Life Harvester #17: Comfort Stuff, Potato Pile, A Joke, Ask A Shmuck, Ribbon Stage
Life Harvester is written by Colin Hagendorf and edited by Rebecca Giordano. This is the email version of a print publication available for low-cost individual subscription. (Get in touch for non-Patreon options.) Life Harvester subscriptions are free to prisoners. If you know an incarcerated person who would like to receive a newsletter every month, get in touch with me directly and I’ll take care of it.
For the foreseeable future I’ll be donating all Life Harvester profits to mutual aid funds. This month I’ll be donated $254 to the Pittsburgh Covid-19 LGBTQIA Emergency Relief Fund and $270 to the Mother’s Day Bail Out. I’d like to donate this coming month’s money to a mutual aid fund for undocumented people left out of the stimulus. I’m looking at a few, but if there’s one you recommend, please hit me up.
MAY I ENTERTAIN YOU?
It’s been 7 weeks, give or take, since most of us “non-essentials” have more or less stopped leaving the house, and since many workers who were previously disregarded have finally been acknowledged as the actual foundations of our society, though without adequate financial compensation. These are troubled times and I’m afraid things will only get worse. Writing this newsletter and mailing it out to you all every month has given me something manageable to focus on besides freaking out. Hearing from friends and strangers in response feels so good! Please keep sending me letters and emails. I’ll write back (eventually)!
COMFORT STUFF
At this time of intense weirdness and isolation, comfort food seems to be on everybody’s mind. From conversations I’ve had with friends and family, to those I’ve overheard on podcasts, to the contents of the Bon Appetit youtube channel, foods that soothe are a hot topic. But comfort stuff is a broader category. How many people are tweeting about rewatching 30 Rock, or the Office, or rereading favorite childhood books? Comfort stuff is anything that provides a calming balm to an otherwise thorny tangle of emotions. It envelopes all realms of sensory engagement, and is unique to each person, like a fingerprint.
My personal comfort foods include vegetarian baked beans on rye toast, cream cheese and onion omelettes with sriracha, vegan chili, tuna melts, chocolate egg creams. And something interesting to note: despite the fact that the standard comfort food origin story is “stuff you ate as a kid,” most of my comfort foods actually remind me of my deeply depressed and thoroughly alcoholic mid-20s. Why is this? I think that despite how horrible it was for me to be listless, aimless, and constantly suppressing my identity, the moments when I felt at ease, I felt really at ease.
The last time I ever drank, I had gotten into a fight with the person I was dating at the time and broke into the “emergency whiskey” I kept hidden in my kitchen cupboard. At one point, about half a liter of whiskey in me, I called her, ashamed, to let her know I was wasted. “How does that make you feel?” she chided, expecting me to express contrition. But I was too far gone to pick up on her tonal cues and thought she was asking me what being drunk felt like. “You know when it’s winter and you wake up for work and your apartment is freezing and you’re hungover and you don’t want to get out of bed but you do and you’re so cold and sad in your shitty apartment, and then you realize you don’t actually have to work that day and you get back in bed under your blanket where it’s so warm? That’s what being drunk feels like.”
What’s more comfortable than a warm bed on a cold morning? But drinking to the point of complete disregard for anything isn’t comfort stuff, that’s self-abnegation. Comfort stuff lets you momentarily forget the conditions in which you exist, without forgetting that you exist. A difficult balance to strike, and that’s why the things we turn to in times like these are so important.
As far as comfort media, I’ve been replaying Final Fantasy VI (released as Final Fantasy III in the US). Like much science fiction and fantasy of any medium, the Final Fantasy series contains easy to identify tropes—greed is bad, science can be dangerous, don’t trust the government—and there are the sort of basic anti-fascist themes contained in much children’s entertainment. A simple moral universe where things might get a little rocky at times, but ultimately the forces of good will win out. Though I first played this game as a 12-year-old in 1995, I stopped really caring about video games shortly after when I got interested in the twin temptations of drugs and ska music. Another youth led astray by the two tone army.
Around 2004, I was living with my first serious girlfriend in a railroad apartment in Greenpoint and I didn’t know what to do with my life. I was beginning to feel burnt out on constantly partying and I didn’t know how to take time to myself. So I told all my friends I was sick, stole a handful of anxiety pills from my parents (did you know I'm from the suburbs?), and spent four days popping ativans, drinking cheap red wine, and replaying Final Fantasy. My long weekend of rest and relaxation. It felt good. I made a habit of playing through the game almost annually, as a kind of reset. It’s a habit that naturally fizzled out when I stopped being a depressed alcoholic, but it’s back. Welcome home, old friend!
I’ve also been rewatching teen girl detective show Veronica Mars with Becca, for her first time. Watching it with her means I don’t get to indulge in the unrelenting pace I would if I were doing so on my own. But it’s also a delight to see someone I love experience something I think is great. And since I’ve only watched the whole series once, in a depressed, dissociated fugue, it’s like I get to watch it for the first time all over again!
