🫖 Hello! A little something for your federal holiday. For all the newbies: welcome! This is my free weekly essay. Here you will find a literary rendering of my scrumpy life in New York. Sometimes I reflect on a theme, like doom or lessons from the ground. Other times, it’s more like a raw little poem, like Insecure Twenties or autofiction. Today, it seems to be somewhere in between. I hope you enjoy. 🫖
If I could leave you there–
If, without waking you, I could get up and reach the door –!
We used to go together. –Shut, scared eyes,
Poor, desolate, desperate hands, it is not I
Who thrust you off. No, take your hands away–
I cannot strike your lonely hands. Yes, I have struck your heart,
It did not come so near. (“The Forest Road,” Charlotte Mew)
The night I did it, I prayed to be good; prayed to be kind; prayed to be forgiven. I once again wondered if I am a nice girl or a vicious cunt. We contain, well. You know.
Is the written word a form of cowardice?
Families with golden retrievers. Dog funerals as foreplay for a puppy christenings. Buddy 2 licks the wounds left in the absence of Buddy 1.
How soon is too soon to write about it?
I will avoid windows. I won’t look down from the 26th floor, lest I be cursed with 26 years of vertigo. I apologized for the minutia, but not for the situation as a whole. You blamed the minutia, when really you were hurt by the situation as a whole. I teetered too close to the sun and fell into the only dirty puddle on East Twelfth. After weeks of drought, the water had surely percolated from grimy depths below. I was bruised but I’ve always seen the beauty in unspilled blood.
Is it better to have an idea or be an idea?
The point of my arrow turns to you. The weight of my audience threatens a snap. My target expands then contracts. You’re here; you’re here; you’re here. And, you are (allegedly) not here.
Are patrons inevitably patronizing?
$200 was an investment in my bullshit. But, still. I never promised to spin hay into gold.
When the weather turns cold, everyone looks 40% more homeless.
On Saturday night, the only way home from Greenpoint was by boat. I spent fifteen minutes on the dock, chuckling at the absurdity, cursing the woebegone L train and vaping plumes of essential oils into the frozen air. Even the first snow of the year is less white at night. At home, I ate pho in bed then slept from twelve to twelve.
On New Years Eve, I considered taking Cynthia’s advice and gobbling twelve green grapes at the toll of midnight, but instead I was a kissing machine. I kissed a soldier with painted nails. I kissed multiple authors of prominent substacks. I kissed a crocodile. Or was it an alligator? This is what happens when you clutch a tequila soda in your left hand and a dirty martini in your right at a place like Baby’s All Right. The band didn’t do a count down, which I figured had much to do with how visibly fucked up they were. According to scene reporter and party host Joe Kerwin, this was apparently an intentional choice. I’ve learned not to question God’s Wisdom. On January 1st, I thanked Beelzebub that I didn’t do any drugs or wake up in Bed Stuy.
On Wednesday, two separate dates bailed on me due to sore throats. I wondered if they had been kissing each other behind my back.
In college, Cami taught me that a haircut could be a continuous process rather than a singular event. A snip here, a slice there. L’imparfait over le passé composé. On Thursday, I didn’t have the patience to wait for a stylist, so I removed a four-inch lock to commit to the fact that I was in the process of cutting my hair.
Later, a career of killing
Time. And wasting money.
…
But I always knew if I worked hard enough
I would never make it. (“Charity Balls,” Cynthia Cruz, The Paris Review)
At the Thursday night screening of The Outsiders (1983), I whispered in my friend’s ear, “Want to bet on which teenage boy I’m going to think is hottest?” As a kid, I dug Ponyboy, but this was likely a symptom of my early onset main character syndrome. Rob Lowe, we decided. Within minutes, though, Matt Dillon proved his mettle. I guess I’m in my phase of falling for the handsome scoundrel. Days later, Evana and I were texting:
–“the problem with my sexuality is that sometimes i see a man and i don’t know if i want him or want to be him”–
This phenomenon couldn’t be clearer to me than when watching a bevvy of boys from the Eighties with floppy brown hair prancing about in denim jackets.
Throughout the movie, I cried at all the wrong parts. I couldn’t spare a tear for Ralph Macchio’s tiny dying breath, but welled up at the pink-and-honey skies and the quiet small town loneliness. I left Nitehawk perplexed by my melancholy.
As always, good writers articulated my feelings better than I could. In her latest essay for Roulette, Meg Nolan said, “When I was 20 or so and living in a bedsit in Dublin on the dole I listened to County Line about a thousand times in a month, it felt like real life, a thing I didn’t have access to at the time. It was sad about something specific, where I was just sad about everything.” Real life. A foreboding concept. It’s hard to explain why teenage knife fights and white class warfare in midcentury Tulsa seems more real than my days sending emails while sitting on a heating pad like a Victorian invalid. I shouldn’t romanticize a career of killing. Yet, I disgust myself with all the money I trade for perishable produce and strong drinks. I disgust myself on the breath I waste complaining about the minutia, when I’m really just a little sad about everything.
In her guest post for Maybe Baby, Mallory Rice reflected on her choice to move from Brooklyn to Livingston, Montana. In these lines, she captured the bittersweetness of leaving the familiar behind: “I’ve generally accepted invitations, even when I’m not exactly in the mood, and rarely regretted it. I’ve had periods of feeling energized by all the newness and I’ve also mysteriously cried on the drive home from parties where I, by my own account, had fun. Sometimes, in a quizzical tone, I ask myself why I have made my life so weird by moving here when I have plenty of deep, cozy relationships somewhere else. But then when I talk to the people who I’ve already known forever, I’m reminded why the pursuit and building of friendships is worthwhile.”
Sarah said that there’s less FOMO to be had in LA. This is true, though I suspect that life is untethered on any American shore. On Sunday, I was housebound again. As I ascended my stairwell around 9 PM, a familiar swirl asserted its presence in my visual field, like a colorless kaleidescope. An ocular migraine. One of a dozen I’ve had in my life. Always the same: not particularly painful, but disorienting enough to inhibit anything other than sitting in the dark, which is famously boring. In the past, they’ve passed within minutes, but this time the string drew back for hours, only to be pierced by sleep.
All of my yeses this week transubstantiated into nos. A lesson in intentionality. My aim is well-intentioned, but not always true.
5 songs for my target audience
“Radiation,” LUCY (Cooper B. Handy)
Earnest zoomerpilled bop. Don’t sleep on the cutie pie little music video. His fans go hard in the comments. He seems to be well-loved in the downtown music scene.
🎶 Bet you think this song is about you, don’t you? 🎶
“The Thing,” Pixies
🎶 I soon forgot myself and I forgot about the brake
I forgot about all laws and I forgot about the rain. 🎶
“Metal Heart,” Cat Power
🎶 How selfish of you
To believe in the meaning
Of all the bad dreaming. 🎶
“Homecoming Serf,” Sidney Gish
🎶 This isn't lyricism
I'm just dropping rhymes like flies. 🎶
“Theme from Mantrap,” ABC
Slow, theatrical version of the song “Poison Arrow.” Campy crooning; feels aligned with that era’s nostalgia for a few decades prior (à la The Outsiders, the Stray Cats, Grease, etc).
🎶 Who broke my heart, you did, you did.
Bow to the target, blame Cupid, Cupid. 🎶
🫖 Thanks for reading. 🫖