The First Issue

AUTHOR’S NOTE

How do you decide what to write for the first issue of a magazine in an attention economy? It was crucial that the first issue of tiny Pleasures gave a clear vision of what to expect, while combining what sparked the most curiosity. I didn’t have much time to worry about what to write because within days, I was logging valuable hours on my special interest in Heated Rivalry.

The essay “Contextualizing Heated Rivalry” was the first complete thing I had written in over six months. Like many others, I finished the series the same day and started it again (while skipping episode 3). I was hungry to read discourse about the show since I discovered it six weeks after it premiered. I checked Reddit, online magazines, and even created a Threads account out of desperation. To my horror, there was very little discourse that interested me about the show and so I called my friends to whine about it. I immediately began writing.

I chose the Diabolical Lies podcast episode discussing the show as a template for addressing various aspects of the show without having to choose one theme. I hoped to offer a sobering perspective with meaningful contexts and established definitions to counteract the pedestrian discourse it had garnered since it first aired. I knew I was satisfied when I stopped rewatching the show and inserting it into every conversation.

The theme for the first issue is Something Old, Something New because, coincidentally, all of the sections feature something old and new.

My editor, Ella Ray, is featured in the first interview for the “What’s your occupation?” column. I hoped it would be a way to meet the person who arranges my good sentences into coherent paragraphs. I have known her online for over six years and it is a full circle moment to have her as my editor.

I have tried to address the phenomenon of Sex and the City since before I started writing professionally in 2021. The “I couldn’t help but wonder” column emerged as the most cohesive way to include the show in the tiny Pleasures project by examining the questions Carrie Bradshaw poses on most episodes throughout the show. For this first issue, I chose the bisexual episode to juxtapose it with how Heated Rivalry handled the topic of bisexuality.

tiny Media includes books, music, and films featuring LGBTQ+ characters and themes. We’re thrilled to finally send you this first issue. It feels surreal to finally begin this project. Read it chronologically or shuffle it!

COLUMN

What’s Your Occupation?

Q: Where do you live and how old are you?
A: I live in Portland, Oregon. And I am twenty-nine years old

Q: What is your highest level of education?

A: I went to and finished college at a 4 year university

Q: At what age did you start working?

A: Fourteen

Q: What is your current profession?

A: I do a lot of things, but I’m an editor and writer mostly

Q: Did you start out in this field? Can you map out your career for me?

A: I’ll talk about writing and editing because those are my most mappable lines of work. Since I could write, I’ve written stories, conducted interviews, and loved reading. In college I thought I would become a “capital A” Art Historian—meaning I’d go on to get a PhD and then produce research and write books about my specialized topic, Black American performance art. But I went to a state school with an abysmal Art History department and I don’t come from wealth, making my survival in that field pretty fragile. To sustain myself, I worked any and every art job I could get my hands on. Before the white people in charge let me write anything, I installed projectors into ceilings, re-painted white wall galleries, gave tours to board members who still said “colored,” coordinated volunteers for art festivals, picked up empty glasses after openings—all the physical and emotional labor people conveniently forget makes the arts run. From there, I wrote here and there when the folks in charge would allow it: press releases, random comms, a little something for the museum magazine, shit like that.

Working in galleries and museums was foundational to my understanding that I didn’t want to work in these spaces and that academia wasn’t for me either. In 2020, after being fired from all three of my jobs at the beginning of quarantine, two people who I kept bumping into at openings took chances on me as a writer and editor. Sharita Towne, is a brilliant Black woman artist also from Oregon who gave me first writing paid residency. For three months, I occupied a basement studio tucked beneath hers, and wrote and made art uninterrupted for the first time in my life. She taught me how to risograph print, put my writing in published zine, and connected me with a curator who then exhibited this work at our local museum. Amelia Rina, arts writer and editorial wizard, hired me at twenty-three as the Associate Editor for her online arts magazine called Variable West. She taught me how to edit from the ground up and published my first “big” piece of art writing and I was there until the magazine closed earlier this year. Both of these people pushed me to call myself a writer/editor/artist. Over the last six years I’ve built a writing and editing career out of studying my craft, being a forever student that is confident enough to take on experimental and non-traditional projects, saying no to things that don’t align, and a desire to support language production and criticisms from everyday folks.

Q: Do you have any certifications for your current profession?

A: Nope. I wasn’t formally taught editing in school, like many of my colleagues who went onto graduate school or specifically studied English at the university level. I was given a Chicago Manual, told to learn it, and everything else I’ve learned on the fly, through Youtube university or books, and by being rigorously edited by others.

Q: What other skills do you possess that support your current profession?

A:

I’m a Virgo, so I’m hypercritical, detail-obsessed, and kinda turned on by “less sexy” tasks like technical copy editing. I’m a slash and burn type editor when it comes to content and developmental work, meaning I’m really good at pushing the text until it’s “where it’s supposed to be,” pulling on all the loose threads and poking holes. It’s a bit full on, but this Virgo-ness, this inclination to make things as close to the vision as possible, is because I believe in the writer’s capacity to make the work better
Reading! Like really reading, annotating, getting into the material and asking questions, and revisiting texts has only made me more capable of translating my own ideas and helping others do the same
Discernment. Sometimes as an editor, and as a writer, you need to know when something isn’t working whether it’s your own or not.

