She’s perfectly healthy according to the vet.

According to x-rays and bloodwork and degrees.

But I have a feeling.

The shelter said Shirley was three years old, but she’s always seemed older.

Our one-year-old pup, Raindrop, needed a playmate, and Shirley was the shelter’s go-to for training and calming other dogs.

She’d been at the shelter for a while. Her sister, Laverne, was adopted without her. Later, Shirley also got adopted, but was brought back. Twice.

“The problem is Shirley doesn’t really like men,” the shelter guy said. He looked at Steven. Then at me. Then he said, “She’ll probably like Byron best.”

That was three years ago.

Just like Shirley trained other dogs at the shelter, she’s trained all of us.

She taught Raindrop how to howl.

She taught us to yell, “Loud noise,” as a courtesy to her before we use the blender.

She barks at guests when she’s ready for them to leave.

A few weeks ago, we adopted my mom’s 12-year-old dachshund mix, Belle. Shirley became morose.

“She’s probably just yielding to the new, most senior member of the household,” Steven said.

“OR MAYBE SHE’S SICK!” I said.

I started counting the white hairs on Shirley’s snout. I compared photos from when we adopted her to now. I considered the way she looks at me sometimes.

Strangely, I don’t feel this way about Raindrop or Belle. They seem fine.

Raindrop is playful. Belle is energetic. Shirley seems pensive.

“Are you thinking about death?” I ask her.

Shirley looks at me as if to say, “Just give me a belly rub.”

I cry. The snotty kind. “I hope we did right by you. Thank you for protecting us. You’re a great sister and friend.”

When I was a kid, I didn’t use stickers. I was saving them.

I don’t wear my favorite clothes. I’m saving them.

I pre-mourned our previous dog, Tilda. Previous relationships. Previous jobs.

At one job—where I was happy!—I worried every day I’d get fired, and had the stress and diarrhea to prove it. I was getting fired in my mind every day. Traumatizing myself. The kinder thing would have been to actually get fired. At least then it would have only happened once.

Shirley takes her time on walks.

She eats slowly.

She naps in the sunshine.

Maybe it’s not pensive. Maybe it’s presence.

She rolls over. She just wants belly rubs. Probably without me weeping about nothing.

“Keep belly rubbing,” she says.

“Okay, okay,” I sob.

“At this rate, you’ll probably die first,” she says.

“I love you,” I say.

She rolls her eyes. “That’s the spot.”

Life, death, dogs.

I try to make sense of it.

See it here.

I think.

Here are postcards from my marriage.

Five years of marriage and something is off. Five years, I think—Steven keeps track of dates. I’m bad at math and directions and seasons and intersections and daylight savings and remembering to turn off the fan in our bedroom. Our marriage doesn’t feel like ones from TV or movies.

I never dated anyone seriously before him. I’d go two weeks, then get bored. A therapist asked if I wanted a clown or a boyfriend. I met Steven in 2013 (I think—he’d know). We laughed constantly. At words like grundle. At stupid dog videos. At each other. I told that therapist I found both.

One night I was exhausted, but we were supposed to have a date. I canceled last minute and assumed he’d fuss like others had. Instead, he said, “No problem. I’m here to make your life better, not more stressful.” I moved in with him.

We wanted careers as artists. We stayed up late writing, then reading each other’s work, saying it’s great, keep going! When one lost hope, the other took the torch, said this will be funny one day, and we’d laugh about that. I wasn’t thinking 10 years ahead. I just wanted another hour.

I wanted his family to love me. I worried about my clothes, jokes, hair. I asked him, what if your nieces and nephew think I’m the clown in our relationship? He said “they do and that’s what they love about you.” And that made me smile. A big red clown smile. Matched his.

Something is off. The word marriage isn’t enough. For our art. For our dogs Raindrop and Shirley and Belle. For nighthawks eating bugs over the pool. For the backyard gopher we named Wellington. For how he can’t load the dishwasher correctly. For when I can’t remember how many years. For another hour. Love, B

Marriage is full of joys. And learning experiences. I write about tools I use to help me through hardships here.

He’d wave his arms over a map of the town and tell us what to wear.

“It’s gonna be hot, hot, hot.”

He was magnetic. Charming. Handsome.

But I didn’t just watch him on TV.

We worked at the same TV station in a small town—so small we lived next door to each other.

When I moved into my apartment, he helped me carry my sofa up the stairs.

His smell lingered. It was not of cologne or laundry detergent. It was of sweat and sunshine and something alive. A scent you want to roll around in.

Get ready for springtime temperatures. Watch for allergies.

I was new to being a reporter.

I was new to being gay.

