Dear Reader,
I spent the last two weeks in Italy, ate pasta every day, laid in the sun, spoke Italian, ignored my emails, and just relaxed. Here is what I learned about the experience: I always thought I had this alternative Italian life. A life where green, white, and red existed next to angel tchotchkes and overly dramatic dinner conversations, where guilt and love and second helpings and dark lip liner reigned as THE Italian way to be. And then there was my grandmother who cut through it all with her tomato garden and colorful water basins and the good wine. Being Italian felt confusing. It was the Sopranos, My Cousin Vinny, and Under The Tuscan Sun. It was honest but in pleather pants. It was basil in the sauce but call it gravy. I never knew if it was real or some mafioso-movie version we all adopted. I took after my father’s family who, in contrast to my mother’s side — the ones I grew up with, were a bunch of fair-skinned, introverted, creative, depressed people from the North. Even though I was living this Italian-American experience, I felt out of place around the table filled with swarthy cousins, aunts and their crosses, saints, lawn statues, and grandfathers who held their broken wallets together with rubber bands. Italy was old and hot and passionate and comforting. Everyone spoke with their hands and blew kisses to loved ones. It was filled with drama and gelato and those damn angel tchotchkes. And everything, I mean everything, reminded me of my family — down to the water basin and sauce and hand gestures. And just like my family, I didn’t outwardly look like the Italian-Italian people . . . but every public statue felt like a reflection with their round faces and strong chins and soft arms. So maybe I didn’t have an alternative Italian experience, maybe it was the other unstable, surrounding factors of my childhood that added a static filter across my Italian world, and maybe I was where I needed to be the whole time to recognize my genuine, Italian life.
— Laura
Food, Sex, TV, Beauty, Books, Fun
best-in-show
🍝 Definitely the first meal I had in Italy at Luciano. I ordered the Pappardelle del nostro Pastificio al Ragù di Cortile in the best Italian I could muster for my first attempt. The host asked if I was Italian because of the last name on the reservation. I’ve never been happier.
🍑 Love Honey’s Press Invite to Alice in the West Village. I walk in and there are candles, sex toys, and a garden display showcasing the latest items from the brand. I got to take home a slapper paddle.
📺 TV. I don’t want to see an uncle marry his niece, but the prospect of Daemon Targaryen and Rhaenyra Targaryen getting together could strengthen the house in HBO’s House of the Dragon.
💄 This is no joke. Your face will legit peel into a new face. It’s Face-Off, bish. I’m also using it on my leg to help clear some acne scarring. AHA 30% + BHA 2% Peeling Solution
📖 The Ethical Slut, Third Edition: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love (Revised) — It’s worth the ready even if poly or openness isn’t something you’re looking for. I find myself more interested in the idea of value: value in sex, value in withholding sex, not withholding sex, value in ourselves, value of owning sexuality. It’s more of an unlearning than anything.
🪩 Harry Styles in concert on the last day of his #15ConsectiveDaysMSG. It was pretty special, I must say. I wasn’t a fan . . . more like a passive viewer in his career. But wow, does this human put on a great stage show. However, the real surprise was the friendships I saw all around me. My lukewarm take: here
Do You Need To Be Sad To Write?
I miss writing. There is a constant thought pattern that swirls around the nodes of my brain of cool ideas to write, but when I have the time I’m intimidated by the prospect of producing trash. I can’t have that — the world I’ve built up around me will be left to gray ruins. Truthfully, I’d like to see myself do something with my hands. Cooking. How stupid am I for not seeing that as a way forward? It was right there. Both my grandmother and my mother — excellent cooks. I felt unworthy of it. Unworthy of caring. And, as a fat kid . . . I was afraid to take any interest in cooking because there would be a direct route to my fatness. This breaks my heart. What could I have been? I admire women in food magazines, always astute and professional, always joyful despite their joints aching and their backs arched holding the weight of man’s dominance in the culinary industry, their grandmothers in their ear whispering recipe secrets. So, I’m taking a culinary course. Not like professional level . . . just a class to get me up to speed. I think this will make me happy. It has to, its got to.
Final Words: Pasta Is A Healing Experience
I ate so much pasta and drank so much wine and licked all the gelatos — and I have never felt hotter in my whole life. Like, no one sent me off with sexy compliments or anything. I wasn’t sexy on anyone else’s time. It was just this satisfied, calm, soft feeling that I deserve much more than I allow for myself here in the states. Italy won’t fix all my worries, but it was nice to feel good as is.
Chat soon.
— Laura
Hey Laura is a short newsletter dedicated to body image, sad stuff, joy, sexual wellness, life, butts, confidence, essays, fatness, crying until you're a puddle of DNA, embarrassment, and so much weirdo stuff.
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