20 Undead Sapphic TV Characters, Ranked by Brain Munching

One thing about sapphic TV characters is: they sure do die! But also, a lot of them are undead, like vampires and zombies and ghosts. And some of the ones who have died have been resurrected, both on-screen and by the actors who played them after their shows were over. The undead, of course, are most famous for eating brains, so today on Undeadstraddle, I thought I’d make a little list of undead sapphic TV characters, ranked by whether or not I’d let them munch on my brain. Hopefully this will finally get me recognized by the Pulitzer nominating committee.

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20. Hope Mikaelson, Legacies

I don’t think Hope actually wants to eat my brain. I think it would make her feel bad. So she’s at the bottom of this list.

19. Barbara Kean, Gotham

She ruined her entire life because she was in love with a cop. I don’t want her anywhere near my brain.

18. Pam Swynford De Beaufort, True Blood

Pam’s not really my type, but I do have a whole lot in common with Tara Thornton, who definitely came as close as possible to letting Pam eat her brain, so, like, I guess I could say I wouldn’t let Pam eat my brain, but if it came down to it, maybe I would?

17. Alison DiLaurentis, Pretty Little Liars

The reason I wouldn’t let Alison DiLaurentis eat my brain is because I know she’d then stuff my empty skull will with some kind of doll inside a doll which she’d then hide in a barn in rural Pennsylvania as a clue to a mystery that didn’t have anything to do with me.

16. Jenny Schecter, The L Word

I just want to clear up, first, that, according to Mia Kirshner, Jenny Schecter is alive, after dying, so: undead. I don’t think I’d volunteer to let her eat my brain, but if she did eat it, at least a New Yorker short story would come out of it and the fate of my brain would be debated at length on Twitter after my demise.

15. Sophie-Anne Leclerq, True Blood

I have, historically, not made a lot of great decisions when it comes to ginger femmes, so no matter what I say here, the truth is I would definitely let Sophie-Anne Leclerq eat my brain if she asked nicely. Or meanly. Or, like, if she simply approached me with a fork.

14. Lexa, The 100

Because Lexa is only technically alive in a simulation, I am going to assume she would only simulate eating my brain, which is fine. I simulate stabbing every man who calls me a bitch in video games but I’ve never done it in real life.

13. Ava Silva, Warrior Nun

If this sweet lamb needs my brain to save the world, which is of course the only reason she’d ask, she can have it. And anyway maybe eating my brain will imbue her with my gay powers and make her rebel against the church and tear it down from the inside out.

12. Lucy Westenra, Dracula

The thing about Lucy Westenra is she has Katie McGrath’s face and who’s gonna say no to that?

11. Rose Solano, Jane the Virgin

Another ginger femme, another series of bad choices.

10. Sara Lance, Legends of Tomorrow

I’m saying Sara Lance can eat my brain because I think she’d find a way around eating my brain because she’s an outside-the-box thinker who doesn’t want anymore buried gays. I think she’d save the day and keep my brain in tact and give me one of her dykey high fives while we share a beer after the heroics.

9. Delphine Cormier, Orphan Black

I think Delphine would eat my brain whether I wanted her to or not, if she felt like it needed to be done, and there’s no way I could fight her off or outwit her, so I might as well just submit to the feast.

8. Dani, The Haunting of Bly Manor

Having my brain eaten by Dani seems like it could be one of those epic poems about sirens and the sea, and then we’ll just live our lesbian lives in the lake for all eternity, which doesn’t seem like too bad of a deal.

7. Bill Potts, Doctor Who

Bill’s been through enough shit to last a hundred lifetimes. If she needs to eat my brain, it’s hers.

6. Mona Vanderwaal, Pretty Little Liars

The thing about Mona Vanderwaal is she could literally be eating my brain right now and I wouldn’t even know it — and if I discovered it, if I saw her munching on my noggin, and I was like, “Why are you gnawing on my head?” She’d be like, “Because you signed this ironclad contract telling me I could.” And she would produce the contract, which I wouldn’t remember signing, but my name would be right there on the dotted line, and I would be legally required to let her continue her meal.

5. Helena G Wells, Warehouse 13

HG probably invented something to make the whole brain-eating process as painless and mess-free as possible, so I guess that’s okay, and she could also probably bring me back to life with a robot brain, and she’d probably cryogenically freeze me until my new brain was ready. Pretty good looking out, for a brain-eater.

4. Vamp!Willow, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Waaaait a second, is this where my ginger femme path of emotional destruction began???

3. Villanelle, Killing Eve

I’m going to be honest with you: I think my wife would like to get into a situation where me and her and Villanelle are kinda taking turns eating each other’s “brains,” and I’m never going to deny my wife her wildest dreams. (Jodie Comer said Villanelle climbed out of the Thames after being shot, so it’s all good, she’s undead.)

2. Tara Thornton, True Blood

If Tara Thornton asked me for literally anything, including a bite of my brain, I would simply say: yes.

1. Kathryn Janeway, Star Trek: Voyager

Ahhh. No. THIS is where my ginger femme path of emotional destruction began. Enjoy my medulla oblongata, my queen.

An Open Letter From the Vampiric Council on Vampire Erasure

Hello, it is I, Fright Dyke, writing on the behalf of the Vampiric Council, the governing body of vampires you might be familiar with due to human popularity of the television program What We Do in the Shadows. It was recently brought to our attention that two writers for the website Autostraddle, whose name is just as confusing as the Superb Owl, committed an egregious act of vampire erasure. We hereby accuse Drew Burnett Gregory and Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya of ignorance and disrespect for failing to include any vampire movies on their list of the supposed 25 Scariest Queer Horror Movie Moments, published in our favorite month of October, 2022.

Everybody knows vampires are the gayest undead creatures. I am not here to prove that point, because it is a fact that is simply known. So me and my colleagues on the Vampiric Council were shocked — nay, disturbed — by our exclusion from this list. This is a failure of representation. This “Drew” and this “Kayla” consider themselves “EXPERTS” ON “QUEER HORROR?” Ha! As if! (That is a quote from my favorite human movie Clueless.)

The Vampiric Council does not stand for vampire erasure, an epidemic that has plagued humanity ever since the gross and incorrect backlash against the popularity of the film franchise Twilight. No one movie or series can represent all vampires, but the Twilight movies are good! Not liking them doesn’t make you special!

As a subgenre of horror, vampire movies are often underrated and overlooked. Our films are considered “sexy” and “erotic” and therefore “not scary.” While the Council agrees that vampires are the hottest monsters, we take offense at the notion that we are not terrifying. We can literally drain you of blood, and we will should you fail to properly respond to this open letter. We appreciate the pedestal the gay community places us on and the ways in which some of you see your own experiences and identities reflected in our stories, but please take us seriously. We deserve not just your respect but your bloodcurdling fear.

It’s hard work being a vampire in this economy. Do you know what the cost of black market blood bags is these days?! Inflation affects us all — the living and the dead. We cannot, on top of these problems, add a crisis of representation and visibility. We’ve lived in the shadows for far too long and fought far too hard to be seen as real members of society. Erasure of our community undoes that important vampirism activism.

We eagerly await your response, which you can tie to the foot of the enclosed magic raven and send to our PO Box. I also was wondering if I could be provided with the email address for the appropriate editor for a pitch I have about the human movie Clueless.

Signed,
Fright Dyke, special envoy for The Vampiric Council

Caught Dead: Style Tips for Nonbinary Vampires

Blah! That’s what I say when someone suggests I wear the same old outfit day in and out. I’m not some kind of cartoon Dracula wearing a cravat and a cape every day. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Or maybe that was my last victim. I can’t tell, and I’m too busy to worry about it. We’ve got expensive art openings to crash, windowless warehouse parties to attend where I can ahhhh get up to a queer person’s sweating neck and just let my claw graze it ever so lightly, feel the warm hum of their blood underneath their dermis and the prickle of those hair follicles that will soon not be the only dead thing about them. Sorry. Where were we going? We’ve got graves to lean on seductively, my vamps! Let’s get you dressed.

I included a mix of items that we earn a commission on and that we do not. You’ll notice that there are a variety of price points, brands that are good about including a diversity of sizes, as well as some smaller queer-owned brands we don’t earn a commission on but want to support anyway! Anything Etsy is kind of the best of both worlds (we do earn an affiliate commission from Etsy). While I do own jewelry from most of the Etsy sellers featured, I don’t own any of the other pieces personally except for our Caligula Inn Shirt, though I can attest to the fit of Androgynous Fox and Dapperboi items. Some of the other brands such as Rebdolls and Selkie are AS staff favorites!

Vampires Don’t Get Cold (or Believe in Modesty)

Nothing says “creature of the night” like showing off your nipples.

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Snip Snip; Everything Is Cropped

Headless horsethems rejoice! No need to worry about your necromanced noggin when you can now show off your completely intact torso with various items of clothing, all in black, none of which even remotely attempt to cover your bod. Feel the cemetery winds whispering around your navel when you’re out on the hunt and just really internalize that you’re an apex predator, babe.

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Buffy (and Blade) Taught Us That Vampires Wear Leather

Vampires don’t need to breathe.

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An Outfit That Says…’Blood Sacrifice’

Here, we’re going for sleek and effortlessly intimidating. For style inspiration, think: Lair of the White Worm or gay pirates.

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For the High Femme Fatales

Are these dresses expensive? Yes. But as a vampire, your grocery budget has absolutely plummeted as your food is free. If you’ve been around the mausoleum for a minute, then you’ve likely invested your money into all sorts of nefarious causes such that splurging on a dress like this won’t even cause you to bat an eye. When looking for cheaper options, note the key is dark colors, antique prints, materials that levitate away from the body as well as high, high shoulders. You are a nonbinary vampire, and the fabric on your shoulders needs to be reaching for the dusty chandeliers above you.

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A Spell More Casual

If your goal is to blend in, then being fully resplendent in head to toe ghoul glam miiight give you away before you can get down to any sucking. Consider a dinner outfit composed of items like the above instead!

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Accessorize, Witch

From the obvious to the clandestine, Etsy has something for everyvamp. I cannot recommend enough that you take the single dangly nonbinary earring up a notch by selecting a design that will make your dance partner think they can hear the hiss of evaporating holy water.

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You Only Need One Pair of Shoes

It’s not like you’ll wear them out while flying around as a bat. While I have heard the quality of Doc Marten’s has actually fallen recently, I believe that Solovairs are of respectable quality.

I’m Just a Girl (With a Green Ribbon)

We go to meet her parents, out in the country. It is hot and August and the trees are parched. When we get to the rural roads, I lean my head against the plastic near the window — but not the clean glass of the window itself because I do not want to leave grease stains — and the branches thwack their dryness along the glass while I watch. I try to summon some kind of wetness for the part of being the devoted partner later, but every drop I believe I can muster must have been robbed from me by the August sun, by climate change, by the oppressive heat that no machine seems able to defeat.

We step into the gasp of air conditioning and French doors. A shih tzu snuffles around our feet. Is it better to greet the dog first or the mother? The dog goes to my girlfriend, and her mother looks at her with an adoration that rubs up against me like a cat’s tongue. Adrianne’s eyes glance at mine — no, not at mine, off mine, like light off a hot metal slide on the playground. I see in the way her mouth quirks, the way her mother’s hands rasp against mine when she draws me into a hug — I understand that in this family, my love, my care is incomparable, is nothing like this mother’s love, is inferior. Her hand finds my neck. She kisses my cheek without asking.

How did I get here? I am as uncomfortable as I was the first time I was crouched on the side of the winding dry dirt roads of our little country house when I was still too young to read books with chapters — few were available anyway. My childhood best friend and I were scooping up the fine dust that fell off cars and tractors and Amish wagons and gathered along the edges of the asphalt.

“Fairy dust!” Megan declares and dances in a circle and for a moment I want to be very special friends with her, for her to hold me up above all other friends, for her to blow that fairy dust in my face and to have it transform me.

