Absolutely rabid for the language of longing

A few things I liked in April

I Love Love; Anything is Possible is a newsletter about making your life magic when everything fucking sucks, walking hundreds of miles on foot, homosexual longing of all kinds and laughter as catharsis when crying feels boring as shit.

1. Let me tell you a story:

This month, I confirmed what I feared may be true— that I owed THIRTY THOUSAND DOLLARS in taxes. I had a bad accountant last year; my new good accountant caught an absolute bevy of errors. It was suggested that I re-do my 2024 taxes, plus do my 2025 taxes, plus start my quarterly 2026 payments. I hate the US government! I don’t want to give them a single penny!

I decided I would just not refile my 2024 taxes, that I absolutely refused to pony up this money that among other things, I did not have.

BUT.

I can’t knowingly hold onto a lie, it turns me into a husk of a human. I become so nervous that I scream WHO’S ASKING!? when someone inquires about something simple, like…oh I dunno…asking how are you, let’s just say. When I sort of knew my old accountant was bad but didn’t know the specifics, it was good enough. But now that I knew just how bad? And just how much I owed?

What I figured out is ultimately I’d rather be relatively and momentarily poor than sick with anxiety. Despite it being in direct opposition to my political ideologies, I paid what I could and payment planned the rest. The experience of all of this was exhausting, terrifying and emotionally harrowing. It turns out somewhere along the way I learned that a little light fucking up means that I must be a bad person.

I have a best friend with parents that are alarming in ways similar to my own, and I see what an absolute dick she is to herself in instances where things go a little bit awry. If this were happening to her, I’d say MY GOOD BITCH, look at you figuring it out when no one fucking taught you! I’d say, DAMN, you’re so good at being responsible despite being raised by wolves! I like my friend because she’s funny, fun, ridiculously nonjudgemental, smart, creative, so many things. But I think perhaps the compassion that I easily have for her is the greatest gift she’s given me. If she’s good, I’m good. If I’m proud of her, I’m proud of me.

Intense rumination around taxes, value, morality and self-worth really dominated my month of April and though—say it with me now!— TAXES ARE BULLSHIT, also good job me, for understanding that even when I am uncomfortable, I am not a piece of shit.

May this realization re-find me whenever I need it.

2. Kimberly King Parsons has a very good weekly newsletter (First Breath). In this newsletter, Kimberly dissects the first paragraph of various books from a writer’s perspective. This one, on Carole Maso’s “Her Ink-Stained Hands”, was so, so good.

First of all, I love writers. You guys, we’re so fucking charming out here, trying to make art out of existence, words, and paying attention. Kimberly is a very classy put together woman who is a secret freak! Or at least, her tastes are freaky. She has a practically erotic obsession with language and ALSO this book’s opening is extremely erotic in nature so it was doubly freaky and joyful to read the dissection.

Kimberly says:

What (Maso) was reaching for, she wrote in the book’s preface, were “ways in language to express the extreme, the fleeting, the fugitive states that hover at the outermost boundaries of speech.” In this case: desire. But the book isn’t really interested in the particulars of sex—it’s interested in the language of longing, the way lust infuses sentences, and how wanting something saturates every word around it.

I am absolutely rabid for the language of longing. I want to read it, I want to understand how writers are working with it, and I want to discuss it with other people who feel similarly geeked out.

3. Good news: Dawn Riddle has 2 new photo missives! This time, she went to SERBIA (!!!) and New York/Philly. Dawn saw many incredible things. Highlights include: SEXY SPONGE CAKE. dogs, dogs, dogs. A tiny cafe with a truly wild amount of lamps. A Taz mosaic. Several very good hand painted signs (there is nothing I like better than a hand painted sign). A frightening carnival. A baby that looks like he’s seen some shit. Colors galore! A husky pigeon (? — kind of bird unconfirmed).

Anyway, go look at the pictures.

4. Let me micro review six books that I liked very much:

Nerve Damage by Annakeara Stinson.

A woman with a stalker ex starts stalking him back. It’s barely about him! It’s about how trauma fucks with your sense of reality until you’re not totally sure what’s true. Bonus points for relatable parent figures and an extremely lovable yet unreliable protagonist.

Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt

A mother loses her tether to her daughter due to addiction. Despite the devastation of this fact, there is still a granddaughter to care for, to marvel over, to shape her life around. The writing is s l o w , and approaches the language of longing softly, from a whole new lens than the languages of longing discussed before. The text is tender and brutal and full of love. No one saves anyone, just like real life.

Flesh by David Szalay

This book lays out most of the life of István, a Hungarian man. We see adolescent sex, obsessive love, violence, imprisonment, poverty, opportunity, opulence, transformation, poverty again, and grief. The writing is spare and devastating. A whole life told through what a person cannot say! What mastery. Restraint and agony, what’s uppppppp.

Famesick By Lena Dunham

Recently, I found myself at a writing retreat where many of the attendees were discussing their distaste for Lena Dunham.

I happen to like Lena precisely because she is so distasteful. I think having questionable taste in fashion, bad tattoos, a sense of self that includes embracing the awkward, the profane, the annoying…is cool. That’s my truth!

This book talks a lot about the trajectory of GIRLS paired with Lena’s increasingly chronic illnesses. She felt like shit SO often. And yet! She managed to be a creative force that could not be contained or denied. I admire this fact and I like her!

May chronically ill women continue to bless us with their artistry.

Speaking of: Frida Kahlo’s first solo exhibition was in Mexico in 1953. For the opening, she ordered her four-poster bed moved from her home to the gallery and arrived in an ambulance. She was carried on a stretcher to the bed, where she stayed for the duration of the party. Sometimes life really is performance art.

Yesteryear by caro claire burke

Books about influencers! I love them.

In Yesteryear, a semi-hateful tradwife influencer un-fucking-ravels. One day, she wakes up in the past she’s been cosplaying and what awaits is chaos, blood, terror, labor, and worst of all, no audience. It’s sharp and mean! I’m a Leo rising. I think about what attention and lack of attention does to a person a lot! I read this book with velocity.

Lovers XXX by Allie Rowbottom

First:

The place is Los Angeles, the year is 1982. Jude is one of a pair of best friend barely legal teens (Jude and Winnie, respectively) grappling for money and power. They find that making porn is the door to both. Or is it?

They do a lot of cocaine. Jude leases a yellow convertible; Jude and Winnie and every other girl compete for notoriety. Jude loves Winnie in a real way, and then she fucks her over royally. Winnie is a writer and writes a shocking tell-all article in the newspaper about being underage in the porn industry. The dog runs away. Everything is a mess.

Second:

The place is Malibu, the year is 2015. Winnie hasn’t seen Jude since the mid-80’s and maybe Jude is dead. Winnie is scarred from her time in the industry. She wrote a fiction book, finally, but it didn’t sell well (tale as old as time). She is divorced and something is missing. Maybe finding Jude will fill the hole?

You’ll have to read to find out.

I will leave you with two things:

5. The Ordinary, Extraordinary To-Do Lists of Keith Haring. I love to be a gay artist in a lineage of gay artists. I am honored to be just another creative marveling at the choreography of every day life.

and lastly:

6. Siamo delle fucking dive!!!

—

I’m done! Finally!

I have been making a concerted effort to keep track of the things I like more, and I fear all of this noticing is making this newsletter terribly long and borderline unreadable. Is this TOO MUCH™? Is it just enough? If you say it’s too much, I’ll cry for a week. JK. Or am I? Who can say.

Until next time,

Luca

Illustrations by Lana Elanor, Font by Meg Burk. Incredible photos by Dawn Riddle!