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8/28/24

This time can be different or it can be exactly the same. You can grow up now or you can grow up later. Hard now or hard later. It doesn't actually matter which one you pick. It's fine to wait to be better, you just can't complain about something you did to yourself. Once you learn this everything gets easier. Harder, but easier.

I'm one week from starting classes, one month from moving, I got back from Puerto Rico a few days ago, before that I went to LA two times in ten days just because I felt like running. It was fun. My only goal this summer was to get my wisdom teeth removed and I succeeded. My four-year saga of mouth infections and weekly low-grade fevers has finally come to an end, a saga which managed somehow to align perfectly with this now-closing chapter of my life that began when I left home for New York and started my remote job. Friday will be my last day. On my first day I sat at L's dad's desk in the fourth-floor office of her parents' house in Philadelphia holding a Lobel's Steakhouse icepack to my face in between zoom calls to bring down the swelling from my inaugural mouth infection brought about by six Bang energy drinks consumed on some stretch of highway between Baltimore and Wilmington, followed by three bottles of orange wine served by a downtrodden twink on a roof in south philly, then more bang energy and a full pack of cigarettes on 43rd and locust. Three weeks later I got a citation in the mail for "violent crime" from the state of delaware for blowing through a toll booth with my head stuck out the window. I used to know how to live. I paid the fine and finished my course of antibiotics and began. What started then is ending now, another course of antibiotics complete, this time just preventative, four years and four teeth gone just like that. I told my parents I would do it again if I could, horrified my mom with detailed recounts of the bone cracking and neck twisting and blood and little shards of teeth sprinkled all over my sweatshirt, watching them roll off of me and scatter onto the ground as I got up from the chair and stumbled into the lobby. My parents forgot to pick me up so I stood in the sun on Santa Monica boulevard for fifteen minutes thinking This Is the Life. I thought about how lucky I am to have experienced torture and felt nothing at all. How rare to know pain and not feel it. This is the life, I told my parents in the car fifteen minutes later and they laughed but I meant it.

When I first moved to greenpoint I used to look for the church steeple to find my way home. I had a hard time getting around. In LA everything is easy, ocean is west and everything else is east. In Philadelphia it was mostly the same, the schuykill cuts through the city and you always know which side of it you're on. In Brooklyn the East River is west, everything in this city radiates from Manhattan. My mom always called Manhattan "New York," she'd come to visit me and ask if we were going to go to New york today. I'd get annoyed and say we're in New York right now and she'd say oh you know what I mean and I'd say that's not how it works, but actually it is. It's so hard to admit the world doesn't revolve around you, that's why you look for steeples when the signs are written for someone else.

When I leave this apartment there are things I'll want to remember and others I'll want to forget. I'll want to remember the grass overgrown in the empty lot next door and the sun on the deck. I'll want to remember last year on st patrick's day standing in the kitchen and the beam of light that reflected tiny rainbows on all the walls and the ceiling from the rhinestones on my shirt. It was stupid and I cried and sent a picture to my mom. I'll want to forget the tiles so brown and crusty you could never tell if they were clean. I'll want to forget the smell of death and the monster flies that tormented me for weeks while some animal decayed in the bathroom wall. I'll want to forget the yelling and hiding and walking on eggshells. I'll want to forget a lot of things, but I won't because how else do you know it's getting better? I'll want to remember the bottles breaking and when enough was enough and the midnight drive to the urgent care and the crying in the bathtub while I waited for the drugs to kick in. I'll want to remember the quiet and the dark and the memorizing new words to pass the time and the moving of the laundry from the bed to the floor and over and over and over again.

R and I were texting about how life is just one big surgery, it's just adding and taking away. R said hers is like a boob job, glamorous and hedonistic, and I said mine was like an appendectomy, pain and suffering brought on suddenly for unexplained reasons but easily fixed if you just do something about it. It's not a very good metaphor but it made sense to both of us at the time. I thought it was funny R chose boob job as a symbol for glamour and hedonism since we saw a lot of boob jobs in Puerto Rico that seemed neither glamorous nor hedonistic. Mostly they looked like bags of saline or fat hanging off peoples' bodies out of obligation. R and L and I loved being there, though, even if we didn't have enough artificial parts to attract the attention of anyone above a certain tax bracket—or below it for that matter. None of us wanted to go back to New York but we all felt we had to. Did we? R's job is remote, L is unemployed, I still haven't paid my tuition. I never had a reason to be in New York, I just packed up my car one day and went, leaving the city wouldn't be any crazier than coming here in the first place. There are people and things that would make leaving hard, I guess, but staying doesn't always feel that much easier. I guess living in New York is kind of like a boob job. Something that seems glamorous and hedonistic but in practice just feels heavy on your chest. But it was your choice to do it in the first place, so, you keep on carrying the weight.

It's not so bad anyway I can feel it lifting. I care less and so much more. The fix was easy, I just had to do something about it. Last night I dreamt I had promised to make shrimp and soba for someone and tonight when I went to buy tofu at the store I thought to myself, "but they really wanted shrimp," then remembered I'm alone. At orientation yesterday I sat around a big wooden table with people who had hearts and brains and cared about me more after five minutes of meeting than anyone I'd met in the last four years. I know pain but I don't feel it anymore. It hurts to realize it's not about you until you remember it's all yours. I don't need somewhere to go I have somewhere to be.

8/11/24

Every time I'm hungover I think about what exactly it is that I have to live for. The day after T's birthday party a few weeks ago was particularly bad. R had spent the evening charming a young man named Jasdeep. He was a 28-year-old software engineer at Google, but spent money in such a way that suggested he might not have the requisite logic or reasoning skills to succeed in his role long term. He bought R (and anyone who happened to be within a 15-foot radius of him at the bar) hundreds of dollars worth of drinks and, for the promise of one kiss from R, purchased 1.5 grams of M the drug dealer's finest at R's urging. Jasdeep was disappointed to learn that R is only a woman of her word before drink 5 or after drink 9, but he did end the evening with at least one new notch in his belt. As R learned the next day when Jasdeep reached out via Instagram dm wondering who he had sent 120 dollars to at 2:30 in the morning, this was his first time buying or doing drugs ever (he never mentioned the drinks, so I guess that was par for course). Mazel tov, Jasdeep! You're a shell of a man now. And so my dismal state the next day was likely some sort of secondhand karma for that. Then began the hangover-induced considerations, how it is I keep getting on with it, waking up and starting again, when it only gets a little better after it's gotten so much worse. Later on came the classic hangover-relief ecstasy, when I suddenly feel lucky to be alive for the simple fact that my headache is gone. Always like I've overcome and graduated, except I'm nowhere new, just back at square one after a visit to the bad place. And the cycle repeats and intensifies and I ask myself again and again what it is I have to live for. Most of my time in new york has begged the question "why not kill yourself?" which sounds and is dramatic, but comes with a silver lining. Being routinely confronted by the depths has helped me understand having nothing to live for as perhaps one of the most persuasive reasons to keep on living. Because someday you might, and there's only one way to find out. It's really that stupidly simple.

So many things are ending but what's even scarier is how many things are beginning. Another day another life. More waiting and running late. Ha ha ha. Maybe tomorrow I'll wake up and make something of myself. Everyone wants to believe that because they feel something they can do something. I feel tired but I can’t sleep.

5.

On Tuesday I cried and told my mom I want to become a mechanic when really what I meant was that I want to leave New York. Why me? I think this so often. Sometimes you're a kid again sometimes you never grew up.

4.

I only sound stupid because I'm trying to be nice. Social hierarchy relies on deference, good manners mean a willingness to debase yourself, carry the conversation, laugh at the jokes, remember the names and the titles and the upcoming shows—and never ask for anything in return. This is not an indictment of a scene, this is a fact of life. Those who deny it are the most guilty. Anyone who suggests you simply be yourself, be assertive, never fold for strangers, has only ever existed in a position of social power or has been too dense to realize they aren't.

Interpersonal success arrives via two major routes: by intuiting another's needs and responding to them—making yourself small when you get the sense someone needs to be big—or by ignoring anyone's needs beside your own—making yourself so big that anyone you encounter begins to doubt their own size. Defer or be deferred to, defense or offense, every interaction has an inflection point, no matter how unconscious: mitigate the threat or become it. And when you're 26 and largely good for nothing, it's hard to think of yourself as anything but prey.

I met a priest uptown last week. We were put in contact by a man who knows a monk who knows my late great uncle. For some reason I thought we'd be friends, but I didn't know about the National Eucharistic Convention and this was a deal breaker for him. He told me he hates when priests only think about their parish, that I'm clearly going to the wrong church if they've never said a word about it. And I didn't have the heart to tell him the "wrong church" was actually just no church at all. I tried to ask some questions about the convention but with each one he got more and more upset about how little I knew. He changed the subject, he knew I'd be starting school in the fall, asked what I'll be studying. Religion, I said, and he just shook his head and told me that department has no respect for people of faith. I joked that maybe I could be the one to help them see the light and he said nothing and gave me that all-too-familiar look of disappointment I can't seem to get away from these days. We only have five minutes left, he warned. What is it that I really need, he insisted, and what did I want to know? And I wanted to tell him this:

I haven't been in the face of this much apathy in so long, or maybe I have just been too deluded to notice. The care can always turn out to be a hallucination, it's just hard to find the motivation to convince yourself otherwise—there's nothing quite as invigorating as building a body of evidence to prove to yourself that you matter. I read something unfair about me on the internet. When I talked to N last week about the coldness and the suspicious looks he assured me it was nothing and I agreed I was probably just taking everything personally like I always do. I stopped writing here because I couldn't take the idea of being criticized, because I'm weak, because I take everything personally, and every time I would try to get the words out it would feel like I was lying. And everything is so fragile, so obviously falling apart, the pain is enormous and coming from nowhere. It's easier to erase, disappear, become a rumor, mourn a couple of years, then your whole life. That's what it feels like, anyway. Stand up straight and talk to people who bore you to death because then it will all be over. There's a cat in my house that belongs to a man without a soul, I want him to leave, but maybe I'll keep him forever. What is it that I really need? Nothing. Remember: it doesn't get easier because it's never been hard. What do I want to know? Even less. Last night I saw my face in harsh light and vowed to shell out whatever amount necessary to stay naive. No more time to be wasted. You only live once even if you live forever. I took nyquil and woke up ten years younger. There are new links and new letters and new lives. There are versions of yourself out there that you've never met before. There are new ways to twist the knife and new ways to stop the bleeding. Everyone is graduating and getting promoted and traveling the world and I am right here, at the start, ready to begin again.

3.

I don't feel much of anything for anyone, when I left the bar last weekend I walked in the mist and thought about how nice it would be to disappear, if only I could think of a reason why. It's a terrible way to cry out for attention, no one ever notices you're gone until you return, so you may as well stick around and save yourself the airfare. The world feels less conspiratorial, maybe just because I've grown bored of all this mindless treason. It's not betrayal if you really don't care. I'll confess there is comfort in paranoia. I miss the feeling of being watched, it's better than feeling alone.

Now I'm tasked with understanding: is there anything left to be said once no one's listening? When the delusions of relevance wane, is it time to admit you just wanted to be heard? The obvious answer is yes and yes, the less obvious answer is how? I've dabbled with obstruction and just ended up confused, there is only so much 'fudging of the details' possible before you start to damage the Whole Point. And if you are so concerned with obscuring yourself, was there ever really a point to begin with? I miss my open heart. I don't think about the summer or the fall. Sometimes I think about the winter but then I forget. I try to imagine the next few months and I can't. I'm angry, then I'm not. If you think this is about you it's not. Everything is so different now.

2.

Another day of trying to catch up. Another day of trying to decide. Another day of tabs I can't seem to close. The Dance Studio Mid-rise Pant from Lululemon. The religious studies MA. The Indigo Five-Pocket Jeans, size 27, only 3 remaining. The ssense shopping bag, containing the Indigo Five-Pocket Jeans, because there are only 3 remaining, a show of good faith. So much purgatory to escape. They're cutting service on the G train from July through August. So much purgatory to escape. I wish I knew a better way to structure the hours, but I only know how to fill them. R returns Wednesday night, Thursday is the board meeting then the talk then the return to the castle. After that another week of something and nothing, then it will turn to February and I'll be 26. I said 25 was going to be my year and it was, wasn't it? There was momentum and time frozen still, what more could I ask for?

1.

so much of life is just trying to distract yourself from the horror of time passing. Nothing ever stops. Days pass and weeks pass and people go in and out, ignore you at parties, you ignore them right back, it doesn't get easier because it's never been hard.

new year new me same old story ....

11/29/23

I flew back to New York from St. Louis on Sunday. I booked with Southwest and forgot to check in early which was a big mistake. My dad was telling me about a failed marketing campaign Southwest had in the 80s or 90s where they tried to brand themselves as "The Company Jet." The campaign was, naturally, short-lived. If you've ever flown Southwest, you know that the entire premise of the airline is "fend for yourself," and "corporate luxury" is a bit of a hard sell after making your passengers line up like cattle and fight to the death for an aisle seat across from the bathroom. And that sort of luxury is reserved for groups A and B anyway—groups for people who have the sort of foresight required to survive in the wild west. Group C, assigned to me and the other losers, has more of a spaghetti western vibe. No one ever feels compelled to make any sort of sense in group C. Case in point: I board the plane behind a guy who keeps walking step-together-step-together instead of right-left-right-left. At first I thought he might have some sort of disability, but eventually it became clear that this was a stylistic choice.

On board they announce they're low on overhead compartment space, so everyone starts frantically trying to find the final spots except we're still stuck in a single file line so we end up just shuffling back and forth up and down the aisle, begging people to please put their backpacks under the seats in front of them so we can depart in a timely fashion. No one finds this to be especially motivating, they just stare back blankly because they either have nowhere to be or are enjoying our suffering too much to care. After a few more circuits of humiliation, all of group C somehow manages to offload their bags and find seats besides me. The flight staff lets me run up and down the aisle a few more times alone before deciding to intervene—maybe they thought I needed the exercise—and then finally tells me they will check my suitcase for me. This would have been a solution for most, but unbeknownst to the hospitable stewards and stewardesses of Southwest airlines, on this particular occasion my suitcase is packed to the brim with maybe 20 pounds of antiques or varying flimsy metals that my grandmother demanded I take back with me to New York "or else." I don't really feel like broadcasting this to the entire airplane, there's no way to go about it casually. I know this from experience—my grandmother has been using me as a mule for her antique cups and plates and ashtrays for the last few years because she wants them to go to someone in the family and fears my aunt will auction them off or, worse, put them in the dishwasher. And if you say your suitcase is full of metal heirlooms someone always hits you with the "but they're metal, not glass, they won't shatter," and you can't really say "but they could dent" without seeming insane.

I try to avoid the issue by saying my laptop is in my carry-on and that I can't check it because I'm afraid it will get damaged, but the flight attendant says I should just remove the laptop before checking the bag and I'm no match for this kind of iron-clad reasoning so I'm forced to come clean and say: but what about the 4 copper goblets and tin candelabra? Everyone is already annoyed with me at this point, so this really doesn't help—everyone loves to hate the girl with the tin candelabra...The flight attendant rolls her eyes and suggests I take both the metal goods and my laptop and relocate them to my tote bag, which puts me in the terrible position of having to explain to her that this won't be possible, as my tote bag is at max capacity due to two very large candles fashioned to look like watermelon halves. And as soon as I hear those words come out of my mouth I know I have ruled out any possibility of currying favor with the other passengers to get a spot in the overhead compartment, so I unzip my suitcase and take my laptop and my candelabra and my melons to my seat and leave the goblets to go with god off to the luggage hold. Obviously this all indicates some sort of untreated psychosis on my part, but I do think that Southwest is at least partially to blame because none of this would have ever happened on "The Company Jet."

My time in St. Louis was largely spent listening to my older brother [N] ask each of my family members if they would try the "original coke." My grandma said yes, why not, then my dad explained to her that the original coke had narcotics in it and she said did I stutter. [N] followed this question by offering each and every family member a glass of "dirty sprite," an offer he unfortunately never delivered on, despite what I can only imagine was prime access to all sorts of pills and syrups in my grandparents' medicine cabinet. Each morning brought a new package from Amazon, always addressed to my younger brother [LW], but always actually for [N]. In the span of his 3-day visit he ordered two pairs of Airpod pros (both for himself), a miniature fondue set (a gift for my aunt), an off-brand Roomba (a gift for my grandparents), and a Yankee candle (he gave no explanation for this one). Once when he was having trouble opening one of the boxes, my mom passed him a pair of scissors and he replied "a knife would be more dope."

I was blessed to receive a few gifts myself, my parents kindly delivered me a stack of unsorted mail and papers, including a rent ledger from 2020 for my old house in Philadelphia and a receipt from my insurance company from when they falsely charged me for 10 immunotherapy injections in 2021. Why these needed to be flown across the country for my urgent review has yet to be seen, but it's the thought that counts. Speaking of thoughtful gifts, [LW], not one to be overshadowed, gave my grandparents and aunt collectively the Oppenheimer soundtrack, Oppenheimer on blu-ray, and the Oppenheimer book "American Prometheus." He told them he thought of the gift and "just knew" it would be perfect. I don't think any of them have a vested interest in Oppenheimer, movie or man, so maybe the perfect part was that it was a three-part gift for three people? The reasoning is flimsy but fair, I really have no place criticizing him since I just gave everyone decks of cards from London that I selected "according to personality" which was mostly at random. But at least my gift did not require us to listen to ambient bomb vibes during Thanksgiving dinner...

So much else so much else...Need to get a CT scan. Need to get the letter to help stop [R]'s deportation. Need to see the dentist and the dermatologist and the optometrist. Need to get the zipper fixed. Need to balance the thyroid. Need to stop the pain. But these are all supplemental, first thing's first: breathe. Then sit and wait.

In London I did a lot of this, while [R] was in class I walked around thinking and re-thinking. The last time I was in London was almost five years ago now, since then I've lived six or seven different places, had six different jobs, two graduations, remembered things, forgot things, loved, lost, you know the drill. I had naively assumed that the sheer act of returning could put it all into perspective, but the mysteries of my life remain as such, their outlines maybe just a little sharper. I'm sure all the time I spent stoking the coals of "self-reflection" made me really fun to be around, [R] would come home from 10 hours of school and I would greet her with a crazed look in my eye and some variation of "I've figured it all out" which spanned from needing to move to London to live alone with two large hounds to needing to eat grass-fed gelatin twice a day so I can live forever. Writing it out now I'm realizing those two aren't mutually exclusive, so maybe the answer is moving to London to live alone forever with two large hounds while eating grass-fed gelatin twice a day—now I've really figured it all out.

