Y’all, I finally moved apartments. If you’ve had a front row seat to my life and what I’ve been dealing with in the interest of affordable rent in NYC, you will be relieved and excited for my new chapter. If you haven’t had the joy of a front row seat to this shenanigans, think… roaches. Think… bizarre roommate issues beyond resolution. Think… strange men showing up uninvited to my door. Yikes. All in the interest of balancing an artist life in NYC with some semblance of life quality. (Housing in NYC really is as bad as you think, and maybe even worse, unless you’ve got substantials coins.)

A close friend of mine Timothy Westbrook, on the show today, has had her own interfacing with the hellish rental market here in the city, as a prolific fashion designer, featured in the New York Times, Vogue, as well as Project Runway… in the wedding as ceremony space.

It is in the realm of ritual and reclaiming some of the magic that has been lost in the modernization of our societies that Timothy’s and my souls connect. Timothy also is one of the best gift-givers I’ve ever had the joy of receiving from (see the picture below of my iconic pants from the Summer Within NYC premiere last year that they designed and made!); is a master at honking my butt cheeks in the perfect moments; at once can be strong and stubborn and then understanding and fluid in the next breath (MAJOR Aries energy…). I could literally go on and on about the adventures - both inner and outer - that we have shared in just the year that we have been friends…And as Timothy transitions out of an iteration of NYC life - they gave up their ridiculously overpriced DUMBO apartment - and into a moment of self-discovery, I decided to bring them to the Summer Within podcast to see what they have to share about this bold move to free-fall into the unknown (something I know a lot about.)

I met Timothy last year through a former guest on the Summer Within podcast, beloved sis, Candystore. Timothy had just gotten out a relationship and I was freshly back here in the Big Apple. I was transitioning out of my relationship with Brad and still felt wet behind in the ears here in post-COVID New York, with its even faster pace and greater reliance on screens for the most basic human interactions. Despite having grown up here, at that time I was particularly open to new friendships and intimacies. My connection with Timothy was palpable from our first friend date to watching a live scored version of a Lord of the Rings movie (I left early, still sorry about that bb!!!) to now pretty regular checking in and co-creating.

This conversation between us is another mini collaboration and I hope it brings you insights and pleasure. As always, feel free to share, comment here, and commission Timothy for fashion stuff, event stuff, and so much else.

With love, con amore,

Summer

THE ONE who fulfills your every desire

THE ONE who matches your idea of the ideal partner

THE ONE whose presence seems to promise the possibility of the happily ever after.

And, if that person is not present on the night of the hypothetical speed dating event, or if you don’t connect with anyone there, the night can be seen as somewhat of a failure, with some kind of resignation in the form of a comment like “I didn’t meet anyone special, but I guess I had fun…”

What if I told you that in this case, you are the One that you are coming to meet up with?

I guess it can sound crazy, but what if your main intention for LOVE RITUAL was to fulfill your own desires fully, by finding the place inside of you from which juicy, scary, sensual truth and presence pours out of? What if, at LOVE RITUAL, you practiced leaving no stone unturned? What if you practiced saying the scary thing that you don’t want the cute person in front of you to know? What if you showed up completely, and authentically, as yourself: with no mask, no pretence, and no pretending to be the person you think the person in front of you wants you to be.

What if you let go of control and let the Ritual do its work?

What if the LOVE RITUAL was created to practice removing the blocks which prevent you from falling in love… with You?

(Use the code: AMICA for 33% off!)

See you next Friday, New York lovers!!!

With Love, con amore,

Summer

PS: From a former Love Ritual participant, “Love lifts us up where we belong, but first you gotta get out of the house. An opportunity to practice both is cute”

We scroll. And we scroll. And we scroll, often looking for the thing(s) we want the most. Connection. Love. Sex. Fulfillment of some kind.

I’m so tired of it y’all. And I wondered, what can I do to help?

I recognized I have a gift- something that I can share.

I love to facilitate and have had the pleasure of cutting my teeth doing it as a 21 year old elementary school teacher nearly 2 decades ago. I’ve facilitated so many different kinds of containers and spaces.

