in a relationship together, I was very upfront with you. I was like, “We need to be super honest about finances, and we need to be talking about how money functions inside of this relationship, because it’s always obscured in these ways.” That’s our capitalist society where people who have money don’t want to talk about money in this way.

For me, especially because I am a writer and people try and hide what things cost or how much you get, I was like, “I want to be very upfront about it,” but I also want to be like, “It’s okay for us. For right now, I’m doing it, and then you do it.” For right now, as I’m writing and trying to work on new stuff, we have switched.

Kayla: I think that’s something that people don’t always understand, too, especially maybe people who are non-writers who would be reading this. Just because you had your moment where you did get this really big deal, you were a bestseller, so you’re able to get this amazing deal. That only lasts for so long, and then you don’t know what your next fucking deal looks like. You have no idea. And you’re in that limbo stage right now.

Kristen: Anybody who asks me at any time, I try and be transparent about book money, because I think people aren’t honest enough about how finances work. We’re getting really outside of the realm of our relationship, but I guess it’s still contained within it. Yeah, 25% of your book money it has to go to taxes. Also, just because you have a deal doesn’t mean those things happen in real time.

Kayla: It’s parceled out in a weird way.

Kristen: But to address the other part of the question about how things happen in our household, Kayla cooks a lot. She’s an amazing chef. She makes an amazing amount of food.

Truly, when we began dating, I was happily living off of late night Taco Bell and 7-Eleven fare. Kayla makes us a lot of meals, and because she does all of that, I’ve very happily fallen into, I would say, a lion’s share of cleaning in the house.

Kayla: I would say you do all of it. I really enjoy doing certain domestic work, but it’s very limited to the kitchen. Not even, because I don’t like doing dishes. I don’t like doing that shit. I love to cook, and I love to perform this housewife duty, but I don’t love to clean. I don’t love to do all that stuff. I’m not necessarily a slob, but I have been a slob at periods of my life. I do feel like we have this very queer relationship where, in so many ways, I’m the housewife. I am cooking the food and doing that stuff, but then you’re doing all of the cleaning, you’re doing all of the housework, and then you do some of the more quote, unquote “butch work,” too. You work in the yard and all that stuff. You take both of those things on.

Kristen: I feel like I have dominion over the garage, the tools that we have, the yard work, and trying to get things set up. I take out the garbage.

Kayla: Then also the vacuum and the dusting.

Kristen: I vacuum and I dust. I clean the bathrooms.

Kayla: You do the laundry now too. [ed. note: omg maybe it’s boring for us to talk about laundry so much but if you slog through our laundry tangent i promise there’s horny content coming soooooon]

Kristen: I do the laundry and I do the dishes for the most part.

Kayla: When we lived in Miami, I did all of the laundry for a very specific reason. You had always had in-unit laundry where you lived.

Kristen: I said, “I don’t want to do that,” because having a dog means that sometimes they piss on things. I was like, “I don’t want to have to be like it’s 2 a.m., we have to go somewhere, and try and wash this.”

Kayla: We both made lists of deal breakers when we were moving into our first real place together, because the fellowship didn’t count. Our first real place together, we had certain deal breakers as far as the apartments we were looking at. Couples should do that when apartment hunting together.

Your deal breakers were… The main one was, “It has to have in-unit laundry.”

Kristen: That was my only one.

Kayla: The place in Miami had laundry in the building’s basement. You were like, “I don’t want to live here, because of this reason alone.” I was like, “This place is so nice. It is the nicest place we will ever live. There is a view of the ocean. I am going to swear to you right now that I will do the laundry every single time. You will never ever have to do the laundry,” and that remained true. You never even learned how to use the machines down there.

Kristen: As soon as we moved into this new place-

Kayla: Now you do all the laundry.

Kristen: I almost 100% of the time do the laundry and I’m fine with that.

Kayla: I feel like one of the first times I did it was yesterday. I didn’t even switch it, you switched it.

Kristen: Part of it too is, for me, when I’m trying to deal with anxiety, stress, having things be cluttered, or not set in the house makes my brain feel messy.

Kayla: You’re a resetter. At the end of the night, you want to reset everything the way that it looks before, so that we wake up in the morning…

Kristen: I literally set the pillows on the couch, I make sure the kitchen is cleaned up, I bring all of our stuff upstairs, I throw out any garbage, everything’s done. That way, when I come down in the morning, stuff feels set. Because I don’t like coming down into a space and having it feel cluttered. I don’t know how much of that is just… There are areas of control that I think feed into. Even how I like to perform sex. I like to have my hands on things, and I want to be the one dictating how things happen. If I’m able to do it myself, control it, and to see, it is very satisfying to me. Yeah, I reset. We have a bunch of candles in our house, I reset the candles in the morning. I have a fucking leaf blower, I come outside and I leaf blow the deck, so it’s clean the way I like it to be.

I feel like a sense of satisfaction. I get a deep sense of satisfaction from doing those things. Part of it too is I’m in a career, my writing career, where I don’t get to have a say in how those things function. Also, you’re very nice to let me do a lot of the things I need to do. Some of my behaviors I didn’t realize were so deeply… I have my nails dug into it. The detergent I can buy, the type of toothpaste I want to buy, or paper towels.

Kayla: You never want to change it up.

Kristen: I didn’t realize that I was like that until you and I started dating. It’s very fascinating to me.

Kayla: I’m always like, “What do I have the coupon for?” And you’re like, “No, I want to get the thing that I want.”

I’m trying to think if there’s any other financial things that we haven’t turned over, just because I do think that it’s important to talk about that stuff. We share a car that is your car and you pay for pretty much all the expenses related to that car. Also, when we go out, whether it’s on a date together or out with people, we don’t really nickel and dime each other. We don’t split bills.

Kristen: Absolutely not.

Kayla: We just take turns, and it feels very natural. I do think that we are very aware of how much money each other has at any given time. Once I got the Autostraddle job, you were so willing to let me pay at restaurants and bars in a way that, before, you would’ve just immediately grabbed the check and done it. All of a sudden you would just be like, “Yeah, I’m going to let you take this.” Even though we don’t share any bank accounts or anything like that, we have a lot of transparency. You tell me every time you get weird checks from shit. That’s part of writer life too. You’re like, “I sold the German rights to this and I get this check.” You always tell me, “I got this check,” and then I know that you have that money. You know what I mean?

Kristen: When we do have money, I consider it to be our money in the household, because it’s going towards household expenses. Even though we don’t share a bank account. I was like, “When money comes in, it’s still shared money, because we are sharing our lives together.” When I’m doing stuff for the house, getting things for the yard, I have an understanding that it’s a shared expense, because it’s something we’re both using and it’s for us.

Kayla: We’re very rarely like, “You owe me this, you owe me that.”

Kristen: I literally have never done that. It’s also just not something that I want to do. I don’t know how much of that is… I am a person who likes to pick up the check at places and is like…

Kayla: Yes, I do know that.

Kristen: I love to do it. I love being out with friends, picking up the check, and doing things like that. For our relationship, my mindset is, “It’s a shared expense household.” What we have together is what we share, so our finances are linked, even if our bank accounts aren’t.

Kayla: And for us, that doesn’t mean a 50, 50 split. It totally moves with how much each other is making.

Kristen: That’s just going to continually shift through our careers.

Kayla: I’m pretty sure we’ve never, actually, split rent 50, 50.

Kristen: No, we have not.

Kayla: It’s always been some sort of adjustment for our income.

Kristen: I think that makes sense.

Kayla: Yeah, yeah. Okay. Wait, can we move inside for the rest of this?

Kristen: Yes. It’s going to pick up a lot of Lola snoring in the background. Jesus.

Do you have kids, pets, plants, all three? Do you not currently have, but want any of these things? Why? Are you in agreement?

Kristen: I have a 22-year-old son. I had him when I was a teenager.

Kayla: He was 18 when we started talking.

Kristen: He was already off at college when we started talking.

Kayla: He was a full-grown person.

Kristen: Yes. This is something I very much kept out of any… Obviously, I was just trying to sleep with people and I never had anyone come to my home.

Kayla: Yeah. I knew it, though. We didn’t talk about it in the beginning, but I knew it, because I Googled you before we met up, and it was in one bio of yours. It was in your bio on The Toast.

Kristen: That’s one of my first pieces that I had come out.

Kayla: I think that was maybe before you had made the decision to be a little more private about that. You hadn’t gone viral on Twitter yet.

Kristen: Yes. This is something that happens when people have a lot of online access to you, they think they have access to everything, and I wanted my son’s life to be freely and completely his own and not for my own life to have any bearing on what he was doing or trying to be. I didn’t want him to have to deal with anything just because I was terminally online.

He’s 22 now. When we started dating, he was 18 and then turned 19, but was already off for his freshman year of college. And then I have a dog named Lola.

Kayla: You had a lot of pets when we started dating. To the point where I remember my best friend Becca at the time was like, “How many pets does this person have?!” My friends obviously creeped you at the beginning and a big part of your Instagram presence was all of your animals.

Kristen: Part of this, too, is shared pet custody with my ex partner. When I moved to Vegas, I took my most portable piglet baby, which is Lola, who’s a French bulldog. Yeah, we shared a lot of pets together. That was something I shared a lot with my ex, we both very much loved animals.

Kayla: I did joke to someone, I remember early on, that I was dating Snow White. Butch Snow White.

Kristen: I feel like at the time when we started talking, there were three dogs in the house, a cat, a hamster, and a fish. There were a lot of animals and I love animals. That is a thing about me and a part of why I really love being in Florida, it’s such a space for creatures. Yeah, they were shared custody animals.

Kayla: You brought Lola to Vegas, and I had never lived with a dog before.

Kristen: That was very funny. The first time you met Lola was when we were moving across the country.

Kayla: I met her on the cross-country trip.

Kristen: I picked you up from the airport. Lola was in the backseat along with our suitcases and things. We got you, you leaned in the back and pet her on the head and were like, “Hello, nice to meet you.” And then we stopped in New Orleans. Our friend Jami Attenberg put us up for the weekend as we were driving across the country, and we got to visit with her. And we were sleeping in the bed, and it was the first time we had slept with the dog and you were like, “Oh my God, this dog snores so-

Kayla: So much.

Kristen: So much. It’s so loud.

Kayla: Yeah, because it was Lola and it was Jami’s late dog, Sid, as well, who recently passed away. Which is very, very sad because literally the first time that I ever slept in a bed with dogs, it was Lola and Sid at the same time. So I got a crash course.

Kristen: You did, yes.

Kayla: They both snored. They were both stinky. I was like, “Well, this is my life now.”

But I do remember having that thought of, I was like, “Wow, I really am into this person.” I always in theory, liked dogs, but I didn’t grow up with them. And my dad actively dislikes dogs.

Kristen: But he seems to like Lola, which is funny.

Kayla: He does, yes. He’s very Indian dad about it all. It’s kind of like dogs don’t belong inside the house. But he has warmed up to Lola a lot. But yeah, I was always like, one day I’m going to have a giant Husky. I remember thinking that when I was younger and telling my parents that. But I’d never slept with a dog. I’d never had a dog in my personal space. And so Lola was the first one. And the joke formed early on that I was step-mommy. And I was like, “I am so fiercely protective of her.”

Kristen: And she is of you, which is extremely funny.

Kayla: Yes.

Kristen: In a way that she has never been of me.

Kayla: Yes. She can’t handle me being in a pool swimming.

Kristen: French bulldogs notoriously cannot swim. And Lola definitely can’t. She’s very top heavy. And she has never done this with me, but as soon as Kayla gets in a pool around her, she paces around a pool. She’ll scream. She hurled herself in once, and we like to say she fell to the bottom of the pool with the heaviness of a toaster.

Kayla: Yes, yes. It was throwing a toaster into a pool.

Kristen: We had to rescue her from that because that’s how much she didn’t like that you were in there. So you guys have a very specific kind of bond together that’s different than what I have with her.

Kayla: Yes, it’s true. It is true. And in the beginning, I let her really truly sleep right up against me and up by my face, which I’ve since learned that she can just stay at the bottom of the bed. She can stay at our feet. But at the beginning I was just like, “Oh no, this is the baby, she’s got to be close.”

Kristen: We have a million plants in our house.

Kayla: We do. But they’re under your supervision.

Kristen: That’s part of my purview also. I think I grew up thinking I wasn’t good at taking care of plants. And part of that was having pets so often, and pets need a lot of care. And I was almost too attentive to plants.

Kayla: You cared them to death.

Kristen: Yes. I was like obviously, I need to feed them every day. That’s not how plants function. And so I have since then become a plant dad … Like we have so many plants. We have an entire wall of pothos that grows down the wall. I like things that are alive. I love being in spaces where things feel alive.

Kayla: You have a lemon tree that I feel like your mental health hinges on.

Kristen: Well, God, please don’t let it die.

Kayla: You’re like, “If the lemon tree is doing well, then I’m doing well.”

Kristen: But it is a thing where it’s like, I genuinely enjoy having creatures and things feel like alive around me.

Kayla: You do. You like alive things. It’s a big part of your love of Florida. It’s like there’s always creatures. There’s always plants. It’s not only, there’s only plants, but they’re almost trying to take over. It’s like you love the overgrown look, you love-

Kristen: I don’t want anything to feel super manicured.

But I mean, I guess a good question of this, too, is how we feel about having kids together.

Kayla: I feel very passionate about the fact that all couples but especially queer couples should talk about this and early on.

Kristen: And that’s something we did, right away.

Kayla: Yes. And it’s not weird to talk about early on. It’s something that you should be on the same page about as early as possible. And I still remember the first time we talked about it. It was during that lockdown time in Vegas, and we were sitting outside and you know, you wanted to gauge things because you were like, “We have this age difference.” You were like, “I have a kid ….”

Kristen: And he’s already an adult. I have raised him.

Kayla: You were like, “I want to know where you’re at.” And I was very honest. I was just kind of like, “I don’t want to rule it out. I don’t want to have a hard no.” But for right now, that’s not my focus. And I think, yeah, my answer was basically not yes or no. It was like, I’m not ready to decide, but there’s a good chance I will want to one day.

Kristen: And I think that that is where I was, as well. But also, it’s an interesting thing to consider because I have a lot of things attached to parenthood that were very much attached to … I was a teenager and had to have this very gendered kind of specific role as mother, as a single mother for this child and what that looked like. And my financial circumstances, my age, and the role I felt like I had to play inside of that.

Kayla: Or you had to have a relationship with your parents who … You had to rely on them for certain things, and it extended your relationship with them in a way where you weren’t able to put up the boundaries that you could later in life because you had to rely on them for things.

Kristen: And my relationship with my son is terrific, and we have a very close, great relationship. But I do sometimes say this is, we had a relationship that was almost like … I mean I was 18-

Kayla: So you grew up together.

Kristen: We grew up together. I was still growing and learning. And so the idea of becoming a parent now, which is, obviously, I would not be carrying a child, that’s not something I would be doing. But I was like, “What does my role look like if you and I had a child?” And it’s a very different kind of relationship, and it’s also a very different financial circumstance and age circumstance and in a committed relationship circumstance. And those things all are very different than what it was previously. And so I was like, “I’m not ruling that stuff out either, but it’s also a decision we would make together.”

Kayla: That conversation went really well, though, because I feel like we both were being very honest and I think I was a little nervous that my answer felt wishy-washy of like, no, yes, no.

Kristen: But that’s how mine felt.

Kayla: I think when we had that conversation I was 28, so I was just like, yeah, I still feel very young. But also the thing we immediately agreed about, and I think I was the one who said it, I was like, “My main focus is my writing.” I was writing, and my career is my child. And I knew that you would be able to relate to that because I was like, “I know that you’ve never been able to really treat it like that because you had this kid.”

Your kid had to be your focus for so long that even when you were writing and first coming into yourself as a writer, the kid is always going to supersede that. And so you’d never been able to be selfish in this way of, I’m making choices based solely on my own writing. Not that that’s selfish. You know what I mean?

Kristen: There’s this great piece that maybe we can link to about Becoming The Art Monster. And it’s this great idea about what it means to be, quote, unquote, “Selfish about work outside of the traditional trajectories of love, life and romantic life and kids and family and what that looks like to be the art monster and make the art your lover and these things.” Which is maybe what I was trying to get at earlier when I was talking about a big part of relationships in our lives outside of each other is we have very intense, very specific relationships with our specific art. And that takes precedent.

So I think that you and I talking about that, I felt secure in talking to you about the idea about having children because I feel like we will always be on the same page when it comes to … But where is the space for making work? And where is space for art?

Kayla: I think the point at which either of us would decide to have kids is it would be a point where we’re like, “This is not going to take away from these other parts of our lives.”

Kristen: But I think that that’s such a specific conversation, and maybe people aren’t always on the same page about it, but very happily we were.

Kayla: For me, I think what’s important to me is that it remains an option. I think it would’ve been a very different conversation if … Because I remember, you put the ball in my court a little bit. You were like, “What are you feeling?” And I was very honest of, “I don’t want to rule it out, but I’m not sure.” And I think it would’ve been a very different conversation and a different trajectory if you had said, “Well, no, never for me.

Kristen: I’m just never going to be a never person. I think it is not in my nature to be like, “This thing will never happen” because that’s not how I think life works. Saying never to anything isn’t how my entire life has functioned. So that’s just not how I would ever frame anything, especially any kind of life trajectory or choice.

Kayla: I think for me it’s just like I always want it to be an option to the point where it’s like, if I do get to be a certain age, maybe I would consider freezing my eggs or doing something like that, which is obviously very costly and stuff. But for me, if I can have it as an option, I want it as an option.

