The Euphoria of Elliot Page |
In December 2020, after disclosing that he is transgender, the Oscar-nominated actor and star of Netflix's The Umbrella Academy became the most famous trans man on the planet. That's made him the target of indescribable hate but has also brought him unimaginable joy. Here, in his own words, he talks about his childhood, his career, his transition, and his life, though not necessarily in that order. ____________________________ What have I learned from transitioning? I can't overstate the biggest joy, which is really seeing yourself. I know I look different to others, but to me I'm just starting to look like myself. It's indescribable, because I'm just like, there I am. And thank God. Here I am. So the greatest joy is just being able to feel present, literally, just to be present. To go out in a group of new people and be able to engage in a way where I didn't feel this constant sensation to flee from my body, this never-ending sensation of anxiety and nervousness and wanting out. When I say I couldn't have ever imagined feeling that way, I mean that with every sense of me. |
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Locals tell an old joke about the Ukrainian city of Lviv. A man emerges from a train at the railway station there, glad to have finally reached the faraway east. Across the platform, another man steps down from another train. He takes in a breath of air in the strange, exciting west. Lviv is a gateway, a cipher, a place caught between. Refugees, aid workers, idealists, and goons gather there now because of the war, some coming, others going. It's become a haven for those fleeing the horrors to its east while a staging ground for those bound for the same. They call it the City of Lions, and it would be difficult for even the most obtuse visitor not to connect their chosen symbol with the emerging national will that's so fierce it seems to belong to a past century. In early March, a few days after Russia's multifront invasion of Ukraine, I joined a small group traveling to Lviv to help advise and train a city defense force of local volunteers. I'd gotten on the plane there mostly thinking I was going as a journalist. Once we landed I knew that one more writer looking for a story was the last thing Ukraine needed. My friends, though, sought a third trainer. So I said I'd do it. They didn't pressure me. The moment did. |
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I have a man in my house, and he's been aging for a long time now—I want to say 50-odd years. In my understanding, this aging process was supposed to refine all of his flavors, making him more robust yet more patient, more tenacious yet more caring. And while I have observed a notable uptick in tenderness and affection, I was under the impression, based on the novels I've read and the movies I've seen, that he'd become increasingly independent and bold and courageous over time. This has not been my experience with the man in my house. While I enjoy and treasure this man very much, lately he's seemed to dislike rapid changes in temperature. He has a minor foot injury that he updates me on daily instead of, say, boarding a nuclear submarine in search of spies. The man in my house is losing his hair, but he says the Rogaine he bought is "too sticky." To be fair, this man looks good with or without hair. But when I mention the countless painful treatments I've used to maintain my girlish good looks, my man no comprende—a verb he would understand if he learned Spanish as he's been threatening to do for more than a decade. I don't mean to suggest that this man is lazy. Quite the opposite! He just has so many goals. Sometimes I think the goals themselves are the problem. He's trying to do too much! It's as if years of adult responsibilities have finally caught up to him, and now, instead of feeling daunted by, say, a battalion of assassins, he's undone by a teenager with too much homework. |
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Looking for Clarence Thomas |
He wasn't the first Supreme Court justice to speak a native tongue other than English. But no other member of the high court grew up speaking a language at risk of being forgotten like Clarence Thomas did—the Gullah/Geechee man they once called Boy (the genesis of those Pin Point nicknames, and why his was Boy, is beyond anyone's memory), who decades later would write what may be the most important thing there is to know about him: "You hate yourself for being part of a group that's gotten the hell kicked out of them." You want to understand Clarence Thomas? That sentence is the Rosetta stone. Hatred directed not outward but inward, where it does the oppressor's work for him. The man's a human being, so his self-hatred couldn't have been a conscious choice. But be that as it may, my concern for a single suffering human ain't the purpose of this writing. My purpose is to try to understand Clarence Thomas not because of what the world did to him but because of what he's doing to us. |
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Ben Stiller Sees the World Differently Now |
When he was little, Ben would lie under his sheets after bedtime listening to music on his clock radio. WNYC had a program called While the City Sleeps, hours of classical music that made him feel as if he were floating. He always felt like he was getting away with something, listening to it. The city was asleep, but he was awake! He would stare out the window at the lights glowing in the apartment buildings up West Eighty-fourth Street. The city lights seemed to trickle up into the stars, and with the dreamy music playing softly—it was magical. Now, he's working on a documentary about his parents. Their brilliance, their humor, their generosity, their struggles. It brings up memories of all the times they were there for him, and the times it felt like they weren't, and how he thinks about that with his own kids. This apartment was always here, and they were always here, and he could always come home, even when he didn't want to because he was out chasing his own dreams. But the documentary is a good year away from being done. First he's got to finish directing this nine-episode show for Apple TV+, Severance, which has taken forever because of the pandemic but which is finally looking just how he wants it to—a show he'd want to watch. |
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80 Books Every Man Should Read |
Back in 2015, Esquire published a list of "80 Books Every Man Should Read." It wasn't our finest moment. The list claimed to be "utterly biased," and indeed it was. We received criticism from every corner of the Internet, and we deserved it. Only one title (A Good Man Is Hard to Find) was written by a woman, and fewer than ten were written by men of color. It was also a pretty boring set. In 2016, we published a new and improved list: "80 Books Every Person Should Read," selected by eight female literary luminaries including Michiko Kakutani, Roxane Gay, and Lauren Groff. It was a good list: surprising, dynamic, and inclusive. But this spring, when we started planning Esquire.com's first ever Summer Fiction Week (a digital spin on the Summer Reading Issues we published back in the eighties), we asked ourselves: should we not just make our own amends? And so, we resolved to step back into the literary Thunderdome and issue a new iteration of "80 Books Every Man Should Read." Our editors gathered in our New York office to nominate hundreds of choices, then winnow them down to these 80 worthy standouts. From fiction to nonfiction to poetry, Nobel Prize winners to forgotten geniuses, this list spans a wide swath of forms, writers, and literary history. These books will change you, challenge you, and above all entertain you. No doubt some of you will have objections to what we selected and what we overlooked. We welcome that, and we want to hear from you. This list is a reflection of the hearts and minds of the people who made it. Think of it like a time capsule. Chances are, in another six years, another group of loving, diligent readers will come along and outdo us. And now, presented in alphabetical order by author, are the 80 books every man should read. |
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