And now it’s showing up in this very specific way: in the form of:

LOVE RITUAL, this Friday, the 13th Feb, for bi/queer/pan folx looking for romantic relationships. DJ EGGZ will be spinning sultry tunes. We will connect with our own vibration of love and then go on a few low-stakes mini dates with some other available. queer qts in the space.

I want to find my next big love. And I know so many of you do, as well. So many of us, queers in my immediate and more wider circle, are looking for our next big love.

And we’re also afraid of it. Or ashamed of it. This is why we gather… !!!! Shared intention is so powerful!!!

Consider this a call to you and/or your sexy and interesting single friend.

We will find love!1 (Within us… and beyond!)

We just need to show up for it (. 35% off code: SUBSTACK) in whatever way we can.

SEE YOU ON VENUS’ DAY, FRIDAY THE 13TH, ON VALENTINE’S DAY EVE.

With LOVE, con amore,

Summer

Here is what happens when two magical beings, myself and Potion, venture to Boriken, aka Puerto Rico, to get some respite from the dark, cold winter that seemed to come too quickly this year.

Please enjoy our conversation and subscribe to Potion’s substack and check out all of their incredible artwork and offerings <3 <3

with love, con amore,

Summer

PS: More of Potion’s photos and videos from our trip can be found here.

Read more

I present to you Candystore, glam poet/style icon/arts administratrix and most importantly… MY SIS!!! And, the newest guest on the Summer Within Podcast.

We discuss the bathroom conundrum for us feminine males.

Gender expansion.

Being in our “disappointment era” in terms of fashion.

And our journeys from twinks to MILFs.

With love, con amore,

Summer

I have had the pleasure of now starting a new project with Nuria, a group inquiry on home that will result in films and performances around the US and possibly beyond.

Nuria is a student, a practitioner, and a teacher of multiple artistic and therapeutic disciplines involving the human body in motion.

When talking about her approach to and perspective on her embodiment practices, she said that for her:

“The body is a fractal expression of all that is manifesting and dissolving in the universe”

I invite you to sit back and enjoy this conversation with one of the most fascinating humans that I have the delight in calling a friend.

Nuria. Latifa. Bowart.

With love, con amore,

Summer

There are so many gems of wisdom and love in this conversation, I recommend listening to it all the way through at least one time.

Take notes.

Ask questions.

Share it with others.

This is just the very tip of the iceberg that is the incalculably valuable work of Lee Warren.

~

I met Lee Warren of Reclaiming Wisdom about 5 years ago outside of Asheville on a magical lake at the height of COVID. It was from that summer on that our collective friend group formed, although “friend group” feels reductive. We are spiritual family, working together to reclaim so much that has been lost.

What’s special to me about Lee is that her ways of knowing are so embodied, are so lived… she speaks from an authority of experience… from a life lived, not simply studied.

~

In this thrilling conversation, Lee shares about her path of living in an ecovillage and how it led her to becoming the Queen of Death, inspiring us to listen to the wisdom within each of us and source coherence from the body.

Please visit her websites Queen of Death and Reclaiming Wisdom Substack and stay tuned for her upcoming book Dying Together: The Art of Community Death Care.

With love +coherence, con amore,

Summer

The proof is in the presepe…

The practice of recreating the birth of Jesus through a nativity scene, or in Italian, the presepe, is one that has been going on literally since the 13th century. I don’t know exactly when the femminiello was added to the Neapolitan version of the nativity, but in the picture above, you see the femminiello holding a little basket on her finger. This “basket” is no other than a container to hold the little wooden numbers for a little mystical game called tombola. A game that I will be playing with all of you in New York City on December 11.

Tombola is like bingo, or more akin to Mexican loteria, where each of the numbers that can be drawn correspond to a different image or idea. A LOT of the numbers can be connected to something very raunchy….

Come through to Little Italy on December 11 to laugh, to cry, to win prizes… and to connect with this sacred mystical lineage of Neapolitan bingo… TOMBOLA. And see what meaning we can ascribe to the sequence of numbers…

There’s so much to say about the sacred role of queer people in society… there’s so much proof across cultures about how we hold sacred, mystical knowledge.

Here, we will unearth and give homage to this lineage… in a way that could not be more hilarious… just check out #23 Lo Sciocco!

