Peyton Dix’s Grub Street Diet

Illustration: Maanvi Kapur

Peyton Dix is one of the most in-demand lesbians in the city. Her podcast, Lemme Say This, which she co-hosts alongside Hunter Harris, returned this Spring as part of the Obamas’ Higher Ground network. (Michelle Obama was a recent guest: “She’s a real up-and-comer; you should look out for that girl,” Dix says.) Between the show and her own writing, Dix is a machine that can only be stopped by one thing: Pride weekend. She still considers party-hopping work. (“The streets are just as important as the boardroom.”) The culmination of her Pride Month included post–Dyke March ramen, a bagel order that puts Cynthia Nixon to shame, and some 4 a.m. Trader Joe’s gyoza. Even if Dix didn’t intend to stay out as late as she did this week, it’s not her fault. “I do have a gay-guy moon,” she says. “After a couple of drinks, that’s when the club starts calling me.” 

Wednesday, June 24
Mornings are the only time I take care of myself; after that, it’s probably downhill. I try to start right with overnight oats with chia seeds, a little maple syrup, and berries. Then I walk to get coffee at Bittersweet, which I do every single day — I don’t care what the price is. Do not do the math and tell me. Today it’s an iced cappuccino, regular milk — whole or 2 percent, depending on how much I like myself. I throw in some brown simple syrup after that. I have coffee at home, for any lover who’s wondering, but when it’s just me, I like to get my steps in. A little mental-health walk and spending $7 can sometimes change your whole life.

I take it to the park and sit with my friend Mo, who’s biking back from the gym. I have just spent a weekend in Fire Island with a bunch of hot gay men, so I’m taking the only respite I have before Pride weekend. Sometimes the hardest thing a person can do is be gay. Surviving Pride Month is a marathon, not a sprint. We catch up and talk shit, and then he bikes off and I stay to read. Reading in public can feel like performance art, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I do my morning pages with an acknowledgment that they might be my last for this week and ending on one full page of affirmations and manifestations (I’ll circle back if they come true).

Then I head to hot yoga at Tangerine, in the Downtown Brooklyn–ish area. The class I take is from an instructor named Liz, the second most-important lesbian in my healing-journey lifestyle. The first is Chani Nicholas, of course. The astrology of the week is something about preparing for the Mercury retrograde, and I interpret that as Pride weekend is about to be hard.

Afterward, I want a smoothie, so I get one with spirulina from SoBol, which I’d never been to before. It’s mid, and sometimes that’s okay.

I head home for a meeting with my management, and then I do the responsible thing and, in preparation for a long weekend, I cancel my evening plans. I was supposed to go to a Jay-Z30 event. Not a very Pride thing to do, but it’s good to disrupt the space. I am still hungover physically and emotionally from Fire Island, and I know the rest of my week will be bus, club, another club, plane, no sleep, so I decide to stay in. My neighborhood group chat alerts me there is a new Taco Bell that just opened in Clinton Hill and — this is really important — the Enchirito is back: It’s a burrito that’s treated like an enchilada. I get it with the regular seasoned beef, and it’s just fabulous.

The rest of the night, I catch up on Mormon Wives because I like when white women act insane. I’m going to be on Get Real on Hulu talking about it, so I had a lot to catch up on. They’re kind of the epitome of girls who are constantly falling out with each other or maybe never even liked each other at all, which is a very interesting dynamic to me. The way friendships look on reality TV is so fascinating because it forces confrontation and everyone is so bad at it, but at least they try. It’s another version of The Artist’s Way if I think about it long enough.

Thursday, June 25
I start my day with my perfect chile-oil egg. There is no other chile oil in the world except Lao Gan Ma, the spicy chile crisp. You know Miss Girl? It’s kind of giving non-binary, and it’s the best chile oil there is. People try to say Trader Joe’s has a good dupe, but I don’t trust it. I put it in a pan, drop an egg in, crack it, salt, pepper, a little cheese if I’m feeling bold in my gut (which is often). High heat, short cook. I like my yolk runny.

I go get a Bittersweet latte and then log on to virtual therapy until my house cleaner arrives — diva. She always arrives an hour late, so I now schedule her two hours in advance to get her to arrive on time; it’s a beautiful system that works for the two of us. She’s late, but so am I because I’m Black and I’m gay, so I empathize.

While she’s cleaning, I run some errands. I get my nails done and make a pre-Pride Walgreens run — vitamins, magnesium, Electrolit, Tylenol, paper towels (not Pride-related; I am just out). The big errand, though: I get my hair braided in Clinton Hill. My normal braider is out of town, so I went with God, a.k.a. Yelp, to find an African braiding salon near me. This woman and business I WILL NOT NAME did try to rip my hair from my scalp, but damn, her lines are clean, so I can’t be mad.

I get straight-back cornrows. I’m currently trying to cosplay masc. I’m hearing reports it’s not working, but alas.

Then I head back home for a meeting followed by a Get Real briefing call — chatting through all the Mormon Wives lore we’ll be discussing with Miranda from the show. After the calls, I promote a podcast episode with the perfect guest, the gay guy to my lesbian, Caleb Hearon, and send some emails. Even though I’m freelance, I still like a Summer Friday, so I do a lot of prep work on Thursday.