How would you describe the sex we have together? Do you believe in lesbian bed death and, if so, has it or do you think it could visit our relationship? What haven’t we done together but would like to?

Kristen: Both of us are very sex driven.

Kayla: Yes, we have very high sex drives. And I had never been with someone who could match my sex drive. If anything, I have a higher sex drive than you do.

Kristen: I think it’s shocking to me. It’s very shocking. I’ve never been with another person who I felt wanted to fuck more than I do. But I really enjoy that part of our relationship.

I mean, it’s about to be four years together, and that’s not something that’s factored into our relationship at all. I do know, especially from being in previous relationships, obviously I’m not going to use the terminology “lesbian bed death,” but I would say relationships go through ebbs and flows of things. How are people communicating with each other? Are there issues that a person is having mental health wise? Is there something that’s going on that’s very high stress? Is there grief or trauma or different things like that? And that obviously affects the idea of having sex in a relationship. But we haven’t had those issues in any major way. And you and I have both agreed on this: I don’t want to be in a long-term relationship where sex isn’t a big important part of that relationship.

Kayla: Yeah. Again, because we both do have such high sex drives and, to go back a bit, are monogamous, too. So it’s like we want to have sex with each other. So that’s always going to be a component. I think what’s interesting to me is that, if there are ever periods of time where we aren’t having sex, whether that’s a few nights in a row, a full week or whatever, we both clock it and then talk about it. We’re both like, well, we haven’t had sex in a week. It’s like, we notice it.

Kristen: It’s because it’s very unusual. It’s unusual behavior. Usually it’s just like we have a lot going on. We don’t have an issue with talking about sex or engaging with sex.

Kayla: No. Because I do think that sex is a really big part of our relationship in the way that it’s not necessarily for everyone. Because obviously, it’s the way we got together. But it’s also, we happened to come into each other’s lives in a time where, I think, both of us had learned a lot about ourselves sexually.

Kristen: I know exactly the kind of sex I want to have.

Kayla: And same. For me, I know it’s different than for you. I think when you came into the situation with me, you were like “I know exactly what I want.” For me, I will say I did learn some of that in the beginning of our relationship. Because also, I’d never used a sex toy before we were together. Not even solo, which feels so crazy. Nothing!

And even talking about it here, I worry about it getting misconstrued in this weird way of this weird narrative of, you are older than me and more experienced than me and you kind of come into my life and being like, “Here’s how to have sex.” And that’s not what it was. It was not like that. That is a mischaracterization, but there is a degree to which I felt pretty inexperienced before we got together. I’d had a lot of sex, but I had a lot of sex that I didn’t really like.

Kristen: I did feel like you felt comfortable. And then feeling comfortable means you can try out new things. Because that’s what that level of comfort means. Something that felt very unusual to me or maybe a little scary to me before or I didn’t know how to access it, it feels a little more accessible because we feel comfortable with each other. And maybe that is the language that is.

Kayla: As soon as we started using toys and using different things, I was all in. I was like, “Let’s go.” It was never this weird kind of hesitation on my part. I knew that’s what I wanted. And I just had never, I think, had the space to explore that. And I think, yeah, you’re right. You created that safe space for me. You were surprised I hadn’t done a lot of things, but you didn’t make me feel weird about it.

Kristen: I mean, we’re both queer people. We know that stuff doesn’t come on a timeline, right?

Kayla: Right.

Kristen: It’s like you figure stuff out or try stuff out when you do. And that doesn’t mean you’re this age or you’re at this period of your life. It means, here’s who I am, this is when it happened.

Kayla: I think for me, I had been such a high sex drive, sexual person for so long and being queer and all this other stuff on top of it, I felt a lot of shame about that. And I think there was something about when we first got together that, finally, I could let go of that and then it was just, yeah, free for all. It’s like, I’m not going to experience this shame anymore. So I want to do all the things that I want to do. And you were also at a point of time where you had been fucking around for years at that point-

Kristen: Literally years.

Kayla: And you were like, “So I literally know exactly what I like.”

Kristen: I know what I like, and I know what I want. I mean, some of it, too, is like right, it’s this kind of bottom top dynamic we’ve talked about. Some of it is bottom and top, but some of it is just kind of control for me. And I know what I like control-wise during sex. And that doesn’t mean the other person is going to be interested in that. But you and I immediately had a dynamic where I’m like, this feels like it is compatible.

Kayla: Super compatible, yeah. Because you’re not full on stone, but you have some stone tendencies of…you like to get another person off.

Kristen: I very much do. But also I have a very specific idea about how I would want someone to touch me.

I always feel constantly, it could be any time of day, and you and I will be like, “Hey, I thought about this.” Or, “I wanted to try this out.” Or joking around about stuff, but also we both watch porn separately and together. We both masturbate separately and together, and we incorporate that into our conversations and our sex life.

Kayla: We early on watched a lot of porn together.

Kristen: But also separately. I mean, we still both do that. I love the idea that we both have very specific sex drives and engage in that, even outside of each other in that kind of way.

Kayla: Yeah. I mean, like we were saying before, we’re together all day, every day and yet we still find time to masturbate or watch porn separately.

Kristen: Having a body means having a relationship with that body by yourself. But also, I always feel excited. I’m never bored talking to you about anything having to do with sex. You and I are both up for pretty much whatever.

Kayla: We’re both very down to try things. So the last part of this question of what haven’t you done together that you want to. I don’t think we know that now.

Kristen: I’m sure there is going to be something but I don’t know what that is yet.

Kayla: And I also think the things that you don’t like necessarily for yourself, which you maybe have more of those than I do. But it’s also stuff that I’m not really interested in. You aren’t interested in experiencing pain at all during sex.

Kristen: No.

Kayla: And I do, but I I don’t want to make you feel pain. That’s what I mean, though, where it’s so compatible. Where it’s those things that you technically have hard lines about. They’re not hard lines that inhibit my pleasure. They’re not things that I’m just like, “Oh, I feel like I’m missing out on this experience or anything like that.” It’s the lines that you have, I’m like, “No, I get it.” It’s cliché to say we’re a good fit, but we’re a really fucking good fit. And I don’t think I would have learned as much about myself sexually in this relationship if that hadn’t been the case.

Kristen: Well, I mean, some of the dynamics between our relationship are-

Kayla: Right. You’re very strongly top and I’m very strongly bottom.

Kristen: It’s very much I want to fuck, and you want to be fucked. And I don’t have a problem with pain when it comes to providing that for you. Trying to think of a classy way to say that.

Kayla: Providing the pain. Providing the pain. No, I think that-

Kristen: And I like that. I like that.

Kayla: It’d be a very different story if you were … technically I have hooked up with people who are like, “Oh, I think it’s disgusting to choke out a woman.” Or, “I could never do that.” Which again, fine, that’s totally their prerogative. And if that’s the way they feel, that’s fine. But I could never be with a person like that because I’m just like, “Well, I want that and you’re telling me that that’s disgusting?” That’s what I feel like, the things that we both want or don’t want are so compatible. It helped free me of that shame.

Kristen: Well, because also I think, too, that it just feels comfortable. It feels interesting to use the word comfortable in these kinds of ways when talking about sex, because maybe comfort implies a kind of warm blanket, cup of tea, kind of situation. But comfort, I think, the idea of comfort is being able to be expressly free to say things and not feel any kind of tension or anxiety. I don’t think either of us has a feeling of stress or anxiety or fear when talking about something we would want. And I think if anything, I feel excited to talk to you about stuff I want, right?

Kayla: Oh yeah, we’re so honest with each other. I’m someone who strongly identifies as a lesbian and have for a long time, and I’ve told you that I watch straight porn. It’s things like that where I’ve never really been in a relationship where it felt like I could say that. I’ve never used sex toys, but I used to put weird things inside of myself when I was first exploring my own sexuality and stuff. And I felt comfortable to share things like that with you early on. And I think that can only mean a good sex life if you’re able to just talk about whatever.

Kristen: And in a way, too, where it doesn’t feel like we’re like, “Well, we have to have this conversation.”

Kayla: No.

Kristen: It’s like, “I want to have this conversation.”

I feel excited to tell you about things like that or to say what I want or to be like, this is what I’d like for us to try. It’s always a feeling of excitement and a feeling of anticipation. It’s never a feeling of … And maybe that’s what I mean when I say comfort because it’s a comforting feeling to be like, “I never have to feel worry over something like that.”

Kayla: I think I could say almost anything about sex or what I want sexually and it just would not faze you. Also we both write sex into our work. I feel like we’re both known for that in our writing, in different ways. But it’s why we’re able to even be open about it in something like this interview, for others to read.

Do you think your relationship will more or less continue to exist as it currently is? Why?

Kayla: Well, we’ve talked on this a bit already, but both of us are the type of people where we’re always open to change.

Kristen: Well, I wouldn’t want anything in my life to exist in exactly the same way, that sounds awful. Even my writing practice doesn’t work that way. I don’t want to be bored. And the idea of something staying the same way forever is extremely boring. Do I think it will stay as some kind of representation of what we have? Yeah.

Kayla: Yeah. I think we’ll always love to eat meals together, travel together. I think we’ll always love talking about writing, all the kind of fundamental things to our relationship. I don’t think those will shift. I think on a very surface level, we’re engaged, we’re going to get married. So that to me is a relationship change. We are going to be wives.

Kristen: I mean, that was already a big shift for me. I truthfully didn’t think I would ever get married again. I didn’t think that was something that was going to happen for me or that I would ever want. So that’s something that’s already shifted within the course of our relationship.

What would you say are your most fundamental differences?

Kristen: I think this is a given because of our age gap, because we are 12 years apart. I am not a person who … I’m not on my phone all the time. I’m a person who can’t even remember to reply to a text. And you are a person who, you met your core group of friends that you have that are your very good, close, incredible friends, literally online. And so how you connect with friendship and people is very much based on being like, I need to talk to people 24/7 in this kind of way. And that’s just not how I am. But I understand it. It’s not something I dislike.I understand it’s a fundamental difference in how we both are.

Kayla: Yeah, this is building on that, but I just have a lot more intimate relationships than you do.

Kristen: I feel like I’m more careful. I have a couple very, very close friends, and my thing with those friends, too, is I have two best friends and both of these best friends, I never text them. Not to use this language or whatever, but I guess my love language is … I need to spend time with people. It’s actual spent time. So when I’m with those people, I’m a hundred percent present. I’m like, “Here I am, I’m with you and I’m only thinking about you.”

Kayla: Whereas, I spend all day texting so many different friends, but even the ways that I text them or the ways that we talk is very different in the way that you are with your friends. Some of this goes back to, I would say our most fundamental difference is you’re a top, I’m a bottom, and that kind of manifests in these different ways. I will talk to my friends during the day about being horny for this celebrity or whatever. When we talk in this kind of way where it’s technically sexual, but not for each other, but we talk about these things like this hot mom on this show or whatever and you would never talk to your friends that way, ever. If you’re talking about a horny thing, it’s with me.

Kristen: I just don’t communicate that way, but I don’t dislike that you do it, I think it’s just different. I think it’s one of these things where some of it is an age gap thing, but some of it is just who we are as people. Who I am as a person is that I enjoy spending time with people face to face for the most part, and I struggle with doing that stuff in a text-based situation, but again, there’s not anything wrong or weird about that, it’s just different.

Do you all have any shared dreams/goals for the future or each other? What are these?

Kristen: I’m excited for when your writing career/book career is more established because I think that’s what you’re working towards. I think that will be an exciting time. I’ve already loved that you’ve spent that time with me. I’m looking forward to doing that time with you when you do book tours and when you’re in different spaces that I’ve already been in for writing. I think that will be really exciting, and I’m looking forward to that because it’s something we both love so much.

Kayla: I constantly feel excited about your future. I feel like every single thing that you do in your writing career, it makes me excited. We’ve talked about this recently, but something that I figured out for myself is I think we might end up having very different book careers and different writing careers, and I like that. Who knows? Again, this is something I feel like could change at any point, but I kind of like the space that I’m in right now of this very indie, kind of small, nontraditional publishing world. There are ways to have success and breakthroughs in that world, but I feel like I am maybe going to explore that a little more before pressuring myself to pursue more mainstream avenues. Our careers are always going to look different, but I think we’re both always excited about whatever the kind of milestone is for each other.

Kristen: I’m not trying to speak for you, but I think we are both always excited for when the other person is actively engaged in doing the creative work that’s very meaningful.

Kayla: Because that’s another thing that ebbs and flows, to go back to finances, our creative lives are in constant flux. We’re almost never aligned. This was something that we talked about in our Catapult piece that we did together: If you’re writing a lot, I’m usually not. If I’m writing a lot, you’re usually not. I don’t know why that happens, but it does. But we’re always excited for the other person.

Kristen: We’re both working on creative work, but what we’re making, they’re not the same thing. They’re both very deeply important to us, but our things are separate.

Kayla: As for shared goals, I’m not focused on having a kid together right now, but I would love to write a pilot together, that’s the thing I feel very excited about. We’re still at the very early stages of that, but that feels fun. I don’t think we ever really expected to write something together, but this is a different medium. That feels exciting to me, because it does feel connected to our relationship in this way where we are always riffing off each other. We watch a lot of TV and movies together.

Kristen: We also have a similar sensibility about humor and drama and tenderness, and I think those things factor into making something like that. Also, I just feel like what we’ve even talked about for the pilot so far is really good. It doesn’t feel like work.

Kayla: It doesn’t. It feels fun. We call it writer’s room kind of jokingly like, “Yeah, we’re in the writer’s room.” It’s the two of us on the couch. That’s something that I’m excited about for the future, because who knows what comes of that, but we’re working toward it together.

Kristen: But part of that is it doesn’t even matter, it’s just making something. To me, that’s especially where I’m at in my career, is the idea of making something and just enjoying the process of making something is reasonable enough and it feels right.

What piece of pop culture do you share or what piece of pop culture reminds you of your relationship? What’s your movie or your show or your book or your song?

Kayla: This is a funny thing though, because this is the part of our relationship where our age difference comes through the most. A lot of our pop culture references or even the things that we’re attached to or the things we know…this is where we kind of diverge a lot, but also we give each other a lot of grief about certain things.

Kristen: But in a funny way, I think, it’s in a funny way.

Kayla: Yes. Other than stuff that’s coming out now, anything that we brought into the relationship, none of it is going to perfectly overlap, because even the things that we both liked, we experienced in very different ways. A good example of that is you watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer when it was coming out. Not only that, it tracked your life.

Kristen: Buffy was in the same grade as me. Buffy was literally my age, and that was a show that was really deeply meaningful to me. It was at a time in my life where I felt like I didn’t really have a lot to grasp onto, and I felt very isolated. I was 18 and I had a baby, and I was very alone, and I didn’t really have a lot of art, and I very much embraced the idea of this show and fandom in general as something that I could have that felt like creative and a community space, that was deeply special to me. I know you had this with different shows in different ways. You were on Tumblr, you were in a completely different timeline.

Kayla: Not even that, even just my relationship to Buffy also had these kind of special contours to it and stuff, but was very different. It was not airing anymore, I kind of came to it later in life. It was foundational to some of my friendships. But it’s so different. I feel like we have these kind of things where, they mean a lot to us, but in very different ways and at very different times of our lives, or even just that we consume them in different ways. Because I watched all of Buffy on Netflix, or even The L Word.

Kristen: When I watched The L Word, I had no money at the time, and I got Showtime, and it was like my, “I’m not going to eat out.”

Kayla: And you shared the account with friends, right? [ed. note: Kristen kindly did not correct me here when i assumed there was a LOGIN for Showtime back in 2004 rather than a literal subscription for your cable account. So no, she did not share the account, she had people come over to her home to physically watch it together anyway I was born in 1992]

Kristen: Yes. I was like, “I’m never going to eat out at restaurants because I need to pay for Showtime,” so I just didn’t go to a restaurant for a year so I could watch The L Word.

Kayla: And I had checked it out from my college’s media library because it was on Netflix by the time I was watching it, but I had a shared Netflix account with my mom, so I was like, “I can’t watch it on there.” So I had to check out physical DVDs from my college. That’s what I’m saying. We have all this weird kind of overlap, but our experiences of it were so different because of our age difference.

Kristen: The way that we watch things together now is so exciting to me. Even how we watched Yellowjackets.

Kayla: That’s what I was about to say. I think that’s the most striking example of shared media because I was sent those screeners. You were saying, “Oh, the show Yellowjackets that’s coming out-”

Kristen: I really wanted to watch it.

Kayla: “It has all these people that I really like,” which it’s obviously catering toward nineties kids.

You were already hyped about it, and I was like, “I got screeners. Let’s check it out.” We were in Miami, and we pressed play on that first episode. We had screeners for the first six or seven, and we stayed up until four in the morning watching all of those screeners. That was the first time that we’d ever had a pop culture experience like that. We’d watched lots of stuff together. We’d had lots of fun watching things together. But I think you and I both have kind of somewhat obsessive tendencies.

Kristen: Oh, absolutely. Yes.

Kayla: Especially when it comes to pop culture. That had never happened at the same time for us, where we literally cannot stop. We are so obsessed and-

Kristen: Being able to talk about it together, not just enjoy it in the moment of watching it, but then rehashing it, thinking about it and considering it during the day, and then just popping it in because we’re together all the time. Just being like, “Oh, what did you think about this?” Or, “Oh, I’ve been thinking about this all day.”

Kayla: Not to be too meta about it, but it was teenage sleepover energy.

Kristen: It was really fun. It was legitimately fun. To me, I was like, “Oh, this is just indicative of how in the future we get to enjoy art in these kinds of ways.”

Kayla: I think we went through A League of Their Own the same way, too. That was another one where it was just like, “Oh, we are going to keep hitting play on these screeners.”

