Grace Lavery / Joseph Lavery & Daniel M. Lavery / Mallory Ortberg - "Straight with extra steps" couple trooning out to avoid "dwindling into mere heterosexuality"

[Bookwork]

I, a hater, keep waiting for Joe's good news that will spite my hatery. Perhaps there is no good news and he's just tormenting me with waitery.

--The Madhater

 

[Potatis Salad]

I wonder what Tard Baby's bus commute to her min-wage job at the senior center is like?

 

[monstrous bubo]

How short is this bus, Mal?

 

[AfghanBlue]

Mallory was sober first, pretty sure she was already sober when she and Joe met. I agree that whatever she was calling "alcoholism" must have been pretty damn mild, but whatever, be sober if you want to. Joe by all accounts was a genuine shambolic drunk and cokehead. They have both discussed the fact that Joe tried to get together with Mallory and she refused because he was an active addict. Then he got sober.

Anyway, new Instagram post from our lumberjack dad. That body language from Lily, oof/lol:
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Joe detransition confirmed? He looks like Ozzy Osbourne.
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Side note: I just checked on Chez Lily. Still under contract.

Hah. The offspring has both out-Male Patern Baldness'd Mal, as well as outclassed her on actual as well as relative forehead size.
Man mogged by the toddler.

 

[Constellationzero]

How short is this bus, Mal?

And does it say Septran or Sunshine on the side of it?

 

[Anasa Tristis]

For Lily and Grace: And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. —1 JOHN 1:4

So Mal mangles a Bible verse to signal her masochistic devotion to her master and mistress in the dedication? How very apropos.

Chapter One

Twice now I've tried to read that unreadable slop, and twice now I've given up after a paragraph or two. Just painful. The effort is not worth it.

They needed girls to dress the windows at Lord & Taylor, Macy’s, Gimbels, Bonwit Teller, and Henri Bendel, to say nothing of the sub-carriage trade shops; girls to manage the Christmas markets in the various remaining Scandinavian pocket neighborhoods; girls to assist sales clerks at the greeting card stores on Forty-Second Street; girls to usher, distribute programs, and sell candy and cigarettes at the Radio City Christmas Spectacular and the Broadway shows; and girls to press and fold for the wardrobe head of The Nutcracker at the Lincoln Center.

That's one fucking sentence. One. Readers need to come up for air now and then! Mal writes the way she lives; poorly, and in an anaerobic environment.

I wonder what Tard Baby's bus commute to her min-wage job at the senior center is like?

Classic Tard Baby. "I humbly put myself at retarded risk in a submissive and sacrficial way before entities I mistakenly attribute to having power over me. I'm sure that will enoble and benefit me as it succors and soothes them. Ultimately it will inspire them to treat me well."

JFC.

 

[A Sentient Cloud]

I wonder what Tard Baby's bus commute to her min-wage job at the senior center is like?
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Thought one: Jesus Christ, this woman who has lived for years in at least two cities with robust public transportation can't even ride a bus without fucking it up?
Thought two: They have a car. Lily doesn't work and Joe has his stupid e-bike. Why isn't Mal allowed to drive?

 

[Aunt Carol]

Why isn't Mal allowed to drive?

She keeps locking herself out of the house and she can't figure out bus routes.

So I agree Mal should have use of the car; it'll be funny to see what happens.

 

[Bookwork]

They have a car. Lily doesn't work

Lily has to drive Joe around so he doesn't get hurt on his ebike or inhale bugs when he gasps at an imminent pothole.

Lily has to drive Rocco around so he sees his pediatrician and gets intellectual stimulation at play groups, parks, and those indoor places where parents pay for their kids to lick other kids' germs off things.

It's Lily's car. Lily's. Like Rocco is Lily's son. Lily's. LILY's.

 

[A Sentient Cloud]

Lily has to drive Joe around so he doesn't get hurt on his ebike or inhale bugs when he gasps at an imminent pothole.

Lily has to drive Rocco around so he sees his pediatrician and gets intellectual stimulation at play groups, parks, and those indoor places where parents pay for their kids to lick other kids' germs off things.

