I Just Cleaned My Toilet, Witness Me

On Loving What Everyone Hates in You

ICYMI I have a new essay out at Majuscule. It’s called “Fill in the Blank: Addiction, Family Trauma, and How (Not) to Write About It.” I’d love to know what you think of it. It was one the most difficult essays I’ve ever written and I worked on it for about six months (on an off ofc, I have a life or try to). I made more editorial changes after that, which were trickier than I’d imagined, but only made the essay that much better. There’s some very fun meta stuff in this essay too about genre and essay craft. It’s sad, but in a useful way I hope. Or maybe it’s an essay in that it offers no solutions.

Hey, even if you don’t read this whole thing, please hit the heart button below and also if you leave a public comment it’s so nice for all of us substacky people. Because conversation is really cool. It does chemicals to the brain.

I did actually just clean my toilet after having a panic nap, after taking my cat Pippi to the vet and finding out she needs bed rest and/or she may have arthritis, (who doesn’t Pip?) after finishing one of the most devastatingly excellent novels I’ve ever read, Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck. I bought this in translation in Germany and wow, I’m going to try to read every one of her books now.

My toilet has gotten really stained and I swear it’s not my fault and anyway I scrubbed it as penance for taking too many trips this summer and not working and feeling like a bad person with no money for a half hour. I also vacuumed and swept.

Photo by Curology on Unsplash

So, this summer I have traveled maybe more than I have since I lived and worked in Italy for a year. When I did that I was a newlywed, a young professor, and thought I was straight. I also had untreated anxiety and depression, and spent a lot of that special, unique time fretting and wishing I wasn’t in Italy. Probably thanks to a lot of therapy and SSRIs I can travel now without very much anxiety. I like going places and this is kinda new for me.

Onion Headline: “Middle-Age Single Woman Declares on Internet She Likes to Travel”

Soon I will likely have much to say about these trips, but for now I’m still processing it all and writing a lot in my diary. As a lady does. It would be nice if I could do that diary processing in a cafe with a poop-inducing ice coffee by my side.

There will maybe be an essay about Tinder in Germany. I have no idea what I would write about Shanghai except I ate everything and loved my colleagues a lot and I understood very little and kinda liked that feeling of utter stupidity.

Speaking of weird (in the non-Republican way) projects you’d never imagined you’d be a part of, my dear friend and fellow traveler, Jason Nunes started to make tiny techno songs using silly things I’ve said in our COVID pod group’s voice texts (our COVID germ pod never died and turned into chosen family pod which is a cool outcome).

The resulting songs have really cracked me up, and apparently aren’t doing all that bad on Spotify either. Since we’ve released two singles from Cursed to Blessed music, we’ve had over 1200 listens or plays (not sure what the right verb is here) in just one month, and that makes Jason, Amar (our producer at Cursed to Blessed and super great friend/chosen family person), and me pretty tickled.

We also sold our first physical album in Berlin to one of my best former students, Ashley W. She’s really genius and I was so happy to see her and the album is pink and super cute, and I’ve heard techno is really big in Berlin, so it all seemed like a good fit. This all happened in a dildo store, but that’s for the bigger travel post which I hope to write one day soon. If you could buy me like twenty coffees collectively as my dear Subby readers I would be more likely to write that sexy travel post about dildo stores, German Tinder, and delish breads.

Listen to Tiny Techno here bbs or if you are a record collector buy the album. These are the sillier songs. One is me getting worked about about loving YOU and the other one is about how tiring Williamsburg can be. IYKYK, amiright? The more profound, hope you’re on drugs or needing spiritual guidance in the form of an adult woman baby voice telling you it’s all going to be okay songs, are coming soon.

I once had an incredibly bitchy shitty psychic tell me that I could never be a teacher or a professor with a voice like mine. I’ve experienced a lot of gatekeeping around my voice, other random idiots wondering how I speak with such a cartoon-like voice or if it’s a put on. You tell me dummies, are these big tits making me fall over yet because they’re so real? There are also occasional grouchy student comments on Rate My Professor. My favorite of all time, “Her voice sounds like it’s boring itself to death.” Lol, not bad my former student! Good writing. I hope I contributed to that in some way.

