This episode, I read the final chapter, Sky Holds the Sun, from my nonfiction manuscript, F*ck Bubble, to my good friend, Desiree, in Park City, Utah.


Sky Holds the Sun is about the bigger story, the one when, after everything, it all begins to make sense. It's about the magic of happenstance, of being in the right place at the right time, about forgiving oneself of bad choices; of reemerging with the natural flow, of being led home to the source. Above all, it's about how saying goodbye can also mean entering into a new world with the added benefit of knowledge. 


I met Desiree at our small hippie boarding school in Southwest Colorado, where we were both students. It was the early nineties and we were still teenagers. Years later, when so many of the main events that became F*ck Bubble were happening, Desiree and I were both living in LA. She'd hear all about Mack and Gunner and all of the ongoing drama when we'd go on a camping trip at Sequoia National Park or out to dinner at Sunset Junction. Despite my frustrations, she was always a calming and supportive force. 


We talk all about our super unique high school and our (quasi-mutual) crushes, and how those events back in the nineties defined us in so many ways. Above all else, this chapter is about saying goodbye, and not just to Mack and Gunner. It's about saying goodbye by reading the signs and realigning oneself with the power of Nature. Nobody articulates this, or expresses this, better than Desiree.


Thanks for listening to F*ck Bubble. Thanks to Danny Vitali whose track "The Hollow" opens each episode. And thanks so very much to all of my friends.


You can find out more about F*ck Bubble and my other creative projects on my website,  http://brianpearson.net/writings. 


If you'd like to support the podcast and the writing, please check out my Patreon page, https://www.patreon.com/user?u=80977299. 

Episode 17 of F*ck Bubble comes in two parts, both with my friend Joe in Jersey City. 


This second half of the episode begins with the reading of Chapter 18, Arrowhead. This chapter recounts some magical thinking employed on my part re: Gunner while staying at friend's mountain cabin high above Los Angeles. As snow falls at night, a miscommunication of intent leads to hard truths and a reemergence of self.


You can find out more about F*ck Bubble and my other creative projects on my website,  http://brianpearson.net/writings. 


If you'd like to support the podcast and the writing, please check out my Patreon page, https://www.patreon.com/user?u=80977299. 

Episode 17 of F*ck Bubble comes in two parts, both with my friend Joe in Jersey City. 


Joe and I met as college students in Boston during the mid-nineties. He's only ten days younger than me (although he still looks like he's twenty-two). We talk about what it was like coming out during the dawn of the internet age; the clubs (Avalon, Quest, Campus) we frequented and relied on far more than our screens for social connectivity.  Our halcyon days but also an invaluable education. 


By the late-nineties, Joe and I had both moved to NYC. We'd often hang out together at nights/bars like Beige, Boiler Room and Pyramid. Then, in the summer of 1998, both of us just twenty-five, Joe was diagnosed with cancer. He tells that story, parts of which I was present for, parts of which I didn't know about till now. 


Joe, who lives life as a series of bold and uncompromising metamorphoses, who in so many ways encapsulates the era during which we both came out, was the perfect friend to read the penultimate chapter of F*ck Bubble to, to help put it all in glorious but simple perspective. 


Part II will begin with the reading of Chapter 18, Arrowhead. This chapter recounts some magical thinking employed on my part re: Gunner. In short, a miscommunication of intent leads to a reemergence of self.


You can find out more about F*ck Bubble and my other creative projects on my website,  http://brianpearson.net/writings. 


If you'd like to support the podcast and the writing, please check out my Patreon page, https://www.patreon.com/user?u=80977299.

This episode with Rupert in Norway comes in two parts. In this second half, I get right into the reading of Chapter 17, Rest Area, from my nonfiction manuscript, F*ck Bubble. 


This chapter of F*ck Bubble documents the vapor trail my relationship with Mack became shortly after our tense and revealing last meeting in San Francisco in May of 2017. No longer a physical presence in my life, Mack continues to linger via text for days: the probing and wanting specter of a man I'd met in an East Village gay bar some eighteen years prior, slowly disappearing into the warm and protective San Joaquin Valley sky. 

Inspired by the reading, our shared experiences, and his own inimitable form of observation and innate knowing, Rupert "drops the science," offering keen insight and raw wisdom. A fantastic conversation that I'm excited to share. 


You can find out more about F*ck Bubble and my other creative projects on my website,  http://brianpearson.net/writings. 


If you'd like to support the podcast and the writing, please check out my Patreon page, https://www.patreon.com/user?u=80977299.

This episode with my friend Rupert in Norway comes in two parts. 


In this first half, Rupert and I go deep, talking about our meeting dance-floor tangential at Mardi Gras in Sydney, Australia, in 2002, when we were both living there full-time. I would say that perhaps more than any of my other beloved friends who've been on the podcast, my relationship with Rupert really encapsulates the underlying themes of the manuscript: the unseen forces at play as we move through life; the quest for euphoria and beauty; the need for detachment; the flowing nature of all things.  


Part II of this episode will go right into the reading of Chapter 17, Rest Area.


You can find out more about F*ck Bubble and my other creative projects on my website,  http://brianpearson.net/writings. 


If you'd like to support the podcast and the writing, please check out my Patreon page, https://www.patreon.com/user?u=80977299.

This episode, I'll be reading chapter 16, Parklife, from my non-fiction manuscript, F*ck Bubble to my friend Sam in the Shreveport, Louisiana.


