Collected Agenda with Meg Spectre

Guest Edit #16

Drawing on the diary as a medium of both confessional interiority and visceral engagement with the physical world - guest edits ask creative people to share What They Did and What You Should Do.

Introducing Meg Spectre (Instagram) (The Meg Spectre Spectacular)

INTRODUCTION

According to the New York Times - Meg Spectre is “An artist who had a tamagotchi tied to her purse.”

Meg Spectre is an actress, comedian, performer and girl about town, born and based in New York City. As an actor, Meg performs in and around the downtown New York theatre circuit, and is known for her performance as “Sarah” Matthew Gasda’s Zoomers. She has also appeared in a number of independent films including the BizarroLand Award-winning film YMG (2024), American Cuck (2024), and the upcoming film The Glow of Darkness. She runs her own eponymous cabaret show at the KGB Bar Red Room and hosts Karaoke at Chino Grande, where her renditions of Cake’s “Short Skirt Long Jacket” regularly evoke gasps and applause. She has worked as a production assistant for Dirty Magazine, for which she has also featured as a model in numerous issues. She has hosted parties with Dirty Magazine and We Take Manhattan, and appeared in runway shows for brands including Drink More Water, By Liv, and Meg Beck.

As a performance artist, Meg’s practice aims to explore cringe and naive camp. She engages concepts of openness and vulnerability, self-indulgence and narcissism, and shamefulness and awkwardness, all within the contexts of public presentation and personal understanding. She produces unironic multidisciplinary work that employs para-fictional persona, cultural zeitgeisty ephemera, self-referencing motif, earnestness, honesty, and misdirection—all operating under the ethos of performing, with an emphasis on “song and dance,” “stardom”, and “showmanship”.

The May 22 rendition of the Meg Spectre Spectacular is a rendition of My Favorite Show at My Favorite Place - KGB Bar! Thursday’s show will bring together five comics; including Amelia Ritthaler of Girls Rewatch Podcast, and Ivy Wolk of Anora.

Tickets for Thursday’s show - HERE

WHAT MEG SPECTRE DID

Friday:

I wake up late. I’ve been having a horrible time sleeping! I’m out of melatonin, which I rely on in a crazy way, and I ordered more online but it hasn’t arrived yet. I COULD go out to the store and buy more, but it’s like a 15 minute walk to the nearest pharmacy, which means it’s a 30 minute walk total, and sometimes I just can’t mentally justify that for pharmacy runs. My boyfriend Andres and I are seeing “The Marriage of Figaro” tonight. It’s our fourth and final opera of the season. We’ve been really into the young people Metropolitan Opera ticket discount, which makes tickets on select nights like $70 if you’re under 40. 40 is a funny and charming age to have as the cut-off for being young at the opera. I’m tickled.

A lot of my day is spent getting ready to go out for the night, because I have a very annoying self-imposed face and hair program. I do a “gua sha along with me” and a “you don’t need filler, you just need a NuFace” routine, both by @lebaneseangel22 on tiktok. @lebaneseangel22 is impossibly beautiful and nonchalant. I like the NuFace because you have to use an electricity-conductive goo for it to work, which makes me feel like science. They sell special nuface goo, but I just use sonogram gel. My boyfriend’s mom is a dermatologist, and she told me that gua-sha-ing MIGHT work to temporarily subdue puffiness, but has no other benefits. I am too scared to ask her about the NuFace.

Shower time! Before I leave the shower, I scrunch my hair with something called “aPHogee Curlific! Curl Definer Cream”. It’s this yellow goop and it’s only available on Amazon. It came specially recommended by my hairdresser Helik, who is also my sister (a wonderful writer) and mom’s hairdresser. He wears an electric heated vest around the salon, and is looking for love (no luck on grindr, but also no luck at board game night). I would die for Helik. Post shower it’s hair diffusing time, which I do on the bed, slouching my neck all the way forward towards my chest for like 30 minutes. I wonder how this will affect my tech neck. After hair drying, I scrunch in more yellow goop.

We’re getting tapas at El Born before the opera. It’s happy hour, which applies to some of the food as well, and that’s great news. We get a cheese plate, meat plate, tortilla, patatas bravas, olives, a vermouth on the rocks each, and a wine flight to share. Everything is delicious, but the cheese and meat plates come with a bunch of bread that I can’t eat because it’s still Passover. I feel tempted and sad. I’m also anxious the whole time because I’m wearing a super fancy white dress that I’ve been saving for a special occasion, and what if I spill??

The opera is wonderful, the funniest one we have seen yet. There’s a character named “Cherubino”, who’s a young man played by a woman who dresses in girl drag later in the show. Cherubino has great facial expressions. I watch them through my opera binoculars (which are actually birdwatching binoculars but I’ve never watched any birds with them) a lot. I pop some Quit With Jones mints. I’ve tried to use them to keep from vaping, but now I mostly use them just to keep from vaping at the opera. The man next to me is asleep in his seat the entire time.

