Long Time Caller, First Time Listener #6

Welcome to Long Time Caller, First Time Listener, a column where we, Trixie and Katya, give you, the reader, advice. Our answers may not be valuable, but they will definitely be irrelevant. 

Today, we answer the calls of people looking for validation, and not just for the parking garage.

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Want your question answered by us? Email goopedsubstack@gmail.com. Please include a name/pseudonym and your pronouns!

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Question 1: Trixie and Katya are both STUNNING. I'm a teen gay female using they/she pronouns. I've always had so much trouble loving myself and thinking I'm pretty and liking my body for what it is. How can I learn to love myself? 

-simp4_K_and_T

Trixie: Let me ask you something that perhaps no one has asked you before: are you fucking gross? It’s okay if you are. I’m 32 years into being fucking gross and I never let it get me down. Basically it’s going to be a lot heavier lifting for you to delude yourself into thinking you are a supermodel who just has the wrong haircut than it would be to just accept you are a lukewarm bowl of oatmeal with lashes. I appreciate that you believe we are stunning. In certain lighting and a controlled studio environment, you are correct. We are beautiful. But don’t forget- from the side profile in overhead lighting, I look like a Cool Ranch Dorito– jagged, textured, and unhealthy. Just know your angles and don’t flatter yourself. Work with what you’ve got and with a little delusion you’ll be amazed with the peace you find in what you end up with.

Katya: There are a couple things that have really helped me with this over the years. First is to remember that the body is always changing. Literally all the time, there is an outrageous amount of dramatic transformation occurring on a small and large scale on and underneath the surface of the body, from skin to hair to organs to cells, etc.  Because of all that I find it helpful to conceptualize my body as less of an immovable marble statue and more like a procession. On good days it’s a lively and spirited parade, like Gay Mardi Gras, but on a bad day it can grimly trudge like a Sicilian funeral march. But you know, that’s life! Everything changes, and thank god, because even those people lucky enough to enjoy Brad Pitt level hotness will get to watch the symphony of their perfect faces and bodies slowly degrade and disperse into a drunken bar fight. 

The second part is the key. When I learned the following, I literally shit my pants. Well, I had technically already shat them about 15 minutes prior to hearing the following phrase but it still shook my bowels to the core: self-esteem is created by doing esteemable acts. Loving ourselves can be easy, if you simply afford yourself the same degree of compassion you naturally extend to your closest loved ones and beloved celebrity idols. But liking yourself takes work: you literally have to do some good in order to be good and then you’ll feel good and all of a sudden: that puka shell necklace you made with the beaded letters spelling out “I’m a total piece of shit” can sit in its proper resting place: the trash (or your mom’s jewelry box, if she’s a cunt.) I’ll say it again, self-esteem is created by doing esteemable acts. This is of course an oversimplification, and is not a cure all for depression, but it’s what we DO that often influences how we think, and not the other way around.

Question 2: I’ve been with my boyfriend for two years now and I’m pretty certain this is a marriage-worthy relationship. I’ve worked really hard to get to the point I’m at with him, in regards to having trust in him and our relationship, and he’s been very patient and extremely helpful in getting me to this point. But sometimes, I just can’t help but let my brain go absolutely crazy. Any tips for simmering down my wild thoughts? He’s a good one & I don’t wanna let my inability to trust people ruin anything. 

-A Girl Who’s Been Serially Cheated On 

Trixie: I’m going to tell you right off the bat, Linda, that my advice is not going to be what you want to hear. It probably won’t even help you but you have to remember that I am from gay world where you can’t exactly be cheated on because everyone is open and fully getting fisted in front of their parter at brunch. So buckle up.

What is an acceptable way to touch someone who isn’t your partner? A hug? A handshake? A kiss on the cheek? What’s acceptable in a relationship? Spooning? Oral Sex? Cuddling? And honestly in the scope of physical expression, how many bullet points away from one another could the two types of expression really be? If you have established trust in your assumed monogamy, you should know that he has female friends, hugs them as a greeting, grabs drinks with them, etc. Unless you are some wealthy tycoon that he is trying to frack for cash, you should trust that he’s in this relationship because he wants to be. If he wanted to be with other women, he would leave. Also, he deserves a trusting partner. Until you can provide that, he can’t truly enjoy your companionship.

It doesn’t hurt to keep your body vicious, your makeup dusted, and your sex life litty as well. In the words of Noxcema Jackson, “If you want them to know there is steak for dinner, you have *got* to let them hear it sizzle.”

Katya: I’m in agreement with Trixie on the above, and would like to add some pretentious quasi-Buddhist new age pseudo-psychological garnish to her sizzling steak of truth. The mind contains many dangerous neighborhoods, with many dark paths that lead to heart-ache, injury, and car-jacking. Unfortunately we have, for better or worse, paved the roads of these neighborhoods, and we may not be able to close all the streets and shutter all the crack sheds, but what we can do is choose each day and each moment which direction to turn when you arrive at the intersection. Straight ahead will lead you further down the path of trust and partnership, although there is always a pothole and usually some roadwork looming. Take a right and you can go to CVS and then Shake Shack. But when you feel the urge to screech the tires of your worn-out Chevy Malibu and bang a hard left, you’re setting yourself up for a bumpy trip that could end in any variety of painful ways, all designed to keep the traffic flowing through the dark and devious downtown slums of your own personal Paranoia-ville. In short, try your best to live in the moment, not kill anyone, and keep in mind that at the end of the day, marriage is just a contract, love is a battlefield, but your ass is the Taj Mahal.

Question 3: A core member of our close friend group just got into a serious relationship with someone he has chosen to keep secret from us. How do we welcome this new partner into our lives without being overbearing? And what if we hate him?

-Basket

Trixie: It’s likely that your friend is reluctant to introduce a new friend to the group until the relationship appears to “have legs” as they say. Nothing is more unappealing than that friend who is constantly gushing over someone they just met a week ago only to move on a week later after tagging them along to a girlfriends-only weekend trip in the Berkshires. Let your friend reveal their beau on their own time and be thankful you aren’t being sold early on yet another depreciating asset.

Katya: Sometimes we take things a little too far and back ourselves into a corner. It is likely your friend is in a serious relationship with a fake wedding guest that she just accidentally snowballed from a white lie into a full fledged long term scheme. Just let it run its course, don’t pry too much, and eventually she’ll find a way to break up with this fake person.