{"id":465971,"date":"2026-09-16T20:42:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T20:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/465971\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T20:42:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T20:42:10","slug":"tommy-pico-on-why-he-writes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/465971\/","title":{"rendered":"Tommy Pico on Why He Writes"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t know why I write. I don\u2019t know why I do anything, and it\u2019s honestly one of my favorite things about myself. Other than my legs. And my necklace collection. And the pink wigs I put on my Sonos. Oh, and my ability to be single for 40 years and then get into my first long-term relationship with literally the man I was always supposed to be with. I\u2019m a skeptic, but when I was 23, I asked a clairaudient named Patricia about this guy, Trey, I was infatuated with, who she told me was going to be a lawyer (spoiler alert: he is now a lawyer in Connecticut), and she told me not to \u201cworry too much about dating now. You\u2019ll find the person you\u2019re looking for but not until later. You have more living to do first.\u201d At the time, I was pissed and vowed to prove Patricia wrong, so I started a Tumblr (yes, it was the halcyon days of the early-2010s internet) where I was determined to document the 100 dates I would go on. My best friend, Lauren Wilkinson<\/a>\u2014yes, that Lauren Wilkinson, of American Spy<\/a> fame (sidebar: Lauren was the person who told me about Patricia)\u2014said at the time that dating was \u201ca numbers game.\u201d We decided to go on as many dates as possible, and the first person to go on 100 dates would win. I typoed \u201cwin\u201d as \u201cwine,\u201d probably to remind you, dear reader, that as soon as I\u2019m done writing this, I\u2019m hightailing it to the gay sports bar to catch the rest of Game 3 of the Knicks vs. the Spurs, complete with bubbly ros\u00e9. Anyways! I\u2019m not a competitive person\u2014but I truly, madly, deeply had to beat Lauren at dates. I got on all the apps, all the sites, went to all the singles\u2019 nights, meaning I went to gay bars alone (I know), and any time someone asked me out on a date, I had to say yes. No excuses, no restrictions. If they asked me out, we went out. Each guy had a corresponding entry on the 100 dates Tumblr, and each title was their moniker: \u201cPhish-y Lawyer.\u201d \u201cBaby Baby Baby.\u201d \u201cBar Farter.\u201d And it was actually kind of\u2026fun? Not the dating part\u2014dating is fucking horrible. It was the writing. For the first time in my postcollegiate life, I had a sustained writing practice. Everything in the world\u2014every thought, nuance, song, and boner\u2014became fodder for it. It was an instinct I let myself trust. Unfortunately, I didn\u2019t beat Lauren at the date game because the project had its intended effect: Around date 30 or so, I met someone whom I then went on another date with, and then another, and then it was just him. And, surprise, surprise, it turned out I wouldn\u2019t have dated him if it weren\u2019t for playing the numbers game. He was 23 to my 27, and as a rule I didn\u2019t date younger guys (the last time I\u2019d dated a 23-year-old, I was 18, but that\u2019s a tale for a different essay I\u2019m writing in my head called \u201cGetting Fingered in the LGBTQ Center All-Gender Bathroom\u201d). When he dumped me two months later, I was shattered. All that effort I\u2019d put into dating, not just with the 100 dates thing\u2026 I saw how everything I did in my life was a prelude to men. And for what? So that I could sit in a waterfront park in Williamsburg crying over a guy while listening to Lana Del Rey like every other goddamned gay?! Whatever men offered, they weren\u2019t going to give me myself. That\u2019s my job. I looked into the water and promised to date writing the way I dated men. A year later, I started working on what I thought would become the world\u2019s longest Tumblr post, called IRL<\/a>, which eventually became my first book. And the rest, as they say, is the future. So why do I write? I really don\u2019t know. I just kind of have faith that if I start somewhere, I\u2019ll get to where I need to go.\u2022<\/p>\n

This article appears in Issue 37 of Alta Journal.
SUBSCRIBE<\/a><\/p>\n

NATURE POEM, BY TOMMY PICO\"<b><i>NATURE<\/a>NATURE POEM, BY TOMMY PICOCredit: Tin House Books<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I don\u2019t know why I write. I don\u2019t know why I do anything, and it\u2019s honestly one of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[12788,183505,7,118350,183499,9,8,180451,180453,183501,183498,183500,183507,183502,183503,183493,183494,183497,183495,183506,183496,183504,93939],"class_list":["post-465971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-alta-journal","tag-becoming-a-writer","tag-california","tag-california-book-club","tag-california-book-club-tommy-pico","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-california-writers","tag-contemporary-poetry","tag-indigenous-poets","tag-irl-tommy-pico","tag-native-american-poets","tag-poetry-writing","tag-queer-poets","tag-queer-writers","tag-tommy-pico","tag-tommy-pico-interview","tag-tommy-pico-irl","tag-tommy-pico-writing","tag-tumblr-writers","tag-why-tommy-pico-writes","tag-writing-advice","tag-writing-practice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}