Crying snacks
When you’re crying for a long, long time
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I had another newsletter (also about crying) planned for this week – about when my mom died 11 years ago, how I process my grief through food. This week I’ve been sidetracked, emotionally, by HBO’s The Last of Us. And I need to talk about it with all of you.
If you haven’t watched it yet, please jump to the recipes for crying snacks below. You can watch Episode 3, Long, Long Time in isolation from the rest of the series, but I love the entire story and recommend you watch The Last of Us from the beginning.
I love the The Last of Us games – I even dressed up like Joel in a YouTube video! – so knowing where the story is going, everyone is going to need crying snacks for at least the next six Sundays. I think the finale will be a bigger event than Game of Thrones.
You can watch this post on YouTube as well:
Much will be written about Long, Long Time – the third episode of HBO’s the Last of Us. It’s the best hour of television produced in my lifetime. I’m not a TV critic, but I am a gay man.
Growing up it was obvious that I’m gay. I think we all knew when I stayed inside to play Electronic Dream Phone with my sisters instead of playing soccer. My mom was both extremely religious and homophobic. She told me not to move to Toronto for University, since Toronto would make me a gay. It was “the headquarters for the whores and the gays.” I came out to her unintentionally, while I was driving us home from IKEA. It was Pride Month and the radio was talking about gay people. After her rants I asked why she was so hateful towards gay people.
“Would you kiss a boy?” she asked. She quizzed me on if I had ever given a blowjob or if I have “had sex in the butt.” I avoided her questions, I avoided driving into the median, I avoided letting her hate into my heart. She never accepted that I’m gay. Even in hospice care, even after taking her to every chemo appointment for 2 years, her last words to me were “I need you to improve and be a better person and you know what I mean.”
It wasn’t the first time she said it. It was the last.
While hurtful and cruel, her reaction didn’t define my relationship with myself. I am proud of being a gay man, but being gay has never been a struggle for me, the way that being straight isn’t a struggle for most heterosexual people. I’m gay, but I am also a cook, a writer, a former CEO, a gamer. I am not a gay cook. I am a cook.
I’ve tried to live an interesting life where being gay is often the last bullet point in the summary of who I am. I am a boring, single, middle-aged gay man who believes in monogamy. I don’t enjoy being sexualized or objectified by strangers. This often means I don’t participate in the gay community. This means I don’t post selfies on Instagram because of the inevitable messages I get. These gays don’t care about me, my life, or my food – they only care about Marko the sexual object. This isn’t unique to gay men, it’s what women live with every day.
I grew up in a strange transition period for gay rights. Same sex marriage was made law in Ontario in June 2003, a few months before Outbreak Day in HBO’s The Last of Us (in the game, Outbeak Day is in 2013). Same sex marriage was made law across Canada in 2005, after my first year of University. Growing up my oldest sister had a lot of gay friends, so being gay has always been normal to me. Queer as Folk and Will and Grace were on TV. My world is very different from the world Bill and Frank would have grown up in. If Bill and Frank were 40 in 2003, their 20s would have been during the AIDS crisis of the 80s. They’ve already seen all their friends die once. 80s means trouble.
Frank landing in Bill’s trap after traveling in a group of ten – the only one left alive – is both a tragic metaphor for the AIDS crisis and a terrible cruelty for the character to live through that experience twice.
Being gay, like any other label, is about negotiating what society wants to force upon you against who you want to be. Society loves to tell me who I should be, how I should act, how I should dress, where I should love, who I should love. I want to be me.
Gay men are stereotyped into understandable buckets of gays to create an understanding of something people don’t want to understand – that love is love. There’s a snap-to-grid gay man you’re allowed to be. Gay men enforce these classifications on themselves, much like feminist stereotypes created by the patriarchy that force communities to divide themselves instead of come together. In media, gay men are allowed to be thin and flamboyant, hypersexualized fit men, or non-sexualized bears. They are usually helpful and designy. They hold their arms up like a T-Rex. Their stories are often only about how they, and everyone else, are in relationship with their sexuality.
