#39: That time trump lost and other perfect days
Three vignettes from times I didn't know my happiness could reach such heights
Please indulge me by allowing me this earnest and more wholesome post about joy. I hope each of you reading this can easily remember some of the most peak experiences of your life. I’ve been reflecting on mine, and I want to share them mainly to show how they exist completely outside conventional milestones we’re told should bring us fulfillment.
I’ve always maintained that Ask a Hedonist is ultimately about the ethical pursuit of pleasure. The relationships we build—romantic, platonic, sexual, or something else entirely— are just one avenue toward a fulfilling life. For me, I’ve felt that many of my most profound moments of connection came from experiencing collective joy rather than private intimacy.
Writing this post feels apropos, as the NYT Magazine just published a special issue on happiness, and in Our Idea of Happiness Has Gotten Shallow. Here’s How to Deepen It, ethicist writer and NYU philosophy professor Kwame Anthony Appiah writes about how happiness used to be viewed as a public good, and was more of an expansive concept about flourishing communities, whereas it’s now a more shallow, individualistic pursuit. When I write about non-monogamy, I'm really exploring this same broader idea that no single human can (or should) be expected to provide all our happiness. In my experience, the profound joy I’ve felt usually came from a tapestry of connections and collective experiences and not just one exclusive relationship. These peak moments I'm sharing today are another expression of that same philosophy.
The Day Trump Lost
The day Drumpf lost in 2020 has to go down as one of the best days of my life. After four years of watching cruelty become policy, seeing someone who bragged about sexual assault on tape still win millions of votes, of witnessing blatant corruption with no consequences, the relief was physical.
We were still deep in the pandemic in November 2020, and you may remember they took several days to count the votes. We were all isolated, pre-vaccine, still watching the death tolls, still not gathering. Everyone’s anxiety was through the roof.
That week had been chilly, typical fall weather in NY, but Saturday broke like a gift. We were met with a sunny, gorgeous, 75 degree day, with perfectly blue skies. Lou and I were checking news updates obsessively and laid down on the couch when we heard it. Actual cheering erupted outside my window. We immediately knew. We barely glanced at our phones to confirm before running into the elevator and out into the streets of New York.
People were skipping, jumping, waving, making eye contact with everyone. We all nodded and smiled at each other. HE LOST. HE LOST. HE LOST. The wicked witch was dead.
We made our way to Union Square first, joining a growing crowd where people handed out fliers and cheered. Then we moved north toward trump tower, documenting all these spontaneous parades on our phones. People singing, people clapping, people dancing. Our friends responded to our ig stories “where are you???” We shared our cross streets, and our group grew larger by the hour, friends of friends joining the celebration.
We stayed masked, as the pandemic was still raging, but for the first time in months we felt a little hint of freedom. The warm November day, the release of tension, the shared joy with thousands of New Yorkers who believed in science, in caring for each other, in the most basic forms of human decency.
We typically avoid Times Square at all costs but on this day it felt magical. Cars were all at a standstill, drivers were smiling and honking in celebration, people dancing in the street between taxis. One car had the song “Fuck Donald Trump” on a loop blasting through the speakers, and we formed a circle around it, strangers dancing together. Our group kept absorbing more people as we wandered the streets.
As we skipped downtown, we joined a huge group dancing to Jay-Z & Alicia Keys’ “Empire State of Mind,” which is normally such a corny and overplayed song but hit differently cause it felt like the anthem we all needed in that moment. We collapsed for a bit at an outdoor bar in K-town, ordering pitchers of beer, sharing with and cheersing anyone who caught our eye.
As darkness fell, we drifted over to Washington Square Park, and the mood evolved from pure celebration to something more purposeful. We joined a drumming circle with a call and response “Liberation for Black People! Liberation for Black People!” The energy held us there for hours.
It wasn’t so much about Biden winning, in fact few people mentioned his name. It was about the collective exhale after four years of holding our breath, about this moment in 2020 where strangers could feel like comrades in something important.
This day is emblematic of how much I crave and need collective joy, and how the most intense pleasures come from not private experiences but shared ones. The magic of being swept up in something larger than myself, with whole city blocks transforming into spaces of celebration, I think no intimate relationship can replicate that feeling of beautiful, spontaneous community.
Lovers & Friends Festival, Las Vegas
A few years ago, a group of my friends and I went to Vegas for a hip hop and r&b throwback festival called Lovers & friends Fest. When we first saw the poster, I remember thinking “how did they get all these A-listers into one festival lineup??” innocently forgetting that Ashanti, Ciara, and Ludacris loomed large in my teenage years but were far from being A-list anymore. Still, tickets sold out instantly, and we managed to nab just enough for our group, and we booked our flights.