I forget to have lunch. Maybe because of my ADHD, I sometimes just forget to eat, and then all of a sudden, I have a bad attitude. I tend to keep an RXBAR on me for that reason alone. Being a little malnourished is classic Pride and a classic lesbian thing. Plus I know I have a big dinner later that I’m planning to go hard at. One thing about me? If there’s a free fancy dinner, it’s clean-plate club in this house.

I go down the street to Rhodora for my friend Tembe’s intimate Pride kickoff event. This is a calmer, queer-POC-focused soirée. The point seemed to be: We’re lesbians who are hot and mostly Black and in our 30s now, so before we descend into hell, let’s stretch, have drinks, giggle, gossip, play mancala, and look at each other. There is one exceptionally attractive lesbian there who’s making me want to end my no-dating rule. I drink a mezcal negroni and snack on olives I stole off someone else’s plate.

The big dinner is at Moss, a new membership club in midtown. I’m not a member; I just like free food. I’m in a complicated shoe, so I call a car there. The Caesar salad slaps. There’s a big-ass shrimp cocktail and oysters, but the shrimp is alarmingly large in a way that felt very inviting at first and then incredibly challenging. Then roast chicken breast and a vanilla dot cake. I’m not a big cake person, and I don’t like things that feel like sprinkles, but my friend Sarah Burke really loves it, and I’m an ally to her experience. I’m not a yuck-your-yum kind of girl — I’ll never yuck a yum; I’ll only judge it from afar.

From there, I go to Boom Boom Room, where JoJo — the O.G., not Siwa — performs two of her hit songs with a purse on. People laugh at the accessory glued to her underarm, but I understand; I don’t trust drunk gay guys either! I see y’all spilling your tequila sodas and doing bumps of ketamine; you’re not touching my shit. She does her numbers on the bar and immediately walks off. I order an Uber in the middle of “Get Out” so it’s waiting for me when she’s done. I drink a mezcal with ginger beer.

Friday, June 25
I wake up and have a Zico coconut water, a ginger immunity-boost shot, and my other breakfast classic: a Siggi’s yuzu lemon yogurt. I have an iced cappuccino, but I don’t actually know where it’s from because my friend Lindsey Weber picked it up for me. And honestly? It was better than Bittersweet.

We’re recording a special Patreon edition of her podcast Who? Weekly at her house, and it’s off camera. Suddenly, I’m an advocate for bringing back podcasts that aren’t talk shows. Return to the form. It’s fabulous to sit back, relax, run your mouth, and not be aware of A-cam, B-cam, or C-cam. As you can maybe assume from the day before, I’m a little hungover, so I’m in no bra, a Nickelback tee, and my ugly glasses. It felt so safe not to have to think about being perceived.

My high-school best friend Kaela is in town staying with me, so she comes to pick up the keys. She’s my recent lesbian friend — I told her she was gay in eighth grade and she didn’t believe me. I wasn’t a lesbian myself at the time, but I was always perceptive, and I was dry-humping half the girls in my grade. She just came out, so I told her to come visit so we can run her in these streets for her first real Pride. She lives in L.A., where I think two brands of lesbian exist: either the Long Beach snapback lesbian or the 24-year-old white enby. Lesbians don’t know how to integrate for some reason. Not to be the MLK of dykes, but segregation ended! Hello!

For lunch, we sit in the backyard at Colonia Verde. I’ve gone on a lot of first and last dates here. I get the shrimp tacos on a flour tortilla — my favorite thing to order — plus another coffee, a ceviche, and a carnitas taco.

Then I go home for a podcast meeting. During Pride, Hunter and I do that thing where we say good-bye — like, “I’ll see you on the other side of it.” She prays for me. We always laugh about the fact that going out during Pride weekend is work for me. When we record on Monday, she’ll hear my strained voice and know I’ve just been to war.

I go to a screening of Bouchra at Metrograph, and I get a mezcal negroni and don’t properly inhale while smoking a cigarette. During the film, I have popcorn and two bottles of water. My friends made it, and I can’t recommend it enough. I go home to shower and change, then pregame at Sarah and Alyza’s in Bed-Stuy. Everyone is going to Papi Juice at Elsewhere, which is a queer and more-POC-centered party thrown by my friends Mo, Oscar, and Adam; it’s been going on for over a decade now. I am really tired, but I really want Kaela to meet these very important people in my life, so we head there. I dance. I sweat. I watch gay guys do drugs. I wait in bathroom lines, push past strangers, give a hug to a podcast listener, and eventually get really hungry. We were there until too late. “Too late” meaning Popeyes was closed by the time we left. That’s how I end up with Trader Joe’s chicken gyoza and ramen at 4 a.m. It’s late to be getting culinary, but someone has to do it. A lesbian always will.

Saturday, June 26
I wake up at 11 a.m., which is not enough sleep. But here’s the thing about me: Even when I’m out late or hungover, I naturally wake up at, like, eight. It’s not a flex; it’s often a prison, particularly on weekends when I want to sleep in. So even on a weekend, if I wake up late, I just get anxiety about it. But I took a magnesium before bed, and that really helped. Or at least! I tell myself that!