I had spent years trying to pray it out of me. Youth group. Confession. Bargaining. I didn’t date. I didn’t touch anyone. I believed what I had been told: that being gay was something rotten inside me, and if I followed it, it would lead to disease, isolation, death.

The weatherman was older and wiser. He was comfortable in his skin. He took me to the little local gay bar. He showed me life, not death.

He told me he didn’t want a relationship. I assured him I understood.

One cold Saturday night turned into a warm Sunday morning. My first time. No bolt of lightning from God. We weren’t struck dead. We embraced.

I woke feeling at home in myself, still in his bed, watching him in a way the camera never could.

Those closed eyes. The man from TV, his face soft on the pillow beside me. His smell all over me. His aliveness, too.

My new aliveness.

Bundle up. There’s a cold front on the way.

Working in TV in a small town didn’t pay well. So when a two-bedroom apartment was available and would save us money, I pushed for us to move in together.

The weatherman resisted until I promised again—“I understand. I know we’re just friends.”

I learned the details of his life. His toothpaste next to mine. His razor in the shower. His favorite margarita mix in the freezer. His bedroom on the other side of a thin wall.

I worked the 10 p.m. Sunday newscast and came home, excited to watch the latest Six Feet Under.

I opened our apartment door and he was tangled with another guy in our living room, cuddled on the same sofa he’d helped me carry upstairs when I first moved to town.

The two of them were watching the final minutes of Six Feet Under.

My purple Pier One Imports candle was burning. It was an expensive splurge and I had been saving the candle for a special occasion. It was nearly spent. The house smelled of it.

I couldn’t smell him anymore.

It wasn’t the first time he was with someone else. But it was the most painful. It was the first time in our place, and the first time I couldn’t deny it.

He broke my heart. Or, since he was always honest with me, maybe I broke my own heart.

I got a new apartment the next day.

We both cried when I told him.

He understood.

But there was still something I didn’t.

I needed emergency therapy. The only appointment I could find was with a therapist who worked with kids.

I was a 22-year-old man, sitting in her office on a little sofa for children, Barbies and Legos scattered at my feet, while the therapist sucked on a lollipop intended for her tiny clients, as I explained, teary-eyed, “I was in love.”

She slurped, pulled the lollipop through her lips with a wet smack, and asked, “How do you know it was love?”

I made a living asking questions. Of politicians. Of celebrities. Of everyday people on the worst days of their lives—their home burned down, their husband was arrested. I’d stab a microphone at them and ask, “How do you feel?”

For the first time, I knew what that felt like.

Was it love?

Her question followed me for years. It hovered over new relationships. Is it love?

It hovered over jealousy, anger, longing.

Am I really angry?
Am I really jealous?
Is this really what I want?

I saw other therapists over the years. Different offices. Different couches. Same pattern.

The question was always more powerful than the answer.

Was it love?

Yes.

But not the way I thought.

I was in love with life. With taking a risk. With stepping into something I had been taught to fear. With letting my world expand. With giving myself over to something more than someone.

I’ve seen the weatherman since.

Still handsome. Still moves the weather in me.

But we’re different now. The forecast has changed.

I’ll always love what we had. Him smiling at me through the TV. His toothpaste beside mine. His face on that pillow. The way he changed me.

I don’t watch weathermen the same way anymore.

I picture him instead—arms sweeping across the map of our story.

“Sunny. Warm. Beautiful.”

Sometimes life is complicated. I write about tools I use to help me through hardships here.

This is a very special chapbook I wrote after moving my mom into assisted living.

She was cool. I spiraled.

Am I Severely Depressed or Do I Just Need Taco Bell documents what helped me find myself again.

Anytime I’m feeling gray, I turn to these very personal lessons from life, therapy, Carrie Fisher, and at least one self-help guru from the 1980s.

I wrote it, printed it, folded it, stapled it, signed it, photographed it, and uploaded it for you.

• Paid Members: The digital version is waiting for you right now. You can also order a printed copy if you want.

Get your new chapbook

• Free Members: Upgrade now to unlock this book instantly and see everything else waiting for you.

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Pen Pals

Mom never called that late.

“Byron, I have nausea and I’m sweating and I called 9-1-1 and I’m having a heart attack and paramedics are here and I’m going to the hospital.”

She hung up and the TikTok resumed playing—“They had nine spacecrafts in the hangar”—but now, who cares?

Leaving California, rushing to my childhood home in Louisiana, I cried a little at the airport.

Poor Mom.

I cried for me, too.

I caught myself thinking, I don’t want to do this. That’s the exact thing I said to myself before I had chemo. That’s what the task ahead felt like—hard, consuming, emotional.