Most in our group had not spent much time in Vegas as adults; none of us were into daytime pool clubs or casinos like that. But the festival drew us there, and we were planning to make the most of it, booking all our dinner and club rezzies in advance, bumping all the music from these artists every time we hung out. We each booked big beautiful rooms at the Wynn, where whimsical floral globes and lush green backdrops beckoned us in for a fun few days.
The actual festival was golden. There were so many, almost too many, excellent acts followed by excellent acts. We belted it out to “Weak” by SWV, we watched Ashanti and Ja Rule perform like it was 2002, and Ciara looked like she did in her heyday when she performed “Ride.” Usher and Lil Jon played their eponymous “Lovers and Friends,” which I absolutely loved when it came out. The night ended with the legendary Lauryn Hill.
We all knew pretty much every word to every song, no matter what stage we ran to. As we sprinted to catch up to an artist performing at a stage at the other end of the grounds, we’d catch another performance we’d recognize on the way, singing the words as we ran over. Our muscle memory kicked in for lyrics we hadn’t thought about in 20 years.
After dancing in 105+ degree temps all day, we returned to our hotel and collapsed into one of our larger rooms, massaging our legs and ordering room service. We played a game Louis created called “What is More,” where we debated whether Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston had better vocal range. These were the debates of our youth, now revisited with the perspective of adults who’ve lived a bit more life.
The next day, feeling goofy, we visited Meow Wolf, an immersive and interactive multi-story art installation, with things like a fully built-out supermarket where every object on the shelves was made from felt, to full room funhouse mirrors made of instruments. We giggled our way through, very inebriated, tapping into our inner child.
Afterward, we decided to spend the night in a casino, and intentionally chose the saddest, quietest one far from the main strip. I’d forgotten that casinos are windowless places, and without the glitz and glam of the ones on the main strip, this one felt especially sad. But we had a lot of it to ourselves. We took over a Craps table, and they had me roll the dice.
I had never played Craps before and still admittedly don’t know the rules of the game, but everytime I rolled that dice, it was in favor of the numbers for the people in our group. And I am not exaggerating when I say I had such a wild streak rolling only favorable number after favorable number that the dealers started watching the way I rolled more intensely. I ended up earning everyone at the table enough money to pay for each of their hotel rooms for the trip. It was such a rush, and I felt so much pressure to roll the correct number, only for us to erupt into cheers over and over again. Now I understand the rush people get from gambling.
We grabbed a selfie there, all of us flushed with victory and disbelief. Something about the festival and the way things shook out, our group was completely in sync and completely in love. In those moments, dancing to the soundtrack of our youth, exploring surreal art spaces together, celebrating impossible wins, I felt a connection with these friends that was as profound as any romantic relationship I ever had. It wasn’t about coupling up; it was about this temporary collective we’d formed, moving through the world as a synchronized unit, creating a bubble of joy that sustained us all.
Mysteryland
Nearly a decade ago, I found myself in upstate New York for Mysteryland. It wasn’t just my first camping festival, it was my first time camping, period. The whole adventure began when one of my best friends who worked in music PR casually mentioned she had some tickets. “Some tickets” turned out to be a whole stack of them, and she got our entire village of friends caravanning up in multiple cars, laden with tents, coolers, and festival outfits.
What I remember vividly was waking up that second morning to perfect weather— another gorgeous 75 degree day with blue skies. Our tent village came alive with the sounds of us freestyle rapping as we got dressed “Makeup in the tent! uh, Makeup in the tent!” The song had exactly one line we repeated over and over again, but it became our morning mantra, punctuated by us laughing and the occasional dropped eyeshadow palette.
Our festival crew had natural subdivisions – smaller groups that would splinter off and reconvene throughout the day. My cluster of four wandered to a morning yoga class with live jazz that had us stretching under sunshine and marveling at how uncrowded and civilized everything felt. The stages were spread far enough apart that the music didn't bleed together, and strangers would make eye contact, smile, and actually talk to each other rather than just push past.
This was way before Lou and I were in a relationship, and at the time we existed in this undefined space for months. I appreciated that our friend group let us rock, observing this thing happening between us with a kind of benevolent conspiracy of silence. It really felt like they created a space for us to just exist exactly as we were.
The magic of the weekend peaked when, through what felt like cosmic alignment, all our scattered friend groups converged simultaneously at this enormous, circus-like tent. It looked like a carousel, with colorful fabric panels swooping from a center pole, and we all found each other in this swirling, dappled light. Lou had this blueberry hookah pen (nicotine-free) he brought back from Berlin, and it became our group’s prized possession, passing it around like some sacred object. When he realized he dropped it somewhere in the vast expanse of grass, collective disappointment set in. That is, until our friend Camille, with what seemed like supernatural perception, retraced our steps and spotted it nestled in the grass. You would’ve thought she found actual buried treasure from our reaction— jumping, hugging, cheering. Over a hookah pen lol. But in that moment it felt like the universe was conspiring to make everything perfect.