In A Long, Long Time, Bill (played by Nick Offerman, who is straight) and Frank (played by Murray Bartlett, who is gay) have a beautiful, long relationship. The story is not driven by their relationships with their sexualities. The story is driven by their relationship with the apocalypse: the story opens with Bill’s life as a prepper, Frank’s arrival in Bill’s trap, Bill and Frank falling in love, both finding a reason to live that’s more than simply staying alive. They fight off the worst of humanity – not because they are gay, but because society collapsed. And they lose to an impossible autoimmune condition that has no treatment, notably not HIV, but MS or ALS.
And of course, they have dinner. They have wine. They have strawberries.
“Noticing things is what I do”
Bill survived outbreak day the way he lived his romantic life, with impenetrable walls to keep himself alone. His life is simple, though without meaning and without fear. Bill is not coded through gay stereotypes. He’s well groomed, but conservative. He’s gruff, but he has a wine collection. He turns on the local natural gas supply so he can cook. I often think about what it would mean to live off grid after the end of the world – I would put in solar panels and batteries for my induction stove. I would probably go to Home Depot, too.
When Frank appears there is a beautiful set of interactions that will be familiar to most gay men. I had one this week when I went to buy a baguette. There’s a smile, a bit too wide. Lingering eye contact then looking away. The questions gay men ask themselves in daily life, which is made visible in the post-apocalyptic landscape – are you like me, or will you hurt me? Another glance, a specific type of smile is a confirmation.
I see you. I’m not good at lying.
And yet my walls remain as tall as Bill’s, but my apocalypse is created in my own mind.
Gay communities are not distributed like heterosexual communities. Often gay men move to the larger cities, for safety and community. Like a Quarantine Zone, but there’s no threat of zombies. Gay communities are keeping out the physical, mental, and emotional monsters of homophobia. Kitchener-Waterloo, where I live, is a large city on paper but ends up with a smaller than expected amount of gays. Most moved to Toronto. Like Frank trying to find the Boston QZ, the safety of migration becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In Kitchener we don’t have a single gay bar, let alone an entire neighbourhood.
I’ve been single now for 4 years, as many as Bill before he meets Frank. Our very real pandemic has made dating difficult. Initially for obvious reasons, but now that society is piecing itself back together, the single men interested in monogamy are withdrawn. Everyone is too afraid to be attached. Afraid it will be taken away again at any moment. Whether that trauma is from lockdowns, past relationships, or that feeling of never being enough due to the cruelty of homophobic parenting is up for debate. It’s probably a mix of all three. For a while my therapist helped me through these questions for myself. Recently they’ve changed, instead of asking about me, she asks about the guys I date. “What is his relationship like with his father?”
She’s taking notes right now for our next chat. (Hi.)
“That’s not you. This is you.”
Frank finds a Linda Rondstadt piano book. For people my age, this would be like finding a Madonna, Lady Gaga, or Dua Lipa piano book mixed in with Bach – a gay rights icon, a pop culture queen. With Craig Mazin’s goals for the song he wanted in mind, my modern take would be Hang With Me by Robyn, which is so, so sad. Frank plays Long, Long Time – comically poorly – to egg Bill on to show what he’s got. The song is intensely lonely, but in this context also hopeful.
Bill, for lack of a better word, comes out to Frank after tenderly playing Long, Long Time on the piano. “There was no girl.” Another confirmation of what’s unsaid between them. You can see all of Bill’s walls come down in that one moment. When you’ve been single for a while there’s a crushing despair mixed with the hope of a new relationship that only hits you when you’re all in. It is difficult to accept that you will have to feel again. Both actors create a brilliant view into the beautiful and terrible things that love will make you do, which is what the story of The Last of Us is really about.
“I wasn’t scared until I met you.”
By removing society from the story – literally – all of the preconceived notions of how to discuss what it means to be gay are gone. There is no one else. The only two people left in this world, at least in Bill’s town, are gay. They do not need to be othered. There is no one to other them from.
“Then love me the way I want to be loved”
Which brings us to crying. This episode upset me deeply. A large part because of the beautiful storytelling, and the tragically romantic ending.
In the official podcast, Mazin says explains a line – “This isn’t the tragic suicide at the end of the play.” – referencing Mart Crowley’s play The Boys in The Band.