[R] and I hung out with [L] and [J] and [B] a few times. [J] was exactly how I remembered him, he brought us to a party with a bunch of weird french people that made [R] body surf. One night [R] and I had planned to go home early but instead ended up at the pub yet again...the entire city of London was sick including [R], so she was drinking this mulled wine thing to soothe her throat. She claimed it was hardly alcoholic, that is was borderline medicinal, but after a few glasses of "mulled wine" it became clear that what [R] was actually consuming was hot jungle juice, not treating her throat, but making her so drunk she could hardly recall having a throat in the first place. I tried a sip of her drink which tasted mainly of rubbing alcohol and then immediately understood why she was so willing to chat with the random British accountant who sincerely congratulated me for knowing who the Rolling stones are. We had started the night at a restaurant talking about time and memory, waking up and forgetting where we are most days, getting older and realizing how fragile reality is, how easy it is to completely lose it, what to do when it feels like you don't exist. Record-keeping has always been my coping mechanism for this, this blog is an obvious example, but I've done it forever, first with diaries, then disturbingly detailed calendars during the terrible Tweens followed by compulsive photo-taking through college and beyond. It's not so much a fear of being forgotten as it is a fear of forgetting, losing the thread. I remember being five or six and trying with all my might to remember my birth, the sinking feeling when I realized what I knew then I could never know now, that that void only grows, swallows more years and more parts of you. And when memory fails, you turn to memorization, consult your notes and try to recall, pray you've copied it down somewhere, the more notes, the better chance of finding the information that you need—it makes sense, but it's a symptom, not a cure. To remember how you felt is different from feeling. To actually hold in your hands the fact that very little is real, even less is constant, that information does not bring one closer to truth, but rather constructs it, and then ask yourself to live in the structures created for the sole purpose of reconciling a world built on air—that is the weight of being. And I'm starting to think that losing the thread might make it a whole lot lighter, so maybe [R] was onto something with all that mulled wine.

Sometimes you wake up and realize you have been lying through your teeth, mainly to yourself. I told my family I'm reading a novel that embodies the Eastern European affect following the occupation of Vienna and World War II and they said why and I said I don't know. The world is cruel but at least it's honest.

10/30/23

I am so disinterested in sharing myself with the world, not because the world is necessarily undeserving, but because I have very little left to give and am unwilling to have those final shards of my heart broken. And what exactly could I share that wouldn't be seen as retaliation? Doing something "in spite of it all" is never fun, anyone who claims to be empowered by resentment is either lying to circumvent a deep self-hatred, or just sick in the head, probably both. My haters are not my motivators, they are confused and should please just hear me out I can't take it anymore. Whatever. I left the city because I'm bored but I'll be back and doing the same things I always do before anyone realizes I was gone. I sent my parents photos of the graveyard overlooking the truck stop from my hotel window and they asked where I was and I said at a hotel by the graveyard overlooking the truck stop. What else is there to say? [R] and I swam in the pool and drank warm mad elf beers out of plastic cups. There is only one bottle opener in the whole hotel, it belongs to the woman at the front desk, she had to go out to her car and get it from her key chain. She said she'd be there all night long if we need her to open another round which was good to know. I made [R] try the oil mask face massage, I want to be forever young, my grandma said she won't sleep until I agree to do something about my forehead lines, this is phase one, I told her, and then I promised her I have contingency plans and I do. I hope I live long enough to really chase my youth, I know aging is beautiful and something we should embrace, but a longing for youth is inextricably linked with growing old, and why should we deny ourselves of that? I know grasping is the root of all pain, all suffering, but the ache of living is not mine to cure. So why not grasp? I'd rather hold on than let go

10/23/23

Words placed gently instead of firing on all cylinders—I don't know how to do this. I've developed a phobia of slowing down, some fear that the space between the thought and the page will grow too large and muddy the feeling. That the only way to capture meaning is quickly. Because thinking is most often over-thinking, and the faster I record, the less time I have to think-over-think and mutilate something that could save me.

Every day I eat yogurt with a stolen spoon, I don't know where it came from anymore, just that it's not really mine. Every day I wake up, eat yogurt, and start again. I stretch and brush and put on the same clothes, I remember. We are blessed by the mundane because only in repetition can we earn a memory. Every cycle is another chance to take it all in, write it all down, collect and recollect. Forgetting is the most devastating loss, we are so lucky to get to retrace our steps. There is no loneliness when you remember how much you carry with you—the way you turn the key, cut the apple, make the bed. These are proof of life before now, and now, and now. You are always in the company of a thousand former selves. You taught yourself to love—now do it again.

10/11/23

It's Thursday and I don't care. It's been so long since I've written anything here and I don't know where to begin so I'll start at the end and work backwards until I start to forget. I submitted the yearly data report I make for my company Wednesday after almost 72 hours straight of staring at my computer screen. At first I felt relief but then I realized what I actually felt was nothing. Apparently after hours of sitting cross-legged, clicking around blocks of meaningless text lifted from old newsletters I had written and adding 7pt font size data labels to my stupid custom blue-and-navy bar graphs, I damaged some sort of nerve that left the right side of my body numb indefinitely. At first I thought it was due to poor circulation, but after doing 200 jumping jacks and as many pilates hundreds as I could manage, I realized I would probably just have to wait this one out. Obviously this was all moderately disturbing, but [R] and I had made plans to celebrate my submission at the Argentinian steakhouse, and I wasn't going to let a little bit of paralysis get in the way of that. I tell [R] and [L] to call 911 if my face starts drooping and then limp my way from the G to L and all the way down avenue A. At the steakhouse we are served by a man who goes by "mariachi," he offers us free limoncello which [R] prepared us for, she said the last time she came here with her boyfriend they basically gave them an entire bottle of wine for free because it was "almost empty," so this is clearly a steakhouse that has mastered the art of customer retention because look who's back. I go to the bathroom and text my entire extended family PDF copies of my report and by the time I come back the limoncello is on the table and [R] has somehow convinced mariachi to let us finish the bottle of some "almost empty" japanese whiskey. He then tells us that speaking two languages makes you a better person and I don't disagree but it's awkward because the implication is that he is the only person there who speaks two languages except [L] speaks like 3. Some man pokes his head in the door and asks Mariachi for an espresso then leaves and Mariachi explains to us that it was his friend "Rye" who is a bartender across the street. It seems that the premise of their relationship is one person asking the other to set them up with a girl, then the other person saying they would, but no one is good enough. Mariachi asks us if we know anyone good enough, either for Rye or himself, and we say definitely not, no one is good enough, and then he pours us more whiskey. Eventually they turn the lights on at the steakhouse and Mariachi tells us we should go see Rye, that he will give us free drinks and is expecting us. We decide to go because who even cares but when we get there Rye does not offer us any free drinks and instead asks if we would like to open up a tab. We vow to finish our drinks before Mariachi arrives from across the street but they are extremely strong and disgusting. We fail miserably and are maybe a 10th of the way done by the time Mariachi walks through the door. [L] goes to try to close the tab ASAP and leaves me and [R] to continue the conversation with Mariachi, who Ry—not "Rye," he clarified that his name is just "Ry" no E—informed us is actually named eduardo. [R] and I confront him about this and he says he uses Mariachi due to his family links to el Chapo, his cousins are cartel, then goes on for a bit about how when someone does him wrong he makes them disappear. This is good to know, we tell him, and he assures us that he would never make us disappear—unless? Ultimately I respect his game because subtle threat has always been a traditional part of the art of seduction. We leave before we do anything that would be grounds for elimination and go to big bar to meet [E] who is there with a bunch of canadians. [R] says she is thrilled to be in the majority tonight and I'm happy for her. I tell everyone about my nerve condition, show them how I can't flex my foot, and then take advantage of their sympathy and force them to look at my 20 page report on the academic progress made by The Children in summer 2023.

Tuesday I will now remember fondly as my final day of full mobility for the forseeable future even though I squandered it by sitting at my desk for 12-14 hours straight. I work and listen to "Across the Universe" like 100 times for some reason and take photos of myself in my mirror with the bedazzled gun I made last summer held to my head. I've started referring to anything I do as a "challenge"— get out of bed "challenge," sit at my desk "challenge," my foot is asleep "challenge." I find this extremely funny, but the trade-off is that no one will answer my texts anymore. The apartment has been empty since Monday afternoon, I tell [R] that I actually like these long stretches of being totally alone and working because they make me "more myself" and she tells me that if this behavior is what I consider "more myself" then it is of great cause for concern. And this is why I like to be alone...

The day before Tuesday is Monday and I wake up late and then sit at the coffee shop with [R]. I tell her about my insane dreams as of late, and how last night's dream involved like 6 consecutive rainbows and some sort of radiating light from the golden gate bridge, so it seems like things are looking up for me. [R] asks what I mean by this and I say that rainbows are typically symbols of luck and she says she's never heard that before, she thought they were more symbols for "good times" which I think is pretty similar but she says otherwise. Eventually we decide it's time to get serious and then go home to play Abbey Road medley on rockband over and over again until we get 5 stars. I was on the drums and now that I'm thinking about it I bet all that rocking out had something to do with my fucked up nerve thing because the foot pedal on that drum set is maybe the least ergonomic device ever created. But these are the sacrifices a serious artist has to make...[R] and I leave to go to our movie and walk over the bridge, we see "the wedding banquet" which was funny, I don't have anything else to say on the matter. We go to try to find the used electronics store that [A] recommended but didn't know the name of to buy an xbox 360 controller. He didn't give us much to go off but we find it anyway, the sign is basically unintelligible but [R] understands it immediately, it's just three letters using the worst font in existence. [R] says that if she was a graphic designer she would probably do something like that which is why she can read it and why she should never be trusted to make any sort of signage. The store is closed so [R] and I eat a honey cake on the streets and then go our separate ways.

Before Monday comes Sunday, a day I spend mostly watching youtube compilations of the best auditions on various iterations of "The voice" and the rest of that canon even though I am supposed to be working. This is actually something I used to do with more regularity, starting my junior year of college when I used to watch this video of these three Filipino boys singing "Listen" by beyonce on repeat and cry because I thought their voices were so beautiful. And once you have watched one video, you just know Youtube is going to hit you with the "JUDGE IN TEARS WHEN BOY SINGS ALL BY MYSELF" or "SMALL TOWN SINGER STUNS JUDGES WITH RENDITION OF YELLOW BY COLDPLAY" (this is actually a real video in my youtube recommendations right now). And so down the rabbit hole I went and now years have gone by and I still cry every time I see those boys pour their hearts out in perfect harmony. I have maintained my silence on this matter until now because every time I have tried to talk to someone about it they have just looked at me weird and I can't really have anyone messing with my joy, but then I find this video of some boy on The Voice Kids: Ukraine and he is so good that I have to share it with someone and so I gather [R] and [L] around the TV and stream the video from my phone and there wasn't a dry eye in the house...[R] and I go to the nina event and talk to [E] and [M] about [M]'s guitar playing, [R] and I talk about our guitar playing and my terrible grip strength, [R] decides she loves [I] which is beyond random. [E] and [M] tell me about how they became friends through their ex-girlfriends, bonded through their break ups, now they're here.

I forget the rest I forget the rest. Maybe I'll remember tomorrow.

10/2/23

Eat Drink Man Woman is an amazing movie even though I hate movies. It all hurts so bad you gotta laugh.

9/25/23

Every day is chaos. [L] and I fell asleep in the train station last wednesday night for an undetermined amount of time, the G was running both ways but only on one track so I guess we fell asleep for however long it takes for the train to go to the end of the line and back minus a little because when we woke up we still had to wait 12 minutes. On Thursday it's my turn to lead the team ice breaker, I ask everyone to tell the group something they hate that everyone else loves or vice versa because a little conflict is good for the mind body and spirit. No one has any hot takes, though, except for one of the big bosses who shares a long list of grievances starting with parades and ending with flavored seltzer. He keeps interrupting the meeting to add more things to the list and people are getting annoyed but personally I appreciate his enthusiasm. I do a bunch of random work and enjoy a desk chobani (chobani you eat at your desk) and do my daily exercises for bone density preservation. I meet [R] for a drink before the opening but I'm late and she has already been sitting there for 30 minutes talking to [A], she told me she wanted to sit in silence but there was no one else in the bar so she couldn't pull it off. I tell her that if she wants to sit in silence now that I'm here she is welcome to, I'll just stare at the wall. She takes a minute to really weigh her options and finally decides that she is willing to speak with me—"but only for now" she clarifies. [A] keeps making those hidden word photos, all of them just say his friends' names and "gay" so it's pretty easy to spot the hidden words knowing that. [R] and I leave and have dinner and then we go to meet people at the river which ends up being controversial but that's life. [R] and I sit at the bar and this guy [J] walks past us and hides behind a tree for no apparent reason, he stays there for a really long time peeking his head out and looking at no one in particular. We talk to [A] again, apparently [R] tried to "flex" on him earlier when he told her about how his roommate and her friend get together and annoy the shit out of people, [R] argued that she and I are way better at this, which I'm not totally sure is something to brag about, but winning is winning I guess. [A] says we aren't annoying enough, but there is still time, and it's true, we all have so much time to become insufferable. [R] leaves and I talk to [E] and [A] for a while, mostly about how the bar would be 100 times better if this tree next to us wasn't there. It's totally cosmetic so there isn't really a reason for it, though it's the same one that guy [J] was inexplicably hiding behind earlier in the night, so I guess we should be sensitive to his needs. I go and walk with [E] to 7/11 and then when we get back they already did last call so [E] leaves and then I talk with someone briefly about [H], they say he dated someone very different from his current girlfriend when he first moved here, now things make sense but it's funny looking back. Then they talk about how break-ups don't really get better as you go through more of them, they actually just get more depressing, the cycle goes on until you find the right person, and even if each repetition of the cycle allegedly brings you closer to ending it, it never feels that way. I agree this is depressing and then decide it's time to flee so I walk through the empty italian festival to the bridge. And sometimes after a long night of your own existence you need to go home and eat sugar-free strawberry jello at your desk while reading your horoscope on 10 different websites—not because you want to, because you have to. And so I do just that.

Friday is a day for useless suffering, I sit in my car as per usual and search random stuff on my phone. Some girl I went to college with posts a picture on instagram with her boyfriend who I swear to god is Zack bia and so I send it to [R] and [L]. [R] asks me who exactly zack bia is and I realize I don't know. I think it's pretty disturbing I was able to recognize his face and conjure up his name without any other reference points, I guess either he is doing something right or I am doing something Very Wrong, though those two things aren't mutually exclusive. I look him up and find out he is a Dj or something but mostly that he dated that home-schooled chick olivia rodrigo—no hate, she's just none of my business—and also that he is most certainly not the man in that girl's instagram photo. The day goes on, I do work and buy a peach that tastes bad, [R] and I make dinner and I learn that I do not like enoki mushrooms, between this and finding out who zack bia is I'm really expanding my mind today. I lay on my bed and stare at the ceiling for a while until [R] tells me staring at the ceiling time is permanently banned from our household and then we leave to go to the tech bro party on the roof of an office building in soho. [R]'s friend [J2] is throwing the party, he is the CEO of some multi-million dollar start up that does Something and went to penn with both of us, apparently some other start up in the building threw a party last month and they want to show them up. I do not know the particulars of the last party, but there is definitely competition in the air...there are like 10 bottles of grey goose and casamigos sitting unopened on the bar and maybe 60 full boxes of pizza in the office. There are probably 50 people max at the event, so I guess everyone gets their own box. There is a single $700 JBL speaker playing exactly what one would imagine they'd hear on a roof full of savant male software engineers wearing branded t-shirts from their summer internships at google, uber, airbnb, facebook-now-meta, their female counterparts all in stilettos and black pencil skirts. Company dress code, I guess. [J2] tells us the speaker was purchased down the block earlier today then tells me I look "a lot less homeless" than when he saw me a month ago. I tell him that hopefully by the next time he sees me I will look even less homeless, perhaps even housed. [R] and I decide to help them make a dent in their liquor stockpile and then ignore everyone until we start feeling grateful. [J2] is running around with [J3], the little sister of his ex-girlfriend from college, they keep running into the office to do lines of crushed up orange adderall. Towards the end of the night everyone has migrated to the office and the proprietor of said orange adderall is trying desperately to rid himself of the final lines. [R] and I politely decline and instead steal 10 packs of cheeze-its from someone's desk. Luckily this man's prayers are answered and all of a sudden some NYU sophomore in a glittery blazer stumbles in with [J3], the guy offers them the remainder and the glitter-blazer-girl says, in earnest: "two lines of adderall? Don't tempt me with a good time..." and bends over and sucks them up like a vacuum. [R] and I take this as our cue to leave, we say bye to [J2] and walk to the elevator, stopping only briefly to steal some random merch from the office storage closet. We walk to a bar where some man offers to move so [R] and I can sit together and we say thanks but apparently he feels that this gesture entitles him to join our conversation for the evening. He asks where we're from and how we met, we answer for a while but he keeps making up more random questions to ask even though neither of us are saying much, we keep trying to ice him out but he is totally oblivious, [R] is just saying "hmmm" and I have turned to face the wall. He tells us he thinks it's odd that [R] and I are friends, we ask why and he says he would expect [R]'s friends to be "a bit more asian," maybe chinese, he thinks. We tell him that is very interesting and he says he is glad we think so, we seem like very nice girls. He leans towards the bartender to order another drink and we realize he is not, in fact, wearing any shoes, and his pant legs, it seems, are not quite of equal length, and, lastly, that he has a very large duffle bag or two stored beneath his seat at the bar, which, speaking theoretically, might suggest that this man is homeless, at least for the night. He asks [R] and I where we are staying tonight and if we'd like a sip of his drink and we tell him tonight is actually our final night in new york city ever, that we're late for our train to the new place we will be living. Then we wish him all the best and leave the bar to embark on our new lives elsewhere. We meet [N] and [T] and [T2] for and talk to some friend of [T2]'s from the internet. I can't remember what he said I was either too tired or it was very boring.