The last of my comfort stuff is dressing in cute little outfits. I imagine for some people comfort clothes and “comfy clothes” are the same thing. I prefer to feel like I look good than to feel good. And, frankly, I’ve been killing it. My 2020 Quar Mood Board: Sophie Suarez in the L Word: Generation Q: wearing tapered chinos and a short sleeve button up (Wildfang, sponsor me you cowards); “did you notice I’m a lesbian?”: Sappho hat, labrys shirt, double venus earring; non-black monochromes: pink, eggshell, mustard yellow; jumpsuits (Wildfang, etc etc); mixed leopard print loungewear with knock off Versace slippers (thank you, Dasha on Killing Eve). I’m also trying to harness the confidence and pure psychotic energy of my friend Elizabeth wearing a red Supreme fanny pack front-facing around her waist like a dad at 6 Flags. I’m not quite there yet, but it’s good to have goals. I could get all heady about how as a recently-out transwoman in captivity it’s important to blah blah blah but honestly, cute little outfits are the most pure and joyous part of my life and my only comfort stuff that doesn’t ultimately make me sad when I think too hard about it. Can you just let me have that, you animals?!
POTATO PILE
I received a letter from a reader not that long ago in which they came out to me as Possibly Trans. They communicated a sense of gratitude for my frank writing about my own transition as a prelude to expressing their fear that “trans content will one day eclipse the pile content your readers crave.” In that spirit, I’d like to discuss a photograph of a pile I came across recently on twitter.
In the foreground of the photograph, there is an enormous pile of potatoes. The stuff Food Not Bombs dreams are made of. Hundreds of potatoes at least, probably thousands. Behind it is a slightly smaller double pile, with two distinct peaks as if it had been dumped on from two points. In the back is the largest pile of all, the mother pile. This pile is, I would speculate, at least 40 feet at its widest and 20 feet high. It has a peak on either side, with a plateau in between them. It looks like the kind of dirt piles on construction sites that are so big and sturdy that cars can drive on them. The combination of the three piles in perspective, coupled with the fact that the potato skins’ color blends with the barren soil of the lot upon which they were dumped, and you’re looking at a completely surreal landscape, which reminds me of the bone zone that the hyenas in the Lion King lived in. The photograph was tweeted by a woman named Molly Page (@IdahoMolly) and is accompanied by the text “Farmers in Idaho are dumping their potatoes. [single tear emoji]... Commercial demand has fallen and there is no market for the extra potatoes. [potato emoji]”
Technically speaking, these are beautiful piles. But only a monster could appreciate their near perfection without considering the context in which they exist. This is food, edible food, being left to rot (because it’s lost its market value) in the wealthiest nation in the world, despite the fact that for many citizens of that nation, food is scarce. Our government has the resources to buy these potatoes and distribute them to hungry people. But they didn’t and they won’t,, because keeping those people hungry and desperate is necessary for the society they want. Real heads already knew capitalism is a death cult. If you hadn’t thought about it before, I’m absolutely baffled if the government’s response to COVID hasn’t made it obvious that the logical framework our culture is built on is fucking busted.
NOTE: looking up that tweet, I am so utterly stoked to notice that since taking that photo Page organized caravans of trucks to pick up and distribute all those potatoes!
A JOKE
I don’t think I’ve ever printed a joke in this newsletter before, but last time I was in New York Jo McCann told me this joke she read in one of my best friend Milo’s dead grandpa’s joke books, and I LOVE IT. (The same dead grandpa who had the Gorbachev nesting dolls last month.) If you’re not Jewish, you need to know that in Jewish culture, the mohel (maw•yel) is the guy that does the circumcisions. Here’s the joke:
So, this mohel’s got a storefront on 10th Ave and, maybe, 40th Street. Way West Side. Been there forever. Nice little spot. It used to be a clothing shop so it has a little display window out front, and the mohel uses it to show off his watch collection. His niece who used to do the windows at Macy’s when she was in art school puts a little something seasonal together as a mitzvah every few months, and at the center, the mohel’s watches. And these aren’t just any watches. These are some of the most exquisite watches around. Rolex, Cartier, Brietling, Audemars, Hublot, Patek Philippe. Crème de la crème for watchheads.
So one day this lady walks in and she’s holding this beautiful vintage Rolex. And she says to the mohel, “My husband’s watch stopped today. Can you fix it?”
And the mohel goes, “Didn’t you read the sign? I’m a mohel, not a watchmaker.”
And the lady’s like, “well then why’d you put all those watches in the window?”
And the mohel goes, “Lady, what would YOU put in the window?”
ASK A SHMUCK
Dear Shabby,
I’m at a point in my life where I have a lot of opportunities to have sex with people (high school). However, I’m conflicted over whether to just have fun and make memories by screwing whoever whenever, or only have sex with people I truly love and care about. I was gonna ask my mom, but she’s Catholic. How should I decide what I want sex to mean to me?
—Uncertain in Union City
Dear Uncertain,
I think you know that I can’t help you decide what sex should mean to you. But, I can share some of my own experiences, and, hopefully, give you some things to think about. The good news, right off the bat, is that you’ve already gotten over one of the biggest obstacles in thinking about your own sexuality: the notion of virginity. Virginity is made up patriarchy stuff and it isn’t helpful to anyone.
