out in the les at joyface

my sugar daddy substack threw a party

This post is free! No paywall! I’m going to experiment with more free posts moving forward. Let me know if you read it!!

If you’re in NYC, Drenched, weekly stand up comedy in the Water Tower, is back on Wednesdays at the Arlo Williamsburg! And I’m currently on a world* tour, next stop is Miami at Gramps on Friday, November 15. Please tell your friends, enemies, lovers, and exes to attend! If you know someone in Miami with a boat… I want to meet them.

*domestic US tour major cities only xo

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THE STATS

• Day of the Week: Tuesday

• Neighborhood: LES

• The Crew: Honestly the Avengers of “thought leaders” (lol) on Substack. The members of the Substack creators program, my amazing contacts at Substack, Bailey & Randa, internet Golden Boy Adam Faze, one of my favorite Substackers (I read her writing every day!) After School by Casey Lewis, my friends & brilliant writers of Guru Nandini Says, Dini, and Drinks First, Ariana, and the buds that Substack is courting to write their own newsletters, influencer/writer/chef Lydia, her hot chef boyfriend Max, and founder who I went on one actually fun date with but we’re just friends, Andy.

• The Fit: A handmade blue and black sheer mesh dress that I bought in college from a RISD student at an art fair. The vibe was her Spotify Wrapped actually isn’t embarrassing and doesn’t include the Chainsmokers every year.

• Home by 12am

THE PREGAME: Auditioning for a Commercial at One on One

Before I could meet the rest of the Substack Creators Program cohort at dinner, I had a rare in-person audition for a drugstore beauty brand. Which is how I found myself at One on One at 4pm, exactly how I picture Hell.

Hell isn’t a firey pit, no, it’s a fluorescent lit room full of girls, just like me, but just a liitttle bit different (taller or blonder or ethnically ambiguous in a different way), sitting on plastic couches waiting over an hour to improvise poorly, for no more than 5 minutes tops, to a room full of executives who are not good enough actors to even pretend they’re enjoying our riffs on…yogurt…or Expedia…or tax software. And when they eventually make the spot, it’ll feature Jane Krakowski instead. Love her!

This commercial was for a body wash, and we had to wear…swimsuits. I made my way all the way to Flatiron, waited 40 minutes, stripped down to a BIKINI, then said “My glow up…it’s in my shower” four times, then they politely told me they’d seen enough.

The worst part… the waiting room was half comedians and half…models. And yeah, you can tell the difference between a comedian and a model. Oh, and they wanted me to read the copy for the body wash with… retinol… so yeah they called me an aging non-model bitch. Excuse me while I go drown myself. “My suicide…it’s in my shower!” “Maybe she’s born with it (depression)…maybe it’s Maybelline*!”

*The audition wasn’t for Maybelline xo

THE GAME: Dinner at The Ten Bells and Out at Joyface

Substack celebrated the launch of their first iteration of the Creator’s Program with a dinner and party in NYC, and they put out all the stops. They flew out the participants outside of NYC, put them up in hotels, and gave us vouchers for Uber, which I used all week. Essentially they were our Sugar Daddy. Thank you, Substack!

The Ten Bells is a dark and moody natural wine bar in the LES (Aesthetic: 8/10) and the spot of at least two mediocre dates from my past. Daddy Substack covered bottomless bottles of natural orange wine ($0) and platters of charcut (Yummy-ness: 10/10).

I sat next to absolute icon, superstar and Creator Program Colleague Jeauni and gossiped with Substack CEO Chris. Less than a minute into our conversation he asked us “what do you hate about the platform.” The pinnacle of a founder! Why be a dinner when it can be a focus group?!

And to sip on orange wine and tell a grown man and CEO how he could better support my art… wow, what a rush!!! But to be honest, I’m so thankful for Chris, and I love Substack. I don’t hate anything about the platform. This rocks! And if you write or podcast or have a mailing list, you should make one asap.

"thought leaders"

After stuffing my face with cured meats (don’t have to wear a bikini anymore!!! “My glow up…it’s gouda”), Substack shipped us off in Ubers to Joyface. I envision the trip to Heaven not as a long tunnel with a light at the end, but sitting in an Uber that is already paid for.

Joyface is a vaguely 70’s-apartment-themed dance club with a water bed and a disco ball where, once in my earlier 20’s (but still a little too old for this to be true), I threw up a drink right back into the cup I drank it out of then kept dancing. No worries. Happy to return under other circumstances. (Aesthetic: 9/10).

Waiting for us was the best merch shirt I’ve ever been gifted, piles of pizza boxes stacked taller than me, and themed cocktails, all open bar (Yummy-ness: 10/10). If I could redo my Bat Mitzvah, I think it’d be like this… or my wedding (god-willing).

I invited my new friend Dini, who is a professional matchmaker and founder of a dating app. We met via Substack when the PR team told us that they think we’d be a good fit for a collab… and we knew within the first two minutes of our intro phone call that hey, our collab is going to be a friendship! You can make a new friend from a blog! A miracle! Substack rocks!

Looking around the party, we were unimpressed by my prospects. Turns out writers are kind of introverted and… short kings. Who could have guessed. The most interesting people at the party were ones I already knew and securely in the friend zone (Husband Material: 3/10).

My friend, Lydia and her boyfriend Max were already on the list, and I invited our mutual friend, founder of an influencer marketing company, Andy. We met at a corporate retreat in Park City, Utah where I was the event coordinator because I do need to have a day job to pay for my lifestyle (consider becoming a paid subscriber). Usually at these events, everyone is older and pretty corporate. I did one at a golf course in Wisconsin where the attendees kept falling on the green. The green is flat…

My main job on these retreats is to babysit the attendees and make sure they get on the buses to their various activities. And per usual, most of my wards were old and corporate. But Andy was young and wearing a cool t-shirt and cuffed pants (hmmm) that actually fit him…curious. We hung out at the planned dinner at a Brewery, followed each other on Instagram, later went on a fun date at 3 Williamsburg locations, and decided to be friends. And look, we did it!! You can meet single people IRL! You can make new friends, with straight men even, as an adult! Miracles happen once in awhile!

As a literary party, this was purely chatty, no dancing to be seen, and it would have been weird if anyone started so I did not shake ass, I networked (Shaking Ass Factor: 0/10). After a couple of hours, Ariana, Dini, and I left to eat chicken fingers and keep up the chatting. I do need to go back to Joyface on a regularly scheduled going out night because the DJ’s usually are great, and I wonder who I’d meet…

So I ended up going to sleep early in my perfect merch, thinking about how great my new community is, and woke up without a hangover. Wholesome! Maybe I’ll be sluttier next week.

Where should I go next!? Leave a comment, email me, or send me a DM, and I’ll recount traumatic auditions for you! I’ll even go back to Joyface!

And if you have any suggestions of bars and clubs you’d like me to try, please get in touch!