I order Greenberg’s Bagels, which was not my call; I’m being an ally to Kaela. I’m extremely hungover, so please hold your judgment, but I got a blueberry bagel, scooped out, with bacon, egg, and cheese, hot honey, and lettuce. It was so chaotic, but hear me out — it was good. No one believes women anymore, but I’m telling the truth.

We also order coffee delivery (yes, I am hungover, I let Jesus take the wheel) from Blank Street. I get a Daydream matcha latte. My friend gets a regular coffee, and I make her get a large so we can share. I also go to Walgreens and pick up approximately 42 Electrolits. The backbone of Pride!

Before the Dyke March, I get Chop’t: a Mexican Caesar with jalapeño chips and an oatmeal-raisin cookie. Best fast-casual salad spot, and don’t even try to tell me it’s Sweetgreen. It’s my first Dyke March. I’ve organized protests and marches before, and I love the euphoria of collective joy and liberation, but I do struggle with slow walking. I live in New York, and I can’t tiptoe. Maybe it’s my ADHD — I get overstimulated. So I cut in higher up, around 18th Street, making my walk shorter. It’s so fun. I love that it’s a place to see so many different expressions of queerness, of lesbianism. And I didn’t run into an ex, which is unheard of. On top of everything, there was a DOUBLE RAINBOW! Maybe god doesn’t hate gays after all.

We go to Menkoi Sao around 9 p.m. and order a very hot, very good spicy miso ramen, gyoza, edamame, and a Sapporo. It’s a saved spot I’d never actually been to; I don’t even know why I saved it. But that’s my whole relationship with saving places: I just trust who I was when I saved it. I have fully lost my voice, so I can’t really communicate, which is maybe nice because I just get to enjoy the meal.

The plan is to go home. I have a tote bag on me. I’m not trying to go to the club in flip-flops. But I am convinced to “stop by” the unofficial march afters at Parkside Lounge, where a friend is bartending. There’s a long line of baby queers outside. I get in through the list line and run into an old camp friend, my neighbor, a girl who started a rumor I was on Ozempic, and someone I dated. It wouldn’t be a Pride weekend without running into at least a few people you used to hook up with. There are strippers here. I don’t see them, but I see a foot go up, and just that is fabulous. My bartender friend brings me and my friends three Gatorades — blue, red, and yellow. Between the hydration and the number of drinks we have, I change my tune and think, “Why stop now?” So we go from there to DickAppointment at Nowadays. The second I get in the car, my tiredness hits me and I am like, Well, what am I doing here? But my best friend is in town, I want to show her a good time, and I decide to dance for a little bit. One thing about me: I’m susceptible to groupthink. And it ended up being one of the best parties I’ve ever been to. We’re out until five in the morning.

Sunday, June 27
Naturally, I don’t wake up until noon. Forgot the magnesium, so I’m a little more anxious. We were supposed to go to Riis Beach — I always go to Riis for Pride with a bunch of my friends and exes and everyone I know. But I wake up too late and with not enough energy, and when I get up, it’s overcast. I check my phone, and my Crosswalk Crush interview went live, where I gave a #Pride-themed dating-advice hot tip and was promptly called every name under the sun by incels in the comments. <3 Yayyyy.

For breakfast, I make medium-boiled eggs — I like it when the yolk is a little runny, and someone told me once that’s better for you, and I tend to believe someone if they say something with their chest. Before we head out, I eat a Trader Joe’s Waldorf chicken salad.

I get the kind of cleanse I need after the horrors of my Fire Island trip last weekend by going to a lesbian woman’s large home in Carroll Gardens. I only know a few people there: the two friends who invited me, one woman I’d met years ago, and another one I dated. Like I said, what is Pride without running into a few of your exes? Everyone is nice and grown up in a way that makes my 32 feel like 16. Being around them makes me want to contribute more to my Roth IRA (complimentary).

It starts out as a very chill afternoon: We get there around four. They are playing a game of flip cup. There is a tattoo artist and well-behaved dog. We’re in a quaint back patio with cigarettes displayed on a silver tray. They have a bartender for the next hour. And what’s a beautiful white woman’s home without a cheese plate? There’s one really good sharp cheddar I get into and a blueberry goat cheese. There is Domino’s there, too, but I don’t touch it. I’m more of a Papa Johns sweetheart myself. It’s a nice, calm comedown, proper Pride, real lesbianism, because up until then, we’d kind of been acting like gay guys.

Then we go to Brooklyn Social nearby, where another friend of mine is throwing a still-intimate party. Just more lesbians in a space, eyeing each other, some flirting, some possibly beefing — who’s to say. I have a cigarette, the skinny kind because then it doesn’t count, and a mezcal ginger beer. And then someone buys me another. And then someone buys me another after that. Mezcal really has become my go-to. I love mezcal. I did that very annoying thing where I went to Mexico City and said I didn’t like mezcal and then came back like, Mezcal is my whole life; there’s no other alcohol. I think it’s okay to be annoying as long as you’re honest about it.