Maybe we are practicing dying when we are fucking and that’s why we like it so much.

You can't die with just anybody.

Dear readers,

Thank you for being a continued subscriber to Unsupervised. If you're not sure why you're receiving this email today, it is because you signed up for my former newsletter Excuse Me Your Honor within the last few months.

Things are changing. It is now called Unsupervised and I moved everything to Substack. I did this so that I could keep sharing while making some of the writing more private and uncensored.

You have the choice to become a paying subscriber for $5/mo to get full access to everything I share here, or you can remain a free subscriber and receive teasers and less frequent posts.

View your subscription options by visiting lordcowboy.substack.com/subscribe or review your account type by visiting lordcowboy.substack.com/account.

If you want to unsubscribe, you can also do that there.

What else do I want you to know today?

You love and listen with tenderness, grace, passion, and warmth. You are cherished, you are listened to, by yourself and others. Your body is beautiful, you see it and others do too! You walk into the room and people smile, but most of all you give people permission. You are patient, embodied, you laugh with your whole spirit, you flirt with the whole world. You allow yourself to be taken somewhere new, you have blessed encounters, you trust where it ends. You do not let fear sit for too long. Each step outside of your comfort zone is an act of surrender, of dismantling things you’ve picked up but no longer want around. You are not the only one. You don’t have to wait until you feel interesting to do what it is. You don’t have to be cute to surf, you don’t have to be smart to write, you don’t have to be cool to share - all you have to do is show up as you are, over and over again.

Thank you for your trust, patience, and understanding. Stay tuned for a free bonus issue this week featuring a roundup of everything I’ve been paying close attention to lately.

Now onto this week’s writing…

I want to live why not. I want to hear the call. I want to feel where to go. I want to braid the grass.

I want to know the answers: sometimes, always, rarely, never.

1. I want to live why not

You’ve been on my mind so much lately. Will you tell me what your life is like and I will tell you mine? I went down to the surf early this morning just to watch. I knew the high tide would be silly, and it was; so silly that I got swept up into it and pulled under all the way to my waist. My pants are out to dry draped over my surfboard.

I moved into a small casita at the base of a mountain, a guest house with damp and half-loved, mostly forgotten sensibilities. Books on the shelf: photographs of the Caribbean with the spine chewed out, a mystery novel, a world’s most unusual trivia guide, the biography of Teddy Roosevelt, Pulp Fiction - one-time reads.

I try to write every morning before anything else, the wisdom of the ages. The bedroom I sleep in has three very large windows which feels like too many after living in New York for so long. Each one looks out to a different scene. An overgrown backyard that opens and closes and opens again to the jungle. A somewhat tended-to side yard and the loose shapes of a neighbor’s truck, puppy pen, shed through the negative space of tree branches. A front yard with bamboo growth that stretches three stories high, a mango tree bearing fruit that will be ready in two weeks, scattered burn piles of debris, and too many chairs without enough people to sit in them. My van. I can hear so much. The chacalacas, the occasional motorcycle coming down the main road in the distance, Arturo’s puppies howling when he’s left them for too long. Did you know that roosters crow not just at the first light of dawn, but also at midnight and also whenever they feel like it?

Other things that came with the house: cold showers that should really just be called trickles. Initially I found them so wretched that every time I talked myself into taking one, I also talked out loud the entire time, a little rampage of “I know I chose this, but I didn’t choose this.” Now the climate is so impossibly humid that any trickle of water from above I worship; I tell myself that after this I’ll never need to take a hot shower again.

There are scorpions I don’t love and haven’t learned to expect, and geckos whom I adore and know just where to find. I’ll admit that sleeping was impossible the first week I lived here. My awareness of how alone I am “if anything were to happen” was acute and brick-like, sitting on my chest. How many people have I shared my location with? Who is paying attention? Then I went away to Mexico City for a few days, and when I returned the feeling had dissipated.

Something I will try to remember for next time: when I go somewhere new for an extended period, it is important for me to unpack and then leave right away. Maybe after a few days but no more than a week after moving in. Where I go and for how long, it does not matter, for the service I am chasing is simply the act of returning. And not returning like from a day of surfing or from walking through the market, but returning with a stale suitcase after having been launched into the sky a couple of times, wondering if the strangers sitting next to me will make good partners into the afterlife. Returning like getting into a taxi at the airport and feigning relieved exhaustion while asking the driver to go north towards the coast. “Vamos a la playa,” they say it to me every time, and peaceful anticipation grows between both of us. The drive turns from concrete to mud, the trees multiply, the dogs in the street get more in the way. For a few hours I feel like I am on my way to being a regular. So intoxicating is the sensation, I sometimes imagine it bottled and sold as an experience to inhale: “hop in, you’re tired and all of the underwear in your suitcase is dirty, but you’re going home.” I imagine it like a ride that never really takes anybody home. The point is just to feel like you’re on your way there, for as long as you want.

Last weekend provided an unexpected international blind date. I want to live why not. He flew in on Friday. I climbed a hill on the south side of town to meet him, where flowers peek over high walls and the tourists are scarce. The air was so thick that my hair turned damp, the ends curled upwards. I arrived at his hotel doorstep soaked in my own sweat, the silk of my dress clinging to my ass and belly, but I noticed he was glistening in his own wet too. I was attracted immediately, wanted to be in his embrace, meet his saliva.