Faraway Friends
On friendship...
Over the weekend I was contemplating what the theme of this week’s newsletter would be. It was either going to be about my experiences in Catholic school or the travel tips I’ve accumulated over the last few years as a frequent flier.
But then on Monday I found out a coworker and friend of mine recently passed away. My mind has not settled since.
It’s strange the shape this grief has taken. It had been a long time since I last talked to my friend and I’ve spent the last few days wondering what our last conversation was about. Did it matter? How did it end? What exactly were the last words I said to him?
Those words are lost in the ether now. They may have never mattered and I am only now straining to project some importance onto them. Whatever those words were, I hope they were said with kindness. With compassion.
Sometimes while we sat together at lunch, our conversations would turn towards the existential. I’m sure we covered the topic of what we think happens after we pass into the next realm. I’m not solid on my answer and I don’t think I ever will be.
I am sure about one thing, though. I am sure that he is at peace now, which is what we all deserve.
The theme of this newsletter is friends who are far away and the love that persists despite the distance.
November Book Reviews Part I
Great Circle: 5 Stars
What I liked about this book: This book was a slow burn but I absolutely loved it. I think this was an example of historical fiction at its finest. I don’t want to give much away because the unexpected parts were my favorite. There are two timelines in this book: one about one of the first female pilots in the beginning of the 20th century and the other is set in 2014 and it follows the actress playing the aforementioned pilot in a biopic.
Plus there was a map in the beginning of the book and that always thrills me. I love maps.
Who I’d recommend this book to: anyone who has the endurance to read a 655-page book; people interested in historical fiction; Capricorns.
Medium of the book: I switched between a Kindle copy borrowed from the UC Berkeley library and a paperback I purchased at Pegasus Books on Shattuck in December 2022.
Judging a book by its cover: I loved it. I would take breaks from reading and stare at the cover while I ruminated on what I had just read.
The Woman in Me: 4 stars
What I liked about this book: Oof, this was a tough one to get through. It was well-done, but it was just so sad. She wrote more compassionately about her family than I expected. What stuck with me was how good of a friend Paris Hilton seems to be to her.
Who I’d recommend this book to: any child of the 90’s; anyone who never considered how cruel the internet / pop culture was in the early 2000s.
Medium of the book: Audiobook borrowed from the San Diego County Library
Judging a book by its cover: Evocative. I wonder why she went with that specific photo.
The Vulnerables: 4.5 stars
What I liked about this book: Excellent writing. This was the first book set during the beginning of the pandemic that I’ve enjoyed. A very compassionate book. I also love that my favorite Madonna anecdote was mentioned.
Who I’d recommend this book to: anyone who has ever had to live with a Gen-Z person.
Medium of the book: Hardcover purchased from The Book Catapult, my favorite SD bookstore.
Judging a book by its cover: It’s why I bought the book! The story sounded interesting but the cover is really what drew me in.
My favorite people’s favorite things
I love the Celebrity Shopping lists on The Strategist. Last month I bought Mario Lopez’s pomade and Anna Billier’s cat bed.
I can still remember the first time I met Gigi. It’s a flashbulb memory.
It is 1996 and I am in the PM Kindergarten class. We are coloring a worksheet when I hear my teacher say “Hello Gigi!”
I look to the doorway of the portable classroom and I just see a silhouette of them. The sun was shining bright behind them so all I saw was the outline of my new friend. I asked whoever was coloring next to me who Gigi was.
“She’s in the AM class. She’s nice.”
It makes me so happy that we are still friends 27 years later. They were my first kiss (which tasted like the onions in the burgers we had just eaten). They were in the car the first time I got in a car accident (I backed into a parking garage column when leaving Holy Bowl 2007 - what a Sacramento sentence).
They were my first love.
I was in love with them all throughout elementary school. I used to think it was because they were so pretty (obviously) but now with time I can see it wasn’t romantic love. It was the kind of love you experience when you first meet someone who understands you. Gigi was the first person who was on the same wavelength as me and I treasure our friendship so much.