Sidenote. Sometimes I think Rate My Professor is the only celebrity roast I’m ever going to get, so I try to enjoy the zingers. Another favorite, “Like the Truman presidency, my appreciation of her has grown over time.” WOW. I’d be happy if I could write something like that into my stand up routines which continue to terrify me. Also, no one has ever compared me to our 33rd president, Harry S. Truman. That makes me feel presidential.

Insert bitchy psychic, “With a voice like that you’ll never be president!”

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

The point is I love my voice, and I’ve come to understand it’s one of my super powers. It makes certain people weak in the knees with longing, it’s really great for reading books, essays, and poetry out loud to crowds, it makes people laugh, and it’s very distinct. I never hear from another room, “Carley is that you?”

Countless people have said this before, but to my memory most notably Lidia Yuknavitch in her 2016, life-changing (to me) Ted talk, “The Beauty of Being a Misfit.” RuPaul has also said it probably 2000 thousand times to weeping, about to give up drag queens, but here we go again:

EVERYTHING THAT PEOPLE HATE ABOUT YOU IS PROBABLY YOUR BEST THING. IF PEOPLE TELL YOU CAN’T DO SOMETHING YOU REALLY WANT TO DO BECAUSE A PARTICULAR THING OR MANY THINGS ARE WRONG WITH YOU, YOU SHOULD KEEP DOING IT.

For years people told me my writing was too girly, too much, too gross, too everything, too sad, too, too, too, well, that’s why it’s great to some people. Same with my voice. Same with my fat ass. Same with pretty much everything that some people have taken it upon themselves to tell me I suck at doing or have wrong with me. No, my ex-boyfriend Jamie’s drunk sister, I should not be teaching kindergarten instead of college, and why do you hate kindergarten teachers so much, when they are the gods greatest gift to the world?

I’m sure this is true for you too. Don’t listen to the haters, and soon you too will have a small, but mighty band of 259 subscribers reading your work (I love you all so much!), five published books, 1200 listens on Spotify, and a USAA profile that currently says, ASSETS: $128.90 LIABILITIES: —$19,531.06. Please notice that I made the negative sign an em dash, just in case you missed that.

Also, USAA is the best bank if you have anyone even your dad who you barely speak to in the military or formerly in the military, you should join. The customer service alone will make you cry with gratitude. Sometimes the USAA people are so nice on the phone, I’m like “Guy, I know this is great, but I gotta hang up now.’

Hey speaking of subscribers, should we get some new ones in here? You can pay by the month or by the year, and truth be told everything is free here mostly so far, so you’re just giving me more money so I can work on those liabilities and write about Germany Tinder, and reviews of all of the movies I watched on the airplane (yeah that’s coming up). If you ever want a free subscription I’ll def gift you one no questions asked ofc.

A few other voice thoughts before I head out the door.

I once dated a guy in my twenties who freelanced at Nickelodeon, and we often got high together and had very good sex. He, being the appreciator of me that he was, decided to pitch to a new cartoon character to his bosses called Amber Ant. She was me in ant form busting out of some amber and having a lot to say. Not sure if he ever pitched it, and obvs we don’t have such a cartoon character today so even if he did pitch it, well that’s Hollywood. This guy also had a manila folder labelled, “Got stoned, had an idea.” I miss him. He’s somewhere being a dad in California. Also, life before smart phones.

My dear friend Dan Nester and I used to scheme about becoming voice over actors in graduate school until we found out you also have to be an actor to be allowed to do the voice part.

Also, I’m sure you’ve heard that tech bros and AI tired to steal Scarlett Johannson’s voice and though her voice is much throatier than mine and she was the beloved AI in Her and of course she’s a huge success at everything, isn’t that just the way it goes? People tell you your femme voice is awful forever (and for that matter all femme voices are awful and grating and not powerful) and then they want those same subby sexy voices for their chatbots. More to tease out here about the commodification of femme voices in sex work, tech, and if this were a full-on essay I would bring in Paul Preciado and his ideas about living in the “pharmacopornographic era.”

Okay, enjoy the typos! Bye! Love you!

xoxo

Carley

P.S. Here is Pippi at the vet where she later scratched the lip of the vet assistant and then pooped on her. Go Pip! Also the vet attendant was so nice, after all that she said, “I love you Pippi even if you are mad.”