I also did want to do it, to try to be Mom’s hero. I’m good at problem solving. Staying calm. Being steady. When you’ve been Carrie Fisher’s assistant and held her hand through electroshock therapy, you can do anything.

Two stents later, doctors praised Mom’s heart, but saw she had difficulty walking. Her knee had given out weeks earlier. They sent her to 20 days of inpatient physical therapy.

I started deleting more from my calendar, sending apologetic emails. Replies came back: “No problem! You’re a great son!”

If I was being a great son, I wasn’t loving it, living in my mother’s rural cottage. Isolated. Rain. Extreme cold. I had to run water so the pipes didn’t freeze. No tofu at the grocery stores.

I cared for Mom’s chatty bird, JuJu, and sweet dog, Belle. I drove Mom to cardiologist and orthopedist appointments. I felt the weight of a wheelchair for the first time.

I learned everyone’s name at Mom’s rehab. Hello, Miss Clara—she had a fall recently. Hi, Mr. John—always holding his face to an Alexa speaker and asking it to play Lawrence Welk over and over.

Belle kept me warm every night. Other family members and neighbors gave me hot meals and king cake. A friend visited from Los Angeles for a weekend. I bought local New Orleans coffee with chicory for the cold mornings.

20 days turned to 30. Doctors wanted Mom to move permanently into accessible housing. She says it was the hardest decision she’s ever had to make. But she found bright spots—the fountain outside her window, the cappuccino machine in the lounge, excellent jambalaya.

I signed paperwork I didn’t understand. I wrote her name in all of her clothes.

When Mom was settled and content, she sent me home, but not alone.

Coffee, Coke Zero, and Belle were my companions for the fifty-one-hour drive back to California in Mom’s old Toyota Corolla, stuffed with keepsakes she asked me to protect for her, including Belle.

I crossed state lines. I crossed time zones. I crossed back into my old life.

When I got home, Steven, Raindrop, and Shirley welcomed Belle and gave me kisses like nothing had changed.

But something had.

No more waking early to turn off Mom’s pipes. No more long commute to her rehab to bring her an iced mocha. No more Miss Clara and Mr. John. No more organizing and scheduling and sorting her medications.

My body didn’t know I was home, waking at 4:30am every day. Even the dogs stayed in bed—including Belle.

I had work to do but couldn’t open my laptop, couldn’t think about making art, couldn’t brush my hair or get out of my sweats.

I hate calling it “depression.” I feel like I haven’t filled out the proper paperwork. Maybe it’s not even the right word.

Pensive? Sure. Malaise? Definitely. Melancholy? If that’s the thing from 1842 that’s treated with leeches, then, yes, probably a lot of that.

Mostly, it felt like collapse. Purpose collapsed—writing a book proposal was lame compared to the real life stakes of helping Mom. Hope collapsed—seeing how the healthcare system treats seniors, and one day, who will haul my yearbooks and treasures in the back of their Toyota Corolla?

I tried to honor appointments.

The dentist said to smile. Absolutely not.

The pilates instructor said, “Use your obliques.” I don’t even want to be alive right now.

Some hero I turned out to be.

I should not be collapsing. I should be grateful. I should be back to normal. I should be strong. I should not need rest. If I’m not productive, I’m worthless.

4:30am again.
Then, another day, 5am.
Then, another day, 6.

Eventually, the dogs decided 6am was reasonable and joined me. All three.

It was a week before I could open my laptop. My battery recharged.

No moment of enlightenment. Nothing superhuman, except I stopped trying to be it.

Sometimes feeling depressed requires more. I’m grateful this time it required less.

Finally, one day: 7am. And a smile.

Belle snoring beside me.
Palm Springs light on the mountains.
The last of the chicory coffee.

My phone lights up with my mom’s name.

This time, it doesn’t interrupt anything.

I answer.

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That’s what I would tell myself as a kid when I thought Leonardo DiCaprio was cute or when I NEEDED that Abercrombie & Fitch catalog.

Others had a gay devil, too.

On a family trip, a relative who was even more entrenched in Catholicism than me, drove us past a gay club. “You gotta see this,” he said.

I was about twelve and we had just eaten dinner at a place where the schtick was waiters throw hot dinner rolls at you.

Outside the club, a leather daddy was walking, alone, in chaps with yellow stitching. Everyone in the car laughed. But I was thinking, “His gay devil is winning.”

Years later, the gay devil followed me to college in New Orleans. The audacity.

I saw a flyer for a campus club called Gay Outreach at Loyola (GOAL). I sent a letter of outrage to the university president, Father Bernard Knoth, SJ.