Would it work?

“Turn me into a fairy!” I call to her, gesturing to my little pudgy face. She blows the dust towards me, brown eyes and brown hair blinking in the sun. I cough. It is not fairy dust. It coats my throat. I am hacking the kind of cough that gets all the worse the more you hold it in, bent over, bare knees pressing into the gravel. She smacks me on the back, my knees meld with the decayed asphalt road and she reaches to undo the choker round my throat. I shake my hand. She tries again. I push her onto the ground. She cries out. I cough and hold my throat. Her mother comes outside just as the first wail makes it past Megan’s lips and cries out over the treetops and so high into the sky I am sure all the other neighbor kids can hear.

For a moment, among the Queen Anne’s Lace and the ground apples, I thought she might kiss me with those lips and make me a fairy princess like her, one who could roller skate and ride a bike and who knew the things she knew because she had older brothers.

“What?”

We’re alone after dinner in her parents’ guest room. It’s been a long drive and a devastatingly long dinner. I lie back on the bed, ready to peel sticky clothes off of me, wondering if it would be better to shower now or in the morning or if their water bill might let me do both without getting noticed.

I am gross, disgusting. Unlike the blissful days of childhood, I now know about deodorant. I apply it religiously. Her hand grazes my leg that was shaved three days ago. Her smile crooks lightly while she flicks her hand to drag against my stubble.

“Stop.”

She puts her weight on me. And I like it. I like it enough.

I look at the Pier I Imports guest room around me and meet her blue eyes with my brown ones.

“Do you believe in fairies?”

“Of course. I saw one once,” she says and reaches for my neck. She does not elaborate. Her finger nudges my ribbon and a tiny bit of dry thumb flesh catches on the tight emerald weave.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

She places her fingers around my neck but does not squeeze, watching me, eyes flickering despite the fact that we are in suburban lamplight and not the candlelight of my too-often electricity-deprived city apartment.

Every seam of the fabric of my clothes tightens. My skin is thread wound too tight around my bones, my veins squeezing the blood up until pressure threatened my eyes, their tethers loosening. Maybe they will pop out when she squeezes me again. I shift, aware of my underwear, my stockings, my shoes and my hair, threads, twisting and hanging down on my shoulders, of string theory and the threads of the universe that vibrate and hum and hold us together and the electron ties between my atoms scratching at nothing because there is some nothing in me.

There is a nothing in me that wants out, that wants whatever she wants to do to me.

“Don’t untie my ribbon.”

Because, no, I want to exist. That other thought is something else, something dark and deep and un-me, something that wants to undo me, that wants to take apart my knot and make me not anything at all and I have to not want that because I am something, right?

“Oh, like this?”

You Need Help: Your Girlfriend Is Literally a Vampire

Q:

My girlfriend is the best so many ways. She’s kind, supportive, an incredible baker, my best friend, and the sex is amazing! There’s just one small thing.

So things in our relationship started to get a little weird when she started hanging out in a centuries-old crypt in our neighborhood. When she told me this was where she was spending some evenings, I thought it was odd but didn’t want to question it, because I think it’s important that she have her own life outside me, and we practice a lot of open communication, so as long as she was telling me where she was, I didn’t think I had anything to worry about.

But a few weeks ago, my girlfriend’s entire demeanor really changed. She stopped wanting to go outside during the day. She isn’t really eating much. I thought maybe she was just dealing with depression and suggested she meet with her therapist, and she listened because we have good boundaries like that. She went to her appointment but hasn’t been able to schedule a follow-up, because her therapist is apparently missing??? So I’m working on helping her find a new one, but you know how long that can sometimes take!

Sometimes, I catch her in the kitchen making a weird thick red smoothie, but I don’t want to judge her eating habits if that’s the only thing that tastes good to her right now. I think it has beets in it, so I’ve been buying some at the grocery store in case she needs more, but she hasn’t seemed to notice.

We’re still having sex, and it’s really good. She has especially gotten into biteplay, and I’m into it! I just wish she would talk to me more about whatever’s going on with her. She’s still hanging out at the crypt a lot. In fact, it’s the only place where she really wants to be other than inside our house. I asked her if I could come one night, and she freaked out. I really hope I’m not being paranoid, but do you think it’s possible she’s cheating on me with someone at the crypt? I would never follow her, because again we have good boundaries, but what could she possibly be doing there? Am I being too hard on her? Should we try opening up our relationship?

A:

Thank you, dear reader, for writing in with these questions. I’m going to be a little harsh and direct with you, but I think it’s ultimately for the best: The reason your girlfriend is behaving like this is because she’s literally a vampire. I would know, because I’m also a vampire. My guess is she probably started hanging out with some vampires at the crypt and one of them turned her. Don’t worry; we don’t consider this infidelity in the vampire community!

You girlfriend’s vampirism doesn’t have to be a relationship dealbreaker. You might just have to adjust some of your expectations and routines in order to account for the changes your girlfriend is going through. She might be embarrassed or scared to tell you she’s a vampire, so maybe you should start the dialogue. Tell her you know what she is and that you’re not afraid of her. Tell her you want to learn more about vampirism and her community.

Now that you know your girlfriend is a vampire, you can practice being a better ally to her. Vampire allyship can take a lot of forms! You could help her out a lot by stealing blood bags from your local hospital or by hunting large game if you’re uncomfortable with the whole human blood thing. Buy blackout curtains and make plans to go out together after the sun has set. But the best way to show up for your girlfriend, who is a vampire, is to just ask what she needs as a vampire.

Also, at the risk of slightly breaking Vampire Code, I do need you to know she likely killed her therapist. It happens! Baby Vampires don’t know how to control their urges or ethically source blood yet, so little whoopsies can sometimes occur. Don’t sweat it, and definitely don’t blame yourself. Instead of a human therapist, consider seeking out a Licensed Undead Therapist who can better cater to your girlfriend’s needs. You can also try couples counseling specifically geared toward vampire/human relationships.

If you decide this is all too much for you or that you’re not willing to support your vampire girlfriend in this new stage of her life, then the best course of action would be to break up. You can’t change your girlfriend. (You can, if you wish, let her change you by turning you into a vampire, but that’s a decision that requires a lot of thought and time, so don’t jump too hastily into anything.)

I wish you and your girlfriend the best! I promise you this doesn’t have to suck 😉

This Zombie Bite Changed My Life

This Changed My Life is an ode to the small, seemingly chill purchases bought by Autostraddle writers and editors this year that made our lives infinitely better. Did these items LITERALLY CHANGE OUR LIFE? No, we’re being gay and dramatic. But perhaps a pair of sunglasses really did change your life — who are we to judge?

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Now, I’m almost positive this was an experience I did not pay for, though to be completely frank, I’m feeling a little confused and delirious as I write this and don’t think I’ve managed to blink in at least three hours. But regardless of whether I purchased this or not, I feel confident claiming that this zombie bite did indeed change my life and therefore qualifies for AutoUndeadstraddle’s This Changed My Life series, which I once wrote about a human coffee machine for. The good news about being bitten by a zombie? I apparently don’t need to drink coffee anymore! Actually, I don’t even need to sleep anymore! Thank you to this zombie virus for curing me of my caffeine addiction.

Ever since the early evening when I managed to triumphantly stab a zombie during an apocalyptic squabble in an abandoned warehouse but didn’t see there was another zombie behind me who had gotten its nasty little chompers on the flesh of my shoulder, I’ve been seeing things differently. Literally. My vision is blurry and desaturated. The people I used to know very well now don’t look familiar at all. In fact, they look a little bit like food?

I’m grateful to the zombie community for welcoming me with literal outstretched arms. I’d be nowhere without the supportive grunts and moans of my community, who really get me, you know? Like, the other night, a group of us stumbled into an abandoned karaoke bar that I vaguely remember from my life pre-zombie bite ARRRRRRR HSSSSS — sorry, I’m not sure why I typed that — and after we made sure to bite any other humans we came across (which, honestly, you’re welcome, now you get to be a part of this rad community, too) we had a grand old time. And no, we did not sing “Zombie” by The Cranberries; it’s offensive that you would even joke about such a thing. (We sang “Wanted Dead or Alive” by Bon Jovi, and we more so incoherently shrieked it than sang it.)

Being bitten by a zombie means no longer having to wear sunscreen or fuss with expensive skincare products. I love my skin the way it is: graying and decaying! There’s so much freedom that comes with a zombie bite. I’m pretty sure I’ll never have to go to work again! And there’s sooooooo little drama to worry about. I basically just need to make sure no one beheads me. Other than that, I’m chilling! Again, I mean that literally. My body is quite cold to the touch. But hey, I’m saving money on my electric bill by not needing to run the air conditioning anymore!

So anyway, I highly recommend going out there and getting bit by a zombie. I can even hook you up! Just swing on by and ARRRRRRRR ARGH HSSSSSS ARRRR RAHHHHHH ARRRRR RRRRRRR BWAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH ARRRRR ARGH HSSSSSS AWERRRRRRRRR BARRRRRRRRRHSSSSS RAHHHHHHHHHHHS ARRRRR ERFFFFFF ARARRRR.

Can Ghosts Scissor?

It all started with a simple premise, a curiosity really. Can ghosts fuck?

I’m feeling very Carrie Bradshaw (the original version^TM) as I write this, staring outside of my window on an overcast Spring evening, typing away on my laptop in an oversized sweatshirt and sitting crosslegged at my desk with my toes exposed to the still-too-cold air. A trusty hibiscus tea by side. And here is when Carrie would make an allusion of sorts, spinning a tale of how exes are most certainly the ghosts of Manhattan but the only thing that haunts her is the Chanel bag she lost in the back of her Uber Black coming home from brunch. She’d say, “I couldn’t help but wonder, were we the ghosts we were fucking all along?”

But I am a simple woman with more simple needs, so instead I took to Google.

If a person googles “can ghosts have sex” interestingly enough the first thing to pop up are stories of human people who have had sex with ghosts, and not the said ghosts having sex with each other. This is where we begin our tale.

Human People Who’ve Had Sex With Ghosts

A sexual attraction to ghosts is known as spectrophilia, which feels self-explanatory. In 2017, Glamour published an entire retrospective on 90s spectrophilia. According to their research, the 90s were the peak time to engage in spectrophilia due to the following heartthrobs: Devon Saw for the three minutes of Casper when he wasn’t a cartoon; the teen who played Thackery Binx in Hocus Pocus in the three minutes when he wasn’t a cat (in their research, he is dubbed very officially as “knockoff ghost Leo”); and also Patrick Swayze “makin’ horny spectral pottery with Demi Moore” in Ghost. It’s pretty hard not to notice that all three points on this starry constellation are also gay roots for a very specific subsect of millennial lesbians, though I do not personally count myself among them.

From here, I landed at an oft-cited article from Slate’s advice column that was first published the early months of the pandemic. Someone writes in because they are worried about their friend, who is having sex with a man named John, believed to have lived in her apartment building in the 1920s. John and this person have an ongoing sexual relationship of at least four months. This lead to a spin-off article from The Cut, which argues that ghosts make the ideal pandemic sex partner. And you know what? Points are made: “having a disembodied spirit as a sexual partner means you can carry on your affair from the comfort of your own home — ideal in a time of responsible social distancing — and you also don’t have to worry about COVID-19 transmission.” We stan a pandemic-safe queen.

Around this time, I also fell into a deep dive on the difference between an “incubus” and a “succubus.” According to the aptly named website “DifferenceBetween.com” (which I am sure is a peer-reviewed study), an incubus is a male demon that wants to have sex with women at night, and a succubus is a female demon that wants to have sex with men at night. Pretty straight forward stuff, pun not intended. However, I cut my teeth in the wars of online lesbian television fandoms, so I know for a fact that according to the Good Book of Lost Girl, at least some of those succubus (succubi?) are gay. Which casts doubt on this entire body of research.