I send my grandma a selfie from The Met, since we have kind of an opera-based texting relationship, and then we head down to Soho House for the launch party of “The Ick”, a new tik tok webseries by Ari Cagen. I’m in one of the episodes, and when I arrive to the venue there’s a big poster of me by the door. It makes me feel very special. The party is lavish, with a big “The Ick” ice luge and a DJ who plays a lot of loud Bad Bunny. I get a $30 French 75, and bump into someone while holding the glass, spilling a little on myself. OH NO! MY FEAR! The stain persists even after drying, but is mostly clear. I make a mental note to get the dress dry cleaned this week.

At the party I spot @Streethearts and @Talialichtstein, two tik tokkers who I like, but I’m too shy to talk to either. I DO talk to to Adrian Anderson (the filmmaker who got me on the project), Matthew Danger Lippman (my costar), and Sasha (whose last name I do not know , but who is very sweet and also tells me she will be at the Easter Brunch I’m going to on Sunday). I also talk to strangers. I tell them all about my musical comedy show, “The Meg Spectre Spectacular”, the next edition of which is happening this coming Thursday. When I go out on the week of a show I feel like a politician on the campaign trail.

My friend Calla, a gorgeous poet, shows up with a gaggle of girlies, but at that point I’ve already been there for 2.5 hours and I’m getting antsy and it’s time to pack it up. On the elevator down I see an ad for “A Night with 50 Cent”. Soho House is funny. When I get home I can’t sleep, so I watch the finale of Rupaul’s Drag Race. Onya Nurve wins. It’s the right call. I fall asleep at 4 AM.

Saturday

I wake up LATE late. NuFace. Gua Sha. Shower. Yellow goo. Diffuser. More Yellow Goo. I’m meeting up this afternoon with Jean-Baptiste Chiara, an arts and culture writer from outside of Paris. He’s visiting New York City for a video piece he’s making on “the downtown scene”, and he wants to interview me about The Spectacular. I’m not sure I’m enough of a fixture of Dimes Square to warrant appearing in this piece alongside real life niche-internet-microcelebrities like Crumps or Peter Vack, nor am I sure I want to be, but basically I’ll say yes to anything.

He wants to meet in the Hoxton Hotel lobby cafe, which is great because that’s a 15 minute walk from my house. On my walk I think about how glamorous it is to be interviewed, and interviewed at such glamorous hotels, and to have such glamorous establishments within walking distance of my house in my glamorous neighborhood, and to be able to walk to them in my understated glamorous interview outfit on such a warm early spring day. I get there and he’s very nice and French, but it’s too loud and crowded and we have to leave and go to McCarren, which is a bit of a bummer because that’s less glamorous because it’s a park, and is back in the direction I came.

Conversation is easier than I expected. One-on-ones with new people make me nervous in a crazy way. I feel like I always either lose all my sauce or overshare to keep the conversation interesting. But maybe when English is someone’s second language, everyone is given a pass to focus on clarity and concision in their conversation. It’s a weight off my back. He buys me a coffee from the Blank Street in The Parkhouse and we have an off-the-record chat about what the alt-right presence in New York City is, if it exists or not. (In an ironic twist, a week later I’m looking at r/willamsburg, which probably isn’t even the most embarrassing subreddit I follow, and someone has posted a candid of some guy in the parkhouse wearing a tshirt with the SS symbol. The comments are debating if he’s for real.)

The interview itself is sprawling and well researched, except for the part where we’re talking about art-in-communication-with-other-art and I assert that the Marriage of Figaro was a sequel to The Barber of Seville, which it turns out it wasn’t (they’re actually both just musical adaptations of plays, Spring Awakening style). At one point, I accidentally knock my coffee to the ground, but it’s honestly a relief because coffee makes me jittery and I don’t actually drink it, I only ordered it because there was nothing non-caffeinated on the Blank Street menu. If it was still in front of me I might have finished it to be polite, and then I’d have heart palpitations and shaky hands and have to run home to take my beta blocker. Spilling it really was an accident though, I swear. For some reason involving battery that I don’t understand, he has to reset his camera every 20 minutes. Over the course of our interview, the camera gets reset 8 times.

From there I head to my friend Lila’s birthday dinner. She’s an electro pop musician I went to college with, and she moved to New Jersey almost a year ago, so I’m very excited to see her. I stop at the bodega by my house since they just started selling bootleg Sonny Angels and I figure it will make a good last-minute present, plus I’ve been curious to see what the bootlegs look like out of the box. I’m thrilled at Sonny Angels’ surge in popularity, especially considering that I’ve been collecting them since high school, when the face molds were different and the only place to buy them in New York City was the Kinokuniya bookstore by Bryant Park. I’m sure to mention this every time they’re brought up. Sometimes I think I’m a very annoying person.

