The Autostraddle Yearbook: A Decade Of Gay Work

“In 2013 I was living in New York and I knew I needed to break up with my girlfriend and move away but I didn’t know how so I used to go to my day job, and spend the day emailing the Autostraddle group email (haha remember before Slack when we had a group email? Miss you, daily 100+ email chains!), and Riese and Laneia teased me that I had to share every feeling I’d ever felt with the group in real time, and they weren’t wrong. I was developing a huge crush on another Autostraddle writer, who would become my girlfriend after I broke up with the girl I was dating at the time (oops, sorry, etc) and she and I would gchat all day, too. I’d stay up until 5am writing articles and I’d sleep for a few hours and then I’d go back to my day job. I’d come home and we’d all hop on Google Hang Video (is that what it was called?) and we’d just like, hangout! Sometimes Marni and Riese would join and we’d watch Marni cook Riese dinner, Lizz and I would often talk about our vaginas, I had like 30 crushes on everyone so I was always flirting with someone (we run a very professional operation here, y’all), and we would just hang out on our laptops and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh.

I think maybe to a certain type of person this sounds pathetic, or lonely – a bunch of queers spread out across the country, video chatting each other late into the night every day – and it’s true that I’m grateful to have queer community I can hang with irl now – but I know I don’t have to explain to a bunch of Autostraddle readers how good it felt to be in community with a bunch of weirdos just like me, even if we could never hang out irl. We built a home on the internet, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a real home.

Anyway I was 23 so I was never tired even though I never slept, I was just happy, even though objectively everything was falling apart. Except that it wasn’t? I think that was the first time in my life I realized my friends were gonna be it, you know? I don’t know that I knew it yet – I went on to have three more failed monogamous relationships before admitting to myself that maybe that is Not My Journey – but I know that even though I cried about needing to breakup with my gf every day, even though I was miserable in New York, even though I knew everything was about to shift and I was terrified – Autostraddle was home and I felt safe and happy and good and loved, and that was enough.”

—Vanessa Friedman