I used words like “betrayal,” “sin,” “abdication of duty.” And plenty of exclamation points.

Soon after, I got a message on my dorm room answering machine. Father Knoth wanted to meet.

In high school, soliciting donations to fund a class trip to Washington, D.C., an elderly accountant I approached said he wouldn’t contribute because he only supported Baptists. He said Catholics had it all wrong.

I researched, visited my priest, called my Sunday School teacher. I cracked open an encyclopedia and the Catechism. I knocked on the accountant’s door again and rattled off my newly learned talking points about transubstantiation and concupiscence.

The only thing we agreed upon was that being gay was evil. He was impressed. Mostly, he seemed amused. He funded my trip in full. And I learned confidence could pass for truth.

I sat confidently across from Father Knoth, his giant grand desk between us, his striking view of campus behind him. He opened a manila folder. My letter inside. He was no match for my old, trusty talking points. He closed the manila folder.

Like the accountant, he seemed amused.

But I was not amused.
I was certain.
I was so certain.
Was.

More helpful than “othering” gay people would have been if all those priests over the years had warned me that time and certainty are enemies. That time never loses.

Time came for my relative who drove us past the gay club. He left the Catholic Church over the McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish sandwich.

“The Pope used to say you’d go to hell—HELL—if you ate meat on Fridays,” he said. “So I’d always eat fish, fish sticks, those damn fish sandwiches. Then they just said, ‘Never mind, you won’t go to hell anymore—our bad.’ They have no credibility.”

Time came for me, too.

College life brought friendships and education about religion that small-town talking points couldn’t survive. When “othering” stopped making sense, the rules and institutions behind it did, too.

I started to warm to the one friend who’d been with me the whole time. The gay devil. After really meeting him, turns out he’s not so bad. I actually kinda like him.

And time came for one other person.

My senior year at Loyola, I was nominated to be on an activity programming committee. The appointment needed to be approved by the president of the university.

I once again sat across from Father Knoth. I was less confident this time. I planned to pretend we’d never met. But he pulled open a drawer. Removed a manila folder. Only one piece of familiar paper was inside. My letter about GOAL, now three years old.

“I don’t feel that way anymore,” I blurted.

I didn’t elaborate. He didn’t press. He approved my appointment.

Time came for him years later, long after I graduated. Abuse allegations from before he was in New Orleans turned revered Father Knoth into, simply, Bernard.

Time doesn’t always undo everything. Not memories. Not regret.

I still see the leather daddy’s face as he watched us drive past all those years ago, that yellow stitching.

I hope he didn’t hear our laughter. I hope he didn’t spend a second thinking about it. I hope when we were long gone, he had a wonderful night, a real devilish good time.

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Pen Pals

1. Mom

Mom had a heart attack. She’s doing great. Like, GREAT! I’m really proud of her.

But her knee is giving her extra trouble.

I’m in Louisiana and glad to help but also missing Steven, Raindrop, and Shirley. Duality! Maybe that’s normal?

This week taught me two terms I didn’t know I needed.

• Choice Collapse—The act of postponing a decision until external forces eliminate all alternatives.

• Liminality—A transitional phase in which old structures have dissolved but new ones have not solidified, leaving identity, rules, and meaning temporarily undefined.

2. He-Man

The trailer for Masters of the Universe made me cry. I’ve loved He-Man since I was a kid.

Weird how some childhood things stay with us. I wonder what else lingers—worldviews, biases, coping mechanisms, etc.

I still have all my childhood He-Man action figures. They’re in a giant jar on my nightstand.

I’m not a psychiatrist, but maybe I loved the story of someone insecure and powerless finding strength. Could also be the loin cloth.

3. Pink (and Nate)

I was listening to music and Just Give Me a Reason by Pink and Nate Ruess shocked me. It was a live version. I seek those because they’re so much more tingly.

The music starts, Pink begins to sing, but the lyrics are wrong, the pace is off, and before I can wonder if it’s me—she stops the song.

She apologizes with absolute grace, says she forgot the words, and then starts over, on blast, no holding back.

She was fully present, dropped into reality. Here’s what happened. Here’s where we’re going next. No war. Cheers, cheers from the audience.

Can I do that? Have I ever? Really use my whole self, put it all out there like that, belting into the universe with whatever I can muster?

Listen here.

4. No Nonsense Spirituality

I often get great insights from Brittney Hartley of No Nonsense Spirituality as she documents her journey out of religious indoctrination.

I found her on TikTok one night when I was overthinking in the bathtub and searched “illusion of the self.”

Her latest post explains why some religions actually create nihilists and atheists.