Lila is a vegan with celiac, which seems hard because when you say you’re vegan and gluten free, people might assume you’re choosing to be difficult two ways when actually she’s only choosing to be difficult one way. The restaurant is vegan Italian, and I figure if she picked it it must have good gluten free stuff, which is handy for me because I’m still doing Passover until tomorrow. I’m running 20 minutes behind, but when I get there her whole party is around the corner, and it turns out she told everyone to come a half hour earlier than when the reservation actually was because she knows we are late people. I’m humbled.

At dinner, I’m seated across from Lila’s new bandmate, who is a 19 year old boy. He orders the most expensive thing on the menu (a very realistic looking soy steak I’m too shy to ask for a bite of even though I’m really curious), and has “come to terms” with the idea that women get their periods. I give Lila her Sonny Angel. It is MINISCULE. Way smaller than the normal ones. Upon reflection I feel bad for getting her a birthday gift from a bodega. But she seems to like it. I specify over and over that it’s a bootleg, so she doesn’t think I’m trying to pull one over on her.

We talk a little about our former classmate, let’s call her “K”. K was recently arrested for an alleged shocking violent crime I don’t want to mention here. Lila is pretty shaken up. It’s a horrible situation all around. K and I didn’t cross paths at all at school, but we were both on Lila’s birthday trip to the Jersey Shore 3 years ago. I remember K chastised me for expressing an interest in going to clown school, telling me it was problematic since clowning was “born out of minstrelsy” which like A) shows a real lack of understanding of the history of clowning and B) ugh now I’ve gotta talk about France? This is a total tangent but also on that trip we went to a smoke shop, and the smoke shop owner asked us to pose for a photo with a sign that said “give back poor people money you and your murderous family looted from Sri Lanka”, so now that’s floating around somewhere. I had assumed there was some geo-political situation going on in Sri Lanka I didn’t know about, but I did some research and that doesn’t seem to be the case, so I think it was just a personal gripe the smoke shop guy had with someone back home,

Post-Lila-birthday-dinner, the gaggle is going to Jean’s, but I’m still spent from my Friday bonanza and the 4 am bedtime of it all, so I part ways. On my way home I realize I don’t have my keys, they’re in my coat which it was too warm to wear today. I text Andres, but he’s out with friends and will be for a little bit, so I figure I’ll go to a bar near my house and wait for him. Getting off the train, I run into my friend Lizzie, who’s a cool girl with a chic bob, and she’s maybe an engineer or something? Crazy smart, always aces the bug-related questions at Ginger’s Bar trivia night, which is run by her girlfriend Pia, one of my oldest friends. Pia is the best trivia host I’ve ever seen, a compelling stand-up who’s been on the Spectacular lineup multiple times, and a gifted illustrator who makes all my posters. We met like 8 years ago, in my past life on the bootleg resin toy scene. Pia and Lizzie are very much in love. I tell Lizzie my keys predicament, and she decides to accompany me to Night of Joy, where we drink beet-and-dill vodka on the roof and yuk it up. A welcome surprise! She tells me about her idea for an edible gel pouch that has both protein and caffeine. Lizzie truly is a woman in STEM. About an hour later, Andres texts me that he’s home, so I can finally be let in. My melatonin has arrived, so I take two. They’re the Amazon house brand gummies and the outside tastes like wax but the inside tastes like gummies, so it’s a real toss-up. I get into bed and scroll under my weighted blanket until zzz.

Sunday

It’s Easter Sunday and I’m doing it in the most Jewish way possible. I’ve been invited to Easter Brunch at my friend Aileen’s, who I met at a karaoke (she is to “Goodbye Earl” as I am to “Short Skirt Long Jacket”), and I intend to use the meal to end my Passover gluten-fast. There’s going to be homemade fried chicken and biscuits, and I’m foaming at the mouth. To compound the Judaism, her apartment is on the Upper West Side, home of Zabar’s and my parents. I’m in a voluminous eating dress to anticipate bloat. Whenever I eat anything, my stomach gets all ballooney, and it really kills the vibe. I still haven’t figured out what causes the distention, besides just like, food as a whole. Once, I showed a gastroenterologist a picture of my stomach on a particularly bad bloat day, and he said I looked 8 months pregnant. His name was Dr Kornbluth, he’s my dad’s gastro as well. When he gave me a colonoscopy, he said “you look just like your father” as he put the scope in. Another very Jewish thing.

