Dear Patrick Stump:

When Rolling Stone published a story about the blog post you wrote this week using the headline “I Am a 27-Year-Old Has-Been,” the first thing I thought was: I hear you, dude. If anything, I might have even been a little jealous over the fact that you had a few more years (and a few more million dollars) than I did when I came to that conclusion for myself. But whatever the case, I’d love to take this opportunity to usher you into the exclusive social club of People Who Made That Record Once. We’re happy to have you.

Membership requirements are not so stringent. In order to keep your membership in good standing at this club, you need only provide proof of personal contact (or Internet criticism) initiated by exclamations such as, “You made That Record once!” or concluding with inflexible, and preferably snide broadsides like, “You’ll never be as good as the Person Who Made That Record Once!” Senior status is awarded to those members who can provide proof that a.) present-day musical or nonmusical performances are consistently marred with requests for songs from (or stories about) That Record, b.) recent interviews still continue to focus on That Record, regardless of the artistic merit and/or contemporary relevance of your current work, or c.) reviews of your current work privilege the discussion of That Record over your new stuff at a word-count ratio of 26:1. That’s when we know you’re really one of us.

So first, the bad news. That thing you call a “barrage” of hatred from kids who “liked me better fat” and “paid for tickets to my solo shows to tell me how much I sucked without Fall Out Boy” will probably never end. The problem with making That Record is that, for many psychologically underdeveloped people with Internet access, you have become That Record, and therefore, cease to exist as a human being with the capacity to feel, change, and/or do anything else. So while I can’t say that I’ve ever had a threatening letter sent to my home the way you have, I can say that just last month, someone actually went to the trouble of making a blank Facebook profile using a variation of my name combined with the words “Fatfaced Dork” so that he — let’s face it: women don’t do this shit! — could friend-request me, and presumably, make me angry. (Unfortunately for him, I can’t say I was angry so much as I felt like I was on an episode of Glee.) In other words, it’s been more than sixteen years since I made That Record and I’m still on the receiving end of vitriol. You’ve got a ways to go.

Once this initial shock subsides, however, you’ll find that membership to this club has its privileges. Playing in a popular rock band is a difficult drug to kick, and as with all difficult drugs, the chase for that original high is a self-destructive one — perhaps because, quite simply, it can’t be done. Life before That Record happens only once, and after that, the seal is broken. Your enablers will tell you it’s a matter of scale, but that’s just a lie to keep the party going: The first time I performed in front of 15,000 people only felt marginally superior to the first time I played to a sold out 300-capacity club. Meanwhile, going from Fall Out Boy to Soul Punk was basically like going from crack to heroin. You thought you could beat the addiction by changing the recipe, but by the time you realized the high still wasn’t there — and that the game had, in fact, only gotten darker — you’d already “blown your nest egg.” As with every life-altering drug, there’s a rock bottom. But as with every stretch of sobriety, there is freedom at the finish line.

To break this grip and join the functioning ranks of People Who Made That Record Once, Mr. Stump, you only need to undergo one step. That’s eleven steps less than almost any other program! (We are nothing if not efficient.) It may take some time to fully inhabit this principle, but it’s important. So here it is: Be grateful for That Record.

That Record put you on the map and gave you privileges that you will enjoy for the rest of your life. The hatred may seem more unbearable at some points than others, but the love you will receive for it is immeasurable, and it is stronger than a chorus of boos or a mock Facebook profile. People will tell you how That Record saved their lives, scored their first kiss, soundtracked their wedding, or helped them love themselves a little bit more. If you ever get hit by a tow truck and wind up in a hospital for two months, you will receive literally hundreds of letters from perfect strangers who took time out of their day to write and mail physical letters just to tell you how much That Record means to them, and how you’ll always mean something to them for making it. You’ll get comped meals at restaurants, discounts at record stores, and career opportunities in almost any field you choose to pursue thanks to people who love That Record. And the residuals from That Record will help you buy a little something special for yourself every few months. This year, I think I’ll finally get an iPad.

What’s most important, however, is that you realize that not everyone gets to make That Record, and that there are thousands of boys and girls with guitars who would kill to be a flash in the pop-cultural pan instead of making records that no one will ever hear. (And when I say “no one,” I pretty much literally mean no one: Of the 98,000 albums released in 2009 that sold at least one copy, for example, a staggering 81,000 of those titles went on to sell less than 100 copies!) Think about this and accept it as something wonderful, no matter the unwanted side effects: What we have is special.

