In 2015, I started watching the TV show Younger about a recently divorced woman in her 40’s who lies about her age to get her foot in the door of a New York City publishing house. I started watching because of Debi Mazar and Hilary Duff however there was something about the young love interest, Nico Tortorella, that drew me in.
Great acting ability. Yeah, that’s it.
When I heard that Nico was part of the LGBTQ community, with they and their pronouns, the Coronavirus quarantine gave me time to download their book “All Of It Is You: Poetry” on Kindle and get an autographed copy of “Space Between: Explorations Of Love, Sex, And Fluidity” from Barnes & Noble online. Were they more than just a pretty face?
“All Of It Is You: Poetry” is broken down in three sections: body, earth and universe. The body poems are about various organs, secretions and emotions. While the earth poems are about minerals, seasons and elements. They cover the planets, astrology and space in their universe section. Many of the poems are artsy and deep with words I was too busy to define, ain’t nobody got time for that during a pandemic. “Animal” is a fav, dedicated to Nico’s dog Sun, showing a sweeter side but the best is when they play on words and prose funny shit…there’s literally a hysterical poem called “Shit”.
“All Of It Is You: Poetry” hints at who Nico is but “Space Between: Explorations Of Love, Sex, And Fluidity” lets you into their inner workings. Like I always say, you don’t really know someone until you know what’s the first item they stuck up their butt hole, in Nico’s case that would be a spoon used for oil pulling. What’s oil pulling? I’m not Googling it out of fear of what I might find.
Or their ability to cause an instant heart-on.
I found that I related to the beginning of “Space Between” quite a bit with Nico’s struggle to figure out their sexual identity and dealings with a homophobic and racist family life. However they lost me once they started talking about wealth (one show paid them $20,000 an episode, with a job like that I could live a year on a few weeks of work or retire after a few years), alcoholism, cocaine binges (my Birthday Cake Oreos finally got delivered, so I understand addictions), and group sex parties (I had trouble getting one person to sleep with me, I didn’t know multiple partners was an option). This book could have been called “Nico! The Bisexual Kardashian.”
The bottom line (or top line, no judgement here), in my gay opinion, is that Nico is a “queer, nonbinary, bisexual or pansexual, happily married, polyamorous/non-monogamous human being” who is battling the “archaic patriarchal rules” from their rich, admittedly white-privileged perspective with modern-hippy ideology. More power to them.
You go girl!