I get to Aileen’s building and there’s a placard outside because apparently James Dean used to live here. Picturing him living on the Upper West Side is cracking me up, but also he was maybe closeted and the building is right by The Ramble, so like yeah, sure, maybe. I’m starting a rumor in this substack. Aileen’s home is lovely and she’s scuttling around in an apron being a cookmaster. The apartment is packed and I flit about, choppin it up with pals. There’s Sasha from The Ick party, we talk about maybe making some tik toks and she’s in this perfect bunny sweater. There’s Eli, another one of my karaoke friends (he is to “There is a Light and it Never Goes Out” as Aileen is to “Goodbye Earl”). There’s Laura, she’s done some footage for The Spectacular and I like her a lot and I feel like I’ve known her for a very long time but I really can’t remember how. There’s Kitty and Caitlyn and Alizé and we chat about thrifting and Wicked and how hard it is to shop for pants. Everyone looks immaculate and Easterly. I notice it’s a lot of other Jews. Maybe we all took the opportunity to really show out in our Easter best because it’s not every day we get to do this type of thing. I do a lot of sitting on the floor. There's a cat in the house. they’re bumping Billy Joel. Things are nice.

I drink two glasses of this super funky orange wine that I brought. Andres says the orange wines I like all taste like nail polish remover. Maybe. Then the food hits the table, and it’s chicken and biscuits as anticipated, plus grits and black eyed peas and cucumber salad and some sort of country ham situation and a coconut cake with meringue rabbits on top. We all line up to serve ourselves and I’m impressed by the orderly nature of the whole affair. I get a little of everything and do a little slav squat to eat. Everything is exceptionally delicious, but it really is some of the best chicken and biscuits I’ve ever had. I second guess myself, because maybe any chicken and biscuit would taste world-shattering when you’ve been off bread products for a week, but then everyone starts talking about the food and it’s confirmed that yes, it legitimately is just really really good.

I do what feels like gorging myself and then make my rounds to say goodbye, it’s time to jet, I have to go to rehearsal now. It’s in midtown, so I walk through Central Park from Aileen’s. I’ve got those two glasses of the nail polish wine in me but it’s fine, it’s a very preliminary rehearsal for a reading of a musical, and the walk will set me straight. Everything’s hunky-dory. The weather is beautiful in a shocking way and it’s also Easter, so it’s a real everyone-in-the-world-is-outside type of situation. We have risen! Sometimes when i'm tipsy in the park in the right tinted sunglasses it feels like weed in high school: The feeling intensifies when I pass the Time Warner Center. When I was 16, my friends and I used to get stoned go into the TWC William Sonoma, try the samples, and marvel at the case of fancy knives, which is mounted on the wall behind glass like fossils at the Museum of Natural History.

Rehearsal is at The Lambs Club, New York City’s oldest theatrical society, which I’m a member of. It’s across the street from The American Girl store, and shares a building with the Women’s National Republican Club, which has today posted a sign in the lobby advertising a talk with Curtis Sliwa. Lol. The Lambs Club is filled with curiosities. Oil paintings of its “shepards”, big file boxes filled with playbills and clippings from the 1930s and illustrations by “Nancy”’s Ernie Bushmiller, who was a member. One time I took Andres here and he called it a frat, but I went to art school so that’s none of my business.

We’re doing a new musical about Dostoevsky. I play Anna, his stenographer and second wife. I have only a vague understanding of stenography, and honestly I’m not doing great at this rehearsal. My songs are all too low for me. They say they’ll transpose them, but just to do them for now, so I’m stumbling through and my singing is flat and charmless. Despite being a musical comedian, I am not actually a good singer even on a good day. I don’t feel like a strong singing voice is a prerequisite for musical comedy, but it probably is for being in a musical, and I do feel a little like I lied my way into this job. Everyone is nice enough about it. When we finish, I’m embarrassed and would like to eat more wheat-based foods now that the bandaid has been ripped off, so I call up Andres and we make a plan to go to Forma Pasta Factory, but then pivot and try our luck at Bernie’s which is usually way too packed, but they have some room outside today. I appreciate a stupid hypey Applebees-core restaurant from time to time. Andres does not. So this is nice of him. We get a caesar salad that’s bigger than my head (my head is small but still) and a chicken parm that’s bigger than Andres’ head (his head is not at all small) and a brownie sundae that’s probably the size of both my boobs put together (which is maybe the size of my head).

Monday

I wake up at 10 am to the tape of the last Meg Spectre Spectacular having been delivered. The videographer has also pulled a couple clips “for social media”. Very thoughtful. I’m trying to get less shy about posting stuff from the show to socials. It feels maybe too vulnerable and cringe, especially on my main Instagram account. But it’s 2025, and that’s showbiz, babey!! I choose to let my tangential brushes with the tik tokkers on Friday embolden me. I open CapCut, add my captions, tense up my whole body in a way where the muscles in my thighs shake, and post to Instagram and TikTok. I feel embarrassed immediately. I go wash my face really hard.