Saturday is saturday, I work on a bunch of writing stuff all day. I've been having dreams about watches which the internet says means I am feeling time pass me by, some sense of urgency, which is all made up but definitely true, I do have this sense of urgency right now, especially about my writing which is why I have spent less time blogging and more time on some other projects, I'm just not sure what to do with them yet. I'm generally pretty candid on The Blog, but as time goes on and I mention it to more people and I continue to experience the fallout of all The Changes from the end of summer, I do write with a sort-of awareness of who's reading that I didn't used to and that I don't particularly like. It's not that I filter more, though I probably do, just that now there is this pause I can't get rid of because there is a longer list of people who could take something the wrong way. And so I spend all this time considering the consequences when realistically they exist only in my own head. So I have been trying to counter that privately, make sure I capture everything, not just the things I'm 99% sure I'm comfortable with almost anyone reading or knowing, until that space goes away again. Does it ever? I see [C] later and tell her everything, she tells me about school, I tell her about my two new favorite pastimes: disappearing and loitering on the street corner. She expresses mild concern, which I understand, but also there is nothing wrong with just standing still and watching the cars go by on a brisk september night...

On sunday I wake up at 6:30 AM due to an unsubstantiated sense of betrayal which is, shortly thereafter, substantiated. To discuss this further would be a waste of time. I decide not to go back to sleep then listen to "midnight train to georgia" until the coffee shop opens at 7 AM. I walk in and all the baristas are shocked, I've probably only been in before 9 AM once or twice, and then I sit and stare blankly out the window until my brain starts functioning. The next thing I know it's 8:55 and I have been staring for almost two hours but I'm feeling good...is this why people get up early? To make more time for staring? I would love to do this more often but unfortunately I don't think I can add any more eccentricities to my lifestyle without someone trying to have me committed. I read then write then buy mango and 4 cartons of paper clips then I go work on my newsletter about the children and their academic progress and how the sun has set on yet another successful summer. [R] comes home with a croissant for me and we read about the upcoming events at the Penn club, one of which is sincerely titled "Pump & Paint." Whatever it entails comes for the low low price of $42. [R] makes soup while I bitch about being tired and wanting to die but ultimately this is not an option for me because my parents and brother are in town. I walk to go meet them and the second we sit down my brother insists on reading us multiple out-of-context passages from the bible, there is no clear point except for some vague implication of the treachery of women, I guess he wanted to let me know where I stand right off the bat. We then, in the span of a single dinner, proceed to discuss Edward Craven, the federal reserve, Harvard extension school, the similarities between JFK and Abraham lincoln (it's not what you think), my brother's personal opinions on how I should ascend the ladder at my company to become COO by the end of the year, my mom's personal opinions on why my brother is always right even though he is clearly deluded from living on an island of crypto bros, the similarities between JFK and Abraham lincoln once again, the united nations is in session, how my mom doesn't want to watch the new exorcist movie because, unlike when she saw the first one 40 years ago, she now knows that ghosts are real (she actually said something closer to she now knows "all about that realm" but I'm saying the quiet part out loud for her), how my MBA era is imminent, david and goliath, how my mom doesn't want to here another word from the landscape designer, and finally, at the urging of my brother, the similarities between JFK and Abraham lincoln one last time. I walk home and then [R] tells me to try her soup so I do and it tastes good. We get high and say goodnight but I don't go to sleep I lay in bed and let my eyes dry out and type and text and stare at the ceiling because it's my room it's my life it's my rules.

9/20/23

Another day of sitting in my car. I try to sing wild horses karaoke but it's too low and I just sound disturbed. I check my signal messages because that is the only platform my brothers communicate on and see a message [LW] sent me at like 8am with a random photo of three ducks and a text saying verbatim "one of the ducks wanted to sell me car insurance, the other IPA, and the last one wanted to know if I had any quackers. Very interesting." I don't know what to make of this so I don't respond and try to find another song to sing to entertain myself until street cleaning ends but before I can even type in "best karaoke ballads for females" I receive a follow up text from [LW]—almost 4 hours since his first text now—saying "I told the duck that I didn't have any quackers." It occurs to me that he was really looking to engage me with this sort of abstract half-joke about three unidentified ducks and so I respond and tell him that it is very interesting indeed to which he immediately replies "Yes, it is very interesting" and that's the end of that.

I ask [R] to give me a haircut which somehow turns into me giving her a haircut and suddenly 2 hours have gone by and [R]'s hair is now the product of my first attempt at layers and I have side bangs like an anime girl. We vow to tell everyone we got these haircuts at a very expensive salon so people will think we look kind of fucked up on purpose instead of because we got a little carried away with the kitchen shears. Only the lovely anonymous readers of this blog get to know the truth...[R] and I make the most cosmetically disgusting dinner that also tastes bad and then walk to union pool for the nina event. We talk to [D] and his friend [N] who always gives the impression of having recently been fired from his job but [D] insists this is not the case. But a vibe is a vibe...[N] leaves the table to go talk to some other people and [R] accidentally kicks him but then later tells me she did it a little bit on purpose because she "had her reasons." I introduce [R] and [E] who is drinking a frozen strawberry margarita that he claims not to like but finishes suspiciously quickly. Everyone goes to watch the show but they won't allow [R] and I in due to the fact that we don't have tickets. [R] and I sit outside alone for five minutes and then people start to trickle out of the show because I guess it wasn't everything it was cracked up to be. [R] tells everyone she is going to get a pitcher of beer or else even though that is not something they offer at union pool. [R] tries to get the bartender to make an exception but they are not having it so we just get one of the frozen strawberry margaritas [E] claimed to hate. [D] tells us he has major gossip about one of the performers but then we start talking to one of his friends who works for the record label of the performer so the gossip has to wait. The person from the record label gives me a wristband due to my pervasive charity case vibes which is a big win. [D] finally tells us the gossip, that his brother [W] used to live with the performer while he was dating some girl and when [W] and the girl broke up after a year of the three of them all hanging out in a group the performer swooped in and started dating the girl pretty soon after. [E] and [R] start talking about Toronto and I start talking about LA with [N] who lived there for many years until he got divorced but seems to fundamentally misunderstand the lay of the land, keeps insisting he's seen "the big sign" with the name of the neighborhood I grew up in on it and I keep telling him there is no "big sign," there's really only one "big sign" in LA and it very clearly spells out "HOLLYWOOD," there are some other mid-size signs in, like, beverly hills or santa monica, but none, I can assure you, marking the maybe one point five square miles that make up my childhood stomping grounds. He still finds this unpersuasive so I decide to drop it because it seems important to him that this sign exists. This guy [B] keeps joining the conversation to tell really bad extended stories that all center around "kids these days, am I right?" and it's really awkward because nothing is landing and he just keeps going and going and talking about how Adam Sandler is a real comedian and I don't think I've really developed my perspective on that particular subject so I have nothing to contribute and eventually I just kind of inch away and leave the rest of the group to deal with it. Everyone wants to go to the alligator lounge and so we go. [E] and [R] and I talk about living alone and his problems with his old landlord and how his parents got mad at him for being an illegal alien in canada after all they went through to immigrate to the US from Russia. [R] talks about her deportation and tells everyone yet again how my debts make me unsuitable for marriage. If she keeps this up I will for sure end up a spinster, but that was likely to happen no matter what so at least I will have someone to blame it on besides myself. [E] goes to play pac man alone for like 20 minutes and [R] goes to try to sweet talk the pizza men into giving us free toppings but it doesn't work so she ends up venmoing them $1. [E] tells us about his various best friends and we discuss inter-friend-group dating but then this really loud guy shows up and [R] and I can't focus anymore, [E] says he didn't notice because he is partially deaf and [R] and I leave because if we spend another minute near the loud man we will end up partially deaf too. [R] and I go to kelloggs so [R] can try her first tuna melt but it tastes disgusting and I fall asleep in the booth.

Wednesday arrives and I wake up and face the music i.e. look at my haircut in the mirror and find out if it makes me want to kill myself. I decide it looks fine actually and carry on with my day, the people in the coffee shop notice it and so does my manager and I decide to tell them all the truth because my horoscope said I need to give myself permission to be exactly who I am. To be quite honest, though, I don't think I really needed any additional encouragement in this area but the stars don't lie so...The ukranian nurse practitioner demands we meet so he can bill my insurance company $250 and so we talk for like 10 minutes about a bunch of irrelevant stuff, I tell him I'm going to London soon and he tells me London is "a part of india." I tell [R] about this and she says hell fucking yes it is! He then tells me about how he used to work in an ice cream shop in greenpoint when he first moved here 35 years ago and that when he wasn't making sundaes he was playing the lotto machines in the corner. I tell him this sounds nice and then he offers his opinions on "the pollocks" and then tells me there is still time for me to find "a nice pollock boy" which, based on his opinions expressed only moments earlier, would suggest he doesn't think too highly of me. Luckily he finds this conversation to be sufficient evidence that I am deserving of my prescription stimulants, and so we say goodbye see you next month. [R] and I go buy mango and then I do a bunch of work I have been avoiding. We go meet [L] at the italian festival which is literally hell on earth, I think san gennaro would be the perfect place to send someone who has committed countless crimes against humanity, after that amount of suffering I think god could probably call it even. We flee in shock and horror after less than 5 minutes and take the train to bar pitti so we can honor my italian heritage without developing PTSD. Some girl compliments my shoes and I say thank you but I'm too hungry to really register what's going on and distracting myself by looking at google maps for no real reason and then [L] tells me the girl was some singer named Clairo. She shows us a picture and [R] and I aren't sold but then we realize the girl is wearing a sweater with a huge "C" on it so we agree that [L] might be onto something...We finally get to eat and end up seated directly next to Julianne moore who appears to be crying a bit and in some sort of argument with her husband but I stopped paying attention because what goes on with Julianne moore and her husband has nothing to do with me, sorry. We eat and then walk for a while, [R] goes home to smoke weed with [E2] because she is coming with me to the Ulrik thing tomorrow and doesn't want to neglect him. [L] and I go to burp castle and run into [E] and his friend [J] and this other guy [C]. [E] says hi and [J] offers us a welcoming sneer and then [L] and I sit in the corner and talk about the wedding she went to over the weekend and some family drama and how multiple relatives asked her about her visit to margaritaville because I posted a photo on her instagram from there. [L] starts looking at my instagram and I find out she has not liked a single photo I have posted in over a year except for the ones she is in so she starts liking a bunch of my posts to cover her tracks but too little too late...[E] comes over and tells us about a sandwich he ate for lunch and then some sort of special hack for cutting a mango. [J] joins the conversation briefly but seems intensely bored and then [E] refuses to tell him the mango hack so he leaves. [L] orders a can of wine and it is surely the most disgusting wine I have ever tasted, it must have been created for those suffering from severe anemia because it tastes like straight up blood. Once [J] leaves [L] and I go sit with [E] and [C]. I ask [C] how he knows [E] and he says he knows him through [A], that him and [A] "make the little computer," whatever that means. We talk a little bit about ohio where he's from, we talk about people on the internet, he knows [S] but only as [P], he asks about [T] who apparently went to penn but whose identity remains mysterious to all, I tell him that [S] asked me about [T] too. [C] asks if I own any of his NFT and I say absolutely not and he seems to think this means I have allegiances to other NFTs but actually my only allegiance is to cold hard cash. I try to get him to tell me who everyone is on twitter and I make some progress but not enough. The bar closes and [L] and I leave, we ask [C] where he is staying in brooklyn and he says sunset park near the cemetery. I tell him pop smoke is buried there and he seems genuinely excited about this. I tell him he should go visit his grave, that [R] and I are going to the next time we have an entirely free day because it's a whole-day affair, there's no way to quickly say goodbye to pop smoke. And then we all stand there and nod in agreement, [C] and [A] and [L] and I. Rest in peace, pop smoke. Gone too soon...

9/17/23

On Friday I tell [R] and [L] about my dream the night before where my cousin/godfather shot at me with a paintball gun in my room and then shot at my paper lantern and the paint disintegrated it and I was trying not to react because people were watching but then I end up losing it when I realize there is paint all over my bed. Then later in the dream I remember that a lot of paint is washable and I go back to try to wash the bedding but the stains are all gone. Then I'm in this sort of castle-type place preparing for my bat mitzvah and it dawns on me that it makes no sense for me to be having a bat mitzvah as a 25-year-old catholic woman and so I go to tell my parents that I refuse to go through with it and they are mad, then my aunt/godmother appears and is absolutely enraged, says she won't speak to me if I don't go through with it, I tell her it makes no sense for her to want me to have a bat mitzvah because she is literally my godmother but she doesn't care and gets even angrier, calls me antisemitic, I tell her and my parents that I'm not, that I refuse to commit to any religion, that this refusal is the same as when I refused to get confirmed in high school, but no one is having it. My aunt starts kicking me and calling me a stupid bitch and then I kick her back and say she is more of a stupid bitch because she took 7 years to graduate from college, then I wake up. So many layers...[L] says she had a dream last night too, in her dream her mom married Putin.

[R] is now a member of the penn club so we go to drink some martinis and it's awesome, just us and 4 old men and a group of blackout drunk young asian people in this big ornate library. The old men are reading or dozing off and the asian people are popping bottles of champagne and walking around with their shirts unbuttoned. It reminds us of our stay at the greenbrier hotel in west virginia, though much has changed since then, by the end of our night there [L] and I had to physically restrain [R] to keep her from drinking every shooter in the mini bar and I can't really foresee that happening again, but only time will tell. We watch the asian people go up to the bartender and order progressively more disgusting drinks starting with a mezcal negroni and ending with a limoncello espresso martini. We leave and go downtown to another bar that is apparently supposed to be a secret but I have been here a bunch of times by accident and it was always empty, so I guess it's a really well-kept secret. The bartender keeps talking to [R] and [L] and I and pouring us shots we don't want and saying he hates us until this group of random Irish people comes in and he decides that he actually loves us, I guess compared to how much he hates these Irish people. One of the Irish guys says he has a song in his heart and starts serenading us with "wagon wheel," the bartender keeps saying "fuck you" to him while he sings then turning around and winking at me, no idea what he hoped to achieve with this. [L] leaves because she has an early train the next morning and [R] tries to guess the bartenders nationality. [R] first guesses Italian and he says not quite, she then guesses turkish and he says getting closer, finally she says macedonian and he says hell fucking no! And tells us he is Greek, which actually means he is greek-macedonian, just on the pro-greece side. The couple sitting behind us starts making out and then they briefly pause so the woman can order another drink and the bartender brings her one and says "cheers to the happy couple" and she says "we aren't a couple, I'm cheating on my husband tonight because he is a narcissist" and then we all get quiet and then they leave. [R] and I go to sing a few songs and run into [C] who says he was also at burp castle on Thursday but he doesn't like it anymore because the bartender doesn't shush people enough. We uber back and [R] gets dropped off at [E]'s house and then I make the uber driver play Yellow by coldplay and roll down the windows and go home alone.

On saturday I wake up and go to the coffee shop and text people for like 1.5 hours while listening to wild horses on repeat until [R] arrives and makes me stop acting weird. She leaves to go meet her friend visiting from out of town [L2] and I go home to stare at the ceiling for a while. When [R] returns I insist she let me experiment on her with some "new looks" which all ultimately edge her closer and closer to looking like that sea witch ursula from the little mermaid. I leave to have dinner with [A] at cafe himalaya...once again...and we catch up on my miserable awesome little life. There is this group of guys maybe a few years younger than us sitting at the next table who are all dressed the same and I keep staring at them because they are really funny to me but [A] tells me I have to stop but wont say why and then finally when they get up and leave and she explains to me that those people were famous, one of them was some person named "role model" who is emma chamberlain's boyfriend, I don't ask her which one because it would be impossible to tell—the one with the ironic trucker hat and silver earring or the other one with the ironic trucker hat and silver earring? Kids these days...If only [A] had allowed me to stare a bit longer, maybe one of them would have given me their autograph.

We go meet [R] and [L2] and [E] and others for drinks and [A] orders a cosmopolitan because why not. Everyone wants to go out and so we walk to some event on bowery but then realize we want nothing to do with it so [R] and co uber to mansions and I walk [A] to the train while I make up my mind about going out. I start walking over the bridge and vow to make a decision by the time I get to the other side but the next thing I know I'm outside the whole foods on bedford so it's pretty clear the answer is no at this point. I listen to some people scream outside a bar on the next block and then text [A2] for a while about his beautiful long distance friendship with [F], I text [D] about the screaming people and he says he was at that bar, lucky him I guess. On sunday I wake up to no less than 60 photos and videos from my little brother [LW] who has taken himself to some godforsaken music festival in Louisville, kentucky called "bourbon and beyond." He asks me how the penn club is and I explain to him I left the penn club 48 hours ago now. He asks no further questions and says "the killers are playing and living up to the name" then sends me an unintelligible audio recording, presumably from their set, and I tell him I'm glad he feels that way. I try to do work but end up looking through pages and pages of striped long sleeves shirts on ebay for no reason in particular, just curious what's out there. [R] texts and says to meet her for piadine and so I walk to lella. I ask the italian man at the counter for the gorgonzola piadine but with speck added and he looks at me with genuine astonishment and says "who told you to do that?" and I'm confused because I feel like that is a very common pairing but he seems to think I'm remarkable and I'll take any praise I can get these days so I just say "my heart told me to" and he smiles in amazement. [R] and I talk about her night and then make plans to watch a movie about sex addiction but then we have to cancel them because [R]'s guest needs tending to. I didn't do anything else for the rest of the evening besides eat a peach that was only so-so.

