🫖 Hey, team. Short and sweet glimpses into the moments I’ve left the house lately. 🫖
Being a writer guarantees that you will spend too much time alone—and that as a result, your mind will begin to warp. If you are in a small workspace, your brain will begin breathing and contracting like the sets in Dr. Caligari. (Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird)
When you’re young, you do so many things hoping to be noticed. The way you dress or stand, the music played loud enough to catch the attention of another person who might know a song, too. And then there are things you do as you step out into the world, the real world full of strange adults testing out what it means to be generous or thoughtful. (Hua Hsu, Stay True)
Summer is constant claustrophobia, from within and from without. A tension—the desire to go outside versus the price of being anywhere but home.
They say it pays to get out of the house. This month, I racked up the largest credit card bill in my personal history. It pays to question conventional wisdom.
I spend too much time alone. I do so many things hoping to be noticed.
At Littlefield, my eyes rested on a man’s clear glass bottle of seltzer. Rainbows sailed, swam and refracted with the movements of his arm. This created a new, more beautiful thing than the static rainbow light display behind the stage. The comedy show was great, but the bottle was a showstopper.
I ran into some friends in the East Village whom I never expected to see outside of Crown Heights. I joined them on their journey to Sunny & Annie’s for a frozen treat, nursing my first Diet Coke since the Reuters article. I asked if they liked their ice cream soft or hard. Leila said cold and solid. Liam had no comment. We strolled back to the park to check if it was a good or bad dog day. It was a bad dog day.
I went to a coffee shop where there wasn’t an empty seat. I ordered. I trusted the process. I acted like a human being when a spot opened up. I sat down. I wrote in a notebook. I gazed into space as a jazz trio began to play.
I finished a book and watched Idiocracy (2006) on the same Saturday. These two things are not in contradiction.
My brother texted me about donating platelets.
I made a list of all the things I want to do in the Bay Area when I visit in October. Van Kleef’s, Sinaloa, campus, Kingfish, Comal, the Starry Plough, Raleighs, the botanical garden, Tilden, Fenton’s, Mercy, Lagunitas, Swensens, Tommaso’s. So much I want to taste, though perhaps it’s all sweeter living in my memory.
I swiped Tinder furiously and chatted briefly with a man in Scotland (visiting soon) and a couple in Brooklyn (because, where else?). These conversations had a timbre of loneliness and connection, whose ancestry can be traced to online chatrooms in the early aughts. Inexplicably, Tinder is more innocent than Hinge.
After a brief attempt at reading outdoors, I aimlessly made my way home. On a bench sat two fellow Berkeley English majors, whom I hadn’t seen in three years. I met them separately at school, but knew they started dating from social media. Visiting from elsewhere, for one weekend only, suitcases at their feet. We all shook our heads and gawked. New York is always like that, said he.
Over exquisite hand rolls, I explained to some new friends how I used to be incredibly careful with my language. I used to deeply consider the power of words to do harm. Now, I’m less sure. There are still things I will never say, but my lips have loosened. I struggle to understand which of my beliefs come from the heart, and which have situationally seeped into my skin. Chill LA. Woke Berkeley. Based New York. Am I powerless to the pendulum?
Kate and I talked about everything in a booth until a group of 32-year-olds usurped our peace. We got reprimanded for the bottle of port we brought into the bar. It was a surprisingly gentle scolding. We earned two dollar bills from the floor of the photo booth and took topless pictures in the graffiti-lined bathroom.
I vowed to flirt with everyone I met at a low-stakes birthday party. I’m pretty sure that I did. I, at very least, talked to a lot of people. I suppose the chasm between talking and flirting is not so wide.
My armpits smelled like peach rings after a particularly heinous night of vaping.
I tried not to vomit in an Uber, and I didn’t. When I was home, I did. The cat looked at me with wide eyes and the next day, he sat on my chest and licked my eyelashes.
Evana and I joked about planning a night out where we dress like Victorian dolls and lick lollipops, batting our eyelashes at men with our mouths open. We laughed so hard we almost choked on the udon we were slurping in front of my bedroom AC unit.
My summer fling tore his ACL playing basketball. So, it seems that ship has sailed.
I sheltered under an awning when the rain came and shooed sparrows away from my almond croissant. I talked to my mom with my cell phone held up to my ear, like a businessman in 2009.
I watched my hot neighbor wait for his sandwich order. We both pretended not to see each other. Or, maybe, he didn’t actually see me and I am the perpetually maladjusted freak.
I took the train home at midnight. The doors opened and I watched four men in orange vests sitting on a bench with their backs turned to me. They were all in varying stages of male pattern baldness. There was a world there, for four seconds before the doors closed and the ride continued.
I felt too young for the dive in Gowanus where Alex and I sipped whiskey. I got off the subway a stop early for a longer stroll home. Walking past improbably large groups of identical 22-year-olds, I felt too old for the East Village.
🫖 Thanks for reading! My mixtape below is full of music that feels summery, claustrophobic, layered and expansive. As a reminder, this is a perk for paid subscribers, alongside my additional columns, doxxed + tsundoku. 🫖
7.9.23 Mixtape
To start, the spinny, dizzy musical architecture of Selfish Soul by Sudan Archives. Be careful with this one—it will be in your head forever. 🎶 About time I embrace myself and soul. Time I feed my selfish soul. 🎶 Brittney Denise Parks, aside from being demonstrably talented, also appears to be delightful and cool. Quote for proof: It felt like time to let people know who I am. My stage name is kind of academic and on Athena, I created this thoughtful persona centred on divine Black femininity. Now I want to show my looseness, too. I'm a deep, insightful person, but I'm also fucking silly. // I generally find the B-52’s to be a bit grating. My mom has described them as a “had to be there” type of band. I feel willing to indulge in Rock Lobster and Love Shack around Halloween (for some reason), but I recently stumbled across Topaz, which is a beachy delight. 🎶 Bright ships will sail the seas. Starfishes are spinning. 🎶 // I think one of the most erotic things I’ve ever witnessed is Paul Weller lounging in a gondola, being paddled by Mick Talbot, as seen in the music video for Long Hot Summer by the Style Council. To me, he is the sexiest man alive. With its womping jazzy influence and inexplicable doo-wops, this song somehow feels too long, despite being under four minutes. Yet, what could more perfectly reflect the feeling of what it is to languish in the summertime? God bless the Modfather’s pretentious malaise. 🎶 All those lonely films. And all those lonely parties. 🎶 // I recommended a Maia Friedman song in my very first Insecure Tea post, having been fresh out of seeing her open for Bedouine. I’ve been revisiting the track Sunny Room lately, as it feels very aligned with my personal move into the bright, cheerful bedroom in my apartment a month ago. 🎶 New growth is both fast and slow. You will find your own. Your own sunny, sunny room. 🎶 I found my own sunny room and I love the idea that anyone can find their own version of that—something that makes life a little brighter. // At last, we’ll pump things up with Steppin’ Out by ELO. It’s classic ELO goodness: melodramatic, orchestral, pure rock, etc. The little sound that happens right before the chorus (1:03) literally IGNITES me in a way that’s hard to explain. 🎶 Don't know where I'm going. I'm just steppin' out. 🎶
"There was a world there, for four seconds before the doors closed and the ride continued." Always love to see these worlds through your eyes