Q: Do you mind sharing your estimated salary?

A: It varies year to year based on if I have a 9 to 5 work on top of my writing and editing, I’ve made $30,000 one year and $70,000 the next. So within that range.

ESSAY

Contextualizing Heated Rivalry

March 20, 2026

Sourced from IMDB

Six weeks after Heated Rivalry ushered the cisheterosexual world into a humiliating hysteria, I scoured the internet in search of affirming, challenging, or enlightening discourse about the most-watched TV show on HBOMAX since 2020, according to The New Yorker. After a simple Google search, almost every article I read in supposedly prestigious media like The New Yorker, British Vogue, The Guardian, and even Out Magazine—the nation’s leading publication for LGBTQ+ media—centered heteronormativity in creatively facile fashions. Did no one find it elementary that the dominating conversation almost two months after the premiere was, “Why do straight women resonate so much with Heated Rivalry?”

Heated Rivalry is an adapted TV show based on the books by Rachel Reid—Heated Rivalry and The Long Game—about sex, desire, and sexuality portrayed through the sexual relationship of its main characters, hockey stars Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov. Framing Heated Rivalry as a love story effaces what the show is at its core: A historically humane projection of queer life. Positing Heated Rivalry as a love story that transcends all sexual identities, in defense of its merits, dilutes issues of casual sex, gender, and sexual identity. The show is also surprisingly beautifully shot. At a time when everything in the mainstream is excruciatingly monotonous, jejune, or apathetic, Heated Rivalry is a multi-sensory opulence with lighting, framing, music, and a spectacular screenplay.

The sex scenes don’t feel gratuitous because of stylistic (camera work, editing, and lighting) and ethical (the use of an intimacy coordinator) choices. Jacob Tierney, the show’s writer and director, respects his audience; he refuses to be didactic, which is now routine in every form of contemporary media. He eschews tropes of queer presentism, which queer studies graduate student Colton Valentine defines as “a Whig history of sexuality that positions today’s LGBTQ+ writers as liberators of the closet past,” by situating these characters alongside, rather than against, documented depictions of queer identity and life. It captures in vivid vignettes, sincere characterizations, historical and cultural depictions of queer life in the late aughts, and the pressures of the “exceptional minority” trope in meticulous blink-or-you’ll-miss-it dialogue and acting.

Sourced from IMDB

Sourced from IMDB

Much of what I feel for Heated Rivalry is entwined in the individual choices of the director, Jacob Tierney, and actors Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, made to adapt this story for TV. It is Tierney’s incorporation of consent as foreplay that intensifies the effervescence of the moment; the camera work invites you into each intimate encounter without intruding. Williams inhabits Shane Hollander with depth, charm, and striking (micro) facial acting. When we meet Shane in the opening scene of the first episode, we immediately learn that he is a rule follower with a competitive sense of humor. By the end of the second episode, we gather that he is deliberate, with a profound sensitivity illustrated through all of his unsent text messages to Ilya. Storrie personifies Ilya with hypnotic line deliveries and a convincing Russian accent for a rural Texan native. During a scene in episode two, Olympians, in the bathroom after the MHL awards (the show substitutes the NHL with MHL to avoid copyright issues), Ilya rejects Shane after making him beg for fellatio. With deep vocal timbre and an intoxicating cadence, he says to Shane, “We will go back to our seats, watch the rest of this boring show, and then go to a boring party after. And then, when you have been waiting all night, you'll go back to my hotel room and I will maybe… maybe do more than just suck your dick.” By the end of the scene, I was spellbound.

The show is filled with queer history and coding, but my favorite is episode one’s shower scene, where Ilya masturbates in front of Shane. Gender studies academic and intimacy coordinator Amber Rose McNeil historicizes and contextualizes this scene in the Heated Rivalry intimacy scene analysis they publish on their website. They remind us about cruising, “a way that gay and queer men have historically found other gay and queer men to have sexual encounters with,” to illustrate that Ilya’s masturbation isn’t random or merely entertainment. McNeil breaks down Shane and Ilya’s “casually distanced cruising” by highlighting all of the moments that lead up to the shower masturbation scene. McNeil selects the hotel cycling scene to illustrate how Tierney’s camera work shows us where Shane’s eyes rest throughout the rousing exchange, specifying that this scene features a “light cruising” where “Ilya is showing and gauging interest and attraction. His words and actions are flirty, providing Shane with information but also gathering information from Shane. In this scene, the flirting and measured behaviour from Ilya are more apparent to a general audience. But, when viewed through a queer lens, it is another scene that intentionally and handsomely illustrates queer coding, queer history, and queer culture.”