After this I fell into the greatest rabbit hole yet, and so may I present to you:

Which Celebrities Have Had Sex With Ghosts

On the list of celebrities who have had sex with ghosts, none appear more frequently than Joy Behar, noted host of the daytime television show The View. In 2022, Behar proclaimed live on air, “I’ve had sex with a few ghosts and never got pregnant.” To which Whoopi Goldberg replied, “I’m just gonna let that ride.” (haha. “ride.”)

The earliest example of celebrity-ghost sex that I could find was Ana Nicole Smith, who once said in 1994 that she had “some amazing sex” with a ghost that haunted her old Texas apartment. In 1999, Lucy Liu described her ghost sex as “sheer bliss. I felt everything. I climaxed. And then he floated away.” This sounds so peaceful and pleasant, a ghost lover who knows when to leave after the job is done.

The most noted queer celebrity to have sex with a ghost is Ke$ha, who once said in an interview that she “went to the bone zone” with a ghost and also wrote an entire song about it (2012’s “Supernatural,” which includes the following lyrics: “Baby, when we’re touching in the dark/ Can you feel it?/ I can hear the pounding of my heart.”)

And while this all fun and good, it doesn’t answer the root question.

Can Ghosts Have Sex With Each Other?

It took some digging, but the answer here is a resounding: Yes.

In 2011 an Ohio woman captured what appears to be two ghosts in the middle of going to town on each other using what appears to be her camera phone. To quote the highly respectable Metro UK (where I found this article), “the female ghost seems to have grabbed her male partner by the ghouls and decided to give him a night he won’t forget.”

By. The. Ghouls.

The photographer in question told her local FOX news channel that “It looked like… like the ghosts having sex.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. I do believe, that is that on that. If ghosts can have (straight) sex, then queer ghosts can scissor. That is just plain ghost math.

And maybe Carrie Bradshaw is right, maybe “we were the ghosts we were fucking all along.”

A+ Crossword Literally Can’t Leave This Place

Excerpt Answer: Neck-tarine! 🧛🏻‍♀️ 🫦

Editor’s Notes: Animalstraddle

Many years ago on April 1st, 2019, the website Autostraddle, for one day, devoted itself to perhaps its most worthy subject of all time: me, Carol the dog. The entire website became Carolstraddle, with a special banner for me, a special cursor for me, and special articles for me.

It was an important day for not just me (I am important every day and a star) but for all pets and animals, who flooded the comments, finally having found a space where they could be amongst like-minded individuals and share their emotions and concerns on a variety of important issues, such as a dog who was barking very loudly at the time.

Every time I complain to my parent, Riese, that there has not been enough Carol content since that time, she gently suggests I re-route my complaint to an Editor and also tells me that I am in the newsletter every week. While it is true that my PICTURE is in the newsletter, what about my voice?????

Imagine my delight when a great void opened up this week with one Editor out sick and another wrapped up with writer interviews!!! (Not that I need a great void, I am a small dog and only need a small void, but anyways) In fact I heard word that on today, April 1st, both our Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor would be out of the office!!?!!?!?

Therefore I knew there had never been a better time to hatch a plan to center myself!!!! Once again I could bring an important voice (mine) to the LGBTQIA+ population on April First!!!

But there’s more!!!!!

Although my in-person behavior towards every other animal in the world (especially squirrels) would suggest otherwise, I am very benevolent and generous towards all of G-d’s creatures and decided that this year 2022, I would use my privilege to stop thinking about only myself for the day and instead make space on this website for other animals (not just me) to take up space. In fact today you will be hearing from not just me (Carol) but also from two dogs who are not me, one cat (i also might be a cat so in a way that is also about me) and a tarantula. When was the last time you read an article by a tarantula? That’s right, we are doing important work here.

Also there is a quiz where you or your pet can find out if you are me or maybe a pet who is not me?

In conclusion, look how cute I am:

NSFW Lesbosexy Sunday Wants More Shenny Lesbian Sex Scenes

Welcome to a very special edition of NSFW Sunday: Shenny Day! Today we celebrate the best matchup in all of L Word history. Unfortunately, the inevitable Shenny OTP was destroyed by bad writing and portrayed with such menace and inaccuracy that Shenny fans remain the most misunderstood people in all of fandom until this very day. I

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… Important news regarding sex and creatures of the sea: The worst sex in the world is anglerfish sex, and now there’s finally a video.

… Every Way To Find A Date, Ranked By A Shane: “I hope that in the “Where Are They Now” interview, Shane reveals that after the show ended, she discovered the joys of polyamory and is now leading a fulfilling life with multiple partners, minus the guilt and self-loathing. And you know what? I feel like the more well-adjusted Shanes of the world have a lot to offer in terms of dating advice.”

… If you can’t be with the one you love because Ilene Chaiken drowned her in a swimming pool, love the one you’re with: women share their pleasure principles in a podcast about Literal Self-Love.

…. There isn’t much Shenny fic out there on the web for some reason, except on the official Shenny website, which you’ll have to register with in order to read any stories on. However, I would highly recommend doing just that so that you can read This is Treasure….  If you don’t want to join that really important website, I also enjoyed And Guest over at Archive of Your Own. In fact it was the first fic I ever read in my life! (I read it last week.)

… Then I wrote you some original Shenny fan fiction: This Is What I Want.

… If you wanna sext someone after reading that fic, here’s some tips on how to do it.

… In the wake of FOSTA, which is a terrible initiative that will do far more harm than good for consensual sex workers as well as victims of sex trafficking, I think former sex workers Jenny and Shane and me  would encourage you to re-read this today —> What We Owe To The Hidden, Groundbreaking Activism of Sex Workers.

…. Noted switch Jenny Schecter also enjoys being submissive and knows that submission is power, too — Confessions of a Little Spoon:

That power struggle translates to our bedrooms, and can make anyone (regardless of gender) feel as if they’re less powerful when they enjoy being dominated or even held. There’s no man in the relationship I have with my girlfriend, which should free us from the gendered roles to which many straight couples still conform. Yet, I can’t help but feel everything that makes me submissive — when she makes the first move to initiate sex, when she lays me down in her bed, and when she drapes her arms around me to cuddle — relegates me to the “feminine” role in our relationship and makes me weak.

… In the alternate universe I believe in, Shane and Jenny are a happily married and totally poly couple. Here’s Some Advice from a Polyamory Coach on Dealing With Relationship Jealousy.

… At Oh Joy Sex Toy, a comic on why it’s okay for “strange things” to turn you on and how these preferences and desires develop. Relevant to Shenny interests for obvious reasons.

… On a more serious note —> Writing Ourselves Whole: Using the power of creativity to recover and heal from sexual trauma.

… This old list of All 97 of The L Word Sex Scenes, Ranked is wrong, I’m sorry, no shade to Tracy who is a great person. This list of the top 15 L Word sex scenes does not include every L Word sex scene ever, but is still better because it’s more accurate.

… How To Buy A Strap-On and Dildo: Lesbian Sex Shopping Guide: If you want to fuck Cherie Jaffe next to a pool, this is the post for you.

… The star signs you’ll have best sexual chemistry with, according to Cosmo. (If you wanna know what this looks like according to us, check out Your Completely Queer Guide to Horoscope Hookups.) Whichever the most compatible star signs are, that’s what Jenny and Shane are.

… Ah! French boudoir postcards! These pictures are not of Claude or Marina, but still. (via Eros Blog)

… Americans love having sex in risky places. The bathroom at The Planet isn’t on here, because nobody really understands how it feels to be Jenny, you know? (“Completely dismantled,” by the way, is how it feels.) Also by the way, here’s our list of the most ambitious places you’ve had sex and the gayest places you’ve had sex.

Sunday Funday is Shane and Jenny in a League of Their Own

Every Sunday Funday deserves the reminder that Ilene Chaiken is very probably going to ignore season six of The L Word when it reboots, which means JENNY LIVES and our OTP can finally have their happily ever after. Here’s some other good gay news from around the world this week!

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Abbi Jacobson is making A League of Their Own Into a TV show for Netflix!

Over 100,000 people have signed a petition demanding Commonwealth countries decriminalize gay sex.

9 family sitcoms about today’s America you can watch today instead of Roseanne. (Or watch the truest American love story: SHENNY!)

Here’s how feminists in China are using emojis to avoid censorship. Everybody loves an emoji!

You know that website doesthedogdie.com? Well they’ve added an option for Does The LGBT person die? AHEM.

Britain’s highest-ranking transgender soldier marries actor in dreamy Disney wedding.

Lindsay Amer is bringing the body positivity movement to queer kids with her new YourTube series Queer Kids Stuff.

Evan Rachel Wood and Gina Rodriguez are starring in a heist film together? I KNOW WHO SHOULD DIRECT IT!

Please feel free to share any other good gay news or good Shenny feelings in the comments! As always, any hostile Tibettes WILL BE BANNED.

Everything That Didn’t Happen Because Seasons 3-6 of “The L Word” Were 10th Grade Creative Writing Assignments

When you think about it, it’s pretty clear that everything after Season 2 of The L Word was the result of a creative writing assignment that Jenny gave the students in her 10th grade Language Arts class at Green Oaks High School in Illinois, when Jenny got a job there after befriending the principal’s daughter, who was her roommate at the hospital.

Jenny missed LA. She missed the heat, she missed her loving, erratic, hare-brained friends, and Bette and Tina. Most of all though, Jenny missed her hottest and best friend, Shane. But she knew she needed to get her life together, away from these women and the way that they lived. That had been what pushed her over the edge, in fact — the fighting, fucking, crying, drinking… When she was discharged from the hospital, Jenny worked hard to find the right therapist, which sometimes takes months but she kept at it, and it only took a handful of sessions with Dr. Donna Martin for Jenny to understand how toxic LA had been. There was a small part of her that sometimes wondered if she might ever go back, if she would ever see her super hot best friend Shane again. But as quickly as this thought would surface, Jenny would swallow it down and get back to the business at hand, which was always writing and teaching.

In the state of Illinois, under a near constant cover of clouds and rain, there’s a small town named Green Oaks, population 3,866 people. That’s where Jenny moved after her hospitalization. She sometimes drove down to Wilmette to get her fill of city life, which is where she met Madeleine, a pixie-like trans woman with clear blue eyes who was fully realized and nuanced and self-assured and loved dancing and laughing and studying marine life. Jenny and Madeleine respected the hell out of each other and encouraged one another to drink plenty of water and get eight full hours of sleep each night. They’d dated briefly, but Jenny was dedicated to her self-imposed celibacy and didn’t want to hold Madeleine back and, understanding that polyamory was definitely a choice but not quite the right one for them at that time, she and Madeleine decided to be friends instead. (Shortly after, Madeleine met Lorna, a fully realized, nuanced and self-assured butch woman from South Carolina who played fiddle, and they fell madly, deeply in love, which was very sexy and very sweet.)

Madeleine was the one who gave Jenny the idea for assigning this creative writing exercise to her students. About six months into her treatment with Dr. Martin, Jenny had been given a version of the task as homework — something to help her look forward instead of back — but she was having a hell of a time putting the words on paper. It seemed simple enough: write the story of your future. But every time Jenny tried to imagine her future in Green Oaks, her mind went blank. She was happy there and had a wonderful, supportive friend group, including a cool dyke community she’d met through Madeleine, but dreams of LA kept popping up, unbidden and unexpected. Jenny talked with Madeleine and asked for her honest opinion: what did she think would happen if Jenny moved back? Madeleine was blunt: she didn’t know the future and neither did Jenny. She suggested Jenny try writing that story, the one where she went back to LA and picked up where she’d left off nearly a year ago.

But the what-ifs and possibilities of that story where overwhelming to Jenny, so instead of tackling them herself, she turned them over to her students.

“Your assignment is to write about what happens when Sarah Schuster moves back to LA after a brief stay in a psychiatric hospital in her hometown in Illinois. This will be round robin-style, where you’ll work together in groups and build off of each other’s stories as we go. Everyone will have a chance to add to this story of Sarah Schuster, a beautiful, delicate, misunderstood woman whose biggest mistake was opening her heart.”