I will be collaborating with some other performers to bring it forward <3 stay tuned

Get your tickets here

with love, con amore

Summer

Anyways, in classes where we’re just doing drills and learning steps, finding partners is easy because the leads stand in a circle and the follows go from one dance partner to the next, or vice versa. Every follow dances with every lead. You practice a step with someone, and then you move forward and practice the step with someone else. This gets us used to different bodies, energies, styles, and skill levels. In the structured class environment, where I’m not worried about finding a partner, I thrive. Sure, there are nerves about getting my steps “right,” but in general, I’m picking up on the dance pretty quickly and truly have enjoyed connecting with many different leaders.

The “social” time is a completely different story. One that, on my first day in class, I expressed my concern to my (male) teacher about. He was encouraging me to go to a social and take more classes, but the question that I had bubbling up inside of me was, “are the leaders, who are mostly guys, going to want to dance with me?” Like, why would a straight guy want to dance with me over a woman?

And here’s what my teacher said… and why I love him.

He admitted a fact that I was already perceiving: that most men will choose women to dance with them over someone like me— if they don’t know me. This is a hard but true fact that queer people deal with living in a heterosexist world. My teacher assured me though that if I have established relationships with other dancers through conversations and workshops, then they will want to dance with me… for me. Not because I’m a woman or because I’m not a woman, but because I’m a dancer and a human that they want to move with in space.

This bit of guidance has gotten me so far… it was such a reminder for me to choose to see myself beyond the disparaging rationale that my mind went to… that went something like… all the leaders are straight guys and none of the straight guys will want to dance with me because I am not a straight girl.

The reality is that many of the leaders are not actually straight guys, and even if they were— we’re not talking about having sex with each other, we’re talking about dancing, remember? I even asked another teacher if I’d get more dances as a follow if I dressed more femme, and she made me understand that what you wear doesn’t even really matter. It’s all about how you dance.

Anyways, I’m still working through all of this and still find myself to be a bit insecure at the zouk socials. I look around, seeing so many heterosexual pairs whirling and twirling and dipping across the dance floor, wondering why I'm not out there rolling my body with someone at every moment. Sure, it might be easier for me to get guys to dance with me if I was passing as a biological woman, full stop.

Bu after a few months of dancing zouk I realize people who are there for the dance will choose a partner first and foremost because of how they dance, not because of their membership in any category. (I recognize I am being very generous and that of course there are straight guys who lead who will never volunteer to dance with me, no matter how skilled I become. And this is something I have to accept. Not everyone wants to dance with everyone and that is truly their prerogative. I choose to put my attention on the people who are choosing me.)

By now I have learned that the Zouk community does actually have a lot of lgbtq people and same sex pairings. It’s not always so obvious, but we are definitely present. In fact, some of my absolute favorite dances to date have been with women… women who had learned to follow first and then learned to lead later. Women who, in general, know how to relax more and be more playful. Women who seem to find it easier to remember that at the end of the day, the whole point of this is to have the most fun as humanly possible <3 to express one’s body as poetry…

Come find me on the dance floor!

With love, con amore,

Summer

Another way of saying that is, I’m taking CLASS again. Oh god and I’ve never been happier.

As you read from my previous newsletter about grieving, heartbreak, loneliness, dystopic dissolution, etc etc, the last few months in my stodgy flatbush apartment has had me wondering, “did I move back to new york city for this?!” And by this I mean… well. Look around you, NYC, people are losing their shit in a major way.

Anyways I’ve turned a corner to a more joyful existence and it’s definitely related to a return to embodiment.

About a week and a half ago, I traveled up to Bellows Falls, Vermont to the Field Center to begin a new project around the theme of home, with a dear friend of mine, Nuria Bowart, and a cohort of 4 other artists… with whom I made meals, danced, created, interviewed and… celebrated my 38th birthday… :-D. This collection of humans is so special, I could gush forever about them…

And when I say we danced together… i mean we fkin danced: we improv’d across the space… with various explorations pertaining to the theme of home.

CI is improvised movement from postmodern dance which explores sharing weight with other bodies and also non-bodies. I’ve been practicing for nearly 10 years. There are lifts, there is rolling, there is a lot of body contact. You can choose to look at it simply as a physical practice: one in which you learn techniques for lifting and sharing weight with another human, or… you can go into a more symbolic understanding of all that is happening while you’re in class or in a jam1, and use what comes up emotionally or psychologically as material for personal growth.