I’m ten years older than you now, Patrick, and I can tell you with confidence that it gets better. (Should we start a YouTube channel for this?) I went back to school. I actually managed to find a stable relationship. I’m living my pre-rock band dream of teaching at a New York City college. There is a good life waiting for People Who Made That Record Once, and while you may want to shrink away in your fingerless gloves now, you will inevitably come up for air. We’ll be here when you’re ready, and we’re looking forward to welcoming you at our next meeting.

Abner and Harper Willis are a pair of brothers who front “the New York City-based indie rock band” Two Lights. Their idea of success includes scoring a worthless “VIP pass” for an unnamed British pop star and then being surprised when the backstage room didn’t look like a P. Diddy White Party, a review in a third-tier NYC free magazine that meaninglessly describes their music as having “the magical power to obliterate wintery thoughts,” and hiring “a manager who’s helped break artists like Blur and the Smashing Pumpkins” — which is code that anyone familiar with the music industry can easily decipher as: “Our manager did some shit at Virgin Records in the ’90s.”

Time Magazine recently gave the floor to the Willis brothers for a slot in their “Entrepreneurial Insights” special, and the thesis came together almost instantly. Abner and Harper want you to know something: Being in an “indie rock” band is hard!

It’s also expensive. By their estimation, a handful of blog reviews and the privilege to work with someone who sent Lenny Kravitz posters to record stores in 1995 has already cost the band upwards of $109,000. I want to write that number again because it’s so absurd, and then pick up a sandwich board and write it again — next to the words YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG — so that I can boycott Two Lights shows around the country with a small, but angry cult called The Church of Rational People. I want to take them into a bank and show them what $109,000 looks like, and then slap them over the head with a fistful of hundreds. I want to drive their equipment into the most dire, economically oppressed neighborhood, sell it all to the local pawn shop, and then donate the proceeds to any number of families that could use a hundred extra dollars to make rent this month. Two Lights are like the Mitt Romney of sad boys with guitars, ambitious and chiseled white men who weren’t asked to release their financials under duress, but did so anyway because their utter lack of self-awareness never tipped them off to the fact that spending $109,000 to play Wednesday nights at the Mercury Lounge is on the same level of crazy as donating $4 million to the Mormon church in one year. Maybe even crazier.

Of course, I would be remiss to simply yell YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG and not explain myself. I played in financially viable bands for years without the money of major labels — or sometimes, for that matter, anyone — and while it certainly wasn’t always a P. Diddy White Party, I made a living in New York City without going bankrupt. Let’s crunch some numbers:

Training: Our folks shelled out for 15 years of piano and guitar lessons (times two of us!). These days, we’re spending $250 to $500 a month on voice lessons. Cost to date: $30,000.

OK, stop. First of all, it’s completely unfair to include your parents’ investment in music lessons into this equation — unless we also plan on adding the grocery receipts, too. (All that basement jamming makes you hungry!) But even if you take that out, there is no reason why these guys should be spending $250 to $500 a month on vocal lessons. (I listened to your single: they’re not working, you guys!) Learn how to breathe, learn how to warm-up your voice, and then treat yourself with an extra session when you’ve got the extra money. Otherwise, just lock yourself in the bathroom for the acoustics and fire up YouTube. Seriously.

As for me, I have a few books about guitar and took a music theory course in college once, but that’s about as much as I’ve ever spent on training. Cost to date since 1991: Maybe $50.

Rehearsal: We rent a space in Brooklyn for $50 per three-hour session. Cost to date: $3,000.

Oh hey, I think I know that practice space! $50 for three hours is great, but it sounds like these guys practice a lot, which means they could (and should) be sharing a monthly space with at least one other band. At the current going rates, you should be able to find a room in Brooklyn that costs the same as a few hourly-rate practices. That their ever-so-useful manager hasn’t filled them in on this point says something about the value of their services.

Technically, I’ve spent a good amount of money on rehearsals, but it’s always been strategic: Hourly practices are saved for upcoming shows or running through a set-list, but writing always takes place somewhere less expensive — like your drummer’s mom’s house in New Jersey, which also comes with free soda and chips. In that sense, I’d probably say I’ve also spent at least $3,000 on rehearsal space — but that’s including every rehearsal I’ve ever booked since 1990, which is, incidentally, the year young Abner was born. Pro-tip: Going on tour is like practice that pays you.

