October 14, 2023:
N.Y. Liberty games, mesenchymal stem cells, and a coming-of-age memoir

I’ve been reading Wellness by Nathan Hill, a 500-something-page tome that explores the power of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. The book opens with our main characters, Jack and Elizabeth, who live in adjacent buildings in Chicago. Their whirlwind love story is immediately followed by a flash-forward. We get to see the couple years later, after their passion has cooled. Right away, I wondered what happened between them. What changed. They live a supposedly normal life, one where voids are filled with new condos and a better school district for their kid Theo, who’s obsessed with Minecraft and watching videos of people playing Minecraft. It’s a modern interpretation and diagnosis of American life, one of optimization and materialism. While I get that’s how plenty of people live, this book made me realize I don’t want a traditional, atomized nuclear-family life for myself. I want to keep my friends, goddammit! The people in this book barely smile.

The novel made me think back to Allison Davis’s story about babies and the way they reshape friendships on both sides of the spectrum. While the story is great, and worth a read, I became obsessed with the comments section. Readers shared their personal experiences with this massive (and sometimes involuntary) upheaval. Some of the comments are resentful, emphasizing how difficult it is to relate to nonparent friends, while others emphasized how people who are single into their 30s and 40s might feel left behind. Their stances are often opposed, almost tribal in their differences. And while their assertions are all valid, it seems to me that they’re mostly overwhelmed by how total the shift has been. There’s the people who left the party and those who remained, the ones who figured the people who’d departed might still text or call. But there were a few folks in the middle, the ones whose lives remained intact because they (and their friends) welcomed the change. Evolved with it. Resisted the urge to withdraw or avoid. It’s inspiring. Especially for someone like me, who has had the same close friends since middle school and has expanded my friend group since then. I want my people forever, and I’d like to think I’d do what it takes to keep them — and that they might do the same for me.

My friends are largely single or partnered but unmarried, and we still see each other plenty. We blow money on fancy weeknight dinners and take last-minute trips to Miami. There’s hours-long FaceTimes about who’s dating who, who’s leaving what job, musings about the world’s inequalities and what it would take for them to end. It’s easy to say my life will always look like this, that I’ll always have time for three-hour chats (I’ll just put the baby on my hip!), and my community will expand to meet me. But then I look back on my life five or ten years ago and realize I’m worlds away from that version of myself. I wish I could bottle it up, this late-20s feeling, where I’m the happiest I’ve ever been and the sexiest I’ve ever felt. I know it’ll change, but I like to think that it only gets better from here. That we’ll keep meeting each other, like we always have. But I don’t know for sure. Ask me again in five years, I’ll get back to you.

I did pottery for the first time at Bklyn Clay for a Sulwhasoo event. They’re launching a fancy face cream in Korean moon jars, hence the pottery-throwing class, and I ended up making a chunky-looking dish that I’m saying is a catchall but was really the best I could do. I had already gone through four balls of clay and there wasn’t much time left in the class, so that’s what I ended up with. I’ve been saying that I want to get hobbies this year (I have a habit of turning my “hobbies” into side hustles) and despite being ridiculously expensive (though a friend turned me on to some affordable classes in the Bronx), I like that it’s something I’m not good at and can improve on over time. Next up on my hobbies list: tennis!

Everything to do with Love Is Blind season five. Everywhere I turned, there was a new piece of drama (Renee and Carter?!), and unfortunately, I couldn’t look away. The show has taken a turn, and in my view, there’s only one way to fix this monstrosity: make it queer or age the contestants way up, Golden Bachelor–style.

Preservationist Michael Henry Adams’s apartment tour. He’s long been an advocate for preserving Harlem landmarks, and his home is a reflection of a life spent documenting and collecting.

Lupin has returned for season three, and I’m excited to see what Assane Diop is getting into now. The subtitles also stop me from scrolling through my phone while I watch.

Mesenchymal stem cells. I went to a fancy breakfast at Casa Cipriani a few weeks ago to learn about Angela Caglia’s new and very expensive ($395!) serum. The secret ingredient is these stem cells, which apparently repair the skin’s tissue. I’m curious but not sold. I’ll be on the lookout for more serums with the ingredient.

How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair. It’s a memoir (rare for me to read these) that follows Sinclair’s journey growing up in a rigid Rasta household and how she was able to eventually chart her own path. I’m Jamaican, so I’m always interested in what other Jamaican people are doing. Plus, this book has been talked about all year.

There’s something I love about a coming-of-age story. To me, we come of age every time we evolve and grow to meet the next version of ourselves. It’s every time we look around at the life we built and realize that some parts of it are a physical expression of our childhood traumas or the stories we tell ourselves. We come of age when those stories no longer work, or we tell a new one.

The latest season of Only Murders in the Building. Despite the deployment of increasingly questionable scenarios to keep the story line going, I love the oddball combination of Mabel, Oliver, and Charles-Haden Savage.

The N.Y. Liberty Games. All the girls are outside!

(A text exchange between me and my dad.)

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