In KJ Holmes’ class this week, we were learning how to support another dancer in falling to the ground, and allowing our bodies to slow gravity a bit so their meeting the floor was softer and not painful. She taught us the technique, which involved cradling the other person’s head for a moment to signal that they could fall, and then at a certain point, letting them go as they inch downward in surrender to gravity. The falling partner is not a limp, immobile rag doll, they are also living, breathing, responsive and in relation to the same force of gravity that we are. KJ saw the way that I was helping my partner down to the floor and stopped the class to make a correction… I was basically carrying my partner down to the floor, as if I was tucking a baby into their crib lol.

I didn’t even realize I was doing it until KJ called it out, and she said, “You have to let your partner fall!”.

You have to let your partner experience falling.

You have to allow them to have their own experience with the truth that is gravity.

I realized that on that day, in that moment, I naturally defaulted to holding someone else’s weight instead of trusting that letting them fall would ultimately be what they needed. So, it hit me really hard. It made me wonder, “In what other contexts am I holding more weight in order to protect others from “falling?”

sigh.

with love, con amore

Summer

PS: Here’s another example of how CI can bring up emotional/psychological dynamics. A person who struggles with fear of rejection might find it really challenging to initiate a dance with someone else in a jam. That person might be looking longingly at another pair, wanting so bad to join, but the fear of rejection could be so great that it would prevent them from doing so. But, if the fear of rejection is showing up just in a silly dance class, it really does beg the question, where else in life is this person being limited because of this same fear? Therefore, the CI space can be at once a wonderful and challenging environment to develop skills both physical and interpersonal. Of course, no one has to dance with you, and you don’t have to dance with anyone that you don’t want to. And that doesn’t mean that your value or worth as a human is in question: just that that other person simply wants to do something else right then… and this has nothing to do with you. Such important lessons to remember.

ESS: That’s why this lady right here is on my altar. Mother Sylvia.

(S holds up the photo of Sylvia Rivera, next to her face.)

You know her?

Back when I was in college… and still searching for myself, SHOCKER… the search continues… I randomly auditioned for this Living History thing, and I was asked to play Sylvia Rivera during Pride month. In my research I came across some pictures of her. Honestly I was a bit spooked because of how similar we look physically… There was one of her sitting like this (shows the pose) at the Washington Sq Park fountain and my jaw dropped. Wait, let me show you… (pulls out WSP photo) Right…..? I know!

Later, when the Living History piece was over, I could not quite let her go. I just couldn’t. I felt her with me all the time... while taking a shower, walking to class, obsessing over boys, buying my first skirt, even studying for finals…

I would scour thrift stores looking for the clothes that I saw her wearing in the pictures… I felt so connected to her that I would only respond to the name Sylvia. Don’t worry, I grew out of that… (forces laugh)

Now, our relationship is mutual. Much more balanced. She’s more like a friend… a gal pal.. An accomplice. She helps me to say the things that I can’t say on my own. In turn, I speak her words because history is trying to erase them.

(S seamlessly turns into Sylvia as she walks across the stage to grab Sylvia's stool and places it downstage.)

Sylvia: The Stonewall wasn’t a bar for drag queens. Everybody keeps saying it was. So this is where I get into arguments with people. They say, “Oh, no, it was always a drag queen bar and it was a black bar. No, Washington Square Bar was the drag queen bar. Okay, you could get into the Stonewall if they knew you… and there were only a certain amount of drag queens that were allowed into the Stonewall at a time. ….

Sylvia: We wanted to protect you. From the world. From life in general.

You know, to show you that there was a better life.

Tix Here

~

With love, con amore,

Summer

New Yorkers are on the bike path: cycling, running, jogging, and walking. There’s a constant current of healthy hearts pumping towards wellness, and yet the park is surprisingly silent, except for the sporadic sounds of trucks accelerating and decelerating in the distance. A shopping cart being pushed by an elderly man collecting cans and bottles.

And then there’s me. Cross-legged by our tree, remembering the place where we said goodbye, remembering that moment 3 months ago when we said goodbye for the last time.