Heated Rivalry’s conceit includes a contrast between the pressures of the homophobic hockey world and the couple’s affection. It is notably the tension in the exterior world and repercussions in their interior life that make for a compelling watch. The show is an earnest, imaginative deviation from representations of queer life as a miserable existence portrayed in many queer presentist media. Queer presentist media portray caricatural models of queerness through contemporary characterizations and aesthetics, while, as Valentine puts it, "[canonizing] contemporary texts, but eliding and delegitimizing older queer lives and artworks” to make queerness digestible for a heterosexual audience. The writers of the book and of the screenplay reject the impulse to highlight the inherent unhappiness of a life that deviates from the dominant narrative, ultimately refusing to make the injustices and wrongdoings of a heteronormative society its central point.

It did not surprise me that the dominant media ignored all the complexities of this exquisite production. What confounds me is the seriousness with which queer media and social media personalities have devoted to theorizing the show’s cisheterosexual resonance as if queer existence needed universal appeal to rationalize its reason for being. Unsurprisingly, the abundance of theories for this asinine phenomenon has failed to produce any imaginative insight. Is it shocking that relying on the restrictive framework of heteronormativity, which predictably excludes anything that doesn’t fit neatly into its bleak worldview, has produced terrifyingly colorless conclusions?

I will not subjugate you or myself to more humiliation by offering a theory on this futile discourse. Instead of a dignifying review, which the cast and crew deserve—but is absent in legacy and independent media—I have chosen a superlative response in the mainstream (although it falls short) as a framework to contextualize Heated Rivalry from a queer perspective.

Sourced from IMDB

The New Yorker’s Critics at Large podcast offers an interesting perspective on the proverbial closet. They also mention the show’s resonance with the straights™, so beware!

***

In the episode “Scott Galloway vs. Heated Rivalry: Who will save men?” the hosts of Diabolical Lies, a culture and political podcast hosted by Katie Gatti Tassin and Caro Claire Burke, analyze professional grifter Scott Galloway’s vision of masculinity as proposed in his book, Notes on Being a Man, and Heated Rivalry’s supposed “portrayal of masculinity” as solutions for “reimagining the masculinity crisis” from their leftist feminist lens. The focus of my response will start from midway through the episode when they begin discussing Heated Rivalry because I do not have valuable minutes to expend theorizing on the screeching incoherence of Scott Galloway’s book.

In the first part of the podcast episode, the hosts offer visceral feelings and favorite snapshots of the show. They introduce a TikTok video of a cisheterosexual woman outlining personal claims for why the show resonates in a diaristic manner, culminating in trivial observations and fallacious reasoning steeped in Anglo-American feminism. They wholeheartedly agree that the video, “succinctly highlights all of how we are grappling with this idea of idealistic masculinity versus the masculinity that we really deal with in the world today.” Whatever that means.

They claim that “the show walks the line between what is (masculinity that we deal with in the world today) and what could be (idealistic masculinity portrayed in the show).” Legacy media and audiences gushed about the presence of “safe masculinity” instead of “toxic masculinity.” Even the TikToker asserts that “They are literally the embodiment of traditional masculinity. Yet, their masculinity is never weaponized.” But what is safe masculinity and how is it different from toxic masculinity? If masculinity is defined as the qualities or attributes regarded as characteristic of men and boys, which preserves hegemonic ideals for gender and sexual identities within binaries determined by biological sex, how does one achieve “safe masculinity” when masculinity itself is restrictive? I reject the idea that there is such a thing as “safe masculinity” when the doctrine of masculinity ostracizes those who deviate from these norms, while imposing a circumscribed order for those who adhere. The hosts and Tiktoker are essentially saying: Isn’t it so nice that they get to be buff and chiseled while talking like girls? This assertion is both misogynistic and homophobic because there’s the subtext that these queer men are vulnerable privately while passing as straight publicly, as if it’s a good thing. Both “safe masculinity” and “toxic masculinity” are oxymoronic ideas.

The TikToker expresses that it “causes grief” to watch two men on an even physical, economic, and gendered playing field, not because she envied the relationship, but she “craves that freedom within love.” She boldly states that “there's no inherent power dynamic between them, no underlying expectations that one person be smaller, softer, gentler, easier, or more accommodating because of their gender. They're both allowed to be strong and vulnerable at the same time and also masculine without being threatening.” The hosts also reflected on the absence of a “power dynamic” between Shane and Ilya. What I think they all mean to say is that there is no power imbalance between the couple. Power dynamics is the distribution and experience of power in any relational dynamic. In Shane and Ilya’s case, the dynamic is balanced and not for the reasons outlined. Perhaps the ignorance surrounding the concept of power dynamics has produced shallow conclusions.

