Consumption Lounge: Hot, Prideful Picks for June
The pursuit of love and liberty on the spectrum
Welcome to the Consumption Lounge: a regular feature where I showcase all my favorite consumables from the food, beverage, cannabis, lifestyle, literary worlds, and beyond. Occasionally, affiliate links are included, but all recommendations are of my own.
Hi everyone,
I know that many people have been in a low place these days (the exception being the very uplifting news of Trump being found guilty on 34 counts), so going to try my best to keep this newsletter lighthearted and enlightened, but spicy and beefy!
June kicks off 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️Pride Month🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈 and #1000wordsofsummer, a very smart writing project from author Jami Attenberg that creates a structure of writing 1,000 words per day for aspirational authors who want tangible results rather than stewing in sadness of never finishing what they start (guilty as charged!). Even though I write about that many words on an average day, most of the words are never allocated to The Next Great American Novel. Will this be the year I finally do it? Stay tuned!
Pride this year has been a little existential for me, thinking about identity during a time when people seem particularly torn between the excessive use of rigid labels and eliminating them entirely. Kind of a weird cultural pendulum swing considering Gen X did not give a shit about anything and told us to “kill yr idols,” so I guess that’s why I didn’t go to Kathleen Hanna’s Free Palestine book event 😢.
As a real B in the LGBTQ+, I realized that I’ve actually been *proudly* Pan all along, making me part of the “+” sub-subculture that people within the queer community absolutely don’t care about and are mostly trying to drop off the acronym, along with asexuals and anyone else they reluctantly have to acknowledge within some nebulous zone of “bravery” and sex positivity as we all keep ourselves open to the possibility of love in all forms beyond the binary while still having to navigate through the trash hole known as internet dating apps. UGH. I have to thank trans men for this, as I thought I hated men for sexism but turns out that I’m actually the sexist! Trans men made me love (some) men again. Thank you, trans men.
There were more Catholics for Queers than Bisexuals at last year’s Pride parade, so who really cares about Pan? It’s basically the same thing: not real. Just kidding! Bi erasure is very real, so Pan existence is practically non-existent. Some might argue that Pan is technically Queer, but no one takes me seriously when I say that either. No one will ever invite a Pan person to a “Queering the food industry” summit, for example, even though they are queer. Ooh, I just felt 500 people eye roll! But let’s be real: at a certain point, there are just too many labels to be inclusive of everyone—myself included.
From a historic context, I get it. The Gay Liberation Movement is still pretty nascent. I live right down the block from Stonewall, which I pass most days of the week and is now a celebrated tourist attraction being added to progressive travel guides, conscious that gay travel is still not universally accepted everywhere. I’m not going to violate the sacredness of Fire Island or other private spaces unless welcomed (though Cherry Grove is delightful and I do want to see the Sunken Forest and wouldn’t totally mind being the Margaret Cho hag in Finding Fire Island, but I will not be taking prime summer surfside fuck real estate away from the gays! Nor could I afford those absolutely shameful rental prices!).
Stonewall is still an active bar filled with many people who were present when that first brick was thrown and turned into a riot, which was not that long ago, yet during a very different time. In the words of Norm Macdonald: “People used to have three opinions, max.” Women were still getting chased around their desks in skirts from their bosses while getting paid like 30 cents on the dollar, spousal rape was still legal, and so was firing someone over their sexual identity. People weren’t talking about butt sex because you could be arrested for it, which it made it so easy for the AIDS crisis to fester from a conservative government happy to see these people die and deprive them of medical resources and education. One of my friends has been with his partner for well over a decade now and his parents still refuse to acknowledge or meet him because this is the generation we’re still dealing with.
Today, trans people remain particularly at risk, especially in conservative led states and on the forefront of another tense election year where progressives are once again dropping the ball. Drag queens are being demonized for reading to kids at public libraries. Queer kids still get kicked out of homes and have a higher risk of being unhoused or committing self-harm. One of my favorite projects this year was a chapbook where kids could speak for themselves and they have spoken: they love libraries and colorful queens with hearts of gold. So, why are we defunding libraries and Drag Story hours are getting bomb threats?
Pan people aren’t exactly at the same risk—unless they happen to be trans or gay. Pan is the acceptance of gender fluidity and acknowledges more than two genders in potential sexual partners, so it’s not a hard personal identity. This lack of defined identity bothers some people for that reason, but I like the fact it forces people who think they live outside the binary to reconsider how much that is actually true to them. Pan people are kind of generalists, which frankly is very fitting for someone who usually identifies as “neurotic” and sexually identifies as “slut.”
Places like Stonewall still hold tremendous meaning, which is why many jaded Gen X and young commie art queers still roll their eyes at the corporate sponsor floats rolling down 8th Avenue. A boring desk job that pays well with benefits that doesn’t discriminate against you and embraces your pronouns is actually still a legitimate form of progress, even if it is unsatisfying and not radical. Everyone should have equitable access to miserable jobs regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation or religious affiliation, because labor is still labor.