~

Before I continue I want y’all to know that I’ve avoided writing this and I’ve avoided sharing this with all of you for one reason and one reason only. A part of me imagines that there’s one of you out there in my readership who wants to be with me… mainly because you don’t know about this messiness. There’s a part of me that wants you all to know how desirable I am. How perfect I am. How ready I am for the “love of my love”. How ready I am to fit into your life so seamlessly and make it all better- and that revealing where I’m actually at in this grieving process would make me less hot.

In Edinburgh last week I had been feeling a lot of the grief of aging- of growing up, of losing people, of witnessing the shifts in certain relationships. I was sitting on my bed with a dear friend, processing some of this, and throat full of tears muttered, “and all of this would be easier if I just had a partner… someone that could just help me to hold it all.” And, my dear friend, this brilliant woman, wise and gorgeous said, “wouldn’t this partner just be a band-aid for your real feelings then?”

And this was an insight that I needed to hear- one that truly rocked me. Well, yes, in fact he would be a band-aid, and yes that is exactly what I want.

But then I realized, the band-aid, the temporary balm to my existential dread would not allow me the space to go to the root of my real issue - the one that cannot not see my own wholeness… the one that cannot see my own perfection, actually. But if this partner that I’m dreaming of is a band-aid for my loneliness and my partner before that was a band-aid for my loneliness caused by the relationship that came before that, then are all of my relationships just band-aids or temporary fleeting solutions to the incessant, constant, underlying reality of aloneness?

Are we all just here together to distract each other from the existential and ultimate reality of our lonely passage through this planetary existence?

~

There were so many things that I hid in my relationship with you. And right now, as I sit by our tree, I can’t remember most of them. And that’s because I said them all before we said goodbye. One of them was that my body had never responded to anyone else the way that it did with you.

The other one was that you were my best friend.

It was my acknowledgement of the end our time together that made me finally tell the truth. To let go. To not stay trapped in my own mind because of fear. It was the knowledge that those moments were the end of the life → death → rebirth . Sitting by this tree with him 3 months ago was the moment of death for me and for that relationship.

So, yes friends. I have been suffering a bit… trying to maintain a facade of frivolity and general “with it”-ness.

But transparency with all of you is a necessary ingredient in moving through this part of the cycle. Here is the harvest.

My main harvests for you:

1. Make art about your feelings.

2. Be radically honest as much as humanly possible, as early on as possible. (This was something that my guy did insanely well.)

With love, con amore,

Summer

PS: I’m restaging my Sylvia Rivera play!! On 9.28 in NYC. Here’s a link for tix: Sylvia

*We are also spreading awareness for individuals on the ground in Palestine providing food and medical care. Please donate here.*

~~Humanity is one organism. We share collective consciousness.

And when humans are at war with each other, even if it’s not our bodies on the frontlines, somewhere deep within our beings, we experience it. Just like the earth does.

Imagine being a mother who has watched your children be murdered.

Imagine being a father who is watching your family starve to death.

Imagine being in New York City, watching all the terrors of humanity unfold from our cell phones and feeling completely powerless to stop the war machine from grinding away.

Imagine not having any more tears to cry.

My new theater piece and ritual performance, US VS THEM, poses the question:

Do the tears that we shed lighten the load of another?

WE WILL GATHER ON JULY 27, 2025 at 2PM TO GRIEVE, TO FEEL, TO BE ANGRY together.

At the Rose Garden in Prospect Park.

The schedule is as follows:

2:00 - gather for potluck

3:00 - ritual container opens with Valeria Moraga’s ritual performance and honouring of the earth

3:15 - US VERSUS THEM activation with Valeria, Ivory Aquino, and Summer Minerva

3:45 - Sharing and Expressing in Heart Circle

5:15 - Closing of container with Summer

We look forward to seeing you this Sunday, June 27 in Prospect Park.

With love, con amore

Summer

*This activation is a fundraiser for the US VERSUS THEM cast to bring this performance to the world stage at Edinburgh Fringe. We need to raise $2222 more dollars. Link here.

*We are also spreading awareness for individuals on the ground in Palestine providing food and medical care. Please donate here.*

My documentary SUMMER WITHIN will be screening in a legendary Bushwick arts space!

