More knowledge I don’t know what to do with.

In the early 2000s, we female-type creatures with burgeoning sapphic feelings had t.A.T.u’s anthem “All the Things She Said” to swoon over on a famishing Friday night. Deep down, I am sure the skeptics among us fully suspected that the sensuous duo was all a product manufactured by dirty old men in a boardroom… but given that the song (and its accompanying vid) hit us a little too hard in the core of our delirium, it was REALLY hard to resist the head rush.

Nowadays, kids have the seemingly more authentic Kayleigh Amstutz, a.k.a., Chappell Roan, who recently stormed the VMA’s in knight’s armor of a sort. A getup most people assumed was supposed to evoke Joan of Arc, but that some claimed was actually alluding to the legendary swordstress, opera singer, and nun-seducer, Julie d’Aubigny (Roan’s camp has neither confirmed nor denied this claim).

D’Aubigny: A figure from queer history I wouldn’t even know about if not for my own college objet de desir, who was an anthropology major and a certain variety of history buff.

With all that Roan discourse flying about, and having just watched a long montage of Karen Walker’s best moments from Will & Grace (Karen with her bisexual chaotic energy was a character my undeclared paramour prized), I heaved an internal shrug and did one of my ill-advised late night Google searches. Because I am now solidly in my forties and have always tended to become closest with peers who, like myself, have older parents… what I found was another obituary.

All I’ll say – and it applies to my entry from April as well – is it’s strange to read that the parent of someone who is no longer in your life has passed. Especially when you can recall their child, your former compatriot, having a fraught relationship with that parent back in the day.

I probably shouldn’t post publicly half the things I write here. I probably also shouldn’t Google all the things I do. But, though I still feel like I am 17, life keeps coming, and, in its absurdity, it has brought me close to and then flung me far from a number of individuals. While I can accept this perfectly well from day to day – in fact, my resignation solidifies with each passing year – I also can’t seem to switch off caring completely.

So I search, and I find.

And, in the absence of the Ones I used to know, I write, mostly to make sense of it all myself.

Of course, the internet can be wrong. In a manner of speaking, wires can get crossed. But even if, as of today, the fragments I find are just an AI-compiled pancake batter of fake news, the events in question still loom unavoidably on the horizon. We all know how this song goes. And it seems that, where matters of life and death are concerned, I am proving to be one who prefers certainty to speculation.

Anyhow. Warm remembrances to those no longer around, and, like I’ve always said, if I loved you once, some part of me always will.