…and to be honest my *own* past even seems immeasurably distant sometimes, like oh my god who on earth was that awkward painfully earnest boy who was me when I was last in Rome nineteen years ago; Alles Vergängliche / Ist nur ein Gleichnis; so it goes.
Anyway thank-you dear museum curators, I appreciate the work you do, I don’t mind you don’t have the famous guys’ beds, we see the past dimly across a dark gulf of interpretation anyway…
(the Keats-Shelley house were even like hey it’s not *our* fault we don’t have the bed, the Italians burned Keat’s bed because he died of TB in it, but here’s a bed that looks like his bed maybe.)
both the Goethe house and the Keats-Shelley house that I also visited were cutely apologetic about not having any original furniture, like honey I don’t mind if you don’t have Goethe’s bed anymore it’s ok. (Perhaps they just feel overshadowed by the Goethehaus in Weimar where they do have his bed.)
Ok what I *actually* did was walk around a lot, eat carbonara, visit my old pal Goethe, and sit drinking coffee or negronis while reading @adapalmer.bsky.social’s new book on the Renaissance — which is highly entertaining, even if you’re not a recovering history professor.
Roman forum
Nadia contemplating in a cafe
Empty Roman street
Trans girl graffiti reading “8 Marco Roma Trans Femininista”
Went to Rome for some timely Meditations on Decline and Fall…
He also wasn’t totally wrong I *do* 3-bet less than the Game Theory Optimal sometimes 🤷🏻‍♀️.
Some poker chips about to turn into more poker chips.
More poker chips.
Guy next to me on a losing streak still mansplained poker to me. (But tbh he seemed like an Egg so I didn’t mind so much as I would have. I’m terribly forgiving.)
(I go and leave Bluesky for just 10 months and suddenly you’re *all* here?)
Nadia in a black beret and makeup
Viennese cafe scene with Sachertorte and white wine.
went to Vienna for a weekend so I could wear a beret and eat Sachertorte. there were no trans girls on grindr within 100 miles but the grand cafes were open until midnight, so.
Nadia in a brown tweed ladies suit, striped waistcoat, and blue silk cravat.
New: Harris tweed suit. Old: cravat I wore obsessively as a twinky boy in London 15 years ago, and a favorite waistcoat from grad school. As my old pal Goethe says: Auch der Gedanke willig, sinnig, schnelle / Sich ums Vergangne wie ums KĂĽnftige schlang.
Nadia and another Nadia in a mirror.
doppelgängeresque
Nadia with her eyes closed in a polka dot dress.
This was taken after I’d finished everything I had to do with the food, hence the beatific expression.
Nadia’s thanksgiving buffet
Nadia’s pies
Nadia’s dinner rolls
Happy Trans Giving sign
Hosted a trans thanksgiving for 12 guests yesterday in my tiny apartment — cooked vast amounts of food, including two roast chickens, two dozen dinner rolls, miso-glazed carrots, and two pies. Exhausted; contented. Community is fun… but remember, it requires a lot of chairs.
🤯
Nadia looking out of the train window.
On the train from Scotland to London, periodically refreshing grindr (t4t filter) every 50 miles down the east coast mainline. (Conclusion: t’all need more t4t in the UK, poor dears.)
I also had problems with the oven which was disconcertingly tiny and in was Celsius and had a convection fan that you couldn’t turn off, with that and not knowing what half a pound of cream cheese was in grams I have now officially lost all my Britishing Skills. :(
(had met my mum’s cisgay friends the day before whereupon I proceeded to shock and fascinate them with descriptions of my FFS.)
It went well and was delicious although turns out “room temperature” butter in a Scottish farmhouse kitchen early in the morning in winter is a rather different thing from room temperature butter in my Seattle apartment, so.
Nadia’s single-layer carrot cake with brown butter cream cheese frosting and pecans on top.
Made carrot cake for tea with my mum’s cishet friends who wanted to meet the mysterious Other Daughter who mysteriously lives in Seattle and of whom there are mysteriously no photos in the house from before two years ago.
oh yes that’s of course the real reason I’m wearing it - I love my Barbour jacket despite its Tory lady vibes.
Nadia wearing a Barbour jacket and tweed skirt.
found the perfect disguise as a trans woman visiting the UK: dress like a Tory councilor.
Nadia in a beige trench coat and silk scarf, looking pleased with herself because it’s October.
It is properly rainy, windy October fall. Long have I plotted my outfits for this season, laid down my plans in the despised baleful days of summer, biding my time — now at least I can unleash my trench coats and turtlenecks and tweed on an unsuspecting world.
Headshot of Emily
The GIRLFRIENDS cover!
NYC save the dates!
BOOK LAUNCHES for GIRLFRIENDS 🥰
OCTOBER 19, McNally Jackson Seaport w/@emotrophywife.bsky.social (7 pm)
OCTOBER 25, Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Heights branch
w/@leahtigers.bsky.social (7 PM)
MARK YOUR CALENDARS
cc: @emializh.bsky.social (prolly esp. yer calendar)
hot mean and bi, that might be the closest you can find in Seattle?
she’s really good at it you all should undergo this delightful ordeal.
Got a friend to tell me all the criticisms that a Nemesis would level at me. She began with how I’m vain, snobbish, and self-centered. Criticisms got sharper as she went on. Recommended.
It hasn’t inspired me to be a good person. No. Instead I shall be vain and snobbish in ever more refined ways.
I mean I’m not opposed to smoking in a dingy alleyway beside the dumpsters, one meets good people there, but yeah, I’d prefer the posh drawing room with Chesterfield sofas and a nice decanter.
grindr guy with blank profile, messaging me asking “What’s T4T mean”
local grindr guys continue to Have Questions. oh buddy, I wish I had answers. every time I think I glimpse the Meaning of T4T, in a fleeting glance in a bar or in the folds of a shared unmade bed, still it recedes from me; I spend a lifetime unraveling its Mystery, and arrive only at the beginning.
thing is, I’m not a lesbian, have never been a lesbian, and yet, in practice these days, I’m only into other trans girls. So maybe he needs a whole book on T4T sociology…