Parklife documents one of the most cinematic and dramatic lunches I've ever had, and I didn't even eat anything. After an already heady visit with Mack in San Francisco, I agreed to meet him one more time at a fantastically stuck-in-the-seventies Korean restaurant in the Richmond. By the time we left the restaurant, everything about Mack and me had changed, had come to pass, had as if been absorbed into the SF fog.


I met Sam in New Orleans back in 2000, what ended up being one of the most surreal and meaningful summers of my life. Sam was a big part of it all. We talk about that summer and all that has followed since.


You can find out more about F*ck Bubble and my other creative projects on my website,  http://brianpearson.net/writings. 


If you'd like to support the podcast and the writing, please check out my Patreon page, https://www.patreon.com/user?u=80977299. 

This episode, I'll be reading the 15th chapter, Mist, from my non-fiction manuscript, F*ck Bubble to my friend Rocky in the Catskill Mountains of Upstate, New York. 


In May of 2017 I traveled up to SF to help Missy with a weeks-long work project. There, both my illusions and intuition caught up with me. Truth, clarity, and acceptance arrived with the help of my friend Rocky who, without his knowing, showed me just what a cruel and pointless game I was caught up in with Mack and Gunner, and how vital it was that I get out. 


I met Rocky while working at an art gallery in Springs, NY, in 2006. He was having his first  solo exhibition there, and I was helping to prepare for its opening. 


Unlike previous episodes, this episode, due to audio issues and directly following the intro, opens with the chapter reading. 


You can find out more about F*ck Bubble and my other creative projects on my website,  http://brianpearson.net/writings. 


If you'd like to support the podcast and the writing, please check out my Patreon page, https://www.patreon.com/user?u=80977299. 

This episode, I'll be reading the 14th chapter, Jewels, from my non-fiction manuscript, F*ck Bubble to my friend Connor in Portland, OR.


Jewels is about a challenging but illuminating visit I took to San Francisco in February 2017. Having already "broken off" whatever it was I had (or didn't have) with Gunner a few weeks prior, things still felt tense and contentious with Mack. In SF that week, he was at his most egotistical, his most craven, making overt but fruitless attempts at sexual contact.  Relief came in the form of a night out with Missy at Honey Soundsystem. The following morning, I found myself standing face-to-face in the rain on Market Street with Mack, who was taking glee in dissecting Gunner's life. Not yet knowing what was to come with Gunner that spring in LA, I could only be glad I'd opted out of what increasingly felt like a desirous-yet-warped, circular firing squad.


I met Connor not long after moving to Portland in March of 2019. By then I had already written F*ck Bubble, put it away. I don't think I ever mentioned any of the story to Connor. He's my "newest" friend on the podcast, somebody I knew I liked the first time we met, a kind of Anti-Mack: warm, consistent, empathetic, self-aware ... and hysterically funny. A breath of fresh air. 


You can find out more about F*ck Bubble and my other creative projects on my website,  http://brianpearson.net/writings. 


If you'd like to support the podcast and the writing, please check out my Patreon page, https://www.patreon.com/user?u=80977299. 

This episode, I'll be reading the 13th chapter, If, from my non-fiction manuscript, F*ck Bubble to my good friend and sometimes writing partner, Patryce, in LA.


If is about those days and weeks following my Denver to LA road trip with Gunner in January of 2017. Having no regret about going, I was nonetheless coming to terms with what I had gotten myself into both physically and emotionally, and needed to figure out what to do about it. 


I met Patryce at a mutual friend's gathering in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 2005. We were both living in neighboring Greenpoint at the time and continued to see each other around but didn't really become close till 2014, when I sublet her flat in Portland, Maine, where she had moved. We soon became good friends and writing partners, creating scripts for both film and television, an endeavor that nearly got us both killed. We discuss the reading and go deep on the crisp fall morning when it almost ended for us both.


You can find out more about F*ck Bubble and my other creative projects on my website,  http://brianpearson.net/writings. 


If you'd like to support the podcast and the writing, please check out my Patreon page, https://www.patreon.com/user?u=80977299. 

This episode, I'll be reading the 12th chapter, Trail Mix, from my non-fiction manuscript, F*ck Bubble to Robin in Hudson, New York.


Trail Mix is about my finally meeting Gunner face to face. In January of 2017, I flew from LA to Denver to drive with him in a packed Subaru back to California – the first part of his new life after coming out to his wife and family. For me, the trip was about much more than meeting this guy who had seemingly 'dropped like magic' from the Western sky only a couple of months prior. It was about revisiting my past, specifically my high school in Southwest Colorado and a beloved photography teacher named Sadie. This chapter documents that nearly thousand mile drive, from single-digit temps to warm subtropic desert ... all within the course of a bizarre, passionate and beguiling few days. 


I met Robin Rice in the mid-aughts through her eponymous photography gallery in the West Village of New York City. I've since had two solo exhibitions with her, and we've become friends. She moved to NYC in the seventies, and was part of its ever-changing nightlife + art scene from the very beginning ... including being at the opening of Studio 54 with her camera in hand. Robin now splits her time between the city and Hudson, where she was for the reading and conversation.


You can find out more about F*ck Bubble and my other creative projects on my website,  http://brianpearson.net/writings. 


If you'd like to support the podcast and the writing, please check out my Patreon page, https://www.patreon.com/user?u=80977299.