With a podcast titled Tell Me Something Messy, I’m no stranger to confessions. I’ve talked about feet and fart kinks, estrangement from a religious mother, being in a polyamorous marriage, sugaring my asshole, surviving sexual assault, and more. But with the first draft of this essay due tomorrow, I’m coming up with scraps. In a desperate attempt to source anything to write, I Googled confession, hoping it would spark inspiration. There were a few definitions offered, but the pertinent one was: acknowledgement, admission, avowal. What wasn’t offered is the inherent vulnerability of confession. How a confession exposes us to potential harm or embrace. For most, admitting to a kink or a strained family dynamic would be enough to give a person heart palpitations that render them silent. But since that’s not true for me, I’m curious what my vulnerability looks like. Truthfully, as soon as I type that, I begin to dread the work of such an exploration. I’d much rather confess something fun, like the time a guy changed my life by eating my ass.
His name was Derrick, and he wanted to toss my salad. I was in my early 30s, and my husband and I had just opened our relationship. At this time, I wasn’t into letting anyone eat my veggies. But Derrick was attractive, kind, had a monstrous dick, and I craved his ranch dressing. (See what I did there?!) So I agreed to use his face as a bearded lounge chair. He used his mouth for more than 30 minutes, which had me on the verge of making him clear out a drawer so I could leave my integrity at his place. The crash out was loading, babe! His skill for slopping up the booty meat opened something up for me. Yes, my hole, but also my head (as in brain).
In the last week, I have pumped out seven drafts around this confession prompt––none of them satisfying. Perhaps I’m just overthinking. As a last-ditch effort, I tried to release my idea of what the final result of this piece should be. My hope was that through surrender, a confession buried deep in my psyche would suddenly reveal itself. After a few minutes with no reveal—I’m a deeply impatient Taurus—I opened my phone. A quick scroll through an erratic Instagram timeline served me punchy podcast clips, endearing dog videos, and dystopian government chaos. I felt a whiplash of emotions. Chief among them, fear.
Did I just confess something?
I’m not even sure I’m allowed to admit fear. My career is built around being messy, as in human. Cheekily and compassionately saying the quiet things out loud—particularly as it pertains to sex, relationships, and identity. I regularly put out content with the intention to uplift and empower, which has garnered me the nickname Messy Mom—a title I cherish. At best, moms nurture, protect, and make us feel like everything is going to be okay. It’s how I’ve aimed to use my digital platform over the years. But it’s become more challenging to be that version of myself, so much so that I wrapped the first season of my podcast a few episodes early and scaled back on my regular online presence. As I write this, I’m realising that the whiplash of what’s happening in our world has left me deeply disoriented, with my hope deteriorating. But if hope fuels action and change, how can I show up usefully if I’ve lost it? Ugh. This is not what I wanted to write about. I want to reach into my trusted bag of charming anecdotes and tell you about the time I took a dance cardio class with Beyoncé.
I arrived an hour early, cuz bitch, I wasn’t gonna let a delayed subway make me miss the most important day of my life. Like a good student, Beyoncé was set up in front, next to the trainer. Casually, I stood in the back of the room on her left side, discreetly gawking at her perfect skin and her iconic blonde bangs. I was ready to live out my middle school fantasy of replacing Farrah Franklin (IYKYK) as the new member of Destiny’s Child. By the time class finished, we were all bathed in sweat. Beyoncé, who worked just as hard as us, didn’t have a bead of perspiration on her. It was a reminder that she is not like us pedestrians. She is… Beyoncé.
A month ago, I was in West Hollywood, standing in front of the gay bars on a Saturday afternoon waiting for my partner to arrive. Music blasted from every direction while muscled go-go boys threw ass on platforms. On my phone, I watched a video of an ICE raid in my hometown at an Upper West Side restaurant, which was immediately followed by videos of the disastrous floods in Texas. Followed by a trailer for the newest season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.
When I looked up from my phone and back out at a seemingly carefree crowd, I wondered, *in my Carrie Bradshaw voice*: Are we relying on astrological readings, manifestation techniques, and good vibes to numb ourselves from feeling the tragedy of a collapsing democracy and man-made apocalypse?
The world’s operating mode continues to be business as usual amidst so much that is unusual. Or is this in fact the norm, just the first time we’ve been able to access it all at once? Perhaps the most jarring part about all of this is being able to see the tragedies but not feel my personal reality disturbed yet. I’m currently writing this wearing a crop top and hoochie-daddy shorts, whilst nibbling on some freezer-bag sweet potato chips I just air fried. That said, I’m now constantly warding off anxiety attacks because contending with so many realities existing on the same globe while also managing a personal life is disturbing. Awareness is a symptom of adulthood no one warns you about. Sometimes it makes me—and this I hate to confess—freeze. It’s not a state of being detached, but rather a mix of being stunned and overwhelmed. A questioning of what is the right way to react and the perfect way to be of service. In 2020, while creating content around race and intersectionality, I saw how quickly people began to get “allyship fatigue.” Think about how massive the culture’s divestment was that a term had to be coined. Social media exposed itself as a performance stage for people to curate the appearances of caring, and the algorithm only supports it when profitable. So whether it’s right, wrong, good, or bad, I now find myself suspicious of people’s posting intentions. I always wonder whether they create content because they care, they want to look like they care, or they want the dopamine high from a double tap. Of course this is a generalisation. There are plenty of activists, educators, and folx who sacrifice everything for change and progress. I guess what overwhelms and stuns me is how in the face of all that sacrifice the world continues to turn, seemingly unbothered. It sends me into a spiral of depression and heartbreak that I intentionally have to tend to so that I don’t become numb.
I’m taking a lot of deep breaths writing this. I’ve got a jazz station playing in the background, helping me regulate so I can pour all of this thinking out onto the page. I really just want to haphazardly change the subject again and confess something else, like how even as a non-binary person I occasionally mess up other people’s pronouns, which feels deeply embarrassing for obvious reasons. But I’m not going to. Instead, I’ll sit here and feel this.
I’ll soothe myself by remembering that, just as the algorithm is a mixed feed, so are my emotions. Fear is not the singular feeling. It’s just the hardest one to acknowledge. Ironically, it comes with more fear: of judgement, ridicule, and criticism. But fear is part of being human, and in a time where there are concerted efforts to extinguish our humanity, perhaps the most important thing any of us can do is admit it. Perhaps this collective acknowledgement allows us to interrupt business as usual, and do something about the reality at hand. Perhaps it melts us from a frozen state and gives us permission to take action without getting caught in the barbed wire of perfection. Perhaps my fear is evidence that I’m not numb. I’m not desensitised. I’m aware. I care. And perhaps confessing this fear is part of finding my hope again.
xo Messy Mom
Brandon Kyle Goodman (they/them) is a writer, actor, and sexual wellness advocate. They’re best known for their work on Netflix’s smash hit and Emmy nominated animated comedy series Big Mouth and its spin-off Human Resources; Amazon’s Modern Love, Hulu’s Plus One, and ABC’s Abbott Elementary. Goodman is also a co-host of the new E! network awards season after-show RE!CAP. Every Monday you can catch them on their Substack livestream, Messy Mondays at Night! On Thursdays, you can hear episodes of their iHeart relationship podcast Tell Me Something Messy And this fall they’ll be premiering their solo stage show The Heaux Church at Ars Nova in New York City.
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