On monday I awaken to even more texts from [LW], now he is in texas apparently, he sends my dad and I a photo of some sort of felt hat asking, in earnest, if he should get it for our mom's birthday next week. My dad defers the decision to me citing his "lack of knowledge of the women's fashions of today" because he is forever a diplomat and I say absolutely not because I am forever a huge bitch. I work for a while then go to meet [R] at spicy village because she has been trying to go for a week now. We're both extremely hungry and delirious and can't think of anything to say to each other so I go down the front page of the new york times app and read [R] the headlines. I only pay for the games subscription so I can't offer her any information beyond that, but at least we get the gist now. Apparently trudeau is saying some indian organization in canada is a terrorist group and that they carried out an attack on canadian soil recently because they want to establish canada as a sikh nation. [R] tells me her mom used to have an umbrella from the organization, before they started terrorizing though. We learn that Zelensky plans to travel to america soon to assure biden that funds are not being squandered and we both agree that that sounds like something someone who might be squandering funds would do and so zelensky may want to rethink his approach—confidence is key. Luckily our food arrives before we get any further, I don't think the other customers would have appreciated our commentary on ron desantis or the floods in libya. We walk to burp castle and then take the train home. [R] goes to [E]'s house again and I try to get on the G but it never comes so I end up walking and then I get to the mccaren track and walk a few laps in the dark. The track is always good for Realizing Things, and chief among these things is that it is imperative that I eat jello ASAP. I go to mr. plum and buy mango and jello and a single can of sparkling water and go home and lay on the ground and wait.

9/14/23

On wednesday morning I believe I woke up suffering from depression but then I got over it, more people should try this. I work on my gorgeous spreadsheet that I wish I could link here but I think that would be frowned upon by my employer. It's all fun and games until the corporate secrets get leaked as they say...I book my tickets to London and tell my mom the deed is done and she says "what tickets?" and she's not joking. [L] and I go to the opening at the Swiss institute because I remembered the last time I went there they had nice wine. We sit and watch some installation movie about water in africa out of respect and also because we both got overheated on the way over and need to sit in the dark for a while. We go to the roof and drink our wine and stand in the corner next to some older men alternating between french and english, complaining about some girl at the opening who vaped in one of their faces while they chain-smoke in mine and [L]'s. And they say the swiss have no sense of humor! [L] and I talk for a while about relationships, how break ups are contagious, her upcoming trip to amherst massachusetts, the sacred heart school network, etc. and then we end up eating some random saltines she has in her bag because we haven't had dinner yet and it seems that what the Swiss people lack in humor they make up for with their heavy pour. We leave and go to cafe himalaya and [L] accidentally orders the pan fried noodles instead of the sauteed noodles which is devastating but we say nothing and choke down those crispy bastards like it's our job. [L] is unsatisfied and demands we go eat ice cream and then says something vaguely anti-semitic that I can't remember now except for that it was vaguely anti-semitic, and so that act of violence will forever exist only within the confines of the crosswalk on Houston and Avenue B which is probably for the best. I refuse to eat the weird ice cream and so [L] goes in alone and comes back with fig and sesame ice cream, both of which taste like cigarettes. [R] is depressed about her deportation and wants to drink delirium and so we go to burp castle to meet her. [L2] is sitting at the bar and we talk for a little while, he asks about the triest opening and I explain that I will not be in attendance, [L2] just got back from LA and went to erewhon for the first time, he tells the man sitting next to him who I have met once before that I have been to erewhon every day since it opened and I have to break the news to both of them that it probably opened long before I was born. [R] tells us about her time at the border and some apparently life-changing curry she ate in montreal and then goes home because she has to be in washington heights by 8 am tomorrow. [L] and I stay and these random italian guys come to talk to us because we are wearing "proper shoes," which seems like an incredibly low bar for taking interest in a woman so it isn't really much of a compliment. They are nice enough but then one of them starts trying to teach us about the various italian dialects, "teach" is actually quite a generous description of what he was doing, really it was closer to performing an entirely unintelligible monologue and then pausing every so often to nod his head as if to say "see?" before diving into the next regional dialect of Puglia. I am polite for as long as I can be, but then I tell them I have to go to the bathroom and take my drink and leave to go sit alone at the empty bar. They seem mildly offended, but later [L] tells me she told them I am italian too and they said "ah! So she is crazy!" and they weren't offended anymore. [L] and I run into [T] on the street while heading to the train, he tells us about his roommate problems, that his 18-year-old e-girl roommate moved out and he basically had to evict his other roommate because he refused to pay rent and did some weird shaving ritual in the bathroom once a week and would always refuse to clean it up. [T] asks why we are suddenly always in the east village if we live in greenpoint, [L2] asked me this earlier also, and I explain to him that we have always spent a disproportionate amount of time away from greenpoint, it's the only way to live there and not want to kill yourself. Though if [R] gets her way, we'll be gone before the lease is up.

On thursday I tell everyone in the team meeting that my family thought I was going to be stupid because I went to a montessori preschool and during "free choice" all the other kids would choose a station where they would learn to read or speak spanish or write cursive and I would always, every single time, choose "lip balm" which was a station where they let you dig your hands into a vat of petroleum jelly for an hour. I still get made fun of for it to this day, apparently the only other station I would occasionally visit was "identifying farm animals," but I never made any strides in identifying them, I would just steal the figurines and go to the corner and pretend the cows and chickens were teen girls shopping at the mall. I guess it's comforting that I have always been a low-brow type of girl, at least I've remained true to myself all these years. The people in my team meeting have no idea what to make of this, obviously, but they seem genuinely happy that I am participating in one way or another, albeit only to talk about myself. I finally put a song on nina and then they dox me on twitter but it's fine. I tried to unlink the account but it wouldn't let me so I guess this is god's plan. It occurs to me that now people might think that I'm trying to make good music and failing, when actually I know full well that I am incapable of making good music, so what I am really trying to do is make the worst music possible—which I think I have done quite successfully—but you can't release a song with a caveat, so I have no choice but to just sit back and let it rock. [R] returns from her day passing out potatoes with her fellow pharma consultants and we discuss my brief depression, the highs and lows of being the "single friend" in a friend group, my latest role that [R] occupied before she started dating [E], how the last time [R] and [L] and I were all single at the same time was like 5 years ago now, and how it would probably be legitimately dangerous for society if the three of us were to be single at the same time ever again. I think one of them is going to need to get married to ensure that never happens, so tick tock boys get down on those knees...[R] and I go eat sushi in the east village on our way to the italian festival. We return to burp castle once again because I guess I like beer now? I actually had a dream two nights ago where in one of the like "scenes" I was waiting for someone to bring me a drink and they brought me like a vodka soda or something and gave the other person with us a michelob ultra and I remember feeling legitimately jealous so. [R] and I sit for a while and [R] says something about how she doesn't like nurses and then I tell her that's like me saying I don't really like bus drivers, but then I remember all those bitch nurses we went to school with and have to eat my words. The woman next to us is really high and says there is no way we are going to make it to the italian festival and it turns out she was right. [A] won't tell me who is who on twitter, just keeps going to sit in the corner and laugh at some Milady drama on his phone. [L] arrives extremely drunk after her omakase PR dinner and we dig through her gift bag and [R] puts this random scarf around her head. We eat some complimentary dried apricots and [R] eventually takes off her scarf but then some random dude comes over and tells her to put it back on as a joke I assume but it certainly did not land...We go home because it's late and there is nothing else there just is.

9/12/23

On monday I continue my quest to break in various pairs of shoes I never wear, now I'm working on a different pair because I'm going to this launch party for [L]'s company's new product in a few weeks and want to have options. I hate dressing up and feeling encumbered, so I'm pre-empting all of that by wearing miu miu heels to the post office. That all makes me seem very forward-thinking, but realistically I'm just bored. Also my main reason for going to the post office is because the debt collectors have found me and I have to mail them $5 cash ASAP because of a blood test I took in May and never paid for, so forward-thinking is not exactly my middle name. In my defense, I thought LabCorp kept sending me letters because of a covid test I took like a year ago where they made me put down my insurance even though the test was free, and so I was just throwing away the letters because I thought they were trying to shake me down unfairly. Then one day [R] handed me a stack of new letters from them and watched me throw them away, she asked why and I explained my reasoning, and then she told me the covid test company is LabQuest, not LabCorp, and that I probably do owe them money. And so my real defense is that I plead insanity, though this means nothing to Harris&Harris of chicago, my sweet debt collectors, who have hustled harder to collect my $5 than I have hustled for anything ever in my life.

I make the mistake of telling my mom about my tickets to London, she is uninvolved with the trip but becomes obsessed with how good of a deal it is and keeps texting and asking if I have purchased them yet, I keep telling her I need to wait for [R] to confirm about the apartment and she says okay but then texts the same thing 10 minutes later. Realistically she is bored too because like mother like daughter. I paint more and end up thinking about how this "new year's painting" really holds true to its title, by the time it's finished it will have basically traversed an entire year with me, not even on purpose, that's just how it happened. That's one thing I like about working slowly (re: being lazy), the output is graduated, it goes from a painting to a quasi-relic of my life, which is about as far as I could ever go trying to ascribe meaning to anything I paint. Obviously this sort of "meaning" is only meaningful to me, but that's sort of the premise of most art, whether or not someone is willing to admit it. To make work is to assert your point of view which is inherently self-centered. Even if your work is seemingly impersonal, it means you have, in one way or another, decided you have some sort of authority on the matter, otherwise why would you "speak up," so to say? You cannot be an artist and delude yourself into thinking you are a humanitarian. Maybe one day we can all drop the act, but for now, since no one really cares if a painting has sentimental value, I'll just keep making quiet monuments to myself and tell everyone else they are about being an American—and they are. Just, you know, only one American.

On tuesday I decide I should probably exercise so I go to the gym and remember why I stopped going. I walk on the treadmill and then like 10 minutes later, despite the fact that all the treadmills are completely open, this random tiny but huge and extremely sweaty man who smells intensely of mildew decides he absolutely needs to take the machine directly to my left. I don't know what it is about me that makes disturbed men want to enter my orbit, this is why I had to stop sitting on the steps of the catholic church too, there would be a ton of space and for some reason people would sit down right next to me and smoke or cough and spit. I guess it was god's will but still...Anyway eventually I have to get off the treadmill because the mildewy man keeps grabbing onto the bars and slamming his feet on the machine like an angry bull and I keep laughing. I don't know what he hopes to achieve with this, but it surely seems intentional so I don't want to interfere with his process. [L] comes home from work and we make like 10 kinds of vegetable because I'm tired of looking like I work in a coal mine. That is not a dig at coal miners, their sort-of grey tinge is due to a hard day's work, my grey tinge is because I am uninterested in eating anything besides babybel cheese and norwegian seed crackers, so.

[R]'s visa was denied. She keeps refusing my proposals for marriage which is rude—am I not good enough for her? She says it's because she would never marry someone with any sort of debt. I suggested a comprehensive pre-nup, but no dice. Always a bridesmaid and never a bride...

9/10/23

I go to the nina thing on thursday with [L] and as always it is 500 degrees in the office so I go stand by the refrigerator and stick my head in the freezer to cope. No one cares except when I am obstructing their access to the budlight but honestly they should be thanking me for that. The performance ends and everyone leaves but [L] and I end up staying for a while and talking to [D] and [M] and [J] and [A] and [E]. This other guy [J2] is there also but he doesn't talk to anyone, he just switches between pacing around the desks and sitting silently on the couch. I talk to [J] and [D] about [J]'s nephew whose name [E] thinks is terrible. [D] is in a band with [J]'s sister's husband and recently met this baby with a bad name, [J] says he likes that his sister is normal and has a husband and a child or whatever because it takes the pressure off of him to do any of that. I wish I could relate to that but my siblings are autistic and/or financial criminals so I'm pretty sure all the pressure to be conventional is still on me. We all end up talking about skincare because of [L]'s job, [J] says he uses living libations because of an ex-girlfriend and [L] and I say we have no idea what that is so we look it up and it's just some company with an A-Z list of oils and butters and whatever that you could probably just buy at whole foods. [J] tells us there is more to it but that is yet to be seen. I think we can just blame this one on the generational divide and call it a day. We all walk to the river and [E] tells me he saw me at fort tilden on monday but didn't say hello because it seemed like I didn't want to talk to anyone which I tell him is hypocritical because the last time I saw him at the beach and didn't say hello he made a whole scene about it. Though truthfully I was in quite a state on monday so it's good no one tried to talk to me. [L] and I talk to [M]'s friend from out of town who is actually his girlfriend's friend, we talk about his business and subsequent stints in jail, my predisposition to gambling addiction, horse races, atlantic city, why bank of america won't stop auditing me, all the best things in life. I introduce [N] and [J] and they talk about Bard which mostly means they list out a bunch of random addresses where they lived in college. I keep asking people what the "purpose" of their art is, not because I care but because it seems a lot of artists benefit from the fact that this line of questioning is widely considered gauche, that only an idiot would endeavor to ask such things, especially in passing, but in truth that is all self-protective. The aversion to the stupid question lies less in the stupidity of its premise and more in its demand for an answer of equal or greater stupidity, and so we shame the first idiot into submission to avoid becoming the second. And so I'm happy to play the fool, as if I have any other choice, because if someone has the privilege of making a living off something with only theoretical value to society, I just think they should be asked to answer for it a little more often. [L] and I talk to [D] about what we were told about [V] and her hundreds because she is grinding on some man in the corner and [D] tells us that is not a random man or a client, that that is her boyfriend of many years. And so like I said I'm happy to play the fool, it's the only role I've ever known.

On Friday I ate mango in a hot car and probably did a bunch of other stuff too but this is all that I can recall at this time. At night I go to meet [A2] and her friend [R] at artist's space where her other friend [N2] works and then I briefly ruin my life and then we leave. I go with them to meet their other friends in greenwich village and then we walk to this guy's apartment which is actually his parents' apartment in noho to sit on the roof. We mostly have a nice time but after a while it becomes clear to me that this guy is part of a very distinct breed of young-new-york-liberal-arts-school-contrarian-boy that has very little interest in agreeing with others for the sake of good times, and though I was not necessarily the target of his disagreeableness thanks to my elder status as a 25-year-old fossil, I certainly felt its strain. I gave it all I had and then jumped ship to go meet [L] and [J3] at the magician and then we hung out for a while and then left and went to the folly which [M2] had said is where people are throwing parties all of a sudden but I kind of didn't believe it because the only time I had ever heard of the folly was for some random finance Penn girl's birthday last year, but this is the circle of life. I talked to [M] and some random guy for a while but when [M] and I went inside to get a drink he told me I should avoid him because he is "skeezy." I see [J] and we talk briefly and he tells me he spent all last night flirting with [L] and I don't really know what I'm supposed to do with this information. I sit with [E] and we talk about the importance of exercise until this girl [D2] who I have met a couple of times before sits down near us and asks about [J4] and I have to explain to her that we aren't together anymore and then she gets this really solemn look on her face and says she is sorry to hear that and I say it's really okay and she says no, I know what it's like, I dated [J4] too, and gets even more serious but I'm having a hard time keeping a straight face because I know for a fact that they absolutely did not date or have anything beyond a casual platonic friendship. There's really no way to approach this tactfully so I just let her commiserate with me and mourn whatever experience she feels we have in common. Soon everyone gets up to walk home and I decide to do the same, except they all live like 3 blocks from the folly and I live like 3 miles from the folly but I don't care. I walk with [A3] and we talk about some stuff then go our separate ways near the base of the bridge and then I walk all the way home.

On saturday I commit myself to the very important task of breaking in a pair of shoes I have had since february and never worn and then I go meet [A4] for dinner but leave the shoes at home because there is still more work to be done there. We talk about so many things, work and life and life and work, we end up talking about [S] who [A4] knows of because of twitter and I tell him about how much [S] reminds me of him just like...in spirit? It's hard to explain but [R2] and I have talked about it before, I always said that if they ever met it would alter the space-time continuum. I give [A4] the link to [S]'s blog which [S] coincidentally writes he is taking an "intermission" from the next day which pretty much confirms my theory...the universe wants to keep them as far away from each other as possible. Later I go to [J5]'s party and mostly talk to [D] and his friend's [S2] and [S3] who I have both met before on separate occasions. I end up kind of weird and distracted all night because there is this sort of divide where everyone who I would have hung out with there just a short time ago is on one side of the party with [J4] and I am on the other. Obviously no one arranged this, it's just how it happened, but unfortunately for my attempts to stop believing in the stars, my horoscope has been saying something like "the people you associate with and talk to every day will change completely" for the last few weeks which has largely, for better or for worse, been true. There's really no way about it, that's just how it goes, but it was weird to experience in real time. I talk to [F] and [A4] downstairs for a while, [A4] and I talk about how you grow up thinking no one drinks and drives and lives to tell the tale but then you get older and realize that like 80% of people on the road are at least a little bit drunk. [D] and his friends keep playing the guitar, I ask them what it is about being a man that compels you to break out the instruments at a party, men are always breaking out the instruments at a party, I've never understood this, no part of me has ever thought "this conversation would be better with some light acoustic accompaniment," but I'm not a man or a musician so what do I know. I end up staying much later than I planned and after a certain point I realize I am way to hungry to exist and so I say goodbye and speed-walk a mile and a half to 14th street to try to get pizza. I don't know why I did this, I'm sure there were closer places but I was strung out and on a mission and the clock was ticking so I didn't really have time for second thoughts. I finally get to the pizza place with 3 minutes until closing and I go up to the counter and watch the person in front of me in line buy every single remaining slice. The cashier confirms this and I sulk out onto the street and I am ashamed to admit that I almost burst into tears. I try to take the L home but it isn't coming for another hour and so I call a car and go home depressed.

On sunday I don't feel like existing, this is just how it goes, you must live through days you don't want to, they are the price you pay for the days that you do, or the price you pay in hopes of someday experiencing one that you do. I find out I have been carrying around a metal fork in my bag for some amount of time which is really interesting. I think about painting but don't do it, instead I rehang everything on the walls of my living room. I'm terrible at sleeping, even worse at being awake. Instagram keeps targeting me with videos about exercise and bone density so I guess I need to deal with that soon. I think being 25 might be the original sin.