My takeaway is there’s despair—or worse—in saying one’s worth must be earned (sacrifice, prayer, paying money, getting “saved”) versus our worth being inherent.

5. You!

Paid Subscribers and Founding Patrons make this possible.

Thank you for considering this project deserving to exist and for helping keep my writer hat warm. It’s been incredible therapy to work on this lately.

Thinking of you.

love,
b

P.S.
Mom’s dog Belle says hi!

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Pen Pals

I wasn’t shocked. I had found a lump. My doctor warned me it was certainly cancer and would have to come out.

He was an older gay urologist who only examined me without gloves, patted my ass occasionally, and never charged me a copay. I wondered if that made me a kind of sex worker. I loved it.

I knew I was in a comedy and not a drama when I called my dad to tell him I had to have one of my testicles removed. He asked, “Well, how many testicles do you have right now?”

My mom cried and said something like, “You have cancer? How could you do this to me?”

My boyfriend, Steven, was steady after the initial shock. He didn’t say the words but I read on his face, Ew, that was in my mouth!

I didn’t die in surgery.

The testicle was positive for cancer, but it was contained and I wouldn’t need chemo.

My doctor had recommended a solid silicone testicle implant. The selling point was when he told me, “They all have serial numbers so if you’re murdered they can use it to identify your body.” That doctor really got me.

I let him pick the size. A mistake. He made a reasonable choice, so I missed my chance to go really huge.

The fake ball went in. My dead ball went to a landfill in Oxnard. Life kept going.

I waited to feel different, to see life differently. I didn’t.

Not yet.

I turned my broken heart (broken ball?) into art and made a web series about it called Last Will and Testicle.

I met other people who had survived. And learned about many who hadn’t. (Thinking of you, Max.)

I still didn’t understand my luck. Or the risk. A ballsack was still mostly a punchline.

Five years later, it came back. New tumor. New fear. Bad timing.

Steven and I were about to get engaged. We moved into our first house together in Palm Springs with our beloved dog, Tilda. My first book was about to come out and I was about to start a new career as an author. I had longer hair and somehow finally felt kinda cool.

The world was different, too. COVID arrived. I’d be getting chemo alone. No visitors. All the stakes felt higher.

I called my dad. “The cancer is in my lymph nodes this time, so I still have one testicle left if you want to update your records.”

The night before chemo was to start, I couldn’t sleep, snuck out of bed past Steven and Tilda. I sat on the sofa looking out the new backyard where we planned to build a life, crying and whispering to my tumor, “I don’t want this, I don’t want this.”

Chemo made me nauseous and hungry at the same time. My mouth tasted like chemicals and the fake berry flavoring of some of the meds. My hair started falling out. Steven helped me shave the back.

I was the youngest one in the infusion room, one of the only ones wearing a mask. A guy with only one leg watched Fox News during his entire infusion. A tough, stoic older woman knit and glared at me as I occasionally cried under my blanket.

One day she came over. I thought I was about to get gay bashed by a senior citizen with lymphoma.

“Do you like color?” she asked.

“Sure.”

She pulled a rainbow beanie from her tote. She had knitted it for me, for my bald head. This whole time, she saw me. I misread the real diagnosis, again.

Another afternoon, as Steven took me home from chemo, he slammed the brakes and yelled, “Was that a cat in the gutter?”

He ran into the street and came back with a kitten.

Steven was a great nurse to both of us, but we didn’t keep her. My immune system was too weak. Tilda was too sick. A friend helped re-home the kitten and named her Vanilla Bean.

Cancer didn’t make life stop. It just happened alongside everything else.

After chemo, doctors told me they needed to slice me open from neck to navel and remove the tumor and my bad lymph nodes.

I wanted a second opinion and Googled “best testicular cancer surgeon” and emailed all of them. One wrote back. He was nearby, at USC. He made a small, respectable incision. He charged a copay.

I’ve been cancer-free ever since.

My book came out.

Steven and I got married.

Vanilla Bean died.

Tilda died.

I’m still here. Funny.

When my young nieces hear that I survived testicular cancer they giggle. I get it. I tell them, “The body is a miracle.”

So is humor.

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Actually, any friend would have been fine.

I was twelve when my dad decided we needed to get away from the government.

We left my school, my friends, and moved north of New Orleans to a literal village where I saw overalls for the first time.

I tried 4-H. Absolutely not. I was a boy scout only long enough to snag the outfit. Then, I found this thing called youth group.

The town’s only Catholic church was billed as The Little Cathedral in the Woods. The “woods” part was accurate. The “cathedral” part was rebranding. It had been a barn.