Sourced from IMDB

Power dynamics exist in every relational dynamic, but not every relationship, romantic, familial, professional, and platonic, experiences an imbalance of power. A relationship (and I am not strictly referring to romantic relationships) can start balanced and end or remain imbalanced. Many factors, such as class, age, race, gender, ethnicity, and culture, affect the distribution and experience of power. In Shane and Ilya’s case, the absence of a power imbalance isn’t merely because they are men. The relationship is able to maintain a healthy balance because both parties are unconcerned with overly defining their roles within the relationship, which is the norm for heterosexual couples. Together, they reject the prescriptive, proscriptive, and descriptive confines of heteronormativity, thereby creating a balanced relationship. They exclude heteronormative expectations commonly adopted in most sexual and romantic relationships. Ilya never weaponizes Shane’s virginity by using his experience to dominate Shane. He playfully asserts his sexual knowledge competitively before reciprocating oral sex during their first sexual encounter and never mentions his experience again. Although Shane enjoys relinquishing control during their sexual encounters, it is also true that he initiates sex just as much as Ilya does. When he admits to Rose Landry, a famous actress he briefly dates, that he “prefers being the hole rather than the peg,” he is simply expressing a preference. Instead of prescriptive agendas or restrictive labels like “leader” and “follower,” resulting in dominance and control, they have invited playfulness, consent, healthy teasing, and tenderness. They take turns starting and meeting each other.

It is a myth that the relational dynamics on the show are “functionally unimaginable” for cisheterosexual people. The TikToker hypothesizes that an egalitarian romantic relationship is unattainable because “no matter what, in a heterosexual relationship, misogyny plays a role regardless of how progressive both of you are.” Truthfully, cisheterosexuals seldom explore imaginative solutions outside of their microscopic ideas of what romantic relationships should look like. To have egalitarian romantic partnerships, cisheterosexual women, like their male counterparts, must confront the homophobia that surrounds their romantic life. The women reject men who are either openly bisexual or men who exist outside the parameters of the dominant definitions for how men should act, in this case, “strong and vulnerable at the same time and also masculine without being threatening.” Tedious!

It bears repeating that the dismal worldview and frigid imaginations of heteronormativity remain inferior for comprehending queer relationality that exists outside of the binaries of heterosexuality, i.e., bisexuality or genderqueer identities. Even with the best intentions, a cisheteronormative lens inadvertently excludes and sanitizes Ilya’s bisexual identity. Throughout the podcast episode, the hosts (and many others who have theorized on the show’s resonance with cisheterosexual women, including The New Yorker’s Critics at Large podcast hosts) omit or gloss over Ilya’s bisexuality as if it were a trivial characteristic like having blue eyes. Bisexuality exists outside the monosexual framework, threatening monosexual dominance and deconstructing the idea of sex. Through omission, the hosts are unable to perceive and translate the nuances differentiating the queer sexual and romantic relations of the central characters from gay and lesbian couples with heteronormative dynamics. To create equitable partnerships under a patriarchal economy, monosexuals must abandon the illusion of safety and security the heteronormative doctrine promises in pursuit of a queer political praxis that interrogates the conception of power and deconstructs the dominant narrative of gender identity, sexuality, and behavior. Michael Foucault’s History of Sexuality, and the writings of queer theorists such as Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley’s Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic: Queer Imaginings of the Middle Passage, and Black feminist theorists such as Patricia Hills Collins’ Black Feminist Thought are critical texts for queer and heterosexual people looking to develop a queer political praxis.

Sourced from IMDB

Suppositions on queer relational dynamics through the lens of cisheteronormativity have also curtailed any meaningful discourse about the show. Towards the end of the video, the TikToker professes that the show “resonates because they show what love looks like when gender stops interfering, and it reveals what's possible and what isn't.” The approach is homophobic and illiterate, regardless of intention. Neither the hosts nor the person in this TikTok has questioned their unfounded claims. Because if they’d looked further down, they’d ask, “If Ilya and Shane can have a balanced dynamic where ‘gender stops interfering’ just because they’re gay and men, how then can one explain the misogyny and internalized homonegativity of coupled gay men? Or the rejection of ‘feminized' men in queer communities?” The analysis suffers from an absence of consideration for relevant qualities that shape the main character’s identities and how they experience each other.

Maybe the question isn’t “who will save men,” which is undoubtedly a bootless errand, but theories for how cisheterosexual women might extricate themselves from the clutches of a heteronormative abyss.

***

One of the hosts asserts that “Shane and Ilya's difficulty with communication is quite literally shown via language barrier. Ilya can barely speak English.” They claim the language barrier supposedly prevents the couple from sharing their true feelings, which makes the relationship “largely physical.” According to them, the couple is only able to communicate better once Ilya’s English improves. The absence of communication between Shane and Ilya (to the hosts) is “a very central issue in masculinity.”

Shane Hollander is biracial (Japanese 2nd-generation mother and white Canadian father) and lives in Canada. Ilya Rozanov, Russian, lives in Boston during the hockey season, and spends summers in Moscow with his father and brother, whom he literally and figuratively refers to as “police.” These national and racial identities inform their early and later communicative fashion. Hollander is also established as neurodivergent in the book, which Jacob Tierney superbly portrays without ever telling it throughout the season.