“There is a tradition of essentially equating homosexuality with tragedy. And that a gay man couldn’t possibly just age and be happy and live long. And it was important for me to have Bill literally say, that’s not what this is.”
– Craig Mazin
This episode hits me so hard because it shows a future I never imagined for myself, never allowed myself to imagine. Even though their lives end in suicide, Bill and Frank lived a beautiful life together, with romance at the end of the world. They get 17 years in a world where it isn’t guaranteed that you will even have a tomorrow. I hope everyone can experience that kind of love in their lifetime. I hope I get to, too.
I have a full life with great friendships. But it would be nice to have my person. I also sometimes wonder if it's easier, like Bill before Frank, to accept that won’t ever happen for me. But if two gay men can find each other in the apocalypse, surely I can find someone in Kitchener.
For those who have played the game, it has a much darker take on their relationship. Bill is just as paranoid, but when you meet him he is alone. You learn in a letter that Frank left Bill – Bill is too rigid, too set in his ways. You get a glimpse of this fight in the show, when Frank wants to paint. To leave Bill, Frank sets out to get a car battery. He is bitten by the infected. He hangs himself, rather than lose himself to illness. Like in the show, Frank follows this arc of choosing how he wants to live and end his life. But Bill has two very different lives: miserable and alone, or full of joy and with purpose. Satisfied.
“I know I don’t seem like the type.” “No, you do.”
There are many moments in the show that, for me, feel pulled out of my own life in a way I haven’t seen in any media before. Frank gently touching Bill’s beard. Holding hands on the couch, Frank’s nervously comforting thumb movement. Having sex on a first date, but explaining you’re not a whore, because there’s a whole range of sexuality where sex is related to emotional and mental connection, not solely physical attraction.
I’ve always been comfortable being gay – I had a boyfriend in highschool. But that isn’t true for many guys. I dated a guy, who was 29 at the time, and he had never had a partner – man or woman. Another guy I dated spent his 20s engaged to a woman. Last summer I went on a few dates with a guy, nearing 40, who has never introduced a partner to his family or friends (and still isn’t out). Bill’s story feels like people I know.
I think this episode is breaking into popular culture the way Brokeback Mountain did because it breaks the mold of the social stereotypes of gay men and gay relationships, by simply being a relationship. Bill and Frank never saw Brokeback Mountain – it never existed in the show universe, it came out in 2005, 2 years after Outbreak Day.
Bill and Frank’s relationship is a universal love story. It’s what we’ve been trying to say for decades.
Love is love.
Let me love the way I want to.
Representation matters
The gaming community has a loud, vocal minority that is opposed to representation that doesn’t look like straight, cisgendered white men; or sexualized, objectified, straight cisgendered women. They claim the mere act of other people who live in this world being represented in media is political, while their request to erase us from media is… somehow… not? The contradiction is intentional, to keep you arguing. Their goal is to have power over others, not an internally consistent system.
When The Last of Us (the game) came out in 2013, Bill’s story was there, but not in your face. The Last of Us dives deeper into the lives of LGBTQ+ people through the rest of Part I (game 1) and Part II (game 2, which will likely be several seasons of television). Neil Druckmann, the creator, has stood by this and doubled down on representation despite massive hate and vitriol directed at him online. His advocacy matters. Craig Mazin’s commitment to showing what middle aged gay relationships look like matters. Casting gay actors matters. Referencing historical gay works matters. If you listen to the behind the episode podcast you’ll learn the great lengths they took to do this right and it shows.
Long, Long Time is the most emotionally impactful piece of television I’ve ever watched. It changed me, and helped me feel seen in a way only A Little Life had before it (A Little Life is a tragically beautiful novel, but as masochistic to the reader as The Last of Us is to the player. Proceed with every possible trigger warning and bring your crying snacks.)
What’s striking to me in the days since this episode aired is how it has spread faster than a cordyceps infection. My straight friends are watching it. My straight friends have told me they are crying. We are all talking about crying. We are crying together about a gay love story.
It’s a beautiful love story in a world sorely lacking in love.