The youth group was all misfits. One kid was bald by twelve. One girl needed a bra she couldn’t afford. There was an orphan. And me: effeminate and insecure.

I didn’t have to be alone anymore.

I took to it. Our priest named me Altar Boy of the Year. Twice. I walked old people to their cars. Mothers wanted their daughters to date me.

All I really wanted was for the other kids to like me. It wasn’t happening.

I had to try harder.

I shook hands like a politician. I spoke like a local anchorman. I wore a T-shirt that read Top Ten Reasons to Stay Roman Catholic. And it listed all ten. On the front of the shirt.

I insisted on leading a prayer at every youth group event, softball games and movie nights and one time at a livestock auction to watch this kid named Andy show a goat.

I made everyone hold hands. I waited for silence. When all you could hear was the breeze and Andy’s goat, I delivered a prayer so grand it sounded as if directly from Jesus.

It was directly from The Bodyguard.

At the end of the movie, Kevin Costner is protecting a politician at a meeting when the chaplain says, “Heavenly Father, please be with us today as we meet in friendship and duty…”

At the end of the prayer, the music BOOMS and Whitney Houston nails her iconic: “And IIIIIIII… will always… love youuuu.” I memorized it.

To my mind, every time I recited it, everyone was in fucking awe. I was emboldened.

If those kids wouldn’t call me their friend, I’d make them call me their president.

I conspired with the Sunday school director, Miss Ethyl, to draft The Constitution of the Youth Group of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church. “Make me in charge,” I asked. She loved me because I occasionally helped her pick up sticks and pinecones littering her yard.

I planned trips. I chaired meetings. Before a concrete ramp was poured outside the mobile home we called our Community Hall, we buried a time capsule which was an old Coke bottle filled with photos of us, handwritten hopes most of us would never realize, and newspaper clippings about Pope John Paul II from my personal collection.

I threw myself a party on my final night as president. Term limits. Kneecapped by the very constitution I wrote. I still smiled.

I decorated the mobile home with American flags. I hired a DJ to play I Will Always Love You during my closing speech. Very moving except for a few seconds when he accidentally played a snippet of some song called Gangsta’s Paradise.

When I visit my dad now—don’t tell the government—I sometimes stop by that little cathedral in the woods.

I don’t recognize anyone. No one asks to shake my hand anymore. Miss Ethyl died. Even Whitney Houston is gone.

I still have that prayer memorized. For emergencies. And on occasions when I think of my old youth group. We were there for each other, helped each other grow, and they mattered to me. Maybe it wasn’t friendship, but something deeper.

The concrete ramp is still there. I’m probably the only one who remembers the time capsule under it.

I wonder who will find it, long after I’m dead like the rest of them.

I hope it’s an effeminate, insecure, lonely kid. I’m certain part of my spirit will be in that village, in those woods, outside that little cathedral, watching. I’ll stand on that ramp. I’ll hold my chin up. I’ll whisper to him, Hey, friend.

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The directions to the fancy party are still warm from the printer.

I dress carefully. Brand new outfit. Verrrry Instagrammable. But—

I’ll never wear it again. It’ll only ever remind me of the crying. It starts at exactly 12:00:01 a.m., those sobs under fireworks.

I’ve done this at many NYE parties.

I’ve cried in guest bathrooms. In one of those pantries with a frosted glass door that says “PANTRY.”

After, I’d say never again. But then, again. Again.

I was young.

Then I learned—by accident—one way to stop spiraling over the holidays.

My worst New Year’s Eves were in my twenties. I once met friends at a party in New Orleans where everyone immediately scattered to better parties or disappeared into bedrooms. I wasn't out yet. Not a party kid. A former Altar Boy of the Year, for God’s sake.

I left.

I walked alone down a residential street in the freezing cold. Through windows, I could see other people having lovely nights. I only knew it was midnight because fireworks went off overhead, looking at them through teary eyes.

Then, a big night where I didn’t cry.

A favorite question of mine to ask at parties is, “What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?”

Someone will ask me, “How about this weather?” and I’ll ask them, “Do you love your father?”

That’s how I ended up in conversation with a retired literature professor who was spending his golden years exploring BDSM.

At some point, I asked him the meaning of life. Typical.

He didn’t pause.

“Happiness,” he said, “is about managing expectations.”

Of course it was him. Of course it was someone fluent in sadism and masochism who understood holidays.

I wept less after I adjusted my NYE expectations. See friends? Reasonable. Bed by 9pm? Achievable. Change my whole life? Crying. In a taxi. In an inoperable van in the woods in Louisiana (only once).