Sourced from IMDB

I was sure we had watched different shows because these conclusions were incomprehensible and simply fiction. Supposing that Ilya can barely speak English when most of the show is in English is xenophobic. It is an uninformed analysis of non-native English speakers, which omits the nuances and particularities of how communication is culturally determined. Misunderstanding how someone communicates because of cultural differences is not the same as speaking different languages. Ilya’s communication style must be considered through his Russian identity, familial dynamics, and tragedies. When he first meets Shane, it has only been five years since he found his mother, who died by suicide. He speaks subtextually and it is difficult for anyone with neurodivergence to parse, especially Shane. These variables inform how he camouflages with bravado and humor. At the same time, Ilya’s sense of humor is both cultural and personal. When Marleau, Ilya’s teammate, observes him texting and comments on his blushing face, Ilya responds with what might be my favorite line in the show, “Uh, no, never in life have I blushed. Russians do not do this.” It is simultaneously the most Russian response, as it is indicative of Ilya’s personality. Only Ilya would object by making a common, human, and involuntary reaction a universally “Russian thing.” With Shane, he nestles his affection in humor. In jest, he calls Shane “Mr. Real Estate” because of what he calls a “real estate fetish.” In the scene before Shane visits Ilya’s Boston home for the first time in episode four, Ilya fakes indifference when Svetlana finds him watching a TV special of Shane discussing his love for architecture at his custom-built cottage home in Ottawa. What intrigues me about Ilya is his ability to use humor to elusively communicate his affection for Shane and expose how well he knows the object of his affection. He is neither cunning nor cruel.

Shane compartmentalizes external expectations and pressures as the first Asian Canadian signed to the Metros while balancing a relationship with his mother, who is also his manager. Shane’s neurodivergence is crucial in understanding miscommunications with Ilya throughout the season. Neurodivergence affects how Shane interprets Ilya’s impish nature at various points throughout the show. However, neurodivergence does not imply an absence of feeling. Compartmentalization does not diminish Shane's capacity to feel everything, everywhere, all at once. He does not pathologize or expedite emotional processing or introspection. Instead of interpreting Shane’s realizations as delayed, we can appreciate this stunning unfurling of sexual awakening and identity.

What I hope to convey here is that even two native speakers of the same language can have similar miscommunications. Communication is regional, personal, and cultural. Subtle and conspicuous nuances, similar to what I have outlined above, affect how we all communicate.

Sourced from IMDB

In the relationship’s infancy and especially before their first sexual encounter, Shane and Ilya’s communication is explicit, oblique, and non-verbal. All of their flirtation is sketched with implicit dialogue and communicated with their bodies. My favorite of their early interactions is when Ilya, the more forward of the two, starts flirting by saying, “See you at the draft,” after beating Shane’s team at the International Prospect Cup. Six months later, after the cycling scene—an interaction I have concluded is the most exquisite foreplay—Shane tells Ilya, “See you in October.” It’s hard to miss Ilya’s faint smile after this interaction because Shane is mimicking how Ilya expresses interest, which is an understated example of how one begins and the other joins.

The two are teenagers and barely know each other when the sexual relationship begins. Any expectation of intense emotionality would be premature. It is true that they both struggle to express themselves in the infancy of the relationship, but are we to ignore the external circumstances—familial and systemic as well as cultural and personal nuances that dictate how these young men communicate? In their defense, the slow progression of their communication with one another is realistic and educational for young people starting to navigate and cultivate romantic lives. The lack of emotional communication between the two doesn’t delineate their relationship into “a largely physical one.” Instead, they begin by clearly defining the sexual relationship. And while confusing for both of them at different times and for different reasons, they allow each other the space to navigate personal confusions and external conflicts without saddling the other or their relationships with paralyzing expectations. Essentially, their scanty dialogue is simply because the relationship started out as, in Ilya’s words, "plans to fuck,” but then morphs into something more (because I reject the notion of “love at first sight”).

These days, most contemporary sexual and romantic dynamics are abundant with red flags from the beginning. We enter most sexual and romantic dynamics with overcommunicated personal agendas before we even know what the relationship might offer us. The show’s differing portrayal of gradual intimacy translates as “a very central issue in masculinity” for those with myopic relational standards, where heteronorms define expectations and performance of vulnerability from people we have yet to know. At some point, Katie says, “I wanted them to fucking talk to each other. There was one scene, I think they had started to talk about Ilya's father, and then they started making out, [we wanted them] to have a conversation! Talk about your dad! It was so physical, and they weren't communicating in a way that felt as though they were getting emotionally vulnerable with one another.” While Ilya and Shane’s relationship is very physical, what sustains the relationship is thrilling sexual encounters, tenderness, mutual respect, and admiration. By contrast, most heteronormative relationships begin in admiration and end with organizing individual disappointments. Shane and Ilya are equally titillated by the others' sportsmanship and personalities. Simply put, they clearly like each other. They needn’t know each other’s past trauma to have good sex. Is it incomprehensible that these two unambiguously initially wanted to fuck?