June 23 @ 7:30 PM

CHEZ BUSHWICK

Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation.

304 Boerum Street, #23. Brooklyn

TIX LINK HERE.

See you in Bushwick tonight!

As a theater artist, I have written a short theater piece that asks the question of what a group of artists can do in order to not drown in complacency. How can we rise above identity politics and see the humanity in all? How can we collectively come to see that war itself is the enemy?

The play is called Us Versus Them and it will be going up this weekend and next around the city.

Included in this is a little conversation I had with my co-director Sebastian Jamal Robinson! Enjoy… hope to see you this weekend or next. Tickets are here for the Hudson Guild Theater shows. The shows this weekend in 6B Garden @12:30 in the East Village are free!

See you this weekend or next!

With love, con amore,

Summer

Unfortunately, I have slipped into some of the same old habits again whenever I get the chance: scrolling… mindless app use… - which means I’ll need to double down on my preventative measures for my righteous battle against brain rot.

As mentioned before, I have not actually gotten rid of my smart phone altogether. My plan has been to use it only when I’m at home… and sparingly.

But, at some point, I started bringing my smartphone out with me (even though it doesn’t work unless connected to the internet) in the chance that I need to check email or utilize maps or listen to (pre-downloaded) music.

The city has free internet in many places, it’s called LINKNYC, and once you sign in once to one of these networks, the smart phone remembers the password and your phone gets automatically connected to the internet whenever you pass one of the internet ports, no effort required. (I like to think of them as modern day pay phones.)

So, while at first it became the exception to get on the public WiFi- for urgent matters only - I have slipped into seeking out Free WiFi opportunities when I’m out and about, for a plethora of arbitrary reasons. (Basically, Did so and so respond to my text yet? mainly because I don’t receive most iMessages to my Nokia.)

Speaking of texting, the Nokia flip phone that I have been using makes texting hellish. I hate how long it takes to type and the ineffectiveness of the predictive text is draining my life. It doesn’t learn new words! “bb” is not a thing with predictive text. Neither is “sis”. Also, with my flip phone, I can’t call an Uber or a Lyft, so if I don’t have a transportation solution already planned, I’m S.O.L. Thankfully I bike a lot, and there are lots of trains as well as yellow taxis, but traveling home in the wee hours from Bushwick to where I live in Flatbush is nearly impossible without my own transportation or a Rideshare app.

Long story short, I’m sorry to say I don’t think that the Nokia flip phone is a long-term solution to my little screen addiction issue. It’s just simply not compatible for ease of living in this city.

Without a smartphone, one has to think ahead a lot more, unless you risk basically just being unprepared and needing to rely on your smartphone wielding friends for certain needs… which is alright once in a while, but kind of defeats the purpose of the experiment because its reinforcing someone else’s dependence on that technology.

When I first started this experiment, a friend reached out suggesting the Light Phone, which is a pared down version of a smart phone, but actually has (some of) the features needed. A functional maps feature. Music. At least. (Still no rideshare opportunity…)

For now, I’m keeping my flip phone game going until I decide to bite the bullet and buy a $299+ Light Phone… or find a way to have better boundaries with my iPhone.

With love, con amore

Summer

PS: Keep the calls coming!!!! I’ve been loving the spontaneous conversations that emerge from random phone calls.

Subscribe now

it’s actually been mostly great.

but i wanted to write today about boring it can be without a smartphone. But also, maybe why that’s not a bad thing.

~

I was sleep deprived and flying back from a Mountain

on the plane with a new bestie

we had landed and there was a bunch of taxi-ing that the plane was doing

I was exhausted from the couple of days we spent away cavorting in the woods.

I had forgotten to come prepared for my 2-hour plane ride with a book or mag.

(i was also in kind of a bad mood: im one of those people who can go without eating for a while, but the second i don’t get enough sleep i turn into an evil gremlin.)

all i wanted to do while we were waiting in this hot, crowded airplane with annoying humans around me… was to escape.

my smartphone would have been PERFECT for that moment. I could have read the news. I could have read ANYTHING I wanted, in fact. I could have listened to a podcast, music: I could looked at pictures of hot people or the latest fashions. I could have scrolled my awareness right out of that obnoxious atmosphere into the pyramids at Giza or a village in Sicily.