Gear: Our family has invested in dozens of musical instruments and other gear (pianos, guitars, drum sets, keyboards, mandolins, PA systems, amplifiers…). And, oh yeah, it cost more than $500 to move a piano down three flights of stairs and then up to Maine (a story for another time). Cost to date: $25,000.

Again, your family’s investment is not your own. But even if it were, you’re paying too much. I owned just one guitar throughout most of the ’90s — a Gibson SG that I paid $300 for — and a Marshall half-stack that I found at a pawn shop for $500. I spent another $150 on pedals. The only time I’ve ever spent real money on a guitar was after Texas is the Reason sold out two nights at Irving Plaza in 2006. I celebrated by buying a Gibson Les Paul that I’ve always wanted for $2,000. The only other guitar I’ve ever owned is a Fender Telecaster my brother gave me in 1991, and that’s it for my entire career in band gear.

Total cost: $2,950. You do with what you have, and it’s amazing how the creativity will come.

Performing: For gigs here in New York, we hire taxis to lug our keyboards, stands, guitars,basses, amplifiers and drums to and from the venue. Whatever cash we earn beyond that usually goes to our current drummer. And expenses soar when we hit the road. Cost to date: $1,000.

Here’s the thing: You pay for taxis in New York anyway, whether or not you’re carrying a guitar. One time, when I lived on the corner of First Avenue and E. 10th Street, I actually walked my gear around the block to play at (the now-defunct) Brownies. It happens.

Interestingly, a thousand bucks isn’t a lot to spend here, and that’s surprising considering that neither of these guys work day jobs. If they spent as much money going out on tour — and sleeping on floors and eating at gas stations like normal people — as they did on voice lessons, we might actually know who Two Lights is. We probably still won’t like them, but that’s not the point.

My bands have spent lots of money on performance and production, but except for the very first tour I ever went on in 1992, I’ve always recouped. For real. Even when we were playing to a hundred kids on a good night. I’m not even particularly good at math, but I know how to make it work on tour, and a lot of it is about making friends with sofabeds, asking the promoter to make some cheap veggie stew, or making smart merchandise at fair prices. As a result, total cost: $0.

Promotion: Once you have music out, you need to promote it. We pay a guy to send email blasts to databases of hip music blogs. Postcards, demo CDs and other materials are also essential. Cost to date: $1,000.

Actually, none of this is “essential” for a band no one has ever heard of. None of it. Abner and Harper Willis ostensibly have the Internet and access to the Hype Machine; they should be sending out their (tasteful and infrequent) “email blasts.” (Although as a former music writer, I can tell you that there is a very special place in my trash for “email blasts.”) Also, postcards? That’s just fucking gauche.

None of my bands used a publicist of any sort until we were signed to a record label, and truthfully, there is really no reason to have one until you’ve got an honest-to-goodness album to support. The same goes for management. It seems insane to have to explain this to anyone in their early 20s — who should probably be playing music because they have something to say and not because they want to “earn a lot more money than even doctors and lawyers” — but play shows, be nice to people, make friends with other bands, and send free music to anyone who will listen to it. Also, don’t write about how much money you have in Time Magazine. My well-tested strategy will cost you $0.

Lost wages: The two of us each put about 20 hours a week into band-related work. Abner (still in school) could easily make $10 an hour working at a bar on weekends. Harper (a freelance writer) has to turn down writing assignments worth around $400 a week. Cost to date: $25,000.

I’ve been trying hard to refrain from using the word “privileged” here, but come on. I always worked when I played in bands — even when I didn’t technically have to work. I was a freelance writer, a record label owner, a data entry clerk, a record store guy, an executive assistant at a publishing company, whatever. I did it because having a job made the band feel less like a job, and that’s a good thing. (Also, I don’t think it’s particularly noble to be a poor musician.)

So if the Willis brothers have “lost” wages, it’s simply because their privilege allows it and their pride demands it. But since I cannot relate to such nonsense, my “lost wages” to date come to $0.

Living in New York City: Our cousin Abby lives in Atlanta in a house — a house! — with a couple of friends. They pay a third of what we pay for our combined living spaces. New York is absurdly expensive — but the band’s future demands that we live here rather than, say, our hometown in Maine. All told, we estimate that decision costs us an extra $1000 a month. Cost to date: $18,000.

