Humiliation, but make it cute

When trying to impress a girl results in my mom cutting gum out of my hair. Reluctant interest in cozy mysteries. Guest starring Melissa Broder and Miranda July.

From where I sit in the library during Thursday evening writing sessions, I can see Melissa Broder's books on the library's shelf. I can't read their titles but I recognize them by the designs on the spine: Death Valley, Milk Fed, The Pisces. Recently I read half of Miranda July's new book All Fours, then the library demanded it back. Soon I will ask the library to give it back to me, so that I can finish it. In normal terms, I need to place another hold.

While I was reading the first half, I thought about the similarities between Miranda July's novels and Melissa Broder's novels. They are unashamed books about shame and anxiety, with narrators who act upon the world as if conducting an experiment, as if the consequences of their actions (which may seem inevitable to those around them) are a surprise. Their narrators report with exacting detail the way that it feels to be them, yet, it's hard to know in what ways they are reliable. Their narrators lie, let things go too far, and have big desires. One thing I love about Melissa Broder—that I'm sure I've said before in this very forum—is how embodied her writing is. She writes from the body, of the body, about the body. Her characters have bodies that piss and shit and get wet and taste and bleed. As we all do. What I love about Melissa Broder and also love about Miranda July is that they talk about difficult shit like depression and premature birth and failing in love—but they do it with exquisite love for humankind. I think (you might disagree) that Miranda July has joy bubbling up from everything she creates, tender and relentless optimism for the breadth and range of human experience. I think Melissa Broder writes with profound attention to perseverance, resilience, and finding grace in unexpected places.

There is no real reason I am writing about these two authors at the same time. I am not building to a conclusion. It's just something I noticed, while reading All Fours (first half), having not read Miranda July since 2017. Between my 2017 read of The First Bad Man and my 2025 read of the first half of All Fours, I read Melissa Broder. Now I want to put them on the shelf next to each other so that they can commune, and use each of them as an excuse to also talk about the other.

Humiliation, but make it cute

I came here, today, to tell you about some experiences of humiliation in childhood which I recently realized are all linked in one very particular way: I was trying to impress a girl.

First, I was in preschool, so probably four years old. My brother and I and a friend of ours (a girl) were in my mom's van, while she went into some building to run an errand. Maybe she was in the preschool, talking to our teacher, Tiana. Maybe she was running into one of the print shops we frequented, picking up a print job or dropping off files for the graphic design work that she did. Maybe she was running into the pharmacy, or grocery store. She left us in the car a lot when we were kids. Anyway, I was in the car with my brother and this friend, trying to impress the friend. I remember tumbling over the seats of the van, which obviously was very cool. But then the gum that I was chewing (why was I chewing gum at age 4?) somehow jumped out of my mouth and into my hair. It was a big problem. I vaguely remember trying to get it out with peanut butter, but I'm fairly sure that it ultimately had to be cut out.

Next, I was around the same age, probably four or five. We had some family friends over, and for whatever reason, I was taking a bath with the family friend, a girl who was a year or two older than me. It was a time of life when I was learning how funny a switcheroo could be. Opposite day was all the rage. Breakfast for dinner was a hit. So, I thought, I know how to impress this girl. Look, I said (probably), I'm going to use conditioner first and then shampoo. How wild! How silly! How very cool. She was impressed (I assume) at my innovative and cavalier nature, when my mom came in. Look mom, I said (probably), I switched things up and conditioned first! My mom was decidedly not impressed. That's not how it works, she told me. You have to use conditioner second, or the shampoo will wash out all the conditioner. Chastened, I conditioned my hair again.

Finally, when I was maybe nine or so, I had a friend over. Another girl. This friend was a year or two younger than me. We were playing or maybe listening to music, in any case we were going through my parents CDs. To impress her and show her how cool I was, I tried to put one of the CDs on my finger, like a ring. It was cool and funny until—I couldn't get the CD off of my finger. It was extremely stuck. Eventually we had to cut it off, and that's why for the rest of my childhood we only had one of the CDs in the 2-disc Nutcracker set.

I was surprised when one of my family members (my aunt, who I think reads this newsletter—Hi Sarah!!) was not surprised when I came out as gay a dozen years ago. What gave me away?! I thought, then. How did she know?! Now, looking back on my somewhat persistent pattern of trying to impress girls… I see what she saw.

One other moment of very early and intense queer desire, which didn't end in humiliation (yay!) but instead in a bad habit (oops) was when I was around six years old. We were playing at a friend's house and some kids were there that I didn't know very well. They were neighbors, or maybe the kids of my friend's dad's girlfriend? In any case, one of them was a girl a couple of years older than me, who was impossibly cool. Thirty years later I remember nothing about her but my impression that she was so. cool. She cracked her knuckles. After meeting this cool girl, I started cracking my knuckles. I've never been able to stop.

I still think its embarrassing to like someone. What is more humiliating than taking a big swing, emotionally, in order to impress a girl and ending up with your mom cutting gum out of your hair, so to speak? It's so embarrassing to think someone else is cool, or hot, or funny, or frighteningly easy to spend endless amounts of time with.

Embarrassment is part of the contract of being human, in the "vulnerability" subsection. To open yourself up to new experiences, or connect with the cool girl, or find out if the person you like likes you back, you also have to open yourself up to the possibility of embarrassment and its more intense cousin, humiliation.

I could probably connect this back to the two authors (icons! Visionaries!) from the beginning of the post, Melissa Broder and Miranda July, with something about how they address embarrassment and humiliation head on and by doing that they create work that connects with me on a deeper level because they are exposing themselves to vulnerability and as my friend Zahra once said "oversharing is how you make friends".

But I will let you tie those strings together yourself.

Cozy Mysteries

In a possible new recurring feature with the theme “have I become my parents?” I would like to address the genre of cozy mysteries. The key trait about these stories is that, although there is murder, it is cozy. Think Murder She Wrote. These books like a warm blanket and a cup of tea, but the cup has little daggers painted on it.

My main association with cozy mysteries is that my mom reads them. She reads them voraciously. Name a cozy mystery that has ever been published and my mom has either read it or knows of it. She can tell you which ones are good, and which ones are bad but she will read them anyway, and which ones are unredeemable. I used to roll my eyes at her cozies. Sometimes, as a kid, I would run out of books to read and have to turn to the books belonging to someone else in the household. My brother read sci-fi, my dad read non-fiction about surprising new ways of understanding the world, and my mom read cozy mysteries. They didn’t hold my attention enough to draw me in, but sometimes I read the first fifty pages to the murder then flipped through the rest of the book to find out what happened.

However, now, suddenly, I’m into them. The last several books I’ve listened to on audiobook have been cozy mysteries. They were listened to because (as I may have said before) I like lighter fare in the audio format. I’ve consumed all of Richard Osman’s books, which are fun if constructed chaotically, listened to Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutano, which I generally liked though I did solve the mystery many many hours of novel before the characters did, and just finished How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin which I truly enjoyed. It had some beautiful writing in it and the only gripe I have at the moment is how the best friend is not important to the plot in the slightest and only exists for the narrator to talk through her thoughts on the case while on the phone with the best friend.

Am I becoming my mother? I used to disdain cozy mysteries, and now I… like them. I used to find knitting tedious and boring, and now I… enjoy it. Send help and book recommendations.

Snack Corner

An ode to wafer cookies: why are they so good?

A question for everyone: Cadbury eggs (original, the big ones filled with “creme”)—are they good? I think so, but it seems like it might be controversial. Let me know.