It’s going to take some work. I understand that. But stick with it and imagine, if you will, an image of me, your peach. Unflinchingly cool in a red jumpsuit under a black wool coat, hair freshly blown out and ankles yet untwisted in two-inch-heeled boots. Shaking hands with Julien Baker and Not Passing Out Or Saying Something Dumb.

[record scratch]

[freeze frame]

Yes, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.

But before you imagine too far beyond, let me clarify: meeting legendary lesbian guitarist Julien Baker (currently dating her best friend/bandmate Lucy Dacus after nine-ish years of slow burn, which is Actually the gayest thing a person can do) while on the way to the launch party for my book about lesbian heartbreak was NOT the gayest thing to ever happen to me.

Let me back up.

So, yeah, in case you missed it, my first book has officially been out in the world for two months, one week, and four days! People are saying extremely lovely things about it. I feel crazy every single day in a good way. I feel like I can do anything I want to do, for the rest of my life, forever. I have said yes to so many things and booked so many flights to places I’ve never been in my life. I drank a giant glass of PBR at a dive bar in Madison on their pasta-and-bingo night; I fulfilled a lifelong dream to smack the Bean in Chicago; I swam in the bathwater ocean of Miami at a local dog beach with a sinking sailboat (that may or may not have been haunted) run aground just offshore. I read about lesbian love and loss across the country. I’ll gladly say yes to more – if you run a reading series and need a lesbian, please contact me. Pride month is coming up, and I am not above being tokenized. I’m trying to move books, babe. Email me.

For release month in February, I did book launch events throughout NYC, then a short tour with stops in Kingston and Philadelphia. Before embarking on a larger tour that would span five more cities, I came home for a two-week break that passed like two minutes. Before I knew it, I was walking down East Houston street with my friend and girlfriend flanking me and a giant L.L. Bean canvas laundry tote filled with my own books slung over my shoulder. My godmother bought me that bag as a pre-college gift. It’s extremely stiff and sturdy, built to withstand humid, sandy beach days in Martha’s Vineyard. I used to carry my whites in this, I was thinking to myself. I used to carry my whites down four flights of stairs, across the freshman quad, and down to the basement of the dorm that always had open laundry machines. I used to cry at 2am, hauling my warm clothes home beneath the stars and the elms. I used to hope I’d drop dead right there on the grass with my clean underwear crumpled like tissue all around me. But it’s been eight years since then, and now that bag is carrying my book.

This is what I was thinking about while I was being introduced to a musician whose work means so much to me that seeing her static image on my phone screen makes my palms sweaty. This, and whether anybody would actually show up tonight so I could earn back my deposit, and whether I’d actually booked the flight I was supposed to board in two days to Madison, Wisconsin. (I always have, and I always think I haven’t.) I think that’s why I was able to keep my cool when I met her. I had so much going on, I had no brain space left to panic. I had no choice but to be the normalest I have ever been, in my Entire Life. Everyone who witnessed me was genuinely impressed with how regular I behaved, which is a little insulting but probably fair.

I am not saying more about Ms. Baker here, or ever, because some things are just for me and not the internet. Suffice it to say she’s just as nice as everyone says she is. I hope she has a great rest of her life and that nobody ever bothers her again, myself included (unless she would like to hang out, in which case, she can definitely bother me). I bring it up for three reasons, listed in order of significance:

1. I really wanted to mention it. lol

2. It does feel like a tiny blessing from the universe. The timing was just insane. To meet a massive creative inspiration to me the night I’m celebrating the launch of my first book, completely organically, felt like a sign that I’m on the right path.

3. It’s a good example of my ability to lock the fuck in and be aggressively normal when I need to, despite my exaggerated past social media persona as an impulsive #crazygirl. Which is extremely relevant to the story I’m about to tell.