The afternoon is eh. I write a little. I think about taking my Friday dress to the dry cleaner, along with a skirt I got a Glossier Superdew stain on last week while I was getting ready to go out. I don’t take it to the cleaner in the end. Instead, I eat cold chicken pad see ew with my hands. When they’re cold, rice noodles get stiff and dry, but I power through. A few days ago I ordered Thai, because it was still Passover and I urgently needed a noodle that wasn’t wheat based. (On a regular week, I probably eat about 3-4 noodles.) The place I ordered from, Boon Thai, was doing two-for-one pad see ew, so now I have like 7-tubes-of-yellow-goops worth of pad see ew to get through. I ordered Thai from the same spot a few weeks ago for the White Lotus finale, and the delivery guy was messaging me super angry because he had been waiting there for 40 minutes to pick up the order. I was freaking out that he was mad at me, but my boyfriend pointed out that sometimes when experiencing unexpected inconvenience, you can get mad without necessarily being mad at anybody. I saw footage of the Thai place that night on tik tok later. It really was mobbed. I left him a good tip. When he came to the door to deliver my order all he asked for was a 5 star rating, but I always do that anyways.

Andres and I are AMC A-Listers, a position I cannot recommend highly enough, and they’re showing Pride and Prejudice today, which I’ve never seen or read but feel like I was born knowing the plot of, like all women are. I pick up some sour gummy bears and peach rings on the way to the 34th street theater. I almost never buy concessions at the theater, but I always need a snack, if only to occupy my hands. I’ve gone coocoo bananas with the food I’ve snuggled in before. I’ve done a chipotle bowl. I’ve done two gray's papaya hot dogs. I’ve done a bottle of wine with glassware I’ve brought from home. But it’s 4 pm and we’re keeping it simple. I guess Andres was on the same wavelength, because he shows up with starburst minis and hi-chews and nerds gummy clusters. We are full feasting. The movie is lovely. The girl next to me is asleep the entire time. An AMC membership is good for making you feel rangey. We saw the Minecraft movie last week.

We’re hungry post-movie, as one can’t live on bodega gummies, so we head over to Sushi 35 west. It’s a mostly-takeout spot above a vape shop, but the prices are really good, especially for lunch, and the quality of fish is amazing. Andres and I both get a sushi set and we try the same pieces at the same time like it’s an omakase. Every piece is very very good except for the uni which is ocean foam in a bad way. It’s the first round of the NBA playoffs, and The Knicks are playing at MSG around the corner, and Andres gets it in his head that maybe we should try to buy some tickets online and go. They could be cheap once the game starts, he says. I went to art school so that’s none of my business. We decide to wait and see at some dive bar around the corner from Penn Station.

The dive bar is playing dad rock out the wazoo. But it’s like, dad rock spanning decades. Pink Floyd, Poison, Pearl Jam, Creed, Paralyzer by Finger Eleven. A dad rock journey through time. (I think Journey makes an appearance, too.) I’m a die hard dad rock fan, but I err more towards Billy Joel, Elvis Costello, Squeeze. Nonetheless I’m titillated by the ambiance. There’s an older couple behind us who order a full bottle of wine. I’ve been struggling with what to order at dive bars since seltzers have been giving me acid reflux recently (the stomach-based horrors never sleep), and I used to be a vodka soda girl. I panic and settle on a glass of wine, to keep up with the full-bottle joneses. Andres is refreshing Seatgeek every few seconds, but the tickets never get any cheaper so we just go home. The Knicks end up losing that game, but win the series.

Tuesday

I wake up with a headache. This happens sometimes. Revenge of the dive bar wine? I should learn more about sulfates. A Marina Abramovic fan account has reposted my video from yesterday. Little pleasures abound everywhere. When I was getting my nails done last week, I saw a woman at the salon sniffing from this little jar, which turned out to be filled with a bundle of eucalyptus-y herbs. It’s big in Thailand. I ordered one for myself and it’s finally arrived. I try it out. It’s like Vic’s Vaporub, but just for smelling. Maybe this is the new vaping. I’ll probably still vape. But this could be good for like, in addition.

I have some sort of hip joint problem. I’ve started to notice it when I take long meandering walks or sit for too long. What really tipped me off was when I noticed, while trying on gowns for my cousin's wedding, that my left hip has a major dip in it that my right one doesn’t. A set of hip dips are fine and cool and body positive or whatever. A single one is cause for concern. I look like when scientists did that reconstruction of what King Tut’s body was probably like. Anyways, I’m going to the doctor today to be assessed for physical therapy. I pack my new Thai inhalant and a couple of disposable cameras I need to get developed, and hit the road.

The doctor’s appointment is by Union Square, so my plan is to do that, pop down to Sammy Photo Lab, pop back up to get my brows done at the Union Square Sephora, and head back to Brooklyn. The Union Square Mount Sinai is sprawling. I am the youngest person in the waiting room and it’s not even close. I’m seen by the doctor, who is trailed by a girl I’ve been told is “observing today”. She has braces and a blowout and a Van Cleef bracelet and she looks like a Westchester 13 year old who would have kissed the boy I liked at summer camp. She takes my vitals. Blood pressure low, heart rate high. She is later trailed by an identical Westchester Observer of her own.

