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Grace Lavery / Joseph Lavery & Daniel M. Lavery / Mallory Ortberg - "Straight with extra steps" couple trooning out to avoid "dwindling into mere heterosexuality"
Sadie Stein's job at the NYT is "preview editor" (link). Her other work has a Mallorian vapidity (link) but with greater yearning for being chic on the cheap: "Ode to the Buttered Roll," "My No-Good, Very Bad Dinner Party," "The Duchess of Windsor's Favorite Sheets, On Sale," "These Cheap Wineglass Shades Make My Dining Room Feel Like Bemelmans," "How to Wear a Robe All the Time."
Her husband, Loren Stein, got kicked out of the top spot at the Paris Review for forcing himself on writers (link) before Sadie married him (link), and this January, got dumped from NYU fellowhood for those offenses (link). One wonders, Dear Reader, if Sabbatical Joe has something in common with him.
The throuple is blasting away on social media this morning, Mal celebrating the release of her book and its audio narrator Mara Wilson, while Joe and Lily exhibit their latest vintage ramble. Food poisoning seems to have been errrm flushed away.
The drollest emanation is from Mal re: Men's Hotel:
Daniel M. Lavery @daniel_m_lavery 1h
my novel Women’s Hotel is out today! I hope you will consider buying it from a bookstore or checking it out at the library. I wrote a kind of book I like to read very much, and I think that pleasure is present in the book. You will have a good time with it!
Russell Brandom @russellbrandom 20m
is there a men’s hotel?
Daniel M. Lavery @daniel_m_lavery 16m
Yes, in Chicago!
[links to New Republic article, The Last Men's Hotel in Chicago]
From Lily, a snap Mal made of Rocco sitting on a pool table (owner of pool table probably wondering when pool table becomes poo table).
And Joe, as always, thinks you're as fascinated by his sophisticated dreams as he is.
Honestly it's weird because we need these places again. We need YWCA type places so young people can move out and get started instead of languishing in mom's basement in suburbia. More privacy than a hostel & you can stay longer; a little cheaper than an apartment of your own; maybe you meet a roomie you then get an apartment with while staying there.
It’s also weird she thinks affordable housing stock was an issue. There were plenty of super cheap apartments in NYC in the 1950’s - 1980’s. The WW2 baby boom meant people flooded out of the city into LI suburbs to own homes, leaving the cramped substandard city apartments they grew up in during the early 1950’s. Goodbye tenements!
All thee cheap cold water, roach infested, fourth floor walk-ups flats were legendary. Lots of affordable housing, it just sucked.
The history of residential hotels for women is sort of interesting. The big evil men seemed to think women should have an option for clean, safe, decent moral standard living when they came to work in the city as nurses, office workers, etc… It began in the late 1800’s over worry for the factory girls then got more white collar.
Women’s hotels were just industrial versions of the respectable boarding houses that used to be the preferred option. Running boarding houses was a primary way older women and widows to earn income. Women residence hotels just supersized the concept.
I think what people can’t fathom today is most people preferred social housing to having a room or apartment to themselves. People were accustomed to living in homes with lots of people and even sharing beds. They felt quite lonely in a private apartments. Most of the women in women’s hotels stayed there for the safety and the social interaction it provided, not because they couldn’t afford their very own apartments.
Leads me to yet another book recommendation:
I’m sure most people are familiar with the movie or book Looking for Mr Goodbar. It based on the murder of the teacher Roseann Quinn, in NYC in 1973. There’s an excellent book, Closing Time by Lacey Fosburgh, about Quinn and the rough trade Times Sq hustler that killed her.
It’s a really in-depth look at the city in that era and makes crystal clear why many women would opt for respectable, safe residency hotels. Quinn wasn’t even safe at work ffs. But Quinn didn’t want the restraints of such a place, she opted for her own apartment in Manhattan. Her death is so fucking tragic, she was such an interesting woman. It’s one of those books I couldn’t put down and read in two days. Highly recommend, excellent investigative work by the author. She went deep. The Goodbar book/movie is surprisingly accurate, they just downplayed the rough trade background of the killer. The actual killer is straight out of Midnight Cowboy or City of Night .