My tour ended in Los Angeles for AWP, an annual conference for writers, educators, and literary professionals of all types. The conference switches cities every year, and this year LA had the honors. This was my second year attending, and my first as a published author. The first day, I staggered to the entrance of the book fair floor carrying exactly one box of 50 books that I’d had shipped out to my friend Carlos’s house in advance. I was hoping to sell at least half so I wouldn’t need to bring home too many in my suitcase. I wanted to save that space for the shopping I planned to do at the book fair.

By 5pm on the third and final day of the conference, I sold out.

It was a euphoric way to end an already incredible tour. I got more comfortable standing behind my own work. I had maybe thirty seconds to draw potential readers in, so my sales tactics got more and more… radically honest. If I saw a clockable lesbian walking by, I would make eye contact and say “This is my book, it’s about dyke drama.” 90% of the time, swear to god, that was a sale. Another hit: people read my Humorous Bullet Points before buying solely because of my “anti-Boston sentiments.” To everyone who shared their Boston survival stories with me at AWP: you are seen. You are heard. I am proud – no, HONORED to represent you.

Ultimately, I landed on the most effective elevator pitch: it’s a collection of letters to my exes. On the occasions I slip and say “all my exes,” I have to amend to “most.” There are a handful of exes I don’t write about, for a variety of reasons. But in honor of my fucking book, the lifesaving power of personal narrative, and completely selling out at AWP, I’m breaking tradition. Just this once.

So here, unearthed from my drafts, I give you a modern lesbian cautionary tale of AWPs past. (From here on out, all names used are pseudonyms.)

For most of America, the weekend of February 8-11, 2024 in Kansas City was Super Bowl Weekend. Everyone was waiting with bated breath to see whether the San Francisco 49ers would beat the Kansas City Chiefs.

For 6,000 writers, the weekend of February 8-11, 2024 in Kansas City was the annual AWP conference.

Kansas City is famous for barbecue and jazz. Most of its citizens wore entire outfits of red and gold to support their team. Those who had to wear uniforms to work sported buttons or pins. The Starbucks in the lobby of my hotel was covered in garish paintings of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. AWP is like Coachella for people with glasses and divorced parents. You can imagine the culture shock. I was terrified to tell anyone I was born in San Francisco.

Before you have a book out, a big part of what you pay AWP for is three days of getting to tell other people that you are in fact a writer, and have that met with admiration and curiosity rather than scorn. I controversially, tentatively do not see anything wrong with this – in fact, I’d argue that not enough people embrace the label, so anything to help boost people’s confidence is a net positive to me. The other incredibly valuable part of AWP, especially if you already have a manuscript or enough of a cohesive project proposal, is getting to meet so many incredible independent presses doing great work that you may have never heard of, but that might be the perfect future home for your work. Either way, whether it’s validation or connection or community or networking or discounted books or sometimes even arcs they’re really not supposed to sell you but will anyway if you’re nice you seek, it’s ALL about the book fair, baby. Trust me.

On Friday night, my friends and I dutifully piled into our rideshares for the 15-minute drive to the nearest gay bar. An AWP offsite reading with a legendary lineup of queer authors was being held in the upstairs club, as soon as the Drag Race watch party finished. I prepared valiantly for the evening – I was having a sober AWP, but I still wanted to hear readings and dance at least once. Just, definitely not until 2am. I had a panel I wanted to attend at 9am the next morning.

Liz and I climbed the maroon-carpeted steps to the upstairs bar. They were still setting up for the reading, and the crowd was thin, but a decent number of people lingered at the edges of the room. I scanned the room for my friend Olivia, who I’d met in a Zoom workshop group. She was doing AWP with the rest of our workshop and a few of her MFA friends. When we found out we were all planning to go to the same reading that night, Olivia told me she was going to arrive an hour early and to come find her at the bar. They’re only letting in the first two hundred people, she’d said, and I refuse to miss this.

