Everything I Love Is Ugly

I mean really, you'd be amazed

[lowmoanofthedialtone]

I found her wife’s Facebook. They got married in 2021, NINE YEARS after we thought we would. She looks nothing like I imagined. They have dogs.

I feel free and trapped. I was holding my breath, never thinking about her and thinking about her every single day. Imagining we’d somehow run into each other from 1,000 miles apart and dreading it all the same.

I saw a wedding picture. Her suit was perfect with her salt and pepper hair with more salt than before. She looked so PROUD. I remembered our impromptu engagement photos taken by her aunt that she never let me see because she was embarrassed that I wasn’t polished enough. Maybe that wasn’t it at all.

I hope she’s prouder of her than she ever was of me. She didn’t like to hold my hand in public. Sometimes because it wasn’t safe, and sometimes because she was ashamed of me. Now she has a wife and I have a wedding dress with mildew. Nothing was ever quite clean enough and I usually missed the mark.

[expressions-of-nature]

Fontainebleau State Park, Louisiana by Lana Gramlich

[cowtownchad]

Silence Is Also An Answer

Ohio

[lowmoanofthedialtone]

Twice this week I have had (expensive) tickets to concerts/movies/etc and I haven’t used them because no one will come with me. I used to be so good at doing things alone, and now I’m alone so much that I don’t relish the alone time away from my cocoon.

I’ve spent almost $400 on tickets for events in the last 6 days that went unused. And tonight, I saw a new thing in May, and I bought the tickets. Before I even asked the few people who might be interested if they would join.

It was embarrassing last weekend to ask around and be turned down again, and again, and again. But I have 6 weeks this time. I have time. I’ll find someone.

I think these are the repercussions of being so closed up, so distant and separate. Everyone has significant others and kids and that’s nothing new; now I don’t even communicate with most of them. I’m not even sure what the solution is. I’m just sort of numb to it, and sad, and I want things to be different.

But I bought the May tickets. I have 6 weeks. Surely someone will try?

[brutalistarchitecture2]

From Jeanette Winterson's recent substack article

[lowmoanofthedialtone]

It was going to be Old Friends, Bookends.

20 years passed.

Now are we: Good, Bad, Ugly?

Are We?

I would have given you my Pulse, all along.

[chainsawpunk]

Francois I de la Sarra, in the Chapel at La Sarraz (d. 1363), at Vaud in Switzerland

[evermore-fashion]

Favourite Designs: Frieda Leopold ‘The Witch’ Haute Couture Gown [x]

[grandmahoney]

“There are accepted revolutions, revolutions which are called revolutions; there are refused revolutions, which are called riots.”

— Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

[lowmoanofthedialtone]

There’s so much chaos in the world but my thoughts keep repeating a spiral towards you, you, you. You called me with a heavy heart and “I just need to talk to someone grounding and grounded and real” so I spewed all my positivity and busy-ness at you to offer whatever sort of distraction you need. And then at the end, after your husband called and you had to deal with your kids: “ok so the other real thing I need is for you to read over something I wrote, and a response, and help me formulate what comes next.” Asking me to lend you my words and my voice and you don’t realize it’s all yours, how ever much or little you need, always.

It’s only later I remember that you’d be the perfect person to work through my recent awful notebook discovery with. A page of homophobic biblical references, written at 15, either to remind myself of what I’d been taught or educate myself on what it really said or I dunno, punish myself I suppose. And on the next page? Your name. Over. And over. We were both suffering the same poisonous muck. I want to tell you, work through some as-yet-unspoken truth that we both know and like to pretend we’re beyond now. But the real world feels so full of chaos.

[oldhollywood]

Katharine Hepburn as Amazon warrior princess Antiope & Colin Keith-Johnston as Theseus in stage production of The Warrior’s Husband (1932) (Corbis)

[gates2valhalla]

[bobdylan-n-jonimitchell]

Joni Mitchell at The Bitter End, Bleecker Street, New York, NY, October 23, 1968.

[mynocturnality]

[lowmoanofthedialtone]

Today, I am this house.

[tauruswolftrail-deactivated2025]

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, 1986, dir John Hughes

[tauruswolftrail-deactivated2025]

God’s Own Country (2017)

[tauruswolftrail-deactivated2025]

Portrait of a Lady On Fire (2019) dir Céline Sciamma

“The film is set in the 18th century, where queer love was illegitimate and marriage was often a business proposition and nothing more. Marianne (Noémie Merlant) is hired to paint the portrait of an aristocrat Héloïse (Adèle Haenel). The portrait is to be sent off to the man Héloïse is to marry, but Héloïse is not pleased by the marriage and is refusing to pose for the portrait. Marianne’s task is to accompany Héloïse on walks by day, secretly observing her, and then paint the portrait from memory by night. Marianne does so, but secret looks become looks of adoration, and those looks are returned.” - Depulia Online