Small Wire gift guide

My boyfriend told me the other day that lists are kind of fascist. Still, I persevere. In many ways, gift guides were created for people like me. I am enthusiastic about gift-giving but not particularly imaginative. I am part of a large family and am participating in multiple gift exchanges. I love the idea of being one of those people who just shows up with something thoughtful. Instead, I show up empty-handed, out of breath, and 30 minutes late.

My thing with gift guides though is that they almost never feature like gifts that I feel like I could realistically offer to people. Half of them are exercises in curation, a way of showing how chic your taste in lamps and spices and Alaïa jackets is. The other half are the trusty under twenty five dollar thing you can buy on Amazon that will be thrown out by New Year’s. What they often lack is taste, which is not contingent upon spending a lot of money or being very fashionable. Maybe my loved ones are simply less avant-garde than everyone else’s. I went to a very trendy boutique in Manhattan earlier this year looking for a birthday present for my sister. I thought maybe some jewelry or tchotchkes of some kind. They tried to sell me those opaque patterned legging-like tights that are in now and that sort of make you look like you have measles. Almost no one wants that.

My favorite gift guide that I have seen so far is the Fran Magazine gift guide for esoteric boyfriends. Boyfriends are not gendered here. You can be your own esoteric boyfriend. What I like about this gift guide is not that I would want to receive any of this, but that it starts with the fundamental premise that all the people around you are probably freaks and weirdos in their own particular way and that you must adapt your gift giving to their cultural compass. There’s this part in The Hundreds (that I quoted in my year end book list from last year but I will shamelessly quote again) where Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart write:

I don’t hate all my friends a little even a little. There’s the tender one with dark black hair who is fighting to stay attached to things on the verge of dead. There’s the person who calls us cartoon names and judges the funny-bad. There’s the person who gets irritated if I get anxious. There’s the one who is clueless that her face is a maniacal gif. There’s the Marxist candy eater. There’s the one who is an amazing mother and you like watching her go at it. There’s the one who is developing a sense of humor after a life- time of devoted seriousness, and it’s sweet to watch her loosen up and crack up. There’s the one who is happy to see you. There’s the one who likes, really likes, the way you think. Most people only kind of like, but when someone really likes, that’s nice. There’s the one who taught me the phrase “that’s nice.” There’s the one who jumps in hard and has to leave in an hour. There’s the one who you respect so much your heart hurts. There’s the one who has you in mind, then calls you up. There’s the one who lifts your chin on contact. There is the one who just starts in without even so much as a hello. Then there are all the good conversationalists. Then there are all the grinners.

The Hundreds would be a beautiful gift for almost anyone.

Also in books, Overshare, the catalog from the Sophie Calle Walker Center exhibition is more casual than a typical coffee table book. It’s soft and floppy and buttery yellow and sort of feels like a very luxurious magazine. Sophie Calle is a compulsive oversharer, all about neurosis and poor boundaries and obsessive behavior. I gifted this to myself because I am a bookseller and get a retail discount. You could gift it to a neurotic woman in your life. Alternatively, Magali Lara made a really good artist book called Los zapatos de tacón, which is risograph printed and mixes drawing and text.

For real readers, you could get a Copper Canyon Press poetry book like Popular Longing by Natalie Shapero, for the yearners, or Deluge by Leila Chatti for the mystics out there. Leonor Grave from The Graveyard Review put out a beautifully designed zine about horror movies that might still be available and is only $15.

You can get a sweatshirt from The Ones We Love that says “Caution: swan is aggressive” for only $48. You can make someone feel very seen that way. You could get these really thick wool socks from L.L. Bean. Whenever I feel bad, I put on really warm socks and it makes everything better because my feet are always cold. You could get someone Hot Hands hand warmers, which are kind of a throwaway Amazon gift, but which mean a lot to me personally because I have cold hands. You could get someone a sauna day, which is literally the secret to everything. You could get one of these hand-knitted balaclavas with a little bow on it from this Depop girl (they are 50% cheaper than the Paloma Wool ones and around 80% cheaper than the Sandy Liang ones). You could get this Kiehl’s hand cream that is like magic or you could make your own whipped moisturizer and give it to a friend, like my friend did for me.

You could get these funky glass cups from a ceramicist I know. Or you could DIY your own Margiela kiss shirt by embroidering on a white button down, like my brother did. You could get a pair of smart bracelets that vibrates when you tap it so you can send little hellos all day long to someone you love (I got these and they’re kind of cringe and also definitely steal your data but I love them). You could go to any antique store or estate sale outside of a major city and get really kitschy decor on the cheap. Or you can go on Etsy, if you want your apartment to look like my grandmother’s and order some vintage fish wall plaques from New Jersey or this stainless steel fish jello salad mold or this ‘70s pink Murano glass mushroom lamp. You could dry some flowers and gift them along with The Language of Flowers by Sheila Pickles, if you’re feeling really Victorian about it.

You could get one of Malak Mattar’s gorgeous paintings or a Gabrielle Rul print if you can get your hands on one before they sell out. You could get the Esther Perel relationship card game for people who are really emotionally slutty. You could get a CSA subscription for someone who is a creative cook or these glass storage containers for someone who is worried about microplastics. Or you could get an entire case of Hapi Hot Wasabi Peas—probably just for me and literally no one else.

I have earrings from Daisy Chains that I always get compliments on. You could get this vintage beaded gold heart evening bag which Susan Alexandra wishes she had made. For someone you really love, you could get these sheer Helsa voile shorts, which, I am ashamed to say, I saw a video of Nara Smith wearing on her birthday. They are extremely flattering. You could get these really slouchy cotton socks to wear around the house or some Marland Backus jewelry if you have a lot of money to spend.

You could subscribe, for just $5-10 a month, to my friend Rawan’s newsletter, Refaat Writes Back, for writers from Gaza (you can also subscribe for free). You could gift a subscription to Lux, one of my favorite magazines. Someone I used to work with gifted me a Lux subscription a couple years ago and this year I was published in Lux so sometimes gifts can take you far. You could subscribe someone to the New Directions New Classics Club for $160 a year and they will have 12 New Directions books delivered to them.

Or if you really want to show someone you cherish them, you could cook them a nice meal and kiss them on the cheek and tell them how valued and amazing and loved they are and that you don’t hate them a little, not even a little. That would be enough for most people. I know it would be enough for me.