Grace Lavery / Joseph Lavery & Daniel M. Lavery / Mallory Ortberg - "Straight with extra steps" couple trooning out to avoid "dwindling into mere heterosexuality"

They are flying by the seat of their pants now. Mallory might have been trying to find some way she could stay in NYC, but the parents panicked at the thought of not having a live-in baby sitter at the ready. Someone is going to have to care for the baby while Joe and Lilly work. I get the idea Joe is hanging on to his job at Berkeley by a thread and they would prefer he’s in-person as little as possible. I’m sure Mallory was love bombed with reminders she’s Rocco’s daddy! He needs you!!!
Interesting... I keep thinking about Mallory spending a year job hunting, only to settle on a part-time weekend position. But after spending two weeks looking for apartments, they're giving up, and Mallory is leaving the job she thought was going to be so fulfilling and give her a needed break from being at home (which is good even if your relationships are great). Either she was traumatized from the grueling search and jumped at the chance to cut her losses and take an easier path, or you're right and the other two were extremely unhelpful with the search and kept saying, "Maybe let's just move to Michigan... :/"

Also remember that Joe just lost out on some opportunity because of his "trolls." He's picking up his ball and going home, and Mallory is expected to leave her job behind.

Access to Rocco is what they will hold over her for now and forever! "Aw jeez, I guess you could go on a book tour, but Rocco is growing up so fast, and WE have to go do that conference on Commune art, remember? Aw jeez....... :/"
 
Come and listen to my story
'Bout a man named Joe
A perv Berkeley prof,
Masturbating to Foucault.
And then one day
He was tweetin' at some cooze,
Then into the flat moved his lesbian muse

Lilz, that is. Hair gold, bourgeoisie.

Well the next thing you know
covid's filling up the air
The queer folk said "Joe move away from there".
They said "Hipster Brooklyn is the place you wanna be".
So the throuple packed it up
And became the Laverys.

Throuple, that is, Carroll Gardens, doggy parks.

Well now it's time to say goodbye
To Joe and all his kin,
Now they're on their way
to move to Lansing, Michigan
You're all invited back again to this locality
To watch them insecurely mock provinciality

Heteronormativity, that is. Take some T, cut your tits off.

Y'all come back now, y'hear?
:story:This is a masterpiece, I am fucking crying reading it while playing the original song in another tab, it matches up perfectly.
 
I sometimes am in the area of MSU for various things but unfortunately MSU is one of the two largest public universities by area so even if Joe continues ballooning in size it is unlikely I will be able to see him. (It's always amusing to see people shocked at how much physical space the university sprawls across. It was built in a field in the middle of nowhere when Lansing was just the Capitol in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere so there was nothing to restrict this. Penn State, the other top two, is a similar situation.)

I'm not an expert on the area or anything but from my understanding of the area I can maybe give some suggestions on relevant things. There's no way they won't be living more towards or in East Lansing. Lansing proper is basically just the state government and shuts down before 5pm (there's a few things that open up later at night but it's not a real downtown, it's the government and the rest is more normie family stuff) and has nothing really going on anyway*. There's lots of new fancier apartments that have gone up in Lansing in recent years but they aren't for Joe's type, really young government employees, the whole area is way too Black and working class for him. That leaves where the rest of the professors live I suppose, which is East Lansing and some of the related suburbs. Joe's going to hate it, Mal could potentially thrive because there's some niches she could fit into but I wouldn't really be optimistic.

There probably is one place I could go and maybe see them if Lily hasn't already taken them to Lansing's greatest sight: THE FISH LADDER!

*Like, Lansing is noticeably behind Detroit and Grand Rapids in terms of cities where cultural stuff happens in Michigan. Detroit's downtown was upgraded into having a sort of tourist enclave down by the stadiums/arenas, Lansing is more like Detroit a few decades ago with the "attractions" downtown being government. Grand Rapids has a ton of private money spent on it, the DeVos family, etc. so it brings it more of that stuff despite being a less "important" city in regards to government stuff. (Also has a far larger population than Lansing Metro.)
 
The fish ladder looks dope.

even if Joe continues ballooning in size it is unlikely I will be able to see him.

