Cheesecake, Tits, and the People Who Think That’s a Problem

Running this journal long enough means you collect a specific class of detractor. Not trolls—they’re boring—but the considered objectors who surface periodically to remind you that you’re commercial, soulless, or irredeemably vulgar. The naked-women people. The how-dare-you-be-cheerful-about-cheesecake people. And the most persistent charge: hypocrisy.

The argument goes like this: you can’t write something genuinely felt about loneliness or loss and then immediately follow it with a post about a great party and a song you can’t stop listening to. The two registers supposedly cancel each other out. Real writing requires consistent melancholy. The James Blunt standard. If you’re not perpetually staring into the void, you’re clearly faking the darker stuff.

I think this is a profoundly boring way to experience being alive.

What I’ve always tried to do here is document the actual shape of days—and the actual shape of days is mixed. The late-night confession and the post about a sandwich you didn’t expect to enjoy and a pop song you’re embarrassed to love exist side by side because that’s how it happens. You feel something real on Tuesday. Wednesday is fine, actually. These aren’t contradictions; they’re the same person moving through time. The crude and the sincere have always lived in the same house. I contain both. Most people do, and the ones who claim otherwise are performing something, not documenting it.

The readers who’ve stuck around seem to understand this. They’re not asking me to pick a lane because they don’t live in one lane either. That’s always been the only audience worth having.

The vultures can circle. There’s cheesecake.