Found out last week that my little big brother, Deedz, is gonna come live with me this summer while doing an internship out here in the Bay! In anxious anticipation for his arrival–for what will be frolicking in the sun, binge eating cookies by the bucket, conversations about girls and boys and art and tech, bellowing laughs that fill my tiny (but less tiny than the last) apartment’s walls, and an infinity of other Gao-like traditions–I’m posting a few overdue pictures from my latest trip to NY this past spring; pictures that bookend the passing of spring and usher in an always-welcome summer, that serve as witness to Dean and my trip to visit Deedz in his Brooklyn enclave.

Pictured are an incomplete but nonetheless full assortment of things and people and places visited during these few days–old and dear friends, my brother’s ridiculously well-adorned grad student apartment, and, of course, the endless insta furnishings, for your insta pics, at the insta office. How meta.

A few random details about the trip, for posterity:

• DD, Dean and I tried to do as all the NY things, namely hours of endless walking, eating, subwaying, and endless pursuit of lox.
• I met Lisa’s boo, Dom, for the first time, and Andrea’s, Taylor, for the second. We celebrated Lisa’s tenure at Bloomie’s, as she was soon to pivot into a new space, with small pastries that were more satisfying to look at than to nom nom. I melted in the warmth and love of seeing these two best friends of mine and their lives with these most beloved partners! The night wound down with Taylor & Dom watching Seinfeld while Andrea, Lisa and I watched Benito Skinner’s horoscope parodies on insta on the next couch.
• We helped Deetz shop for his house party, a soirée that was thrown with his downstairs neighbors/owners of the house who were moving to the West coast because Ken, the husband, is starting a design architecture firm in Portland.
• Dean and I walked around all afternoon and evening Saturday, before returning back to Dd’s party, dessert in tow. During this walk we: got big gay ice cream directly followed by serious consideration of yet more ice cream at Davey’s, got Bahn Mi at St. Mark’s, bopped around the East village and LES and Chinatown, got the best motherfing maple coffee I have ever had, bought a tub of banana cream pudding for the party, talked about some serious things and some not so serious things, cried (me), laughed so hard it hurt, talked, listened, held hands. Relished in these most special moments–the banal, the everyday, but still somehow the most magical, the most meaningful, the most Real and Important.
• Saw friends from college! Mike and Melanie! Both of whom I haven’t seen in years, but who live in NY and came to Dd’s party. I was so happy to see them and was reminded of all the things I love and miss about college/in my life: all my RC weirdos–weirdos because they defy convention, weirdos because they haven’t grown out of their idealism and integrity, weirdos because Melanie brought a big plastic dildo-like back scratcher that she and Mike found on a trash can on their way over, something I could only imagine myself or an equally weirdo friend doing–who remind me of my humanity and community, from which I have felt to varying degrees estranged since college.
• Met Dd’s friends from school and Dean’s friend from the bay, an interesting, eclectic, and funny bunch. Talked with a few, laughed even harder with a few others. Met Malcolm, enough said.
• And lastly and least notable, spent a lot of time at work; made and drank a lot of hot chocolate and matcha (by far the most notable perks of the NY office).