9/8/23

Last weekend I lost a bet and had to watch Inland Empire alone at metrograph and it was maybe the worst 3 hours of my whole life. The night before I drank super bock with [R] and then went to the show at [N]'s but didn't stay long because it was just too weird. I talked to [W] for a while, he said some nice things, I don't really know how to write about any of this and still remain vague enough for it to, like, not invade anyone else's privacy, but so many of my conversations in the last little while have been dominated by The Break Up that I have struggled to come up with anything else to say...but I'm trying to get creative here. [R] and I leave and go to the river to see these people perform that we saw at [E]'s performance on wednesday. We run into [A] and [B] and they ask us to come sit with them, they ask why I'm being weird and I have to break the news once again, we stay and talk for a long time, it is [A]'s birthday and [B] took her to altro paradiso and she said the food was good but the lamps were better, and so either the food was so-so or these lamps are really something special. [B] keeps buying us drinks and pulling out huge stacks of cash because he doesn't trust the banks, [J] told me this forever ago but it was funny to see in action. We go outside and [R] becomes obsessed with this girl [V] who is shimmying around on the sidewalk and swirling a glass of wine. A few nights before someone had told us about her, that she lives in [M]'s girlfriend's apartment and pays rent exclusively in hundred dollar bills because she is a stripper or an escort or something, now I can't remember and I also don't even know if it's true, and that [M]'s girlfriend pays him rent with the hundreds from [V], and so that's why [M] has so many hundred dollar bills, including the one he gave me to help fund the river challenge. I actually think being a charity case suits me, I hope more people start to see me as a wayward girl worthy of a little philanthropy...[R] leaves with [E2] and I stay and talk to [M] and [B2] for a little while longer but I'm really drunk and really hungry and so when [M] and [B2] say let's go inside I follow them for one second and then immediately turn and sprint down the block because I don't know how to do anything without seeming deeply disturbed. I don't think anyone noticed though so if I didn't write it here that little outburst could have stayed between me and God but I'm trying to shame the mental illness out of me. I wander the streets for a little while and then a man working at williamsburg pizza beckons me toward him and hands me a box of random slices of pizza and says "run" and I am nothing if not obedient. This is exactly the sort of philanthropic energy I was trying to attract. I eat like one bite out of all of them and take a taxi home and that's what I call living. The next day after I finished suffering at the hands of david lynch I ran into [E3] and we hung out for a while at a bar for underage college students but truthfully I can't really judge because I'm closer in age to them than most of the people I talk to these days. We talked for a long time about many things and then we went our separate ways and to be completely honest I had to exercise a lot of willpower to not go running back to williamsburg pizza to see if my benevolent friend was around. I spent the next day thinking about unpacking my suitcase, I still haven't made up my mind, then I worked on my "new year's painting" painting that has been hanging on my wall half finished since january. To be fair, I never specified which new year, so as long as it's done before january 1st 2024 I'm going to call it a win. Later I met up with [A2] who is visiting from LA and her two friends [A3] and [N2] and we catch up on everything and I dole out boy advice that I am most certainly not qualified to give but that will never stop me. Everything is always easier said than done, that's why I love to talk so much. [R] comes home the next day, I pick her up from the airport and we drive straight to fort tilden and [R] tells me about her new dream to work in a kitchen and sleep with the entire staff because she just finished reading kitchen confidential. She says she feels qualified to work in a kitchen because she is really good at coming up with profane things to yell when things go wrong, which, as we all know, is the most important part of being a chef. She kindly demonstrates this skill for me and the other patrons of the beach and shortly after that it became clear it was time to leave. We both haven't really eaten all day so we drive to a random trader joes in middle village and eat a pack of prosciutto in the parking lot. I can't sleep which I convince myself is due to bad feng shui because my mom saw some spiritual interior decorator maybe 12 years ago who gave her a list of very important specifications for how my room should be arranged according to my birth chart which she has since lost. I end up rearranging my room like 5 times, my neighbors definitely hate me but i refuse to be a victim of circumstance, I dragged my bed around to see if there was a particular direction that brought me inner peace and I can't say I ever figured it out, but I did tire myself out enough to sleep so for all intents and purposes the answer is Northwest. Tuesday came and went, I painted more then walked around the track and watched people play soccer and work out. I used to do this all the time, sometimes I would smoke and walk or drink and walk, basically anything that would be paradoxical to improving one's health, and watch all the sweaty ripped people chase their fitness dreams while I remained totally stagnant. I used to think it was so funny but now that I'm writing it out it seems sad. I've begun to excel at work, this is something that I used to do all the time as well, I've actually spent most of my life until fairly recently excelling, or at least trying to. I probably burnt out after college, no one really tells you how to pull yourself out of it except for stupid people on instagram talking about depleted adrenals. I'm not going to listen to some chick drinking from a plastic tumbler tell me to journal and have a cup of tea and a "real breakfast" and make my bed every morning until I'm Restored. For me personally that does not sound restorative, that sounds like a recipe for suicide, though that would solve the problem of my being burnt out, because then I wouldn't be burnt out, I would be dead. I think I struggle with the abstraction of "career" and I most definitely struggle with the idea that you could work as hard as you can at something for your whole life and have it never pan out. Too much uncertainty, I know this makes me a wimp, I'll get over it soon and really Put Myself Out There, I just don't really know what for yet. On wednesday my boss tells me she loves my new spreadsheet, it's everything she's ever wanted and more, this genuinely makes me feel good which is a little dark but whatever. I install the second set of blinds in my room and send everyone in my family a photo and they all say how proud they are of me, how glad they are to be related to someone who finally got up the courage to drill her ikea blinds into the window frame after a year of living in her apartment. This genuinely makes me feel good too which is even darker. [R] wants to drink delirium tremens and go see this artist's show in tribeca and so that is what we do. I go to cafe himalaya and then [L] asks to meet at burp castle and so I tell [J2] to meet me there for our hand-off of some excess pills prescribed to me by my beloved ukranian psychiatric nurse practitioner. I had agreed to this pre-break up and didn't really think [J2] would follow up after but he did and it makes no difference to me so. [J2] is super drunk and talking loudly which is basically screaming at burp castle and so I tell him we can go outside for a while. He's being really nice to me but it seems like he kind of just wants to talk shit about [J] which naturally makes me feel weird. Obviously everyone bitches after a break up but typically not to their ex-boyfriend's best friend, any sort of public bad-mouthing is a bad look in my opinion, maybe you get a hall pass for the first 48 hours or something if it was really traumatic but even then it's a bad look. The worst part was that I knew this wasn't the first time [J2] had done this to an ex-girlfriend of [J]'s, he's got a real carpe-diem sort of attitude when it comes to capitalizing on anyone experiencing signs of ill-will towards [J], and so this all made me feel a lot more like an opportunity than a person. I guess this is what it feels like to have something to offer, next time I hope someone wants to take advantage of me for my great success or powerful influence instead of my failed relationship. I go back in and we stay for a while. [J2] talks at [A4] about painting which is pretty funny because they are both artists, [J2] gives him advice about how to make money through art and [A4] just keeps nodding and saying Yeah Man, the whole interaction is so devoid of any context even though there is so much context which is awesome. Some random guy talks at [R] for almost 30 minutes straight and then tells her she's really interesting and that they should hang out some time. [R] gives him a fake number and then moves to the other side of the bar. The random guy's friend starts talking to me and [R], he says something about not usually hanging out in this sort of scene because he didn't go to art school like the two of us clearly did. He tells us that he went to school in philadelphia and we break the news to him that we, too, went to Penn, not art school, and he is genuinely mystified. He makes us list out all the clubs we were in and then asks us if we went to any spring fling concerts just so he can tell us he was in charge of planning them. In my opinion this is not something to be proud of. He cannot seem to comprehend that [R] did not belong to any clubs and did not spend that much time in the bioengineering lab, but that mostly we were just hanging out and having a good time, I'm pretty sure he referred to her as a "rare specimen." Then the two random guys and [J2] decide it's time to discuss whether or not god is real and to be honest that is none of my business. The bar closes and we leave and go to hang out with [M] who is in a really funny mood. I ask him who is in charge of the music tonight and he says "who's in charge of this place? my girlfriend's in charge, that's who!" with a big smile on his face. Unfortunately that did not answer my question but I'll live. On thursday I have so much work and they keep adding me to random meetings. They call me eventually to finalize my raise and promotion so that's good for me I guess. I meet with [J] before the nina event so we can break the ice before entering a room with like every single person we know. I have more to say but I'll save it for another time.

There's no hard feelings but feelings...they are hard.

9/2/23

Play tennis against wall pick up clothes from Ukraine listen to songs from sophomore year, it's sophomore year again. Drive [R] to the airport the wrong way ask about the art blog website thing shower then go to the movie. No offense to australians but why. The stuffed animals made sense back when he was a twink, or so they say. It turns out they liked my singing at the birthday party, no one thought it was weird, some people aren't cool, they're just tall, you cannot get these two things confused or it will ruin you—nobody tells you this. Imagine everyone at eye-level, or even a little lower.

8/29/23

Everyone at work asks how my week off was and I tell them it was great, I have a new lease on life which is almost true, I just leave out the part where I got evicted. Details, details…We have a bunch of planning meetings for the next year where we write out our responsibilities and I try to encourage everyone on my team to leave a few off the list so we can lighten the load a bit and they tell me this is not how it works. I don’t know why they refuse to dream big—did no one ever tell them life is what you make it? And so we include all the file management and hyperlinking and zoom-report-pulling that makes me want to kill myself, among other things.

My grandma has taken it upon herself to single handedly convince me to forsake all other passions and become a full-time painter. She’s quite skilled at this, she always starts by buttering me up, telling me I’m the most talented child in the family, that I have so many gifts, that I should know my worth. Then she starts to angle—I have so many gifts, but some are far greater than others, isn’t it time for a bit of focus? Then she invokes my great-grandmother, who she says invented the idea of “everything in moderation,” but in fact moderation was her most damaging vice, and don’t I want to achieve something in life? She says the writing is okay, but what I really need to do is paint for four hours a day, no more no less. The issue with this, I tell her, is that I am not really cut out to be an artist, and my paintings are actually just kind of bad photo realism. She tells me this is nonsense, that she looked up the man who funded my visit to Cuba and that she thinks he has no talent. I tell her it’s all in the eye of the beholder, and my grandfather tells her that’s why she’ll never visit Cuba on his dime.

We go to dinner and the conversation turns to [LW], how he gave my dad and grandfather both that new Quentin Tarantino book for father’s day so the three of them could “discuss it.” Apparently he calls multiples times a week to ask if my grandfather has finished it, gets angry and hangs up when the answer is still no, but he himself has yet to begin the book. My grandma says she has “suffered through” a few chapters herself, that she will never understand such a “disturbed individual.” I tell her a lot of people feel that way about him, and she tells me she wasn’t talking about Quentin Tarantino. We go home and play cards for a while, my grandma tells me I need to stop raising my eyebrows because I’m getting wrinkles, my grandfather immediately raises his and my grandma screams, says she hates it when he looks like Groucho Marx. My grandfather then reaches over to her and pats her on the shoulder and says “pat pat pat” and my grandma screams again and laughs and says she only hates two things about my grandfather: when he pats her like a dog, and when he looks like Groucho Marx. Naturally this makes me want to cry, they love each other so much.

We soon end up on the topic of whether or not I am anorexic and I assure everyone I am not, perhaps I am Midwest anorexic but I am certainly New York Fighting Weight. We talk generally about health, how I need to be careful because genetically I have breast cancer on both sides across multiple generations. This is something I have known since I was 11 and my mom got sick and it was impressed upon me that every point of consumption stands to hurt or heal. I’ve always seen that as a sort of inflection point in my life, where I started to understand not just that actions have consequences, but that actions compound, and that their consequences are often indecipherable because of the massive weight of our existence, that a spoonful of quinoa instead of a spoonful of captain crunch could actually be the difference between life and death, we just don’t know these things until it’s too late. And so needless to say things got a little messy for me after fifth grade. The next day I wake up and my grandma demands to watch me eat breakfast which is fine because I was going to do it anyway. My grandma talks about how my grandfather never worked hard in college because he was too busy talking into his HAM radio. My grandfather confirms this, says if only he studied English or history instead of math and physics, then he would not have had to turn to the radio every night to fill the void. I asked him what he talked about on his radio and he says Oh, The Weather. We look out the window for a while at the bird feeder but the birds never come.

8/27/23

New pics

Everyone is eating bagels with their boyfriends in the park and I am eating a mango with Myself over the kitchen sink. This might seem like something a depressed person would do, and it very well could be, but it has always been a favorite past time of mine and I won't forsake fond memories because of new context. As to whether or not I am, independent of the mango-sink-eating, a depressed person—from now on that information is [redacted].

Yesterday I endured my second break up of the week, this time with my beloved internet decision making wheel, because now that I have Accepted That Which I Cannot Change Thumbs Up Emoji, I really have no business trying to tell the future on yes no wheel decide dot com. I used to use it to make stupid decisions like should I wear pants or a skirt, or should I eat a scone today (if it said no I would typically just ignore it), but it's a slippery slope, especially for someone who is very easily influenced by even the suggestion of some sort of divine force. A few years ago I convinced myself I was about to board a flight to my death because I had just watched a season of this tv show where a plane disappears on its way to Jamaica. I was flying to visit my parents and when I got to the airport I got stuck in a revolving door and there was this automated voice thing that got caught in a loop saying "danger leave danger leave." I mostly ignored that one, but then some random woman said something like "are you sure you should really be here?" and I got more freaked out, but the final nail in the coffin was when I got to what was supposed to be my gate and found myself at deserted gate for—you guessed it—a flight to Jamaica. I went to my new gate and panicked for a while until I saw this tiny bird sitting on one of the airport monitors and I frantically googled "are birds a sign of good luck" which turned out to be a much more contentious question than I had imagined. Many felt that birds were a symbol of angels being nearby, but no one could agree about whether or not it was a sign that you were being watched over, or that you were close to death and the angels had arrived to drag you away to heaven or hell or whatever. Ultimately I sucked it up and got on the flight and the angels dragged me to purgatory, Los Angeles, and I vowed to never, ever watch a show where a plane disappears on its way to Jamaica ever again. So far I have been very successful in this endeavor, it's not as popular of a premise for a tv show as you might think. I like to tell myself this is all due to a strong tether to the Powers That Be, but I believe the clinical term is paranoia. In my defense, though, that whole ordeal was made worse by the fact that the plane ticket literally cost $666 and the flight was on Friday the 13th, which is so ridiculous and would only ever happen to me. All that's to say, the wheel and I were never meant to last. In its place I have been writing down all the questions I will never ask in a note on my phone so that one day soon I can look back and laugh at myself for being Fine (re: 8/25/23 ha ha ha I'm so funny). I will spare you the gnarly details, but to give you a sense of why it was time to call it quits with the wheel, one of the questions I had to refrain from asking was "Is the NYT spelling bee pangram a sign from god?" Good riddance. Though obviously I would still love to know the answer.

I go to LaGuardia which is now cursed in a new way, this time it's my fault though, no tv show to blame, but maybe someday, I'll write it for all the deranged women who come after me—I am kidding please don't hate me. I spend most of the flight thinking about What Went Wrong, with the exception of 10 minutes spent helping a man shove a winter jacket into the overhead compartment, unclear why he had it in the first place. My aunt and grandparents pick me up and we go straight to the botanical garden where I push my grandma around in a wheelchair while she tells me that movies should be about movies, not the liberal agenda. Every once and a while my aunt overhears her and turns around and says What Did You Just Say? And my grandma says Nothing, I'm Just Catching Up With My Granddaughter, and then goes back to telling me about how we used to be a proper country. We talk about how much I loved Italy, how I'm going to run away there the first chance I get, and my grandma says Why? You Just Got a Dishwasher. And I say she has a point. I tell her about the Polish man who installed it, how he went out of his way to tell [R] that he has friends from India and he has friends from Pakistan, and though she may want him to, he can't pick a side. [R] told him that was okay, that what we really want is world peace anyway, which I think is beautiful.

Before we drive home my grandfather insists on buying one of every cookie from the garden cafe even though it's like 10 PM and we haven't even had dinner yet. We all agree that the blueberry cookie is the best, except for my grandfather who only wants to eat the peanut butter cookie, says he doesn't plan to share, which I respect. We get home and talk about the newly installed fiber optics, my grandparents' trips to Mexico, we look at pictures from when I was two and three and four and five and so many things click, I remember a time when everything just was—and it never really goes away, you just forget and end up with stories about yourself that aren't true, they were just the only explanations that made sense after all that forgetting. And there's the heartbreak and there's the aftershock. Things crunch and crack and snap back into place, you start to realize everything you needed to know once it's already too late. Stupid painful irony. That's life, they tell me. You never know the beginning until the end, they say. And maybe I'll find it funny once I stop finding it sad? I don't know. My aunt got me a crate of my favorite sparkling water from the Chesterfield Aldi, I got obsessed with it last year because the can says "Belle vie," so now everyone has stopped calling it seltzer, instead we just call it "Belle vie." And it is.

8/14/23

The day is saturday. I wake up and tell [J] to make a remix of marnie singing stronger on Girls and he agrees and then we sit for a while and make beautiful music. I leave and go home to clean my room and try to install the blinds I ordered after a year of getting seared by the sun every morning at 7am. I like the idea of being woken up by the sun but it got to the point where I needed to put SPF on before bed if I didn't want to wake up with a sunburn and so I caved and ordered the finest blinds ikea had to offer, the Hopvals cellular shade, and I can't wait for my vitamin D levels to plummet. I open some mail to clear off my desk and find a letter from bank of america letting me know that I have been issued a refund for the $2.71 dunkin donuts coffee a man in staten island stole my debit card to purchase in february. I believe he also spent 10 dollars at CVS but I guess I will just consider that one a donation. At the end of the day I am just grateful my debit card ended up in the hands of someone practical, just a coffee and some CeraVe is all he needed. If we ever meet again, I'll buy him a drink.