Kristen: And then we just get to talk about it and enjoy it and have conversations about it. It’s not something I’m sharing with you or you’re sharing with me. We’re experiencing it in real-time together, and then we get to obsessively talk about it.

Kayla: Or, even the way that we consumed White Lotus, because we both waited to watch White Lotus. We are very online and stuff, but we just hadn’t really watched that show. For me, sometimes work makes it hard to start new shows because if I’m not writing about it, if I’m not actively engaging with it for work, then it’s maybe not top priority. That was a show that we just both put off by accident almost, and then when we finally watched it, we watched both seasons straight through and had a lot of fun with it.

Kristen: I think that’s maybe the bottom line, is it’s legitimately fun to watch and consume art together.

Kayla: We kind of covered the TV show aspect of that, but other pop culture … What is our song?

Kristen: Oh, this is a great question. It was something that we were asked recently, since we’re engaged and we’re going to get married, which is what is our song? What would play at our wedding?

Kayla: My sister’s girlfriend, who is a musician, asked this.

Kristen: A very talented, great queer musician. The God’s honest truth is that our song is the punk version of “Mambo Italiano” because that second time that I came to New York, we couldn’t get into the hotel room, so we ended up wandering around. We went to a restaurant and then we went to a bar.

Kayla: Went to one of my favorite restaurants in New York, Kiki’s, the Greek restaurant.

Kristen: And we were making out at that restaurant.

Kayla: We were.

Kristen: And then, we left the restaurant and we were like, “Let’s go into this bar.”

Kayla: Clockwork in East Village.

Kristen: We went into the bar and we got shitty beers and we were sitting in the back room and just making out, and they started playing this song, this horrible song.

Kayla: It’s a punk cover of-

Kristen: And not a good cover.

Kayla: The band is called, Franks & Deans, like Frank and Beans, and they do Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin covers.

Kristen: They kept playing it because they were obviously trying to get us to leave the establishment because we were making out so much in the back of this bar. They must have played that song 10 times at least. I feel like they played it forever.

Kayla: It played a second time, and we thought it was just kind of a glitch, and then it played a third time and we’re like, “Oh no.”

Kristen: They played it a million times. And so, to me, I was like, “How could this not be our song?”

Kayla: Yeah. We said it in that moment. We were like, “Well, this is our song now.” Again, this is the second time we’d ever hung out together, and we were like, “Well, this is our song.”

Kristen: So, now literally at our wedding, we have to dance to the punk version of “Mambo Italiano,” slow dance romantic style, and we’re going to make out just as much, and everybody has to watch us.

Kayla: Yep. It feels fitting because later on in our relationship, we did listen to a lot of Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra together.

As far as movies go, we don’t have a movie that’s our movie, but something that we really enjoy is watching horror movies together.

Kristen: Oh, we both love that. On the Friday the 13th, we always watch Friday the 13th. We did a drinking game for it, so fun, which is something that we like to do.

Kayla: We like to do drinking games to movies. We won’t talk about the time that Kristen made the rules for the Twilight movies.

Kristen: Never again am I allowed to do it. I’ve never been so hungover.

Kayla: I mean, we can’t talk about it because we don’t remember. She’s basically like, “Every time there’s a vampire.”

Kristen: I didn’t say, “Every time there was a vampire.” I just said, “Every time they say vampire,” which was maybe worse.

Kayla: I think something that stuck out to me at the beginning of a relationship is that because of the pandemic hitting when it did in our relationship, I was used to going out to the movies all the time. That was something I did a lot that Kristen didn’t necessarily do. She loved movies but she didn’t go to the theater. I practically lived there, and that has really shifted now.

Kristen: Oh, another thing I really think we should talk about was that I was not involved in any kind of reality TV.

Kayla: Oh, yeah. That does feel important.

Kristen: Until Kayla and I started dating.

Kayla: Yeah, Kristen had never watched any-

Kristen: Any Bravo.

Kayla: Any Bravo.

Kristen: And Kayla was trying to watch an episode of Vanderpump Rules in the kitchen on her computer. You asked it in a funny way too, because you were like, “Hey, I’m going to make some food. Do you care if I put this on?” I’m like, “Why would I care?”

Kayla: This is in Vegas. Yeah.

Kristen: It was also just for you. You were like, “Do you care if I put this on my own computer?”

Kayla: For context, my ex hated reality television so much that I literally wasn’t allowed to watch it in her presence. Except for maybe once, on my birthday weekend.

Kristen: For me, I was like, “You never have to ask me that. Why would I care?” I was like, “I don’t watch it, but why would I care?” And she put on this episode, and immediately I was-

Kayla: Leaning over the island. We had this island in Vegas. I had the laptop faced toward me in the kitchen, and Kristen was sitting on the other side, on the bar side, and she was leaning over trying to hear what these people were talking about.

Kristen: I started asking, “What did they just say? What was that?” And I was like, “Throw me into the deep end of this pool.” And we started watching everything. And it’s something that I deeply enjoy now.

Kayla: Oh yeah. And she’s more caught up on Bravo shit because she reads all the Vulture stuff on it. That’s a big part of our relationship, watching all the shows together.

Kristen: But it’s so fun. I’m deeply invested in it.

Kayla: And we talk about it extensively. Like you were talking about earlier, what’s fun is to be like, “Let’s process this. Let’s talk about what just happened.” We do that with Bravo all the time. Sometimes I’d catch us sitting on the balcony at night, the gorgeous water view in front of us, city skylights, a bottle of wine, good food, very romantic…and we’ll have been just talking about the Real Housewives for hours, almost like they’re people we know or literature to be dissected.

Kristen: Trying to make Bravo Dykes happen.

Kayla: To make Bravo Dykes happen. It’s also just good for writing fiction. You can’t make that shit up.

Kristen: You can’t make that shit up.

Kayla: If you want to write good-ass, weird-ass fiction, watch reality television, you’re going to see that people do the weirdest fucking shit.

Kristen: To me, it takes me back a little bit to my long time working inside of libraries.

Kayla: And seeing people act weird.

Kristen: Because working in a library, because you’re a service worker in this very specific capacity in a library, people don’t see you, you’re invisible to them. They act out, they wild out. To me, I was like, “Oh, watching these Bravo shows, I haven’t seen somebody act so wild since I was in a public library.” So, it’s gorgeous. Watching Housewives is akin to working in a public library. I will come on and talk about this to Andy Cohen.

Okay. To wrap up, tell us a funny story about your partner.

Kristen: Here’s my funny story about Kayla. Kayla does this thing where occasionally in the middle of the night, she will wake me up and she’s very serious and will almost shake me awake to tell me something with utmost importance and seriousness. It’ll be the middle of the night, pitch black, and she’ll be saying something to me, and I will be freaking out. I can’t tell what’s going on, and it’s because I finally realized Kayla is still asleep and she’s saying something nonsensical.

Kayla: Give an example.

Kristen: What is that word that you said that time?

Kayla: Camsquatch.

Kristen: For instance, we were in an Airbnb in Orlando before we moved back here for pride. It was Pride weekend. I was awoken in a strange space in the middle of the night by Kayla very vigorously insisting I listen to this word that turned out to be Camsquatch. I’m dead asleep, can’t understand what she’s saying, and I think someone’s breaking in. A thing you should know about me is I’m always on alert in a space in case I have to protect us from an intruder. I need to be able to be awake and alert so I can protect you from whoever’s trying to kill us, and possibly that’s because I watched so many murder shows. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been deeply disturbed by Kayla waking me up by yelling something that’s not a word.

I mean, it’s funny. It’s funny to laugh at the next day, it’s funny. But yeah, Camsquatch is not a real thing, but to you in the moment, it was urgent. But when I’m awoken from a deep sleep, it is a shocking moment. But it’s always very funny too, I’m laughing right now, it’s a funny thing to think about. You say some nonsense in the middle of the night, and people need to know that.

Kayla: It’s hard for me to think of a funny story because you make me laugh a lot. I feel like we have a lot of funny moments in our relationship and a lot of those funny moments are those weird couples funny things where it’s not going to be funny to anyone else. We got very weird during lockdown, did a lot of bits. There’s one about a townsperson needing to take her baby to the town witch. I can’t even explain it.

Most recently, I cracked up on New Year’s when I came into the party and saw you were telling our engagement story, and you’d already turned it into a very funny story, with all these specific beats. And it’s mostly you roasting yourself, because you were so nervous when proposing that you were at a strange loss for words that never happens to you. And I saw you doing this whole standup act about the proposal for our friends just seven days after the proposal, and I was like “Oh, I will be hearing her tell this story over and over for the rest of my life.”

That’s all I can think of right now because when I think of anything else, I’m like, “Here’s this funny story about Kristen falling.”

Kristen: Well, I think that’s fair.

Kayla: You do fall a lot.

Kristen: And I’m upfront about that.

Kayla: You fall a lot, you spill a lot of drinks, but as you point out, it’s never anybody else’s drink and it’s never on anybody else.

Kristen: The party foul is only on myself.

Kayla: Yes. You spill your own drink on yourself.

Kristen: I will spill my own drink, I will spill my own food, and I will only spill it on me.

Kayla: But you do bust ass a lot, which unfortunately, I come from a family where we laugh at that.

Kristen: Oh, I think that’s amazing. I think we’d have a problem if you didn’t think that was funny because it is funny. It’s deeply funny. If there’s a crack in the sidewalk, I’m tripping over it.

Kayla: Yep. Your legs are-

Kristen: And I’m tall. It’s like Gumby falling.

Kayla: That’s a memory from the beginning of our relationship. We hadn’t met in person yet, and I was in this shoe store in Vermont. I was texting you, and I was like, “Are you tall?” And you were like, “No, not really.” And then I was like, “Oh.” And you were like, “Yeah, just 5’8.” I was like, “5’8 is tall. What are you talking about?” I was like, “You’re a flamingo.”

Kristen: Well, that’s because you’re very short.

Kayla: Well, and you think that I’m lying about my height to this day.

Kristen: Well, it’s not that I think you’re lying, it’s that I think you are mistaken because how could I be the height that I am and you be the height that you are?

Kayla: Why would I be mistaken? People have told me my height. I am 5’4″, which is above average for a North American woman.

Kristen: You also said you could see, maybe that’s a funny story you should have told us about, you thinking you could see 20/20 vision and that very much not being true.

Kayla: Well, I wasn’t going to drag myself.

Kristen: We’re just being goofy now.

Kayla: What?

Kristen: I said we’re just doing our … *razzle dazzle hand motions* little weird show, no one is going to think this is as funny or interesting as we do.

Also.Also.Also: Noted Lesbian Author Kristen Arnett Was a Clue on Jeopardy, the Category Was “Get Stuffed”

It’s Tuesday already. How?? And simultaneously, how is it only Tuesday??

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Queer as in F*ck You

Ok so this is a slight editor’s privilege, but tonight’s headline goes out to Kristen Arnett WHO WAS A CLUE ON JEOPARDY TODAY (click to hear the clue in real time) and our entire workplace cannot stop screaming about it!!!!

well holy shit i’m a jeopardy clue pic.twitter.com/AazrInSjA9

— Kristen Arnett (@Kristen_Arnett) January 31, 2023

And then an indie bookstore got involved, and it was so cute? But obviously the winner here is the Kristen Arnett’s fiancée, my daily coconspirator, woman of my heart, queen of the Autostraddle daily calendar, our Managing Editor Kayla Kumari:

when i discovered the category was GET STUFFED i literally shouted "THATS GAY" https://t.co/LEU1HApw6v

— kayla kumari upadhyaya (@KaylaKumari) January 31, 2023

THATS GAY indeed. Ok let’s see what else!

It’s been days, and I have not stopped being angry. Utah Just Became the First State of 2023 to Ban Gender-Affirming Care (and to read more: Utah’s New Anti-trans Law Is “Brutally Unfair” and Will Face a Legal Challenge, Advocate Says)

Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union Share Sweet Photos with Zaya Wade Ahead of Winter Formal. At least there’s some good in the world, somewhere.

nbd JUST AUTOSTRADDLE BEING INTERVIEWED BY CNN!!!!! Congrats to Nic and Valerie 🎉 How ‘the Last of Us’ Did Bill and Frank Justice — And Impressed Many LGBTQ Fans

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Saw This, Thought of You

I’m sorry… what. Wait, So Now Even My Hair Is Aging?

How Our Definition of Healthy Fails Black Women. I think about this a lot.

I was actually just talking about this over the weekend! Black Teen Girls On TV Are A Mess… Finally

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Political Snacks

“In life, Nichols had been diminished to an abstraction, a target for the inchoate rage of men who were, at least nominally, part of his own community. In death, he was reduced again—this time to a cudgel with which to goad liberals for their one-note fixation with racism. Observers on the right seized on the racial uniformity of the incident as if the fact that Black cops are also capable of behaving so violently toward a Black man might retroactively exonerate similarly violent white cops of the charge of racism. “liberals blame racism for memphis man’s brutal beating despite officers being black,” a headline on the Fox News Web site claimed. The left, exasperated conservatives appeared to be saying, is so bereft of novel ideas that it blames white people even for situations in which no white people are present.

Yet seemingly few Black people have harbored the delusion that white people are the sole vectors of white supremacy.”

The Killing of Tyre Nichols and the Issue of Race by Jelani Cobb for the New Yorker, one of the few people I want to hear from during times like this.

OK. And now! To be honest, I debated including this. I don’t want to fear monger for the sake of doing it, and I don’t believe Trump will ever be President again so giving him any kind of platform for his hate (even here, in a publication that’s obviously standing against everything he says, that goes without saying) is dangerous.

I also know that coordinated attacks on trans kids and trans adults — because it is not going to stop at trans kids, not that it matters — has been gaining groundswell years, we all know this, and that’s shaping up to becoming the defining lines of a right wing culture war going into the 2024 election. So, by that measure, ignoring Trump once before because “he simply could not win” was something promised myself never to do again. Here we are, getting prepared: Trump Vows to ‘Stop’ Gender-Affirming Care for Minors if Re-Elected President

Also.Also.Also: “The Ache Is Just as Important as the Orgasm,” Kristen Arnett on Writing Great Lesbian Sex

Feature image via Kristen Arnett on Instagram

Hello! HI! Today my brain was a little sad, and then I read this deep dive into dyke TikTok drama and JoJo Siwa, which — to be honest — I didn’t expect to love and laugh as much as I did, and now my brain is at least 50% more happy than it was before. You should read it!!

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Queer as in F*ck You

“When I write sex scenes, the ache is just as important as the orgasm. Tension comes from building momentum — not only in sex scenes, but any scene requires building and aching and needing.”

I only want to read Kristen Arnett writing about sex from now on. Her description of what makes good sex writing… well, work.. and Our Wives Under the Sea is some of the most gorgeous writing I read today. It’s not usually the kind of piece that would make our headline feature, but it’s a slow news day coming off of Labor Day and couldn’t we all use some good writing about sex in our lives? Is there a better way to kick off fall and wrap yourself into late summer? Being hot while being nerdy is supreme September energy. The Best Sex Kristen Arnett Has Ever Read.

The Summer Black Queer Music Took Over

As Sue Bird’s Career Nears Its End, Her True Impact Comes Into Focus. “The WNBA star — talented, audacious, and gay — has given fans all of herself in recent years.”

And while we are talking WNBA, yesterday was Brittney Griner’s 200th day being wrongfully detained in Russia. Read this opinion piece from Dave Zirin for The Nation, “We should be stepping up our efforts to bring the WNBA superstar home. Instead we’re getting ‘out of sight, out of mind’ — and it’s a disgrace.”

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Saw This, Thought of You

Margaret Court’s Resentment Is Proof That Envy and Racism Were Serena Williams’ Only True Rivals. “A privileged white woman is upset that people don’t like her as much as the Black woman that changed tennis — and sports — forever. Go figure.” (Speaking of which, Serena Williams’ Last Match Was The Most-Viewed Tennis Broadcast In ESPN History)

My Parents Were Sex-Positive & Polyamorous Before It Was Cool

Against the Big-Screen Beauty Contest. “The internet demands that women project desirability—at a level formerly reserved for movie stars.”

I wish that I wasn’t like this, but… I am. Every Funny Girl Song Performed on Glee, Ranked.

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Political Snacks

Former Pentagon Leaders Warn of a Dangerous Era. “The challenge to the 2020 election result has helped create ‘an extremely adverse environment,’ former defense secretaries and generals said in an open letter.”

Related: The Long Unraveling of the Republican Party

Dorothy Roberts Tried to Warn Us. “The legal scholar and sociologist wrote about the criminalization of pregnancy 25 years ago. Why didn’t more listen?” Dorothy Roberts is one of the minds that I most trust, this profile of her brilliance is a must read.

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And One More Thing…

This broke me up.

Taylor Hawkins' 16-year-old son, Shane, does his father proud as he sits behind the kit for @FooFighters' performance of "My Hero." #FooFighters #TaylorHawkinsTribute pic.twitter.com/EsQ3sGNygU

— CONSEQUENCE (@consequence) September 4, 2022

Things I’ve Never Asked My Girlfriend of Three Years About Age Gaps, Topping, and Our First Date

Welcome to part two of my two-hour conversation with my girlfriend, bestselling author Kristen Arnett, during which I asked her questions I genuinely did not know the answers to! In part one, we covered childhood and teen years, and she explained scrambled porn to me, which definitely ties into one of the topics we touch on in this second half of the interview: our age gap. In fact, we’re talking all things our relationship, from its origins, to our first official date, to our specific top/bottom dynamics, to the writer4writer of it all. Yep, we got very personal!

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Kayla: Let’s fast forward to our relationship. We met online, and I feel most people know that about us. It’s like the-

Kristen: I think it’s part of the legend.