Right then, Lou and I broke away for a moment, walking through a field. He stopped, turned to me, and with this deliberate slowness, took his sunglasses off and rested them on top of his head. I can still see him perfectly framed against that sky, with puffy white clouds moving behind him, his face suddenly open, his eyes completely visible, as he said simply “I do love you, you know.” The first time he’d ever said it. Time seemed to fold around us, creating this pocket where nothing else existed. I said it back, we had our moment, and then rejoined our friends who were still spinning around that tent.
The rest of the festival became saturated with new meaning, with every song hitting with perfect clarity, every shared moment with friends feeling sacred. I’ve been to dozens of festivals since, but that one lives in me differently. Not because of that declaration alone, but because of how it was nestled within this perfect temporary community we’d built, this collective joy we were all experiencing together.
Looking back, I realize how beautifully that moment embodies what I’m always trying to express about relationships. Yes, there was this traditionally romantic milestone, but it wasn’t isolated from the community around us. It wasn’t about retreating into coupledom. The peak experience came from the way the romantic connection existed within this web of friendships, shared experiences, inside jokes, and collective celebration.
If you've read this far into a post that’s not about foursomes or the complexities of jealousy, thanks for sticking around. While those topics generate more email opens, these reflections on collective joy feel just as central to what I'm exploring here. My philosophy remains that romantic relationships need not be the pinnacle of achievement or fulfillment. We can recognize different forms of connection and treat them with the same significance we're taught to reserve for romantic partnerships.
I have many life partners : lovers, friends, temporary companions. Society doesn't have the infrastructure to recognize these bonds yet. There are no tax benefits for the friend who carries you through your grief, no legal protections for the group of people who form your chosen family, no ceremony to mark the significance of these collective experiences that reshape us. But that doesn't make them any less real or transformative.
Thanks for reading and I’d love to hear your thoughts if you can please share in the comments!
Q: I've been seeing two people separately for a few months, and they've both said they’re interested in meeting each other. I'm nervous that the person I’ve been seeing for less time will feel disadvantaged because I’ve been with the other partner for much longer. What kind of setting works best for this meeting?
A: I should first say for anyone reading this that not everyone wants to meet their metamour (partner’s partner), but it’s really cool when they actually do want to connect. My first time facilitating this type of meeting (where I was the metamour and my partner Lou was the hinge), my type A personality definitely kicked in and I overthought every detail. We ended up having a picnic.
It really depends on everyone’s personalities, but I think picking an activity with a built-in conversation topic works best to take the pressure off having to sit directly across from someone and run through a checklist of questions. Bowling, billiards, going to one of those bars with lots of games, gives everyone something to focus on aside from the potentially awkward “ok we’re sleeping with the same person” convo.
When it comes to body language and how much you touch your partners while you’re together, you should have a separate conversation with each partner with what they’re comfortable seeing, but I’d say just keep it natural and also considerate. As for managing your own anxiety, this is where I'd say embrace your nervous energy, and even name it if it feels right. If you’re not super practiced at it, it can be a little strange to have two people you're intimate with meeting each other, and pretending it's completely normal might actually increase tension.
Keep in mind that you’re not responsible for the relationship that they have with each other, and the best outcome isn’t necessarily that they become best friends. You just hope that they have mutual respect and comfort. If they don’t click, that’s also fine. You can continue to have separate wonderful relationships without your partners being in each others lives in any significant way.
Definitely check in with both of them privately before and after the meeting, and ask if there’s anything they’d prefer for future interactions. Good luck!
Someone please tell me you’re following the drama unfolding in the literary world surrounding Andrea Long Chu (Pulitzer prize winning NYMag book critic known for her snark)’s takedown of Ocean Vuong’s new book as well as Som-Mai Nguyen’s similar critique of Vuong for Astra Magazine. Ocean Vuong is such a darling of the literary world so this is wild in-group Asian writers calling out Asian writers and I have no one to talk to about this…
As a born and raised New Yorker who views no other city as an option, I'm kind of over the whole "farewell to New York" essay genre, and Lena Dunham's Why I Broke Up with New York isn't really an exception. But this one reads a bit differently, with Dunham basically never vibing with New York from the start. I’ll accept New York hate if it comes from a native and lifelong New Yorker only.
Are you watching the latest season of The Rehearsal? I’ve always loved Nathan Fielder’s hijinx from the Nathan For You days and season 1 of the Rehearsal was really excellent (albeit kinda unethical) television. After being disappointed by his scripted project with A24 and Emma Stone in The Curse, I’m glad to see him back on track with the awkward social experimentation we all love him for.
I omitted these last three sections of the newsletter in my month of Feeld related posts because those were a lot to write so I need to catch you up on so many great meals! Between knafeh pancakes from Lebanese spot Hen House, fried Oaxcan cheese from Hellbender, and tamarind butter snails from Viet-French hotspot Ha’s Snack Bar, April was a very good eating month for me.
