Mt. Everest & ranking all my apartments [Like You Know Whatever]

Hi friends,

How’s it going? Welcome to August! I know that it’s very in fashion to be anti-summer right now, hating on the hot weather and yearning for fall and “spooky season,” but some delusional, heat-addled part of my brain still thinks this could be a great summer. I mean, Beyoncé just dropped a whole entire new album, for fuck’s sake! (More on that later.) I’m not ready to give up my watermelon frosé quite yet.

As for my emotional state, I’m somewhere between barely hanging on and totally fine, maybe even thriving. Some days I shift back and forth from one side to the other! So. Fun. I’ve been having a lot of trouble sleeping this past week due to anxiety. I’ve decided that I can no longer cope with all these enormous existential threats by just taking pills and grinding my teeth, so I am on the hunt for a new therapist.

The last time I was in therapy was right before I got married, when the stress of wedding planning and everyone losing their minds around me drove me there. I think I was on Medi-Cal at the time (see: not married yet), and the only therapist I could get in my shitty health plan was technically an intern. She was a terrible oversharer. My therapist before her shared nothing about his life with me–I didn’t know if he had kids, where he was from, anything. I would ask him how he was and he would just say fine and redirect the conversation back to me. This other therapist, when I’d ask her how she was, she would tell me about how the brake light went out in her car but she couldn’t get it fixed until the first of the month. One time, two weeks before my wedding, she came to a session so sick she could barely talk, and I knew it was probably because she couldn’t afford to cancel on me, but I was worried about being sick at my damn wedding! Another time, she told me she’d had a failed bead business. She actually was helpful in a lot of ways, but I stopped sessions with her right after the wedding. Suffice it to say, I am looking for someone with slightly better professional boundaries this time around. 

Then, a few years ago, I had sort of an emotional bomb dropped on me that I needed help processing and I went through the whole pain in the ass of finding a new therapist (which entails: a) finding someone you can afford/within your insurance network b) who is accepting new patients and c) who has an open appointment time that works with your schedule d) not to mention who is aligned with your goals and personality). I was ready to really dig into some old history and trauma and do some work, but when I got to the first session, she just kept saying, “It’s expensive to sit here, so how can we get you out that door as quickly as possible?” It’s like, bitch, don’t you want my co-pay? I had one session and never booked with her again. So, finding a good therapist in Los Angeles can be difficult. That’s not to even mention all the “life coaches” and “energy healers” you have to wade through when you’re trying to find a licensed mental health professional. No wonder men would rather buy crypto than go to therapy.

Let’s get into Some Things:

- Things You Wanted Me to Write About: I will be honest, folks: I struggled to get started writing this newsletter this week, so I polled Instagram and Twitter to see which topics you wanted me to write about (sound off in the comments if you have more ideas, btw!). Here are a few:

• “Raids.” Sure! I’m not much for political commentary as I usually feel like I’m too stupid and ill-informed to have an opinion, because reading the news gives me major anxiety, so I get a lot of information through Twitter, honestly. But I will share my thoughts. I am slightly nervous that the raid on Mar-a-Lago has enraged Trump’s base, because they are also the ones with all the guns, but also: they need to chill. When the FBI re-opened the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails like, a week before the election, my reaction was, “Wow, that sucks. I am frustrated” not “This is a call to arms! We must destroy the FBI!” It is just always wild to me that people can be so committed to defending a public person. This isn’t your brother, or your best friend, this is just a guy you voted for once, maybe twice. At any rate, I sure hope the FBI found what they were looking for, and that it’s enough to finally put that dude away.

• “How do you stop biting your nails?” This one came through Substack last week, and I’m afraid that I don’t have a very good answer! I go through phases with nail biting, and I just finished a looooong one with scratchy little stubs. What did the trick this time? I went on vacation to New York and I was too busy running around trying to see everyone to sit alone with my anxiety and bite my nails. Then when I got back, my nails were long enough to paint, and when my nails are painted, I don’t bite them. Is this helpful? Idk. Sorry!

• “Beyoncé.” I watched a drag queen lip sync to a clip from “Cozy” at a show the same day this album came out, which was damn impressive! I’d had a few too many drinks at that point celebrating Jinkx’s Drag Race win and accidentally dropped a twenty dollar bill on the ground when I meant to throw a single, but you know what? I left it, because she deserved it. Anyway, I’ve really been enjoying Renaissance, which should shock absolutely no one. I’m a big Beyoncé fan, and this record sounds like a party. I have thoroughly test-driven it, and it is perfect to play while A) doing your makeup B) having a cocktail at home before going out C) dancing in a club (in your Renaissance mystery box t-shirt, of course–true story). Starting with 4, Beyoncé has pushed herself to do something new with every album, and this is no exception. You can really hear her trying out new vocal styles on this record. I saw someone tweet that the girls are lucky that Bey went into singing and not rapping, and I could definitely hear the hip-hop influence on this album, although it has stronger influences from house, disco, and ballroom culture, I’d argue. I will say that Lemonade still remains my favorite Bey record to date–I just really connected to the story and the rock influences, and I must’ve watched the film five times in a row when it came out. I mean, that album is simply a career-defining achievement, one of the best of all time, period. She really dug deep on that one, and rather than mining her pain for this album, she’s described it as creating a happy place during a difficult time. I’m happy for her that she was able to do that, and inspired to try to create my own.