Kayla: The legend. You reached out to me on Valentine’s day.

Kristen: Yes.

Kayla: And you were drunk and-

Kristen: Shockingly.

Kayla: I know that story well, and I feel like people know that story well, but I actually don’t know like, what were you doing that day? What led to that moment? I will provide the context for the sake of the interview, like you and I had followed each other a few months before that on social media and had been doing the very passive, orbiting of each other, liking each other’s photos and stuff like that. No actual direct contact had been made. Until Valentine’s Day. Why that day? And what did the beginning of that day look like for you, if you remember? Because I don’t know that part.

Kristen: Oh, I mean for me I felt like it was a really normal day. It was a day where … because I think it was a work day so I was at the library where I was heading up circulation. So, I know that I came home, and I busted open a bottle of wine. I was in a fine mood, like I wasn’t in a bad mood or anything.

Kayla: Yeah, we had been interacting but very passively.

Kristen: That was a period of my life where I was on dating apps a lot and randomly hooking up with a lot of people, and kind of doing whatever. And I remember you had followed me on Twitter, and I did not know who you were. So, you followed me and I was like, “Who is this? Oh, okay.” And then I was like, “Oh you look cute.” And then I think I went on your Instagram, and I think I followed you from there because, I saw pictures of you and I thought you were attractive. And so I was like, “Oh, I’m going to look and see her Instagram.” Because I think I was looking to see if you were dating anybody.

Kayla: Okay. What was your conclusion?

Kristen: I thought no, because it was a lot of thirst traps. But again, I didn’t go back that far and if it’s just somebody new I’m like kind of looking at…I was like, “I’m going to look at the first nine pictures probably.”

Kayla: Okay. Yeah. Those were probably all thirst traps.

Kristen: I can tell you with assurance that they were. And I was like, “Oh, I think you’re good looking.” And so I don’t know. That day, I was just having a regular ass day. I got home from work and I was kind of drinking wine and whatever. I think you must have posted something. I literally can’t remember what it was.

Kayla: I think it’s very possible that I did.

Kristen: It wasn’t something sad though, because I don’t think I would’ve connected with that. But I think you might have posted something. You might have posted a picture or something on Instagram. But that’s not my platform, so I think I would’ve probably messaged you via Twitter. Also, you were doing a lot of cross posting at that time. If you did a thirst trap on Instagram, you posted it on Twitter also.

Kayla: Yeah. I definitely was. I think that was a very small sector of time that I was doing that.

Kristen: I think if we looked back to what was posted on this day, you probably posted a thirst trap.

Kayla: Yeah, Valentine’s Day 2019. Yeah.

Kristen: Thirst trap, probably. So, I think it was like, I’d had a lot of wine, and I was home, and I was like I had been thinking about the fact that I thought you were good looking. I mean, the one other thing was that I really wasn’t reaching out to people that were not nearby. I was looking for direct hookups.

Kayla: Yeah, that was not a move of yours that you were hitting on people online.

Kristen: No, I definitely was not doing that.

Kayla:  Which I don’t think I realized at the time-

Kristen: No, I was trying to message people that I could have sex with immediately. So I knew you lived in New York. And so I was like, that was not something I normally would have done, because I usually only reached out to people that would be local that I could maybe hook up with. But I don’t know, I really liked your thirst traps.

Kayla: They were good.

Kristen: I told your mom.

Kayla: (laughs) Yeah she visited us in Vegas and was like “why did you like Kayla?”

Kristen: (laughs) She was like, “Why’d you do that?” And I was like, “I thought she was really hot.” But I think that was like a big thing where it’s just like, I don’t know. I felt good, I was having a great day. I was like, well, I’m home, I’m drinking wine, I was sitting in my recliner. I literally had my wine in the cup holder of my recliner, just sitting. I remember being reclined back and my recliner, very drunk off wine and being like, “I’m going to message this woman on Twitter.” And I did it, and you responded back fairly quickly. It was like a regular day, but it was very unusual that I would’ve messaged somebody that isn’t local. Because, I didn’t normally try and start something we couldn’t be in contact with each other. I’m definitely not a person who’s ever been like, “You know what I want to do long distance.” Like I am not that gay person. But, no had a nice day and then I was like, “Oh, I’m going to send this very good looking person a message.” That’s how I decided to do everything. Like I’m very impulsive.

Kayla: Yeah, I definitely know that about you now.

Kristen: I feel like there’s a very strong Sagittarius energy with the impulse thing. Because when I feel impulsive, I will do that thing no matter what. Even if I’m thinking like, “Well this is a bad idea for my finances, bad idea for friendships, relationships, whatever the hell, like my job.” I’ll be like, “Well it’s happening, too late I did it.” I just think sometimes I just make a very impulsive decision.

Kayla: I mean now you did that before knowing that we would ever have the opportunity to meet really? I mean you knew that you had a book coming out and so you knew that you were maybe going to end up in New York at some point.

Kristen: I will be completely honest with you, I don’t know what I thought was going to come from that. I just thought you were really good looking and I wanted to say that to you. I am the most shocked out of anyone that this is what occurred.

Kayla: Because I mean, it took a while for us to even like text sexually after that. It was like, we kind of built to that.

Kristen: That’s also another unusual thing. It’s not that I don’t like sexting, but it’s like, that’s not what I did. I would just meet up with people. Like if I got a vibe from somebody, I’d be like, “Okay, let me meet you at this bar.” And then we would have sex with each other.

Kayla: Yeah. When you were like on Tinder and stuff, you were very to the point. We’ve talked about that.

Kristen: I mean, and granted I feel like nobody does that. So it was a very easy to get people to be like, “Sure, yeah.” Because I was like, nobody was being assertive. But no, I don’t know. I just made an impulsive decision.

Kayla: Yes. And so then it took about two months for us to meet in person. Did you know how old I was when we met up?

Kristen: I did.

Kayla: How’d you know?

Kristen: I looked you up.

Kayla: I mean, I looked you up too, but we’ve never talked about this.

Kristen: I don’t think I had a confirmation of exactly your birthday at that time, but I knew that you were a certain age, because I remember making a lot of jokes to my best friend Maria about it. And then, because I remember she told me about this later, but I was having brunch with her and her brother, and our other friend, and I kept making a lot of jokes about it.

And then I guess I went up to go to bathroom and when I was gone, her brother who’s our friend was like, “Why does Kristen keep saying this stuff?” And Maria’s like, “Oh, because she’s actually interested, and so it’s bothering her, so she keeps saying it a lot of times.” Because if it hadn’t mattered to me, I wouldn’t have cared. But, it was one of those things where I was like, I did know but at the time I was like, “Well, it’s fine.” Like we were just meeting up for a weekend. And I was like, well that’s fine. And I also didn’t know if you would even show up. You’d been real flighty on text, and so I was like, “Well I guess I’m just going to be in New York for a weekend and that’s totally fine.” I was like “I’m in New York for a weekend, I have a bunch of friends there. I’m at a place with a bar, that’ll be amazing no matter what.”

But that is not what happened.

Kayla: No. Because also I mean, it was a very different experience for me too. It’s like a first date with someone that I met online, but not on a dating app. And they don’t live here, and we have nebulous plans to meet up at a hotel or bar.

Kristen: Yes. But I had told you that I had gotten the room for the whole weekend.

Kayla: Yes, and I told you on my way that I forgot my toothbrush.

Kristen: Yes. But I had said to you previously, “I don’t know what your plans are, but you can stay as long as you want.”

Kayla: Yeah. I’d never gone on a “date” like that before. Which is like, it’s not a date, it’s like an arrangement.

Kristen: Yes an arrangement, that sounds so classy.

Kayla: I’d just never done something like that before, and it was different. And I knew you were older than me, but I wasn’t sure how old.

Kristen: I didn’t know exactly how old you were until when I bought a plane ticket for you and I had to know the year that you were born. There’s just something about being told that the birth year is like 1992. That is like, “Oh my God.”

Kayla: We had this conversation recently with my sister. My sister was talking to us about friends that she has, who are of the same age gap as us but it’s 21 to 33. That’s different.

Kristen: Well, I mean, the thing is this too is like, who the hell knows what’s going on when they’re 21 years old? I barely know what I’m doing now, and I’m 41. So it’s like, I’m not trying to … A person who’s 21 needs to have a life experience. And they need to be able to meet people and do things and learn more about themselves, and that’s great. That’s not anything that I need to be involved with.

Kayla: And I think both of us would admit it never would’ve worked back then.

Kristen: And it should not.

Kayla: It should not. No.

Kristen: I mean, there’s people that have different life experiences though, I can’t say whatever, like-

Kayla: Sure, yeah. It’s not a universal statement.

Kristen: And also when I was like 21, my life experience was also so different than other people’s life experience when they were 21. It’s like, everybody’s life is different, but I do know that for myself. I mean, I also knew where I was at the time when you and I met. I had just gotten out of a long term relationship, and I had been dating around, and by dating around I mean indiscriminately hooking up with people. I was like, I’m not looking for whatever this is. But I did know that it was important for me, I was like I don’t want to be engaging with anybody that’s under a certain age because I feel like there’s a space in which there is going to be some really big gap between, and a gap in between what we would get from each other. So I wasn’t trying to hook up with anybody that was substantially in a completely different place in life than I was. And again like you and I when we started talking or whatever, it was like, you and I we’re both writers, we’re both going through a lot of very similar things according to our careers. We’re both in this specific kind of place where we’ve both gotten out of like specific kind of relationships.

Kayla: Yeah that’s interesting that you say that, because I definitely agree. And, that’s something that I’ve talked to my best friend about in the past where it’s like, we are at such different points in our life but, they almost correlate in this interesting way. It’s like you had gotten out of a long term relationship/marriage. I had gotten out of a relationship that was not necessarily super long term, but it was a defining relationship.

Kristen: It was a very serious, substantial part of your life.

Kayla: Yeah. It was the majority of my twenties. It was like, I moved cities, stuff like that. And then also, you had a book coming out, like this big thing. I was like shifting toward doing the thing I wanted to do-

Kristen: We had a lot of change happening in both of our lives.

Kayla: Yeah, like so different but similar. And it just kind of made sense. I don’t know. Do you remember what we talked about on our first date?

Kristen: At the bar?

Kayla: Yeah. Because, some of it was this, what we’re talking about now. We talked about our past relationships, and we talked about where we were at with our careers.

Kristen: Yeah. I mean, I remember being like, it just felt easy.

Kayla: I know.

Kristen: It just felt like a very natural kind of falling into discussion about a lot of different stuff.

Kayla: In retrospect, you were pretty open and personal in a way that I know that you’re not usually.

Kristen: I mean, another thing too is that you and I talked for a while before we met up and that’s not normally what I would do. I made a point previously to that, to be like I am purposely not engaging in a dialogue with somebody. But you and I had already talked, and I’d known some things about you because you told me them, and you knew some things about me because I told you.

Kayla: And part of that was my personality of being like, I’m such an internet kid, I like to connect to people this way.

Kristen: I’m more careful, I think.

Kayla: About what?

Kristen: Because intimacy feels very intense to me, and so I think I am more circumspect even though I want people to be able to know things about me. But, I’m also a person too, where sometimes strong emotion feel like too much, so I want to make it into a joke or something. But yeah, I just remember it being really easy.

Kayla: I do too. I actually remember kind of a lot about our first date. I remember what I wore, I remember how I felt getting there and the train ride over, what it felt like outside, and just sitting down next to you, and we just talked a lot. And I didn’t even know you that well at the time. So, I didn’t know how rare it was for you to be that kind of open and vulnerable with me which, I feel like you were.

Kristen: Yeah, it was a nice time, I guess it was just one of those things where I didn’t anticipate it. I didn’t anticipate that it would turn into the thing that it turned into. And these are my favorite things in my life, when I’m pleasantly surprised by what my impulsivity has wrought. I mean, that’s the thing about my impulsiveness. I know I’m impulsive, but also I think a lot of the time my impulsiveness is going off of a very strong gut intuition. So it most of the time doesn’t steer me in a horrible direction. But I think that we both kind of left the weekend being like not sure what was next.

Kayla: No I did too, and I didn’t even have as much casual sex experience as you had. But I still thought I was like, “oh we did this, it was fun.”

Kristen: Like a fun, nice time. I mean, I just assumed it’d be like, “Okay, I’ve got a nice hotel, we can hang out for the weekend. I go back to Florida, you live in Brooklyn.” We had a good time. And that’s kind of how I thought it was going to go.

Kayla: And then we pretty much like immediately made plans to see each other again.

Kristen: Disgusting.

Kayla: Disgusting.

What for you is the hardest thing about our age gap? Because I think we talk about like it’s hot, we’re both into it, like that kind of stuff people are into that, but what’s hard about it?

Kristen: I don’t know. I mean, I think shockingly for the most part, it hasn’t been as hard as I assumed. I think I went into it with a preconceived idea of being like, because of our age gap, it might be hard because of X, Y, Z.

Maybe we will be in such different places of our lives that I have raised a kid and I was like, this is not a discussion that I had with somebody because, I’ve never dated somebody in a situation where they’re significantly younger, having a conversation about having kids and I worried about that. I think I maybe in my mind kind of conjured that it would be more difficult but, in reality it really hasn’t been, I haven’t had any kind of situations. There’s lots of jokes where it’s like, “oh, you don’t know what this is?” Or, “Oh I don’t know what something is.” Or, “Oh my girlfriend has to help me with technology because I’m like an old grandpa.”

Kayla: Which does happen.

Kristen: Oh it absolutely does. But it’s like one of those things where for myself, nothing has been … Maybe it’s been less hard than I thought it was going to be. I think part of it is that I’m such a person that lives in the moment, I don’t think about the future. If I was pressed, I’d be like, “Yeah, if we are together in the future, what will our old age look like me being that much older than you?” It’s not amazing, but I’m also just not a person that thinks like that. But I guess too because we’re both in places in our life where we can basically move wherever we want to, our careers make it so we can kind of be flexible.

Kayla: That makes it a lot easier.

Kristen: I know our age gap is like a 12 year age gap, but we’re kind of in the same place career wise.

Kayla: Not same same place, but-

Kayla: I think we’re the same ballpark. I mean, I think we’re kind of in the same place. I feel like we’re kind of on the same even playing field. That’s how I feel in my head, you know? I don’t know, nothing feels as hard to me as I thought it was going to. I don’t know, what for you? Now I get to ask.

Kayla: You get to flip it?

Kristen: Yeah. I get one ask. You don’t have to post it, but you have to tell me.

Kayla: Yeah! I mean, I agree with you in the sense that on paper it maybe seemed harder than it was going to be. I think something that I wouldn’t have been able to articulate before, but that you just said is that our lifestyles actually help a lot because I think a different lifestyle, and different career path would have an impact.

Kristen: I think that would make it harder.

Kayla: And I think technically one of the biggest life experience differences between you and me, is that you have a kid and I don’t. And yet that has not felt that difficult to me.

Kristen: I mean, I know a big part of that is that like we started dating after my kid would’ve left, he’s an adult and would be in college.

Kayla: Yeah, he was grown. So that wasn’t really something we had to deal with. And I think you and I did — at the risk of sounding corny — meet at the exact right time.

Kristen: No, I think so. I don’t think it would’ve worked if it was a different time.

Kayla: Almost by even just a year or whatever.

Kristen: No, I agree. But it’s one of those things where it’s like, I don’t know, we are kind of on the same page about professionally what we want. We both care about our careers so much.

Kayla: And that’s the top a priority for us, and I think that’s different, because I even think somebody my age would maybe be more fixated on “I want to have a family or do this other thing.” And that’s not where I’m at. We have the same priorities in life. So I do think it’s the age gap has not been that hard to navigate.

Kristen: I mean, do you think that some of it might be that — and I’m just extrapolating — but it’s like, my writing career didn’t start until like 10 years ago, so we kind of are in the same kind of trajectory when it comes to our professional careers. It’s closer together than our age gap relationship. Our careers are kind of sitting in the same kind of place. Like we had stuff happening at the same time, if that makes sense.

Kayla: Okay, let’s talk about that. What has felt hard or surprised you about dating another writer? Because I know that is something we both said we would never do. And then it happened.

Kristen: I really thought… I mean, it’s been a few different things. Part of it I know is that we are writers dating in a pandemic. We both work from home, and both do writing for a living. We are both in the same space together. I’m hesitant to use the word trapped. I know I’ve been using the word trapped, and I was like, “I don’t want to use that anymore.” Cause I think that’s the wrong language to use for what’s happening. Cause I’m not trapped with you. I enjoy being with you. That is not the language I want to use for that.

It’s just not what I had anticipated, what our writing relationship would be like together. We’ve always worked well in the same space, which I think is so lucky. Another thing too is I started dating you and I knew that you were a TV critic and worked for Eater. You were doing food writing and nonfiction work, and you worked for Autostraddle with like nonfiction work. I was going into it being like “this is an essayist, slash nonfiction writer that I’m dating.” Then as we have been dating, being like “okay, this is a person who writes fiction, too.” Which was not something I had anticipated and that I didn’t know about you. I didn’t necessarily think I’d be dating another writer, but I definitely didn’t think I’d be dating another fiction writer.

But to me it’s been… I think it’s been really good in all the ways. It means that we have such a good dialogue about work and the stuff that we’re interested in. We can be really petty about writers in our own home and then we don’t have to put it anywhere online.

I mean the challenges I feel with writing lately, like trying to publish books inside of a pandemic, have nothing to do with anything you’re doing. I would say the biggest problem for me at this point with being with another writer is knowing I’m completely consumed sometimes with the stupid, dumb feeling I have about what is happening with my career and knowing that I’m subjecting you to it all the time.