“The band’s future demands that we live here.”

No it doesn’t. Being a band in New York City is prohibitive for a million reasons, and the imagined big-city promise simply does not warrant the sacrifice unless, as it was in my case, this is where you grew up and it’s just home to you. If Two Lights were really good — spoiler: they’re mediocre — then A&R guys would fly out to meet them. Labels would fly them into New York for a showcase. The Internet would discover them immediately. There is no such causal connection between living in New York and “making it,” so if I were these guys, I’d call my cousin Abby and move to Atlanta. Fact: Once you’re in a van, on tour, it really doesn’t matter where you live.

Which brings us to our final tally. Two Lights: $109,000. Me: $6,000 over 20 years.

If I were a name-caller, I’d even call the Beatles fucking stupid if they’d spent that much money before having recorded Please Please Me. But hey, Abner and Harper Willis, I’ll spare you. I just hope we all learned something here.

If his tweets were any indication, Michelangelo Signorile dedicated his entire radio show yesterday to the question of Cynthia Nixon’s sexuality.

That’s weird.

It’s true that the public loves a good riff on some variation of the is-she-or-isn’t-she question, but in this case, we know. Cynthia Nixon is gay. She has a girlfriend. She isn’t hiding anything or campaigning against gay rights or donating millions of dollars to the Mormon church to help defeat same-sex marriage. The how or why is better left to the scientists, but the what — that she is an out lesbian woman — is well established.

Amateur biologists that we are, however, many of us just couldn’t resist taking the bait when Nixon gave an interview in which she asserted that “for me, [my sexuality] is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.” Of course, that didn’t stop Signorile’s followers on Twitter (and others) from doing just that, dismissing the comment as a byproduct of misguided bisexuality, using it to illustrate “another example of the difference between gay men and lesbians,” or just chalking it up to the very male perception that “women are allowed to be more sexually open in our culture.” (Really?) Incredibly, only a few people — all women, it seems — actually gave unconditional credence to the notion that Cynthia Nixon has a right to define her own experience, even when it appears to threaten everything we believe about ourselves.

First, the obvious. Cynthia Nixon “knows” that her being gay is a choice in the same way that I “know” my being gay is an inborn trait. We just feel it. Of course, sheer introspection is not a sound epistemological method by any stretch — for either of us! — but in lieu of a credible and falsifiable explanation, it’s all we have. So in this case, it’s not even a situation of respectful disagreement, but personal truth: Nixon is not telling me that I chose to be gay, but that she did. I can’t possibly know whether or not that is true because I do not inhabit Cynthia Nixon’s body and mind.

I can, however, think about choice and freewill and the fact that we are a species famous for claiming categorical agency when we have none. For example, most of us don’t ever question the moment we “chose” to be right-handed or left-handed, but this predicament was actually one of my childhood’s most pressing questions. I practiced writing left-handed for years, I mimicked certain left-handed affectations that I’d see on television or elsewhere, I even started wearing a watch on my right hand. I heard about this thing called ambidextrousness — supposedly my grandmother had it — and I thought maybe that was me, too. At one point, I realized that my handwriting as a lefty actually got pretty good! But in the end, I “decided” that it felt more natural for me to be a righty. Just like Nixon, who said, “I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better,” I tried righty and I tried lefty, and righty is better. As far as I was concerned, I made that choice, and there was nothing you could have told the 14-year-old me to convince him otherwise. It was as obvious to me as the fact that Knightwatch was going to become legendary television. (It didn’t.)

I realize now that it’s more complicated than that. That even if there is a “choice” involved, it’s not one of unmitigated freewill, and that — as with most of, if not all of the major markers that we use to construct identity — there is also some sort of genetic influence or predisposition. But what if there isn’t?