Everything That Didn’t Happen Because Actually Seasons 3-6 of The L Word Were 10th Grade Creative Writing Assignments

With Corresponding Grades and Feedback

1. Dana Fairbanks is sick and will likely have breast cancer. (A+ “Great external conflict, very relatable. Let’s see where the group takes it!”)
2. ‘Mama T and Mama B.’ (D “Lacks creativity. Honestly bums me out.”)
3. Alice Pieszecki and Helena Peabody are friends. (B “Very imaginative. Hope your group can make sense of it later?”)
4. Alice chases Dana by car through city streets. (A+ “Classic.”)
5. Sarah Schuster goes back to LA with her butch kinda-girlfriend, Moira, who isn’t exactly welcomed into the friend group. (A “Excited to see where this goes!”)
6. Shane McCutcheon lives in LA but doesn’t know what a quinceañera is. (F “This is literally impossible.”)
7. Alice has an elaborate shrine to Dana in her living room. (A+ “Haha. Brilliant.”)
8. Sarah uses a taser in a parking lot; “We’re not faggots, we’re dykes you asshole.” (A+ “FLAWLESS. Evocative of Dorothy Allison — see me after class I have a book I’d like to loan you.“)
9. Carmen de la Pica Morales gives Shane an absurdly sexy lap dance after making her wear a dress and hair extensions and dance with a man at a quinceañera. (A+ “Thank you for turning this around.”)
10. Tina Kennard cybersexing with a man. (A+ “Haha. Brilliant.”)
11. Shane for Wax. (A “Love that you’re adding a new location! Great forward motion for Shane, too.”)
12. The NEA pulls its funding because The Art of Dissent is critical of the Bush administration; Tina is unsupportive. (A+ “”This is the new McCarthyism” haha perfect!”)
13. Shane and Sarah reunite in the driveway and are very happy to see each other. (A+ “Shows so much heart from both of these characters. Loved the embrace — for a moment it was like the world fell away and only the two of them existed.”)
14. Shane kisses a puppy before unloading the truck. (A+ “Great detail.”)
15. Angus Partridge and Kit Porter meet. (D “Feels unnecessary.”)
16. The gang plus Moira all meet at a fancy restaurant to celebrate Sarah’s return; it does not go well for anyone. (C “The lobster anecdote is a good try but I expect more subtlety from someone at your level.”)
17. Shane apologizes to Sarah about how dinner went, while reiterating how happy she is to have her back. (A+ “This is a really sweet moment between best best friends!”)
18. Bette goes to Washington, where she’s propositioned by a closeted US senator. Bette calls Tina for advice/permission, then turns down the offer. (A “Love how Tina is slowly losing her mind. Enjoying the animosity building between these two!”)
19. Billie Blakie, a party promoter, introduces Moira and Jenny to people who give Moira an opportunity to rethink her gender situation. (A “Yes! Good direction!”)
20. Kit and Angus kiss and talk about their feelings. (F “This is terrible. Don’t bring Mary K Letourneau into this ever again.”)
21. Dana is given a cancer diagnosis, undergoes a mastectomy without telling her friends. (A “Great, but why would she not tell her friends? Keep it believable.”)
22. Alice meets a lesbian vampire at bisexual speed dating. (A+ “Love it. More like this please — wait why is a lesbian at bisexual speed dating?”)
23. Helena enters into what will be a tumultuous relationship with a documentary director, Dylan Moreland, who will end up blackmailing her and breaking her heart. (A “Feels true.”)
24. Shane’s 6 o’clock is late, also Cherie Jaffe. (A+ “Wow.”)
25. Carmen ignores Shane and flirts with men; Shane goes to Cherie Jaffe’s beach house. (A+ “You’ve taken this to its logical end and yet I’m shaken to my core and horrified by your sick genius. Absolutely STUNNING scene by the pool.”)
26. Tina admits to Bette that she’s having feelings about men. (“To revisit the pool scene for a moment — am I to understand that Shane went *back home* to get her strap-on before going to Cherie’s beach house?”)
27. A publisher loves Sarah’s novel, draws comparisons to Dorothy Allison, buys it on the spot. (A+ “Absolutely perfect direction.”)
28. Sleater-Kinney plays The Planet while Sarah walks in on Billie giving Max a blowjob and Shane gets the news about Dana’s surgery. (B “Again, take care with Dana’s story here! Loved Sarah saying “don’t hide” to Max though, that was very poetic.”)
29. Dana pushes away her girlfriend, Lara Perkins, and instead relies on Alice for friendship and help. (D “Yikes.”)
30. Carmen and Shane get matching tattoos. (D “Why does this need to happen.”)
31. Tina wants to have sex with this white dude who looks like the next white dude she’ll want to have sex with. (B “Haha yes.”)

Jenny was grading the most recent round of progress — Carmen and Shane get back together but it’s rocky, Moira has transitioned to Max and is throwing a top surgery party, Dana shaves her head — when she came to an entry that would change her life forever.

“Dana dies with none of her friends around. After the funeral, Shane is distraught and, in a mourning panic, asks Carmen to marry her. Carmen accepts.”

Wait. How could these sophomoric monsters kill Dana? And worse, why the hell would they drive Shane into an extremely misguided lifetime commitment to Carmen (a woman who was fundamentally wrong for Shane, if Jenny was being honest with herself)? She thought about the night Shane had cut her hair in the kitchen: the tank top Shane was wearing, how she’d knelt down in front of her, the sound of the scissors and when the tears came. And how safe she had felt. Scared but safe. She’d trusted Shane, depended on her, owed her life to her, really. Shane had been the one to find her on the bathroom floor that day — Shane was always the only one who was ever looking for her when she needed to be found.

Actually, coming back to reality for a moment, Jenny wondered what Shane could want in Carmen. Carmen couldn’t make her happy — Shane needs someone with imagination, someone to take care of her, someone to laugh at her jokes. And then—

“Oh my god. I love Shane. I’m majorly, totally, butt crazy in love with Shane!”

Jenny stood up from her desk and walked to the phone. She still knew the number by heart.

“Hello?”

Jenny hesitated but then went for it. “Shane,”

“Oh my-” Shane exhaled a tension she’d been keeping inside for nearly a year. “Babe.”

“I was wondering if we could talk?”

“I’ve got all night.”

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Jenny sold everything she didn’t love and drove herself back to West Hollywood, where Shane met her on the front porch of a reasonably priced bungalow. Since the invention of the kiss there have been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind.

Original Shenny Fan Fiction: “This Is What I Want”

Hello all 34 people who are interested in more Shenny content, welcome to April 1st. Last week for the very first time in my life on this planet, I read fan fiction. Specifically, in preparation for this monumental day, I read Shenny fan fiction. And because I am a confident and ambitious person, I immediately thought to myself, “now that I’ve read ~4 pieces of Shenny fan fiction, I’m prepared to write my own piece of Shenny fan fiction and publish it on the internet for Shenny Day.”

What I have for you now is a hastily constructed but very long piece of Shenny fan fiction that needs approximately 10 rounds of edits but will not receive them because today is Shenny Day and also it’s Shenny fan fic, so whatever. I wrote a graphic sex scene and then felt like that was super extra and toned it down and now it doesn’t even make sense anymore but I just wanted to give you a heads-up that sexual content exists in here so you can be prepared. That’s what fan fic usually involves right? I’m asking for a friend, I don’t need to know personally b/c I’m an expert.

Also I wish I’d had the idea to write this sooner so it could’ve had illustrations. Shenny illustrations! If that isn’t heaven then feed me to the manatees. 

Just to be clear, I am a genuine Shenny shipper. Today was a dream come true!!!!

This story takes place in December 2017.

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“Jen,” Shane is dead serious. “This breaks like — every rule of responsible threesomes.”

“HA!” Carmen grins wildly, takes another quick swig of her beer. “It is so adorable, Shane, to hear you talk about ‘responsible threesomes’!”

We’re back at the house on Rising Glen in the Hollywood Hills, where from the couch we’ve piled onto we can see the luminous blue glow of the pool, the glass gate encircling it and the whole throbbing night and condo-dotted mountains and vulgar city beyond. It’s way past our bedtime but Carmen and I had a little too much tequila and we’re punchy and giddy, thirst rising like humidity in our throats.

“Oh, Shane is very responsible now,” I tease. I have my whole hand on the back of her head, fingers all up in her ridiculous hair, and I give her scalp an animal scratch while she makes a pouty face and Carmen laughs more. I’d missed that laugh, the one she only gives to people she wanted to fuck who she knows want to fuck her, too. I add, “She’s very good at being a responsible poly partner.”

“I can see that,” Carmen smiles.

“She loves ‘checking in’ about her emotions and hearing about all my little feelings—” I continue, flicking Shane’s lower lip, still pouting. “Better be careful, a bird’s gonna land on that.”

“Ha ha,” Shane says, and then, to Carmen: “Don’t tell me you think this is a good idea.”

“Actually…” Carmen swills the last dregs. “It was my idea.”

“Carmen had it!” I put my hands up. “Carmen had the idea.”

“I meannnn, if you don’t want to,” Carmen leans towards us, biting her lower lip, pressing her hand onto Shane’s extended shin. Her scissor-slaughtered Gal Pal t-shirt dips as she does, leaving at least one nipple on the dangerous precipice of immediate exposure. Quickly, she moves her hand from Shane’s leg to my thigh, just barely underneath my skirt, the kind of touch just tentative enough to make me wetter than any deliberate, expected touch ever could. The kind that gets you wanting but not knowing if you’ll get what you want and also certain that if you do not get what you want, you will probably just melt right there on the spot. I lean in, so to speak. Shane stiffens. So to speak.

“I didn’t say,” Shane speaks like she’s afraid she’ll be overheard. “I didn’t say — wouldn’t ever say — that I didn’t want to.”

“So?” Carmen slides her hand farther up my thigh and her nails are so close to the dip between them that I very nearly yelp.

“I just!” Shane’s fingers against her own mouth, a pause. “I am just trying to respect everybody’s feelings. And Jenny, I know you’ve been having a hard—”

“Okay okay okay okay,” I put my hand on top of Carmen’s, holding it in place. “I think, and Carmen agrees, that this is emotionally safe for us because!” Carmen takes her hand away, slouching back into her end of the couch, arms crossed, eyes steady on us both, thoroughly entertained. I slide off Shane’s lap so she’s behind me and I’m between her legs, both of us facing Carmen now, and Shane’s teeth graze my neck and she whispers, “I love you so much.” I get goosebumps.

I can’t believe we’re here. Where I was a few days ago feels so far away.

*

The day unfortunate enough to occur between the day The Los Angeles Times broke the Mark Wayland story and the day Carmen de la Pica Morales was due to fly in from Berlin for a weekend before a gig in San Francisco and then back to Europe, it rained in Los Angeles with a droning consistency that reminded me of Skokie. But I’d been in a Skokie state of mind for a while, I guess.

Shane, lying on her side, her hand on my ass beneath the silky fabric of her old Free City t-shirt, the one I love to sleep in: “Jen, I can see if she can stay at Bette and Tina’s tomorrow night, I’m sure it’d be fine—”

“No no no no no, don’t do that,” I insisted, my face stupid-hot with tears. “This’ll pass! I will pass through this big icky negative labyrinth nonsense thing.”

Shane lowered her eyes. “It’s not nonsense.”

“I will yank myself out of this emotional mortuary with grace and aplomb and everything will be totally fine.”

“It doesn’t have to be fine.”

I touched her face, then, her smooth cheeks, the crush of her jaw, my finger grazing the choppy bangs she’d consistently maintained only the most remote dominion over regardless of hairstyle.

“Ugh I just!” I wanted to grab my phone like a tiger. “Can you tell me what they’re saying about me? Pretty please.”