Kayla: Yeah. But that’s funny because, for me, that’s such an upside. I totally get what you’re saying too. We’re both so inundated with it. It almost feels like a vacuum and, we don’t want to burden each other with writing frustrations, but it’s also, at least you understand.

Kristen: I do feel when I’m really down on myself or having a hard time with my work or going through it with that, being like, feeling like I’m being a burden to you or repeating myself or not being like the kind of person I want to be for you.

Kayla: On the one hand, I understand it. I get it. And I’m there for you. Yeah. But I understand what you’re saying too where you’re like, but also, you’re going to be annoyed by this because it’s…

Kristen: Well, it’s a fear that I feel like I have, I… I don’t want to alienate the person in my life that I care about the most with stuff that feels… Overwhelming. I don’t want to… I’m trying to think of the right way to say this. I don’t want to have our relationship — which I value so much and I think it’s so special and is so precious to me, it’s so good — being bogged down by the weight of when I’m consumed and what I feel is my own failure. If that makes sense. Even though I know it’s not a failure. I don’t want our relationship to suffer at any point because of how I feel about my work.

Kayla: Sure. Yeah. Cause I also think it’s, I mean, again, kind of a double-edged sword situation, it’s like, I don’t think it’s any secret that we are attracted to each other’s talent and yeah. That is a thing that sometimes can feed into insecurity. We’re attracted to each other’s talent, and also neither of us would ever ever be, like “oh, well you’re not doing well, and I don’t like that.” That would never happen. But I think internally, we could maybe be like seeing our failures through each other’s eyes.

Kristen: Some of it for me is, being a top and who I feel like I am in our relationship and who I want to be in our relationship, I don’t handle failure or not doing as well as I would like, because sometimes it makes me feel like I’m not in control. It makes me feel like I am not being who I want to be as a person in our relationship. And that feels like that’s a double struggle for me where I’m, I want to be confident with you and talented and successful and happy. And that feeds into like a lot of things. So, including our sex life. It’s, I guess it’s like my writing, I feel my writing has got its little membranes inside of everything. Because when my writing’s not going well, it affects all that shit.

Kayla: No, I think that’s good. I think we should probably move into sexual stuff again. Cause that’s what people are interested in.

Kristen: Everybody is. I’m interested in that.

Kayla: We didn’t even necessarily move away from it because I feel like you know that you’re a control freak, but I think I’m a control freak too. In certain ways. And it’s… I don’t know, work and creative stuff feels so connected to sex for me. When we started sleeping together, it was also when we were first starting to read each other’s writing. We were experiencing each other in both those ways at the same time. And that’s interesting to think about.

I’m going to ask something super broad. What does being a top mean to you?

Kristen: I don’t know. I think that’s different-to-different people.

Kayla: Yeah. I mean, that’s why I’m asking you. Cause I agree.

Kristen: I’ve kind of said this to you before, and we’ve had this conversation where it’s, I mean on a granular level. It’s like, who wants to be fucked and who wants to fuck? That’s a portion of what that is for me. I mean, some of it is that for myself it’s a definite measure of control, because an idea of control for myself is very erotic for me. When I feel like I’m in a moment of like knowing exactly who I am and what I want and how I can tell another person exactly how to do it, I feel like I am the most myself and the most confident and best version of myself. And, to me that feels like topping and it does… Like in a pun intended, like feels like I feel great. I feel like the best version of myself in those moments. Those are the times where I feel like when I know the most about who I am and what I want and what I know what the other person would want. But again, I think it’s a very amorphous kind of thing. And it shifts.

Kayla: When did you know that’s what you wanted?

Kristen: I think it took me a little while. Also, what I have liked and what I have wanted in my life, it has shifted and changed as I have aged. I think when I had a better understanding of who I was as a person then I had a better understanding of what I would like from sexual situations. I do think we get little glimpses into what those things are like as we move through life. Of course. Yeah. I mean, some of those things are, “what is the kind of porn you like to watch? What are the kind of things you get off to?”

Kayla: Well, you were in a relationship for most of your twenties.

Kristen: And going into my thirties. And I mean, that was a relationship that had its own dynamic outside of anything else. Right? Sure. Cause I think inside of any relationship is its own cartography. It has its own map. It has its own trajectory. It’s got its own language and its own thing. You know, so we can say, oh, top and bottom, whatever. But it’s like, what does that look like really? Inside of a relationship, it’s just its own thing.

Kayla: After your relationship then you were having a lot of different kinds of sex.

Kristen: Yeah for probably like three to four years. I just dated, and by dated, I use that term very loosely. I wanted to sleep around with people and see what I like and what I want. I didn’t want to be in a relationship. Because I’ve been in a relationship for a long time and I’m ready to have the kind of freedom that I have not had previous to this.

Kayla: And were you trying lots of different things?

Kristen: It’s interesting to remember. Once I was getting on dating apps, I immediately felt like I fell into being more assertive, because I could see that nobody here was going to be assertive. And I don’t have a problem with being assertive. I very quickly found out what I wanted, and I think part of it was through dating apps. Because I was like, I can see what I don’t want right away. I can see how I want to feel right away right from this. What I want to feel is that I am going to put myself in a situation and say exactly what I want. And if a person doesn’t want that, then great. We don’t have to have any further conversation, because it’s a waste of both of our times. Very quickly I was like, oh this is a thing that I had been kind of wanting for long time. But it was something that I wouldn’t have been able to know inside of a relationship.

Kayla: Can you connect what you wanted back to earlier desires?

Kristen: Sure. I mean, I think it’s not difficult to kind of find those little pinpoints. Well, I mean even like watching porn, I liked to watch porn where it was from a viewpoint of somebody who was doing something to somebody else. And that’s what I most connected to, not the person who was being fucked, but the person doing the fucking. But I don’t think I would’ve been able to as a very young queer person understand what I was.

Kayla: I mean same. I was curious, because when I think about myself sexually or the things, I’m into or desires, whatever, I am able to pinpoint stuff from a long time ago. But I never would’ve had the language to describe it then. I don’t think we have it. I don’t think we have the language to describe it at that point. And honestly, I think that’s fine. It takes time.

Kristen: But I do think for myself, as soon as I was able to have freedom outside of that very specific confine of a relationship… once I was outside of it, I knew, I knew exactly what I didn’t want. Right. I was like, here’s what I do want. And some of those things I was able to determine very quickly in terms of sexual compatibility with people. Because I was like, “I’m not looking to have a relationship with anybody.” I was like, “I do not want to have a relationship with anyone.” I’m not looking for that. I’m looking for a purely sexual interaction with somebody. And what does that look like? And what is it that I want from that? That made things a little more clear for me.

I wanted to be very assertive. I’m wanted to be more forward. I’m wanted to see if this is something people on dating apps wanted and be like, I’m interested in just a night of that. And if people were, then great. And a lot of times, people were. It was a thing of, “oh, I’ve been kind of waiting for somebody to ask me for this kind of thing.” Because I do think it’s a lot of women on dating apps just saying “hey” and the other person saying “hey.”

Kayla: Exhausting, it’s terrible. Exhausting.

Kristen: I hate it. I didn’t want to have a “hey” interaction with anyone. But I do think it’s one of those things where it made it a little easier for me. Cause I knew exactly what I didn’t want, and what I did not want was a relationship or any kind of thing that looked like that. And in that way, dating apps did work for me. It was like dating apps are amazing. I’m just getting exactly the transaction I want to get out of this. I was like, I’m getting literally the interactions I want to get, which is just random hookups. And that’s like, yeah, I’m figuring out exactly what it is that I want to get from sex. So, sex was great. Because I was like, here is here’s exactly what I think I want. Oh, it is exactly what I want. So, sex was really good. Hooking up was good. I don’t have to see these people. It was exactly what I want.

Kayla: I had the same moment. It was definitely different. But when I got into dating apps, I was like, wow we can just meet up and have sex. Like, I don’t know. That never felt possible before. It’s why the people who say like lesbian Grindr wouldn’t work are wrong imo. I feel like dyke Grindr would absolutely work.

Kristen: I feel like I was using Tindr as lesbian Grindr. I was very upfront about the things I wanted, like, here’s who I am. I was like, “This is what I want out of it, and is that cool with you?”

Kayla: Ok I have some lightning-round questions for the end here. I know you’ve never literally counted, but if you had to estimate how many people you’ve hooked up with, what would you come up with?

Kristen: I’m thinking. Okay. There was a few years there where it was a lot. So, I’m trying to think, I’m trying to…

Kayla: Do the math. You look like the like meme of that lady doing calculations.

Kristen: It’s under a hundred.

Kayla: Under 100 and over…

Kristen: 75?

Kayla: Under 100, over 75. What’s the first thing that you remember from our first date downstairs at the bar, like first thing that comes to mind?

Kristen: I remember you asking if you could stash your bag under the bar.

Kayla: Oh, I remember that bag. She’s broken now. Okay, and first thing that you remember about our date after we went upstairs to the hotel room?

Kristen: Oh, I gave you my book to look at because it was about to be published, and then I took it and threw it away. So we could have sex.

Kayla: I also remember you throwing the book. Last question. Do you still look at my old nudes on your phone?

Kristen: Yes, I have them favorited.

Kayla: But like, do you look at them? Do you’re like I’m going to do a scrolly-scroll?

Kristen: Yes.

Kayla: We’re always together now!

Kristen: I have one that you sent me, a video. With the Hitachi. And I do like that one.

Kayla: That’s a fan favorite. That’s a re-watch for you.

Kristen: Definitely.

Kayla: All right. That’s the end. Ending on a horny note.

Things I’ve Never Asked My Girlfriend of Three Years About Her Childhood and High School Years

Welcome to Things I’ve Never Asked! This is a new A+ series in which we ask people we’re close to questions we genuinely don’t know the answers to! For this first one, I sat down with my girlfriend Kristen Arnett. Because we live together and especially because we started living together just two months before the pandemic made it so that we were truly together all the time, I thought I wouldn’t have enough questions to ask, but oh wow was I wrong! What I thought would be a short-ish interview turned into a two-hour conversation in which I learned so much I didn’t know about Kristen! In the first half, we talked about childhood, bodies, libraries, Barbies, porn, dial-up internet chat rooms, secret high school girlfriends, men’s cargo pants from Old Navy, and so much more! That first half of the conversation is below, and the second half — which covers our first date, our relationship, being a writer4writer couple, and top/bottom dynamics — will be published in the future on A+.

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Kayla: So we were originally supposed to have this interview at a Hooters.

Kristen: Right.

Kayla: But it was too loud unfortunately. I don’t have that many questions written down, because it’s very hard to think of things that I’ve never asked you, because we’ve spent a lot of time together in the past couple years.

Kristen: (laughs) Yeah. Just trapped.

Kayla: So, a lot has been on the table. I’m going to start with some softballs.

Kristen: (laughs) Is this going to get really hard?

Kayla: No, I don’t think so! I wanted to start with — there were 12 years of your life where I was not alive.

Kristen: Yeah. An even dozen.

Kayla: An even dozen. And I realized that I don’t think I know the answer to this question, but what did you want to be when you grew up? Like when you were young, before anyone has an actual idea of who they are and what they want.

Kristen: I wanted to be a lyricist.

Kayla: See! I had no idea!

Kristen: I wanted to be the person who wrote the words for songs, even though I never did it.

Kayla: Like, not even in your journal or something?

Kristen: No!

Kayla: You were like, “I haven’t done it, but I could.”

Kristen: I just had an idea that I thought I would be good at it.

Kayla: That’s funny, because that is a writer. So you weren’t that far off.

Kristen: Well, I think a part of it too, is that I had friends who all wanted to be singers. Because I feel like that’s when kids are young, they have these ideas about being like, “I’m going to be a movie star.” I had a lot of friends who were like, “I’m going to be a famous singer.” And I was like, “What?” Because I never wanted to do that. Like I’m a good singer.

Kayla: And you’re a performer.

Kristen: But I don’t think I would’ve considered myself to be a performer at the time. I was pretty quiet. I think when I was young and like, the closeted part of me, I was very shy. I really gravitated towards people who were super outgoing and like, really flamboyant, and exciting and like, the kind of people who I feel like I am now. Like how I’m very outgoing, and the life of the party, and want to be talking to everybody, and the first person who’ll get up and do something at karaoke. The first person who will be trying to make a joke in a room full of people. That is not who I was then. And I feel like I really wanted to be around people like that. Because I was very impressed by that. Because I think another part of that too, is like my dad is very much like that. And I was very drawn to people who were like that. Everybody loves them. They’re so talented. And when you hear their name, you’re like “That guy, I love them.” But I had a lot of friends who were singers, and I was like, “I don’t want to sing, and I don’t want anybody looking at me. But I can be part of this, because I could like write the songs that people sing, and then I could be part of it.” It was a strange thing, too. My dream was attached to other people’s.

Kayla: To be a successful lyricist, you have to be attached to a successful singer.

Kristen: I also wanted to be a librarian, but that was before I really even knew what librarians did. That was like back when I was like, “Oh, and you’re like, in a library, I see these people.” You’re just around books all day. And then you sit and people leave you alone and you can read.

Kayla: That’s a common fantasy that people have about librarianship. But then you actually went on to become a librarian, which is interesting. How young were you when you had that dream?

Kristen: I was in elementary school. Everything I wanted to do had to do with books. A big fantasy I had was I wanted to like be able to spend the night in the downtown library in Orlando. I wanted to be left there and have a little tent and a Thermos of hot chocolate. And be able to read as many books as I wanted, like all night long in this giant library and have people leave me alone. Because in my house I didn’t have my own space to myself. There was literally no place I could go to be alone. And no one would ever let me read. People would bother me the whole time. And also I wasn’t allowed to read so many things. And I was like, “If I’m here, then I could do that.” And so I had this really idealized thing in my mind about what it would be like to be a librarian. Because I was like, “Look at all these books here. It’s quiet all the time. No one’s bothering you. You have space, and time, and unlimited access.” And so, my brain was like, “This is amazing.” And so it was like a fantasy idea.

Kayla: I had no idea that you thought that. I mean, I knew you felt that way about books, and libraries and stuff. But I didn’t know that you wanted to be a librarian that young.

Kristen: I did! I mean, I don’t think I understood what it was called. Because, I think when you’re young, you’re most familiar with media specialists at your school.

Kayla: Yes. Yes. I remember.

Kristen: Mine was Ms.Martin. Ms.Martin, thinking back about it now, is definitely gay.

Kayla: Mine looked like an anthropomorphized owl.

Kristen: Hot.

Kayla: (laughs) This did remind me. Am I misremembering this? Was your first kiss in a library?

Kristen: It was, yes. It was at the Winter Park public library.

Kayla: How old were you?

Kristen: I was in ninth grade.

Kayla: And it was with a boy, yeah?

Kristen: It was, yes.

Kayla: But you already had had gay thoughts before that, right?

Kristen: Yes.

Kayla: It was like, on the steps of the library?

Kristen: It was in the stairwell. And I was like, “I’m doing it.” And I remember afterwards feeling very excited. Not because the kiss was good. I feel like it was fine. But I remember being excited, like I had reached a milestone, and being like, “I did it, great job.” And I was mostly concerned with that because I felt like, I don’t know, like I was so out of touch… I think that’s like, I won’t even say that’s every queer kids experience. I think that’s probably every teenager’s experience, of feeling like “I’m being left behind or I don’t know what I’m doing, and I just want to get this one thing right. It feels really important.” You know, especially when it comes to bodies, or sex, or like romance, or intimacy or whatever the hell. So, to me, it was less important even who it was. Like, it literally could have been anybody, I think, and I would’ve been like, “Did it, checked it off the list.” I felt so weird about my own body, and how it was in like relation to other people that like, I don’t know. I just felt like it was never going to happen.

Kayla: Yeah. I definitely relate to that. I mean, technically my first kiss-kiss was with a girl, but it was just like, it was just a kiss. It was not like-

Kristen: Well, technically my first kiss was with my friend Bethany. Because we had made up that secret handshake, where we touched tongues together.

Kayla: That was a church friend, right?

Kristen: Yes. I was in first grade.

Kayla: But for me, my first kind of… I guess first make out, really. It was on top of a jungle gym, with this boy in 10th grade. And I remember thinking at the time as it was happening, “This is just like a movie,” which is so funny, because I was that disconnected from it in the moment. Not in the sense that it was bad, but it was a projection of the thing I wanted it to be. Which almost made it good. Okay, anyway. So you had had kind of gay thoughts before ninth grade.

Kristen: Yeah.

Kayla: When was the first time that you can remember thinking something sexual in a gay way?

Kristen: Oh, that’s really hard, because it’s one of those things where you don’t… I remember it as a feeling of discomfort. And it happened a few different times. Like, some of those times were any time I had to change clothes in a room with other girls, I felt deeply uncomfortable. And it wasn’t because I felt weird about them seeing my body, it was because I was like, “I can’t look at anybody.” I was like, “I’m uncomfortable” and I could not have told anybody why I felt uncomfortable. I think at the time, if I was forced to nail it down, I would say what I think I said for a long time, which is that like, “I’m uncomfortable with bodies. I’m uncomfortable with people.” For a long time, I was like… I think you did this, too. I was like, “I’m not a hugger. I don’t like hugging.”

Kayla: Yep. I did that.

Kristen: And a big part of that is, for myself, I can’t speak for anybody else, was being closeted. I was like, “I have such a disconnect with my body or how my body might react to somebody else’s.” There’s a few different things I can think of: I had immediate access to Barbies, and I loved looking at them. I loved brushing their hair and putting clothes on them. But it was just this kind of act, of like taking the clothes on and off of them, like the shape of their bodies. I would put my mouth on my Barbies. I drew a picture one time as a very young child for my mom, and my grandma. And it was supposed to be a family portrait. This is a deeply embarrassing story-

Kayla: No, I love this. Because I don’t know what you’re about to say.

