Latest Internet as Intimacy column on podcasts and having real feelings, a Twin Peaks chapbook, and #shipwreckSF

Spring 2020: It’s been weird and painful. If you’re out in the streets protesting police brutality, thank you. If you’re wondering what else to do, here’s just one collected list of organizations to donate to.

In less important news, the second installment of my Internet as Intimacy column went up last month: “Podcasts and Tarot Reading Showed Me How to Be Real Instead of ‘Good’.” It’s pretty much what it says on the tin: listening to particular new-agey and writing-related podcasts, and diving into a regular tarot practice, made me finally confront a lifetime of shrinking for the sake of peace. This essay’s existence has complicated a relationship or two. But the outpouring of messages I received on Twitter and Instagram and from colleagues, the hurt and the healing that strangers shared with me, moved me immeasurably. I’ve never cried so many happy tears. Isn’t this why we write? To remind each other that none of us are alone, not really?

Happily, editors Kristin Garth and Justin Karcher accepted my poem, “The Orchid’s Curse,” for inclusion in this beautiful hand-bound chapbook from APEP Publications. These Poems Are Not What They Seem (available here) is a collection for fans of Twin Peaks, and people who are generally into poetry, the supernatural, and uh, highly stylized acting. My poem is about Donna’s strange, sensual performance of desirability in the home of Harold, The Guy Who Loves Orchids, Diaries, and Privacy.

I wrote porn again for #ShipwreckSF. This was formerly an in-person event at The Booksmith in San Francisco, cohosted by Casey Childers and Amy Stephenson, before she moved to NYC. In mid-April, Amy got the proverbial band back together (meaning amazing smut-reader Baruch Porras-Hernandez and a ragtag crew of previous participants) for a Booksmith fundraiser. We wrote ridiculous fanfic of Jane Austen’s Emma, and, because we were (and are) self-quarantining, the event was called Homewreck. I did not win this time. I did not even place, because Joe Wadlington, Nate Waggoner, and Molly Sanchez are too funny. Maybe someday the episode will be uploaded as an episode of the ShipwreckSF podcast. And maybe, if you are not related to me and are not a child I have tutored, you may listen to it.