It’s different now. Any tears that might come are happy. One year, I went on a midnight hike with two close friends. Another, Steven and I went to Paris and, exhausted by a day of sightseeing in the freezing cold, shared a box of chocolates and bottle of champagne and went to bed early. Another, we threw our own party where I could’ve cried in my own bathroom for a change, but I didn’t need to.

Why the years of chasing overnight change? Maybe to face change head-on, defang it since it’s inevitable.

But change doesn’t need a Dick Clark countdown. It doesn’t care what I’m wearing. It comes, sometimes with heart break and sometimes with Prosecco. I try to prepare all year with mindfulness practices, therapy, and making art—maybe that’s a book or a webseries or a Substack, but often it’s a walk or working in the yard or taking photos of Raindrop and Shirley.

I never needed to adjust my life, just my expectations.

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I was open-veined on all the dating sites: OkCupid, Match, Jdate—and I’m not even Jewish.

No boyfriend. No traction. No momentum. Nothing could quiet that voice.

Whitney Houston once sang, I’d rather be alone than unhappy. Eventually, I accepted both.

Then, Steven. We were an 80% match on OkCupid. Doesn’t science matter? We met for coffee. He touched my arm.

Steven. Ridiculous name for an incredible guy—handsome, brilliant, playful. And somehow interested in me? I was skeptical.

We kept seeing each other. This birthed a new anxiety—how fast could I screw it up?

The Christmas Test.

Steven and I had been dating for a few months. Christmas was approaching. I figured, sink or swim. I agreed to go home with him to Maine to meet his family.

It was me testing him. It was him testing me.

A first meeting of family is worse than a first date. Family is where you find out whether you really belong. Family doesn’t hide the truth.

We booked a flight. Instant regret.

Win them over. Or die.

Watching Steven with his nieces and nephews, I fell harder in love with him. And my insecurity kept splitting me open.

Then, another question. Was his family testing me?

I was originally from Louisiana but got the hell out of there as fast as I could. I was fully Los Angeles by now. All city. All sunshine. No snow shoes. No winter coat.

I told his mother the snow was beautiful. “Try shoveling it,” she replied. Steven’s sister wanted me to mount something called a “toboggan.” His brother asked if I had any tips for “deep frying a turkey.”

I wanted to fit in. These were good people—even despite what was happening to that poor turkey.

This was a Rom-Com kind of family. A Hallmark Channel kind of family. They always had Christmas movies playing, like Prep and Landing or Die Hard or Christmas Vacation.

On Christmas Eve, they asked me if I liked lobster. As I was explaining vegetarianism to blank faces, my cell phone rang. They were still staring at me as the caller ID displayed her name.

Beverly D’Angelo was calling my phone.

At the time, I worked for Carrie Fisher. One of the strangest parts of my job was clearing Carrie’s home voicemail. Not because of stalkers or fans, but because of her mother. Debbie Reynolds left long, rambling, affectionate messages that sometimes came with unusual housekeeping instructions and were later followed by a quiz.

Eventually, I forwarded Carrie’s home phone to my cell so I could intercept Debbie before the answering machine filled up.

Beverly had called Carrie’s home line in Beverly Hills, and it transferred to me, standing in Steven’s family’s kitchen in Maine.

I wanted to duck into the next room, shield them from my 24/7-ish job.

But, this was Christmas Eve, with Christmas Vacation blaring on the TV, and nothing could have been cooler than me having one of the film’s stars on the line.

The kitchen was quiet. The snow stopped falling. The turkey in the deep fryer stopped screaming.

I put Beverly on speakerphone. The voice, sultry, confident. She was a badass. The call was quick, easy, Beverly would try Carrie’s cell. I hung up.

I looked around. And yes—for a moment, I thought: Now they think I’m cool.

But then, dinner was served.

They had made lasagna for me—vegetarian, “a first-time recipe,” I was told.

“Beautiful out there,” Steven said of the snowy evening. “Try shoveling it,” his mother replied—a standard, playful retort. Not an attack on me.

And the next time I was offered a toboggan ride, I was told not everyone gets the invitation. (Very sweet, but still, absolutely not.)

The call didn’t make me cool. It made me present enough to see they had already folded me into the rhythm of their day, their family jokes, their lives.

Steven and I married in 2021.

I still think of that Christmas, how the call didn’t create my place in the family, it decorated it.

A Christmas wish: May we always decorate what makes us interesting.

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I fantasized about letting my gold 2002 Nissan Sentra drift across the double yellow lines of Laurel Canyon Boulevard.

A cute little collision was all I wanted—nothing fatal or disfiguring—just enough to send me to the hospital so I could get a good nap.

