What free speech & subway surfing have in common
On Substack and other huge, dangerous necessities.
I’ve been trying to write a letter that my parasympathetic nervous system doesn’t want me to write. To keep myself upright, I’ve been inserting images that delight me into the draft—
Last week I met a man who told me that the night he decided to propose to his boyfriend, he couldn’t stop crying and convulsing, even after he asked, even after the boyfriend said yes. His husband stood beside him, recounting the night from his perspective: “I was like, why is he being so crazy? Oh god he’s going to break up with me. Ugh. Oh well.”
The husband was calm and tall and wearing all white; he seemed to be the epitome of someone magnificently aware of his emotional life, someone whose body might not betray him in this way. But the weepy would-be groom made sense to me. I’m …