It's Lily's car. Lily's. Like Rocco is Lily's son. Lily's. LILY's.

I promise you that I'm aware of that.

Just observing yet another way in which Mal - woman-boy, legal wife, inexplicably successful published author, wet nurse and breadwinner all at once - continues to be blissfully unaware of the degree to which she is being humiliated while her husband plays house with the mistress and their illegitimate child.

 

[Bookwork]

I promise you that I'm aware of that.

Just observing yet another way in which Mal - woman-boy, legal wife, inexplicably successful published author, wet nurse and breadwinner all at once - continues to be blissfully unaware of the degree to which she is being humiliated while her husband plays house with the mistress and their illegitimate child.

Yes, I was concurring, not informing.

 

[Aunt Carol]

wet nurse and breadwinner all at once

ACTUALLY a "wet nurse" was explicitly hired to breastfeed someone else's child.

Mal's a nanny, maybe an au pair.

 

[Potatis Salad]

ACTUALLY a "wet nurse" was explicitly hired to breastfeed someone else's child.

Mal's a nanny, maybe an au pair.

Excuse you, please don't misgender our extremely male lumberjack. The term is MAN-ny, thanks, but it's not accurate here because mannies and nannies receive a living wage. Anyway, Joe and Lily are once again enjoying a little family trip with Rocco, leaving their bro pair at home with the dogs.

Caption:

Yesterday @lolz4lilz and I got to visit North Bend, Snoqualmie, and Snoqualmie Falls, WA: the primary shooting locations for TWIN PEAKS. We ate at Norma’s RR Diner, visited both the top and bottom of the falls, and listened to a lot of Badalamenti et al while doing so. Rocco and I crouched next to the graffiti saying “fix your hearts or die” on the Ronette Pulaski bridge. The experience was uncanny, so much have these sights meant to me for so long—and visiting them after the recent death of the maestro was especially mournful. I was struck by my own ambivalence about the copaganda element of the show, and wondering how it would hit me today if for the first time; but also by the immensity of THE RETURN, which is now Lynch’s last work, and what an achievement it is. Massive, irresolvable, both tender and furious; it reminded me of other achievements in “late style”—of Adorno on Beethoven, or of OUR MUTUAL FRIEND—which is only spiritually Dickens’ last work, obviously. So much death onscreen: Catherine Coulson, most spectacularly, but also Miguel Ferrer, and even David Bowie. I feel very lucky to have lived through THE RETURN, even if am still doing so.​

He posted more pics but they're all of scenery/sets. These are the ones with people:

How many $$ worth of designer clothing do you think we're looking at here:

Joe and his luscious jubblies:


EDIT: Tard Baby hard at work!


Chatner link | archive

Spoiler: full text

It’s been a little over a month since I started my new job in senior living, and I’m officially finished with the training period. On Wednesdays I get to drive the big bus for group outings.

Driving the big bus makes me feel like a character in Richard Scarry’s Busytown, alive with purpose, and surrounded by co-laborers who manage to unite both ease and zeal in their activities of daily living. Or like a happy version of the sad butler from The Remains of the Day, where I am married to my professional duties, instead of to Emma Thompson.

---

From The Chatner archives in 2022: “Now You Work in Busytown.”

There is a sign outside of Busytown:

It says, ‘Come to me, all who labor and

are heavy laden.” Congratulations.

You got the job. To want the job is to

get the job. Labor passes away but

work remains, and Busytown is always busy.

Busytown is full of love and thunder.

Here you have been assigned to Huckle Cat.

So now be best friends. Now you are fellow

laborers in Christ. God’s field. God’s building.

All Corinthians, all turned to the wheel,

All Busytown turning. Teach Patrick Pig

to speak. They all really loved you in there.

I’m serious. You got the job. It’s yours.

Do you want to fly the applecopter?

Done. Lowly Worm would step aside for you.