“Jen, it’s all stupid, you know that,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. They don’t matter. What matters is that you did the right thing.”

“Right,” I pretend to agree.

An actress I’d worked with on Shockproof Sydney Skate — a five-season single-camera FX series that earned Alice and I the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy writing I keep in our bedroom ‘cause it honestly turns me on to know it’s there — had come to me a few weeks ago. She’d heard I had “a history” with Mark. “I just feel like it’s time, you know?” She said, and yes, sure, of course, what animal wouldn’t agree with that. She wanted to come forward about what he’d done to her. Not just her — a few women who’d worked on crews with him and his former personal assistant, the one we’d dubbed “Shane Junior” ‘cause she was a lesbian and looked even more like Shane than every other masc dyke in West Hollywood. You know my story with Mark is really bizarre, right?  The actress said it didn’t sound bizarre at all, that from what she’d heard it wasn’t the last time he tried to exploit lesbians specifically or film people in vulnerable positions without their consent. She said she’d feel safer talking about her sexual assault with me there, the capital-F Feminist and Noted Survivor. So we met with lawyers, talked to reporters, and scheduled media appearances for this week and next.

But I’d only managed two on-camera interviews yesterday afternoon before having a panic attack while in makeup for the third. My assistant drove me home and because Shane was with me and since she had been filmed by Mark too, she went on in my place. She explained I’d had a family emergency. It was a huge favor. She hated being on camera. I don’t think she ever really wanted to talk to Meghan McCain about the UPS girl.

“Do you want me to cancel my date tonight?” Shane asked. “I can, it’s no big deal.”

“No! No No no. Don’t do that,” I forced a small smile. “I’ll be fine. You should go, you should have fun. Doctor Olson is coming over later.” My psychiatrist. She comes to me because I hate driving and when you’re rich, all the professionals will come to you.

So, later that night, I was crying in my underwear on a lawn-chair by the pool when Shane texted You’re my number one to my temp flip-phone, like she’d agreed to do in the poly rules we’d set up for ourselves nine years ago and had never failed to maintain.

The canvas umbrella I was crying under was okay at shading the sun but terrible at blocking the rain. It offered enough shelter for me to smoke a cigarette while I cried, and for Sounder Junior Junior to curl up whimpering on my lap. If I closed my eyes it felt just like Skokie, back when my body barely ever felt like my own.

I knew that an alt-right website had written THANKS BUT NO THANKS, DYKE DIRECTOR JENNY SHECTER over an image of young sad me with IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT written on my naked torso. Someone had sold it to them for more than they thought I was worth, apparently. I’d almost smiled when Shane told me that Jezebel had headlined the same picture: “Jenny Schecter Is a Lesbian Feminist Performance Artist, It Turns Out” but even that turned into more crying. Why did I give a fuck if a bunch of misogynist trolls with no hobbies and bad jeans who masturbated to unrealistic lesbian porn had become suddenly obsessed with making my life miserable? The house had intense security already, Max had installed some kind of “internet blocking machine” or whatever. I was safe. Right?

I breathed, I inhaled, I can do this, I can calm down, I can do the interviews next week, I can be a good feminist. What better way to chill out than a weekend with a mutual ex who left me for my current wife the same week I found Mark’s cameras? Carmen and I had stayed close, but this’d be the first time she spent much time with Shane since all those years ago.

But — what if I hadn’t grown at all? After everything: all the years of therapy, the Den Meditation retreats I forced Shane to tag along on (seriously, once I caught her skipping Past Life Regression to eat Honey Nut Cheerios in her car), the Healthy Stable Poly Relationship I’m in, making it to LA’s Top Power Lesbian Couples List, the girls I’d fucked and the girls we’d fucked together, the medication and acupuncture and spirit walks and Soul Cycle, making peace with and then building a thriving working relationship with Alice, directing a stupid blockbuster movie that’ll seemingly never stop keeping us in wealth, making an under-appreciated short film (based on my short story about a woman who’s mute from birth but then she realizes she’s able to speak the language of the manatees), cutting my Dad out of my life, mending things with my Mom, having one relatively civil late lunch with Tim Haspel in mid-2011, marrying the love of my life who herself attended one hundred more hours of therapy than she ever would’ve if I hadn’t been there to make her — what if after all of that, all the affirmation and reinvention, I was still that wildly depressed, unspeakably fragile and artistically insufferable girl from 2005?

“I was so excited to see Carmen!” I told Sounder Junior Junior, my poor dog who didn’t give a shit and still hated the rain. But now I felt raw again — incapable and insecure, two emotions that Dr. Olson reminded me always led straight to “controlling.” I took another deep breath. The wind blew out my cigarette.

I remember when Shane told me that she’d already started falling in love with me, back then, when we lived with Mark, which wasn’t too far before I started realizing I felt the same way.

But Carmen was right, it turns out, when she said I wouldn’t know the real deal if it bit me in the ass. I didn’t want real things then. I just wanted to get bit in the ass.

No. I wanted to do the biting.

*

“Okay so,” I take a deep breath. “Reason number one this will be okay and not weird at all: because Carmen is leaving tomorrow.”

“So there’s no way anything complicated can happen,” Carmen adds. “I will be OCEANS away.” She waves her hands in the air to suggest a vague and immense expanse of ocean before hopping off the couch and heading for the gold mirrored bar cart. She gestures — “May I?”

“You may,” I nod, and she starts pouring and mixing things. Manhattans, it looks like. She’d become a prolific bartender after a three-year relationship with a very fancy alcoholic.

“Two,” I continue, looking directly at my wife. “Because, Shane, we’ve been together for almost a decade and we’re happy and comfortable and have a life together that I don’t think either of us want to give up. Right?”

“Yes,” Shane squeezes me around the waist, smushing her nose against my back. G-d, she’s fucking cute. “Correct.”

“Three. Because we’ve both already failed at dating Carmen.”

“Exactly!” Carmen adds, pouring from the shaker into iced glasses. “But!” She turns around, that devilish smile again. “You have both already succeeded at fucking Carmen.”

Shane finally smiles back, even laughs a little: “That’s true.”

Carmen winks.

“That’s very true,” Shane adds.

Carmen doesn’t grab the glasses yet, instead she pauses and waits for Shane to finally let herself look Carmen right in the eye. Something quick and feverish and honest passes between them. I feel a knee-jerk jealousy try to slip out of my gut like a scrunched-up shirt I’d forgotten I still owned but I reject my anxiety: I know how to do this, now. I know how to yank it out, recognize it, fold it up, put it away.

Oh, but I remember now! Fully! How it felt to be young and scared of everything — that I wasn’t sexy or pretty or skinny or gay enough, that my outfits were stupid and that I wasn’t sure if the way I wanted to fuck was fucked up. How it felt to be with Carmen, knowing she wanted Shane and that Shane wanted her back but staying with her despite that, and how that made everything I was dealing with that year so much harder. Like everybody was just daring me to crack open, and like my skin was so thin that it just might, at any moment, unless I beat them to it. Which I guess I did.

I lean back into Shane, feel the buds of her breasts through her Wildfang tee, her spindly arms holding me still, still, still, reminding me how she can want somebody else without letting go of me. I’m not that same girl.

Carmen breaks the tension by swooping around to grab the glasses, and deliver them, and then starts fiddling with her phone to pull up a playlist as she continues — “Four, even if I wasn’t about to go back on tour in Europe and then spend half a year in Mexico with Elena who, let’s be honest, will definitely want to marry me and move here once she has the chance to spend more than a week in my presence, and even if you weren’t this gross happy domestic married power lesbian couple and even if we hadn’t already all broken each other’s hearts — EVEN IF all that wasn’t true, I don’t date white girls anymore anyhow!”

“You were her last one, Shane,” I smile, poking her in the stomach.

“Honored, truly.”

Carmen presses play and the speakers start pulsing something that sounds like Sylvan Esso.

“Jenny,” she commands, easing into an armchair. Is that my jaw dropping now, or my inhibitions.

“Carmen,” I scoot forward on Shane’s lap, clasp my palms together, my chin resting on my fingertips.

“Come here.”

I do.

I don’t have to turn around to know what Shane is doing — how she’s sinking into the couch, stretching her arms out  like a powerful man anticipating an expensive lap dance.

She’ll bite her lip, lower her eyes, sip her drink. She likes to watch me. I like to watch her too, it turns out. Only a few weeks into our relationship I’d told her I knew she was poly and I wasn’t gonna smash whatever lit her up, let’s just build something healthy first, just us two, and then make it bigger. At first she insisted she could do it, that she wanted to be faithful to me, and I told her fidelity didn’t look the same for everybody and it didn’t have to also mean monogamy and after a lot more crying and fucking she said thank you, thank you, thank you.

I’d made her go to therapy and do all the shit she needed to do and I’d been doing consistently since we wrapped Lez Girls and things started feeling untenable again.  I’ll go if you go, was a thing I said then and that we keep saying to each other, over and over, in all the years between then and now.

Heady with tequila and an urgency to fuck my fears away, I sit on top of Carmen and her hands are everywhere except exactly where I want them, she’s wet and insistent on my mouth, her kiss is bottomless and I’m lost. Her nails on my skin picking up where she’d left off, lifting my dress right off. I feel her palm against my scars but it feels safe there. My hair’s falling all over my face and she’s yanking it aside, biting my lip, my breast in her hand, her thumb and forefinger pinching as I claw back.

“Fuck it,” Shane says from another planet, which’s everywhere Carmen isn’t. We turn, practically panting. “Get into the bedroom so I can fuck you both.”

*

On Friday morning, Shane was called in to style for some re-shoots, which meant the weekend became just me and Carmen, which turned out to be just what I needed. I needed somebody who had no idea how much I was hurting and just wanted to have fun. She took me to meet her friends and we went dancing at Chico, doing shots with sweaty gay men with scratchy faces and quick feet who’d never try and touch me. We fastpassed through Disneyland with Alice, Tina and Angelica and stayed for the fireworks, wearing dumb hats, our tongues frosty from frozen lemonade.

“I don’t believe in love at first sight anymore,” Carmen told me while we drove back from Anaheim. “Like Shane? We had a connection, sure, but it was mostly a sex thing. Emotionally, I could never really get there with her. But you do. It’s really annoyingly cute, actually.”

On her last night, we’d met up with Helena and her obnoxiously hot 23-year-old girlfriend Neesha at Gracias Madre while Shane worked a Rodarte show. Neesha had sold a dramedy pilot to Hulu based on her experiences growing up trans with adoptive parents in a wealthy white suburb of San Diego. Feeling high, I asked if she wanted my company to produce it and of course she said she’d love that and so there was another round of margaritas for that.

“What about you, Jenny?” Neesha said, glass loosely in hand. “We should be celebrating you, too, and everything happening with —”

“She doesn’t know!” Carmen interrupted her.

“I’m on a media blackout,” I confirmed. “Doctor’s orders!”

“You should’ve seen Alice,” Carmen remembered. “I thought she was gonna implode all day at Disneyland.”

“Anyhow,” I raised my glass. “This is YOUR night, Neesha!”

“I am so proud of you,” Helena gushed to Neesha, practically swallowing head with her mouth.

When Helena and Neesha left to go home and fuck, Carmen and I stayed for another round of margaritas and then two or three more. I guess that’s how the threesome came up, in the end, like how so many things do: tequila.

*

In the bedroom everything gets very ardent very slowly, or, well, slowly and then quickly, like an avalanche. On our way in, Shane grabs me Are you sure this is okay? I say I promise. Shane follows my lead like she does when I’ve got two fingers inside her like a hook from my wrist to the weakness of her knees. She needs to see I’m okay to be okay too — and I am.

Everything’s slow at first, Carmen’s boyshorts rubbing against the briefs of Shane’s I’d started wearing so much that I’d eventually have to acknowledge that they were no longer Shane’s. The briefs, like fear and inhibitions, are in play only briefly.