I lie down and the doctor measures my legs. She grabs my toes and says “hmmm”. I’m embarrassed to be in my Nike Tabis. It turns out my left leg is a full inch shorter than my right. This could either be the source of the problem or a symptom of it. I wonder about having to get lifts attached to the soles of all my left shoes. I do not feel less like King Tut. She runs some other manual tests. A lot of pressing into different spots and asking “does that hurt?”. At one point she asks this while squeezing my right thigh. It doesn’t. She asks again while squeezing my left. I tell her “a lot, but I think it’s because you’re squeezing way harder”. It turns out she is NOT squeezing way harder. Something is amiss.

The Westchester Observers (Becca and Rachel, probably), show me down the hall to imaging. The radiologist gives me the weighty protective vest, which fits like a sandwich sign. She tells me to drop my pants and press my butt against the X-Ray machine. I oblige. It feels like the least fun version of an office photo-copy prank. Then the side. I unbend and turn, and the radiologist comes out of her little radiology booth, strolls up behind me, and bends me back over. For like two seconds she and I are in buttfuck position. The protective x-ray vest hangs off me pendulously. The whole thing is demoralizing. I leave with a referral for twice a week PT.

I’m so hungrythirstydying after the appointment. There’s a Starbucks on the block, and my situation is urgent, so it’ll have to do. Starbucks is hard if you don’t do caffeine. I get an iced honey citrus mint tea, which seems safe, and the sous-vide gruyere bacon egg bites, which I happen to love but only with the mysterious, doesn’t-turn-brown-no-matter-how-long-it’s-been-exposed-to-the-air avocado spread, which I grab as well. The Starbucks is swamped. The egg bites are ready in like 5 minutes, totally normal. But no drink. And no drink in another 5. And another. Biding my time, I do some research on the Starbucks honey citrus mint tea, just to cover my bases caffeine-wise. I’m glad I do, because it DOES in fact have caffeine. I think it’s deceptive and unfair that they don’t mention it. What if I had a heart condition? I don’t, I just have a hip issue and a too-short leg and a bloating problem and acid reflux and a headache. But what if I did? I leave the Starbucks drinkless and hop on the uptown train by accident, which I only notice once we stop at 23rd street.

I get out, frazzled! Between the train snafu and StarbucksGate, there’s no way I’m making it to Sammy’s before my Sephora brow appointment. I know I don’t NEED to develop the photos today, but I feel like I do. Me want content. I frantically look up nearby photo places in the area, and head to one a few blocks away. They seem to mostly do headshots, and I feel like a bit of a chump handing over my two disposables which I get massively overcharged for. But it’s over. Out of sight out of mind, baby. I hop back on the train to Union square and make it to Sephora on time. My aesthetician is a man named Steven. It seems like it’s Steven’s first day on the job. He’s nervous with my brows, he’s sweating all over me, the wax is getting in my hair. I really feel for him. A job that requires fine motor skills is never easy. I didn’t even like folding clothing purchases into shopping bags when I worked retail. Too much pressure. But my eyebrows end up great, and Steven says I have good skin which I’m sure he has to say but also he’s right, I haven’t had a pimple in months. I’m on Spironolactone.

I head back home and get dressed for a quick turnaround. My friend Liv is having a fashion show tonight at Xanadu Roller Rink in Bushwick. I’ve known Liv forever since we’re both city kids, and now she has the cutesiest little shop where she spends all day making ethereal field-fairy style dresses out of vintage bedsheets. I’m in one of her designs tonight, a sheer pink number I pair with a tie-under-the-chin bonnet, and when I pull up to Xanadu someone on the street tells me I look like a princess. Liv is onstage at the sewing machine, making a dress in real time while string musicians play behind her. What a gimmick! I locate Calla (my dear friend, previously seen at The Ick) and her friend Lindsey (Calla’s regular partner in crime; I really enjoy chopping it up with her), and offer them each a sniff from my Thai inhalent. Lindsey likes it, Calla doesn’t get its purpose (which is smelling). Then the show begins, and it’s a fashion show but it’s dance, with a live band of fuckboy-looking musicians who scare me playing surf rock and dancers galloping around onstage showing off clothes. I’m not going to lie to you, I hate dance. But I don’t hate this. Maybe because I like clothes.