Is she getting dressed to fly to Poughkeepsie? The “talk” at the Morgan Library is at 6 pm. The library hasn’t posted anything about it on SM, at least that I can find, but they seem to mostly mention events after they happen.
My mom grew up in Maine, which for ages has only been seasonal work. Maine has one of the highest rates of welfare recipients in the country & sometimes the highest in a given year. A lot of girls she went to HS (this would've been in the 60s-ish) with moved to Boston or NYC & stayed at the YWCA to look for jobs. Because everyone knew what the YWCA was. It was women-only, vaguely Christian & coded as 'safe,' you might meet another girl from a similar background to rent an apartment with there.
I think you're right in that residential hotels were a bit more posh. But like, I remember when I was in NYC looking for apartments on Craigslist in the aughts, meeting these obvious nutbags and feeling like FFS what I wouldn't give for a YWCA or old-timey roommate finding service right now. My parents were older - I was a late surprise - and didn't get why it was so difficult to find a roommate. A residential hotels or whatever seems like a good place to make friends & learn the ropes in a new city.
It's honestly really strange to me that they don't exist at all anymore. With the homelessness crisis you'd think the churches would be all over subsidizing something like a YWCA or some kind of lightly communal living again but they're not. When I lived in LA I did see a lot of landlords operating basically unlicensed hostels, overcharging kids for a bunk bed surrounded by people no one had run a background check on and it's all co-ed only. I helped rep a Christian actress who was worried about sharing space with men it was a really fraught thing for her. People are straight up overcharging at over $1k per month for a room with no use of the kitchen or whatever even.
Is she getting dressed to fly to Poughkeepsie? The “talk” at the Morgan Library is at 6 pm. The library hasn’t posted anything about it on SM, at least that I can find, but they seem to mostly mention events after they happen.
The two surviving Beastie Boys wrote a memoir about their career a few years ago, and it's one of those music biographies that gets less and less interesting the more it's about music, but the stuff about living in extraordinarily sketchy Brooklyn and lower Manhattan apartments in the late '70s and early '80s is solid gold.
I always felt that the troons were mad about this. Like old-school Susan's Place brickhons got to wax rhapsodic about suntan pantyhouse, perms, and girdles. Joe just has to try extra hard to make sure that everyone knows he's wearing girl sweatpants.
Autogynephilia.
The autogynephilic man hates and envies women, and wishes to control them by possessing them. An autogynephile donning his woman-costume is basically telling women "nyaah, this is how you look!", middle-school bully-style. Stealing underwear is one way that he can symbolically possess women. Having sexualized images of women tattooed on his body is another.
Cooking is a form of transition so his cookbook will not be memories and emotions but sperging about how his most horrifying combinations interrogate bourgeois heteronormative food’s limitations both as physical sustenance and cultural hermeneutic.
The Chelsea Hotel was legendary for this. The music scene in NYC in this time was fueled by really cheap, terrifyingly sketchy housing. You could write songs all day cause your rent was like ten bucks. Montreal in the 00s was really similar, it's how we got bands like Arcade Fire.
When I lived in LA I did see a lot of landlords operating basically unlicensed hostels, overcharging kids for a bunk bed surrounded by people no one had run a background check on and it's all co-ed only. I helped rep a Christian actress who was worried about sharing space with men it was a really fraught thing for her.
Are they allowed to show Bosom Buddies on TV anymore? The entire show was based upon two men cross dressing to live in the nice, affordable Barbizon Women’s hotel. Of course, it was ridiculously wholesome and the men weren’t fetishists but totally nice, hetero women respecters trying to avoid seeing all the naked and half dressed women.
I’m trying to fathom what a show like that would be like reimagined for network TV today. Nightmare fuel.
