Hello and welcome to The Parlour!

The Parlour is a new weekly series and newsletter for AF members (if you’re already a paid member, you should receive it in your inbox very soon) that invites you into a space for unfiltered, of-the-moment, queer slice-of-life writing. The Parlour host will rotate week-to-week among the editors and team writers of Autostraddle, so you’ll get to hear from a queer chorus. We hope The Parlour makes your inbox a little brighter and gayer.

What kinds of things are we going to write about in The Parlour? What a fantastic question, and the honest answer is: we don’t know! We don’t know what we will write about, because The Parlour is almost going to act like a collective diary shared between a bunch of different writers. We’ll write about what’s on our mind the exact moment we sit down to write. We’ll ask questions without really answering them. We’ll make a communal record for what it’s like to live in the world right now. Maybe we’ll tell you what we’re reading/watching/listening to! We’ll see! We’re making this up as we go! And everyone’s The Parlour dispatches will feel a little different. You never know what or who you’re going to get! It’s like queer newsletter roulette!

Expect stream of consciousness-style writing, a mix of tones, and personal writing with genuine personality. We’ll also be keeping it short, so if you’ve been craving short-form essays.

Step into The Parlour with us.

For the past several weeks, I’ve been on the road with my wife Kristen Arnett for her book tour for her latest novel, Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One. I’ve been to St. Petersburg, Gainesville, Miami, Brooklyn, DC, New Orleans, LA. In all of these cities, I’ve felt transported to different formative parts of my life. It has felt…like multiple versions of myself were bumping into each other, but in a really beautiful way. I suppose what I’m describing is nostalgia, but it felt like something else.

The last time I joined my wife on book tour was two books ago, in 2019. We were just starting to date, just starting to get to know each other, travelling together, falling in love. I told her I loved her for the first time on the same day she found out her debut novel had made the NYT bestseller list. We’d been on tour in New Orleans. That first book tour was magical, and this one is no different, only that now we are wives. Book tour feels like falling in love all over again.

DC was where I slept with a woman for the first time; LA was where I lived as a lesbian during the first year I came out; Brooklyn was where I had my requisite Bad Relationship You Stay In Too Long In your Twenties gay experience; New Orleans was where I told my wife I loved her for the first time; Miami was the first place where we made a home together. To find myself suddenly in all of these cities I’d lived in before in the span of a couple weeks was like seeing a movie montage of myself at different ages play out before me. Maybe I’ve been watching too much Yellowjackets, but I could almost feel past selves moving alongside me.

On a completely different note: For some reason, I’ve been watching every film Alison Brie has ever been in. I get into these obsessive viewing kicks from time to time, a holdover from my feral culture-consumption tumblr days. I feel like Alison Brie isn’t talked about enough as a queer actor with a very queer career. She’s openly bisexual! She has played so many characters who were queer! Subtextually but also explicitly! I am very tempted to start The Brie Club, a movie-watching club where we watch Alison Brie films and eat brie. Anyway, if you want to follow my very chaotic Letterboxd account, I’m @kaylakumari over there.

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