I have faith in you, and in Joe’s ability to be a blot on the landscape anywhere.

There’s another reason to live in East Lansing:

East Lansing holds the distinction of having earned a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign's 2014 Municipal Equality Index (MEI), which considers factors like LGBTQIA+-friendly policies, laws and services.

It ain’t their last trailer park, but if you’re fixin’ for a single origin ristretto from an old-timey barista with a pronoun badge, it’ll do. What else does Joe need? I’m genuinely curious why you think he’ll hate it there. Won’t he be more exotic there, more strangers to perform to?

In other news, Tard Baby has been let loose at a truck stop

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Won’t he be more exotic there, more strangers to perform to?

That was my thought, too. A climber I worked with married a heartland guy who was a third-tier manager at the local tv station. She Instagrammed at us constantly about how the locals swooned over the invention of The Chocolate Fountain for dipping strawberries at the first soiree she held. And her shoes! They were like Ivanka's! She had business cards without being in business and they were so elegant in their engraved case!

Some of us suspected the ooooing and aaaahing was actually snide, but maybe not.

Joe, too, would convert any attention into Shock! or Praise!, secure in the conviction that the locals are all muppets.

Why is the troll who kicked Joe out of NYC not on here with receipts? Service! I demand service!
 
Won’t he be more exotic there, more strangers to perform to?
I think Joe will enjoy being an exotic trans-scholar butterfly from UK, California, NYC!

Serious Joe fought to get any notice with all his BS in Berkeley and NYC because he was a dozen years behind the edge there. In Lansing his big city bonafides will impress the youngins and the dumb tragically hip adults stuck in their Midwest college town.

It’s no accident that Joe could only find a “lesbian” interested in him was an art teacher from Lansing when you have more lesbians and trannies per capital in the Bay Area or NYC than almost anywhere else.

There will be many others like Lilly who will think Joe is super cool! He never got that sort of interest in NYC or Berkeley, but did get plenty of eye rolling.
 
What else does Joe need? I’m genuinely curious why you think he’ll hate it there. Won’t he be more exotic there, more strangers to perform to?

I think Joe will enjoy being an exotic trans-scholar butterfly from UK, California, NYC!

Serious Joe fought to get any notice with all his BS in Berkeley and NYC because he was a dozen years behind the edge there. In Lansing his big city bonafides will impress the youngins and the dumb tragically hip adults stuck in their Midwest college town.

It’s no accident that Joe could only find a “lesbian” interested in him was an art teacher from Lansing when you have more lesbians and trannies per capital in the Bay Area or NYC than almost anywhere else.

There will be many others like Lilly who will think Joe is super cool! He never got that sort of interest in NYC or Berkeley, but did get plenty of eye rolling.
I think you guys are really optimistic about this. Nobody will give a shit about some gross white dude from NYC or the UK. East Lansing is a "college town" but it's completely surrounded by the Lansing Metro which while small is still 500K+. It's not a place where the students overwhelm the townies except right on the East Lansing/MSU border. MSU is packed with foreign professors and students, the UK is basically Canada but worse at infiltrating in secret.

That LGBT rating is probably nothing, likely it's one of those typical "progressive" city council passes meaningless resolution things. They've probably passed ones about Palestine too. Lansing's not super-left but like all Michigan cities it's essentially a one-party state. East Lansing just has academic bleed over and is less Black/union. The Lansing City Clerk since 2006 has been a gay dude. I think there's like two gay bars in the entire Metro.

Of course, the Michigan Democratic Party is a different thing than many bigger media places, it's very Black urban machine and union heavy. Which is why it didn't care for Hillary's elitist coastal progressivism. The current attorney general may be a lesbian but the party looked the other way on the state's gay marriage ban in the past because too much of its base isn't exactly pro-LGBT, the cities aren't any kind of gay bastions despite being one-party states and the Muslim enclaves are definitely not pro-LGBT.