It seems obvious that the row over Nixon’s comments go way beyond personal truth and more into the thorny territory between social perception and civil rights: If “they” think we choose our sexuality, some argue, gay people will never be free from discrimination and oppression. But considering that the lack of choice that went into my identity as a person of color failed to provide any such immunity from the discrimination and oppression of being Hispanic or nonwhite in America, I struggle to see the logic (or dignity) in such a fear. At its worst, this argument proposes that a pure biological basis for homosexuality is the only escape-hatch from the moral argument against LGBT people, and in turn, submits that without this basis, there may be something to that moral argument in the first place. But there isn’t. Let’s not forget that the rhetoric of an “innate nature” is historically fraught with ideological self-interest, and that this point is not exclusive to a queer context: Late nineteenth-century theorists, for example, “presented the nonwhite person — ‘the savage’ — as lower down the evolutionary scale than the white” in an attempt to perpetuate a myth about the sexual insatiability of non-Europeans and to curb “the threat they consequently pose for the purity of the white race.” (If this sounds familiar, consider Pat Robertson’s recent warning that “there isn’t one single civilization that has survived that openly embraced homosexuality,” and that “if history is any guide, the same thing is going to happen to us.”) Still, at its core, this fear also enforces the wrongful assertion that nature operates in clean divisions of inborn and acquired traits, and totally disregards those evolutionary certainties that factually exist in-between the binaries — such as the way many “plants and animals are hermaphroditic before they are bisexual and are bisexual before they are heterosexual” or how “bees and flowers coevolve through mutually beneficial ‘deviations.’” (Timothy Morton can speak more about this point.) In other words, by placing a caveat-free premium on innate sexuality, gay people are actually making the same argument they are being oppressed with — that there are certain immutable “natural” binaries that exist for human beings in a way that defies the reality of pretty much every other plant and animal species on the planet. By yielding to such exceptionalism, we are clamoring to squeeze human sexuality and gender expression into a rigid box that we invented, which as such, enjoys no right to an existence in perpetuity.

The other thing, then, is this: Without any sort of real epistemic evidence for nature or nurture or neither, gay people ask straight people for the right to define our own experience every single day — even when it appears to threaten everything heterosexuals believe about themselves. Straight people certainly can’t imagine what it’s like to grow up gay, and many of the less sophisticated in their ranks can’t even imagine the possibility that two men or two women can love each other with the same kind of affection, desire, and commitment that they enjoy with their opposite-sex partners. Similarly, I have no idea what it must feel like to grow up with common, uncomplicated worries — such as whether or not a girl I like thinks I’m cute — and without attaching the fears of sin, morality, impending antigay violence, mental illness, and total ruin to every basic boyhood crush. Until we figure out how to inhabit the bodies and minds of other people, we might never know these things of each other.

Which is to say that, as improbable as Cynthia Nixon’s claim plays out in my own experience, I have no choice but to afford her the same benefit of the doubt that I demand for my own personal truth, which persists, unaffected. I mean, I believe I was born this way. But there is nothing about my personhood that would change if I weren’t.

I can only imagine that most people look to their parents for a relationship model, but that was never an option for me. It’s not that my mother and father were willfully antagonistic towards one another — apathetic is, perhaps, a better word — but that their marriage reeked more of obligation than love. In fact, my mother openly confessed that there were only two things that stood in the way of a divorce: a religious prohibition and me. But being a more devoted Christian than mother, she wasn’t about to blame God.

“If it weren’t for you,” she often told me, pointing the finger, “your father and I wouldn’t even be together.”

Without a blueprint to follow, I did what most of the kids from my generation did whenever reality failed to deliver a healthy archetype: I used movies and television to mediate my impression of how “normal” people did things. I waited for boys with boomboxes to woo me from the sidewalk. I figured true love would rush to my side at an airport gate, begging me not to leave. I imagined a 25th anniversary party for my partner and me in which both of us somehow still look 30. Obviously, I was single for a long time.

Before I met John, I celebrated anniversaries by the month. Two months was a big deal, three months a lifetime. The transient nature of my relationships reflected both my cynicism about romance and my idealization of it. Even the best romantic comedy can only sustain itself for two hours before the suspense of disbelief feels like holding your breath; a good breakup — romantic in its own right — was, in my mind, the way a heart exhales. I craved that breakup as much as the chase.

But the chase is sweet, and as my relationship with John developed in those first six months of 2006, I found myself wondering how this plot might play out if we resisted the impulse to rush to the credits. I thought about my favorite romantic comedy of all time — 1999’s Never Been Kissed, starring Drew Barrymore — and how unsatisfying it actually was to end a movie like that with just a kiss. I wanted to see Never Been Loved in the First Place or Never Been Forgiven For Being Such a Terrible Person. For the first time ever, I wanted to know how a movie called Never Been In a Real Relationship might end, and be perfectly happy if it never did.