The upstairs glowed a cozy burnt orange on the right half, an electric blue on the left from the light-up tiles on the dance floor. Two in-service bars, one a semicircle on the other end of the room, and one standard that spanned the full length of the perpendicular wall. Leaning against the bar, just yards away, a short queer in a white muscle tee and black Dickies turned around and made accidental, but direct, eye contact with me.

I barely kept my jaw from falling open. It was my college ex.

We hadn’t seen each other since our breakup, almost three years before. We were terrible for each other, so young and depressed and hypersexual and awful at communicating, and listening. I’d never had a girlfriend before. At the very beginning of the year we “met” (online), I was getting over a breakup. Though I was thoroughly devastated, a small part of me was also thrilled to start exploring the big wide world of casual sex. But then the world shut down, and we were all bored, and some of us started flirting at will on Twitter Dot Com, which eventually turned into an exclusive relationship because it was a pandemic and we had to choose our Bubbles and we were both so fucking lonely. We merged hard and we merged fast. But we could never be what we needed the other to be, and trying to force it was just going to hurt us both. I had the unfortunate luck to realize it “sooner,” and whoever initiates the breaking is volunteering to bear the yoke of The Villain. But if we’re all being honest with ourselves, I think we both knew it was over long before I ripped off the band-aid. It was more than a band-aid. It was more than a little torn hair, a quick little sting and then boom I was up and gone to the fucking gay bar. Yes and no. People think I am flippant about them and most of the time I am but you have to understand, it was like a divorce. Over the phone they asked if we could still be friends and I sobbed with relief.

We never spoke again.

I had not thought of this person in years. I felt my brain trying to catch up: so, were they a writer now? Why else would they be here, at a writer’s conference? When we broke up, they were three years into a philosophy degree. Having done it myself, I could deeply respect abandoning one’s former carefully curated life path and starting over to become a writer. If that was what had happened, I felt a surge of happiness on their behalf. Few things in my life have felt better than stepping into my identity as a writer. I was glad to know they got to experience it too.

In that moment, as their eyes (so blue, I’ve never dated anyone with blue eyes before or since) stayed locked on mine, I became aware of my body and its three years of changes. My tattoo. My blue hair. I wonder if exes can feel when you have a book brewing before you do, the same way they can tell even when they’re a continent away that you’ve started moving on and text to break no-contact and disturb your healing journey. Or the same way dogs can tell you’re about to start your period. At the time, I was still grinding away at my novel. The idea to put Fragments together hadn’t even occurred to me. But I do think your body has to be ready to write certain books, if not all books, and that subtle shift can physically register to those who are looking for it. An attitude, a certain self-belief. I am building something I believe in. I can do this. I am capable of finishing this. I have everything I need and I am going to make it add up to something. Confidence. I understand. It’s sexy.

I averted my eyes but took my time turning back around, and at the same time spotted Olivia a few feet away at the semicircle bar. She waved me over somewhat violently. I tugged Liz towards me. “Do not look do NOT look I see you turning do NOT turn, that was my ex.”

She nodded and continued talking to me about something unrelated, then casually, normally rocked back on one heel and slowly surveyed the room (god she’s good).

“The, uh, muscle tee?”

“Fuck. I can’t do this right now.” I grabbed her wrist and tugged her over to Olivia.

“Mia. Thank God you’re here.” Immediately, I could tell that Olivia was drunk. I tried to suppress a giggle as she continued, “My friend from my program just got picked up by the weirdest butch in Dickies.” She punctuated this with a massive eye-roll.

Liz choked back a laugh beside me and edged her way to the bar. I turned to Olivia. “You aren’t going to believe it when I tell you this, but that’s my ex.”

Olivia gaped. “No fucking WAY. Oh DUDE. Oh I am SO SORRY.”

“It’s fine. Like. Seriously. It was over three years ago.” I wanted to chuckle at the visible relief on Olivia’s face when she heard this. “I could not be less mad. It’s just funny. The world is so small.”

