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I gotta say: I had a really awesome week. I went from a pretty tame week to a very wild weekend, and I’m just feeling grateful. I have a bunch of little things I want to say in a mostly diary-y entry, bigger than a Here are 10 things I’m thinking about style I do sometimes.

Edit: this ended up being way longer than I intended, and I want to eat a Twix ice cream bar. I was going to also talk about the Jersey Shore after a really fantastic jaunt to Asbury Park yesterday. It was my first time there, but I am certainly not new to the shore. I’m shore I’ll talk more about it some other time.

I mean, I certainly wouldn’t be saying that if I was a child and felt this way. I felt quite the opposite growing up, but now that my mom had to restart her life 4 years ago, there are a lot of similarities to my 20-something existence. Sometimes she likes that we’re dealing with similar things, and other times she hates it.

Likes: not having to answer to anyone, getting to spend time how you want to, deeper friendships, realizing men pretend male-dominated chores are really hard when they aren’t, different level of closeness with mom, music feeling like it’s made just for you, befriending people you wouldn’t have expected, spontaneity, being alone.

Dislikes: constantly refilling the Brita filter, in-building laundry, living in an apartment (very different for someone whose been in a house with a family for decades), boring couples, no one wanting to hang on weeknights, being alone.

We share all of these feelings (aside from the weeknight hang thing), and it’s nice because it’s genuine. It’s not like my mom is trying to be the cool mom or fit a lifestyle that isn’t natural to her. It’s funny that I wrote part of an entry analyzing my family and their similarities to characters in The Sopranos months before the bagel shop opened because, after seeing my mom opening it, I keep thinking about this one character in relation to her.

We are introduced to Angie Bonpensiero early in the show as one of the mob wives who are almost indistinguishable from each other. They get lunch together, shop, and deal with the stressors of having mafia husbands. As we get to know her husband better, we see Angie as this meek freak that constantly worries about and fights with him. After he disappears, she is a wreck and has to relies on Tony Soprano to get by for a while. He eventually puts her in charge of managing her husband’s old body shop. We watch her metamorphosis into a strong single lady, working and getting things done. She drifts away from the mob wives, and we learn later that she starts her own loan sharking thing these mafia dudes do.

My mom is obviously way cooler than her and there are clearly lots of differences between their stories, but seeing the way Angie holds her own at the end of the show and just seems so unbothered makes me think of her. They have a similar empowerment arc.

Most mornings this week, I would wake up, walk the dog, and do some work. Eventually, I’d mozy over the bagel shop and revel in my nepo baby-ness, trying to make the bagelers laugh and bickering with my mom over trying to pay for a bagel. I’d sit and eat in the basement where she would join me while I’d look at the Nutella vats and massive Coke packs. Or if the shop was closed, we would hang out and chat all day.

I also worked out four times this week after really slacking on the gym lately. I used this week as a detox. I only hung out with my mom, dog, and Nonna aside from a very lively trivia night at 5801, where my mom also joined me. It’s just such an exhale to like the same things and debate things both smart (why do men in our suburb exclusively wear Penn State, Pitt, or Mt. Lebanon High School gear) and dumb (Sydney Sweeney American Eagle).

Just feeling lucky. Sometimes I go home and feel like a teenage freak and can’t be normal, but I think having Meera for the beginning chunk prevented that from happening. We can just eat Noodlehead and be normal.

I was slightly hopeful that this train back to New York would be better than my train from there because I could sit and work for the whole day, unlike the short burst of plane travel or nauseating buses and cars. Unfortunately, I was wrong because Amtrak WiFi is evil, and most of Pennsylvania doesn’t have enough signal for a personal hotspot to work.

I was cooking once I got closer to Philly, but, although my journey before then was beautiful, I was stuck missing meetings and barely getting anything done due to my extremely slow or nonexistent service. I was just stuck having to take it, and I was frustrated at my inability to create shareholder value.

Besides, how could I work when I was trying to figure out if the girl down the row was being sex trafficked? She and her — allegedly — dad got on in Lancaster. I think he was on drugs because he spoke loudly and stupidly in the way you do when you’re on them. He’s one of those white guys from a poor neighborhood that goes to a Black barber and wears tracksuits. The woman on the other line was yelling at him, which we heard because he kept telling her to stop yelling at him. He had a few heated phone conversations with this woman over the course of the ride, and from listening to him talk to his daughter — a nerdy, awkward teen or early-20s girl — we learned this was her mom. There was a lot of talk about this girl’s brother, as well.

The whole vibe just seemed incredibly off. I stared at the girl a lot in case she would look over and give me help me eyes, but she never did. She seemed genuinely comfortable with him, even though he seemed to not know too much about her. He did seem happy to be with her and listen to her stories. What made me think that he wasn’t a sex trafficker was how loud he was; we could all hear his conversations. Plus, at one point he said Wow, it really smells like Lifesaver gummies in here, and a girl a few rows back said Oh, I’m eating those. He laughed for a while and kept engaging with her in a joking way, too much talking to do with a random person who wasn’t alone. He just wasn’t discreet, but I also don’t know much about sex trafficking. When we arrived at Penn, he put on a safety vest with an MTA logo on it.