I told John about my thing for Drew Barrymore very early on. I told him about Never Been Kissed, and about that time I watched Boys on the Side at 2 a.m. in a Los Angeles hotel room and went to sleep totally wrecked. I even told him about Home Fries. Fucking Home Fries! He politely humored me, as any good boyfriend should, but I insisted, somewhat jokingly, that Drew Barrymore had something to do with our relationship. I liked the idea of having some sort of fairy godmother that was technically younger than me.

So here’s the thing: I’m not superstitious or anything, but if you were to ask me when I knew this relationship was going to work out, I’d tell you it happened at a Starbucks in Chelsea, around the time of our four-month anniversary — a diamond anniversary in the relative history of my love life! I was sitting at a table, head down in my laptop, when I instantly recognized the voice ordering coffee. Without even looking up to confirm, I frantically approached strangers to borrow a pen or paper or anything but a napkin, and when I finally had what I needed, I sprinted to the milk-and-sugar station, where she was fixing her latte.

“I’m about to ask you for something stupid,” I said.

Drew Barrymore laughed as if that were the most wonderful thing she’d ever heard. If you know anything about the scientific correlation between oxytocin levels and looking at a cute puppy, it kind of felt like that.

I told her about my new boyfriend and how great I felt about our relationship. I also mentioned that she’s become something of a silent figure attached to all of it. I told her that John hates romantic comedies, but that if she could just write him a quick note, it would really crystallize the connection and maybe soften him up a bit.

It looked as if she were about to explode.

“Oh my God, yes!” she said, as she grabbed the pen and paper out of my hands and began to scribble the words “John,” “Love,” and “Drew Barrymore” across the sheet. Drew Barrymore hugged me and thanked me and wished us luck. It couldn’t have felt less feigned.

Later, when I went home, I hastily added a postscript: “Two hearts? Clearly, Drew loves you.” I framed the page and wrapped it up, still euphoric and eager to present this gift to John. Neither of us seemed to realize at the time that she actually drew three hearts on the sheet, not two. But it doesn’t matter. Somewhere, Olympia Dukakis — in the role of somebody’s wise mother — is waiting to interpret this as a plot-making metaphor in which love is neither quantifiable nor perfect.

The frame in this photo sits on our bedroom dresser today, on January 4, 2012, the sixth anniversary of our first date. Despite his aversion to the genre, John actually took me to see Music and Lyrics in 2007. I think he kind of liked it.

As far as writing goes, I did a lot of it in 2011. More of it than I might have ever thought possible. Enough of it to make me a little crazy at times. But not enough of it to make me feel like I never want to write again.

The other week, in a conversation with Matthew and B. Michael, I got kind of flustered trying to explain my frustration with not using Tumblr the “traditional” way. I want to publish these short and pithy posts, I said, but every time I set up a draft for one, it just feels wrong. I delete it and tell myself that it’s better to wait until I’m inspired to say something. But I also feel bad about it. I told them how I’ve been anticipating a grand exodus of followers for some time now, but that their number is steady — if not increasing. Nervous Acid has kept me humble in that regard: It turns out that despite the conventional Internet wisdom of the 24-hour news cycle, people will wait for you to think things through.

So while I may not post every hour — or every week, for that matter — your support in the past year has encouraged me to write and publish some really meaningful work on this site, and for that, I am grateful. To acknowledge it, I compiled a list of Nervous Acid’s Greatest Hits of 2011. These are, in chronological order, the ten short essays that I feel best represent (and map out) my year in thinking:

• “Take That (Or, Why I Am Not an Indie Rocker)” (January 3)

“The fact is that credibility has been institutionalized by scene ideologies and critical tropes. And because we don’t own it, we are unwillingly controlled by it. We consume, evaluate, and in many cases, simply dismiss media based on outdated historicism and meaningless signifiers of taste — and this is precisely why I am not an indie rocker. Much less an over-idealistic punk. Because, by my estimation, a group of 40-year-old men who, only twenty years ago, appeared in a music video naked while smearing jelly over themselves just made the album of the year.”