I started this post by discussing how gay people are stereotyped, othered, to help straight people make sense of something they can’t understand. My belief is that this episode has done a substantial amount of good. “Love me the way I want to be loved” – that is something everyone can understand. My hope is this leads to a broader level of acceptance and increased empathy – especially after years of increasing divisions, violence, and hate.
And this is why representation matters. Yes, for me to feel seen. But also for everyone else to see me. To know that I don’t need to be who my mom or my society wants me to be. I need to be as I am. A whole human.
I am enough.
I'm taking a ride with my best friend
I hope he never lets me down again
He knows where he's taking me
Taking me where I want to be
I'm taking a ride with my best friend
– Never Let Me Down Again by Depeche Mode (1987)
This song played on Joel’s radio at the end of episode 1. The playlists were Frank’s idea. The level of depth and cleverness in the production of this show is astounding.
Recipes for crying snacks
After the episode I was awake for several hours. I rarely drink anymore – my last relationship was with an emotionally and physically abusive alcoholic. But I had a glass of wine, for myself, for Bill and Frank. I had snacks. I woke up still full of feelings on Monday.
I watched it again, ugly crying with every tender moment of joy, knowing it would be fleeting, knowing it would be beautiful.
This won’t be the last episode with collective tears. So to make it through the next six weeks I have put together some crying snacks. I asked on Instagram what folks eat for crying snacks. I think there’s a few categories that emerged.
Mini Eggs reign supreme as the ultimate crying snack. I think they have all the attributes of what people want: they are crispy (not crunchy), salty (because you cried all your salt alway), sweet (because of your heartache), and soft/melty (who has the capacity to chew after that?).
The top submitted options follow this logic:
Ice cream: soft, melty, sweet
Cookies: crispy, soft, sweet (maybe salty!)
Chips and popcorn: crispy, salty
Casseroles: soft, melty, salty (maybe crispy!)
Potatoes in any form: soft, crispy, salty (maybe melty!)
Cereal: crispy, sweet
Charcuterie board: salty, crispy
Cheeseburger, specifically McDonalds (one person specific a Big Mac and fries): (soft, melty, salty)
Here’s what I make when I’m upset.
Brown butter oatmeal cookies
I have these cookies in my freezer at all times. You are never more than 12 minutes from crying snacks. You can view the recipe on my website. This is the third YouTube video I ever made, so it’s not great, but I’m learning.
Chocolate chip cookies are also great, I don’t have my own recipe. I use Claire’s. Her recipe is perfect.
Stovetop Popcorn
I have a corn sensitivity, so I don’t eat popcorn as much as I want to. But I will eat popcorn as my crying snack. You can shove popcorn in your face while ugly crying, half of it falling into your cushions, half on your floor. The chaos hides your tears.
Popcorn pops between 400°F and 460°F degrees. You will have best results using a fat with a smoke point higher than that range. Avocado oil smokes at 520°F, beef tallow at 480°F, ghee at 465°F, peanut oil 450°F. Olive oil and coconut oil range from 350-410°F depending on how refined they are. Butter and virgin coconut oil smoke at around 350°F and should be avoided for popping popcorn. If the oil smokes it will taste bad. If you want your popcorn to taste like butter, add butter as your topping – not your fat for popping.
Ingredients
1/4 cup fat, I generally use olive oil because it’s what I have
1/2 cup popcorn kernels – makes 15 cups (3.75 quarts) of popcorn
Method
Heat a large pot on medium-high heat, ideally use a pot twice the size of your finished volume of popcorn. 1/2 cup of popcorn kernels makes 3.75 quarts of popcorn, so use a 5–7 quart pot. If you only have a smaller pot, or you want to make a lot of popcorn, work in smaller batches.
Add in the oil and 3-4 popcorn kernels. Cover. When the kernels pop, add the rest and put the cover back on.
Slide the pot back and forth, swirl it around, keep it moving to prevent the popcorn from burning. When the popping slows to 2–3 seconds apart, take it off the heat. Immediately remove the lid to release the steam (some popcorn may leap at you) and transfer for a large bowl.