Joe absolutely should try to peak trans all the squares, I approve of that greatly, but I think he's going to be a nobody. If he really wants to make a name for himself he should bring his prison/crime abolition activism to Larry Nasser's case which remains front page type stuff locally. Poor guy is spending like a million years in prison just because he refused to conform to neoliberal gender and sexual norms.
 
think you guys are really optimistic about this. Nobody will give a shit about some gross white dude from NYC or the UK
I wasn’t implying 99.9% of the area will give two shits about him, but simply a small niche of turbo LGBTQBBQ types, very queer art/poetry hipsters types, etc.. from the student, grad student, local artist/musician and lonely professor population in Lansing.

Joe could probably piece together a small friend group or sad fan club in Lansing, something he never accomplished in NY or CA. Of course, Joe would look down his nose at all these rubes being nice to him or wanting to be chums. But he can at least yammer on about how badly he needs to get back to Brooklyn and regale them with all his cool stories about life and orgies in NY and Berkeley.

If he sticks to type he will manage to find one special gal, age 24-34 who he will tell her she is truly different from all these other people in Lansing. She really belongs in NYC or SF, Joe recognizes real talent and imply he can help that happen, while letting his hand start wandering up her thigh.
 
The idea that Noah was getting busy with his son is pretty messed up and not a theory that matches any scholars' interpretations of this passage. The word translated as "saw" is different from a later word used in Lev. and Deut. usually translated as "uncovered," and only the latter is used to imply sexual activity. It's obvious that this passage is about simply visually seeing drunk, naked Noah because if it's about incest, why are the other two going backward to cover him? But of course, Mallory sees gay incest everywhere.
The bible is a hard piece of literature to dissect. It's been translated multiple times over, it is filled with things that people in the past would get and not us, and has things that are meant to be open ended. Even if you "know" the bible from your Jesus classes, you can get things wrong due to thinking of it only in a modern lense or the lense of jusr one denomination. It's sad that she's a literature student yet too stupid and haughty to think that she might not know enough about the passages of the bible she's quoting because SHE was raised in that heterosexual cult or whatever so of COURSE she knows everything about the bible.


This was the sentence that stood out to me the most. It's not really a piece about siblings but about parents. The parents of Genesis, both the ones she mentions and the ones she leaves out, all create the conditions of favoritism, competition, and material want that drives animosity between siblings (who sometimes have different, competing parents ........ in a sort of polycule situation ......... that always pits the kids against each other and against their parents).
So is this a long screed of "MOMMY AND DADDY LOVED YOU MORE, HOW DARE YOU," or am I missing something?

Father, mother and Tard Baby!
You know, I think he's actually implying that people looked up Joe and Mal on the web and that's why they can't get anything in the city. As in, people said mean words (true things) about him and posted out of context (full context) pictures and quotes and the landlords realize they don't want to deal with that shit. I could be wrong, but it would be hilarious if so.

And more broadly, is restitution the sole determinant of justice?

Discuss.
I vote that Joe should be beaten up every time someone commits a crime on him or he commits a crime. Wait, that's not what's being asked. *yawn*

This is the kind of question that would have him flop out of the room like the bulbous walrus he is. He'd argue that it was in bad faith that your argument was made then waddle away to his polycule mummuring something about how no one understands him except the enlightened.

Plus, PLUS, I can't believe I almost missed this. Joe is arguing for asset forfeiture, one of the worst and most corrupt systemic actions police do in America, but unbounded from being limited to assets used in the commission of the crime.

Joe's willing to give up all his brand name labels to the people? I'm so proud of him!

the whole area is way too Black and working class for him.
Oh my god, you mean Joe won't be the most lauded minority in the room? That people like him won't be cared about? He might pitch a tantrum for days!

Joe's going to hate it, Mal could potentially thrive because there's some niches she could fit into but I wouldn't really be optimistic.
I think Mal could fit into most places where doughy white girls and boys who older women pat on the head when they follow the rules. She'll be fine, relatively speaking.

