Everything is Personal Newsletter

Jun 10, 2024 | lauriestone.substack.com | Laurie Stone

As I read old notebooks, I see how, in time, I’ve come to rewrite my life in ways that are consoling. I have unsoured the grapes of the past. The story I invented of my earlier years is one of reliable success, few obstacles, and lots of help—a kind of table laid where I was invited to eat. Buon appetito!What memory has sanded down and that the notebooks show is the way I felt in the face of rejection. And how much rejection there was. I wasn't a hero for pressing on. I didn’t believe in my abilities.

May 26, 2024 | lauriestone.substack.com | Laurie Stone

In my twenties, I thought if a man responded to me sexually it meant he liked me, and if he liked me he knew me in some way. We were naked and felt pleasure. This was a kind of knowing, a kind of sympathy. Even if I knew little about the man and little about myself, and even if we didn’t understand the sentences we exchanged after sex. Even if things soon went, oh dear, goodbye. I’m in my thirties or forties when I reverse this understanding or wishful fantasy.

Apr 1, 2024 | lauriestone.substack.com | Laurie Stone

I am looking down at pillows. I'm on a bed, face to face with other people, and I feel welling up compassion for the other person that may not be genuine, but let’s say it is. The person on the other pillow could be a lover, or a mate, or a friend, or someone I don't know well, or my mother. It doesn’t matter. I think to myself, Oh, wow, I can see how it must have been wearying, at the very least, knowing me.

Mar 7, 2024 | lauriestone.substack.com | Laurie Stone

Yesterday, I asked Richard to take a picture of me naked. I was on the floor on a towel. I’d just had a bath. I’m naked with Richard all the time, and he is naked with me. The first time we had sex, he got out of bed and walked to the bathroom, and I looked at his ass, and I thought, “You walk to the bathroom like a deer walks wherever a deer wants to walk.”I like when he sits on the lid of the toilet when I’m taking a bath. We exchange whatever thoughts we’re having since the last time we talked.

Feb 15, 2024 | lauriestone.substack.com | Alex Haley |Laurie Stone

I’ve read two novels by Constance Debré. Playboy (2018), the second novel to be published in English, is coming out from Semiotext(e) in April, and I’ll comment further then. I’ve written about Love Me Tender (2020) in my most recent column in Oldster Magazine. oldster.substack.com/p/notes-on-another-new-life-12.