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Over cappuccinos and an ultimately regrettable éclair, under a few halfhearted Halloween decorations, Roman hands me a book of Frank O’Hara poems, opened to “How to Get There.” He didn’t ask me to read it out loud, but it’s Caffe Reggio, and as usual, packed with two to three generations of pseudo-literati. I declaim:
White the October air, no snow, easy to breathe
beneath the sky, lies, lies everywhere writhing and gasping
clutching and tangling, it is not easy to breathe1
We are both enthralled and spooked. We pick apart the poem for a while, revisiting our favorite lines. Before long, I scurry away to work my Sunday evening co-op shift and he departs to meet up with his brother.
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I say that I’m bummed that October is over, with temporary amnesia that it felt like 31 days of PMS this year. I tell anyone who will listen that I don't know what’s been wrong with me. Burnt out. To a crisp. Seeing things. Therapy. Impatient confidentiality. Please don’t write about this. Getting dumped because I’m a better friend than lover. Being gay for love. Acting up. Talking shit. Stirring shit. Feeling like shit. Shit! Shit! Fucking Shit! Achey. Tired. Hot. Cold. Bummed out. Pissed off. More stinky than fresh. Catching a chill at the cemetery and wanting to cry. Or was it just the sun in my eyes? The uncanny realization that I am someone else’s bad date story. Clutching for my keys in my purse, in a mild horror film panic. I don’t run and you don’t chase me.
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Tell me something that really pisses you off, Jesse asks Celine on the back of a lurching Viennese bus in “Before Sunrise.” God, everything pisses me off, she replies before listing:
I hate being told by strange men in the street to smile to make them feel better about their boring life.
I hate that 300 kilometers from here there’s a war going on. People are dying and nobody knows what to do about it. Or, they don’t give a shit.
I hate that the media are trying to control our minds. It’s very subtle but it’s a new form of fascism, really.
I hate it when I’m in a foreign country, especially America. Each time I wear black or lose my temper or say anything about anything they always go, “Oh, it’s so French, it’s so cute.”
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I’m typically slow to anger, but God, everything has been pissing me off lately.
I hate my soon-to-move-out roommate. I hate the sound of his rhythmic cough as he takes dabs before work every morning. I hate the smell of his nightly meals, burnt in his unwashed air fryer—chicken nuggets and potstickers that fill the room with a thin, rancid smoke that seeps into my hair. I hate that he shops like a nine year old set loose at Costco—snapple and gatorade and oreos and frosted flakes and big hulking gallons of whole milk from factory farms. I hate how he only drinks water from plastic bottles that he never recycles. I hate how his presence makes me feel unsettled in my own home, and has resulted in me hiding in my bedroom with a closed door for six months. I hate how his cat has scratched the fuck out of my furniture and has scratched the fuck out of me once or twice. And, most of all, I hate that I even bother to hate him. I hate how I’ve become hateful. I hate hating anyone.
I hate how long it feels to get from point A to point B, even when the ride is short. I hate subway waits that are longer than seven minutes. I hate getting blisters from the wrong shoes and I hate the panicky feeling of realizing I’m underdressed for the weather, stuffing my hands in my pockets to preserve warmth.
I hate that day when I was walking on 12th and passed two old men. Just as I began to vaguely smile and nod, one of them looked me in the eye and said, You should smile. It was too late, I was already smiling. He said, There she is! That’s beautiful. That’s much better. I hate how that incident ruined my day, which I spent ruminating about the ways I could have reacted that might have served a speck of justice, or at very least satisfaction. I envisioned cursing, yelling, flipping the idiot off. Asking him how exactly he benefits from making a comment like that or telling him to never say that to a woman again. But, what did I actually do? Wipe the smile off my face and silently walk home. I hate being disappointed in my cautiousness and fear. I hate how this memory clogs up my mental real estate when that bored man probably forgot all about it five minutes after it happened.
I hate having the same boring conversations over and over again. I hate talking about Daylight Savings and I hate when people bring up the fact that Halloween candy is discounted on November 1st.
I hate having to send emails with bad news to kind people. I hate trying to pinch pennies on behalf of an organization. I hate being so ignorant about money, and I hate feeling certain that I will never have a lot of it. I hate how the workday cannibalizes all my time, leaving me with no energy for writing or exercise.
I hate how much work it takes to seek out good information. I hate how this makes me apathetic. I hate Instagram. I hate numbly watching stories. I hate being correctly advertised to, and I hate contributing idiocy to the void nearly every day. I hate comments sections where everyone decends like flies buzzing around a rotten carcass.
