Miss Manhattan Hangs Out...with Lucia Stacey

Lucia Stacey answers the door of her apartment in Brooklyn wearing a black kimono, but quickly changes into a black dress and offers me first a LaCroix, then a coffee. I cannot place her accent right away, but she soon tells me her long vowels are of English origin, her short ones from Atlanta, having grown up splitting her time between the two locations. She moved to New York to work in biodefense, a strange proposition for a person with a poetry degree, she tells me. But she has now for several years been on staff at the dating app Hinge, a workplace she loves dearly and where she was recently promoted to VP of Operations.

Lucia still writes poetry--she has been published in Tin House, The Chicago Quarterly Review, and others--and performs as part of The Poetry Brothel, an immersive literary and burlesque cabaret. Her character is Penelope Strangelight, “a chemist, but uses the Oxford English Dictionary in place of the Table of Elements, for when certain words are combined they can cause far more damage…”

In the last year or so, she’s also carved out another artistic niche for herself with what were first doodles but evolved into more defined drawings, sometimes bodies filled with inky swirls and geometry all erotic and feminine, sometimes a more demure teapot or collection of flowers done in gouache. Since she already has a salaried job, she says, she donates 50% of all the proceeds from her artwork to Planned Parenthood in Mike Pence’s name. She has started completing commissions and has even made some of her drawings into wallpaper, which will be covering parts of the Hinge offices as they move into their new space.

Recently, Lucia has taken on another responsibility: becoming a “dog mum” to Hugo, a pughuahua (part pug, part chihuahua). At two years old, Hugo is tiny and fully grown, and to Lucia’s delight is more of a cuddler than a barker.

We sit on the floor of Lucia’s new apartment, which she has just begun outfitting with new furniture and artwork. Light shines in through the window despite the grey day, a sign bearing first the words “Pooch & Saullybear”--the nicknames for herself and her friend and roommate Saul--then the temperature and time until the next arriving L train. Polaroids dance on the wall, as do a Picasso print and some of Lucia’s drawings. There’s a bookcase filled with poetry and dried flowers. They’ll be getting a new couch soon, but in the meantime there’s a collection of colorful cushions and blankets in its place.

Saul comes home and cuddles Hugo. Today is Saul’s birthday, and Lucia blows up a plastic crown for him to wear. Lucia orders dim sum for breakfast then takes Hugo out for a walk, donning her Hinge baseball cap to brave the rain. She leaves it on when she comes back inside. Retrieving stemless wine glasses from the kitchen, she fills them with white wine for herself, Saul, and soon others.

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