August 2019: Girls On Film
On my laptop I keep a folder marked “old photos.” The strange thing about coming of age before the advent of social media is how different the archiving process can be. When I was eighteen my best friend was a photo major at NYU who always carried a point and shoot camera with her. We used to joke that for all of our debauchery, she had the photos and I had the stories. Together we could piece together what happened. Our freshman year she did a photo essay on the lesbian bar scene, and thus I went with her to as many lesbian bars as I could. We told ourselves it was homework. We told ourselves this was the key to happiness. We told ourselves that we would meet girls and fall in love and be wild and have the best night. It was the reason we moved to New York. We carried this optimism into bars and clubs and parties for years. It’s the story of my very first New York.
The thing about the photos from that time is that we’re so young. The photos seem so static. If they weren’t saved on a folder on my computer, where would they exist? Who do the photos exist for? It’s a shock to see photos of yourself from a time before photos were an every day occurrence. M. wanted to document queer spaces, and sometimes I marvel at how we barely even understood the importance of such motive. Most of those spaces don’t exist anymore. The queer spaces for women were always the first to go. I was rushing down Houston Street earlier this summer to meet at student at the Clinton Street Baking Co., and as I approached the corner of Suffolk, something felt familiar. On the corner stood the bar that used to be Meow Mix. 269 East Houston Street: the address as easy to remember as a memorized phone number. We used to shout it at cab drivers as we piled into the backseat. We used to trapeze down the sidewalks in our ringer tees and our Dickies pants with our fake IDs in our pockets. We crowded into that postage stamp of a bar to dance and drink and sing along when they played Le Tigre. Eighteen years later, I stood on the corner in front of the bar that wasn’t Meow Mix: something dressed up with shrubbery out front, a fresh coat of paint. No one there. It was eighteen years since I first arrived, eighteen years since I first found addresses and spaces and bars and apartments and art galleries and smokey venues filled with queer people. People like me. M. took the photographs. I wrote down the stories. We had no idea what was to come.
If I had to put a date on it, the photo above is circa August 2005. It’s a Sunday at Metropolitan, the queer bar in Williamsburg that hosted a BBQ every Sunday in the summertime. Pitchers of beer were $7. Burgers and hot dogs were free. Someone once described it as the only party where you could get fed, get drunk, and most likely get some, all before 11pm on a school night. I can remember the too small white t-shirt I was wearing. The clack and weight of the blue necklace. The jeans were hand me down Diesel jeans that someone had given me when they didn’t fit them anymore: my first and only pair of designer jeans. We are laughing because it is early in the night, it is August, we are with our people. I am a stone’s throw from my alcoholic bottom. I am about to sacrifice people I love and integrity I hold dear in pursuit of self-destruction. I am twenty two. Every summer I work with twenty two year olds, fresh faced and ambitious and wonderful. When they ask me about what I was doing after college, I demur. The short answer is that I was teaching. The truth is that I was about to mess everything up.
The photo is of me and C. Earlier this summer, C. and were having dinner and traded stories about all of those queer spaces that color our youth. What was the name of the bitchy bartender at that place under the BQE? Do you remember the go go dancer who danced on Thursday nights? Whatever happened to the androgynous drug dealer who A. dated off and on? The photos are like relics now. We keep the stories alive. We had no idea what was yet to come.
xo,
c
p.s.
Speaking of queer spaces, I highly recommend this awesome crowdsourced project: Queering the Map. It’s based on Toronto but you can look up any place in the world and see what queer stories have been added to the map. (When I found it there was a single pin in the hometown where I grew up, chronicling someone realizing they were gay in front of the Catholic high school, and it made me all emotional.) (Hat tip to Bryan Washington for sharing this.)
Have you read the best book of the summer, because this is the best book of the summer <3
If you’re up for a literary challenge: #TheSealeyChallenge by Nicole Sealey (who is wonderful) encourages everyone to read one poetry collection every day in August (I believe this is possible!)
The incredible Kate McKean has started a newsletter about agenting and publishing and it is v v good.
Huge shout out to Jami Attenberg’s second annual #1000wordsofsummer, which I have done imperfectly and out of order but which has buoyed me as I’ve carved out writing time this summer.
🎩Passing the hat!🎩 Thank you to my subscribers for chipping in! If the spirit moves you, you can support First of the Month for $5/month (or $30/year), which helps me do less freelancing and more writing (hooray).