As I turned the calendar to July this morning, satisfaction flooded me so fully that I crumpled a bit, my shoulders finally dropping, the dopamine immediate. I juiced 30 days of Pride, Very Big Birthday, unfettered creativity, travel, friendship, and crashing waves until only the fragrant rind remained.
June kicked off with my first Jersey Pride, my first Asbury Park Pride, my first homecoming Pride. I have been to deeply revolutionary queer Prides—Prides defined by trans divinity, asexuals and pans, an expansive deconstructive nature of what we call gender and sexuality. Prides that crack me open with the galaxy of what queerness is.
And then—there was Jersey. Still this expansiveness, but something once forgotten emerged.
The air smelled like garlic and the sea, a siren drawing them near.
Doc couldn’t stop laughing at me as I stammered and jittered, red as a tomato, finally at full-tilt Butch Saturation—surrounded by the ilk of butch women who quietly formed me, the women who tawk like dis and make a mean gravy, their ring of keys unlocking a scalloped bungalow in Ocean Grove or Cape May.
We ate cacio e pepe near a table of four golden-age Italian lesbians, a rainbow of butch and femme, their hair perfectly coiffed for 1987, starched Hawaiian shirts, clackety lacquered nails, a garland of gold jewelry—hoop earrings, layers of chain necklaces. My heart seized and I squeezed Doc’s hand.
I distinctly remember why this feels like home. My friend’s mom’s best friend, a wild “single” lady in glossy cherry-red lipstick, teal stirrup leggings, with a mouth like a sailor. Then more: my mom’s best work friend, my camp counselors, my show choir director, my agriculture teacher, my beloved college professor, their handprints in the cement of my little queer soul before I could figure out exactly why I wanted to be just like them.
Returning to their shores might not have felt as transgressively revolutionary as other Prides, but it did feel like I’d finally been called home.
After Denver, I floated under the full Strawberry Moon with my friend Diana, calling in creativity and wisdom and soul growth. A week later, my beautiful show took a new, expansive shape at its artistic home at Masquerade Theatre, dovetailing with my 40th birthday.
We call it meta, this uncanny confluence of life and art and synchronicity. It was peak meta, buying fake decorations for a fake birthday on my *actual* 40th birthday, icing a cake that was not my birthday cake, with only the intention of dressing the blackbox theater.
My dear friends Tommy and Megan worked their magic with lights and staging, helping me craft a seamless immersive experience—a theater dressed for a child’s birthday party, chairs placed around as though we’d share cake and goody bags, the audience gamely donning party hats.
Filled with loves old and new, this performance was a glimpse of the exhilarating future of this show. A room where the audience and I are one, within arm’s reach, an intimate sharing that is not just mine—the generosity and openness emanating from the audience, creating a two-way vulnerability that is both humbling and reverent. I cannot wait to bring it to life again and again.
“I sobbed gay tears.”
“Mesmerizing, compelling, intimate, hysterical, upsetting, and buoyant.”
“Heart-rending, empowering… go see this show if you ever see the name.”
“As hilarious as it is deep and disturbing.”
“Important, vulnerable, awful, and magical.”
June’s grace kept me ankle-deep in the tide, eating ice cream under the moon. And at the farmer’s market, anointing myself with yarrow and great, dozy sunflowers. And seeing myself in the moving and divinely queer INSIDE OUT 2. And receiving a powerful emotional gift with grace and warmth.
I get to be 40 and 26 and 18 and 7 all at once, and it is beautiful.
xx Jen