The other good news is that the binary you’ve established in your letter (Whatever Wherever vs Only True Love) is also made up. I can think of some short flings and one-off hook ups I’ve had that were full of genuine care. Some have developed into friendships that have lasted for literal decades! I’ve also had years-long relationships that were ostensibly of the “True Love” variety that I’m still unpacking the residual trauma from in therapy. And so my advice, in short is, “¿porque no los dos?” You can’t decide in advance what the emotional stakes will be of sex you haven’t had yet, because that’s not always something you can know.
The important thing is to try your best to stay present and keep tabs on whether or not you’re into what’s happening. Stop if you’re not. Consent is not a contract. Even if you verbally agreed to something, it’s okay to change your mind if you’re not into it. Sex can provide an incredible feeling of embodiment, an unparalleled sense of connection with others, but it can also be a source of pain and the site of trauma, so just like, be gentle with yourself and your future partners.
There’s just no simple answer to your question, and the fact is, you’ll likely be figuring it out well past high school. That’s because desires change throughout the course of a life. Desire can be exhilarating and it can be scary. Being desired can feel powerful and it can feel absolutely dehumanizing. Your task is only to figure out what you want right now, not to worry about what it will or won’t mean later. And sometimes you can only figure that stuff out by doing it. Sometimes that involves another person, but masturbation is a great way to work that stuff out too. Where do you like to be touched? How? Desire is morally neutral. What kind of sex you want or don’t want doesn’t mean anything about who you are, just like any other arbitrary preference.
This is a good time to think about what you mean when you say sex, which you don’t really specify. Are you talking strictly about penetrative intercourse? If so, I would encourage you to broaden your definition. Whether your desire feels queer or not, there’s a lot to be learned from queer sex, both in terms of acknowledging desires that have been historically frowned upon, and also in terms of opening up the field for what sex can mean. I’m not sure if kids today still talk about the old baseball analogy (first base is kissing, home plate is p in v), but approaching sex with that kind of dogma, or an expectation that it can only “progress” in a specific linear fashion, forecloses on a lot of possibilities, a lot of opportunities for fun and pleasure, and creates a sense of momentum for both partners that can be extremely limiting and lead to some pretty uncomfortable outcomes.
This is why my advice is also to over-communicate. Talk about what your feelings and intentions are. This will be awkward at first, but will maybe avoid some instances of having your feelings hurt, or worse yet of hurting someone else’s feelings. But truth is, once you start having sex you are beginning an inevitable journey towards both having your feelings hurt and hurting the feelings of others, and it’s totally worth it. Good luck.
xo, Shabby
If you’d like to submit a question to ASK A SHMUCK, please fill out this form, send an email to colin.hagendorf@gmail.com with the subject “ADVICE HARVESTER,” or simply reply to this very message!
RIBBON STAGE — MY FAVORITE SHRINE
This record sounds like driving around in the end of summer listening to a mix tape that a cool older girl gave you. Maybe she’s your friend’s older sister, maybe she’s someone you trade zines with, maybe she’s your coworker at the grocery store. Doesn’t matter. You can’t tell if you want to be her best friend, her girlfriend, or become her, but none of it seems possible anyway. Classic “Rebel Girl” situation.
A-side opener “My Favorite Girl” is flawless noise pop. Like Go Sailor! if Rose Melberg had a Pro Co Rat and sang about having crushes on girls. “Rid Myself” spins processing a clearly abusive relationship into pop sugar, a jarring, if classic, girl group tradition. The A side is rounded out by “Cry In The Driveway,” a falsetto lullaby about getting dumped. None of the songs are more than 1:20 long. Beautiful and ephemeral, like a summer crush. The B-side features two “longer” numbers, clocking in at 2:15 and 1:46 respectively. More beautiful tunes about the agony of love. “Personal Hell” is a shambolic trek through the misery of affection unrequited and “Reasons Why,” the only track with a staccato guitar part, spirals through the banality of being alive: “Work cycles on, world’s biggest con, living shouldn’t have to feel so long.” Did they write these songs in the recent past about our present?
Full disclosure, these people are my friends, but you could’ve guessed that, I’m sure. Guitarist Jolie M-A (who will forever be saved in my phone as Juicy Jolie from our brief time together in a hardcore band called JUICY) is one of American punk’s premier weirdos. Drummer Dave Sweetie aka international hardcore superstar David Serrano of Pobreza Mental, Exotica, Tercer Mundo, Ratas Del Vaticano, etc, also recorded My Favorite Shrine on a four track and it sounds INCREDIBLE, warm and full without the sonic pitfalls of a novice four track recording (aka you can hear the drums). The wildcard is singer, Anni Hilator. I have no idea who she is but she’s got the voice of an angel. A perfect group.
My Favorite Shrine will be out in July as part of K Records’ International Pop Underground singles series. Listen to “My Favorite Girl” and pre-order at ribbonstage.bandcamp.com.