This Week's Drama: I'm Starting a Substack

as my father said when he saw my first tattoo, "it was only a matter of time"...

Hi! My name is Devin. I am a 31-year-old single woman living in Brooklyn with two cats. Are you sold that my voice is once-in-a-generation and definitely worth subscribing to……… ?

I’m starting this substack to get the thoughts that haunt me before bed out of my head and into the metaverse, or whatever. Plus, I have been obsessed with blog culture since my high school anorexia phase, when I spent every friday night reading the wordpress food journals of soccer moms who weighed their cold cuts and measured tablespoons of various nut butters. This will be more fun than that, though. I promise!

I have victimized my friends by sending them drafts of posts and titles for this godforsaken substack over and over again this summer and there have been many possible themes, but alas…. I have settled on writing about what is most true to me. The Drama.

I love drama. Always have. Always will. A friend of mine once wrote a Real Housewives-style tagline for me — “I may write comedy, but I LIVE for the drama.” And listen, I don’t like to start drama, I don’t like to spread it, I don’t like to be involved, I just cherish the witnessing of the drama. Observing it. Analyzing it. I love Rear Window-gazing out into a world full of ordinary people reacting to the extraordinary task of human connection and communication. It’s so hard! We’re all so weird! We’ve all been through such weird stuff and hence lash out in weird ways that cause… you guessed it… drama!

Speaking of human connection, I once engaged in a long distance BDSM sexting relationship with a middle aged man I’ve still never met. Before he got too clingy, he shared with me that he had “always been intent on living an interesting life”.

Isn’t that classic by the way? It’s like… sir, you’re old enough to have two generations of kids and you think you’re more interesting than your married friends because you sext strangers? We all had such high hopes for the Feeld app broadening the culture’s sexual horizons and reducing kink shame — but in reality, most of what I see on there is the same douchebags with fish pics from Hinge, now with more terms under which to disguise their douchebaggery - “ENM”, “poly”, “relationship anarchist”, “standup comedian”….. just be honest and say your mom hurt you, so now you hurt women!!!!

As you may now be able to tell, despite my best efforts… I do sometimes get enveloped in my own personal drama. Mostly due to historical childhood patterns and an attachment style that I’m now learning to heal with the help of a very tired therapist. But I truly hate being the drama!

I hate being the single friend with the wild date stories. I don’t want to tell you about the time I was passed on for a threesome because I was too socially awkward, or update you that now not one, but two of my former suitors have been featured on a dating reality show (only one of them won). I want to be the married friend on the sectional couch with an ice cream pint thinking I’m living on the edge because I chose to binge an extra episode of Below Deck before bed on a Saturday night (husband’s out of town!). Unfortunately, in order to settle down, I must put myself out there and thus… the drama ensues.

Despite resenting my own, I do thrive on consuming other people’s drama. I’m just like that German Secret Police officer in The Lives of Others but with, like, less stoicism… and slightly lower stakes.

I love reality shows, true crime podcasts, deep dive articles and social micro-movements. I savor the tension that can fill a room when someone enters it in a shocking outfit, the instagram behavior that clearly indicates a breakup, and going years back into someone’s aunt’s facebook albums to psychoanalyze the incestuous dynamics of a family that a girl from my horseback riding camp married into, even though I haven’t talked to that girl since puberty, and probably never will. I was even recently able to get into football, because despite my indoor kid inclinations… those players’ backstories? Are drama.

So, this substack will be dedicated to my chosen “drama of the week” and it could be personal, experienced by me or someone I know, or it could be public. Like, if this week’s post wasn’t dedicated to introducing my latest form of self-indulgent self-expression, I would maybe have written about Bad Bunny’s nude selfie as the drama of the week.

… And how it led me to reflect on the time I sent a nude to a man who merely emphasized it, no written response. That was humbling… just as this whole substack venture is sure to become.

Subscribe if you want to enjoy my humiliations, you sickos! 

Xoxo Devin