Today, Zach goes deep on TNT, something he will continue to do on Fridays until morale improves. Also, have we attained Peak Gay Sluttiness yet this summer? If not, there’s still one weekend left. In worse news, FEMA is cooked. —Emily Gould
MASTERMINDING
An Assortment of Totally Normal Reactions to Taylor Swift’s Engagement
No one is being more normal about it than Zach Schiffman, who wrote this.
Slow week for Swifties, huh? Before we knew about the Engagement (Taylor’s Version™), Emily graciously offered me space in this newsletter to unpack Tayvelopments ahead of the release of The Life of a Showgirl on October 3. I assumed I’d be coming to you with a dispatch about Monday’s vinyl countdown, but instead, on Tuesday, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce announced their engagement via collab post on Instagram. Congratulations! Ladies and gentlemen, will you please stand?
As with everything Taylor Swift has ever done, people are being completely normal about it (this is where, if this newsletter were a talk show, I would play a montage of conservatives melting down over this news — Charlie Kirk saying he hopes Taylor Swift has many children and leaves the island of the wokies, etc.). Possibly the least normal reaction to the engagement has been from the community of people who believe Taylor Swift is a lesbian: Gaylors. Earlier this week, The Cut surveyed the Gaylor sub-Reddit’s reaction to the heterosexual engagement, and the collective freakout has continued to spill over onto X. Opposite Betty Who holding space for Renée Rapp, I hold space for the Gaylors still holding out hope. As will be my duty in this corner of Dinner Party, here is a selection of my favorite reactions and theories that people chose to put on the internet
.Naturally, there was a lot of discussion about Karlie Kloss. For the uninitiated, many believe the album Reputation is about Taylor’s torrid affair with model Karlie Kloss, and the album Lover is about their breakup. Many Gaylors suddenly became private investigators, combing through the post’s likes to see that Karlie and her husband, Joshua Kushner, liked it — and that the engagement photographer had also recently shot Kloss and her children (something I’m sure Tree Paine would like to do herself).
However, despite the massive Gaylor vigil, the most surprising thing about Swift and Kelce’s engagement to me was how normal it actually was. If you didn’t know it was Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, this could’ve simply been a girl you know who now lives in Charleston, South Carolina, or Hartford, Connecticut. The photos are standard overpriced engagement-shoot fare, the dress (now extremely sold out) is an off-the-rack Ralph Lauren number you could grab in the Macy’s section of any mall in America, the caption is a basic inside joke that doesn’t skew too earnest, and even the ring, while massive, is totally fine and acceptable. It’s just surprising for a woman who regularly makes her fans solve riddles to have an engagement this straightforward.
There are a few buckets of Swifties: the aforementioned Gaylors, the diehards who genuinely love and support every move she has ever made, and the ones like me — the ones who openly acknowledge how tacky and strange she can be and love her more for it. As someone who salivates over a bad Taylor Swift outfit, a graduation speech about her love of cringe, or an incomprehensible lyric, this engagement was a letdown.
To honor what could’ve been, let me illustrate what I would’ve expected this engagement post to be, starting with the lack of Swift’s famous “fuckass filter.”
CAPTION (13 lines, naturally):
My whole life, I circled the cul-de-sac, desperate to find my other half.
T-shirts, scarves, paper rings — nothing ever fit.
I didn’t know the bones around my heart and lungs were healing, waiting for you to sit (next to me).
I left the Maserati at the dead-end street.
I walked through the parking lot after the game, desperate to meet.
I longed for you like the skyline longs for a building.
I looked up at you — together, we were stitching a future.
Ophelia whispers, “We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”
That’s the end zone.
And just like Daisy Buchanan, “I’m p-paralyzed with happiness,”
That’s a linebacker collapsed in overtime.
I read these books to you, like I’ll read my vows, in front of you, and Selena, and Este, and Tree.
Honestly, who are we to fight the alchemy?
And then Taylor Nation, Taylor’s official fan account, would post: “Drop everything now. For a limited 48 hours, get your own commemorative print-out of Tayvis’s engagement shoot for just $85. We also have carbon copies (made from jet fuel) of Taylor’s engagement ring available for a limited time only for $1,300 (ykyk).”
GAY SLUTS
You Already Knew About Sniffies Merch, ‘G eyes,’ PrEP, And Doxy PEP, But Maybe Not … HoleTox?
If we’ve reached Peak Gay Sluttiness, there’s nowhere to go but (sorry) down.
Like a 38-year-old-otter Carrie Bradshaw, Steven Horst-Phillips had to wonder, “In the never-ending haze of afters and orgies, are we careering through a tech-driven, pharma-forward sexual dystopia with no happy ending in sight?” Judge for yourself:
Eddy summed up the sexual effects of G as “lower standards, lower inhibitions, higher confidence. It becomes a numbers game.” And what was the score? “On Fire Island, I dosed for two days and got 11 loads. My average in New York is like one to two loads in that same period if I’m not dosing,” he said. A dose every hour, and a load in every hole — a new Zohran campaign slogan, perhaps. I couldn’t help but feel inspired by Eddy’s naked desire, however mimetic it might be, in the sea of six-pack bodies all coveting thy neighbor’s third. Another friend, a 36-year-old design consultant, told me he needs about four to five doses to really get “juicy.” That’s when people get the “G eyes,” scanning the room for semi-hard dicks like sex-starved zombies. The feeling itself is something like a “body euphoria,” he said. “Not exactly like molly. It’s more of a ‘tickle.’ More active, whereas molly is more ‘soupy.’” But it’s more than a high, he added. It’s about community: “You’re with your girls, and you’re doing it together. It’s very ‘ritual.’ There’s a beauty in that.”
Shoutout to the team that worked on this article, especially the fact-checker who called up Eddy to confirm the number of loads.
BUMMERS
The Trump Administration Has Effectively Kneecapped the Nation’s Disaster Response
A cool development that will definitely not have any catastrophic repercussions.
Matt Stieb reports that a third of FEMA’s full-time staff have left or been pushed out because of hostility from the Trump administration. And then there’s this: “The current acting FEMA administrator, David Richardson, has no experience in disaster response and told staffers earlier this year he did not even know there was a hurricane season.”
Hurricane season is currently underway and lasts until the end of November, so Republican leaders might as well schedule their thoughts and prayers tweets ahead of time.
Click Your Way Out
Someone needs to keep track of the history of podcasting, and “Best” lists, while flawed, are the best metric we’ve got.
An astrologer who goes by “Starheal” allegedly had a 15-month-long affair with a Trump Pentagon official.
Luca Guadagnino’s After The Hunt sounds like an interesting mess with good performances.
An especially delectable “Grub Street Diary” (complete with Redwall reference!) from author Ruby Tandoh.
It’s painful to share this, but I, too, have been fired from SNL. To be clear, I have never worked there or even tried.
This newsletter is a chaotic delight equal parts pop culture fever dream, queer theory seminar, and political side eye. Zach’s take on Taylor Swift’s engagement is hilariously meta, poking fun at the absurdity of fan theories while still indulging in them. The Gaylor sleuthing, the imagined caption, the “fuckass filter” critique, it’s Swiftie satire at its finest. And then the pivot to “Peak Gay Sluttiness” and FEMA’s collapse? Whiplash, but in the best way. It’s like reading a group chat between your smartest, messiest friends. Unhinged, insightful, and weirdly comforting.