About the Author (2)

andy pink, live from pre-thanksgiving fasting —

i came out at the age of 17, first to my mom and sister, who cried but were okay, later to my friends at swarthmore, then later that summer to my friends from brookline high school (who i remain close to today). i was a j.crew queen for a long time, and my friend rachel referred to me as being in a "glass closet," meaning it was obvious to everybody that i was gay. i spent a lot of time dancing (no drugs) in college, and i had some boyfriends, mostly forgettable and short lived, it was a weird scene at swarthmore, mostly because all of us knew that we were there to work and learn, and not much else. brookline high was a different scene: i was in a gay straight alliance of sorts, my friends and i, via a school bus, went to the gay rights march on washington in 1993, we were the first public high school to march on washington for any cause. i had sex with my friend ron on the bus in the back (blowjob) — and we stopped in maryland for scrapple (ron deserves his own portrait under "the boys" on the website). all saying, coming out was a really great experience for me, it was scary, you feel alone (unless you call something like pflag for backup), but once you're out it really is a freeing feeling. i still think that it's nobody's business, though possibly against my better judgment as i tend to think of sexuality as public rather than private (also a feminist tenet). anway: i'm pro-out, pro-meds, anti-psychiatry, and anti-capitalist. and i mean it. 1993.

my gradmother was very important to me. molly and i were estranged from the other set, largely because my dad's suicide tore a wedge of blame, responsibility, and misery across the fabric of our family (which was always one-sided, anyway). esther (grandmother) was probably the smartest person i never knew, she said that, "you either clean the house or you read," and she chose to read, and was awfully well read. she took the times literary supplement, which rich doesn't know about, but which is quite possibly the most erudite of journals in the world. my mother still reads the new york times and the new yorker (as does my stepfather), and i always read those, though have also since taken to the atlantic and gq.

molly was truly hilarious. she had an aesthetic that was all her own. she made funny faces with funny voices, and she was silly and got a great kick out of herself and others. i often think i don't really enjoy other people so much (or at least not authentically), but molly was the real deal. she had a lot of her own expressions: deal with it, good one good one, can we not? (before it became commonplace), and she was a great one to abbreviate in the most absurd ways. she really was my best friend, and her loss stings even five years after her death. she truly was the funniest person in america, and she should have gone to la to make it, though she went to bank street and got an ed degree, later teaching in the newton public schools.

my mom is an alcoholic. but she's also the kindest, most giving, person you'll ever meet. she's also incredibly anxious, i'm not sure how she is able to enjoy a speck of life, as every moment for her is stained by nervousness. but she is so generous. she always tells me she would catch a grenade for me (like the bruno mars's song), and i believe her. throughout my hospitalizations, she has been a force of advocacy and determination, and she always regularly visits me inpatient. (i have been hospital free for 2 years, and imagine i probably won't be going back ever again). she is getting old now, she's fallen twice, hip, and she flipped the new toyota corrola that her partner bought for her, all of the airbags deployed, and it's not really clear how she survived the accident: flipped corrola. i'm not even sure how you flip a corrola.

rich should listen to pop music. he would have a better sense of the sitation (on my end, at least).

goodnight, goodluck, until tomorrow —

happy thanksgiving, y'all,

Andy Pink

such a good one good one