it’s OK if your new year doesn’t feel happy or new.
The vibes haven’t been very fergalicious for a while, but that’s not your fault.
Queering the Burbs is a regularly-published distillation of pop culture, politics and queerness written by Joe Erbentraut. If you like what you see, please consider subscribing (it’s free!), liking or sharing this piece.
I started this new year with the unmistakable vibe of a false start. Usually a new year brings with it, for me, a feeling of optimism and rededication. That has not been the case this year. If I’m being vulnerable here, I couldn’t find myself able to conjure an even remote sense or optimism—nor could I strike up a particular feeling of doom either (progress!?)
Maybe this just meant the Lexapro was working after all. It’s been about a month and a half since I started taking baby’s first SSRI and I’ve certainly felt the effects in other areas of my life. I’m no longer fearing monsters waiting in the shadows around every corner, and I’m incredibly grateful for modern medicine and mental healthcare.
But I don’t really think that’s it. Chani just said that the new moon is actually the true start of the new year, but that happened the other week and I still feel more or less the same.
I’m guessing I’m not alone in this headspace. A TikTok I just watched after work the other day made the argument that we’re the only living creature that fights the natural cycle of life on this planet, to die in the winter and come alive in the spring. Instead, every January 1 we are faced with the unavoidable moralistic expectation that this is the time of the year to cut out all vices and abandon your “bad” habits in surrendering to the endless quest toward becoming something “better” (most of which comes, incidentally, with a price tag).
After the holidays, I was grateful to have a rare series of consecutive days off at work, my longest one since July. Days to stay up late and sleep in, days to go a bit feral, days to lose track of the days. During this blessed week of in-between, my husband and I went into the city to see Patti Smith live at Chicago’s glorious Salt Shed.
On the Metra train on the way to the concert, a baby started crying loudly. I could hear the wail through my earbuds. And on the quiet car no less! Stefin texted me and said he noticed the baby, its parents, and the group of people they had boarded the train with were all covered in matching white blankets. They were just a few of the thousands of migrants who are getting unceremoniously transported almost daily from Texas to Illinois, now at the beginning of our Midwest winter. The same migrants that communities all over the suburbs (including Aurora) have now banned from arriving within their jurisdictions.
I locked eyes with the baby. Just two days ago, I had celebrated Christmas with my family in a warm home with too much food and too many gifts before turning to my home, all cozy and bright with its Christmas tree, leftovers and presents in tow.
When we arrived at the station in downtown Chicago, I was overtaken with hot tears. Probably the first tears I’d wept since this Cancer moon started his Lexapro prescription. That is saying an awful lot.
At the concert, Patti Smith sang repeatedly of power, with power far surpassing her 77 years of age. At one point, a “fan” pelted this living, breathing punk icon with a plastic cup filled with ice. “Don’t throw ice at me, asshole,” Patti growled before segueing effortlessly into a spoken word improv about melting ice, ice forming puddles, and aging punk elders can slip on those puddles and hurt themselves, all on a planet that is also rapidly melting, rapidly aging.
We left that show feeling empowered but still overwhelmed with grief. Where was that baby going to be sleeping that night? Where are they sleeping tonight as I write this essay several weeks later? When I started this essay, the temperature stood at -2 degrees and a -20 degree wind chill. Today, as I prepare this essay for public consumption, it’s a Midwestern heatwave of 15 degrees with a 2 degree wind chill.
How can any of us sleep with everything that hangs in the balance right now? How do we go about our silly little tasks at our silly little jobs? While the colleagues in our industries are being abruptly fired by corporate tyrants who refuse to even remove their sunglasses while doing so? All in an election year, no less? We’re seemingly never not on the brink of more war, more bombs, more violence, more missed carbon deadlines, more anti-trans and anti-queer legislation, more babies crying in unfamiliar lands?
Above all, I believe it’s a responsibility we hold for ourselves and the people in our lives to be patient in times like these, which seem to be the only type of times we have anymore. If we are to survive this era, we just need to conjure a level of delulu not unlike whatever was going through Jennifer Lopez’s mind as she went about the creation of her monstrous new film (please watch its deeply confusing trailer). That said, I’m personally terrible at following this advice, which is why I’m committing it to the record here. Maybe I’ll follow it.
I don’t really believe in new year’s resolutions anymore, but I want to use this space and platform to continue to write, to explore ideas around community and conformity, queerness and otherness. I want to get a bit more personal and uncomfortable. You’ll continue to see the words and perspectives of other west suburban queers, and explorations of how what is happening nationally and globally connects with what is happening in our communities. But maybe you’ll see some other things too—personal essays, briefings from my Notes app, playlists, and reading lists. I don’t claim to have any of the answers, but maybe if you’re reading this maybe we have some of the same questions, and that’s not the worst place to start.
We shall live again
Shake out the ghost dance
We shall live
LINK DUMP
Borderless: How to Help Migrants Coming to Chicago
The Guardian: Greta Lee on Past Lives: ‘Seeing an Asian woman 15ft high felt so radical and really dangerous’
The Hollywood Reporter: ‘The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’ is having a moment
Far Out: Princess Superstar on Saltburn fame: ‘I need to give Emerald Fennell a fucking fruit basket and say thank you’
LOCAL QUEER NEWSWIRE
Belong: Fox Valley is opening its new LGBTQ+ youth drop-in (for ages 13-18) in Geneva next week.
Steel Beam Theatre in St. Charles launched their newest production, The Cake by Bekah Brunstetter, this weekend—and it’s a very queer show.
New local queer-owned business alert! New nail salon On Point is downtown Geneva’s first woman and queer-owned small business.
Tickets are now on sale for Annie Hex’s February queer prom, to be held at a secret location in downtown Batavia.
Batavia’s very own Joe B has been instrumental in helping keep our queer proms safe, and could use some financial support right now. Check out his fundraising page and please consider supporting Joe and his family.
You’ve written so tenderly about how I think a lot of us are feeling. I’m entering this year with the mindset that probably a lot of good and hard things will occur, just like every other year. Endlessly feeling grateful and guilty for all the comfort, safety and ease in my life. Thank you for the reminder to think of how I can share more of that with those in need.