I open another letter, this one's from my mom, she sent me a big red heart cut out of construction paper and a parking ticket I haven't paid from last month. I tell her thank you for the reminder and say I will take care of it but I still haven't paid it and I should really stop writing this and just do it but maybe tomorrow. [R] helps me install my blinds but things go haywire and I may or may not have drilled into some sort of solid metal. [R] says it was probably just an electrical box, which does not seem to be a cause for concern in her book, so I just turn up the torque on the drill and let it rock. The blinds end up hanging at a very slight angle but I don't care and it's time to leave to go to the movies. On the car ride over [R] tells [L] and I how she plans to buy up all the property in new york and give everyone an apartment at a standard rate per square foot to end real estate corruption. Everyone will be entitled to some minimum amount of square footage, and the price per square foot will increase marginally according to your income like tax brackets. We tell her this is a very progressive idea and she says yes, that she also wants for all children to be raised communally to alleviate the burden on parents and cultivate a stronger sense of community. We tell her that this is an even more progressive idea and she says yes, and the final part of her plan to save humanity will be forced execution for anyone she doesn't like, to weed out the idiots and slow overpopulation. This is less progressive, we tell her. We ask her if she would consider a sort of prison or exile system instead and she says there will be no such thing as second chances in her city, when you're out you're out. I ask if there will be any age parameters on execution and she says definitely not, no such thing as second chances means no such thing as second chances. I don't think the uber driver was expecting to overhear the beginnings of a modern descent from communism to authoritarian rule, but there we all were in his Hyundai sonata, driving over the williamsburg bridge, looking out at all the many buildings that will one day house the people of [R]'s city, unless, of course, she decides otherwise.

We watch that new a24 movie Past Lives which was good, we all walked out of the theater kind of somber and had clearly all cried, though probably for different reasons. I am really just a sucker for near-misses, anything that could have been and wasn't, all reminders of the fragility of existence, we are always on the verge of disappearing. And as you get older you get to see those near misses play out in real time more often, and you get to watch your potential lives become foreign, your potential selves become strangers.

We walk to drink a slushie before going to [J]'s dj thing and after like 5 minutes of sitting in the corner this random 40-ish-year-old white guy wearing a headband comes over to us and begs to please buy us shots and it's like 8 pm so I really don't want one but he won't go away so we let him. He then proceeds to sit down with us and asks what three girls are doing hanging out alone and if we are in some sort of group or band. We say yes actually, we are in a band called terramagia. I tell him to guess what instruments we play and he says I clearly play the drums and I say that's wrong, that's [L]'s instrument. He asks if she has been a drummer all her life and she says yes. He asks us if she can read music and I say Yes, Nothing But, and he says that's incredible. He then starts speaking in chinese to [L] because he grew up in TaiPei. He tries to insinuate it was because he was some sort of secret agent but this is obviously false. I will never understand why people try to lie about being in the CIA or whatever, the premise of being a secret agent is that you keep it a secret, not that you keep it a secret unless you want to hit on three random 25-year-old girls in a bar on the lower east side. I have no patience for this so I talk to [R] and he continues to tell [L] about what it's like to grow up in asia, even though she grew up in asia and is actually asian. After like 10 more minutes I say it's time to go and then we start to get up and the guy freaks out and says not to go, that he was trying to get to me this whole time, that all of this, the shots, the speaking in broken mandarin, was meant to charm me. I tell him he has fundamentally misunderstood and walk towards the door and then he says he wants to marry me and begs for my name or phone number. I really don't know what he hoped to achieve with all this, I end up telling him my name but he mishears and I don't correct him because in [R]'s city there are no second chances.

We go to watch [J] but his set has ended and so we all just go hang out on the roof for a while. I talk to [S] and his friend [D] about sheepshead bay where [D] is from and how [R] and I were going to go there when I was going to drop my car off at mini of freeport but it never happened. I tell him about the time I actually did go to sheepheads bay to pick up a gigantic yellow leather couch with [R] and [L] that I had found on facebook marketplace and somehow convinced myself would look perfect next to the giant couch we already had even though our living room was like 10 square feet maximum. The couch was so much bigger and heavier than we thought it would be but we were so determined to make it work that we called a handicap uber to get a car big enough to drive it back to greenpoint and made [L] ride with the couch so she could charm the driver into helping us carry it up the stairs which ultimately he did. We spent like a month trying to get rid of it after and ended up making a huge profit becuase the couch turned out to be some luxury italian leather brand, but the jury is really still out on whether or not it was worth it. [J]'s boss's nephew [M] from London arrives and [R] and I decide to entertain him for the evening so [J] doesn't have to worry about it. [J]'s boss had said he was 22 or something but he is actually 28 and totally normal, we talk to him about his time as a chef in london and say we will visit him in the fall. We make him drink a twisted tea because he is in america and he asks why we aren't having one then and [R] says it's because she is canadian and I say it's because I already had one tonight which was a lie. I tell him about my job, how my company wants to save the children from pandemic learning losses, and he says he is a 4th grade teacher now and "the lads aren't alright" so my company sounds good to him. [J] and [R] and I leave and go eat pizza and then go to sleep.

On sunday I wake up and do the work I neglected on Friday because I was depressed. I spend like 2 hours pulling zoom reports that no one will ever look at besides me but whatever. [J] comes to meet me and we drive to connecticut to go to the beach. I paint a bunch of cups on graph paper, all I want to paint right now is cups, beautiful cups, and then we have dinner with [J]'s dad. [J] and I watch basic instinct and I realize the scene from girls where lena dunham flashes her boss is a direct reference to a scene in the movie that probably everyone else who saw it understood immediately. It's moments like these where I wonder how powerful I could be if I knew literally anything at all...

8/13/23

get me out of here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :(

8/12/23

Here is everything that has happened to me in the last week: on saturday the 5th I went to fort tilden with [N] and [J], saw [T] perform, left briefly because I needed to cry outside, on sunday the 6th I went to a yankees game with [J] and his dad, there was a man sitting behind me with a truly outstanding capacity for volume, he either deserves a trophy or jail time, I ate a foot long hot dog, [J] and I spent hours looking for corn that wasn't covered in plastic, we finished watching La Piscine, on monday the 7th I got locked out of my apartment, practiced my presentation, ran out of olive oil, on Tuesday the 8th I asked for a raise and a promotion, they said they’ll let me know, [J] made celebration dinner, I was hopped up on adrenaline and started like 5 debates, [J] did not appreciate this, went to see [N] and [I] at union pool, I think I have been to that place more in the last month than my entire time living in New York, on wednesday the 9th I said sorry, on thursday the 10th I went to the cafe opening and ruined my life, on friday the 11th I was depressed, watched marriage story at 1PM in my bed, I would not advise this, though it was less sad than I thought it would be, probably because I can’t really take Adam driver seriously after watching Girls, [R] told me the time for depression has elapsed, [R] and [L] and I played cards at burp castle then ate two pierogis each, [R] told us how she wants to do a “semester abroad” in Philadelphia to work at our favorite Ethiopian restaurant there, learn the tricks of the trade, we tell her that if she is abandoning us then we will find a roommate who has already mastered that cuisine to take her place, to ensure we don’t have to endure that sort of pain ever again, the pain of being forsaken for Ethiopian cooking, [R] does not appreciate this, on saturday the 12th I was reborn and so I can stop this summarizing and get back to it.

If you don’t pay attention you forget the details, if you don’t write it down it all goes away, talk is cheap and the written word stays, the old Polish man wrote that in my notebook in April, right before it all fell apart, or right as it was all coming together, you never know the beginning until the end.

8/10/23

No better feeling than eating a babybel cheese on the wide open road.

8/4/23

I had to abandon the blog to go try to get a promotion. I don't know if I got it yet but the work is done and it's out of my hands so now I can finally get back to the real work which is navel-gazing and chronicling my life on the internet.

Monday and Tuesday were first about suffering, then grew into beautiful reminders of how lucky I am to have such great friends. [R] and I talked for hours in the kitchen about friends that become family, I usually find that sort of sentiment trite and annoying, but there's no other way about it. If the last few months, or really the last year or two, have shown me anything it's the value of people who let you come back, no questions asked. I won't wax on about it much longer, I just think it's so easy to take the ebbs and flows of relationships personally, and to arrive at a place where your lives could diverge completely and you could still feel secure in your friendship, that's pretty special. [R] gave me a haircut on the deck and I told everyone who asked that she sheared it off with a dull knife. I don't know if I should be offended that no one really thought to question that. We made "american chop suey" which sounds like a slur but is actually a classic dish in Massachusetts regional cuisine, and by that I mean it is almost definitely a slur. I don't know what went wrong but we both ended up doubled over in pain for the rest of the night, I guess that's what we get for eating the racist pasta.

Wednesday I wake up and take my morning meeting then spend an hour clearing out my computer and end up watching this 10 minute video I took of myself crying two years ago on photobooth. I guess it was a weird thing to do but I was in so much pain then for no reason at all and I think I thought that if there was some record of it I could resolve it all retroactively. Of course this is not how it works, most feelings have no resolution, I watch the video and the pain just converts into nostalgia. I forget the sadness, instead end up longing for that time when I was feeling So Much, it's funny how that happens. Memories almost always feel more potent than the experience of their corresponding present, time distills and leaves you with something singular that feels more powerful for the simple fact that you can hold onto it. We think of memory as the sum of our experiences, when more accurately it's a short list of the things we didn't forget.

I meet [J] at Cafe himalaya before we go to see the Barbie movie. I tell him the big news: my landlord agreed to install a dishwasher. Haters will say it's fake but they won't be hating when my glasses are sparkling clean for the first time in way too long. We still have time to kill so we go to a bar and run into this guy [M] who [J] knows through his friend [E] and [M] immediately makes me look through a PDF list of the acai bowls he sells. He then shows me photos of them and has me identify their various ingredients, asks if I know what a goji berry is. I tell him I actually know what a lot of the ingredients are because I'm a white girl from LA as a joke which he doesn't take kindly, he seems to really takes these bowls quite seriously, tells me he is from Brazil so what do I know? But then he goes on to talk about how he is from Philadelphia, then says actually a rich suburb in New Jersey, so I guess he contains multitudes. [J] asks what he has been up to lately and he says he has been throwing parties in Berlin, ever heard of it? He then says he is working with the founders of Sweetgreen to open up brick and mortar stores, 30 of them, for his acai bowls. I congratulate him on this potential accomplishment and then he tells me I have beautiful teeth, that they look expensive, and I think this is actually a perfectly acceptable compliment. [J] asks if he has been doing any "painting" lately, then explains to me that [M] is a big graffiti guy, thats how he knows [E]. [M] asks [J] if he was surprised when [E] came out as trans, then asks us if we think it's possible for a man to be a woman and vice versa and so I briefly try to explain gender dysphoria to him because he sounds genuinely confused but then I realize we are really not having the same conversation. He goes off on a rant and I try to return to the topic of the various ingredients in his acai bowls but he has lost interest. After a while [J] tells him we have to go to the movie and he says we should hit him up for a bowl soon and we say yes but I am honestly fearful for what that much acai can do to the human psyche.

I actually liked the movie and thought it was funny, I started crying towards the end of it, not because of anything in the movie, just because it has been a hard week and a hard life even though it has also been easy. So much of life is about moving on from loss in all of its dimensions, that's why feeling like you have nothing left to lose can be so freeing. That brief interlude when you hit rock bottom is easy to mistake for peace of mind, but those moments are fleeting, always punctuated by some sort of gain that brings you back to a state of potential loss once again. Peace of mind can really only come from accepting loss as a constant, understanding that there is no existence without it, and that time moves forward even when the clock has no hands. Remembering that life goes on is just as comforting as it is heartbreaking.

[J] and I go to a bar after and talk about selling out, how people criticized greta gerwig from going from indie darling to queen of capitalism which I think is stupid. I don't really understand the obsession with "artistic integrity," I think most of the time it's misplaced. It's not actually hypocritical to make a grueling 10-hour film about, like, the wind, and then follow it up with a blockbuster about life in the big city. I think people confuse recurring form or subject for integrity, when it's really about the person making the thing having some sort of vision and executing it. [J] mentions how David Lynch couldn't bring himself to direct Star Wars which most people would probably take as a refusal to "sell out," but I think is more likely that he couldn't figure out how to execute, that he couldn't envision a way for Star Wars and David Lynch to be consonant, the same way, conversely, that Barbie and Greta Gerwig could.

On Thursday [R] and [L] and I go to go see casino royale in the middle of the day and jesus christ that is one horny movie. [R] says they are all like this, that she's been watching them since she was five, which actually explains a lot about her. We walk to meet [R]'s friend from high school [R2] at a place in the east village for all-you-can-eat sushi. We decide to opt for the all-you-can-drink option too and end up drinking a ton of the worst sake you could imagine out of a giant carafe that the waitress tops up with a plastic pitcher every time she walks by. I am almost positive that the "sake" was watered down white wine with a splash of vodka, but some things should remain a mystery. [R] and [R2] go back to the apartment and [L] and I go to meet [J] and [M2] at union pool. [M2] was rejected by the bouncer for not having an ID so [L] and I find him and [J] and [N] and [I] in the park and I tell everyone about how horny James bond is but they already know. I tell [J] to give [M2] his ID and just walk in and say he was already inside and it works. No one has tickets to the real event besides [M2] so we all just stand outside which is fine by me. [T] gives me advice for how to seem more normal in social situations which is to say "hey how's it going" and have bad posture so you appear less intimidating. I try this out on everyone I talk to for the rest of the night but it doesn't really work, everyone just wants to know why I'm crouching all of a sudden. I talk to [M3] and this other guy whose name I can't remember for a while about my brother and the bitcoin and then later [M3] tells me he thinks that guy is a crypto cop so he tries to avoid him. Eventually I get tired and so I go sit at a picnic table with [J] and [L2] and [A] and start doing the spelling bee. I ask [J] for help finding a word and then everyone else asks what we are doing and after a few minutes we are all sitting there trying to find the pangram. We are causing such commotion that [E] leaves the girl he was hitting on at the other table to try his luck but gets frustrated and leaves us to go back to trying to get lucky. We all leave and go to the alligator lounge, I think everyone is plastered because [E] and [J2] are making out with their respective women in the corner and [M3] is telling me about how he loves seeing his girlfriend in a headscarf. Towards the end of the night I end up talking to [A] for a while about blogging and writing and whatever, it's the first time I have ever really talked to her even though we have been in the same conversation like 20 times. I was genuinely surprised that she was actually nice because it's pretty rare for someone who is young and both professionally and socially successful to not suck. They turn the lights on and kick everyone out and [J] and I walk home.

On Friday I am ill from the vodka-wine-water "sake" and spend most of the day trying to dig myself out of a hole at work. [R] and [L] and I eat dinner and [R] feels like it is important we all know that she is attracted to [M3]. I ask her what I am supposed to do with this information, she says nothing, it's just something she needs me to know. We leave to go to the opening but I still feel ill so we decide to drink frozen margaritas and see if it hurts or helps. A group of guys ask if I am from barcelona because of the soccer team logo on my shirt which would almost make sense except is says FC Munich. I tell them this and they ask if I am German and I say no, it's a random shirt that I bought in italy. They ask if I am italian and I say yes and they are finally satisfied. We bike to the gallery and it becomes clear to me that the margarita did not help but it's too late to turn back so we go anyway and stand on the roof because its too hot inside the actual event. [N2] is there and shows us his appendectomy scars from last weekend. [L] and [R] tease [T2] about his 18 year old roommate and how he is in love and he denies it but only time will tell. We tell him about our all-you-can-eat sushi experience and he says he lives right above that place and we suggest he go there with his roommate if things get more serious. [L] and [R] leave and I talk with [T2] more and we read the press release which makes me a little suicidal because why would anyone write that. I look up [T2]'s astrological chart and we end up talking about his break up and my last break up. [T2] tells me that he has hung out in groups with my ex-boyfriend a couple of times recently and that he is extremely friendly, like a little too good at carrying on a conversation and I say that sounds about right. [J] comes over to talk to [N2] and then someone throws a smoke bomb in our direction for no apparent reason and so we decide it is time to leave. [J] and I start watching La Piscine because I guess watching horny movies is just my thing now.

7/31/23

This blog is weird because I want to write about what happened on Saturday and Sunday and Monday but I feel like I'm lying because everything I knew then is tinged with what I know now and I hate that more than anything. What does the full moon do to a person? This is what I keep googling because I just don't understand. I thought the war was over, I even wrote about it on here, but as it turns out I am just a fucking idiot. Surprise!

I actually wrote the paragraph above yesterday and not today when I'm posting this, but I'm leaving it in out of respect for whoever I was 24 hours ago.

On saturday I wake up feeling better but [J] is feeling sick and so we cancel our trip to connecticut. I still really want to go to the beach and so I convince [J] that the sea will heal all of his ailments and we pack up and drive to Fort Tilden. We somehow end up right next to a group of scene-y art and music people in the water, [J] recognizes some of them, I only recognize [E] because he is bald, everyone else looks exactly the same to me. I have probably been in a room with all of them sometime in the last two weeks but I have no idea who they are because now they seem so out of context. Everyone who lives in new york looks so unnatural on the beach because they are typically so Encumbered, the only body of water you can imagine most people in is The River. Everything about New York is in conflict with the beach—new york is about power and the beach is about resignation. It demands a certain sort of sincerity that the city abhors, public struggle in service of a good time. There is no composure on uneven ground, the second you set foot on the sand you forfeit control, slip, slide, admit weakness, prerequisites of the beach that would require true bravery in the city. You cannot outrank the ocean, there is no influence like the tides, you are at nature's will whether you realize it or not. Eventually the art people leave the water and pack up their things, later tonight they will button up and try to forget how it feels to be insignificant.

I eat some cherries and read about joseph duveen and then we drive back in an insane downpour which was cool because I've always thought being able to see while driving is a bit overrated. I go home and then [R] and [L] and I face off with a cockroach. Once again the roach is the victor and we flee the house. [L] and I go eat sushi and then get stuck on the train with every 19-year-old resident of Long Island in town for the night to go to mr. purple and hotel chantelle. We get off at delancey essex and get shoved around by the most base young men I have ever seen in my life and after a while I decide enough is enough and try out my new crowd control strategy which is to run as if I am being chased. This is actually incredibly effective, everyone clears the way and some even start running with me which makes for a beautiful moment of camaraderie, we all have our demons we must run from. [L] catches up and then we meet [A] and [E2] at the magician and we talk about many things, [A]'s internship, the derailment of her project building straw compressors for people in Kenya due to the civil war starting in two weeks according to her point of contact there, [A]'s brother's wedding, giant jaegerbomb, the curse of the magician, how one couple must fight, [L] and I assure [A] and [E2] they will be spared (though only time will tell). We part ways and then [L] and I decide we must drink a slushy and then we facetime with [N] because he says he is in the hospital and we tell him to prove it. He says he has surgery in the morning and that he doesn't care about anything because he is so hungry and they wont let him eat. He shows us all the movies they offer at the hospital and we tell him which ones we think he should watch. We sign off and then I put a calendar event in my phone to text [N] before he goes under. The train home is never coming and so I tell [L] we must bike over the williamsburg bridge and she protests because almost exactly one year ago [L] and I drank the same slushies and I insisted on biking over the williamsburg bridge then too and we both almost threw up because I failed to remember that most bridges are above ground which means that half of the journey is at some sort of incline...who would have thought? I tell her this time will be different, we will take e-bikes, and she gives in. We wander the streets for a while trying to find them, [L] finds one, I get one a few blocks away, we take off over the bridge and I don't need to throw up even a little bit. I get to the bottom of the bridge and realize [L] is gone, she appears a few minutes later and it turns out her e-bike was broken so she had to bike normally the whole way again.

