Adolescence and The Three Lives of Cate Kay

Plus 5calls.org, a great way to reach your representatives

Renee and I were absorbed and emotionally broken this week by the four-part, English miniseries Adolescence, a show about a 13-year-old boy accused of a horrific crime. The actor who plays the father, Stephen Graham, is also one of the show’s creators and writers, and the show is filmed in a one-shot style wherein everything in each episode is filmed in a single take.

Because we are all used to jump takes, multiple camera angles, and fast switches from one scene to another, this can make some episodes feel a little slow, but I appreciated the technique more after watching the 12-minute piece, “About the making of Adolescence,” which we watched after the final episode left us stunned, crying, and wanting more.

This is a show about toxic masculinity and how much we hope our sweet-faced little boys will be untouched by its effects. The show is also about good families who try their best and are sometimes shocked by the outcomes (as my ex-husband and I were when my son became a drug addict and died of an overdose). I related tremendously to the final episode, especially, and though the show is not an easy watch, it’s a beautifully made piece that I’d highly recommend. This would be a great show for parents to watch with their tween and teen kids, too, as it explores how social media is affecting our children, too.

I have a piece that is tangentially about toxic masculinity, male sexuality, and how these issues affected my son, Kyle, coming out this Monday in Huffington Post Personal. I will link to it once it’s posted, but in the meantime I thank Sarena Neyman for pushing me to publish it and to get more of my essays out into the world. She just launched her own, free Substack, Notes from a Loving Curmudgeon, linking to the many essays she’s had published in the past couple of years, which you can subscribe to here.

And while I’m promoting my friends’ Substacks (Substacks being a huge part of what I consume these days, though I don’t write about them as much as the books, shows, and movies I consume), check out the poetry Substack recently launched by a friend of mine since kindergarten! Sage Taylor Kingsley’s writing can be found here, and here is a delightful piece of hers:

People see my hair, my lines, they hear my age, and they assume, “Oh, she must be all dried up. Like a prune.” I am sweeter than a mango, tastier than an orange, juicier than a hot peach that drenches your chin while the Sun caresses your cheek. Oh, if only they knew! I am not a number of stellar revolutions. I am not bones and dust, not yet, not yet. I am a fuckalicious portal. And I know, finally, what I am: Ripe.

©️ Sage Taylor Kingsley at Mystic Musings & Word Weavings
Today’s poem inspired by A gentle quill | Poetry’s prompt: RIPE.

Also this week I finished a fun Reese’s Book Club novel, The Three Lives of Cate Kay by Kate Fagan. The book was a delight to read, despite the main character committing an act so egregious near the beginning of the book that I wasn’t sure I could forgive her. Many characters in the book are lesbians, which of course I enjoyed, but what I most enjoyed about it was how unremarkable this was. The book was about the things that happened to them or that they made happen in their lives, not about the fact that they were queer. Sweet, funny, moving, a great beach read.

I also last week used 5calls.org to make calls to my representatives in the House and Senate about bringing the Venezualans home from the torture prison in El Salvador and about voting against the SAVE Act, which was mercifully stopped in its tracks by a federal judge yesterday. I highly recommend 5calls.org for making calls, the most effective way to make a difference. They provide you with a script and the number to call, making the phone calls as painless as possible.

Please let me know what in the deluge you’ve been consuming lately.