But no, all I had was my flip phone and me. No book. No distraction. Not even a journal. Nothing. Just me, my friend (who I was too crabby to talk to,) and the other passengers.

I was internally grumbling and waiting and waiting and waiting to be released off this plane, needing to accept that I didn’t have any control over the external circumstances.

It was HORRIBLE.

I started scanning the plane, taking notice of the passengers. Some of the (most annoying) passengers had stood up, and had determined to make sure to stand in the aisle so that they could win the Amazing Race episode they were playing in their mind. And one of the contestants (passengers) made my desperation for entertainment all the more worth it.

Picture this.

A gay, no less than 6’4”, white, bearded: twinkle toes energy. Large but seemingly delicate. Hairy, manicured hands with clear nail polish. A gold bracelet mixed with dark fur. A balding brunette- hairs in place with a strong hold type of Aqua Net and/or L.A. Looks hair gel. And, my favorite part. Denim shorts that were not quite short enough to be considered truly short shorts, but certainly not to the knee. These tight thigh huggers stopped somewhere between his balls (which I imagine were freshly shaven) and the middle of his thigh. Tight tight tight tight tight.

Now, for someone so aware of his appearance, I was shocked to see how unaware of his body was.

He stood up and started stretching. His wingspan, practically the width of the plane itself, caused the three women in hijabs standing behind him to duck in order to escape getting clocked in the head. In the middle of his stretch, the line to debark the plane started moving, catching him by surprise. In the great rush to exit, he darts to the overhead compartment and swings his rolling suitcase like a lasso, this time knocking another woman’s phone out of her hand. “Sorry! Sorry!” he shrills and stomps down the aisle, leaving the woman on her hands and knees retrieving her phone in the dust. (where do you suppose he was rushing to? leave your ideas in the comments!!! hehehe)

The THEATER of real life, people.

The things I see now that my focus isn’t zapped is pretty incredible….

#flipphonelifeforever

With love, con amore,

Summer

Today when I went to the gym I jokingly held up my flip phone as if there was a QR code to be scanned, momentarily tricking the staff member whose job it was to scan in members. She looked befuddled for a second, and also confused as to why I would be holding this ancient relic in her face. “Just kidding!” I said weirdly and we both shared an extremely awkward laugh.

I explained that I am experimenting with a flip phone and I don’t actually have the Chelsea Piers Fitness app anymore. The manager, who I’ve become chummy with, overheard this conversation and simply looked me up in the system. He knows me by name now. He also told me that CFP doesn’t do keychain tags or anything like that, but I can just give my name whenever I come in. Of course this will take 7 seconds instead of 2. There was an apologetic tone in his voice.

Wait, you mean to tell me all the cute people who work at the gym are going to learn my name? And that’s a downside…?

heheheh.

Another little perk of this experiment…

with love, con amore

Summer

That summer I connected with Dan, a vibrant an exacting 23 year old intern who prominently wore a lion head around his neck. Years later, in 2018 when both Dan and I were living in New York City and performing, Dan started a podcast called Dan Talks and asked to interview me.

That October evening in 2018 in my beatdown, decrepit and haunted Bushwick apartment (IYKYK) was the last time I remember sitting down with Dan.

Fast forward to just a couple weeks ago when I posted about my new journey with an analog phone, where I invited people who want to be in touch with me to simply try calling. Dan took the invitation and called me seemingly out of nowhere just as I was getting changed in the locker room at the gym. My flip phone knew that it was him (Caller ID?) and I answered excitedly but also normally. We started gayly chatting… and I asked for workout advice. After a mini-workout plan, Dan got to the heart of why he called. He shared that he had been navigating a difficult relationship transition, and in the interest of wanting to be heard, had his partner listen to some of the episodes of his podcast, going back as far as 2018. Dan shared with me that of all the episodes he recorded, the one he recorded with me, only his 3rd one ever, opened up his partner’s heart the most.

In inviting you all to engage in more intentional ways, this gorgeously deep feeling human emerged out of the blue to reflect my own words back to me. I suppose that one of the gifts of this super technological time is that our positive impacts also can keep rippling and rippling and rippling out… not just the dark-sided shit.

With love, con amore

Summer