On sunday I wake up and [J] makes me watch an hour's worth of lion videos, that's just what he woke up wanting to see, he says. I go home to meet [R] and [L] and we get in the car to go to a beach in staten island. [R] tells us about her night, she talked to this guy [D] from college who we used to be semi-friends with but don't see much anymore, he said he stopped drinking, just does drugs now, and so [R] started talking about how she can't do any sort of nose drugs these days and he said what she should do is put coke in a cigarette and smoke it, he does this all the time. [R] told him she would take that into consideration and that was the end of their conversation. I tell [R] I think his audacity is inspired—No I Don't Drink, I Just Smoke Crack.

We stop at an albanian restaurant [R] has been wanting to go to and the man behind the counter says 10-15 minutes for the food and so we play the italian card game while we wait. The man behind the counter leaves the restaurant to smoke a cigarette outside and when he comes back asks about the game, we tell him, then he asks if it takes long to learn, we tell him no, only 10-15 minutes, and invite him to play and he laughs and says next time. The beach is nice, we stay for a while then go to Marshall's in the staten island mall to buy whatever our hearts desire. We drive back and then I go to [J]'s for dinner to celebrate a year together even though we don't really know the actual date for it because why make things easy.

We eat cake and talk about his art and art in general, how trying to make art that is "new" is not only boring, but also a losing game because by the time any sort of idea is realized, what was new is already old. I say it's the reason why there was not and will never be any good art about COVID, why art about the election was cringe—current events are too temporal to be meaningful. I think most successful art is about narrow access points for broad experience—using the temporal to capture the metaphysical, the hyper-specific to infer the massive, trying to collapse a moment of feeling with all the times you have felt that feeling before and every time you will feel it again after—and the same is true in writing, figuring out how to say to say the most with the least.

7/30/23

I keep getting stronger and the pain gets worse but hurts less. I'm reading articles about art dealers from the 20th century and having premonitions that ruin lives. I'm a little too young for all this weight, or maybe I'm just young enough that I can still carry it. My room starts the day messy, gets clean, and when I say goodnight the clothes are back in the pile on the rug. My mom sent the rug from Norway, it's made of plastic bags and bottles from all over the world, and every night it carries a little bit of all this weight. I don't know how you could look at me all this time and see the difference but never say it. I don't remember how I felt about him then, everything ultimately escapes and that's nothing to cry about. When you let go all that weight gets a little bit lighter.

7/28/23

On Thursday I wake up and [R] meets me by my car outside [J]'s apartment with coffee and a ham and cheese croissant because she's a boss like that. We drive home and watch a van try to drive down a street that is a clearly under construction and has a huge "road closed" sign in front of it, but they just swerve around it and one of the construction workers chases after them yelling No No No No. I spend most of my morning meeting reading an "art basel diary" that [J] sent me that this guy [S2] wrote, the same one [S] was talking about in his blog. I met [S2] like one time, he seemed like a nice guy and actually my issue with the article has nothing to do with his attitude—I would say that compared to most art world writing it is refreshingly limited in clout-isms, contains only the occasional weird-flex-but-ok, all of which is pretty surprising considering he is dating the artworld-girl-painter to end all artworld-girl-painters—what actually depresses me about the article is how it's written. It seems like every other sentence is some sort of simile—why must everything be like something? Why can't it just be what it is? I don't really have the right to criticize, he is out there getting published and I am in here baring my soul in broken english on an anonymous blog, but I truly believe that the key to most good writing is suppressing the urge to try to sound smart. He describes a bathroom at a house party as "domestic" and calls being alone an "internal treaty of non-disturbance" which makes me suicidal. Maybe this is just what they are into at spike magazine, but I really don't think a "day in the life" journal about art basel has any business sounding like a poorly translated greek epic.

I end up texting with [S] later about this artist [M] who makes tech bro art. [S] says he makes tech bro art too and I say maybe but also it's different. There is art where technology is the medium, and then there is art where technology is the meaning, where the assumption is that because a work involves coding or motherboards or AI or whatever that it is inherently interesting because it is "modern," because it invokes the future, because a robot made this drawing—who cares? The intersection of art in technology is the hottest place in hell—I actually believe a lot of the impetus behind young artists making this kind of tech art has to do with complexes around needing to feel traditionally "smart." I watched this play out when I was in college and every other would-be art student had some caveat preventing them from being just an artist. There was actually a whole major devoted to students of this affliction—"visual studies"—where you were not just a lowly art student but also a neuroscientist because you had to take one biology class about the brain and perception. This meant you could paint your heart out and still call yourself pre-med until graduation when the majority of graduates from this major become mid-level marketing associates at GAP corporate. I don't know [M] well enough to actually determine if he is cut from the came cloth, but either way I have very little patience for art that asks the question: what if a computer had feelings?

I eat sushi in the park with [R] and [L] then we go to the turkey's nest tavern to play an italian card game and [R] insists we all drink some sort of frozen drink of her choosing. [R] orders [L] an "gargoyle margarita" which is a margarita made with absinthe instead of tequila and me a "miami vice" which is allegedly just a frozen strawberry daiquiri but somehow tastes worse than the absinthe margarita. I refuse to drink it because I am certain it will give me the worst hangover of my life and [R] tries to convince me otherwise but then she tastes it and agrees I don't deserve that much suffering. [R] and [L] go home and I ride a Citi bike in circles around the McCaren park track listening to "Nothing compares 2 U" on repeat until I tire myself because I feel like it.

Friday morning I go to my office and end up having to take 15 minutes of my meeting from the train and everyone asks why my service keeps going in and out and I say it is because I am underground and they do not appreciate this answer. [R] and I make a huge bowl of quinoa salad and spend the rest of the afternoon eating it straight out of the refrigerator. I go meet [J] downtown to eat a burger at this australian restaurant designed for people who want to wash down a cobb salad with an espresso martini. A girl next to us actually orders exactly this, and the waiter asks if she would like vodka or tequila in her espresso martini and she says she is a "tequila kind of girl," as if that is something to be proud of. The waiter looks really familiar and I tell [J] I think he is from LA but it turns out he is not from LA, he grew up in the city. He asks us why we thought that and I say it's because the restaurant has a "beachy vibe" but really it's because he looks like a youtuber.

[J] and I drink a slushy that tastes good and not evil like yesterday's and then we go to [O]'s concert. [J] is convinced it will begin promptly at 8 and I say there is no way a bunch of college kids are going to abide by any sort of schedule, I tell him about how when I would throw parties I would say they started at 8 so that people would show up around 10:30, if you say a party starts at 10:30 people think it's okay to come at 1 AM, this is just how it goes. My theory, as it turns out, is timeless, there is no concert to be found, just a roof with 40 cooper union students and one couple getting married. Everyone claps when they say "I do" and now the newlyweds' love story will be inextricably linked to a band called "Debris Bardot" and I think that's beautiful. I start feeling sick but then [T] arrives so I suck it up and drink a beer and feel a little better. The sun has set and there is still no sign of the concert, [J] and I talk to [T] about midheavens and mars in Libra, a friend of [J]'s named [A] arrives with his friend [E] who invites us all to sail with him to iceland, as soon as he learns how to sail. He gives me his phone number and says he is going to an album listening party across the street and then we never see him again.

[O]'s band ends up playing around 11 and I am feeling homesick for the roof where, though there was no music, there was air to breathe. I leave the crowd to enjoy their mass-asphyxiation and sit next to a window in someone's bedroom and read an interview with David Salle and Carroll Dunham that I had printed out a few days ago and left in my bag. [T] asks if he can join me so I hand him a couple of pages and we sit there reading quietly while everyone else rocks on.

I think a lot about waiting and what I'm waiting for. I think about that horrible moment when you've been waiting for hours, days, weeks, and it suddenly dawns on you that you have nothing to look forward to, that you have been waiting around for no reason at all, just habit. You can't wait to get off of work, spend the whole day counting down the minutes, then you get home and realize it was all in vain, that work was hell, but this is hell too. You've been waiting for relief but from what? There's nothing, it was always nothing. Naturally this all depresses me quite a bit.

The concert ends and we leave the apartment and it immediately occurs to me that all this thinking was temperature-induced, that my waiting was not existential, that I can feel relief, namely from 100 degree heat in a poorly ventilated apartment. This is a beautiful thing. We go find [M2] and [J2] to say hi before going to sing karaoke but on the train back [T] and [J] and I get too tired and call it a night. I take a cold shower at [J]'s apartment and remember that because there is nothing there is everything, this is just something we have to live with.

7/26/23

Called the good people at Mini cooper international and got a new lease on life. All this car stuff has been keeping me up at night, it's a perfect storm of logistical stress and financial stress sprinkled with the most embarrassing sort of sentimentality for material things. Now I have an extra month, maybe two, to sort this all out and also to drive to this beach in Staten Island because I really want to do that before I am downgraded from four wheels to two feet. My morning meeting is lame, I can tell my manager isn't listening to a word I say because I keep asking her questions and she keeps responding with a 10-second delay saying "that's great!" I go read "Dubliners" at the coffee shop but then get distracted by the gagosian article, the beautiful gagosian article, and I forsake the Irish for "the crazy Armenian," which is apparently what he called himself to get cy twombly to take his calls. I send the article to [R] and by the time she finishes it she declares she is ready to get into the game which would be awesome on many levels but also makes sense because [R] could sell milk to a cow, she once found someone to pay $100 for our dirty broken couch by offering to throw in the cardboard box we shoved under it to keep it from collapsing "free of charge."

I text with [S] about [PH]'s cover of paparazzi that he told me about a few weeks ago. There are actually a number of other covers, all deeply unsettling and totally earnest. The whole thing is hilarious but makes me feel schizophrenic because how can someone so hell bent on clout have such a dramatic lapse in their whole cultural charade? Everything else so calculated, so obviously by "the book," and yet this glaring oversight without a drop of irony—when have singer-songwriter covers of pop songs ever been widely respected? And I guess the answer is in the premise, all clout-chasers are inherently uncool, of course there will be errors because it's all so unnatural. To chase anything is to concede your own power by admitting an unfulfilled desire, which is not necessarily a bad thing, often it's in service of some greater goal or higher purpose, but in this case it's in service of impressing some social entity with the stability of a revolving door, and that's just sad.

I decide against going to the show the cooper union kids are putting on because I'm not really in the mood. [R] and [L] and I go to cafe himalaya and then go drink slushies and talk about how we are going to throw a party at mansions soon even if they don't know it yet.

7/25/23

I forgot all about de Chirico's apartment because I was too busy crying. I am back in New York now and dealing with the secondary heartbreak of knowing that my apartment is not de Chirico's apartment, it never will be, because I do not live overlooking the spanish steps, I live in a glorified shipping container decorated with beige-est tiles and countertops leftover from some Polish man's cousin's friend's construction job in the 70's. Everything in de Chirico's apartment was base and lavish, the clunkiest tv you have ever seen flanked by red velvet curtains, beat up parquet floors and regalia. You know the fucking vibes.

I got off the plane and surged into a week of so many events: there was an opening at jenny's on wednesday, I went for maybe 10 minutes, before that I went to burp castle with [R] and drank some beer that tasted like cough syrup which I didn't mind, we strategized about re-signing our lease, so much work, especially considering all of the above, went to some nina event after jenny's that was intended to be a performance but was ultimately a sweat lodge, everyone went to the river after, my first time since the river challenge, I should have done a victory lap but instead I paid $17 for a whiskey soda, on thursday there was the c minus thing at public records, I brought [R] and [L] and tried to explain to them what c minus is and realized I don't know, I don't ask anyone because I like it better this way, everyone walks to a bar after but it's really just the c minus people and their close friends and so it becomes much more difficult to evade the question of What Is C Minus but nevertheless she persisted...I am pretty sure I scared the main c minus guy [R2] with a bunch of astrology talk but I had no insights to share on the topic of ambient music so he left me no choice, [N] tells me about how the deitch girl [L2] is coming to visit even though he says he wants nothing to do with her, I tell him he does not need to be ashamed if he actually likes her and he insists he doesn't and tells me about his new crush and I half believe him, [R2]'s girlfriend invites [R] to a potluck dinner because "everyone that's friends with [G] is going" and [R] doesn't have the heart to tell her she has no idea who [G] is so she just says For Sure Sounds Good, [R] and [L] and [J] and I leave and visit God Bless USA Deli where we see Despot who I am told is famous, [J] goes to talk to him, Despot says he was at the studio in the area, [J] says he should call him if he ever needs someone to write really bad lyrics, Despot says he will consider it, [J] freestyles all the way home, the next day is [J]'s dad's birthday so we go to Connecticut, eat paella, people always want to comment on my "healthy appetite," I don't know what about me inspires this but it happens all the time, [J] says it's because people are surprised to see a thin person eat a normal amount of food but I tell him it is more likely just code for calling me fat, or a forewarning that I will become fat if I continue at this rate, either way I would prefer to eat without commentary, there are far more interesting things in this world than the number of shrimp I can consume in one sitting, saturday we go to the beach then take the train in to go to bossa nova for more c minus time, [R2]'s birthday is the same as [J]'s and he is having a party there, everyone is going, [J] wants to go so he can celebrate his birthday with friends but without all the pressure, I get caught drinking a high noon seltzer in union square and a cop writes me up, makes a whole big show of it, then turns of his body cam and says the ticket has the wrong birthday so I don't need to pay it, he just needed to pretend to catch someone and I should finish my drink and throw it away, I do just that and say Thanks and I'll Never Forget You, bossa nova is fun, [M] comes and [K] comes and everyone keeps making [J] do birthday shots, [M] and I talk about how jealous we are that [S] is writing so much, how we are falling behind, mostly me, [M] keeps up better than I do, we lament that [S] is out there writing history and we are in here choking down another drink, but thus is life, it's a birthday, it's a party, that's all to be dealt with in the morning, [J] lights up the cigar he brought, we all hang out outside, somehow I end up talking to this guy [B] and his sister whose name I can't remember about being catholic, they both went to catholic high schools, [B] went to a carmelite school like my little brother [LW] which is pretty crazy because there are only like 5 in the country, we talk about how the good catholic boys high school in LA is jesuit, not carmelite, how the jesuits are all powerful, how [B] and his sister both went to jesuit colleges, I ask if that was on purpose and they say kind of, it's just what everyone did, they are from a suburb outside of chicago, we talk about the controversy with the pope, how they try to never let a jesuit be pope because the jesuits are too powerful, so many things are like this, [J] and I go home and I learn from him that [B] is actually a sort of niche-famous musician, maybe I would have known this if I had inquired further about the whole c minus thing, I think I'll leave it alone, let it be one of life's little mysteries, sunday is [J]'s birthday, we take the train back to the beach, swim, recover, [J]'s dad asks if I have ever killed a lobster and I say no and he says then today is the day, I drop them in boiling water and kill them dead, maybe a few too many jokes are made about the creepy long island architect turned serial killer, we eat the lobsters anyway, more beach on Monday, I'm stressed about my job, I'm stressed about returning the car, [J] and I drive back to New York late, we stop to get gas and I make him wait while I vacuum the car, I tell him it is the only thing that will bring me peace and he understands, so much I have to sort out this week, I just want to sit at my desk and stare.

I finished "My Brilliant Friend" and it didn't do much for me. I can understand why Elena Ferrante wanted to remain anonymous.

7/24/23

I get to the train and burst into tears that slip into sobs, then heaves. I sprinted half a mile under the weight of 100 degree heat, dragged my suitcase through the mess of people shouting profanities of international stature, willing myself to stay upright to avoid further humiliation, to resist the call of the tangled laces and the relief of my head on the concrete floor. And knowing this the doors closed all the same, too late is too late, and even though the worst case scenario was a missed flight, I lost it. The sheer exertion tapped into some base instinct, the train was not a train, it was everything I had ever wanted in the last 25 years of life and it didn’t want me, the doors closed and I stood on the platform crying out a lifetime’s worth of rejections, banging on the door to test the limits of my power, each time remembering how it was no use, flailing in denial for every declaration that stood resolute while I begged it to bend, inviting hope in and watching it die, shred by shred, inching closer to a hardness that will be impossible to reverse: this was my last chance to melt.

And so I cried until I tired myself out, watched the people I had flown by in the crowd catch up to me and laugh, so much haste to end up in the same place as everyone who had the good sense to slow down. This is what you learn that makes the crying stop: I missed the train lastly because the doors had closed, I was never going to get on it, it was predetermined, it began with the underperformance of the legs, the inefficiency of the path, the poor judgement surrounding the selection of ticket machine made harder by the deficiency in language, which began with the choice to dance instead of play soccer, to take french instead of italian, a series of choices starting with my first breath and ending in the closing of the doors, entirely my fault and totally out of my control. And how can you cry the same knowing this? That in every instance you are equal parts villain and victim, not half and half, but one hundred percent both?

I shell out 60 euros for a cab and make it to the airport an hour before my flight, get through security and customs in record time, wash the sweat off my face in the bathroom while group 1 boards, group 2 follows, I am group 3, hand the flight attendant my passport, these things always seem to work out, how can you cry the same? My parents and I have split, they have boarded a cruiseliner to Greece, then Barcelona, and I am going back to New York, New York or Nowhere, and for every part of me that understands New York, there is an equal part that understands Nowhere, and in every instance you are equal parts villain and victim, not half and half, but one hundred percent both.

The worst things that have happened to you have happened to someone else, the cruel and unusual are ultimately mundane. Sometimes you pour one out, and sometimes it pours out of you.