• “Rank all of your past apartments from best to worst.” Oh gosh, this is such a good prompt! But it could get very wordy. I’ve lived in seven different apartments in my adult life! My husband and I have lived in so many places combined, we used all our addresses as wedding table numbers when we got married. Well, I’ll just start writing it out and we’ll see, won’t we?

#1: My current apartment in Highland Park! My husband and I moved in here in the spring of 2021, right before hot vax summer, so that was fun. I love this neighborhood, which has great food and places to shop and go out and new spots popping up all the time. The apartment is also pretty large–my husband and I both have our own offices, which has made a massive difference in our work-from-home situations. Sometimes it can be a little loud (noisy neighbors) or buggy (we’re currently dealing with some ants), but overall, I feel really grateful that we moved in when we did.

#2: Our first apartment in L.A. We lived in a one-bedroom in East Hollywood/Loz Feliz for almost six years! Can you believe it? It was actually a pretty large one-bedroom with a lot of storage space and a separate room for the kitchen, so it was comfortable for a long time, but once Covid hit, it got a little cramped. I still love that neighborhood–I could walk to Griffith Park and hike right up to the Observatory--but one thing that was always a drag was the police helicopters flying overhead. We lived close to the 101 and main touristy Hollywood areas, so there was always something going on. Sometimes they would be looking for someone at 3AM and they would just circle and circle, while you’d be trying to sleep. The worst! It also didn’t have any kind of view–the windows overlooked the building next door and the parking lot. But the Thai food was bomb. I miss that.

#3: Our first apartment together, in Brooklyn. We lived in a one-bedroom in Prospect Heights that we got a great deal on because Ross’s mother knew the guy who managed the building, and not only that, but it was rent stabilized, which is really fucking hard to find in NYC! It was pretty small, I’m not going to lie, and the kitchen was TINY, but it was in a bomb location and the super lived in the building and was super responsive (another thing that is really fucking hard to find). We also had an upstairs neighbor who would sometimes BLAST music to the point that sometimes we would just go out and go to a bar or a movie or something because we couldn’t stand to be home or to ask him YET AGAIN to turn it down. Yet despite all of those things, it remains one of my favorite apartments because it was the first place I ever lived with Ross, after years of dubious roommate situations. I really like living with him, as it turns out!

#4: A Park Slope apartment a block away from Prospect Park that I found on Craigslist. It was a two-bedroom that I shared with one roommate, a really sweet editor at Penguin who worked in the romance department. She was a great roommate, and the apartment was lovely, with beautiful wood floors and crown molding and all these nice little touches, although my room was TEENY TINY. I only moved out because it was a little expensive, but in retrospect, I should have re-signed that lease, because I went from that lovely apartment to the worst place I’ve ever lived (just wait for #7).

#5: A summer sublet in Windsor Terrace. I lived with two other young women in publishing, including one I knew from college, in a four-bedroom apartment that had been recently renovated and came with a dishwasher AND A WASHER AND DRYER. That’s right, there were only three of us in a four-bedroom. My room was underground, and the only light came from these two windows facing an air shaft, but it was sooo cool during the summer. (Oh yeah, it also had central air!) That apartment was super nice, but at that time, there wasn’t much to do in Windsor Terrace, so whenever I wanted to go out, I would end up in Park Slope.

#6: A summer sublet in Park Slope. When Ross and I decided to move in together, there was a gap between when my lease ran out on my roommate situation and when his lease ran out on his roommate situation that I ended up bridging by living with two women during the summer. I refer to this apartment as “The One Over the Subway.” You might be picturing loud cars screeching on tracks, but you would be incorrect; it was, in fact, located over a Subway sandwich shop, and always smelled like their bread. The roommates were nice–I think one was a PhD student and the other was in tech?--but I didn’t live there long enough to get to know them very well. My one complaint was that, at that time, that area near the 9th Street F stop was very much oriented toward young parents and babies, and there weren’t a lot of places to go out for young twentysomethings like myself. Not sure if that’s changed at all

#7: The worst place I’ve ever lived! Remember how I said that after that nice apartment in Park Slope (#4), I was looking for a cheaper place to live? Well, I found one on Craigslist, and only a week and a half before I had to move out, too. Not only was the apartment terrible and falling apart, the roommates were worse. Let’s start with the apartment. The radiator in my room leaked water all over the floor any time the heat came on. The super was awful and showed up according to his own whims, but despite working on the heat multiple times, he never fixed it, so I just kept a towel permanently on the floor so my stuff wouldn’t get ruined.