Kristen: I had to have been like eight, or nine. Maybe… I think eight. I was very young. That’s another thing I thought I might be — I was like, “I’m going to be an artist.” But I was drawing women in our family, and it was definitely before my sister was born. So I was like, probably… Actually, it might have been seven, seven or eight. And I drew my grandma, me, and my mom. And I drew the three of us together in a picture. And I drew all of us with breasts. Voluptuous, gigantic breasts.

Kayla: (laughs) ALL of you had voluptuous breasts?

Kristen: With nipples, and like everything.

Kayla: Oh, with nipples. I was about to say, “Was it Barbie’s influence?” But Barbie doesn’t have nipples. Were you guys naked?

Kristen: I drew clothes. Like I shaded it in over top of it.

Kayla: So you could see the nipples.

Kristen: You could see whole titties.

Kayla: So nobody was wearing a bra.

Kristen: No. And also at the time I definitely would not have had any. I was seven or eight, so I definitely did not have any. But I was like, “I’m drawing the three of us women, in this family.” I gave it to my mom and she was like, “I can’t show this to anyone.” She was so mortified. She was like, “You drew…” I don’t even think she would say. But I remember I cried, and cried. And I was like, trying to erase the titties.

Kayla: Not erase the titties!

Kristen: But I couldn’t. Because I think I’d drawn it in pencil and gone over it with crayon. And so I was trying to draw back over it, but it was ruined. And my mom’s like, “No, it looks fine now I can give it to grandma.” And I’m like, “You can’t.” Because I felt like deeply ashamed about it afterwards. I was really young. For me, I was like, “I’m being an artist, and we have this under our clothes. So I’m going to draw this under our clothes.” But it embarrassed my mom. So then I was like, “Oh, this is embarrassing.”

Kayla: That’d be a formative moment.

Kristen: But also I was just like, obsessed with women’s bodies. To a point where I felt uncomfortable, because my interest didn’t feel normal to me. Because I couldn’t feel anybody else my own age, around like fourth or fifth grade, feeling this. That’s when you really are starting to do sleepovers, and people are starting to talk more. At least where I was with my age, like in the nineties. With talking about like boys, and things like that. And I remember feeling really confused. So probably the stuff that I felt like I probably knew I was queer, was maybe more like, moments of discomfort. Like, I’m having to change out of a swimsuit, and I feel like really weird, and I’m just turning to a wall. So I won’t accidentally see somebody, except I kind of want to look. And I think the discomfort for me, was the knowing that I wanted to see. It was literally not about anybody seeing my own body, but it was like, “I don’t want to ‘accidentally’ see somebody else. Because if they see me seeing them, they’re going to think I’m staring at them.” And they’re going to be like “You’re being weird.” And that felt so scary to me. And that feeling proceeded all the way through probably high school. Because like, if you’re doing performing arts stuff, you’re just like changing around each other all the time.

Kayla: Oh, I know.

Kristen: Just being girls and being at a sleepover or something. Everybody changes their clothes or does weird stuff. And I was always vibrating with tension and anxiety from those things. I know there’s plenty of people who slept in bed with their friends. I had a really hard time doing stuff like that. I just felt deeply uncomfortable all the time. Like my best friend in high school is probably the only person that like, sometimes we slept in a bed together. But like, even then, I’d always be like, “Let’s sleep in the living room.”

Kayla: Oh, that’s funny. I actually did that all the time. I was like, “Let’s do sleeping bags in the living room. Let’s sleep on the couch.”

Kristen: I was like, “I don’t want to sleep in a bed with you,” because I wouldn’t be able to sleep. My body would be so tense, because I’d be trying to hold myself against the wall, or trying not to touch them. I literally think that went on for me until like, I don’t know, for a long time. Like, it was just such a part of me being like, “I don’t want them to think anything. I don’t want this to like be misconstrued. I’m really, really scared that somebody would think that this is something.”

Kayla: While we’re on this kind of topic, of bodies, and like desire, and discomfort and stuff. When did you first seek out porn?

Kristen: I would say that it’s two very specific different things. One was, the age that I am, the way that cable used to work, is that you could go through cable. The way you could find porn was like, there were just channels that you didn’t get all the way. And so they’d be scrambled. And that’s why they say, like, scrambled porn. Like a scramble channel.

Kayla: Yeah. A term that I didn’t know at all. But I’ve heard you say that before.

Kristen: It’s a channel that you don’t have access to, but you can still kind of hear the audio, and it’s kind of black and white and squiggled out on the screen. But you can still see stuff that’s happening. And then you could hear things. Because it would be like sex you could hear, like women moaning, or like saying certain things. I would listen to it so low, and I would sit next to the television, and turn the volume really far down, and sit with my hand on the button, on the TV. So I could slap it off.

Kayla: How old are we talking?

Kristen: Beginning of high school. Because I didn’t masturbate until I was in high school. I mean, I never had space to myself, and I didn’t know what I was doing. But the other thing that comes to mind…The thing I think was the more like, complex thing for me that was that my first kind of porn was going on AOL chat rooms in my junior year of high school. I was going in women for women chat rooms and talking to women in those chat rooms. That was like the wild, wild west. I never said stuff to people, because first of all, I did not know what I was doing. But I literally would purposely go online, and go into a women for women chat room, and wait for somebody to… Because you’d put in your age, sex, location, kind of thing. And then somebody would message you, and they’d start talking to you. But really it was just somebody like, saying a bunch of sexual stuff they wanted to do to you. And I never said anything back usually, but I’d always be like, “Oh, what else?” And then act like I thought it was funny, like a joke, because I felt like that was the only way I could access it. Because I was like, “If I treat this as if it’s serious, then I’m taking it seriously. I don’t want to take it seriously.” But that was probably the other one. I think that was the most that I was engaging with like ‘erotica’ or anything, was that I knew I was going on those chats because I wanted to talk to people. And I know now in retrospect I was definitely just talking to cis men pretending to be women, for the most part. But it was very titillating to me. And I never tried to go in and do any of that stuff in like, women seeking men, or anything. The only computer that had internet was in my brother’s room. So if I was going online, I had to go on dialup to get on AOL. And it took like 15 minutes for the computer to even boot up online. And he couldn’t be in there with me. So I’d just be like, “Leave me alone. I’m going on the internet.” And he just couldn’t be in his room for hours. At any moment, somebody could come up behind you and be looking at whatever you’re doing and you can’t close out of stuff like you used to be.

Kayla: Do you think he knew what you were doing?

Kristen: I don’t think he wanted to know. Bless my brother. I think he probably had an idea, but it was like, “Do your own thing. I don’t care. I don’t want to know about it.” I went into a lot of chat rooms and talked to a lot of women and let them talk to me about sex, but I think that’s something that people of a time period did.

Kayla: I think that’s something that almost transcends age a little bit, because I did that. It looked different, it was not dial up, but I did AOL chat rooms. I experienced that. It wasn’t even explicitly sexual channels of women seeking women, or women seeking men, or anything like that. It was stuff that happened on the WB message boards or … I was in some literal political online community thing and people would send sexual messages in certain places.

Kristen: I think people find a way to add that kind of content to any place that they can on the internet.

Kayla: Okay. We’re in high school now. Something I have always found interesting — and we definitely have talked about, but there are certain details that I don’t know about — is the fact that you had a secret high school girlfriend, which I never had. I had secret college girlfriend sort of, but it was still different. A lot of that was like we literally dated almost online. You had a girl in high school, who went to your high school, who … you guys were secretly dating.

Kristen: Dating is maybe not the right word for it.

Kayla: Yeah, I assume you guys didn’t use that language at all ever.

Kristen: No.

Kayla: No. I totally understand that, but it’s still like you had someone where there were mutual feelings there, and also you guys did hook up. I never experienced that, and I’m always interested in that experience, cause it’s also really hard to be with someone, but not really be with them. How old were you when that started?

Kristen: I was a junior in high school. Maybe the summer before junior year high school. I was … God, that was a really long time ago. I look back and in retrospect, I have a lot of pity for myself, but also for the person I was with, because I know it was very hard for them also. It was the late 90s. We lived in Central Florida. I don’t think anybody who was even in a heterosexual relationship at that point was having a good time having a relationship in high school.

Kayla: Were there any openly gay people at your high school?

Kristen: Yes. There’s two people I can think of offhand. One was a guy who was a grade younger than me. I remember people not being kind to him, and then another person I remember was actually a person, a grade ahead of me, maybe two grades ahead of me. We follow each other on Twitter. Being out then was not like it would be now, or even it would’ve been 10 years ago, or even like it would’ve been when you were in high school. They would not have been like “I’m gay.” It was one of those things where you just knew that about a person, and I didn’t want anyone to know that about me.

There were times where I encountered other people who, in retrospect, like I know Kathy, who I’m still friends with. I feel like she and I knew about each other. She’s out as a lesbian now. And back then, I liked hanging out with Kathy but it also felt weird to me. I limited what it was. Cause it was like, “I’m not like you, I’m not like whatever this is.” I could see the thing in her that was the thing in me and I was like, “I don’t want that to be me.” But Kathy wasn’t out, but Kathy was gay. And I liked spending time with Kathy, but I purposely was like, “I’m not going to spend time with you.” We wore the same kind of clothes.

Kayla: Describe please.

Kristen: Men’s cargo pants from the Old Navy men’s sales section, some kind of beat up old t-shirt, probably some kind of … if it wasn’t a sneaker, it was some men’s-like shoe.

Kayla: So neither of you were hiding it well.

Kristen: No. I had hair under my chin and Kathy had the same haircut. I was like, “I don’t want to be around this.” But I think a lot of it was that it looked a lot like me, too much like me.

Even when I was first coming out, I think I gravitated towards extremely high femme women who I thought were straight acting or straight representing, because I was like, “This makes sense. This should be what I’m looking at or whatever.” Something that I think sometimes gets lost in the whole like, “Oh. We all crushed on straight girls at one point discourse” is I think some of us were maybe aspiring to be that. I would look at that stuff and see the ways I felt I was failing. Don’t get me wrong. I obviously love being with somebody femme. I obviously gravitate towards that, but it was a way in which at the time when I was very young, I was like, “This is what I should want.” Instead of actually having any nuance about the expanse of what queerness was. I was like, “Okay. Well, if I’m going to like this then I need to like this thing.”

I love femme women, but I felt like it was a different kind of thing where I felt like, “If I’m going to like this, which I shouldn’t, then this is what I have to like, because this is how I should be presenting myself.” And then those were the kind of women in high school that I would be around all the time. I would want to spend time with them because spending time with young women in high school is doing a lot of stuff where it’s like, “I’m not good at this, or I want to do this better like putting on a lot of makeup-”

Kayla: And you were never interested in that?

Kristen: I knew how to do that stuff because my family is very gendered that way. I feel like I wanted to like it more than I did. I just wasn’t good at it and I didn’t like how it looked on me. I didn’t look in a mirror and go, “Wow. You look really pretty, and I like how this looks.” I would put it on myself and feel like I was putting on a costume or something. I think I conflated the fact that I wasn’t good at presenting the kind of gender that I was I supposed to be presenting with the idea that I was poor. And I was like, if I had money, I would present gender in a much better way. I would have access to the makeup and tools and clothes that I need to look the way I need to look, and the reason it’s not happening is because I don’t have money. I really truly thought that. I was like, if I had money, my hair would look right, my face would look right, I would know what to wear, I would be right, and the reason I can’t do this is because I’m poor. I know now that’s not what the case is, but I would say with 100% certainty that I definitely was like, “This is the issue. The issue is I don’t have any money.” So because I don’t have any money and I don’t have access to this stuff, I can’t do gender the right way. Even though looking back, there’s plenty of people who were in the same position as me, including my own sister who did not have that struggle. But I think it was easier for me to be like that, because what am I going to say? “I’m bad at it because I’m bad at being a girl?”

The thing for me too is that there’re certain things I definitely did enjoy.I liked wearing heels, and I liked the way certain clothes would look on me, and I’ve always really liked long hair, and that stuff is still very confusing to me. It’s like, do I want it for myself or do I want to look at it? And sometimes it’s both, and sometimes it’s one or the other.

Kayla: The lens of class on how you saw yourself and how to access certain gender things makes me go back to — and I promise I’m also not going to fixate on your high school girlfriend — but it is something that’s so interesting to me. Your high school girlfriend was femme and also rich, right?

Kristen: Yes.

Kayla: That’s interesting to me that that was someone you were so drawn to.

Kristen: She was a person who had all these qualities that looking back, I really aspired to be that kind of person. She was very beautiful in this effortless way. She knew exactly how to put on makeup, her clothes always looked right. She bought everything she had from Goodwill or thrift stores. She didn’t like wearing any new thing. She had beautiful long hair that she would flip around nonchalantly, like be able to throw up in a little bun or do a braid. And it was like everything looked so easy. It was so easy for her to do femininity.

Kayla: And she was a singer.

Kristen: Yeah.

Kayla: To go back to your lyricist aspirations.

Kristen: Yeah, a very talented singer. Also she was a person who was very effervescent, had a ton of friends, was outgoing.

Kayla: That exact thing that you were drawn to even as a child.

Kristen: Just super outgoing and everyone loved her, but also very pretty and easy in her body. I remember being like … she didn’t ever have to try.

Kayla: Which is probably not true.

Kristen: No. But it’s me looking at it, the perception of it. I think that happens all the time.

Kayla: Not to bring Yellowjackets into it, but I think that’s what Shauna thinks of Jackie.

Kristen: Absolutely, because I don’t think any high school girl is actually not trying.

Kayla: Everybody’s trying really hard.

Kristen: So much of what our quote unquote relationship looked like was me being like, “I want to be around you cause I want to be how you are.” But I think that’s how we are with a lot of things when we’re teenagers.

Kayla: Again, I am always interested in people who dated — which not that exact word — but “dated” in high school because it was something I wanted so badly at the time.

Kristen: It was not amazing.

Kayla: No, I know.

Kristen: And I would say if anything, it made it harder for me to come out.

Kayla: It seemed like a formative experience in a bad way, on a lot of levels.

Kristen: It was a situation in which neither of us was really ready and neither of us were in a position where either of our families would have been okay with any part of that and it would’ve been strange.

Kayla: I do romanticize the experience of a secret high school girlfriend, because I feel it was something that I wish I had, but I also … anyone that I know has said, “No. It’s bad. It’s a bad time.”

Kristen: I think the secret part is the part that is not great because it is a way in which it’s like, I was never getting what I really wanted, but honestly, I didn’t know what I really wanted. It wasn’t like I was ever like, “I want you to be my public girlfriend.” I never would’ve said something like that. I think that’s why I like the language around calling her my secret girlfriend. I say that because I don’t really have the language to say whatever else that was. It was like … we were extremely close friends that spent a lot of time together and then occasionally stuff would happen between us, but that was not something we would ever talk about afterwards.

Kayla: I’m interested in these weird young queer experiences where there doesn’t really seem to be a lot of language for it. Did you ever tell anyone at the time?

Kristen: No.

Kayla: It was truly only the two of you knew.

Kristen: Yeah. I’m positive. And she was the one who ended stuff.

Kayla: That’s the other thing. You guys had a breakup, but again, that’s not the language.

Kristen: It was abrupt enough where it derailed my college plans. Our plan was to go room together in college. And I was like, “This isn’t happening anymore.” I chose a completely different college. Cause I was like, “I can’t be at the same place as you.”

Kayla: What did she say? What does that look like? A breakup that’s not really a breakup?

Kristen: She just … I don’t know. I think it was like, she wouldn’t spend time with me anymore. She stopped doing anything with me. It was very abrupt, and it was almost like there wasn’t a conversation about it, but it was very much like, “I don’t want to be around you anymore.” It was almost more of a friend breakup. I didn’t get access to her anymore. And I was like, this means every part of this is over, and I didn’t have any language for that. How do you have a conversation with anybody about that? I think friend breakups are really hard anyway, regardless of age. They’re very intimate.

Kayla: There’s not a conversation that’s had, but you’re like, something has shifted.

Kristen: I think it happened around a musical that was going on, which sounds gay.

Kayla: I think I knew that detail

Kristen: And then I had to go on and perform and I was like, “I can’t believe I have to go out here and do this stupid musical right now.”

After it was over, I was in a lot of mourning, but then I was like, I don’t really understand even what I’m in mourning for. It wasn’t like we ever had a conversation about wanting to be together.

Kayla: No, ultimately, I’m glad I didn’t have something like that, even though I do romanticize it in my head.

Kristen: I think you had your own versions of those things, honestly.

Kayla: You’re probably right.

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And folks, just like that, I was finally convinced that secret high school girlfriends are indeed BAD and not FUN. So I finally shifted the interview to go beyond high school and delved into Kristen’s relationship with me, including how we met and what we’ve learned about ourselves during our time together. But you’ll have to stay tuned for part two, which will drop on A+ sometime in the future. For now, if you enjoyed part one, consider asking someone you know to join A+ or giving a gift to our fundraiser!

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Kristen Arnett on “With Teeth,” Lesbian Motherhood, and Sagittarius Chaos

When I say I want better queer representation, I specifically mean that I want it to be worse. I want queer characters who are allowed to be total disasters while still maintaining their humanity — in a sense, that is humanity. And that is why I love Kristen Arnett.

Like her debut, Mostly Dead Things, Kristen’s second novel With Teeth is a deeply felt, deeply uncomfortable, deeply hilarious story of a total disaster of a lesbian. It asks questions about parenthood and queer community that will stay circulating around my brain for a long time to come.

