I vividly remember when I first tried the Costco sheet cake. It was summer of 2019, and I was sitting on Santa Monica Beach, next to lifeguard station 25. It was Sydney’s birthday, and her friend Laura carried the cake, along with her toddler and all sorts of toddler things, across about a quarter mile of sand. When she got to us, breathless, she gently placed it in the sand and lit the candles. I thought it was ridiculous. A whole sheet cake with thick icing at the beach is ridiculous. But then I tasted it.

I’m not going to…

My friend posted on Instagram, bemoaning the new Texas law creating a modern-day, internet-driven Stasi. The post was mild, given that abortion and the new law is such a divisive issue: it simply said that Texas hadn’t banned abortions, but rather had banned safe abortions.

I was about to scroll past it, and then a comment caught my eye: Give me a break, six weeks is enough time to know you’re pregnant. The comment was from a woman, so I banged my head on my desk for a bit, and then convinced myself to not respond. …

Poor Texas. I’m not referring to the women there, who will no longer be able to find abortion providers, even if they are victims of rape or incest. This obviously shocks me, but a lot of ink will be spilled on that issue. Perhaps more shocking is that Texas lawmakers got it into their pretty little heads that it would be a good idea to put private citizens in charge of preventing abortions, and punishing people for administering them. …

I blame the perfume commercials of the 1980s. Images of sports cars winding up dark roads with a couple in love, on their way to an old stone restaurant, where candles illuminated the moss. Or maybe I imagined the commercials, but the image still slides into my thoughts, like an old Kodak slide carousel that starts up unexpectedly, snapping through images of the life I was supposed to have.

As a child, I conjured up pictures of my future: there was a man, there was candlelight, there were scenes on porches in twilight, there were scenes during golden hour, like…

“Your whole family is dead, so you might as well give up.” This is what I said last night, to a fly. The fly and I were locked in my bathroom together, because I had closed the door to trap three flies (“The Bathroom Flies”) I saw zoom in there. I followed them, wearing underwear and a t-shirt, my hair in a ponytail, my face dotted in zit medicine. (I should clarify — because that last sentence is grammatically weird — that I was the one wearing a t-shirt and zit medicine, not the flies. They weren’t wearing anything.) …

Next month I’m going to Vegas to have a sexy few days with a Trump supporter. Not one of those reluctant Trump supporters, who stays quiet about it a dinner parties and just wants lower taxes and less regulation. No, this man would happily be seen at a rally. He probably has a MAGA hat, but I haven’t asked. I do know that he has four guns. I, on the other hand, worked on the Clinton campaign in 1996, and stood on a street corner crying when Hillary lost in 2016.

A trip like this was not on my bingo…

Here’s the type of writer I don’t want to be: I don’t want to be the type of writer who uses sex to lure you in; I don’t want to be the type of writer who skates close to the promise of erotica. It’s cheap and makes for bad writing, and I want to be a good writer. And while I’ll happily open a vein and bleed on the page to tell you about my sad and lonely childhood, I draw the line at my sex life.

I’m open about sex, but I’m also a total prude. Men feel comfortable…

I was on a bike ride in Sonoma, at a strange little bachelorette weekend, when the smell of eucalyptus and orange started following me. It followed me back to the overpriced spa where I and three other women I didn’t know were staying, mixing into the aroma of chlorine and white wine. I need to go home, I thought.

By “home” I meant Los Angeles. At the time I was living in Brooklyn, holding onto the notion that my childhood in Los Angeles had been a cosmic mistake. Angelenos were not my people. New Yorkers were: They read books, and…