At the same time, there are plenty of shitty, abusive and manipulative queer people. You can be oppressed and an oppressor. It happens all of the time. We don’t exist in a binary, which somehow seems to escape people who think they are beyond this. Shitty people exist across all spectrums of identity; you can be “good” and “bad” at the same time. It has been known to happen.
Maybe due to the radical undertones of the first uprising, a lot of the loudest dissent this year is coming from creative industries rife with worker exploitation that use collective punishment to shut down union organizers—as if this is not a collective problem beyond our perceived identities—turning into embarrassing and misguided acts of resistance and solidarity elsewhere that detract from issues more directly impacting queer communities. This isn’t to say acts of solidarity are a bad thing or absolve mass corporations that are also hotbeds of toxic worker exploitation and problematic contributions to the planet, but rather to explain how easy it is for otherwise smart people to blindly align with performative SJW groups that essentially accomplish nothing as far as tangible activism goes beyond reinforcing “being different and oppressed” as an identity without doing very much other than producing an influx navel-gazing academic thoughtpieces about “doing the work” from the perspective of people who barely touch labor or the communities they condescend to.
They must have missed the news that just because you dress weird or have a bad haircut and bond over the same music doesn’t mean you’re not a Nazi or a rapist or a narcissist, which anyone over the age of 35 could tell you from years of attending punk rock shows where you thought everyone was there were progressive outsiders and disappointed to learn they were actually not.
Maybe it’s for that reason I’ve been really disappointed in my fellow feminists and having to break up with that label as an identity. That was a hard one. I have always been a girls’ girl, and a grrl, but it’s become very clear that intersectionality often doesn’t apply to the Jewish community (nor the AAPI community, given that no one seems to care when their communities frequently experience violence or discrimination either), unless they’re extremely self-hating about it and apologetic for existing, like Ilana Glazer who unironically starts off every sentence with “As a privileged white cis straight Jewish woman” as if she’s forgotten the entire history of Judaism or that antisemitism is still a problem and that this doesn’t sound incredibly condescending to everyone. The good news, though, is that it’s semi-inclusive victimhood. #progress.
Case in point: the last few events I attended that were allegedly “inclusive,” I was the only Jew there (glad I could help meet that diminishing diversity quota) and met tepidly by people who used to be quite warm with me because apparently people are fine with Jews as long as they’re embarrassed about it. Antisemitism is kind of funny in that way because it feels like an inside joke everyone else is in on, and you’re the joke. Fortunately, one of my favorite Jews was Groucho Marx, so my self-esteem is not diminished by any of this.
In many ways, feminism was my gateway into queerness, and even though I will never expect anyone to take my Pan identity seriously, I do think it is pretty feminist. It’s queer and trans inclusive, while also essentially being a deconstructed identity with zero allegiance to any gender or group—even though I am body positive about my femininity. No one feels satisfied about it and it will never catch on, of course, making it kind of truly subversive in that respect. I don’t know what wave of feminism we’re on now, it’s just not mine. I guess feminists and queer people will just have to keep backstabbing each other over all the predictable and petty things that they already cancel each other over rather than try to work with people they don’t like or have to accept that you can’t always get every action item on your to-do list. I thought reproductive rights was a pretty reasonable thing we could keep rallying for, but turns out people just don’t care. Really looking forward to November.
Frankly, I kind of like the Pan flag—which I just remembered exists and looked up exactly five minutes ago because I’m stoned while I’m writing this (it was actually invented on Tumblr, no surprise there). It looks like a neon electroclash gay Ukrainian flag, so pretty gender neutral—but also kind of bratty by existence. “No, we’re different from bisexuals! We use yellow and cyan!”
Many within Gen Z don’t have a problem with learning the term of Pan because they are far more accepting and open about gender fluidity than previous generations. It’s very obvious proof that hate of gender binary is learned and passed down. Obviously there are plenty of queer kids who are still getting bullied, threatened, assaulted, and murdered here and abroad. Progressive Gen X are open to change, they just struggle to know the language and are embarrassed to be out of touch because they thought their generation is the coolest, so they constantly ask Millennials who are tired and don’t care and just want to own homes already at Boomer pricing and have decent affordable healthcare.
Which brings me to the collective convergence of this progressive existential suffering in the pursuit of love and liberty: internet dating. Particularly Feeld, which is essentially Grindr for straight people but more queer than Tinder, with no less than 30 different categorizations of sexual preferences and identities (I just learned what a gynosexual is! Watch out, gays—someone is coming for your G-spot!). Every once in awhile, you’ll also get an entire Myer-Briggs psychological breakdown of someone’s list of kinks, which I guess is kind of transparent and more honest than hiding the fact you get off on choking and wearing diapers before you meet for coffee while still living in a fantasy world where you’re seeking a “size queen” even as a very average-sized person who watches too much porn and is probably bad in bed. I hope you find your person! Who can blame Gen Z for not fucking in this environment?