Acknowledgements:
Paragraph 1: her agent
Paragraph 2: her editor
Paragraph 3: the NY public library system
Paragraph 4: a writing residency in Massachusetts where she finished the book, and four people who were there at the same time
Paragraph 5:
And to my partners, Grace Lavery and Lily Woodruff: Women are such a pleasure to live with and to think about. I am very lucky it has been granted to me to live with and think about you.
Now, we all knew she wasn't going to be gushing about her loving and supportive family members without whom etc. etc. but I'm genuinely shocked Nicole didn't get a mention. What with being a woman and all. I can't remember whether Nicole bankrolled them for the original NY apartment but surely a line of thanks for the years of womanly friendship would have been the least Mallory could have offered. Anyone have the previous books to hand so we can compare this with earlier acknowledgements?
Are they allowed to show Bosom Buddies on TV anymore? The entire show was based upon two men cross dressing to live in the nice, affordable Barbizon Women’s hotel. Of course, it was ridiculously wholesome and the men weren’t fetishists but totally nice, hetero women respecters trying to avoid seeing all the naked and half dressed women.
I’m trying to fathom what a show like that would be like reimagined for network TV today. Nightmare fuel.
Bosom Buddies is not streaming anywhere I can find nor is it on the retro channels like MeTV. But that may just be a 40 year old sitcom thing.
A few years ago the troons were in a tizzy over the Broadway adaptation of Tootsie and the media played along, doing a lot of hand-wringing over the implications of a man dressing as a woman wholly for professional opportunism.
My mom grew up in Maine, which for ages has only been seasonal work. Maine has one of the highest rates of welfare recipients in the country & sometimes the highest in a given year. A lot of girls she went to HS (this would've been in the 60s-ish) with moved to Boston or NYC & stayed at the YWCA to look for jobs. Because everyone knew what the YWCA was. It was women-only, vaguely Christian & coded as 'safe,' you might meet another girl from a similar background to rent an apartment with there.
I think you're right in that residential hotels were a bit more posh. But like, I remember when I was in NYC looking for apartments on Craigslist in the aughts, meeting these obvious nutbags and feeling like FFS what I wouldn't give for a YWCA or old-timey roommate finding service right now. My parents were older - I was a late surprise - and didn't get why it was so difficult to find a roommate. A residential hotels or whatever seems like a good place to make friends & learn the ropes in a new city.
It's honestly really strange to me that they don't exist at all anymore. With the homelessness crisis you'd think the churches would be all over subsidizing something like a YWCA or some kind of lightly communal living again but they're not. When I lived in LA I did see a lot of landlords operating basically unlicensed hostels, overcharging kids for a bunk bed surrounded by people no one had run a background check on and it's all co-ed only. I helped rep a Christian actress who was worried about sharing space with men it was a really fraught thing for her. People are straight up overcharging at over $1k per month for a room with no use of the kitchen or whatever even.
Because the ess jayy double ewws decoided that it is a UN/NATO HUMAN RIGHT to receive THE SELF SAME standard of living as someone working a job earning six figures.
Even in the mid sized city I live in once had a wOmEn'S hOtEl. It was located above one of the very old movie theaters downtown, and is currently used as dressing rooms for the acts booked to perform there.
But there is at least ONE unit shown on guided tours of the place. These rooms were efficiencies with a Murphy bed (and they'll show you an intact one in the unit on the tour).
The only other apartment shown on the tour is the original owner/manager's apartment. It is a very unique art deco apartment with an unusual circular bathroom complete with his and her sinks, art deco nude bas relief in the tub/shower combo, and lucite fixtures throughout the unit.
But the block of efficiencies/rooms above the movie theater were women only. For single, unattached young ladies. Complete with a whole set of rules including rules about no visitors or gEnTlEmEn cAlLeRs.
But nowadays--even in flyover country--is is a HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION to have anything less than a certain standard of living.
Makes me really wonder why anyone does anything anymore.
A not-terrible Times review means our Dan-Dan might actually be looking at some relatively decent sales. She'll be in my neck of the woods next month; I might need to swing by.
