"It's a dry heat."

I went to Las Vegas this week for a work thing, and if you are someone - as I am - who still believes we are in a pandemic, it was a trip of minor horrors. It’s hard for me to understand a world where the majority of people have no problem being maskless in airports and on airplanes. Airports and planes are already lawless places; they showcase everyone’s worst tendencies. (On my way there, I witnessed two people try to go through security without a boarding pass, both of whom got very agitated when they were told they needed one. It was one of the most confusing things I’ve ever seen.)

I understand becoming more lax as time passes, particularly as most everyone I know has recently gotten Covid anyway, but you can never, ever, make me understand why someone would prefer to walk around the airport raw dogging the air.

Anyway, I landed in Vegas to 108-degree weather and the too-late reminder that my lungs are functionally incompatible with recycled, smoke-filled casino air. By the time I left, I was coughing regularly and my chest was starting to ache; I had been there for 36 hours. “You are absolutely not going to make it very long as the climate collapses, buddy,” I said to myself while waiting outside for my ride back to the airport, attempting to gulp fresh, disgustingly hot air.

It’s a thought that I have often, and the solution for me - at least lately - has not been to sink into a deep pit of despair, but to buckle up and try to have as much fucking fun as I can while I still exist. This means that even in Vegas, there were moments to be had: I hugged the hell out of a few people I really like. I ate short rib tacos and drank many cocktails with one of my best friends, and we spent a whole evening talking shit in the best possible way. I ate $8 M&Ms from the hotel minibar because I do what I want!

And while eating those M&Ms, when my oldest friend texted me about a mental block she was having, I felt uniquely equipped to be of service.

I have known Christine since our freshman year of high school, when we landed in the same English class and sat near each other. We exchanged very few words that semester, and I can’t remember when that changed, but when it did we were mostly inseparable for the rest of our time there. We both counted the days until graduation, when we could get the hell out of town, and we considered more than once risking arrest in order to vandalize the population sign by reducing its number by two.

Got out we did, and while I’ve been in love with New York since the day I got here, Christine has always been a little more restless. She went from Minneapolis to Africa to Chicago to DC to San Francisco, the last of which overlapped conveniently with a handful of years I spent almost as much time in the Bay as I did at home. In those few years pre-pandemic, we tortured her husband with embarrassing stories from high school that only we find funny, we talked about trying to start a writing group again, we mapped out different versions of our futures and tried to convince ourselves we knew what we were doing with our lives. It was comforting and it was fun and it was familiar, and in the few years since, I hadn’t really realized how much I missed it until she texted me this week.

So now we’re writing letters, a thing that maybe we should have considered doing for the last 20+ years but somehow never have. “I’m sorry I’m not a phone person,” I said to her on Thursday, one of the greatest understatements to ever leave my mouth. “I’m sorry I’m also not a phone person,” she responded. And so we made plans to write letters, which I think our fifteen-year-old selves would have appreciated.

After all, if the world is going to burn, what better way to push through as a human being than by writing love letters to your friends?

This week’s letter of recommendation is for these oatmeal cranberry cookies by our girl Martha Stewart. They taste a little like Christmas in a way that I didn’t anticipate but that feels correct for July, and also you should put a little ginger in them because you should put a little ginger in everything.

Here, as well, is my new summer playlist, which might be so specific only I will enjoy it, but I bestow it upon you anyway because I love y’all: You’re No Good Alone: Summer 2022