This a la carte-ing of identities is a distinctively Zillennial flavor that is blowing the minds of elder Millennials who have been largely removed from this entire subculture unless they’ve been chronically single and have to Google half of the terms while deciphering emojis to determine if we’re meeting for coffee or fucking in a hotel room, or maybe both. This is how I’m supposed to find my soulmate now: the healthy way or the “evolved” way. Truly hunting through the flea-infested bin at the secondhand store for a designer purse, handpicking human beings to find an aesthetic that all seem to magically disappear half-way through saying “hello.”
I recognize the love-hate relationship with Pride capitalism, but I just don’t think “love is love” is really doing anyone any favors in this economy. So, I’m going to end on talking about stocks*, dating*, and the strategy* of someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing* before sharing a list of things I think you should buy as a queer person or ally or consumer—aside from the very sad removal of the “gender fluid” coffee mug from Target’s Pride collection last year (RIP) that is now going for $60 on eBay because it threatened middle America. Surely this will piss off some anti-capitalists, but also probably contains some useful and pragmatic information somewhere in there that could be applied to love or finances because love is love: a financial living arrangement that makes divorce lawyers very rich, no matter what your gender dynamic is. Hate the game, don’t hate the player!
(****Bear with me because I’m just learning about finance and dating at the same time by experimenting on Robinhood and dating apps with equally low-stakes investments and similarly low rewards. I might actually be achieving enlightenment right now through this personal experiment of trial and error, but I also think it’s smart to talk to an actual financial planner about this at some point!)
Like my stocks, I diversify my dating portfolio and reap very little rewards for my efforts, usually taking a loss. No one is helping me here except the internet and sometimes Reddit, which I always refuse to sign-in to even though I also took out equally uninvested stocks that manage to operate at a loss one-month in.
Like dating, not all the stocks I choose are good ones because again, I am not good at finances or dating—despite being a Jew, even!—but have an interest in both because I like having nice things and having a partner sometimes helps with that. I usually have three at any given time, much like my dating apps, and similar level of responsiveness. All of them are entirely different types of stock in totally different sectors, much like my dating apps. I assume all of the money I invest is essentially fun money I will never see again, but be pleasantly surprised if I do, much like matching with someone on a dating app and guessing how long the conversation will last before they go silent or disappear.
I have superficial investments in Crypto and people who work in Crypto, which have both delivered the same results: high-risk love bombing with the promise of a Bachelor paradise that’s kind of hate-fucky and completely worthless but a little hot, then spiraling into a trauma cycle and flaming out, creating a massive loss that feels like both a waste of time and also a little stupid because #duh. I don’t think the ETH Lite I bought during the pandemic when it experienced a brief hike before tapping out completely ever going to recover, nor is my good faith in Crypto or people who advocate for Crypto.
Cannabis is never going to be a good stock, nor is a fulfilling and productive relationship with people who are way too stoned all the time, no matter how much they try to convince you. One of my stocks is Utz potato chips, but only because I saw it on Julie Klausner’s Instagram. Weirdly, it’s been offering pretty decent positive growth, but I’m really getting off-topic here because this is supposed to be about Pride and identity and I’m getting there (to the point, that is, eventually).
Point being: When it comes to dating and finance, some offer a lot of potential, some have stable growth, and some are chaos actors that I keep losing money on rather than cut my losses, salvaging what I can and throwing all of it into reliable stock that offers mostly good growth and contributes to others through mutual funds (from an altruistic perspective, but also ETF). It’s all a social experiment that costs money and time with questionable results unless you know what you’re doing or lucky.
Sex and love and business sometimes converge, over dinner or in a restaurant bathroom. What constitutes a successful venture can be strategically engineered, but cosmically informed—just ask Deepak Chopra the next time you’re on his yacht.
I think after realizing that everyone can be terrible or wonderful, I’ve relinquished my own desires or who I think a good partner could be when my overarching goals are safety, security, purpose, partnership, chemistry and orgasms. It could be a man or a woman, or anyone in between. Is it weird that’s my kink? When the needs of that relationship may evolve, grow, or not work out? Where you aren’t constantly worried your next partner is going to kill you? Where is love on the spectrum, and which spectrum are we talking about? What’s at the end of the rainbow? I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling pretty Pan-fried!
Anyway, here are a few things I love and are making happy this month:
June Consumption Lounge
Stone Road’s 14G rolling packs. As a former American Spirit, hand-rolling hipster, I am such a huge fan of this spliff-worthy 14G rolling pack using hand-harvested outdoor grown grass from Stone Road. Bonus: it’s queer-owned, so obviously the correct choice for Pride Month (though they’ve historically had excellent Pride pun-themed strains that I’ve absolutely loved).