As we’ve grown up together, I’ve continued to be in awe of how cool they are. I feel so much cooler just by being their friend. We haven’t lived in the same state since 2009 and we go years in between seeing each other in-person, but the love persists.
So with all that said, it should be clear why they are one of my favorite people. Without further ado, I present Gigi Hernandez’s favorite things, as told by Gigi:
Twin Snakes: I grew up on Mexican candy, the dominant flavors of which are spicy/salty/sour and THEN sweet, in that order of priority, not to mention the golden age of sour punch straws, warheads, and other candy that hurts, so I know what makes a good "sour candy”. Now I'm old, I have dental bills and tattoos and I recognized the need for something in the middle, a candy that acknowledges duality, both whimsy and brutality. Enter Haribo Twin Snakes. It's a gummy candy shaped like conjoined snake twins, one is sour and the other is sweet. They don't fuss with sour-sugar-powder coating, they just make one of the snakes in the flavor pair with a little more citric acid. They're smooth and tangy and chewy: a much more serious bite. You could perform conjoined-gummy-separation surgery to eat one at a time, but I rarely do, they really are two halves of a whole. They need each other. (P.s. One time my boss came back from a trip to Germany and the Haribo Factory with a version of this that is not available in the states. it's called Bärchen Pärchen, "Little Bears in Pairs" !! How cute is that?)
Bio Oil: I know very little about skincare. I had gnarly cystic acne as a teenager that I over-treated with salicylic acid, walnut scrubs, and eventually Accutane, so in college I took a "less is more" approach. I prided myself on being low maintenance (*eyeroll*): sleeping over at my bf's dorm I'd wake up, splash water on my face, apply a coat of Oil of Olay beauty fluid I got at CVS and head to class. Then I learned that Oil of Olay uses prison labor and I stopped buying it. A woman I was working for around that time told me Bio Oil would lessen my acne scars. She was British and terrible to work for and had casually acknowledged this surface flaw that needed correcting. Wanting her approval, I ordered a $36 bottle online, which felt way too expensive, so I used it sparingly, inconsistently. But years later, I decided to use some pandemic stimulus money to reinvent my skin care, & my sister (gorgeous skin, rude) recommended Bio Oil as part of an elaborate system of steps that I don't always complete, and now I get it. It’s not as expensive now, and you can get it on Amazon, but in NYC I find it in some pharmacies. Sometimes it's the only moisture layer I'll wear to bed, and I wake up smooth and soft. When I'm traveling, which I do a lot (I identify as bi-coastal ) I use it to protect my skin from dry plane air. my favorite part is that it has damn near the same rosy scent as that Oil of Olay stuff, which always reminded me of my grandma. Makes me smell like the señora I could be.
This fig bar recipe: Have you had a Fig Newton recently? What have they done to our girl!? She's a square inch flavorless shell of her former self. I'm an avid baker (@bakedbygigi_bk on Instagram) and this recipe is the closest thing, maybe even better than the Fig Newtons I used to love. It requires a bit of molding/finesse but aesthetic perfection is not a barrier to how delicious they are. I've made them into cannabis edibles, I've made them with so many different dried fruits/preserves (apricot, persimmon, pomegranate, raspberry jam,) and they all hit.