• “The Nervous Acid Guide to Responsible Speaking for Dummies” (January 12)

“The conventional wisdom is, of course, that if one yells ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater, the showgoers will panic and begin a riotous move towards the exits — ostensibly causing stampeding, injuries, and even death. So let’s change the context: What kind of reaction would you get if you screamed ‘Fire!’ in a room full of firefighters? What kind of reaction would you get if you screamed ‘Fire!’ in a room full of burn victims? What kind of reaction would you get if you screamed ‘Fire!’ in a room full of pyromaniacs? For each person listening, that same one-syllable word is populated with completely different meaning — it is imbued with duty to the firefighter, anguish to the burn victim, and pleasure to the pyromaniac. Anyone who isn’t completely deluded can understand this.”

• “How to Graduate College When You’re Pushing 40” (May 31)

“Going to college in your mid-30s is embarrassing. It’s embarrassing when professors assume that you’re too young to remember Ronald Reagan or The Great Space Coaster. It’s embarrassing when you’re ten years older than your instructor. It’s embarrassing to have to explain to a 19-year-old young woman, who is objectively cute, that you are almost as old as her father and, either way, a happily gay man.”

• “Beyond Gay?” (June 10)

“The idea of the single monolithic gay culture that these young people think they are rebelling against is, in fact, a myth. If this writer had actually cared to cultivate some meaningful relationships with a few older gay men before dismissing them outright, if he actually connected with personal and cultural gay histories from even before Stonewall, he might know that the only way to go ‘beyond gay’ is, quite frankly, to be straight.”

• “Father’s Day” (June 19)

“When you don’t know who you are, everyone looks different to you. These people are not strangers anymore, but possibilities. Everyone you meet becomes a potential conduit to a sense of history and heritage that you don’t have, that you may never get. It’s a void you’ll fill with other things, but it’s never quite satisfied and always quite hungry. That void is the only thing my father ever gave me, besides the way I look.”

• “The Lesson” (July 21)

“’Wait a second!’ Grazíela said. ‘Are you gay?’

“Believe it or not, I’d never considered the possibility that I might be asked this question in a classroom. I’d never weighed the pros and cons of my sexuality as related to my position as an educator. But in this particular case, I wasn’t sure that coming out at this exact moment would be the best possible thing. Sometimes, when you’re a teacher, you have to put personal politics aside and reach for the ever-elusive ‘teaching moment’ — if only to give students an opportunity to be objective critical thinkers about the facts.”

• “Persons on the Internet” (September 21)

“If you are a Person On The Internet, chances are you have either overheard or engaged in such a conversation in the last fifteen years, and hopefully by now you have realized that the Internet is not any better or worse than the world offline, but merely a reflection: In one corner, you have Nigerian e-mail scams; in the other, Bernie Madoff. In one corner, you have people with fake or outdated pictures on their OKCupid profiles; in the other, you meet a hipster girl at a Girl Talk show who steals your cell phone and turns out to be a wanted criminal. There are freaks on the Internet, but have you actually left your house lately?”

• “The Doughnut Rant” (October 7)

“Mark’s initiative was inspiring and he always seemed to make the impossible possible. Like the time he actually convinced his Lower East Side tenement landlord to let him convert the basement of his apartment building into a commercial kitchen: That’s the kind of old-time New York City DIY fairytale you’ll likely never hear again. I’d already done indie publishing and indie rock; I wanted to be an indie doughnut guy.”

• “Doing Time on Croyden Drive: The Ballad of National Coming Out Day” (October 11)

“I grew up in a family of fundamentalist Christians, who seem to hold on to that whole ‘vengeful God’ thing tighter that whole ‘merciful Jesus’ thing. I grew up believing that gay people were sick, perverted, sinful, and completely lacking of any hope for redemption. The way my mother talked about it, you’d think that the worst thing I could do was kill someone, and that the next thing down on the list would be to love another man. So while I knew she wouldn’t congratulate me for coming out, I’m not sure I expected to be so easily discarded. Like an inanimate object that had worn out its usefulness. I didn’t think I’d have to begin a new life — without blood relatives, without a mother and father, as flawed as they were.”

• “The Death of a Music Writer: A 20-Year Exit Strategy” (December 9)

“The first thing I thought when I looked over Stereogum’s Top 50 albums of 2011 this year was that, truthfully, I don’t believe that there has ever been 50 must-hear albums to be released in any one given year. You might as well make a Top 400; it would be just as useful. But the other thing was this: I don’t care about at least 46 of the records on their list. At all. Like, you could put them on at a party and I’d probably take them off. That’s how far I’ve jumped off this train.”

Thank you so much to everyone who has been reading, new and old. It’s been a tremendous year.