When I finished the book, all I wanted to do was talk about it and what is VERY EXCITING is I got to talk about it WITH KRISTEN!

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Drew: Okay, first, I need to tell you that a month ago I got a call from my sister when she was in Orlando for a work thing. And she was like, Drew, have you ever been to Orlando? There are, um, there are a lot of lesbians here? And I was like well I do know a lesbian from Orlando.

Kristen: (laughs) Yeah there are so many gay people in Orlando. It’s because everybody comes there to work at theme parks.

Ohhhhhh. That makes sense.

There are no gay places to go to though. Except Gay Days at Disney. There are a bunch of dykes who love to come to Orlando and work at the theme parks because they’re the Disney-obsessed dykes.

Have you been to a gay day at Disney?

Oh for sure, yes.

(laughs) What is that like?

It’s very bizarre. It’s like going to Pride and having it feel very corporate. It’s that same kind of thing. But it is funny to watch. Especially because my family is so evangelical that once Disney decided to start doing Gay Days we weren’t allowed to go to Disney anymore.

Moving on from Disney but not moving on from Orlando and family… With Teeth. I’m obsessed. Multiple times I finished a chapter and said out loud, “Jesus Christ, Kristen.” Which I say as such a compliment!

Well, thank you very much. That is very good to hear. It’s one of those things where you write a book by yourself and then you’re like, well I hope somebody likes it or even wants to read it. It’s a very strange thing. I guess I thought after the first book I’d feel differently or it’d be way easier. But no. Fuck you bitch. It’s a lot harder.

(laughs) Because there’s an added pressure since there are people who loved your first book?

Yeah. I feel all the same anxiety plus people reading this book and thinking it isn’t as good. And also topically it’s just not the same thing. I knew there were people I could get to pick up a book with taxidermy.  It shouldn’t be, but gay moms is a harder sell, you know?

I get that. What was the genesis of it? Was it the idea of gay motherhood?

A novel for me is often just something I can’t stop thinking about. So with Mostly Dead Things it was taxidermy. And with this I was thinking a lot about queer community spaces — specifically in Orlando and central Florida. We have stuff like I was saying about Gay Days at Disney when Pride comes around once a year. And then we have like two bars. That’s it. We used to have three and then Pulse happened and now that bar is closed. So there are queer people but not a lot of queer spaces for them. And the stuff that is there is for single people — nightlife stuff, right? So you can go out and go to a drag show and go out and drink with other people. But there’s not any kind of space for queerness to incorporate parenthood.

I was talking with an editor friend on the phone about how that could be really lonely because so much of queerness is community — building your own families, building your own friend groups — and how important and crucial that is. What would it feel like if you don’t have community anymore after you have a kid? The friend I was talking to lives in Brooklyn and they suggested someone could join a gay mom group. There are no gay mom groups in Orlando! What are you talking about? And so it kind of spurred from there.

Also I’m obsessed with writing about families and thinking about families because families are so fucked up. It’s the most fun thing to write about. Every family, even families that are doing okay, have some fucked up elements to them. So I wanted to write about lesbians who were obviously very fucked up in their family and what that looks like both from the outside and what that looks like from the inside. Think about it this way — everybody in a family is an unreliable narrator. Even families who share the same stories don’t tell those stories in the same way. I wanted it to be this claustrophobic, sometimes terrifying, feeling story of how motherhood and queerness in this specific space could feel weirdly oppressive. You don’t understand yourself and the dysfunction gets to a point where it turns into this cyclical bad way to behave.

I want to read stories about dykes not acting right. I want to read about people being messy. So I want to write about that too. I’m just way less interested in people who are not having problems because I feel like everyone is having problems.

Yeah absolutely. I’m also really interested in the aspect of the book that’s about Sammie’s relationship with her own parents. At first it made me question if it’s ever possible as queer people to not feel a little bit failed by straight parents. Obviously there’s a spectrum between total embracing and total abandonment but within that spectrum I feel like there’s always somewhat a feeling of not being understood or being failed in some way. But then as I kept reading I started to question if it’s possible to not fail as a parent in general. Maybe a little failure is a part of it.

I completely agree. I’m of the personal opinion that very few people know what they’re doing. I mean, God bless anyone who does — it’s shocking to me. Every time I feel like I figure something out about myself that thing is quickly proven to be untrue or it changes. So if you add being in charge of someone else’s life? We’re going to fuck up. It’s just kind of unreasonable to expect anything else. There’s too much judgement and not enough nuance and messiness when it comes to parenting.

Add in this layer where Florida is a fairly conservative state and you just feel like you’re being looked at all the time — like people are waiting for you to fuck up. Just as a mom people are judging you for different things, but as a gay mom? People are really anticipating that you’re going to royally fuck things up. So there’s this feeling that you can’t fuck up because then you fuck it up for everyone. People will be like look at these lesbians they couldn’t do it. So you have to be kind of perfect and that’s just not reasonable. As a parent or a human.

That was what I loved so much about the shifts in point of view at the end of the chapters. A lot of them felt so compassionate towards Sammie. Her point of view was absolutely claustrophobic and there was a relief in escaping it and getting a bit more detail of what might be happening outside of her perspective. But also so often she was perceiving them to be judging her in these ways that they weren’t. I love when the person who works at the convenience store thinks Sammie is going to go home to her rich husband. It made me think about the ways society maybe instills these fears more than individuals do. Not that there aren’t people who are like, oh these lesbian moms fucked up so now I’m going to judge all lesbian moms. But I do wonder how much we just latch onto these narratives from a place of shame. Especially when things have changed so quickly with queerness. The judgment that you received 10 years ago, 20 years ago, even like three years ago, can be different. But it’s still so hard to let go of those narratives.

Yeah. It felt important to me to have those other perspectives, because I think we can really sabotage ourselves with our narratives. And it’s easy to do that. We feel like we know exactly how people are looking at us or we know how things are being spun. But we don’t. I think everyone is unreliable, but Sammie especially has a completely warped view of how every interaction is being perceived. So I wanted these outside perspectives to give some kind of clarity because those outside perspectives quite often have no stakes in what’s happening in her household. They’re completely bystander observers to what’s happening in a moment. Even the therapists or Samson’s teacher — who have limited stakes — quite often have very different perspectives on her relationship or how she’s parenting or what her kid is like. And I think that that’s significant.

I feel like that as a person. I catch myself all the time getting trapped in my narratives. Maybe that’s a thing we do socially now, because we have these online narratives. I say this as a person who’s extremely online. We have this very warped idea, because we spend so much time seeing what we think people are like. And in reality, we actually know very little about what’s going on in someone’s life. I can’t tell you how many times, especially during the pandemic, Kayla and I talk about what’s going on on Twitter. We’re like, oh did you see that person doing that thing? And then you just find yourself being like, Oh, don’t you think that they should maybe do this? Or like, I feel like they’re going through this right now. And it’s like, what am I doing! I know literally nothing about this person! But I think we’re trained at this point to feel like we know every aspect of a person’s life. Even though it feels like, well nobody understands anything about mine. Right? But it’s fun. People are so weird.

Well, yeah, gossiping is fun! And it can be harmless. But I do think it’s important to be aware that we’re getting a limited narrative. I mean, sometimes I get social media envy for myself. Like I look at my own social media and feel like this person is having such a great life. I wish I was this person. And I’m… literally that person. Even the way we package our mental illness and our struggles there’s often a level of unreality to it. It presents a totally skewed version of us all.

Yeah, I mean, I think that’s — I don’t want to say normal because God that feels like a weird word to use — but it does feel normalized. It’s interesting too, because it definitely impacts how I write and think about narrative. I wanted Sammie to feel really isolated. If you don’t have community and you don’t understand who you are, you would start to lose any grasp on reality. You don’t have people around you to act as a touchstone and offer some perspective.

Mostly Dead Things is a book that feels outside even when it’s inside. Even when you’re in the house there are things that look alive. And that’s very Florida. But there’s this other kind of Florida that feels like this great claustrophobic space. Sammie’s day isn’t spent actually doing anything of her own. It’s all about what her son is doing. I’m waiting for him in the house. Now I’m in the car with him. Now I’m at his school. Now I’m at his swim practice. We’re at therapy. We’re at the grocery store. And now we go back again and we do it all again tomorrow. Sammie is a bit self-involved and a bit neurotic and this weird monotony amplifies her echo chamber. I think when people are alone their worst impulses get magnified.

Yeah, I mean, she’s so desperate to escape the monotony she becomes a Peeping Tom. She has this desire to look into other people’s lives but only knows how to do it in this removed way. She needs these chaos outlets. It feels very Sagittarian to me. As someone whose Venus and Mercury is in Sag, I definitely related to some of those impulses. Her self-awareness around it too was really interesting to me. Like when she says she needs things to be either really good or really bad. I don’t think that’s articulated a lot — that need for a chaos outlet. And we just see her jump from one to the next. She always has something.

I mean, I am a Sagittarius.

Oh I know.

That’s really funny to think about. You’re also the first person to bring up her peeping on her neighbor which was very important to me. Because you could take it as like, Oh I want to look in at the thing I could have if I didn’t have this other thing. But I think it’s more than that for Sammie. When people don’t realize how deeply unhappy they are, there’s this impulse — sometimes subconsciously, sometimes a little bit consciously — to manifest chaos. Like, how can I blow my life up so that something else has to happen? Because maybe I’m not capable of actually facilitating that change in a way that’s healthy and I don’t actually understand how unhappy I am because with what I have I feel like I should be happy, you know?

Yes.

So I like the idea of her doing these kinds of things like where she makes out with the other swim team mom. She doesn’t even necessarily want to, but she just needs something to change and she turns to total destruction. Which is really fun to think about, because children are also agents of chaos. They will be so horrible. And then immediately be so endearing. They match. Sammie has a child and her child is doing those same kinds of wild things. It was fun to play around with that.

And with the biting she’s literally matching him. He’s obviously not the easiest kid, but it’s also like God you’re taking the actions of your seven year old so personally! They’re feeding off of each other and one upping each other. And it’s like, wait no you’re the mom. You’re supposed to be better.

That was fun for me too. I mean, fun to write. I don’t think I’d want to interact with it in real life. But I do like that we’re getting this through her point of view. And her point of view is that her son is sort of her nemesis and they’re in this power struggle. But that is not a fair way to look at any interaction with a child because that’s not a reasonable representation of the power structure between them.

I worked story time at the public library for like eight and a half years. There’d be so many days where you’d see moms in there who were on the cusp of losing it. You can see it in their faces. They’re just about to have a total breakdown. Kids will have a day where they didn’t sleep enough and they’re tired or who even knows what is going on. And they’ll have a tantrum and maybe they’ll hit you or bite you or kick you or kick someone else or scream some really wild thing in the middle of a place. And the look on some of these parents’ faces. They want to just shake their kid so badly. But they don’t. Because they know that’s not the correct response, right? Just because they feel extreme frustration doesn’t mean they can shake their kid — or bite their kid. But when they’re alone I’m sure there are times where stuff like that does happen. And the question for me is: what happens afterward? I think a lot of people try to make it right in their head or justify it in some way. They compartmentalize it instead of confronting it. Because Sammie has a moment where she could have been like, Oh, shit, can you really pull over, I just bit him this is what happened and we definitely all do need to be in therapy and have a conversation about this. She doesn’t do that. She lies and they go get ice cream.

Look there are definitely parents who are narcissists or parents who are just kind of shitty parents. And some of those parents are sometimes, you know, homosexuals.

(laughs) Yeah. There’s also something about Sammie not having her parents in her life. And a lot of queer people either don’t have their parents in their life at all or just don’t have the same sort of relationship to their family that straight people can have. And also, the way we build families is often really different. And choosing a truly queer life — which to me feels different than just being queer — means giving something up.

When I was first starting on hormones I made the decision to not freeze my sperm which means I can’t have biological children. And I made that decision because it’s expensive and I wanted to prioritize getting on hormones. I’d already been out for six months and was already out to my parents and dealing with that. But there was still a real feeling of loss with that decision. I’m not saying a trans woman who freezes her sperm is less queer — obviously — but there was this version of my future and my family building that could have been a little bit more normal. That could have been a little bit like closer to what I was raised by society to want. And, look, being gay is my favorite thing in the world. But it can also be exhausting. Committing to the lack of stability that comes with being outside normal can be really exhausting.

I really appreciated the scene where Sammie returns to the church and imagines an alternate life where she’s straight and has a husband. In her mind it would be so much easier. Which isn’t necessarily true. But I get Sammie’s exhaustion. Especially because she doesn’t have a queer community around her to fill in those gaps.

Completely. And queerness doesn’t necessarily extend to these very heteronormative patriarchal roles where there are two parents and each plays a certain kind of role with a child. So what are households going to look like? And I think that’s where a lot of problems crop up when people are still trying to fit into that rigidity. You see that in the book where they’ve fallen into roles where Sammie is the stay-at-home mom and Monika is more of the traditional dad. And they’re having all these problems, because it doesn’t fit. But there are so many ways of having a family, right? You don’t even need to have just two parents, or two caretakers, of a child — they can be raised by a group or community. But we don’t have the same guidelines for these alternatives so it can be more difficult to realize.

I think, in general, people feel like we need some kind of manual or some kind of instructions for how to be. And there are only certain kinds of frameworks that we’re given, so the reimagining is deeply difficult. Life’s just so hard. So I get why people want to find ways to make it more simplistic. But I don’t think that makes you happier. Would Sammie be happier in the scenario she’s imagining? Probably not. Would things be socially easier? Well, sure. But it’s just kind of a weird trade off. Which feels unfair, but life is often deeply unfair.

Yeah, I guess a lot of it does come down to, like, being a person is just really hard.

It’s this idea that if I have this and this then I’ll have been successful and I’ll be happy. That heteronormative idea that if I get my college degree and I get my job and we get married and we have two and a half kids and a dog and a home and a car that’s paid off then we’ll be happy. This very American idea of commercial success. But then there’s all this suburban ennui where people are desperately unhappy in their homes. Because none of those things actually equate to happiness. I like putting queerness in the middle of all that because then it’s queer people who are unhappy. And we’re great at that.

(laughs) Yes, we truly are. I mean, I never have the fantasy that Sammie has because I know it wasn’t possible for me. I tried that sort of normalcy for many years and it didn’t work. So the jealousy for me is more like, well what if I was someone who would feel joy because of those basic things? But maybe it’s just a myth. Even people who are able to embrace that normalcy still have a lot of problems.

I think wanting a thing and having that thing are two very different concepts. Especially when we’re told we’re supposed to want something. There’s this idea that people should want kids, but some people just don’t. And maybe Sammie felt like she was supposed to want them or did want them but wanted that to be different. But, I mean, we don’t really know what Sammie’s relationship was with Monika previous to them having a kid. She says they were happy, but we don’t really know.

When you’re writing an unreliable narrator like this, do you as a writer know more than the character? Like, do you know what their marriage was like before Samson?

As I’m going along, I feel like I’m discovering it with the characters. I don’t outline. I’m just kind of a chaos writer if we’re using chaos as the vehicle here.

(laughs)

I feel like if I’m not surprised then I get bored and if I’m bored then the reader is definitely going to be bored. I’m a person who gets bored and distracted very easily. So when I’m working inside something I want to understand the characters as the narrative progresses. Especially writing this unreliable narrator, I didn’t want to know too much about them. I feel like if I know too much, then I’m giving too much. So I really wanted to know the least amount possible. I know how she’s thinking and that can inform how she’s moving through the world. But if I have too much of a backstory on how she’s lying or if she’s lying then it feels heavy to me. I feel like I would fuck up because the other thing about Sammie is she legitimately doesn’t think a lot of the time. She thinks she’s being truthful.

Lying to others — and ourselves — is just kind of a human impulse. I don’t exclude myself from that. I mean, for a big chunk of my life I said I wasn’t a lesbian. That was definitely me crafting a narrative. And I believed that narrative, even though I kind of didn’t. And I think that that’s just how a lot of people move through life, even if they’re obviously not being truthful. It’s a way to absolve themselves of guilt. People are so fucking messy. It’s delightful.

That’s something I’ve learned over the years and it’s really hard because it’s so much easier to be like that person hurt me and they’re evil and they’re bad. And to have to learn that people usually — I mean, there are exceptions — but most people aren’t really malicious. People can be self-serving, but so much of it is fear-based. Just the way Sammie moves through the world is fear-based. Am I a good enough mother? Do I know how to do this? What will happen if I make this decision or that decision? She’s just so afraid. It makes makes me care about her while being frustrated with her. But it’s how I think about people more and more, because I realized when I wanted to put people in categories of being bad, it just never really worked. Which is annoying. It’d be so much nicer to be able to do that.

Oh, it’d be way easier for sure. Just to be like this motherfucker.

Expanding that to gender, I really like the aspect of the book that deals with these lesbians raising — as far as we know — a cis, straight boy. I’ve definitely thought about that if I ever had kids. Like, oh God what if they’re a straight boy, I wouldn’t know how to talk to them! But also I’ve done a lot of work to realize that my fear of men is more a fear of patriarchy. And it’s not helpful to think in a gender essentialist way. I like that Sammie is also struggling with that. She’ll say something about boys, and then will be like, but that’s not true because gender is complicated. But then later she’ll be like, no boys are different.

Yeah, that was very important to me. I didn’t just want it to be two women who identify as lesbians raising a child — I specifically wanted them to be raising a son. There’s a lot of stuff that would be fraught about that for two lesbian moms. There’s this idea that two women can’t raise a son, because there has to be a father figure with some specific masculinity otherwise the child will be fucked up. And that’s obviously not true. Children get fucked up, but the lack of masculinity is the least of our worries. But I wanted Sammie to feel so completely out of her depth. She feels like she knows so little about masculinity and that means she doesn’t know how to talk to Samson. But when it’s just the two of them there are moments of real tenderness where they get to just be parent and child without all the rest.

