Diary of A Wimpy Lesbian Is Sam Bosch’s Second Coming of Age

Album Cover Photo by Alysa Cecilia Garcia

Sam Bosch has a way with words. Whether piecing words together as simple yet emotionally devastating lyrics, or choosing wonderfully evocative titles for their projects, they have a natural gift for building poetic phrases out of everyday language. For example, they describe their music as “Lesbian satanic acoustic punk,” which not only perfectly captures their sound (so perfectly that I frequently refer to it as an example of how artists don’t need to box themselves into rigid genres to describe their music), but also conveys the tongue-in-cheek undertone of Bosch’s lyrics.  On this past Halloween (a canonically queer holiday), they released their fifth full-length project, Diary of A Wimpy Lesbian, which they call, “The best project (they’ve) put out thus far.”

Like the beloved kids’ book series that inspired the album’s name, Diary of A Wimpy Lesbian feels like a coming-of-age story, but one told through a collection of vignettes rather than in a linear format. “Coming-of-age” typically refers to narratives set during the protagonist’s early adolescence, but the genre more broadly describes a transition from child to adult–which I propose happens closer to your late teens or early 20s. This “second coming of age” is the era that Diary of A Wimpy Lesbian encapsulates. Instead of a child looking towards the future with fresh eyes, our protagonist is a disillusioned young adult, forced to reckon with grown-up truths like mortality, heartbreak, accountability, and dependency. In the middle of the opening track, “Venus in Gemini,” Bosch tells listeners exactly what to expect: “It’s gonna be a diary. It’s gonna be, ‘I’m sobbing and playing the guitar and working through emotions, and these songs helped me cope.’” 

In a video shared on Instagram, Bosch said their latest project is about, “Tragic, tragic, tragic, sad, sad, outcomes,” but I think that’s only partially true. Yes, there’s a persistent bittersweetness throughout the nine songs, but the emotional matrix woven by Bosch is more complicated than an isolated sadness. On songs like “Alaska” and “Venus in Gemini,” it takes the shape of a forlorn yearning, where the narrator is overwhelmed with love, almost to the point of despair. Bosch sums up this paradox splendidly in the chorus of “Venus in Gemini”: “It’s kind of unbearable/You make me feel terrible/And loved and seen at the same time.” Part of the maturing that happens during this second coming of age is understanding how seemingly contradictory emotions often coexist, a motif in many of these songs. As Bosch's album demonstrates, loss can still be present in moments of love, and love can still exist in moments of loss. 

“Alaska,” a love letter to a long-distance partner, toys with this same juxtaposition. Lines like “I miss you more than air/I miss you more than life” are wistfully romantic, but also alarmingly intense. Bosch understands that love can be scary, and doesn’t shy away from admitting relationship anxieties. The acoustic version of “I’m Sorry I’m A Piece of Shit” (the original was on Bosch’s project Skinny Dipping in The Baptismal Fountain, released in April 2024) has more of a melancholy feel than the original, but it’s still something of a love song, where apologizing and taking accountability are accurately framed as acts of love. “With Love” (which also has a bonus acoustic version) is really the only “breakup song” on the album, and it’s unexpectedly, exceedingly, kind. The title made me wonder if it was going to be more of a sarcastic kiss-off, but Bosch’s well wishes for their ex are more compassionate than anything a lot of people will ever hear from their actual significant others. 

My favorite songs from Diary of A Wimpy Lesbian explore the emotional ambiguity between anger and grief, and how one can be an expression of the other. “PRIDE WAS A RIOT,” originally released in June as a single (along with “i’m not your man”) gets two new variations on this album, a remastered update and an acoustic version. It’s one of my most played songs of 2024, which feels especially fitting since we’ve watched LGBTQIA+ rights regress literal decades just in the last year. “PRIDE WAS A RIOT” is an antidote to the commercialization of Pride Month: Pithy enough to bite back at corporations co-opting queer identities for profit, but informed enough to avoid coming off as glib. Besides being really satisfying to yell in a blind rage, if the chorus, “Fuck your rainbow capitalist shit/I’d rather throw some fucking bricks/Go Marsha Johnson on your bitch” inspires a single listener to Google Marsha P. Johnson or Stonewall, that’s a triumph. 

“Sweet Home Chicago” is a punch to the gut. Starting with the opening line, “I’d like to say a big ‘Fuck you’ to drugs and alcohol/You took too many lives/Too many way too soon,” this song takes the listener on a roller coaster ride through the stages of grief. As someone who has lost a lot of people dear to me and been really fucking angry about it, I found this song difficult, but oddly comforting, too. Bosch ultimately arrives at the closest I think anyone can come to acceptance, with the heart-wrenching promise, “I’ll try to be as soulful as the days you were alive.” Oof. The idea of a life being passed like a torch from those who have died to their surviving loved ones has steered the majority of my own life, and Bosch expresses this sentiment beautifully here. 

If you, like me, are going through your second coming of age, I highly recommend this album. Diary of A Wimpy Lesbian is like a balm for the psychological growing pains that characterize early adulthood. Thank you, Sam, for making me (a teenage girl in her late 20s) feel seen. 

Diary of a Wimpy Lesbian by Sam Bosch is available now on all music platforms, and a few of the songs are also available as live versions on Bosch’s live album, The Bosch Pit. (And heads up, their Spotify page has way more of their previous music than their Apple Music page!)