A brand new cookware set from Goldilocks. As someone who has generally maintained a hodgepodge kitchen of wares, I’ve been long overdue for an upgrade. This sleek, top-rated seven-piece tri-ply stainless steel set from Goldilocks makes me feel like I’m operating in a professional kitchen with incredible versatility and durability.
The Rainbow Collection from OHHO. Who can be mad about weed-laced rainbow bags from an indie brand? Not me! And if you use the code WEEDWITCH10 you can get 10% off right now.
Pride booty shorts from The Bummer Shop. Did I impulse buy these “Homosexuality is not a mental illness but this ass is insane” shorts from stand up, tv writer, and growing TikTok creator Madison Sinclair? Yes. Yes, I did. Pride outfit unlocked.
The return of Sour Diesel to New York. Last week I got to test drive Animal, an outdoor grown, flavor-driven and strain-driven preroll and vape brand quietly soft launching in New York from Final Bell (known for Sherbinskis, Fernway, Cookies, and Connected). I’ve always had a soft spot for Jeeter, the kief-rolled infused pre-rolls in Jolly Rancher-esque flavors, which Animal’s products definitely remind me of. The brand is currently available in California, New York, and across Canada, so if you’re not in those markets maybe it’s time to take a vacation?
This incredible piece on visionary artist Carolee Schneemann. Sharing this article on Instagram got me flagged so I no longer have branded tools privileges, so please go read it so it was worth the punishment.
Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist. Unless you used to watch this show religiously in the ‘90s, you probably don’t know about it because it’s not on any streaming services beyond YouTube bootlegs. I think the going price for the DVDs is like $300, which I’ve been pretty tempted to buy simply because I don’t trust the algorithm and that’s why I continue to hoard DVDs and my half-working player. Anyway, the show still holds up and is such a cathartic watch, so go take it in before we lose the magic!
SESH cannabis cases. Now in a delightful rainbow of colors, this sleek smell-proof stash box comes with four individual 3.5g stash jars, one 7g stash jar (good for dogwalkers), and a bud scoop with removable rolling tray. If you like you have more than one strain around at a time, this is an excellent small-time investment for cannasseurs to keep their stashes fresh.
The Better Bagel. An everything bagel that’s only 5 net carbs, 25mg of protein, and no sugar added that actually tastes good? Take of all my money, Better Bagel! I’ve finally been having my lox deluxe perfect weekends with sustainable fishery, Hudson Valley Fisheries lox-style cold smoked steelhead. SO GOOD.
Domaine Montrose Solis Lumen. Rose all day season is pretty gay and I know a lot of broke queers, so this is a pretty reasonably priced rose (often around $15) that also comes in orange from the Languedoc region worth guzzling and then writing bad poetry. It’s a delicious and light blend of Grenache and Cinsault that’s quite elegant for a Pride picnic.
Franciacorta. For a sparkling summer, may I recommend this Italian sparkler that’s been up-and-coming the past couple of years and is a much more elegant and complex alternative to Prosecco. It’s very food-friendly, especially for oysters, which I rediscovered on the menu at Sirenetta in Hoboken, New Jersey (which also has $1 oyster happy hour on Tuesdays—a real steal in this $3.50 to $4 bullshit oyster economy we’re living in right now).
Zucchini season! Everyone’s favorite phallic vegetable is back and here are a few recipes I like:
Sauteed spring vegetable salad with zucchini, asaparagus, feta, pistachios, dill, avocado oil
A big salad with a lot of stuff in it:
Tofu egg salad with vegan mayo, scallions, celery, Dijon mustard
Little gems, strawberries, pecorino, and hazelnuts drizzled with red wine vinegar, olive oil, honey, salt
Cavolo nero chicken salad with kale, cucumber, shredded chicken, sunflower seeds, dressing: yogurt, avocado, cilantro, lime juice, pepper, salt, olive oil, and water
This recipe for Cottage cheese zaatar bowl
Also, these Healthy Magnum Bars with coconut cream, apricot, lemon juice, maple syrup, chocolate, chopped almonds
Air-fried halloumi with a squeeze of lemon isn’t a bad idea either!
MORE FROM THE CONSUMPTION LOUNGE
Consumption Lounge: The 2024 Guide to 4/20 in NYC and Beyond
Consumption Lounge: April Flowers, Lavender Honey Caramels & James Beard Rolling In His Grave
Consumption Lounge: Best Things to Consume in March
Welcome to the The Weed Witch coven. If you liked this post, click the heart button below and consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Fall down the wrong rabbit hole? Click here to unsubscribe.
We have the Dr. Katz DVD set and I love it so much. Waving a neon Ukrainian flag at you from over here!