my bicycle: I, like Alberto, come from an overbearing Mexican family in California. In spite of living 3000 miles away, I manage to visit as many as 4 times a year. I still contemplate moving back every day. But instead of falling out of love with New York, every year that passes just changes my relationship to it. One of the main things that changed the city for me was becoming an avid bike rider. Without my bike, I may actually have ended up back in Sacramento when the pandemic hit. People complain about the unpredictable subway. People complain about the grid-lock traffic. Being on a bike is a happy (and terrifying) medium. Squarely in between vehicles and pedestrians, you’re able to weave around both with enough practice, and consequently it is the fastest mode of transport within a borough. It's a cardio workout that is also my commute. My bike’s name is Cynthia. She is aquamarine, covered in stickers, and she is mine. Biking in the city is dangerous: I've effectively been in two bike accidents. One accident (getting car-doored, shockingly not just something that happens in movies,) resulted in an injury: I broke my right hand in two places and required surgery. Cynthia has a matching scar from the same accident, a rip in the handlebar leather on the right side. After a cast and physical therapy, I got back in the saddle. Very little can change my mind about this. Also, no one is too cool to wear a helmet. No exceptions.
innersy boxer briefs: I originally had a separate point on this list of favorite things that was just “being bisexual”, but after thinking about this underwear, a big reason why I love being queer was illuminated. I forget who said it first and I'm certainly paraphrasing, but have you ever heard that thing that’s like “being queer is less about who you’re having sex with and more about the company you keep”? I have dated all kinds of folks as an outgoing bi/pan/she/they/queer/tomboy. I met my current partner John at my restaurant job, when he did that thing they say you’re not supposed to do and asked out the server. I've dated many “men” but John is the first openly queer man I've ever been with. John sees me and loves me in all my pirate-y dude-ness. Being bi for bi has made space for blissful gender expansion for both of us, and set us up for even more queer friendships and moments of queer joy. Anyway, John bought me my first pair of boxer briefs within two weeks of dating. Actually, he bought me a 7-pack in rainbow colors and a pack of his own to match. I've never looked back. They’re more comfortable than panties in so many ways, they’re a warmer layer in the winter. I still have a need for the rest of the gender spectrum of underwear when it’s dress up time, like, I haven’t replaced the whole drawer, just added another possibility. But that seems right, if you know what I mean. To each their own, of course.
Phone strap: Bro, listen: if you’re an on-the-go bitch like me, this is a game changer. I have often been seen with a monstrous combo of bags, straps and carabiners attaching water bottles and bluetooth speakers stretched across my torso, zooming through Brooklyn. This is great for that, sure, but when you’re vacationing or just traveling light, wearing your phone as a necklace just makes sense; no more digging around in your pocket for it when you need your boarding pass or wanna take a photo quickly. This is my favorite brand because they have the most convertible combinations and the phone cases don’t look dumb when they’re not strapped, they just look like phone cases. Highly recommend checking out their final sale tab for the most cost-effective combinations, but if you wanna get fancy you can customize the hell out of your set up.
Tarot: You can’t throw a rock in Brooklyn without hitting an astrology girlie in the face, and tarot and astrology really do go well together. But Tarot is singular to me. Tarot is cool as fuck. I'm an actor, (shameless plug:gigihernandez.me) a storyteller and a big nerd, like, in another life I'd probably be really into Dungeons and Dragons. I think a lot about the Universal Collective Unconscious and The Hero’s Journey. Tarot is a 72-card-collection of characters, symbols, and all the circumstances that life may thrust upon us, big and small, representing a lot of that shared human history. When you read Tarot, you insert yourself into the story that lays out before you through the game-element of random chance, the shuffling and drawing of cards. Tarot welcomes projection. What appears in the cards may be another version of your life that didn’t even occur to you, a secret possibility of your inner-life, a new path in your outer-life, real multiverse shit. Get into it! Suspend your disbelief for a second, cuz it’s not all fortune-telling. I read for my friends for fun, and I read for myself, in passing or sometimes as a form of journaling. There are so many decks and versions, I started on a Marseille deck that I received as a gift for my 18th birthday. It's ancient and cryptic and relies mostly on numerology once you get past the face cards of the Major Arcana. But currently I'm using this one by an artist I love that adapts all the best of the popular Rider-Waite-Smith images. You don’t have to be spooky or spiritual to enjoy it or use Tarot, but it is still magical because (sorry, it’s corny but true,) stories are so powerful.