***

Sourced from IMDB

The show strikes a balance by utilizing the supporting women cast as vehicles for pushing the main stories forward while maintaining empathetic and multifaceted characterizations of its women cast. Svetlana is Ilya’s fuck buddy, but she is also his unwavering support system since childhood. We know through Ilya that she isn’t waiting around for him since she is busy with a new profession. She is also aware of Ilya’s first homosexual relationship with their friend Sasha. Similarly, Rose Landry insists on a friendship with Shane after an affectionate conversation about his sexual identity and preference. Caro praises the show’s portrayal of the women characters on the show. She says, “These women do not carry the burden of educating or improving the lives of these characters. [They] are support systems, but they're also autonomous people in their own right.” When one of them verges on a cohesive argument or observation, the other follows with catastrophic conclusions. Katie rebuts that the women have to intervene to “usher [the men] along. We don't really know anything about [the women friends] apart from their relationships as supporting characters to the men.” She infers that although Svetlana is “understanding about Ilya,” she knows his relationship with Shane means more. She almost catches up to sound reasoning with “I guess I could make the argument that, like in some respects, that's literally just how friendship is supposed to work,” but logic was surely faster because she follows up with, “but we don't really see that [support] reciprocated.” So close!

Diabolical Lies is supposedly from a leftist feminist lens. Do the leftist feminists agree that it is reasonable to center the supporting cis’ter characters over the queer relationships throughout the show? Is it not enough that we have agonizingly sat through tropes of the supportive gay bestie to the cisheterosexual woman with sage advice (that she will not take) for her frightful dating life? In the rush to contribute to the discourse and ride the wave of the show’s popularity, the dominating discussions exclude critical theory and historical context while confusing aesthetic inquiries for political judgement thereby curtailing public and private colloquy. With clarifying language, we can acknowledge the show’s true accomplishments, identify the gaps, while also enjoying what it offers.

COLUMN

“I Couldn’t Help but Wonder...”: A Sex and the City Column

Season 3 Episode 4: Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl …

SYNOPSIS

Charlotte’s gallery hosts a photography exhibition titled Drag Kings: The collusion of illusion and reality. It features women dressing like men with sideburns and socks in their pants. Charlotte is attracted to the photographer Baird, but she’s too afraid to ask him out. Carrie suggests maybe she “needs a sock in her pants.”

Carrie is dating a 26 year old bisexual man named Sean. She smokes while ice skating with him. At the end of their ice skating date, he lists all of his past romantic relationships and casually includes that he’s dated a man. He asks Carrie if it’s a problem and she tells her friends that she lied by saying it wasn’t.

Miranda doesn’t want Steve to move in with her. She tries to tap into her “inner goddess,” or in 2026 lingo, her “divine feminine.” People who claim that the writers do Miranda a disservice by having her marry Steve are ignoring who she is at her core. An explanation for Miranda and those who cannot reconcile her character arc is Anglo-American feminism, which narrowly focuses on equality in business and the corporate world while accepting capitalist definitions of success and seeking their legitimacy within the constructs of wifehood. Audiences refuse to accept that Miranda, a partner at a law firm, would “settle” for a man like Steve. But, as the show progresses, we all watched her descend into the quintessential cisheteronormative hysteria of “finding the one.” Miranda’s character arc is identical to the choices the women criticizing Miranda make every day.

Samantha hires a young assistant who is rude to her clients while answering the phones. In true Sam fashion, she fires him and sleeps with him. This is the least terrifying storyline in this episode.

THE QUESTION

Carrie doesn’t “help but wonder” in this episode. But she does ask a question:

Was sexual flipping the wave of the future? And if it was, could I play that game, or was I over the hill? If women can transform into men and men can become women and we can choose to sleep with everyone, then maybe gender doesn’t exist anymore. If we can take the best of the other sex and make it our own, has the opposite sex become obsolete?

Responding to Carrie’s inane question feels like a form of legitimization for her ignorance and bigotry-laced question; however, I chose this episode as a contrast for how the topics of sexuality and gender presentation are addressed in Sex and the City and Heated Rivalry.

After discovering her new young boyfriend is bisexual, Carrie asserts that she’s “not really sure bisexuality exists.” She says, “I think it’s just a layover on the way to Gaytown.” Throughout the episode, Carrie fixates on Sean’s bisexuality through playground-level questions like asking Sean if he’s staring at a man when they go to a club called “Hair.” On the other hand, she equates bisexuality to “lacking sexual orientation.”

If I had to define Sex and the City to someone who’s never seen it, I’d say that it oscillates between being ahead of its time and portraying a frighteningly rigid depiction of the times. This episode is one of those that is both. It chooses to discuss bisexuality while “liberally” denigrating it. The entire episode is laden with biphobia from start to finish, but most memorably, Miranda refers to bisexuality as “greedy” and “double-dipping” while they discuss Sean’s sexuality. I want to single out Carrie and her friends here, but this is what most cisheterosexuals, gay and lesbian people today, think of bisexual people.