What else does Joe need? I’m genuinely curious why you think he’ll hate it there. Won’t he be more exotic there, more strangers to perform to?
I think he'll be upset because there is not enough to stimulate him, not enough places to go on shopping sprees, no FAMOUS parks and theaters for him to hang around, no big kink scene, no big author scene, people who like art but are focusing on their business or career more and just nod when he talks instead of fawn, and not a single person who is worth impressing to him. Maybe he will be content with impressing the working class, both blue and white collared, but I doubt it. The greatest asspats are the ones he thinks he is clearly owed, from smart artists and writers and journalists and all those other people he loves. He'll be happy if he can get 1 or more girls to fuck outside of the polycule as @MirnaMinkoff said, but he'll likely say they're the only ones who get him or something like that and try and abscond with them to Berkley or heaven forbid, NYC again.

Basically, there's not much to engage him outside of social media, no prestige to be had, and no prestegious peoppe to impress. It will be hilarious but sad for Rocco if he blames it all on Lilly.

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It's nice that these educated people separate themselves from us plebs.
 
You know, I think he's actually implying that people looked up Joe and Mal on the web and that's why they can't get anything in the city. As in, people said mean words (true things) about him and posted out of context (full context) pictures and quotes and the landlords realize they don't want to deal with that shit. I could be wrong, but it would be hilarious if so.
I’m getting the idea that Joe was counting on something, some employment opportunity or temporary university appointment, that would have possibly allowed them to keep an apt in NYC. Maybe a job actually in the city, and/or something that bumped up his monthly income that would have helped them remain in NY. Whatever this involved it could have been torpedoed by just looking into Joe’s online antics the past two years.

When it fell through they admitted defeat and decamped for Michigan.

Anti-capitalist Joe still can’t admit he can’t afford to raise a child in NYC, which is hilarious. You’d think given his supposed politics this would be his first complaint but Joe is loathe to ever admit he’s too broke to make rent and buy diapers. Joe and his husband gotta pack it up and go live with the girlfriend in lower cost of living areas flyover country.

I for one look forward to Joe embracing his inner suburban mom and attending Mommy & Me exercise classes and making play dates for Rocco.
 
So is this a long screed of "MOMMY AND DADDY LOVED YOU MORE, HOW DARE YOU," or am I missing something?
She's definitely resentful of her siblings for siding with her parents or whatever. But also a lot of the sibling pairs she's talking about are examples of why polyamorous families kept falling apart in Genesis, with wives competing for the husband's affection via the kids, passing on conflicting resentments and values. She's recreated that situation with Joe and Lily and doesn't realize the ticking timebomb she's in.
 
Maybe the bigger Q is whether Lilly has a car in MI there. She does, right?
Oh, most definitely. The only public transportation in the area is bus: https://www.cata.org/
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I think you'd have to be really serious to manage a professor lifestyle on it. You can take Amtrak to other cities or hop like five buses to get to the Lansing Airport but there's all kinds of reasons (including the car companies being there) to assume most in Michigan above the lowest classes have cars or access to one. Students, kids, the elderly, etc. seem more likely not to have access to one than even many poorer people, though they may have to borrow somebody's. Stuff is rarely near other stuff, for scale on this map it's like 10 miles from Downtown to Lake Lansing. Which isn't really a large distance but more that unlike larger cities there's not really stuff inbetween things, so trips for just regular errands can take you all over. You can sorta see on the map that a trip to say Walmart, Costco and one Mall could take you to the north, then past East Lansing then down to Okemos and then back to wherever you started from.

This is pretty normal in most flyover cities except Chicago and some others but people from the coasts (or London) except maybe some of Southern California don't really seem to get it.
 
Anti-capitalist Joe still can’t admit he can’t afford to raise a child in NYC, which is hilarious. You’d think given his supposed politics this would be his first complaint but Joe is loathe to ever admit he’s too broke to make rent and buy diapers. Joe and his husband gotta pack it up and go live with the girlfriend in lower cost of living areas flyover country.
Joe is the most pro-capitalist, pro-separate economic classes, pro-separate education classes troon I can think of. Hell, he's one of the most of those types of people in general. I know it's hip and trendy to be a bohemian artsy champagne liberal, but he should have embraced his inner psychopath and gone down the more capitalist route imo. Then again, the people in those upperclass circles have to dress better and not look like they haven't showered in days.
 
Joe, too, would convert any attention into Shock! or Praise!, secure in the conviction that the locals are all muppets.