Then, the email. The subject line read: “Job Opportunity - One of a Kind - This is not spam.”

The email read: “Any chance you wanna work for Princess Leia?”

Read more

I was the only one fully clothed. And I was the only one with my arms up after coating them in the tent’s complimentary hand sanitizer which turned out to be lube.

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Personal note: This was the first real Byrontology post. I’ve made some refinements since then. Leaving this here for context.

b

1/5/26

This is all Carrie Fisher’s fault.

Carrie once told me something wise:

“Just let the dog hump you it’s harmless!”

Wait, no. That was another gem. The wise thing was:

“Take your broken heart and go make art.”

After Carrie died, I wrote a novel inspired by my time as her personal assistant. When I got ball cancer, I made a web series about picking out the perfect fake testicle to replace the cancery one.

My heart is heavy again with rejection and “not enough,” so I’m making art again.

My newest novel hasn’t sold yet. But instead of a pity party, I’m building a playground…

What is it?

Byrontology is a community, but calling it a cult is way more fun.

If you’re creative, an overthinker, and existentially exhausted, you can stay.

We turn rejection, boredom, jealousy, loss, despair—into a joke, a walk, a meal, a letter, a book, a movie, a meaningful moment.

We travel the broken heart to art pipeline, together!

How does it work?

Byrontology is so much more than a newsletter!

It’s a pep-talk disguised as an email.
It’s a high-five for your inbox.
It’s a pick-you-up, delivered about once per week.

Think David Sedaris meets Oprah, in three parts:

CONFESSION

The CONFESSION is Act One: a story to make you laugh:

Struggles of being a gay kid in Louisiana, being an assistant in Hollywood, writing and producing my own movie and webseries, surviving testicular cancer, writing and producing a play and traveling the world performing it, battling dust at Burning Man (I still find it in curious places!).

REVELATION

The REVELATION is Act Two: an insight to inspire.

A lesson from my trauma and how I claw my way out of setbacks and malaise.

PRACTICE

The PRACTICE is Act Three: actions to help you move/build/create.

It’s happy homework.

It’s how to metabolize rejection, pain, despair into meaning, clarity, creative momentum.

See how I travel the broken heart to art pipeline almost every day, so you can, too.

Hello, hi, welcome. I’ll be your cult leader today.

I’m Byron Lane.

Here’s what you might not know about me (yet):

• I live in Palm Springs, California. It’s like living in other people’s vacations. 🌴

• I mostly hang with my husband and our rescue dogs, Raindrop and Shirley.

• I have two novels in bookstores, two Emmy Awards at home, and one testicle in my pants. (I’ll explain it all in future Byrontology posts.)

Most importantly, I’m like you: mostly curious, sometimes weary. Hey, fellow traveler!

I don’t have big answers, but I have life experiences that fuel my art (and might fuel yours).

Not therapy. Not religion. Just art, intuition, and maybe some super fun mischief.

COMING SOON FROM BYRONTOLOGY:

I wasn’t like anyone else in the orgy tent.

“I’m not here for sex,” I told the panting, naked man. “I’m here for enlightenment.”

How Burning Man became the place I told the truth.

“Wanna work for Princess Leia?” - The Email That Changed My Life.

It was in Bali where Carrie Fisher and I accidentally signed up for a couple’s massage.

How the movie star saved the misfit.

I used the movie The Bodyguard to stage a coup in my church youth group.

Never mess with a gay kid who’s dramatic, lonely, and loves Whitney Houston.

How I learned being a leader isn't the same as being loved.

FOR THESE STORIES AND MORE:

Enter your email below and click SUBSCRIBE.

Most people choose the free option which includes limited public posts. Cool.

But the really curious become paid subscribers and get:

• Full access with no speed bumps to every post’s inspiration, practical tips, and confessions I’ll never share in public posts.

• Ability to post comments, ask questions, and privately chat with me and your fellow creatives who are already inside.

• Secret link to watch short TL;DR videos I make to recap every post for the times you don’t feel like reading.

Become a paid subscriber now and you won’t miss a thing.

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You’ve arrived before the launch.
Before the announcement.
Before anyone is really supposed to be here.

That’s perfect.

If you’re creative, an overthinker, and existentially exhausted, you can stay.

I’m Byron Lane, author, Emmy-winning journalist, and former assistant to Carrie Fisher. She once told me to “take your broken heart and go make art.” And that’s what we do here.

We turn rejection, boredom, jealousy, loss, despair—into a joke, a walk, a meal, a letter, a book, a movie, a meaningful moment.

If you want to be here from the very beginning, subscribe now so you catch the first real post when it goes live. Unsubscribe anytime. For early-access…