“TOO small.” Olivia turned around and ordered another drink. One by one our friends arrived and gathered in the small corner of the bar that we’d claimed. Thank god we had. At its peak I’m sure there were more than two hundred people on the second level alone. We were only able to see what was happening by taking turns kneeling on the bar stools, but that was infinitely better than having to stand packed in a crowd facing someone’s back for three hours.

That’s the other thing about AWP: the offsite readings always have a truly ambitious number of people on the bill, so they go on FOREVER.

I was taking my turn on a barstool when it happened. At least an hour had passed since we’d arrived and the reading was in full swing. I want to say this was during Melissa Febos’s reading, but I can’t quite remember. I hope it was. I was watching the reader and trying my best to focus when my ex dragged Olivia’s classmate across the room and through the slightly-thinned crowd, coming to a stop directly within my now-widened field of vision. They wrapped their arms around the classmate’s neck, then began passionately kissing.

Olivia thought it was the funniest thing in the entire world and alternated between apologizing to me and wheezing with laughter. I mostly thought it was the funniest thing in the entire world, but another part of me just felt sad. Sad that my ex thought this was the way to get under my skin, when I was genuinely sincerely happy to see them having fun with someone else. The deliberate nature of it felt too childish for either of us. And yet, it was still happening, right in front of me. I had to just look past it, literally, so I could watch the reading I’d come to see.

I lost track after intermission, but at some point, I turned around to talk to a friend, and when I turned back, both my ex and Olivia’s classmate were gone.

And then, eventually, Olivia’s classmate came back.

And introduced themself.

And the first thing they said to me?

Before anything else?

Released in a string of words so rapid and frantic it was obvious they were horrifically embarrassed about it???

“I’m sorry I made out with your ex in front of you.”

……..

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There it is. The gayest thing to ever happen to me. What do you even do in a situation like this? For straight men, it’s simple – you deck the dude who said it, so that your display of manly strength will show your ex who the alpha is, and she’ll come running back to you. That doesn’t really work for lesbians. I mean, maybe it can, but I do think we as a community are less prone to shows of dominance and more prone to critical thought. I am not capable of drawing blood, nor did I particularly want to — this poor butch from Olivia’s MFA program just happened to stumble into our mess. Besides, I’d be lying if I told you I’ve never been that person before. The accidental interlocutor, the complication, the bug in the well-oiled machine of someone else’s relationship. It wasn’t their fault. As I stood there looking at them, their shoulders slumped apologetically and their eyes downcast, my throat tightened with a renewed surge of anger towards my ex. Why did they insist on bringing innocent people into our bullshit? Forget me — it wasn’t fair to the collateral damage.

So really, what can you do?

As a friend of mine once said, your mid-to-late twenties are for being magnanimous.

So first: I did laugh.

Then I turned to the person who made out with my ex in front of me and told the truth: “It’s okay. It was, like, a long time ago.” I shrugged. “I’m happy for y’all. Hope you had fun.”

I really, truly did.

In comparison, AWP this year was “boring,” but I’ll take selling out of my book and waiting in line for the Clash party over whatever that was ANY day. Proof of life below: my friend (right, laughing, ethereal) and I (left, becoming gay) at the packed Empty Trash reading at the Semi-Tropic, shot by uhhhhhhh Lindsey Byrnes???? who also shot the album covers for all of Julien Baker + Torres’ new singles from their joint lesbian country project?

I’m not saying it’s fate. but I’m not NOT saying that.

xoxo,

Mia 💋

If you are interested in purchasing Fragments of Wasted Devotion, there are three ways for you to do so:

1. Directly from my website. My illustrator and I get the most direct support this way.

2. Ask your library if they take requests to buy books for circulation, and if so, ask them to order the book! Sometimes they have an online form on their website for this.

3. Order the book at your local indie bookstore and ask them to consider stocking it.

   1. If you buy my book on Amazon, I do not want to hear about it <3

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