When I was in college, I loved double dates. Especially when I was with my ex, I was just excited to have a girlfriend that I could be out on the town with. When my friends started getting partners, going on double dates with them felt like such an expansive opportunity. Everyone gets to get closer, and your friendships change in a way that feels like maybe it could be like this forever with these same partners. I reveled in double dating.

Now almost five years into my relationship with Meera, I’ve gone on lots of double dates, and they have lost their luster. There are very few couples I actually have fun with. Part of what used to make them fun was the excitement of having a new partner to show off and getting to share that excitement with your friend doing the same. Maybe I also find friction because I’m not in a heterosexual couple and doing the girly giggly thing with the other girl and my boyfriend can do the sports-talking thing with the other boy. Then again, is that really fun for everyone?

Double dates have two underlying threads for me nowadays: competition and, similarly, competitive horniness. You and your partner are a unit across the table from another unit. It’s easy to stay on lighter, surface topics, especially if your partner and your friend’s partner are just getting to know each other and you don’t all have individual relationships.

It’s not like hanging out with new friends, though, because this is still a date. It’s also not just four individuals trying to bond, it’s, simultaneously, two units seeing if they fit together. You have your individual personas and your couple personas sussing each other out. People are touchy with their partners, staring at each other; they do that little whisper thing sometimes, or even a slightly different voice when just speaking to the other person. Part of dating someone is having a multiverse of inside jokes and dynamics that only exist in your bubble. On a double date, you give others a peek behind that curtain. It’s not the whole thing, but it’s more than what you normally see. It can feel competitive to show We are so in love and look so happy.

Maybe I’m revealing some kind of insecurity if that’s how I feel on double dates, but it is my truth, especially with heterosexual couples. Heterosexual relationships are often centered on performance and fitting into roles, which doesn’t have to be an indictment. That being said, I think performing is inherently competitive because you are doing something for an audience, and you want to win them over. Sometimes the performance is grueling, especially when you are sitting across from a couple that are more into playing roles than being themselves.

Every now and again, the competitive intimacy feels shades away from an invitation. Are we all about to have a foursome right now? Like I doubt they’re thinking that, and it’s not like I usually want them to be thinking that. When both couples are peeling those layers of intimacy, sometimes I wonder how far it could truly go. Plus, competition can be sexy.

I say all of that to praise one of the only couples I love double dating because we got dinner on Friday at buzzy reopened Indian spot Adda. Allie and Sam (yes, heterosexuals) are so fun to go out with because we always have so much to talk about. There’s none of that weird competitive feeling because we are all really friends. We double date not to show off that we can but because it’s fun to hang out the four of us. Neither of them are annoying about their relationship, and I like to think that we’re not either. They always want to go to fun restaurants that I do, and we just eat, drink, and laugh. Friday just felt so buzzy and fun.

All double dates should feel this way, but when all four of you don’t naturally gravitate towards the whole crew, it can be hard. This is going to sound so insufferable, but I think that the more we tear down gender roles the more fun double dates can be. Let me be the one that says ugh, women be shopping!

Months ago, I got Meera tickets to the hottest event in town: Seinfeld night at the Brooklyn Cyclones. I didn’t care about the baseball, just the Seinfeld, as it’s one of Meera’s longtime favorite shows.

The Cyclones are a Mets-affiliated High-A minor league team whose stadium is on the Coney Island boardwalk. It was my second time on Coney Island and first time seeing a baseball game in New York other than watching the Yankees with my family in high school.

If you’ve ever been to a minor league baseball game, it’s because you’re either a freak or a bored person trying to do something fun in your lame town. I had a lovely time watching the New Hampshire Fisher Cats play at a stadium connected to a Hilton a block from the news station I worked at.

As someone who doesn’t care about sports, I might be better suited to the minor leagues. Especially in places like New York and New Hampshire that have great major league teams nearby, minor league audiences aren’t as competitive. You don’t have as many screaming, angry dudes.

Plus, the minor leagues want to do whatever they can to bring people in. They have theme nights, cheap tickets, and drink packages. It’s designed for casual fans and especially families. The team itself is not made up of a ton of players that have potential to make it out of the minors, so its nice to support people following their dreams.

Meera and I went with Matias, and each of us were given a Kramer bobblehead upon arrival. Our seats were $50 each and fantastic, right near third base. Coney Island is already such a specific, strange place, and the game has that same kind of odd razzle dazzle. They played Seinfeld clips between innings, which transition seamlessly to player walk-on songs, all of which were in Spanish.