Reminds of the Cleveland episode of 30 Rock- "In Cleveland I'm a model!" "West of the Allegheny we're ALL models, Liz." Joe is definitely going to chronicle his life in Michigan like he's Oscar Wilde on his American tour, an exotic curiosity bringing spice to the Midwestern masses.
 
Joe is the most pro-capitalist, pro-separate economic classes, pro-separate education classes troon I can think of. Hell, he's one of the most of those types of people in general. I know it's hip and trendy to be a bohemian artsy champagne liberal, but he should have embraced his inner psychopath and gone down the more capitalist route imo. Then again, the people in those upperclass circles have to dress better and not look like they haven't showered in days.
That would have put him in a similar social situation to what he failed at already, posh boy school. He can't hack that kind of environment, although I think most of his values do come from there while being in furious denial about it.
 
Oh, most definitely. The only public transportation in the area is bus: https://www.cata.org/
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This is pretty normal in most flyover cities except Chicago and some others but people from the coasts (or London) except maybe some of Southern California don't really seem to get it.
I understand that's the physical reality of the place but it's very stupid to build places like that. Don't take it as a personal attack on your moral fibre if people don't like the shitty building plan that's turned a pretty countryside into some kind of...all-day driving club.
That would have put him in a similar social situation to what he failed at already, posh boy school. He can't hack that kind of environment, although I think most of his values do come from there while being in furious denial about it.
Etoncel
 
understand that's the physical reality of the place but it's very stupid to build places like that. Don't take it as a personal attack on your moral fibre if people don't like the shitty building plan that's turned a pretty countryside into some kind of...all-day driving club
I realized long ago that some people really love to drive. I’m not one of them, but know many who think driving is actually an enjoyable activity. I know people who will go on a six hour drive on a whim, where I’d rather have a root canal. NYC is a great place to live if you hate to drive, not just because there’s great public transportation but because driving there is such a miserable experience.

Something that made me reconsider some of my views on endless roads and cars.
I’m a big proponent of public transportation: subways, trains, i fucking hate city buses, I have a friend from Russia who gave me an interesting perspective. This person left Russia around 2015 and pointed out a benefit about roads and cars that I, as a western democracy enjoyer, had never considered. They grew up like 90 miles from Moscow. They said the government had let what roads existed go to absolute shit so the only way to independently navigate beyond the town was with a horse or mule, which few people owned. Everyone depended on one rail line that came through town, usually at least once a day. Many towns between Moscow and St Petersburg depended on this same train line, it was their only transportation out of or into their town, only way supplies got there or people got to a hospital if needed.

It also allowed the government to keep stringent control and track of the movements of citizens that lived along this giant swath between Moscow and St Petersburg.

Needless to say upon immigrating here they quickly became a “fuck yeah cars and open road” American in very short order. They are one of the people I know will happily drive four hours for no good reason except the thrill of being able to do it.

Then again I insist on owning one car with no electronic systems or GPS and use a VPN to browse the Internet.
 
I understand that's the physical reality of the place but it's very stupid to build places like that. Don't take it as a personal attack on your moral fibre if people don't like the shitty building plan that's turned a pretty countryside into some kind of...all-day driving club.
Eh, some of us have tried the big city / "neighbors to the top, bottom, the sides, and several buildings surrounding you just like that" thang....and hated it. (Raises hand.)

I get how compact cities are "better" in some respects. It makes sense on paper, for efficiency, and all that.

I still want my yard with the domesticated birds running around back and a micro hobby farm, thanks. I'm happier here than in a metroplex fartbox, even one with a great view and lots of "amenities".

That being said.....this arc has a LOT of possibilities to liven up this thread. Joe the Attention Ho in Lansing is going to be a treat. Can he even drive? Will he dare to go to Walmart? How's he going to handle the HOA? Will he be crushed to find out that he's not an exotic species to the locals (some of whom may even have been to the UK and weren't impressed.....gasp!)

BRB, gotta go get some popcorn for this.

ETA - Lansing isn't prone to lake effect snows. Bummer. It would be hilarious to hear him whine about how he's gonna die in "frozen hell". Better get a snow blower, just in case. Joe probably can't shovel snow worth shit.
 
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