Toppings
I like the fake cheese salty nature of nutritional yeast, it’s like Smartfood but actually healthy. But go with melted butter and salt. Or plain salt and black pepper is great. Shichimi togarashi is excellent. Garlic powder, smoked paprika, and sumac is always a hit. You can even buy white cheddar powder online. Pick the flavours you love, you are the one eating your feelings.
Fake cheese
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
1 tsp salt
Butter
1/4 cup butter, melted (you could also add garlic, or use my pizza garlic/thyme oil)
1 tsp salt
Spicy
1 tbsp shichimi togarashi
1 tsp salt (if your shichimi doesn’t have salt)
Salt and Pepper
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
Savoury Mix
1 tbsp garlic powder (not garlic salt)
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp dried sumac
1 tsp salt
If you have a very large bowl, toss the popcorn and toppings in there. If you do not have a very large bowl, wait until the pot you popped the popcorn in has cooled down, then toss everything in there.
You might be thinking, “wow, Marko, that is a lot of popcorn recipes for someone who shouldn’t be eating corn!” And you would be correct.
Mac and Cheese
I’ve been making this same mac and cheese recipe for 20 years. It’s warm, it’s comforting, it freezes well. You can tailor it to your tastes. I like to freeze it in single-serving ramekins so I am never more than 30 minutes away from a comforting solo meal.
Cheese sauce
3 tbsp butter
3 tbsp flour
6 cups milk
350g/3 cups grated cheese, I like a mix of strongly flavoured melty cheeses, like gruyere, emmental, and gouda. By all means stick to cheddar. If you’re in Ontario, look for Gunn’s Hill’s 5 Brothers and Handeck which make an excellent cheese sauce together.
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 tsp cayenne pepper (adjust to your spice tolerance, this is mild)
1 tsp salt
Fresh black pepper (use white pepper if you don’t want to see the pepper)
Noodles
1 box of pasta, I prefer shells above all other pasta shapes for mac and cheese, but follow your heart.
Method
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
To make cheese sauce, first make béchamel.
Heat a 3.5 quart or larger pot on medium-high heat. Add in the butter and heat it until it foams.
Add the flour and whisk, cooking for 1–2 minutes – this is a roux.
Reduce heat to medium and add the milk very slowly, a few tablespoons at a time. This will help you prevent lumps. Each time you add milk the roux will change in texture substantially. This will keep happening, moving from lumpy to smooth with each addition. After you add 2 cups of milk in this slow, tedious process then you should have a smooth, fluid mixture. Then you can add the rest of the milk all at once without it clumping. If you add all of the milk at once at the beginning it will be lumpy and nothing will make it not lumpy. You need to save your crying to television, not the kitchen.
Increase the heat to medium-high, stirring constantly, until it reaches a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook for 3–5 minutes. At this point the texture will slightly thicken and the cook time will cook out any remaining starch flavour. Whisk the entire time, ensuring nothing sticks to the bottom, to avoid burning the milk.
Remove from the heat, add nutmeg, cayenne, salt, and pepper and mix.
Fold in the cheese. Add all of the cheese and stir until homogeneous.
Taste and adjust seasoning.
You can make this in advance and keep it in the fridge.
Boil the noodles
Heat a large pot of water on the stove
Cook the noodles per the package, then drain and immediately put into ice water. This is a technique I also use for lasagna which helps the noodles retain their chew instead of becoming mushy. You can also try slightly undercooking the noodles in the hopes they won’t be mushy, but they will be. You can also accept mushy noodles. I have.
Drain the noodles.
Assemble
Add the noodles to an oven safe 13x9 baking dish. Pour the cheese sauce in. Fold to combine.
You can top this with more cheese, or some garlic bread croutons (not baked), or go right into the oven.
Bake
Bake for an hour until bubbling and golden on top. Allow to cool slightly serving, which helps prevent it from being boiling lava hot and slightly firms up the sauce.
Leftovers will be much firmer the next day. I like to slice the leftovers and then re-heat in a frying pan in some butter, so you get a really crispy side.
You could also assemble this on the stove, the sauce will be much looser than if baked. If you want to freeze it, freeze before baking. You can also freeze the béchamel.