---

For a long time I had been looking for a day job that would:

1. Provide me with health insurance and
2. Allow me the mental freedom to write after-hours

The last time I had a day job — writing an advice column for five years — I had a lot of fun but often found myself sort of “written out” at the end of each week. Worse still, after the fifth year I found myself scraping the bottom of the barrel of my own experiences. This is bad enough for an advice columnist but even worse for a novelist, so I decided to quit. Now I have a job where I get to run around all day doing errands for people I know personally, which is an ideal job for a novelist, because it gets you away from the computer and lets you rebuild your supply of interactions with people outside of your immediate social circle.

The only real danger is that of being tempted to sell out your daily experiences into a Tuesdays With Morrie-style account of inspiration; the only real defense against such a temptation is never to write about the individual people you work with. But I can tell you about the bus, and that with a right good will.

The Chatner is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



A lot of my friends have been asking me how big the bus is. I have assembled the most regular questions I have gotten about the big bus lately here, that future inquirers might be able to access all the necessary information at once.

FRIENDS: Is it true you get to drive the big bus for work?

DANIEL: You have heard aright. I have successfully completed the necessary training, and am now a confirmed driver of the big bus.

FRIENDS: How big is the big bus?

DANIEL: Let me put it this way. If the bus were any bigger, I would need a commercial driver’s license.

FRIENDS: Meaning…?

DANIEL: Meaning I can transport ten people, including myself, and no more.

FRIENDS: Does the big bus beep when you put it in reverse?

DANIEL: It does. With a satisfying depth of sound, too.

FRIENDS: And is there a button you can press to open the accordion doors?

DANIEL: There is. I can open and close the accordion doors with the slightest movement of my finger. Both admitting and denying egress and ingress for passengers is as child’s play, to me.

FRIENDS: And you’re able to make left-hand turns in it and everything? You go up hills, and so on?

DANIEL: With safety, and with aplomb.

FRIENDS: You drive around the neighborhood in the big bus? Do you see people you know?

DANIEL: I trundle all around the neighborhood, driving the big bus, safely and with aplomb, and I sometimes see people I know through the window.

FRIENDS: But you cannot safely wave at them while you are driving, no?

DANIEL: It is the one heartbreak that comes with driving the big bus. I cannot honk and wave at people I know while I am driving the big bus, not even when I am stopped at a red light.

FRIENDS: Come, let us speak of happier things. There is a lift at the back of the bus which you have been trained to successfully operate, is there not?

DANIEL: There is.

FRIENDS: Does it make a satisfying noise, when you press the button that folds and unfolds the necessary machinery?

DANIEL: It does. But I maintain the strictest of demeanors during the lift’s operation. I may choose to privately enjoy the noise, in the course of my duties, but I am a professional, and keep my enjoyment to myself.

FRIENDS: So driving the big bus is going pretty well?

DANIEL: Pretty well.

FRIENDS: Better than, for example, your experience calling Bingo?

DANIEL: I would not say that my experience calling Bingo has been unsuccessful. I have learned a great deal about how not to call Bingo. But I would not call it unsuccessful.

FRIENDS: But you have received complaints about your Bingo calling, have you not?

DANIEL: I have received suggestions. I have received particular requests. Particular requests, earnestly made, and I have made it my business to carry out those requests. To return to the bus—

FRIENDS: Isn’t it true that just last week one of the Bingo players said “Bingo used to be fun” to their companion at the end of the hour?

DANIEL: I didn’t catch the context in which the remark was delivered. They could have been talking about a number of different elements of the game. Bingo is a complicated game.

FRIENDS: But regardless of context, you would not call such a remark evidence of success?

DANIEL: The thing about the big bus is that it unites a sense of gaiety with a solemn moral code. When there are a lot of people on a bus, they want to have a good time together; when you have a lot of passengers on your bus, it’s your job to deliver them safely to their destination. When I drive the big bus, I am the careful steward of joy. And I am going to get the hang of Bingo eventually.

EDIT 2: From the comments of The Chatner:

One of the things I love about senior care — not that it’s a perfect field — is the group living is exactly the kind of mixed-use walkable communities people are always talking about wanting on social media. We have a little post office, a dining room, a bistro, a front desk everyone hangs out at — it’s like that Vonnegut quote about buying envelopes all day here.

