Yesterday was your birthday. Years ago I put it in my iPhone calendar with a reminder alert. I wanted to be sure you always knew how important you were to me.
I can’t even remember how we became friends, it was so long ago. I was friends with Sam and then you became friends with Sam, or maybe we both became friends with Sam around the same time. However it happened, soon you and I were friends too. And before long we were traveling together.
The first time you scolded me was in Puerto Rico. We had just checked into our room. You got on the phone to make spa reservations and I turned on the TV. The first station that came up was some Fox-affiliated local news network. I reclined on the bed and zoned out while the newscasters talked about the weather. Still on the phone, you snapped your fingers to get my attention. “Turn that off,” you mouthed. I was confused. You walked to the TV and tapped your finger on the screen, where the Fox logo was. You wagged your finger and shook your head. “Oh, sorry,” I said, turning the channel to CNN. “I wasn’t thinking.”
No, wait. That wasn’t the first time. The first time was about a year earlier, when we were out to dinner. Someone said something about having to do their taxes, and I made a dumb joke about our tax dollars going to welfare programs. I was 22 and totally uninvested in politics, so I had no idea what the joke even meant, I was just goofily repeating something I had heard somewhere. You immediately started lecturing me about economic inequality and racism. At one point you even drew a pie graph on a napkin. While you spoke I nodded in agreement, totally ashamed of myself and desperate for you to understand that I had just been kidding around.
I respected your passion. At the time I didn’t really have any convictions. I always voted Democrat, but only because as a gay person that was my duty. Honestly, in those days I was just trying to not get high.
When Trump won in 2016, you were the first person I called. We both had different ways of coping with it. I completely unplugged; you watched MSNBC around the clock.
When Trump won the second time, so much had changed. I wrote on Substack about how bizarrely relieved I felt, despite the fact that I hadn’t even voted for him:
It’s been a special kind of hell for Americans who think that all forms of racism suck and that sex is real. Especially for liberal, Democrat-voting Americans. Just an absolute fucking nightmare. Which is why, today, I can’t help but feel that everyone responsible for this nightmare—including those who stood by and said nothing—deserve exactly what they got on November 5. A red wave wouldn’t suffice. It needed to be a tsunami.
Am I worried about a second Trump presidency? Of course! But after four years of screaming into the void, it’s vindicating to watch Democrats finally reckon with what they’ve been getting wrong. Which, bless their hearts, is basically everything.
You hadn’t changed at all. The day I published the essay, I got an email notification that you had unsubscribed to my newsletter. I was hurt, but not surprised. A couple years earlier Sam told me how disturbed you were by another piece I’d written—an essay about how much I hated the word “cis.” This was around the time you left your husband and started dating a nonbinary disability rights activist who had just gotten top surgery. You told Sam you were afraid I was becoming “radicalized".”
Over the holidays, Sam told me you’re now “refusing” to read my memoir. (No, I don’t know why Sam always thinks I need to know what you’ve been saying about me.) In the past, whenever your name came up, I held my tongue. This time, I couldn’t stay quiet. I told her how pathetic I thought you were, that you were treating me exactly like the people in the religious cult I grew up in treated me after I left. I said something about how your brain must be the size of a miniature cantaloupe, which, I don’t even know if that’s a thing but for some reason it’s what I was picturing in that moment. It wasn’t kind, I know, but I was pissed. Of course you don’t have to read my book; it’s not a requirement. But I’m pretty sure that, if you read it, you would realize how insane you’re being. Come to think of it, that’s probably why you don’t want to read it: You can’t run the risk of encountering ideas that might cause you to question your own beliefs.
Anyway, I guess that’s it for you and me. A twenty-year friendship, gone kaput. Ah, well. I gotta say, I’m a little relieved. It was exhausting, constantly having to pretend like I found your zealotry endearing.
I’ll never forget you, though. Every time I see a white lady screaming on TV about fascism I’ll immediately think of you. My god, I don’t even want to imagine how much you’ve unraveled this past year. I just hope you’re not thinking about doing anything stupid.
I spent 17 years as an out lesbian in San Francisco and slowly watched folks get captured by the cult and then it became too weird and harmful to stick around. The moment my “friends” started shaming me for being homosexual vs homogendered and getting upset when I wouldn’t entertain their belief that sex isn’t real, I knew it was time to move on. I simply deleted, blocked, and left. There was no way I was going to be able to save my group of connections from the gender cult. It was a shocking and sad experience. But my life is better with new friends who share a sense of what is real and don’t shame me for living my truth as a gay person. You are not alone. I’ve already purchased several of your books. Thank you for sharing your story. It’s important work and needed to be said.
They all do it. They scold, they get their hackles up, they impugn, and finally, unfriend. ALL OF THEM.
I just went through this two weeks ago. I've been biting my typing fingers with this woke scold guy I lived with in SF in the early 90s, a guy I really liked --in person.
He also transed his only child, a son, when the son was about eight years old. I'm fairly certain I grok how this happened. Very pretty boy. A twink in the making. Kids at school calling him a girl for being so pretty. Mom now has a trans flag and a candle in her FB profile picture...and my friend has NO BALLS. (Just like his son...recently he told me that bottom surgery was imminent. Of course it was. They puberty blocked him. There's no turning back from that.)
And I never told him how awful I think that is. In the meantime, even the most liberal-seeming posts would set him off. Why would anyone pick a fight over the alarmingly high percentage of kids growing up without a father in the home?
The final showdown was over my posting a joke from the BABYLON BEE. Didn't I know that it's not OK to find the Babylon Bee funny?
Anyway, I'll be writing an homage to this guy within the next couple of weeks.
As for your friend -- I'm sorry -- ! But yes they are in a cult and it's so hard watching them drop like flies into a self-righteous pot of honey.
And I long for the days when we didn't care about our friends' politics. I'm a tail end of the Baby Boomer -- believe me -- once upon a time, that is how it was.