With Carmen I always felt like two tomboys wrestling in our parent’s rec room, grass-stained rascals brave from all that Mountain Dew, our scabbed knees rough on the trackless carpet. With Shane I can be a femme fatale or demure or bratty or all of those things at once, like sometimes she lets me tie her up and sometimes I wear very expensive lingerie sets and she puts me in my place and sometimes we are very tender.

With both of them together I can be anything, and I’m swollen with potential when Carmen’s fingers shift from being flush against me to pushing me further onto the bed and then inside me, and now I’m in that space where I can follow my body and forget my mind. I raise my hips to meet her hand. one finger, two fingers, three, and then Shane gets behind her with that Mustang, her bony knees skimming my calves while Carmen screams YES like she just won something and in a way we all did.

We tumble, we fumble, there’s some wait, where do you want me, but a lot of familiarity too, like riding a bike but the bike is what we were and who we’ve become since then.

At some point I yell: “Fuck you Carmen, your ass is so hot!”

“It really is,” Shane agrees in full bedroom voice, smacking it, and Carmen gasps Oh I’m gonna get you now and this is when things start turning deliriously violent in bursts — my nails scraping the smooth plane of Carmen’s back, Shane yanking Carmen’s head with her hair in fists, leaving bite marks on my breasts, cracking the skin around my nipple. Carmen’s so beautiful, so every muscle every curve every tooth and nail and toe beautiful, but she opens up like the throat of a sword swallower, pretends she doesn’t know how pretty she is, like any of us deserve to touch her like this. There are moments, here and there, where I can catch Shane’s eyes with my eyes open and hers too, we’ll kiss like it’s our own way of breathing.

Eventually, that urge I feel for Shane to tie me to the bed with torn-up tights becomes an urge to watch Carmen fuck Shane and she does and I do. I watch them together for a good long while. I feel on fire and at peace all at once, like everything I fear and love is right there in front of me and it’s just for us, nobody else.

No, I am that same girl. But better.

That’s how I come — watching them, my hand between my own legs, and I don’t even have to close my eyes because everybody’s fantasy is right there in front of me, I mean, who are we kidding, and Shane, panting, scampers over to bite my thigh just in time. Her head lazy on my leg, I ruffle her hair. Carmen winks at me.

Later, we drink more and swim naked in the pool, and I watch Carmen wrap her legs around Shane and I watch them kiss and the moonlight is be perfect and I don’t feel anything at all besides bliss.

Then, back in the bed, winding down for sleep: “I love you guys,” I say overcome in every meaning of the word.

“I love you guys!” Carmen exclaims.

Shane just laughs at us, before rolling her eyes and admitting, “I love you guys too.”

“Okay so, Jenny,” Carmen begins. “Do you remember what you told me that morning you tried to ditch out on our ALL EXPENSES PAID CRUISE?”

“Um, go fuck Shane because I know you want to?”

“Okay, well, kinda, BUT!” Carmen smiles. “That’s not all! You said you didn’t want to go on the cruise because you were working on your project—”

“Oh G-d my terrible project!” I bury my head in my hands. “My paper dolls!”

“I’m donating those to the ONE archives, by the way—” Shane interrupted.

“You are not!” I pounded her naked chest with my fist, but Carmen is still talking —

“Listen! I remember this, I’ll never forget this. You told me that the best thing that came out of being fired by Burr Connor was understanding that you gotta tell the truth,” she says. “I’ll never forget it. You said that’s all I wanna do is just tell the fucking truth.”

“Did I say that?”

“You did.”

Shane cranes over the bed-side to pick up my iPad, and turns it on, propped up on her elbows. Carmen looks like a kid finally about to give their parents the birthday present they’d really struggled to stay quiet about.

“Now you’re doing it Jenny, and everybody else is doing it too!’

Shane pulls up instagram, first, and the #isthiswhatyouwant hashtag, specifically, and okay, fine, I won’t complain about how dumb hashtags are today.

There, she scrolls through image after image of women — queer women, it turns out, some wearing hats they’d somehow crudely affixed the words DYKE DIRECTOR to, like on a piece of paper with a safety pin. Topless, all of ‘em, fat and skinny and butch and femme and beautiful all around, masking or electric or washi tape over their nipples, words scrawled proudly over their chests: IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT. Hashtag “yes please.” Sometimes I’ll stop to read a story — all these girls, talking about all these men who’d fetishized or harassed or abused or pathologized or otherwise fucked with them sexually in a way that felt was or a certain way because they were queer. My lesbian life is not your artistic journey, one very angry girl had written in the middle of a very intense saga that would make a good miniseries. All of it feels both a little silly and desperately important, monumental even. I keep looking down at the pictures and then up at my wife and over at my friend, my dear friend whose come is all over my hand.

“Max’s boyfriend tracked down the source of the photos,” Shane relays insistently. “And Helena has ensured nothing else from those videos will see the light of day. And Mark’s been fired from the movie he was directing and I promise you, Mark and Gomey are never getting another job in this town, Jenny.”

“Also,” Carmen says. “We just had a threesome!”

“Wow!” I bury my head the comforter. “Ugh! It feels good, doesn’t it?” I set the tablet down and, to Shane: “It feels good that… it feels good that neither of us will ever run into him on another set, at another party —”

“It does,” Shane nods. “It really does.”

“It feels good that we did this, too” I smack their bare backs at the same time. “The oft-proposed —”

“By you,” Carmen adds, “I must remind you that it was you trying to initiate a threesome on the ship.”

“Well,” Shane says, “and Mark. Mark was very very into the idea that we could be a uh, you know—”

“A triad,” I finished. “For some crazy reason who knows what it was,” I laugh at myself, at all of us, at every woman foolish enough to believe a man with a handycam, “Mark was very curious about why we didn’t shut the whole love triangle down and just have a threesome.”

“Well, I’m glad we waited to follow his astute advice,” Carmen smiles. “Fuck that guy.”

I swear Carmen’s eyes truly twinkle sometimes. “Fuck Mark.”

*

Not enough hours later:

Hey, Jen, no pressure — but do you wanna do the interview today?

I close my eyes, think on it. Feel Shane breathing beside me.

Finally: I’ll go if you go?

We go.

Laneia’s Team Pick: WATCH IT AGAIN “Shane and Jenny – Forever (Shenny)”

How many times have you watched Shane and Jenny — Forever (Shenny) The L Word since it was published in January 2018? NOT ENOUGH TIMES! Today’s a great day to put this perfect video on loop and masturbate on your sofa.

Also hot tip: adding Alekseev’s “Forever” to all of your playlists, regardless of theme, will make each one more balanced, honest, and fated, just like Shenny! ❤ ❤ ❤

21 Shenny Icons

LOL haters are gonna hate me for this one, but I gotta be true to who I am and what I love, which is motherflipping SHENNY bitches! Yeah, I said it! And then before I said it, I used this index finger to click around in Macromedia Fireworks to make some hawt journal icons for your sweet Shenny-lovin’ souls. Do take as many icons as you want, but don’t forget to credit and lmk which ones you snagged in the comments!

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[1-6]

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 [7-10]

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[11-16]

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[17-21]

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BONUS JENNY ICONS [22-26]

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♥ Please comment if you take anything!
♥ Credit tongue_swirl

Don’t Text Your Ex, Just Take a Xanax-Rec!

Let me take you on a journey way back in time, to an extended-stay hotel in midtown Manhattan, June 2009. Autostraddle had just gotten born, much like many of our interns, who’d be arriving a few days later to “attend” Rodeo Disco, our first-ever Pride Party. Our Business Director, who was living in Miami at the time, had flown out and rented the apartment-style room, and I’d been summoned that afternoon to discuss a rather heated and clearly unreasonable e-mail argument with our Music Editor Stef that I’d been engaging in for the entirety of the day. The topic was the understandably controversial matter of how our 13 interns would be spending their days and nights upon arrival, if we were really gonna make any money from this party, when we’d be delivering their gift bags, and if it made sense to call the gift bags and schedules “Tyra Mail.” Everything was just so much.

Aforementioned Business Director offered me some advice: “Here, take a Xanax.” I’d never taken a Xanax before — after all, I didn’t have a prescription, and I’m nothing if not a law-abiding citizen — but I was feeling pretty wild that day and was up for anything. Who am I but one woman with only one life to live and way too many emails to write and then regret shortly thereafter. So I took a Xanax and within ten minutes found myself not only ignoring my laptop, but absolutely RECLINING in a chair that truly could’ve gone either way. “We should definitely flyer at the Dyke March, everything’s fine,” I trilled moments later before strolling off to the therapy session I suddenly barely even needed. Just like that I’d been transformed from a raving lunatic into a human being who cared about literally not one thing!

A quick Google search for “Xanax” on autostraddle.com turns up 491 results — that probably represents at least 25 times we’ve mentioned a brand name product for free! Arguably, there is no product we have problematically endorsed with more consistency than Xanax.

For that reason and so many others, we are so excited to announce that we have entered into a prosperous partnership with Xanax Recreational, a new kind of Xanax that is exactly like the old Xanax, except you don’t need an actual diagnosis or prescription to get it! All you need to do is call 1-800-AUTOXANAX and an intern will deliver a fresh bottle directly to your doorstep, with a wink and a smile. (The interns have mostly just been hanging out in the park since that party, except for the one who’s in law school and the one who vanished off the face of the earth instead of turning in the Comment Awards.)

It’s a great way to meet girls, chill out, and support Autostraddle at the same time! Xanax-Rec is giving us a 20% kickback on every sale.

The campaign is called “Don’t Text Your Ex, Take a Xanax!”, reflecting the fact that many queer women struggle with self-defeating communication issues.

It also speaks to Xanax-rec’s true desire to connect with this underserved and very stressed out market. In the face of so much marginalization and oppression, can’t a girl get a time out?

The next time your parents, who voted for Trump and don’t understand why you’re yelling at them for taking an Uber from the airport instead of a Lyft, tell you to take a chill pill, you can literally take a chill pill.

The next time you’re stressing out about how to impress that femme by playing pool but you don’t actually know how to play pool, take a Xanax-rec and sit in a chair instead, looking hot while keeping cool!

The next time you feel the urge to text that girl to make sure the text you sent earlier wasn’t “too much,” just take a Xanax-rec and watch Sleepless in Seattle instead!

The next time you run out of Kate McKinnon videos on YouTube, just take a Xanax-rec and watch them again!

As you know, we’ve struggled for a while to attract advertisers to Autostraddle, due to sexism, homophobia, transphobia, the perception of queer women as “poor” and the fact that we write articles on topics including but certainly not limited to buttsex and getting a clove of garlic stuck in your vagina. But just like how little we care about stuff after taking a Xanax-Rec, they don’t care about that or really anything. We finally found our very own advertising match made in heaven, and summarily we’re on track to make more money from advertising this year than we did in 2014-2016 combined!

“You know,” your Mom told me when I told her about this ad campaign, “this reminds me of when doctors were over-prescribing valium to housewives in the ’50s so they wouldn’t have to think about how unhappy they were or become feminists. It’s kinda fucked up that you’re doing this, especially now.”

“BUT!” I told your Mom.

In addition to Phizer supplying all our Senior Editors, most of whom are already on at least one psychiatric medication (I’m on two!), with a lifetime supply of Xanax-rec, we will be running an aggressive display ad campaign, complete with pop-up ads that will leap from the page directly into your soul on every post about climate change or the Trump administration.

You can also look forward to a series of sponsored posts that will exploit surface-level diversity with seemingly effortless in-group cultural references in hopes of manipulating an underserved community into associating corporation with self-affirming and authentic emotions.

The best news of all? Those of you who are prescribed Xanax because you actually need it to function will no longer have to suffer through ten minutes of small talk with friends you haven’t heard from in forever who really should just cut to the chase if all they want to know is if you can spare a Xanax. (Very rude, friends!)

The first 100 orders of xanax-rec come with a free sticker!