And the roommates? They were truly so bad that I once told a story about them for a storytelling class that killed and was about 1800 words written out, so let me see if I can condense their awfulness here. They were two women, one in her 30s who was a dog walker, and the other, an elementary school teacher in her 20s, who was the only one actually on the lease. Let’s call them Bobbi and Sue, respectively. Bobbi was ALWAYS in the living room, usually watching a terrible procedural on her laptop, eating peanut butter straight out of the jar. If you’ve ever had a roommate, you know that hogging the common spaces is a no-no. One time I had an argument with her because she thought that you didn’t have to wash non-stick pans. True story.

But Sue was actually worse. She actually had her birthday party in the apartment and specifically did not invite me or Bobbi. She said, “Hey, I’m having some friends over for my birthday on Friday night, but don’t worry, we’ll probably be gone by ten.” But the best part was what happened when the lease was about to be up. At that point I was counting down the days until I could flee to another apartment, trust and believe. Well, Sue sent me and Bobbi an email letting us know that she wanted to “go in a different direction” with roommates, like a casting director letting us down easy. She said she was looking to quote “queer my space” and “live in a more queer, cooperative living environment.” That was a fine enough reason to kick me out, I suppose, but Bobbi was also a lesbian! Needless to say, we haven’t stayed in touch.

And that’s all the places I’ve lived as an adult! Wowee! I hope you enjoyed that much more than I enjoyed moving all those times.

- Things No One Asked Me to Write About But I’m Telling You About Them Anyway:

- Chris Lowder’s TikToks of Ja Nee’s cocktail tutorials. Oh my gosh, I love these videos so much. This man makes videos of himself reacting to this woman Ja Nee’s frankly ghastly cocktail tutorials for Mahalo dot com, whatever that is. They almost always involve a pint glass, blue Curaçao, no measuring, and not even a little stirring. I’m trying to think of what would be the best intro for you all: the Inverted Traffic Light? The Fire in Heaven shot? Or perhaps something more classic, like the Long Island Iced Tea? They’re all so terrible! It’s hysterical. Oh, Ja Nee.

- @brettyneyspears on TikTok’s cartoon character assessments. This man is so effortlessly funny when describing his reasoning for why some cartoon heroines “can say the F-slur” to him, which Disney couples would be accepting if he came out to them, which animated couples are looking for a third, which Disney men know where the g-spot is, and okay you get the idea, he’s just fucking hilarious.

- RRR. This epic Indian action movie was just wonderful. I would advise you not to read anything about it before watching, because even reading the description on Google spoiled a major plot point for me, which kind of sucked. And while there are certainly joyful and campy moments during the film, there are also some really intense scenes, so maybe don’t take an edible right before starting it thinking that it’s going to be this hilarious action-comedy romp and then get violently claustrophobic during the opening scene where one of the main characters faces down thousands of men at the same time. Anyway. I think that way more action movies should incorporate dance fights, don’t you?

- Let’s talk about a popular tweet from this week that befuddled me, shall we?

“I once matched with a guy on a dating app who had climbed Mount Everest. Twice. And he was still single. Using an app. That’s how hard dating is holy shit”

This one was from a comedian, so I guess this is supposed to be a joke about how dating is harder than climbing Mount Everest, but the basic logic of it doesn’t make sense to me. It kind of implies that because this guy accomplished an incredible physical feat, he deserves a partner, but: is he kind? Intelligent? Funny? Hard working? Like, what else is he bringing to the table? Also, everyone is on the apps, it’s not remotely embarrassing or shameful anymore. Sutton from Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is on Bumble (that’s not supposed to be an example of a great person btw, just a wealthy/famous one).

Some of the best people I know are single, and some of the least emotionally available people I know are not. A lot of my friends in their mid-30s and older are single, some are happy about it, some are not, but it’s basically all a crapshoot, and a lot of it comes down to luck. Seriously. If you met your life partner in high school or college or even your early 20s, you got lucky. “I was a catch!” Please, your brain wasn’t even fully formed yet. You had acne and still owned your original retainer, sit down. And by the way, I met my husband in college! But in no way do I let that delude me into thinking that I’m somehow better at dating/relationships than people who are single at my age. Honestly, they’re probably better at dating than I am, seeing as they’ve had more experience.

Alright friends, that’s more than enough from me this week!

Don’t forget to like, comment, and share this newsletter if you want–you can use the buttons at the bottom or the top.

Until next time—you have to wash non-stick, dude.

Love,

Liz

XOXO