But they’re in a situation where they’re well off and they’re in a “good” neighborhood and he has all of the tools for success. And he’s a cis white male. So I was interested in how they would have conversations about how he moves through the world to help him understand these layers of privilege. And I’m equally as interested in the conversations they aren’t having. Sammie will say to herself that she should think about things in a certain way. And then just she doesn’t. Instead she avoids the things that are happening.

Like he’s working at that bowling alley and it seems very likely that he’s spit in this girl’s drink. And she starts to have a conversation with him, but it’s a conversation she can’t even handle appropriately. And then that’s the end of it. She doesn’t have any further conversation with him about it. She doesn’t know how to deepen his understanding of why this would be a problem outside of just being an asshole. Maybe there’s an expectation that because they’re two lesbians they’d be better at it, but maybe they’d actually be worse? Not all lesbians, but these lesbians. Anybody is capable of not wanting to deal with conflict. They just kind of deal with it and try to get through it and then someday he’ll go off to college. That felt interesting to unpack that. Like surely lesbian moms will do a better job of explaining feminism and privilege to their son. And I’m like, yeah, probably not.

She’s so exhausted that she doesn’t want to do these things. And you just want to be like, hey, maybe if you did these things, you would be less exhausted moment to moment! If you actually confronted some of these things, you could be less exhausted!

Also we think of queer people as being so much more open to self-expression, but Sammie keeps telling Samson he needs to cut his hair! It annoyed me so much. As a kid, I had really long hair that I loved, but at a certain point, there were just so many comments from my mom and sister that I cut it. And as a closeted trans girl that felt like a real shift for me. I sunk into myself. Hair is important to queer people! And, I mean, obviously Samson’s name is Samson. And the scene where Sammie gets her haircut is a pivotal moment. So, I guess, I just… want you to talk about hair.

I grew up in a very evangelical household, so the story of Samson is deeply embedded in me. His mother was barren for years and years and years and prayed and begged God for a son. And then she finally gets a son but God is like, Okay, well, I let you have a son, but actually you have to let him go off and be at the temple. He’s immediately taken from her and she never really gets to have him. So I was thinking a lot about that.

Bible stories built up a lot of my formative years, because my parents only got me books from the Baptist bookstore. And they were so terrible. Truly some of the worst books I’ve ever read in my life. There was this series called the Mandy series, which is literally — it sounds like I’m making it up — but these books are about — sorry I know I’m off topic.

Please. Tell me what these books are about.

They are so bad. They are literally about a blond-haired blue-eyed girl who’s 1/16th Cherokee. That’s what the series is about. It feels like something fake. Like I’m making it up. But no, they’re real. Mandy is like, Oh well, I’m different because I’m 1/16th Cherokee. And I’m blonde and blue-eyed and go to boarding school. Those are the books I was allowed to read. And then anything with the Bible or devotional stuff. The Bible was so embedded in everything. So the idea of Samson as an adult with his hair is this idea of God having a lot of control over his whole life. Samson is born because his mother wills him into existence, but he doesn’t get to stay with her because God wills where he goes. He has strength but his actual life is determined by what God says and what he’s allowed to do and not do.

And then I also wanted Sammie and Samson to be linked by name. Because the way she handles him — whether it’s biting him or telling him he needs to cut his hair — she feels like his body is her body. She feels like she should have control over it. And there’s also this thing parents do where they say an offhand thing and don’t realize how much it hurts. I know there are plenty of things my mom said to me and didn’t think anything of it and I thought about it for a million years. Like my mom wouldn’t let me leave the house one time, because she said I looked too much like Ellen. Which… I was wearing a sweater vest.

(laughs) So, honestly, a pretty apt read.

(laughs) But like I’m sure she never thought about that again. And I thought about that for the rest of my life. Obviously. I’m still bringing it up right now! But I do think there’s this way parents feel a kind of ownership over the bodies of children. They feel like, well you’re mine, you’re mine. So I have control over every part of you. I have control over how you behave and what you like and what you don’t like and how you look and what you’re going to be. It felt important to have a lot of that in there. Because I feel like that’s how I ended up internalizing the story of Samson as a child.

And then there’s so much queerness with hair. Every time somebody goes through a breakup, they get a really extreme haircut.

Yeah, I mean, even Sammie saying the reason she keeps her hair long is because she was attracted to butch women. Obviously butch/femme dynamics are a thing and are important for a lot of people. But for Sammie she’s just thinking, Well, I’m going to fit this role, because I’m attracted to this kind of person and they usually want me to look like this. She’s not thinking about what she wants. Like what’s her relationship to gender? What’s her relationship to presentation? She’s not thinking about that. I was so excited when she was about to get her hair cut, but I don’t feel like we even get to learn how she feels about it. Maybe she doesn’t even know. All she can think about is how other people are reacting to it and that made me so sad. And I don’t think it’s a leap to imagine Sammie’s mom being just as critical of her hair as she is of Samson’s. Not to blame our parents for everything, but I think what you’re saying is really true. There are things our parents say to us that they don’t think about and then we think about them forever. And I feel really complicated about that! Sometimes I’m really indignant and like how dare you have done that! And other times I’m like, you were just trying to raise a kid and that’s really fucking hard and you were doing the best you could. And it’s not like my parents had perfect parents. Even straight people have issues with their parents that influence how they raise their own children. There are all of these generations of trauma and mistakes compounded.

Up until Samson is a teenager, I was really with Sammie and feeling for her. But in the latter half of the book, I just kept thinking about Samson. And with that identification with Samson while still in Sammie’s point of view, the book made me want to be kinder to my parents. Sammie maybe crosses some lines from lovable fuckup to not so lovable, but I just felt how hard it all was for her even as I witnessed her hurting her child. I don’t know. Again, being a person is just so hard.

Yeah, sincerely. It feels like a completely natural thing to go between those extremes. To go from this really fucked me up to I have a lot of compassion about this thing. It’s a spectrum of all different kinds of crap, right? And there’s no reasoning out why things happen exactly because there usually isn’t one reason. It’s a lot of little things smashed together. It feels deeply human and very messy, because humanity is very messy and relationships are very messy. You can relate to someone and understand them and then feel like well, actually, maybe I don’t, I think they’re an asshole. And just swing back and forth. That feels like relationships with pretty much anyone. Or maybe that’s telling about me.

No, no. I mean, I guess, there have been a few times in my life where I’ve met people and their families and they really seem to not have any conflict. But also who knows! It’s like the social media thing. Just because my family doesn’t hide our conflicts when company is over doesn’t mean that other people don’t. We don’t really know what’s going on with anybody. But I do think there are ways that we can all move towards being healthier and being better parents and better children and better partners.

God I hope so.

But part of it is actually admitting to the conflict and admitting to the problems. Like you were saying, after Sammie bites Samson she could have taken a moment and actually talked about it. But for that to happen we need a world where they could go to a therapist and discuss this without her worrying about having her child taken away. It just requires more compassion and more forgiveness and more complication across all of these interpersonal and social structures that we just don’t necessarily have. It’s just really complicated.

Yeah, I think that’s the long and the short of it — it’s just complicated. And I think it makes people exhausted and people just don’t want to deal with it.

I recently read After Delores by Sarah Schulman and in the intro to the 2013 edition she says, “Today, literally 25 years after the book’s initial publication, it would be impossible for a novel with a lesbian protagonist who is as honest, irreverent, eccentric, and alone as After Delores’ to be published by a mainstream press.” And when I read that, I was like, That’s not true! And I realized the reason I said that was because of Mostly Dead Things. And that intro is very much a rousing call to action about why we need that. And I very much agree and you obviously very much agree. So I’m just curious if you think things have changed since 2013. And, more broadly, what do you feel the importance is of having a book about someone like Sammie?

It’s one of those things where when something gets published and there’s a reaction to it other similar things get published. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is. Okay I’m going to talk in a circle right now. My brain is chaos.

(laughs) Go for it.

So Kayla’s been working on this queer books project for Autostraddle and watching her go through and looking at what actually was available — available meaning what got reviews or some kind of write up. It’s been really interesting watching how that moves. One book does numbers and then more follow. But that’s just following mainstream media.

I was actually at Lambda in 2013 with Sarah Schulman. And watching what has come out since then — I mean, even just this year — is incredible. People were asking me what queer books I was interested in this year and there are just so fucking many. And they’re all so good and super different. They’re talking about queerness in a lot of messy ways. Did you read Pizza Girl that came out last year?

No.

That book fucking rules. It’s so fascinating and it feels like a queerness I haven’t been able to see in this kind of way in mainstream literature. And there have been a lot more since then. But it’s also about what’s given recognition. Because these things have always existed. It’s about what’s allowed to have public space. What gets a review in the New York Times? But we can even look at books about queer parenting that have come out this year. Torrey Peters’ Detransition, Baby has so much queerness and parenting and cool shit in it. And that’s not something I’ve seen a lot in mainstream writing before. And there’s so much other stuff coming up that’s very queer and different. And about lots of different experiences. I have to hope there will just keep being more, because there needs to be a breadth of experience of what families look like and what queer people look like. I think it’s just one of those things that takes time. This is a topic that I have a lot of opinions about, but don’t have any kind of coherent thought other than the fact that I always want more.

Definitely. And I am really grateful that since I came out in 2017, I feel like so many queer and trans books have had irreverent protagonists who are kind of fuck ups. I’m so grateful for that. I feel like you can get into so many more interesting things with a protagonist like Sammie. I guess, theoretically, you could have a book about someone who isn’t fucked up, but I don’t know. I don’t know why you would want that.

I don’t care to see it!

(shared lesbian fuck up laughter)

Kristen Arnett’s ‘Mostly Dead Things’ Is a Funny, Dark Story of Messy Queer Love (also, Taxidermy)

If you’ve ever thought hard about taxidermy — and fiction writer Kristen Arnett has — you might come to the startling conclusion that it’s largely similar to having a gay crush on an unattainable woman.

Taxidermy and the art of freezing your life in moments as a way to compartmentalize the shit it keeps shoveling at you are at the heart of Arnett’s upcoming novel, Mostly Dead Things, which is available for preorder now and will be released by Tin House Books in June.

It’s a book written from the heart of someone who loves where they live, even when it’s inconvenient or cruel. Arnett hails from Florida, a swampy place that takes a lot of shit for the weird stuff that seems to constantly happen there. ‘Mostly Dead Things’ gives us a feel for Arnett’s Florida, wild and humid and full of life, especially the onerous kind. It’s a place of possibility, and with Arnett’s style and imagination, I hope we get to learn more about this Florida for many books to come.

Of course, fans of Arnett’s existing writing — whether it’s from her first collection of short stories, Felt in the Jaw, or her hilarious and illuminating columns for Ploughshares about being a librarian — will feel right at home with her storytelling in this novel. It’s dark and deeply queer and horribly funny, aspects Arnett masterfully juxtaposes to show they aren’t mutually exclusive. And I’d suspect for most readers who aren’t cis or straight, it’s not unlike seeing your innards displayed on a marble countertop, the secrets of your life writ large and writ well.

The story centers on Jessa-Lynn Morton, who takes over her family’s taxidermy business after her dad kills himself inside it. Her mom goes off the deep end of grief and is unreliable, and her brother struggles to function. Her brother’s wife, Brynn, walks out without a word — and also just happens to be the only person with whom Jessa-Lynn’s ever been in love.

It’s the kind of book that sneaks up on you, the kind you read until you realize you have to pee or that the light has left the room. Her writing is accessible and feels like reading a thought from your own brain you weren’t aware of thinking, tapping into experiences of adulthood and gayness and longing that you might think you were the only one to have.

Like our memories, the book bounces between current and past. We meet Jessa-Lynn as an adult dealing with the fallout from her father’s suicide but we learn about her as a child and then a teenager, all of these experiences culminating in her process of self-discovery.

“I was thinking a lot about what it means to be a person who’s trying so hard to control everything or trying so hard to make things be a kind of way that you’re not even willing to let what someone else wants factor into it.”

This process isn’t linear, so it works well with storytelling that seamlessly bobs back and forth. The way Arnett writes about self-discovery accounts for bad decisions or shortcomings the same way it tallies anything good or successful. It’s just part of it.

At one point, we see Jessa-Lynn remembering some of the bad things the girl she loves had done as a teenager, and then we see her remembering how she still wrote their names together on her sneaker before using the marker to cover it all up. Then she kissed the names under the marker blob. My teen heart felt that scene in all four chambers.

Essentially, Mostly Dead Things is the story of what happens to a young woman when her life is torn open and reset in a different pose, and how she deals with herself — and her queerness — as a part of that confusion soup. In the momentary chaos after a building catches fire, for example, Jessa-Lynn is talking to her adult brother, Milo, and suddenly realizes she doesn’t know him. This turns into a bigger realization about herself, but also how we place expectations on others to which we ourselves are not adhering.

“I stared at Milo and understood I was looking at a stranger. This was a person I’d allowed to grow apart from me, one I’d never tried to understand out of the context of our relationship as children. I’d expected my family to understand me as an adult but somehow thought they’d always stay the same — a family encased in the skin I’d stretched over them, ill-fitting and irregular.”

Arnett’s journey with Jessa-Lynn and taxidermy started while at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, where she penned a short story about siblings who totally botch the taxidermy on a goat for their neighbor. It was the first time she felt like she’d met characters she wanted to know more about.

“I was thinking a lot about what it means to be a person who’s trying so hard to control everything or trying so hard to make things be a kind of way that you’re not even willing to let what someone else wants factor into it,” she told me from her back porch in Orlando, where she sat sipping wine.

“It felt natural to do, to examine this kind of interest in the body. I’m very interested in the body and the physicality of things, but also how we repurpose things or try and pose them and make them into a way to suit particular memories.”

Arnett’s short stories have garnered attention and awards within the literary world. Felt in the Jaw, published by Split Lip Press, was awarded the 2017 Coil Book Award, and her bylines appear at Literary Hub, PBS Newshour, Volume 1 Brooklyn, OSU’s The Journal, Catapult, Bennington Review, Portland Review, Tin House Flash Fridays, The Guardian, Salon, The Rumpus, and many more.

Notably, Arnett is also popular for her love of her local 7-Eleven in Orlando, where she held her launch party for Felt in the Jaw and likes to keep Twitter updated about her close relationships with the cashiers there.

Taxidermy is the art of freezing a natural moment in time, as authored not by nature but by human beings. Essentially, people who taxidermy animals want a physical reminder of a time and place and feeling, and they want that reminder to stay locked in place.

Loving someone unattainable is just doing this to yourself, and stuffing a messy emotion into a clean frame can keep you safer from it. It’s about the myth of being able to control what hurts you.

“It’s a discussion that has to happen and it’s never going to stop… It’s continuously talking to yourself like, ‘Bitch, no, that’s not how any of this works.'”

“It’s about not wanting to deviate from that perfect thing in your mind, or the idea where you feel if you’re in a specific situation that it doesn’t feel acceptable, trying to compartmentalize or making it into this kind of thing so you can process it,” Arnett said.

Keeping that initial thrill of love in amber keeps you safe from it not working out.

“There’s something that’s so precious about that, that kind of first feeling. As a young queer woman that’s how I felt, I felt like I could break it if I pressed too hard. Trying not to destroy it but also wanting to keep it, and a willingness to do anything to maintain it,” Arnett said.

In the book, Brynn’s sudden departure leaves the whole family shaken, but for Jessa-Lynn, it’s just another part of her life left in a snowglobe of memory and potential. Encasing the past is also a place to get stuck, and Jessa-Lynn knows it because she’s been there before. She thinks about the dullness and sameness of life after Brynn, but also how she can’t leave it, just as she was trapped loving someone who didn’t love her back.

“[N]othing in my life ever felt like it was moving fast enough, but at the same time I couldn’t stand to leave the one place Brynn had left me. The last place we’d loved each other.”

This idea of not being able to leave a place because of we’re too attached to the ghosts haunting it shows up across the book, all over Arnett’s Florida, within nearly all of the characters.

Arnett told me these are conversations Jessa-Lynn has to have with herself to come to terms with her attempts to control her life, especially if they’re not necessarily a conscious maneuver. Understanding one’s own behavior in a realistic way isn’t always comfortable, but it’s key if one ever wants to be able to take other people’s perspective and feelings into consideration.

“It’s a discussion that has to happen and it’s never going to stop,” Arnett said. “It’s continuously talking to yourself like, ‘Bitch, no, that’s not how any of this works.'”

Otherwise, “Mostly Dead Things” plays with the idea of home and how we build it and who counts as family, which are all inherently queer ideas anyway. Jessa-Lynn falls in love with Brynn, and Brynn becomes as important as family to her, and then Brynn becomes family through marriage to Milo. It’s messy, but then again, so are families, so are bodies, so are hearts.

As for the title, which could be read as things that are mostly dead or usually dead things, Arnett said it refers to “things that are almost dead but aren’t.” It’s a nod to the taxidermy, sure, but it’s also a perspective on the human heart and how it perseveres, even in the most hostile environments. Arnett uses this to look at the literal hostile environment Florida can pose, but also families, love, and the people we choose to trust.

All of them can harm us, but as long as there is a little life left in our hearts, there’s hope.

“I’m looking at it as mostly dead, not all dead, like there’s still something there, there’s still the beating heart in it,” she said. “Just because something is a little dead doesn’t mean it’s all the way gone.”

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Mostly Dead Things will be published June 4. Click here to preorder the book.