I’m Serious Now

Hello, friends, readers, and business associates.

I’d first like to thank you all for being here. If there’s one thing we know about the internet, it’s that no one’s obligated to read anything they don’t want to unless it’s an article about what it means to be an introvert, and so someone’s click is always a gift of their time.

As some of you may be aware, I’m a person who’s been known to joke online. You could even go as far as saying my entire internet persona is built on things being “a joke” and that I’m incapable of an earnest sentiment lest I completely unravel. How fun. What dedication.

Picking this up at its base would reveal a network of roots. They’d have created their own maze. At their center, a whole lifetime deflected.

What an exhausting existence, you might be thinking, to have the human experience in its infinity capacity for emotion be pumped through the barrel of a slide whistle. And you’d be right. I’m tired.

Which is why in what I think will be a great second act redirect, I’m a serious person now.

From now on, what you can expect from me is the proper allocation of meaningful emotion (regret and sorrow) and matter-of-fact breakdowns of the world’s ills. No longer will humor be used as a baseline for communication. Life is short, and so we should approach it with the gravity it’s owed.

Please update your contacts as necessary.

Here’s What Happened When I Did All The Verbs From The L Word Theme Song In One Day

I have been trying to master the fast part of “The Way That We Live” by Betty, the theme song for The L Word, for the better part of a decade. That rambling list of gerunds is deceptively hard to recite, especially under the pressure that sets in when you triumphantly declare at a party that you can totally recite all the words to The L Word theme song and everyone expects a demonstration.

After many a night practicing, and my girlfriend waking me up to inform me that I was singing it in my sleep again, the rowdy earworm started to sound more and more like an incantation or a prayer. The more I heard those words play over and over in my head, the more I wondered if within that daringly simple hook, Betty had encoded a certain doctrine. Could The L Word’s theme song outline a righteous path toward a fulfilling life?

With the conviction of Jenny Schecter writing about manatees, I embarked on a journalistic and spiritual journey to unlock life’s secrets with the help of Betty’s lyrical key. I decided to do all of the verbs described at the end of The L Word’s in just one day. The results may shock you.

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8:02 a.m. – TALKING

I woke up on the morning of my endeavor, ready to jump right in. Talking is how I normally start my day anyway, so this one would be easy. I tapped my sleeping girlfriend on the shoulder, and the following conversation ensued:

ME: Today, I’m going to do all the verbs from that annoying fast part at the end of The L Word’s theme song.
HER: Why?
ME: For science!
HER: I’m having some serious concerns about our relationship.

8:04 a.m. – LAUGHING

This one was also easy. I had a nice little laugh at the fact that my girlfriend clearly doesn’t get my work. She did not join in the laughter.

8:10 a.m. – LOVING

For this next one, I decided to do something I love: drink pressed juice while watching an episode of The L Word. During this time, I also pondered the fact that when straight people say “the l word,” they’re usually talking about “love” and not Ilene Chaiken’s six-season wonder. Strange!

9:10 a.m. – BREATHING

Simply breathing here seemed too simple, so I signed up for a class in my neighborhood on Transformational Breathing. It was being taught by my ex-girlfriend.

10:27 a.m. – FIGHTING

I fought with my ex-girlfriend in the middle of a Transformational Breathing class.

10:59 a.m. – FUCKING

For this, I masturbated, because masturbating is fucking. Also, my girlfriend said she was not interested in having sex with me for the sole purpose of a story. She again reiterated that she thinks this project is pointless.

11:06 a.m. – CRYING

Realizing that my latest project, and my life’s work by extension, could be pointless, I had a quick cry on my walk to my next destination.

11:10 a.m. – DRINKING

To get in the real spirit of The L Word, I shotgunned two Dos Equis at The Planet. Because The Planet is a fictional cafe-bar on the show, I had to settle for the parking lot of Planet 9, a record store in my neighborhood.

11:37 a.m. – WRITING

With a slight buzz, I made my way to an actual cafe so I could sit and write the first part of this story. I got distracted and instead wrote a 2,000-word manifesto comparing my plight as a misunderstood writer to Jenny Schecter’s plight as a misunderstood writer.

1:14 p.m. – WINNING

At the cafe, I challenged the nearest table to a round of The L Word trivia. They insisted they had never seen the show, so I won easily.

1:46 p.m. – LOSING

Losing would be harder, as it’s something I’m not used to doing in any capacity. But I’m very bad at darts, so I found an establishment with darts and promptly lost to a kind stranger who, when I told them I’m a writer, asked “like Carrie Bradshaw?” It was then that I realized we need more representations of writers on television.

2:03 p.m. – CHEATING

After weighing the veritable pros and cons of cheating on my girlfriend (Pro: I could finally be the Shane of my friend group! Con: I would actually become the Bette of my friend group, because even though Shane is remembered for her infidelity, Bette was the real serial cheater of the show), I realized I was perhaps taking this project too far. So instead, I just cheated at darts, which got me thrown out of the bar.

3:15 p.m. – KISSING

I went home, kissed my girlfriend, and she asked if I was still working on my dumb project and if I was anywhere closer to unlocking life’s secrets.

4:12 p.m. – THINKING

I took a walk and thought long and hard about whether I had unlocked life’s secrets.

5:43 p.m. – DREAMING

Pausing mid-walk to recline on a park bench, I started daydreaming about what life would be like if I quit my job to open up a half-salon/half-skatepark like the one Shane McCutcheon worked in. Eventually, I actually fell asleep. I can’t remember what I dreamed about, but a stranger woke me up to inform me that I had been whispering “I killed Jenny Schecter” in my sleep.

Autostraddle’s Spring 2016 Queer TV Preview: So Many Sams, So Little Time

We’re already a few weeks in to the spring television season: Faking It and Empire are back, The Fosters and Pretty Little Liars have wrapped up, Jane the Virgin, Grey’s Anatomy, The 100 and Rosewood are going strong and BLESS US EVERYONE, Person of Interest returns for an unfortunately super-short season on May 3rd.

But there’s plenty more to be excited about this upcoming season ’cause there are more new shows with queer characters debuting than ever before in the history of television! Here are some that we’re especially excited about.

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Law & Order: West Hollywood – 4/27 (NBC, 9pm)

The newest spin-off of the Law & Order franchise, Law & Order: West Hollywood tells true stories of a subculture some consider especially heinous. You can look forward to lesbian love triangles, gay men intentionally giving each other STIs, bisexuals who can’t decide if they’d rather kill their boyfriend or their girlfriend, dead lesbians, closeted movie stars dating their obviously gay managers and the transgender sex workers called in for questioning. Cheyenne Jackson and Claire Holt star. B.D Wong will probably be involved, so you’ll want to tune in for that.

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Mommy? – 5/3 (Lifetime, 9pm)

44 years ago, Deb (Lucy Lawless) was walking her schnauzer in the park when she was brutally murdered in a crime that remains unsolved to this day. Now, her 17-year-old daughter Alex (Mia Kirshner), gifted with super-intelligence, is determined to track down the killer, who will probably kill her first, because she’s bisexual. Also, her Mom was a lesbian. But now she’s dead, so!

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Touched By Several Angels – 4/14 (ABC, 8pm)

This wholesome and popular fantasy drama returns this spring with an all-new cast, updated to include more angels and tap into our public fascination with heavenly messengers, tarot cards, spirituality in general and communicating with the dead. The series will follow the earthly adventures of a divine visitor named Tara, called upon by her celestial supervisor, Pam, to bring messages of hope and transformation to lesbian characters who haven’t died… yet!

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Flip, Flop, Or Kill? – 4/4 (HGTV, 3pm, 4pm, 5pm, 6pm & 7pm every day)

Follow aspiring actresses and ruthless real estate agents Stacey and Brittany as they flip houses in Southern California by purchasing old homes in need of TLC, renovating them to perfection, and then physically lifting the house and flipping it over on top of a lesbian, who then dies.

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Galaxy 3030 – 4/20 (Syfy, 10pm)

It’s the year 3030 and every remaining human lives on an interstellar megaship, the only survivors of a civilization and a planet destroyed by war and global warming. It’s a brave new world where a diverse array of persons from all over the old world must come together, develop language, and build a universal culture while evading a mysterious alien predator ship chasing them across the galaxy. How will eight white men, one maybe-not-white woman, one supermodel and a dead lesbian save humanity from its last dying breath? Captain Smith (Eric Close) will have to figure that out, even if it means killing an additional lesbian or knocking over his meticulously arranged model spaceship.

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Lost & Delirious

At a private, all-girls boarding school three young girls discover love and lust between themselves as they mature and learn the darker side of love: intrigue, jealousy and revenge. At the end, a lesbian jumps off the roof and dies.

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The Laurens – 5/7 (The CW, 9:30 PM)

Two women, one small apartment, and one big problem: they’re both named Lauren! Lauren Hill (Alexandra Chando) and Lauren Genovese (Zoey Deutch) share more than just a name, though. They share a bed, work at the same diner, text each other constantly, and often share a joint (don’t tell Mom!). Sometimes they even share boyfriends! That’s right, the Laurens are heterosexual, despite literally every possible shred of evidence to the contrary. We’re including the show in our TV preview anyhow, because there’s a scene where they hot-wire a Prius and accidentally run over a lesbian named Alex (Mischa Barton), killing her.

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Shake Your Babymaker – 5/12 (ABC, 10:30 PM)

A new sitcom from Jennifer Lopez centers on a lesbian who loves being pregnant so much she’s made pregnancy her full-time job! Following the sudden death of her bisexual girlfriend, Janet (she was hit by a car and then infected by a bird somebody let loose in the hospital corridor, which infected her blood, causing her to die from a little-known but lethal interaction between bird-flu and Xanax), Sam (Jenna Duwan-Tatum) wants to create more life than ever before. That’s where Brad (Hunter Parrish) comes in! Brad is Sam’s best friend since the sandbox, and he moves in with Ellen in a new role: Head Pimp of the Baby Business.

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Griswold Academy – 5/5 (The CW, 9pm)

There’s a lot of old money among the blue-blood students of the elite Griswold Academy — and a lot of secrets. These kids have been raised since birth to do whatever it takes to get into top colleges and make the family name look good, including devious double-crossing. That doesn’t mean they don’t make time for drugs, sex and other debauchery behind closed doors. In between college interviews, bad boy Chad orchestrates an ecstasy-fueled orgy to gain the attention of queen bee Simone, valedictorian Myra conducts a steamy secret affair with history teacher Eli Fennick, and teen lesbians Paige and Tara hold hands occasionally before kissing one singular time — chastely, with no tongue. There’s only one mystery on everybody’s mind: who was driving the car that ran them over after that first kiss?

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I’m A [Lesbian] Survivor – 5/27 (CBS, 8pm)

Fans of A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila and The Bachelorette will want to tune in for the hottest dating reality show of 2016. Kiera, a self-described lothario, will choose between 22 beautiful women over the course of a season to find the person she’s destined to share an Echo Park one-bedroom and CSA with. Each episode, one wannabe wifey will be eliminated from the competition and handed over to male showrunners who have an array of violent and increasingly implausible deaths prepared for them. Who will make it through to fight with Kylie about whether Tom’s deodorant even does anything for the rest of their natural lives, and who will die after a scuba diving accident that doesn’t technically kill them but does trigger previously dormant Lyme disease, the treatment of which they are driving to the hospital for when they’re murdered at random by a freeway sniper?

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Four-Star Chef – 5/12 (Food Network, 7 pm)

15 would-be restauranteurs are getting the chance of a lifetime — in an innovative new reality show on the Food Network, amateur chefs work under a heart-pounding time limit to cook the signature dishes of Michelin four-star restaurants. If they can fool even the restaurant’s owners into thinking the finished dish came from their own restaurant’s kitchen, they could see their own dream be fully funded. Features edgy, quirky personalities like Duke, the rockabilly straightedge vegan who feels ethically conflicted about preparing a lamb stew and cries about it a little; Sawyer, the craft-beer-obsessed comfort food chef who never saw a slab of bacon he didn’t like; Amelia, the former-supermodel-turned-cupcake-baker with severe celiac disease, and Karen, the extremely competent butch lesbian chef who viewers can watch slowly lose the will to live with every challenge that revolves around building a five-course meal inspired by a children’s nursery rhyme or the smell of moss, culminating in a shocking finale that nobody saw coming. Well, maybe you saw it coming, I don’t know. (It involves death.)

