Mostly Joking

On Sexy Unique Podcast, the serpent baby, and why I said yes to Spain

Hello friends,

First of all, it is my birthday. I’m planning for today to be a fairly chill birthday, but if you’re not a subscriber, please consider becoming one—there’s plenty of free stuff here—and if you’re already a subscriber or are not a subscriber but wish to support my endeavors, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

And.

I have been listening endlessly to Sexy Unique Podcast these days.

If you don’t know this fairly niche goober of humor, it’s a reality-TV podcast hosted by Lara Marie Schoenhals and Carey O’Donnell, and I love it to bits. Their humor is absurd in the specific way I love: absolutely, completely, FASTIDIOUSLY, committed to the bit. They’re indifferent to whether you’re following their duet from Les Miserables. They’re willing to escalate any premise past the point where a more sensible person would have stopped, which is another thing that I admire about some kinds of comedy. (IT SHOULDN’T BE FUNNY ANYMORE. STOP. STOP. YOU SHOULD HAVE STOPPED FIVE MINUTES AGO. OKAY, YES, IT’S STILL FUNNY.)

In a recent episode, Lara spent an extended stretch insisting that the new baby of The Valley cast member Nia, a former Miss America with a highly dickish husband, is, and I quote, a serpent.

The baby is not a serpent. (I’m sorry that I have to make that clear. You are a smart reader and you do not need me to baby you, but I love you and it’s like saying, “Be careful!” after someone has already bumped their shin.) The baby, by all visual evidence, is a completely normal and more-cute-than-usual baby. But the baby appears whenever Nia appears on the show, and Lara has decided, for reasons she cannot fully explain and does not try to, that the baby unsettles her. Lara calls her Serpent and gives her a fake serpentine voice with commands to Nia as “Mother.” At one point, she tugs aside the curtain just slightly: “No, I mean, everyone should know I’m joking about the serpent thing... Mostly joking.” Then, after a moment of silence, she admits she doesn’t particularly love babies.

I LOL’d, in my hammock chair, alone. No one was home, so I told Daphne about it. She thought it was hilarious.

What I love about that mostly joking is just honest. Not about the bit—the bit is a joke and we know it’s a joke. What’s honest is the small adjustment underneath it: I want to be clear I’m not actually saying this baby is a serpent. I also want to be clear that… I’m not entirely retracting. The “mostly” is saying: I know what’s true, and I also know what I feel. The two things are not going to align today, and I’m not going to pretend they do for the sake of not getting some outraged emails about the unethical behavior of calling a baby a serpent.

I have a similar relationship to a few sentences I find myself saying lately. Things like, I’m fine. (I am sure that many of you will nod along to that one.) Or, I don’t really teach in person anymore. Or, I’m taking it slow this year. All of which are true. All of which are also doing some quiet retraction work underneath the surface.

When I say I don’t really teach in person anymore, what I mean is: I have made a series of decisions about my energy that I stand by. My body is limited. The travel is limiting. The cost of being publicly visible in a room, usually standing and talking for over an hour is real, and I have stopped pretending it isn’t.

There are other things that take energy to do well (or even sort-of well). I have a book under contract. I have Reasons for Living, which I love. I have a household that includes a sick husband and a sick dog. I have fourteen diagnoses on my chart, give or take, depending on how I’m counting that week. I don’t really teach in person anymore is a sentence that is me drawing my boundaries when I didn’t use to know what boundaries were.

But—mostly.

Because earlier this year I said yes to something I have not said yes to in a long time. I said yes to flying to Spain next year, to a private estate at the edge of the Cabo de Gata Natural Park, to teach a personal essay retreat to eighteen writers for eight days. (I wrote about it more fully in my last Reasons for Living letter—if you missed it, the details are here.)

I want to tell you, in the most honest way I can, why I made this decision.

It wasn’t because the conditions changed. The reality didn’t become, I can do this now in a way I couldn’t before. The decision was made from a place that surprised me, which was: I miss it.

The last time I taught in person was at what was formerly known as the Tin House winter program, and the things that can happen when you’re teaching a group live are simply different than they are online. My class came up with a mascot. They sat together at meals and I often heard them laughing at this or that. I see them Like one another’s IG posts. I rarely admit this, because admitting it complicates the story I’ve been telling about my limits, but it’s true. Mostly I’m at peace with how I work now. Mostly.

When I started thinking about what it would take to say yes to something in person again, the answer turned out to be specific. It would have to be a setup where I wasn’t the one figuring out logistics—where someone else handled the airport pickups and the dietary restrictions and the chef and the rooms so that all I had to do was teach, and the rest of the hours I could spend letting my body recuperate. The retreat would be built around that reality rather than around its denial.

This one is all of those things. Which is why, after a lot of years of saying no, I said yes.

I’m telling you this because I suspect some of you read my last letter and felt the pull, and then felt the not-yet, and closed the tab, and have not opened that question again since. Which is allowed! Most of what I write about, frankly, is the dignity of not yet.

As for me? My yes was also a long not yet, until suddenly it wasn’t. There was no dramatic shift. There was just a quiet sentence in my head that turned out to be true. Mostly I don’t teach in person. Mostly.

If you’ve been sitting with a mostly of your own—about an essay you’ve been not-quite-writing, about a yes you’ve been almost-saying—I think it’s worth listening to. Not so you can override your limits, which is antithetical to my core values, but so you can be honest about where the mostly ends and the yes begins. Let yourself meet that crossing-the-line when it shows up.

For some of you, this retreat might be where that line is. The page is here, and any questions go to contact@uptrek.com, who are far better equipped than I am to answer them. There are eighteen spots, and I’d love to read your pages across a table next year.

I’ll write again next week. In the meantime, may you find your own mostly, and may you let yourself notice when the mostly is starting to slip.

With love,

P.S. Sexy Unique Podcast. If you watch(ed) Vanderpump Rules or any Bravo shows, it’s a must.