Post show, everyone’s hanging around the roller rink. It’s not a “wheels night”. Liability. Bummer. I spot my wonderful photographer friend, Matt Weinburger, and we take some pictures and video, and Lindsey takes pictures of us taking pictures and video, and Matt takes pictures and video of Calla, and Lindsey and I take video of Matt taking pictures and video of Calla, and Lindsay asks about cameras for taking pictures and video and we’re all taking pictures and video. The show is sponsored by Unicorn Snot cosmetics, which like, how tumblr and invigorating, and we haul over to their table and smear lots of glitter on ourselves and take more pictures and video of that, and then I get a hot dog and Calla gets poké. To engage with roller rink poké but not Thai herb sniffing is wild to me. Then my headache returns with a vengeance and I have to go home. I post “What has two legs and one is slightly shorter than the other? This guy!” from my bed.

Wednesday

The headache is still here, and I’m dizzy and weak standing up. I feel like I’m about to faint in the shower. Last summer I fainted while waiting in line for the L’industrie Pizza pop up at Meat Hook butcher shop. I had to be hauled into a nearby electronics store. When I came to, I managed to get a slice but it wasn’t even delicious. Shameful run all around. I run through my act for The Meg Spectre Spectacular, which has crept up on me and is now tomorrow. I’ve done this show a zillion times, but I still try to rehearse it as much as possible because what if I get onstage and I go totally blank and then everyone starts booing me and then I throw up and then I shit my pants from the force of the throwing up and then I start crying and saying “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry!!!”. Andres and I are supposed to see Paco Amoroso and Ca7riel tonight (Argentine superstars, of Tiny Desk and “¿Tatuaje en el cuello? Si! ¿El pelo negro? Sí! ¿De silicona? Sí! ¿Se vieron anoche? Sí! Fuck!” tik tok sound fame) but i'm not sure yet if I can swing it based on how I’m feeling right now. I wear my Boca Juniors soccer jersey and little bloomers just in case. I’m the Blokette final boss.

I head to therapy, where I’m lethargic as all hell in Dr. P’s chair. Not introspective at all. No revelations. I don’t even cry, and I usually cry. I mention how I’m feeling physically, as well as the low blood pressure high heart rate of it all from yesterday’s doctor’s appointment. She double checks with her own arm cuff and stethoscope because I guess if you went to medical school that’s the sort of thing you might like to keep in your office, even if now your job is mostly talking to children who aren't reaching their potential at home or at school but could really succeed if only they applied themselves. (I’ve been having therapy with Dr. P since I was 15.) My stats are the same. Low blood pressure, high heart rate. She thinks it’s classic dehydration. Too much hard living I guess, too many operas and Easters. I’m a little bit geeked on the idea of being severely dehydrated right before a big show. It’s just like Justin Bieber on the Purpose world tour! Celebrity stuff! I do feel like I’m always having medical problems right before a Spectacular. They love me at Urgent Care.

There’s a Juice Generation by Dr. P’s office. I’ve always eyed the coconuts that they keep in the fridge, but I’ve never gotten one because the idea of walking down the streets of New York City holding a big coconut with a straw in it seems really humiliating. But I’m in a medical crisis! Optics be damned! It’s now or never! It turns out I needn’t have worried, since they just crack open the coconut and put the juice into a cup along with the meat for you. So actually it’s a delightful and thoughtful treat. I call Andres. He’s at his parents’ house on the Upper West Side and wants to know the game plan, so I head there to rest and regroup and figure out if I’m gonna go to this show or not. On the train, the coconut is my religion. I am absolutely LOVING this coconut.

At Andres’ parents’, I lie down and have two lemon lime gatorades (which people call yellow gatorade but I always thought of as green) with Cha Cha. Cha Cha is his family’s labradoodle. The Upper West Side is the labradoodle capital of the world. Cha Cha is black and white and dog all over, and when she’s in the bed she snorts and rolls around and digs and digs and digs—to where, I could not tell you. Cha Cha and I are peers in the industry. After ruminating, I decide that I really do want to go to the show, since I would hate to think that I’ve ever missed out on anything ever at all. So we get ourselves together and head downtown.

In the lobby of the venue, Andres sees two acquaintances. Tall guys, nondescript faces. They’re acting like we’ve met before. I think I have a rare and terminal type of facial blindness where it only applies to my boyfriend’s friends. They ask if he put me up to wearing the Boca Juniors jersey, which of course not, I just know how to dress for a theme and am blessed with this foresight even when ailing and dying and being Justin Bieber on tour. Andres and I head into the main room and find our spots, which are really not bad at all until, a minute before the show starts, two tall guys wriggle in a couple rows in front of us and oh my god it’s Andres’ plain-faced acquaintances. Everyone around us is pissed off, but none more than me since I have a personal connection to the tragedy. The show starts, and my vantage point is almost parody. Paco Amoroso is on the right side of the stage, Ca7riel is on the left, and the acquaintances' heads are perfectly in front of one and the other. It looks like Mystery Science Theater 3000. I wriggle through the crowd a little and do manage to catch some glimpses of Paco and Ca7riel. Ultimately, they’re giving a really spirited show. Ca7riel has this bowl-cut mullet situation, making him the second musical act in a row I’ve seen with the haircut, since last month we saw Eurovision casualty Joost Klein. This also makes Paco and Ca7riel the second show I’ve seen in a row where the performer is performing in a language I can’t sing along to. I don’t mind. I do have a 435-day Spanish learning streak on Duolingo. And I’ve got a show to do tomorrow…