The team has an MC named King Henry, a red-faced relatively normal guy with a crown, who leads cheers, hosts on-field minigames, and takes pics with kids. They also have a few cheerleaders that I assume are in college. One cheerleader was terribly sloppy, and King Henry at one point called one of them by the wrong name (Sharon instead of Sarah). I found all of this charming.

We had such a nice time, mostly talking with the game in the background. The seriousness is completely gone from the sport, and it’s all about having fun. Everyone is there to have a good time and enjoy baseball, loved ones, and warm summer nights. We could see the roller coasters from the left. We watched cute kids run around and talked to a couple that asked us how old we thought they were but then wouldn’t tell us how old. I think we undershot, which hopefully made them feel good. Just tell us, though!

The climax of the game was after it was over (in a loss): the Elaine dance contest. There’s a famous clip from Seinfeld of Elaine, kind of one of the most iconic female characters ever, dancing extremely poorly with these little kicks. Random women appear on the field and each dance one-by-one to the song she danced to in her style. Some women have naturally curly hair like her, while others wear wigs and outfits like her.

It was electric. It would be false to say that most of the attendees weren’t there for this moment, specifically. Here’s a video from this year’s competition. The first girl to dance, Olivia, was the one who ended up winning the whole thing. She just had that it factor. The women were divided into three groups, and a finalist was picked from each group besides the last one that had one adult winner and a duo of young girls who actually did amazing. Everyone was screaming for their favorites, Olivia at one point being hypnotic enough to elicit cheers of her name without her having to prompt it.

It was such a fun, wholesome time that could only happen where I was. We got hotdogs from Nathan’s after and ate them on the boardwalk facing the water. While major league baseball yields competition and greed, the minor leagues allow you to just enjoy the sport, the night, and this life.

Why don’t regular people do it anymore? What happened? The only IG lives I care about are things like Kori King as the Lorax dancing Maddie’s “Cry” solo from Dance Moms.

Meera wanted to coax our friends yesterday into going live, and Sarah did not need coaxing; she just did it. I was in conversation elsewhere and didn’t know about any of this until the camera was in my face. It was euphoric.

I remember going on Instagram live at random parties or during the pandemic just because it was fun. I feel like we’ve lost this carefree willingness to go live. Maybe it’s a fascism indicator as we fear being truly seen.

Before there were question games like We’re Not Really Strangers, us yearners had “The 36 Questions That Lead to Love,” which I’ve always called the 36 questions to fall in love because I clearly don’t have a memory.

If you haven’t heard of it, let me put you on. You and the person you’re on an early date with ask each other these questions back and forth that progressively get deeper. At the end of the questioning, you’re supposed to stare into each others’ eyes for four whole minutes. Apparently, you fall in love after completing this process.

Before my first girlfriend was such, she was my friend, quickly becoming one of my best friends the more time we spent together. Neither of us knew we were queer, but I just felt impossibly drawn to her. During a very boring rehearsal we had downtime during, I had learned about the 36 questions and thought we should do it just because it’s fun to get to know each other better. We even did the staring into each others’ eyes part! I genuinely went into this not thinking I was doing anything romantic. It’s crazy the tricks my mind can play on itself.

I’m not saying that we wouldn’t have eventually had something with each other if I didn’t do the 36 questions, but they definitely moved things along. I think we first made out soon after that day. Things felt realer and more intense after we completed the questions and the staring.

Since then, I’ve taken the 36 questions with me to so many different places, and it’s always different. Of course I’ve done them with my two other girlfriends and a few other people I’ve dated, but I’ve mostly done it with friends. It’s different every time I do it, and that’s what makes it so fun. Sometimes I do it one-on-one but have also done it in groups as big as 8. I like seeing which questions resonate with people and which ones we might skip. I remember it once took me four hours to do it, but it’s also taken 30 minutes. I’ve maybe done the staring-into-each-others’-eyes part once or twice.

Yesterday, some of my friends and I did it on the train home. We barely got through half of it before our ride ended, but it was so fun because it was a mix of people I know extremely well and other friends that are much newer to my life. It was such a nice way to cap off the night.

It reminded me of one of my favorite times I’ve done this. My parents were supposed to come to Boston for Thanksgiving in 2020 but canceled last-minute (which I would later learn is because they separated). Instead, my mom ordered a Thanksgiving to-go box from since-closed Cambridge fave Craigie on Main that I brought to a house in Allston I’d never been to. I joined in with my roommates Ria and Anaïs and a few dudes I didn’t previously meet who also could not go home for the holiday. It was an unconventional way to spend the day, and partway through I brought out the questions. We had a ball, and I really felt like I got to know the guys in a deep way that I wouldn’t have expected after not knowing them hours prior.

If you have never done this before, I’m putting you on. Do it with your partner, your friend, your friends, some randoms, whoever. I wish I had a recording of all of my answers and how they have changed, but what hasn’t changed is my belief in how these questions bring people together.

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