By the end of the episode, Carrie uses the “I’m an old fart” excuse as a euphemism to obfuscate her biphobia and homophobia. While playing spin-the-bottle with Sean and his friends, Carrie gives Alanis Morissette the driest kiss ever filmed for TV. I wish we all didn’t have to see that. About the kiss, Carrie says, “It was like chicken.” She breaks up with Sean by leaving the party without saying goodbye. She concludes with, “I realized they could do whatever they wanted, but deep down, I was too old to play this game. So I took my hot, old fart ass home.”

Times have changed, but not so much, given how prevalent cis-hetero patriarchy still exists in all visual media forms. It’s hard to decide. Do I prefer a time where a professional sex columnist spews openly biphobic and homophobic worldviews with rigid expectations of romantic relational gender roles? Or one where bisexuality is predominantly disregarded by the dominant media and treated as a footnote, like in Heated Rivalry? It’s hard to say.

Even when the topic is handled with dignity, like in Heated Rivalry, the predominant media still struggles to facilitate meaningful colloquy by omitting or glossing over Ilya’s bisexuality as context for understanding the character and how Ilya’s bisexuality affects the couple’s relational dynamics.

The only dignifying aspect of Carrie’s question is wondering if gender exists anymore. She comes close but lets us know firmly where she stands by the end of the episode. It’s evident in the show’s haphazard reboot, And Just Like That, 20 years later, that Carrie and the show’s writers haven’t resolved the question.

UNFORGETTABLE LINES FROM THE EPISODE

(Without context)

Stanford

See when you’re gay everyone can wear everyone’s underwear. Charlotte

That’s hygienic.

Carrie to her friends at brunch
He’s [Sean] a bisexual. Samantha

I could have told you that sweetie. He took you ice skating for god sake.Carrie

The weird thing was he was so open about it.

Samantha

Y’know, I think it’s [bisexuality] great. He’s open to all sexual experiences, he’s evolved. It’s hot.

Miranda

It’s not hot, he’s greedy. He’s double dipping.

Carrie

When did this happen? When did the sexes get all confused? You know I did the date the bisexual guy thing in college. But in the end, they all ended up with men.

Samantha
So did the bisexual women.

Carrie to Sean

Do I kiss better than a guy?Sean to Carrie

Could you stop making this all about sex?

Carrie to Miranda

I think in any relationship, one person is the alpha dog. The one that’s in charge. That’s you! You don’t want to share your water dish.

Carrie

10 seconds into making out, I could almost forget Sean’s lack of sexual orientation.

Carrie

I was in Alice in confused sexual orientation land.

tiny Media

LISTEN

This month’s list includes revisitations and one recent discovery. I have a rule: If I repeatedly listen to an album for more than two months, I will buy the record. I own all of these records excluding Frank Ocean’s Blonde, which was never officially released on vinyl, because I have not stopped listening to them in the last year.

Album

Wet Leg “Moisturizer”

I discovered Wet Leg after hearing Mangetout on Heated Rivalry in late January. I can only listen to the whole album which to me is a sign of a stellar production.. It is appropriately horny, romantic, and ensures a good fucking time from start to finish. I immediately loved the first seven tracks except Jennifer’s Body. But through repeated listens, I can now say that I LOVE Jennifer’s Body.

I purchased a secondhand $60 subwoofer for my speakers to appropriately experience the vinyl record. I hope you enjoy this safe, hedonistic indulgence.

Album

Laurie Torres “Après Coup”

Apres Coup might be the best contemporary jazz album I have discovered in the last five years. It creates celestial sounds using piano, drums, and a synthesizer. It is a highly intelligent production because Torres merges technique with emotion while inviting the listener’s own emotions with every listen. If I had to pick my favorite, I’d say Interieurs. The track is short, leaving you wanting while also fully satisfying the senses. Marvelous! Feux Fuyants would make a beautiful movie score. And if you loved Eiko Inshibashi’s Drive My Car movie score, specifically, Drive My Car (Masaki), listen to Exit, the closing track on Apres Coup.

Album

Frank Ocean “Blonde”

If the artist formerly known as Frank Ocean (I’m kidding) never makes another album, I would be genuinely content because Blonde is a masterful album. Its release pioneered much of contemporary popular RnB music in the last decade. I still viscerally react to Godspeed and Self Control, but I am yet to articulate the emotions Skyline To and Close To You elicit 10 years later. I think the silence from Frank Ocean since this album’s release has allowed it to air out, materialize, and cement itself in every nook and cranny of popular music. You know you’re about it when a new song emerges with comparable but not quite similar sounds to Blonde. Some of them enter the region where Blonde resides but none has ever come into its neighborhood of excellence.

Song

Nina Simone “Mood Indigo”

This song is in my unfinished personal playlist titled, “You’ve got it in your soul.” I began assembling the playlist after hearing the song for the first time. It opens with an almost 80 second upbeat piano intro until Simone’s voice joins with solemn lyrics. While the song is about experiencing a type of blues she calls mood indigo, you cannot help dancing. It’s as if the song is an antidote to the mood indigo. I invite you to listen to the rest of the album.