Google "Oakland senior living bistro" and you get exactly one result: Oakland Heights Senior Living. They haven't updated their newsletter or online calendar since 2024 but I think this is it. They've got a role called "Activities Director", they've got the weekly bingo. It's Assisted Living, not Skilled Nursing, so the residents aren't that sick.

I've been shitting on this arc because it's such a pathetic career move for Tard Baby, but reading this, genuinely: good for her. She's enriching old people's lives, doing it with enthusiasm, and probably doing a much better job at it than the semi-literate drug addict they would've hired otherwise.

 

[Bookwork]

Joe and Lilz get trips because they are Academics and Mal is a bingo caller. If Melanie Safka were still alive, we might get a song right about now.

It almost seems like you're avoiding me*​

I'm okay alone, but you've got something I need​

Wellll​

You've got some beat up smelly car to drive​

I've got a big new bus​

I think that we could roll together​

But you sit there and cuss​

I've been looking around awhile​

You've got something I need​

[Backup singers, whispering: My Son]​

Wellll​

You've got some beat up smelly car​

I've got a nice new bus . . .​

* Happy little skating tune turns out to be a stalker song if you bother to derive meaning from the syllables. The 1970s were an amoral time, I guess.

 

[Dr. Butt]

This may sound harsh, but someone needs to grab Rocco, lock the doors from the outside, and toss a molotov. Don't feel bad for Mal. We need to remove her weak blood on the off chance her ovaries still work.

 

[Potatis Salad]

I came across this old entry in The Chatner (archive). It's from November 2022, about two years after the pedo brother kerfluffle and Mal's estrangement/flight to NYC with Joe. @Trianon covered it here when Mal first posted it, but I didn't rightly remember this insane paragraph (emphasis mine):

Both my brother and father are pedophiles. I associate both of them with a strategic cultivation of boyishness that defuses and deflects unwanted attention. I cannot forget that my father’s email address, when he joined the staff at Menlo Church, did not follow the usual convention of first name/last name/name of church, but was instead, simply, Calboy. Their continued insistence on their own childlike innocence, even at the expense of actual children, horrified me. Discovering the scale, duration, and breadth of the secret family conspiracy to maintain and protect their access to children made me feel old, and alone in that oldness, overnight.

No victims have come forward. An investigation found no evidence of actual wrongdoing. And yet two years later, Mallory was revising the situation in her mind to make it even worse than she initially thought. I'm sure those mental gymnastics continue to this day.

 

[AfghanBlue]

I came across this old entry in The Chatner (archive). It's from November 2022, about two years after the pedo brother kerfluffle and Mal's estrangement/flight to NYC with Joe. @Trianon covered it here when Mal first posted it, but I didn't rightly remember this insane paragraph (emphasis mine):

No victims have come forward. An investigation found no evidence of actual wrongdoing. And yet two years later, Mallory was revising the situation in her mind to make it even worse than she initially thought. I'm sure those mental gymnastics continue to this day.

Holy projection, Danny the champion of the world.

 

[Aunt Carol]

I've been shitting on this arc because it's such a pathetic career move for Tard Baby, but reading this, genuinely: good for her. She's enriching old people's lives, doing it with enthusiasm, and probably doing a much better job at it than the semi-literate drug addict they would've hired otherwise.

Agree. She found a niche, and she made a reasonably self-aware explanation of why she likes it. She can spin it to online people as romantic under-employment, like Kafka at the patent office, while wholeheartedly enjoying low-stakes interactions all day.

Richard Scarry didn't draw any cartoon animals in an unbalanced throuple, so it remains to be seen if employment stability is the one thing that will finally destabilize their marriage.

 

[Friend of Dorothy Parker]

ACTUALLY a "wet nurse" was explicitly hired to breastfeed someone else's child.

Mal's a nanny, maybe an au pair.

Nanny or au pair unpaid intern.

 

[Autistic Nonetheless]

Im never sure with Mal. Is she a martyr type looking to throw herself into a cause (be it transgenderism, Joe, or hard work) or is she a masochist trying to punish herself for some fundamental unhappiness.

Either way it's hard not to feel sorry for the girl, even if she has been awful to everyone who ever cared for her.