I hate that there’s a war going on five thousand miles away. I hate that innocent lives are being ruined and families destroyed. I hate that nature is being decimated. I hate waking up every morning and seeing headlines about women and children being slaughtered. I hate that my brain can’t make sense of this, so I shut off parts of myself to mechanically make it through the days. I hate that not everyone has this privilege. I hate not knowing what to do, and suspecting that my inaction is a sign that I’m a terrible person who doesn’t really give a shit.
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It is strange to think of living, I mistakenly text Evana, my mind half-glazed, while maniacally scrolling through Streeteasy listings. What I meant to say is that it is strange to think of living in Brooklyn, when I have spent the last two and a half years in the East Village. My lease doesn’t end until June, but my roommate’s imminent departure has me thinking about what’s next. oh it is strange to think of living, she replies.
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Montana and I are parked outside of a Connecticut market called The Big Y. Over toohot coffee and apple cider doughnuts raining cinnamon on our pant legs, we contemplate The Big Why. What do you think it is? he asks. Probably why we exist. Why we are alive. That seems like the biggest why to me, too, he agrees.
//
It’s not October anymore and the air is not white. My anger is subsiding and it’s beginning to feel easier to breathe. O’Hara’s poem continues to rattle in my mind.
all can confess to be home and waiting, all is the same
and we drift into the clear sky enthralled by our disappointment
never to be alone again
never to be loved
sailing through space : didn’t I have you once for my self?
West Side?
for a couple of hours, but I am not that person
The theme of today’s mixtape are songs for anger. I must admit that my arsenal of angry songs is much less robust than my well of sad songs. If you have some good songs you like to listen to when you’re properly pissed off, please shoot me a message or leave a comment! I’d love to add them to the Insecure Tea archive. Also, I’ve decided to share six songs today—it’s usually five, but who cares? I make the rules! // First off, we have Best Friend’s Arm by Pavement. It’s a song where the lyrics feel jumbled and indecipherable, which is well aligned with how I experience the feeling of anger. I’ll often choose this song as the first thing I listen to when I go on a run and want to blow off steam. There is a moment during the song that Malkmus literally coughs and it just sends me! // Rapp Snitch Knishes by MF DOOM tells a hilarious story and contains one of the juiciest guitar samples of all time, in my humble opinion. Thanks to the real heads, I found out that it came from a cover of Space Oddity, which you can find it here—the riff starts at 2:09. 🎶 Rap snitches, telling all their business. Sit in the court and be their own star witness. Do you see the perpetrator? Yeah, I'm right here. Fuck around, get the whole label sent up for years. 🎶 // Drunk Walk Home by Mitski devolves into one of my favorite primal, feminine wails. I love how the song progresses from cold and steely to unzipped and furious. 🎶 But though I may never be free, fuck you and your money. I'm tired of your money. 🎶 // The next song—River by Together Pangea—doesn’t strike me as completely angry, but it has the kind of fast-paced forward motion that I find satisfying when I’m feeling pissed off. It has a sense of teenage angst, I suppose. It’s a great driving song. He sneers: 🎶 And now you’re bombing down the street like it’s a fucking parade. And when it all dries up, you’re gonna feel the pain of excess, waste and wanting. 🎶 // Speaking of teenage angst, I’ll share You Can Have Alonetime When You’re Dead by Remember Sports. The lead singer has such a fabulously bitchy vibe that reminds me of angry girl rock of the early aughts. Like a band that would have played at the Bronze in Buffy. 🎶 Am I regressing or growing legs? My pride is on the floor like a broken egg. 🎶 // Dear Nora does frustration so well. Their song Second Guess is so clear and crisp and excellent. It speaks to my heart when I’m feeling down in the dumps and underestimated. 🎶 Say you wanna second guess me? Well I’ve been second guessed before. Say you wanna throw a party. Just to answer your front door. 🎶 That’s it for today!
🫖 Thanks for reading! Questions? Comments? Reactions? Don’t be shy. I sincerely appreciate you being here. 🫖
“How to Get There,” Frank O’Hara, https://ia801603.us.archive.org/30/items/lunchpoems00oharrich/lunchpoems00oharrich.pdf
I love how you hated everything...such a relief to read someone else's hate stuff…And you went all sweary…all the while retaining your fine bone china writing style
A cathartic watch for those full of bile is the very first ep of After Life with Ricky Gervais being so full of hate he is a complete arse to everyone. But then sounds as if you’ve moved on.
“The uncanny realization that I am someone else’s bad date story…”
yep that’s very bad pain…when we are such good people - it’s hard to face the fact that someone who was important to us saw us so differently.