Thursday

Show day show day show day. Show days are very aaaaaaaaa oh my god oh my god oh no kill me now internally, but they present themselves externally through a very long, chill, languid set of actions. Extra slow gua sha, extra slow nuface. I take care to really drink in the words of @lebaneseangel22 (“I had a fat year in middle school, and now I have these lines on my neck.” she explains. A lot to think about.)Extra long shower. Maybe more yellow goo than usual, even though that’s probably bad for my PH or something. I drink my throat coat tea, two tea bags at a time. I use my vocal steamer, which looks like an asthma inhaler and acts like a vape. I always vainly imagine that by virtue of one-two punch of vocal steamer and throat coat tea, by the time I get on stage I will be a Mariah Carey. It’s important to have dreams and try to shoot for them. Even if you miss you still land amongst the stars.

I need to have lunch, but I’m especially fearful of bloat on days like this. Since I still don’t know what the cause is (where you at, Dr. Kornbluth?) this doesn’t leave me with many options, so I decide to just throw caution to the wind. Andres picked me up a packet of lox earlier this week, and it’s giving me all sorts of ideas. I saw this girl on tik tok slice up an onion, top the slices with lox, cheddar cheese, and capers, and douse the whole thing with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. She called it “onion charcuterie”, and made really sumptuous slurping noises as she ate, which made it seem very savory and delicious. I would never do that with an onion because that’s heinous, but with cucumber it sounds nice, so I start assembling my plate. I use a mandolin slicer which is one of my favorite things to do, appliances-wise. Assembling all the little stacks has me feeling like I’m making a zen garden. It’s really taking the edge off. When I eat it, I make sumptuous slurping noises.

Hauling my stuff over to KGB Bar Red Room is a hassle. I have a big Ikea bag with all my costume changes, my prop phone, my baby doll Aubergine, my green room humidifier, et cetera et cetera. I’m in my big show bows, which feel a little passé but are a signature of the show at this point. I’m too scared to put them in the bag. Now I’m the coquette final boss. They stand on their own with fabric stiffening spray, but that also means they could crumple and wrinkle easily. They can’t get wet either. If I had a show day in the rain I’d have to cancel. It’s a little chilly today, so I put on this big stupid Dollskill leopard print faux fur coat with hot pink trim that I got in 2019. It was the thing to do at the time. I lug my big bag outside, fur coat on, bows on, and wait for my Uber. They’re filming something on my block, and I’m almost definitely in the shot for an extended period of time. If you see someone in the background of a movie next year who matches my description, please reach out and let me know.

Albert and I do sound check at the venue. Albert’s my friend and sound guy. He’s great to have around because he’ll always offer you a lollipop from his Hello Kitty Pouch. We’ve done this rigamarole a zillion times together, but you still always gotta check. I like sound check because lights are up in the house, and the dark is scary. My openers start arriving. They’re all stand up girlies, all gorgeous, and I’ve met none of them before today. Very intimidating stuff. I greet them, walk them through the show (we don’t flash a light on the openers when they’re out of set time, and it’s caused some confusion in the past) then do a lot of hiding out in the green room. The green room is a fun activity because it’s got one of those vaudevillian mirrors with the lights framing it, so if you’re looking at yourself in it and you happen to have a curly bob, you’ll feel like you’re Shirley Temple about to lift the spirits of a Great Depression crowd. I’m huffing my vocal steamer, huffing my vape, and huffing straight from the humidifier in rapid succession. Steammaxxing. I gotta get in the zone, bro. I run through my songs. It’s very in my head very tralalala and I remember I still never took my dress to the cleaners, nor the skirt with the Glossier Superdew stain. People are arriving. Andres is taking names at the door. I’m taking a beta blocker. My pre-show playlist is on shuffle outside. One of the reason to run your own comedy show is to be able to make an audience listen to “We Made You” by Eminem beforehand. I’m locking in I’m locking in I’m locking in. Andres Texts me. It’s time for the show to begin. I step outside the green room and run to the stage. Eep!

WHAT MEG SPECTRE THINKS YOU SHOULD DO

• Get that medical problem you’ve been having checked out before you get kicked off your family’s health insurance

• Under 40 night at The Metropolitan Opera. The fall lineup just dropped!

• Come to The Meg Spectre Spectacular, Thursday 5/22 at the KGB Bar Red Room! Crazy good lineup this month, featuring Ivy Wolk, Willie Zabar, Amelia Ritthaler and Megan Bitchell! TICKETS HERE