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Boo-Who – 5/2 (Fox, 8 PM)

Talk about mismatched housemates! Newlyweds Ron and Melissa just want to settle into their cute LA bungalow, but they can’t seem to get a minute to themselves without the former tenants, lesbian couple Alex and Sam, butting in — because they’re haunting the place! After Alex was killed by a stray bullet fired by the couple’s sperm donor and intended to target Sam’s boss and then Sam died of severe food poisoning complicated by a previously unknown allergy to fabric softener, the two committed to spending their afterlife together, much to Ron and Melissa’s chagrin. Can these two wacky couples bridge the gap… between life and death? Will Alex and Sam’s zany antics, like switching the TV over to white noise every time Ron tries to watch Two and a Half Men, drive them apart? Perhaps most pressingly, will the show be able to develop any dramatic tension or emotional weight when the only lesbians on it can’t be killed because they’re already dead?

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Private Sam – 4/22 (TNT, 10 pm)

Private investigation is a cutthroat business, which is why Sam Rockwell knows she has to be twice as good as the men in the industry if she wants to stay on top… and if she wants to keep her own life as private as possible. She’s got a crack team at her disposal — Peyton, criminal genius with a heart of gold; Sully, ex-military with an unexplained British accent, and Luisa, a mysterious bisexual jack-of-all-trades with a background in corporate espionage who will be tragically murdered by her ex to provide a moving season finale case to solve.

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Yankee Doodle Daughters – 4/13 (HBO, 7 pm)

It’s tough just getting to be a kid during WWII, but the tight-knit group of teen best friends who have grown up together on Clancy Street make the best of it. First heartbreaks, scrounging for stockings, victory gardens, and even dealing with unexpected pregnancies — Lila, Dorothy, Helen, Marlene and Glenda can make it through anything as long as they’re together. Except Marlene, who is a lesbian and dies of dysentery.

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The People Vs. OJ Simpson: Pre-Trial

If you’re anything like us, one season of The People vs. OJ Simpson just wasn’t enough. David Schwimmer as Robert Kardashian, you guys. I mean! Anyhow, if you wanted to know more about Nicole Brown Simpson’s lesbian affairs as described in Faye Resnick’s memoir, you’re in luck, ’cause this season is NICOLE NICOLE NICOLE. We’re gonna dig real deep into the part of Nicole’s story where she falls in love with Faye: the tequila, the baths, the candles, the confessions of spiritual connections. And… well. I think we all know how this particular story ends.

It’s Official: We’re Becoming A Religion

With all the horrors revealed to a shocked world this past Sunday in the HBO Scientology documentary Going Clear, there was one that stood out to the staff of this fledgling queer website: an ingenious business model. After last week’s passing of the Religious Freedom Act in Indiana, which gives ordinary human beings permission to pretty much do whatever they want to anybody because religion, our minds were made up.

We are proud to introduce Scissorism, a cult-like religion that gives queer women the official “non-profit” status they’ve already been living for so long.

Honestly, the idea of becoming a religion has been on our minds since 8: The Mormon Proposition, a documentary film that explained how the Mormons convinced a ton of people to avoid the apocalypse gay marriage would surely rain down upon us by giving the Mormon Church millions of dollars. This worm of an idea blossomed into a caterpillar and then became a beautiful butterfly a few months back, when A-Camp Co-Director Robin Roemer read (or so the legend goes) Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief and informed our CEO Riese, “I’ve been reading a ton on cults this year so I know we are a cult, DON’T LIE!!!!!”

Riese raised the issue with her team of Thetans.

“I think we’ve had this train of thought before,” argued Managing Editor Rachel Kincaid. “The cult one? Which isn’t bad, I’m just noticing how often this theme recurs for us.”

“We have some cultish qualities,” Riese reluctantly acknowledged.

“But none of the money that often comes with them,” Rachel pointed out while drinking tea in her underwear in a cold Milwaukee bedoffice (combo bedroom/office). “Which I agree seems like a raw deal.”

“The only element of being a cult leader I’ve attained is having a hot young girlfriend,” noted Riese.

“Which, mazel tov,” Rachel commented.

“Thank you,” said Riese while watching aforementioned girlfriend singing along to Drake on the couch while eating gummy fruit snacks from a tiny pouch.

“Hannah Hart could be our Tom Cruise,” Laneia suggested while balancing two slices of bread against each other to make an Apple Damn Sandwich in her 32 square feet of tax-deductable office space.

“That’s what I was just thinking!” affirmed Yvonne while attempting to get her dog to stop barking.

“Do you want me to e-mail her?” asked Heather while tweeting with one hand and fixing her bicycle with the other. “Maybe Stacy has her info.”

“Robin can ask her,” responded Riese, in Hebrew.

This initial meeting of the minds was just the beginning of what would become a full-scale vision, the kind that occupies several IMAX screens and rivals the heart-pounding thrills of a good episode of Treehouse Masters. We imagined sitting on piles of money we could then safely distribute to feminist and queer causes, including the funding of Carmen Rios’s trip to Mecca (the Drake tour), debuting a glossy magazine and getting Words With Girls on the air.

The theology was a no-brainer: you do you, be nice to people, don’t talk shit about women’s bodies, don’t link to Bustle, don’t use the word “problematic” or else the goddesses will cry (that’s code for “your water bottle will explode in your bag”), memorize the HTML for adding an image to a comment and do not covet your best friend’s wife or girlfriend.

A pantheon of goddesses have assembled themselves for worship: our Lordess Ellen DeGeneres, Jasika Nicole, Wanda Sykes and Rachel Maddow. Religious texts would include This Bridge Called My Back, Sister Outsider, Bad Feminist, Susie Sexpert’s Lesbian Sex World and OMG I’M GAY. We would immediately apply for state-sanctioned religious holidays such as The Day Orange is the New Black Comes Out and International Autostraddle Brunch Week. Worship services would feature a gospel choir lead by Dannielle Brooks and Samira Wiley, dance performances by Kaylah Wilson and Alex Vega, inspirational speeches from congregants and that part where they pass around a plate and everybody puts a bunch of money on it.

Scissorsism intends to revolutionize the field of religious cults. For starters, members will not be obligated to discard their present religious affiliations, because that’s mean, most religions are pretty rad, and Riese’s Mom would be unimpressed if her daughter abandoned Judaism just before Pesach. However they will need to profess their devotion to Scissorism regularly enough that nobody starts to feel insecure.

Rather than being reminded of how Jesus died for their sins, Scissorists will be reminded how Heather recapped for 80 straight hours for their sins and Riese sacrificed her mental health, social life, financial well-being and youthful disposition for their sins. Rather than being asked to believe in a G-d they cannot physically see, Scissorists will be asked to believe that Kristin Stewart and Alicia Cargile are girlfriends, even if they won’t admit it to the press for some insane reason.

Rather than being helpless when a wedding venue discriminates against us because we’re gay, we’ll now have the power to discriminate against them in return, which could get really creative. For example, Laniea’s Institute Of Midwifery and Ritual would only be open to Scissorists and Jasika Nicole will sew dresses out of driftwood for Scissorists only.

Rather than being subjected to endless “audits,” followers will instead be granted free and confidential therapy, 24/7, because lesbians love talking about their feelings. This will take place in the Super Powers Complex to be constructed in rural Tennessee with a satellite campus in Indiana. Rather than gathering information to use against you shall you choose to deflect (Because what kind of monster would dare to deflect, amirite?) (please don’t leave us) (everybody always leaves please don’t leave), we’ll gather information about your ex who broke your heart, just in case she tries to fuck with you later.

Followers who wish to advance beyond the present highest level in Scissorism — an A+ Gold Membership — will be able to, with the introduction of A+ Diamond Immortal Championship Level. At this level, Heather Hogan will tell you how great you are every single morning, reminding you that you exist at a transcendent and possibly immortal state of relative superiority over the rest of humynkind. You’ll also get a certificate printed on cardstock.

We intend to proceed rapidly with various legislative initiatives, such as a requiring schools to acknowledge the existence of homosexuals in all their textbooks, even math. Queer students who feel erased or invisible would be free to leave the classroom in favor of silent prayer or chanting Indigo Girls lyrics to the sun goddesses. Imagine a world where kicking a trans woman out of the women’s restroom or refusing to grant a couples membership at Lucille Roberts to a snazzy pair of femme lesbians was protected under the law as encroaching on the religious freedom of our people. Imagine the ability to strike with lighting every bitch who asks a butch lesbian if she’s in the right bathroom. Imagine a world in which family members who refuse to accept their daughters’ Scissorism will be declared Suppressive Persons.

Sisters, we have already imagined that world.

And sisters, it is glorious!

That world is so close at hand that Mal Blum is already writing it a theme song. Rabbis are already producing hummus and Franzia in line with the strict dietary guidelines set forth in The Book of Rachel.  Our West Hollywood Studio is already putting the final touches on a script celebrating our Creation Myth, which happens to also be true.

Will you come into the light with us, sisters?

Will you surrender to a higher power and walk barefoot over hot coals into the dusty recesses of our caffeinated hearts?

Because if you do, you will be rewarded with many riches in this life. (For example, you will be able to walk on water, enabling you to bypass whatever lies beneath the water at a Dinah Shore pool party. )

Recruitment will be an early goal we expect to achieve swiftly by sending Scissorists door-to-door with pamphlets extolling the virtues of cunnilingus and communal farming. We will erect folding tables offering FREE STRESS TESTS in shopping malls and subway stations, offering hope and a hoodwink to women who are stressed out about the patriarchy.

Many aspects of the Gay Agenda have been stalled by things like our inability to wage war on an entire class of human beings and our overwhelming desire to be courteous and accepting towards those who trespass against us. Fortunately, Scissorism offers exemptions, if you will, from such constraints. Aside from the financial benefits of brainwashing an entire sexual orientation into taking out second mortgages on their homes in order for us to buy more shipping labels, develop an app and provide camperships to under-privileged LGBTQ folks, another key benefit of Plan Religion is to justify declaring an all-out war on men, as our kind have always wanted to do.

Empowered by founding documents like Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto and incoherent rants from MRAs on reddit about what the lesbians are up to, Scissorists will be encouraged to CRUSADE CRUSADE CRUSADE, unleashing buckets of lesbian feminist rage upon masses of innocent cis men (if you are a bisexual with a feminist boyfriend or a queer with a really nice Dad, you will be required to slaughter an animal or a tofurkey and mark your door to have your man passed over when the Amazons arrive with axes). At this point, we feel we’ll be in prime position to do what so many feminists have dreamed of doing for years but were unable to because they weren’t a non-profit: create a world run by women, inhabited by women.

We call it “the land of Lactaid & Honey” and it will be celebrated by L. Riese Bernard engraving the Autostraddle Comment Policy on two large pieces of rock and lifting the stone tablets into the air atop the San Bernardino Mountains.

Most importantly, the financial influx we expect to experience as a non-profit religious institution with 2.6 million brainwashed members will finally enable us to do the one thing our followers have been praying for for so long: host an A-Camp on the East Coast. Mazel Tov!

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Although we’ve yet to ask the IRS to cement our religious status, let alone receive confirmation of this ideological conviction, we suggest you get in on the action and join A+ or purchase a sweatshirt featuring our religious motif now if you don’t want to end up burning in eternal hellfire with Ted Cruz and everybody who’s ever said anything bad about us on the internet. We’re sure it’ll all work out eventually, it did for the Scientologists!