Matthew broke his zoned-out, screen-scrolling silence with an “Aww.”
We sat across from each other on my new kitchen’s counter tops. He came with me to pick up the keys to my new place. My first post-college place. My place on the Silverlake/Hollywood border. My place with no furniture, and nothing in the fridge except a diet coke and a fifth of Tito’s, which we’d walked to pick up from my new neighborhood’s liquor store. It was the middle of July, we had a pool party to pregame.
We each chased two back-to-back shots with the can of DC.
“Kirby, look at him!” My college friends call me by my last name. It’s a cute one. It’s been my nickname since I moved to LA four years ago for school. He and I graduated in May. He was calling me Kirby when we met, when I was still a tortoise shell glasses-wearing gay boy like him. He was calling me Kirby through my awkward transition sophomore year, my blunt bob bouncing around. He calls me Kirby as the fully-formed woman I am now. Matthew has seen and loved every Kirby there’s been.
Matthew flipped his phone around so I could see a flick of his new boytoy (of but two weeks) wearing bunny ears in a photobooth picture. Like any annoying white, queer Gen Z kids, we misappropriate the term “trade.” His boytoy is absolutely not so, but still I’ve begun calling him “Precious Trade.” PT for short. And come on, with those bunny ears, I proved I too can give out a good nickname.
I went to my new bathroom to baptize it with, well, piss. When I came back to the kitchen, Matty had moved from the counter to the floor. He was crying. Over PT. I left out the part where Matty makes his grand move to Colorado next week. He and PT fell quickly for one another, and now he’s gotta go.
I held him in my arms on my unfurnished apartment floor. I of course started crying too. He told me how badly our own long distance setup was going to hurt him.
I write this, and feel tears welling up all over again. The cosmic connection between a doll and a gay guy is fucking sacred.
Speaking of gay guys: welcome back, Troye Sivan! Troye BB released the first single from his new record, She’s The Best, due October 9. The album’s title track and opener is melancholic and calm; he talk talks (haha) spoken word-style about the features of a girl he later deems “the best” during the song’s soft chorus.
From the first lines “She’s walking down the street with her little thin cigarette/ great smile and a cum stain on her dress,” he establishes a platonic adoration for the it-girl he gets to call his best friend. Sivan expands on her defining details: “Moodboards her future, it looks good/ She always knew she had somethin’ special inside." So we’re talking about a gorgeous, intelligent transsexual. Got it. If not proven by other quips, like those regarding her DJ gigs or tendency to take down incels on the internet or go splitsies with her housemate on a shared boyfriend, then the doll status of Troye’s subject is made clear in the music video that accompanies it.
Directed by Gordon Von Steiner, “She’s The Best” chronicles all kinds of women who fit the bill Troye lays out lyrically. From Nicole Kidman, who plays…herself? Or a generally confident, sexy woman who draws drool from Troye every time she walks by. To all the dolls, like Sasha Colby and PAPER princess Blizzy McGuire, who are memorialized in this music video doing what they respectively do best: Sasha strutting, fiercely slipping strands from her ponytail, and Blizzy being a girl online, probably posting the one thing that will actually make us laugh out loud. Anna Blonda makes a cameo, shaking her tasseled titties, her brassy blonde waves sitting supple. She might really be the best.
Troye chose her for the album’s cover art.
The song and video serve as a love letter to women — all kinds, who are doing whatever it is they do to make it in this world. It’s simple, poignant, beautiful. What I like best is the serious backseat he takes both sonically and visually; unlike past songs chasing after boys or relishing in a heartbreak, Sivan is the observer, spitting out the monologue his mind’s making, in real time, at the mere thought of a woman like Nicole or Sasha. Sure, he sparkles for quick seconds here and there in the video, but only really when he’s spotted back in the drag persona he developed for the “One of Your Girls” video in 2023.
This time around, the blonde has gone full bleach, and the once gaggy face card has become a literally unclockable mug. I had to rewind to ensure it was Troye and not a new fab t-girl I’d need to follow on instagram.
Now, “She’s The Best” is nowhere near the first musical foray into exploring someone’s non-romantic fondness of women. I was reminded of Charli’s “Mean Girls,” of course, with the two tracks having similar verses. She sings, “She’s out there, with the razor sharp tongue stuck to skinny cigarettes." She’s girl on girl loving, shouting out her current sisters like Gabbriette, and fallen idols like Dasha Nekrasova, who, though problematic and rude, help display the brattiness Charli was intellectually interrogating for a record that music industry majors will be tasked with analyzing in essay format. They probably already are.
I’m Phoebe Bridgers-centric right now, like everyone else, and remember “Graceland Too,” which covers the confusing WLW friendships that toe the line between remaining so or becoming more.
I even think about “Girls” by The Dare. Obviously, this one is sexual. A straight guy talking about girls. But it’s not at all romantic. Not lovey-dovey. I bring it up because, like Troye’s track, he spends this one obsessing over all kinds of ladies: “I like tall girls, small girls, girls with dicks, call girls." Maybe I’m biased, but that’s scripture.
Still, “She’s The Best” is a special new addition to the canon of songs about fucking loving women. For being the people they are. Unconditionally.
But it’s my own experiences with my gorgeous gay guy friends, my Matty in particular, that solidify this song as a new anthem for the specific love and support we could only possibly have for one another. I wrote Matthew an essay, and gave it to him when he moved away last month. I wrote, “Every doll needs a gay boyfriend or two or three, and Matty is mine <3. We’re going long-distance soon, and I wouldn’t like to think about that."
Like Matty, Troye Sivan loves boys and girls. I just know there are some who surround him, dolls like me and all other kinds, who love him back.
Images via Getty
