Sober Sex and a J Dilla doc

reactions to must-read articles and pop culture fare

sex after going sober by sarah hepola (the cut)

Last December, I decided I’m done drinking, for the most part. Drinking has never been one or two drinks I sip on slowly. It always turned into five or more and 2am, 3am, 5am nights. But, it’s in the way now, preventing me from being better. I feel empowered to have outgrown drinking. I’ll likely devote a future post to it that explores the switch.

In her article, Hepola, 12 years sober, refers to the “unmanageability” of her drinking as being “central to [her] self-diagnosis.” She goes on to say:

I’d become a big-city cliché: the single woman with her overloved tabby, the most familiar men in her orbit being the ones working at the bodega or the wine shop. I used to think the red flag for alcoholism would be some catastrophic loss — a job, a home, a marriage — but I’d held on to my career, I’d held on to my things (I didn’t have a marriage to lose), and yet I’d lost something far more grave: I’d lost myself. Finally, after several years of trying and failing to moderate my drinking, I could see that alcohol wasn’t opening the door to some bigger life; it had trapped me in a rather small room.

Thankfully, I do not own a cat, but the call out of the most familiar men being in the bodega, while losing sense of self and years of failing to moderate her drinking? Feeling trapped by her drinking persona?? She basically “@”ed me, bro.

My love for the article ends with her recognitions of knowing she needed to quit. Her descriptions of good sex as a “beautiful surrender” are *puke emoji* I’m a long time single person, who made a big mistake in revisiting old patterns (last year? year before? I can’t even remember because it happened in a timeless, blurred existence). Sober sex as a fully in your body experience sounds scary, boring and, eww, tender. It inspires me to keep sex and relationships on the back burner where they belong still for now.

j dilla doc

The New York Times teamed up with FX to bring us a Hulu docuseries called “The New York Times Presents” (why? because content). “The Legacy of J Dilla” episode was worthwhile viewing. I’m such a hip-hop fan, but there’s something so very “male” about getting into producers and following their legacies. So, I’m beyond embarrassed to admit how many Dilla-produced songs there are that I (still!) didn’t know were Dilla songs. To be fair, I was listening to artists he produced in the late-’90s and early 2000’s and Wikipedia barely existed. J Dilla is responsible for basically all of our favorites from that era: A Tribe Called Quest’s “Find A Way,” plus more best tracks from The Love Movement, Pharcyde’s “Runnin’,” and “Drop,” Q-Tips’ “Vivrant Thing,” Common’s “The Light,” to name a few crucial cuts.

Secondly, mystery remains around his production credits because of The Ummah. Hearing those words threw me right back into my childhood bedroom, hunched over CD liner notes. At the time, I thought The Ummah was a fame averse, mysterious producer having to do with A Tribe Called Quest, or maybe it just a producer pseudonym for Q-Tip. Either way, he was a must-have-on-your-record-if-you-wanna-be-hip-hop-canon type producer. I was kinda right, but it was multiple people: Q-Tip, Ali Shaheed Muhammed, and J Dilla! (sometimes D’Angelo or Raphael Saadiq were involved, too). The doc does a great job describing how everything was credited to The Ummah, and it started becoming unclear who did what, but a lot of the time it was entirely produced by J Dilla! My forgotten childhood, hip-hop mystery was finally revealed in an FX x NYT docuseries, of all places!! Much more exciting than just reading it on Wikipedia. Stay woke, y’all!