Song

Les McCann “Burnin’ Coal”

If you are unfamiliar with Les McCann, here’s what you need to know: He is a masterful pianist who, alongside some other elite Afro American jazz musicians, invented the sound of contemporary jazz starting in the late 50s. You will see a lot of Les McCann in my library in the coming months because I found a bunch of his vinyls for less than $5 each at my local record shop last year. Burnin’ Coal is on his Much Les album and I cannot recommend it enough for people exploring Afro American jazz sounds of the 60s.

Similar to Mood Indigo, prepare for a little or lots of movement if you decide to listen while driving. Let loose!

READ

Stephanie Wambugu Lonely Crowds: A Novel

I feverishly read this book in less than 48 hours in hopes that it would get there. Nigerians like to say, “It was there” in response to how something resonated. If you asked “how was the movie?,” a Nigerian might say, “It was there,” to convey that it was neither bad nor good. I love this measured and even tender framing to communicate that something did not resonate or meet one’s expectations. Sometime ago, Wale Lawal, editor-in-chief of the journalistic magazine The Republic based in Nigeria offered an intricate meaning for what “It was there” might mean on his personal Twitter account. He said ‘there’ means that the movie or book did not meet the viewer or reader where they hoped to be met. ‘There’ means that the movie or book maintained an indifference to its subjects throughout.

I had high expectations for this novel because many had prescribed it as an intelligent read exploring homoerotic relationships between women. The novel fell short and never arrived ‘there’ because it didn’t have a clear objective—I do not think Wambugu knew what she was trying to say. The book reads like it was written through a block because it was tedious—you could see the seams. And because it didn’t have a clear destination, it required too much effort and not in the ways I expect when I read. The main characters are confusing and painfully incomplete, which seems to be a personal (recurring) qualm with most contemporary novels about erotic friendships between women I have read. There is no single thread that helps me understand what motivates them personally and interrelationally. I wasn’t convinced these women even knew each other. I recognized bits of something familiar but it remained flaccid. And although I finished it, I left it there. I hope Wambugu tries again.

WATCH

The Chambermaid Lynn, Ingo Haeb, 2014

Since experiencing the versatile and magnificent Vicky Krieps on Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread, I have made considerable effort to watch more of her movies. The Chambermaid Lynn is weird and it is worth it. It triumphantly combines humor, while seriously tackling the topic of sexual identity with a thrilling storyline. Lynn is unlike any character I have ever watched—she is a mirror and a reflection of our exiled desires and explorations. I oscillated between being a little afraid of her, a lot of affection for her, and an overwhelming sadness. By the end Vicky “Creeps” has you reconsidering everything you thought you knew about sexual identity, presentation and the self.

Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee, 2005

I first absent mindedly watched Brokeback Mountain in 2021. I did not remember what I watched or felt and I certainly didn’t remember anything serious about it because I was on my phone half the time. I was also uninterested in what I considered to be “trauma porn.” I was looking for visual queer media that did not end in tragedy for its central characters. I have outgrown this infantile approach and now know the difference between painful but severely beautiful historical reflections and what we call trauma porn. For example, 12 years A Slave is trauma porn but Toni Morrison’s Beloved is achingly magnificent with its mystical reflections and historical depiction of slavery.

I wore the emotions of the movie like a cloak. I even looked into acquiring the screenplay and reading the book. I have yet to do any of this. However, I have revisited the aftershocks of emotions in my mind. Brokeback Mountain is an earnest offering for understanding queer life in rural white America in the 60s. It does not support the agenda of queer presentism. Although it is devastating, it tells a hauntingly truthful story. I may never watch it again but it is safely tucked within reach whenever I need to revisit it in my mind.

Moonlight, Barry Jenkins, 2016

When I think of humane depictions of queer life, especially Black American queer life, Moonlight comes to mind. Barry Jenkins, the film’s writer and director’s, adaptation of the unpublished play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue by Tarell Alvin McCraney, is in a league of its own. Moonlight tackles themes of masculinity, sexual identity, misogyny interwoven in the interpersonal relationships of its central character Chiron in three acts. Young Chiron learns to suppress his emotions after multiple betrayals from adults he was supposed to trust including his mother who struggles with a drug addiction. The film’s climax is just as much of an emotional release for the audience as it is for Chiron. In the second to the last scene, adult Chiron tells adult Kevin, “You’re the only one who’s ever touched me.” The line carries Chiron’s transcendent sadness. We discover that the Chiron we meet at the beginning of the movie is the same one at the end. But it is the build up to that scene that gets me every time. Trevante Rhodes and André Holland dance with their dialogue and their uncertainty is palpable.

Moonlight features an exquisite ensemble cast. There isn’t enough praise for the continuity of each of the actors portraying Chiron and Kevin. Ashton Sanders and Trevante Rhodes succeed at portraying all of Chiron’s complexities and his suffocating silence in his teen and adult years. Mahershala Ali delivers a masterful performance and Naomie Harris as Paula is haunting. There isn’t a scene in this feature that doesn’t leave you with something. Even everything it leaves out is just as impactful.