A week went by and so much happened nothing happened. I want a promotion, I might get it. I sat on the beach and read a book about Reena Spaulings—how did I end up here? How did this happen? I wanted a new life, I got it.

7/16/23

I wake up to my mom reading aloud the various percentages we are of white, the ancestry dot come results have come in. Much is confirmed, some is revealed, apparently some of my Italian is actually "aegean islander" so maybe they'll let me do birthright in Mykonos. I leave the hotel and try to go to borghetto flaminio but it's closed, who knows why, the windows are all boarded up and the grass is overgrown. I end up finding some other random market a few blocks away and spend the morning digging through piles of clothes, I probably could have stayed all day if it wasn't so hot. I call it quits and meet my parents to go to palazzo Barberini and hide out from the heat and the tourists. My mom keeps calling frescos "briskets." I could understand mispronouncing the word, calling them friscos of friskies, but briskets? I think she is doing this to test my limits and so I remain quiet and say yes, the Italians really have a knack for brisket don't they?

We see so much. Caravaggio everywhere, they are obsessed with this man. He changed art forever, they say, and it seems that most agree so I'm just going to let them have it. No offense but after a while they all look the same, I don't like them very much in the first place even if I can understand their value, appreciate them critically, whatever. He changed art forever, but that has nothing to do with me. I do briefly get worked up about two portraits that appear very similar in style, composition, blah blah, they are both of old men in black cloaks or maybe some sort of academic robe, one is Caravaggio, one is Caravaggesque, done by some anonymous painter. Caravaggio went ahead and did the whole thing, painted every little detail, made it look rich and full, no stone left unturned, all that stuff. This other painter, this anonymous apostle, went ahead and did almost the whole thing, minus the entire robe which he essentially omitted, no shadows or highlights or subtleties, it's quite literally a giant black blob hiding in plain sight. If you were just strolling through, you would have no idea, you would enter, see Caravaggio's portrait of an old man, cloak drenched in nuance, then continue onto the next portrait, the anonymous painter's portrait of an old man, be struck by all its similarities and consequently become blind to its differences, this gaping hole masquerading as approximately one third of a painting. And realizing this feels like biting into a microwave burrito and discovering the middle is frozen solid. I think it's the heist of the century, the artist didn't even try to disguise it, the lines are hard, he's drawn a blank right up against all the frills and formalities, abused the fact that we all forget how much light is in darkness. And so much is revealed when we remember this, how much we can see.

We stay for a few more hours and I briefly fall asleep in a chair looking up at one of the many briskets Italy is famous for. We walk to the Trevi fountain because you have to do what you have to do and then we drink lemon granitas and I tell my parents how I am going to start studying something, anything, for two hours a day because I think the happiest I have ever been was when I taught myself AP biology in 3 weeks so I could take the Biology SAT subject test. I can see in their eyes that they feel they have failed me, that if my deepest, most prolonged sense of joy came from binge-memorizing the kingdoms and phylums and classes and then promptly discarding said knowledge the moment I turned in my scantron, something, somewhere, went very, very wrong. I tell them they should take pride in the fact that they raised a daughter who could experience pure joy from something as simple as knowing so many kinds of worm, but this doesn't comfort them.

We spend the next 2 hours going into every tourist shop in our path then go to eat pizza in trastevere. We earn the contempt of yet another waiter when my dad asks in broken italian if there are any onions, "cipolla," on the "formaggio e funghi" pizza. The waiter is incredulous, says the pizza is formaggio e funghi, not formaggio e funghi e cipolla, and then storms off. We eat our onion-free pizza and then try to go to the Colosseum and end up lost because my mom keeps putting her phone on airplane mode even though she is the one guiding us on google maps.

We take a taxi home and the woman driving us asks where we are from and apologizes for not speaking english very well and we tell her she speaks english very well, that we should be apologizing for hardly speaking italian at all. She asks what we know how to say in italian and we begin listing out the birds, the animals, the fruits, whatever evidence of understanding we have, all of which is ultimately just evidence that we have not made it beyond level one in duolingo. My dad keeps repeating "chimia mangia banana" and the taxi driver thinks this is hilarious and laughs for the rest of the ride. She drops us off in piazza del popolo and we say Arrivederci and she says Goodbye.

7/15/23

We get on the train to Rome, the express one-hour train that I was supposed to take when I got in a fews days ago, and I try to catch up on these blogs but I can't focus because my mom is sitting across from me hiding her phone behind her bag trying to secretly take hundreds of photos of me. I tell her this is not really a moment worth capturing in such great detail and she says fine and then slides her phone halfway under the tray table and continues to document my each and every move. At the end of the day I can't complain because it is nice that she cares.

I am homesick for the regional rail, the people on this train are very dull, only trying to get from point A to point B. The air conditioning is oppressive, the train hardly sways which means the luggage stays firmly in the overhead compartment, no spontaneous thud to wake you if you start to doze off, and the most interesting passenger is a guy my age with a list of dog names tattooed on his calf: Buddy, Skippy, Rufus, Lucy, Babel, Bun, Mary. There are more but the names are illegible.

We take the metro to drop off our bags at the hotel and then set out to see the sights. Somehow we end up at the Pantheon which, between the hoards of tour groups and 100 degree weather, appears suspiciously like hell. My parents are undeterred by this, so they press on trying to get in and I excuse myself to sit on a ledge next to a dozen men rotating between smoking cigarettes and herding tourists towards their respective shops or booths. Eventually I get dizzy from the heat and from watching the men go from friends on a smoke break to bitter rivals and back again in seconds so I go to find my parents and they are still trying to get into the Pantheon and I ask them why they want to go in so bad, haven't they both already seen it? And they say yes they have, and so I ask again, why? And they say: because we are here. I think they must suffering from some sort of heat-induced mania and so I tell them we need to leave now, it's an emergency, and then I walk us all over to Galleria Spada which is both air-conditioned and practically deserted, and then no one mentions the Pantheon ever again. We stay there basically until it closes then walk over the bridge to Trastevere and sit down for a drink and somehow get on the topic of my impending student loan payments which ruins the vibe. My parents made me take out a loan to "teach me a lesson," which is their right, but since I have not yet paid off the loan and thus not learned my lesson, I am not, at this time, feeling the benefits of this life skill, the fruits of self-sufficiency. Mostly I am feeling like a kinda-anxious-kinda-drunk 25-year-old nearly 40k in debt vacationing in Italy on her parents dime. And just as the dissonance is about to consume me a man comes by our table and insists my father is George Clooney which is funny because he once actually had to stand in for George Clooney on a set due to scheduling issues.

I resolve to forget about my debts, something I am distressingly good at much to my chagrin, and decide to focus on manifesting some sort of divine intervention until my first payment is due. This, of course, just proves my parents' hypothesis that I am in desperate need of some personal growth here, but this is between me and god now so catch me praying until September 1st.

We eat dinner at a place [J] recommended and then walk to Vatican City where my mom takes a moment to thank Pope Francis for "spiritually uplifting the consciousness." My dad reads the latin on the side of the obelisk in the middle of St. Peter's square and tells me it says something about being stolen from an "impious cult" which probably just means the people of Egypt. Catholics are so dramatic, nothing can ever just be what it is—wine can't be wine, it has to be the blood of christ. Vatican City can't be a city, it has to be a whole entire country. Pope Benedict retired and couldn't go back to being plain old Benedict, they had to invent a new title and call him "Pope Emeritus." But what else could you expect from a religion that started because Jesus decided he's not like other girls.

We walk back along the river and I think about how it's Saturday night in New York and how little I actually care.

7/14/23

I wake up and all I can think about is a dance I had to do in high school called “Be Italian” that I performed at a number of dance competitions across southern california. Everyone in the dance dressed like a gypsy from the hunchback of notre dame and had to hold a tambourine. We would shake them along with the music, then hit them occasionally for dramatic effect. I knew then that this was not what it meant to be italian, but I do think somewhere deep down I expected to encounter at least one or two tambourines in italy, instead I have seen none. But there’s still time.

My mom starts the morning off by watching a tiktok my older brother sent her on repeat where a 26 year old influencer marketing coordinator explains the “Janou” hotel, that it is the “little sister” of the Aman hotel targeted at younger clients that still “enjoy the finer things,” how it is designed to cultivate a future client base for Aman by establishing brand loyalty so once a client ages out and gets their money up they know where to swipe their platinum Amex. I had no choice but to internalize that information so I’m putting it here in the hopes of erasing that young woman’s voice from my brain forever.

We try to go to Castel dell’Ovo, but it is closed so we just look around outside. The castle gets its name from a legend where the poet Virgil put a magic egg in it's foundation, and the egg allegedly protected the castle from the disastrous weather and wars that followed shortly thereafter. Apparently the egg remains there to this day, but you can't see it so you are supposed to just take their word for it. This makes me feel better because I will have had the same amount of interface with the magic egg having been in the castle or not. As it turns out, you can not-see the magic egg from anywhere in the world. We take a taxi to capella Sansevero to see the veiled christ and the "anatomical machines" which are hyper-detailed models of the human cardiovascular system said to be created through metallization, i.e. injecting some sort of hardening agent into the bloodstream, all of which I find deeply disturbing. My parents go off to the archeological museum and I begin my very important work scouring every tourist shop and booth and market that crosses my path. What I appreciate about this country is that they are not afraid of a spelling error. If a t-shirt has a typo, they don’t fix it, they print a hundred more and tell you you’re wrong, the dictionary’s wrong, how could it be a typo if it’s on so many shirts? A man tries to sell me a book for 18 euros that I find on Amazon for 10 and so I tell him this and he says okay, 9, and I say 5 and we have a deal. Now I’m high off of my successful negotiation and ready to win and so I go into a shop and tell the man at the counter I want to pay 10 euros for 20 euros worth of stuff and he says no way. I tell him, in broken italian, that the man next door said he would sell it to me for 12 euros, and he laughs and says in english “there is no man next door.” Ultimately I got him to knock one euro off, just for me.

I meet up with my parents again and we drink a granita on the street and walk back to the airbnb. I check my email and it’s christmas in july at big air laguna, the podcast is now on youtube, there’s a new listing matching my saved search “dress,” there’s something jeff bezos doesn’t want us to know, and just announced: HAIM, the Wiggles, Enrique Iglesias and Pitbull. I hoping to learn something about my car insurance claim, but often we don’t get what we want, we get what we need, and so if anyone wants to join me at the Wiggles concert at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia on September 13th, please be in touch. I didn’t even know the Wiggles were still together, wasn’t there a huge scandal where the purple one was doing meth or engaging in subtle molestation or both?

We leave the airbnb and take a taxi to dinner and the driver says he has never been to california but he has been to san diego and it reminds me of my cousins who used to always say “I want to come to los angeles—and california” which always drove me crazy. I’d tell them that’s like saying “I want to be a square—and a rectangle,” one precludes the other, but at the end of the day they didn’t care and I just sounded like an asshole. I have long since learned my lesson and so I tell the driver I hope he makes it to california one day soon. We walk to the restaurant and a random shop that has transformed itself into a sidewalk bar is playing this song from an italian teen movie [L] and [R] and I watched maybe 2 years ago called “under the riccione sun” and I freak out at the coincidence then remember it is an italian pop song and I am in italy. Either way it makes me think about the period right before I moved to new york when I almost exclusively listened to that song and the rest of the “under the riccione sun” soundtrack. I was enduring too many emotions and didn’t want to attach them to anything meaningful, so I tried to leave them in Riccione but obviously it doesn’t work like that. Now it’s been long enough, though, that it just reminds me of a time when I felt a certain way, it doesn’t remind me of how I felt. Eventually it’s all just nostalgia.

My parents are doing italian Duolingo at full volume front of the restaurant. The host keeps letting other groups go in front of us so I ask my parents to please wrap up their lessons and they do and then suddenly our table is ready. We try to order a salad from the menu and the waiter says no, no salad in Naples, then leaves. My dad says they stopped eating salad in Naples during the cholera outbreak, that’s why there is so much fried food in Naples, they starting frying things to kill bacteria. This is all true, but the table next to us has a large bowl of greens that looks suspiciously like salad to me, so there is salad in Naples, just not for us.

7/13/23

My mom keeps comparing Sorrento to a “strip mall in Koreatown” with the charm of San Pedro, the port city an hour south of LA where all the cars from Japan are shipped, and the class of Athol, Massachusetts, the rural town she grew up in. My dad says it was a perfectly nice place, literally a part of the Amalfi coast, then shows my mom photos to remind her she liked it two days ago when she was there. She looks at the photos of the cliffs and blue ocean waves and makes a face like she is disgusted because that was then and this is now. Things change, she says, keep up. My dad finds this all hilarious and I do too, mostly because I am too jet lagged to think deeply about anything at all and so when my mom tells me Sorrento may as well have been Appalachia I say I Think You’re On To Something.

We’re at a cafe near the airbnb trying to eat breakfast but whenever we try to order something the waiter says absolutely not, you don’t want that, and walks away before we can ask what we do want. I ask him if I could please have a piece of focaccia and he laughs and says that’s not how you say it in italian and I ask him how I would say it in italian and he says he doesn’t know, he’s from pakistan. Eventually he returns with all the things we did not want and then makes me point to the focaccia to prove I know what it is and at this point I really respect his commitment to whatever game he is playing. He brings us some free cookies and then insists that the cafe is closed even though the table next to us just put in an order. But it’s his world, I’m just living in it, and so we leave and say grazie and he says what? I don’t know what that means.

We walk way down toledo to pio monte della misericordia and all I hear is prego prego prego and it’s 90 degrees once again and I’m covered in sweat. The museum is hot but full of beautiful furniture, chairs from Louis the 14 not Louis the 16, my mom insists. My dad says he has found his favorite painting in the museum, it’s by massimo stanzione, and I say why? He says you have to come closer to see so I come stand next to him to observe this painting in greater detail and I find out it is right in front of the air conditioning vent. I tell him I agree, this stanzione really has something to offer, it would be a shame to view one of his paintings from further than 10 inches away, where you could hardly take in the details, the many beautiful details. We start laughing and my mom asks whats so funny and we tell her nothing is funny, we’re just admiring a work by our favorite artist massimo stanzione, he asks that his works be viewed at a respectful 10-inch distance, and we tell her she better come over here before she offends someone and wouldn’t you know it—massimo stanzione is her favorite artist too.

We sit down for a while in the shade at the cafe across from the museum and my dad reads Daoist principles aloud from an apple news article. For each principle he reads my mom replies “I already knew that,” they taught her that in her seminars. My dad says the Chinese have been teaching those principles for thousands of years. Well, my mom says, she’s been living them for at least nine.

We talk about my little brother [LW] and his records, the collection has now surpassed the storage capacity of his bedroom which was already jam-packed with his collection of empty Monster energy cans. I once told him the cans would actually look nice if they were lined up on a shelf or in a display case and he said no, better in a pile. My mom wants him to go to grad school to make some friends and I think it’s a good idea so I say I will try to persuade him. My dad says I should say something about how I wish I went, how I will always regret missing out on more school time and my mom all but jumps out of her seat and says “well there’s still time!” And so I guess my mom wants me to go to grad school too.

Somehow we end up on a tour of the Naples “underground” which was first a cistern, then a landfill, then a bomb shelter. We talk to a guy from Switzerland who tells us that he almost didn’t make it here because of the strikes. My mom brings up the actor and writer strikes in Hollywood which she has taken as a personal offense and then the Swiss guy avoids us for the rest of the tour.

We eat dinner at pizzeria di matteo which is famous because Bill Clinton went there once and they are still talking about it. I’m realizing that the waiter from this morning was actually just a normal italian waiter, it seems that italian waiters basically ignore you and when you try to order something they tell you they need to think about it, this is just how it works. I think that’s awesome, I wish american waiters had more guts, instead they just let us just push them around and then talk shit in the back. This is why no one likes americans, you can’t trust anyone to just lay it all out there and say You Fool, No One in Naples Orders Salad.

My mom asks if I plan to see the barbie movie and I say yes, probably, and she says really? People actually want to see that? And I explain that a lot of people want to see it, it’s the movie of the summer, barbie versus oppenheimer, the works, and she says okay, and remember when you used to play barbies with [F]? I say yes, of course, but we had to stop because she always wanted to be a dog not a barbie, and I was looking for a more stimulating conversation than “Let’s go to the mall!” “Woof.” I would come up with ways to try to trick her into talking, say a spell had been cast on the dog and now it could talk and she would say a few things but then would always find some sort of potion to turn her back into a dog again. My parents tell me they always tried to play with me, but no matter what their dolls said it was always the wrong thing, I had a very strict plot line that was obvious to me but no one else. My mom says she would leave me to my own devices and instead organize barbie’s shoes. My dad says he would usually say something like “and now barbie and her friends are going to harvest wood at the saw mill!” and I would say No They Are Not!!!! and he would be banished to the couch to watch the Cardinals game.

Eventually we get on the topic of this woman [J] who had a daughter [C] in my grade in elementary school and made it her personal mission to torment me for some reason or another. I don’t know why this adult woman felt it necessary to target a 7-year-old but she did and now I think I take it as a compliment. [J] was from Virginia and wanted to turn Los Angeles into a small town and rule it like she did in high school, which in her mind somehow began with her being elected president of the PTA and ended in my ruin. My mom says it was because [J] wanted [C] to be the “queen bee” but [C] was a pretty subdued child. I, on the other hand, was apparently picking up the phone and going through the school directory and making plans with anyone and everyone—[C] included, we were actually very good friends until her mom got involved—because both of my brothers were crazy and I wanted out. [J] didn’t really consider this, she was too fixated on the fact that I might end up with more friends than [C], and so [J] started inviting every girl in the class to weekly pool parties besides me and that was that. I hardly even registered it at the time, I just assumed [C] didn’t like me anymore or something and so I went back to the school directory and made some other friends, but my mom said there was constant drama amongst the parents about who was in and who was out, they argued about their children’s popularity like they were appraising a house: well [C] is going to be over 5’5, well [D] made friends with 3 kids in the next grade, well [K] doesn’t need braces, etc.

And so once I was out my mom breathed a sigh of relief and decided I would be out forever. I found out that she pulled me from the “advanced” classes [J] and all the other parents like [J] used to curse out the principal to get into even though it wasn’t especially clear what made them so “advanced,” we were all like 8 or 9 at this point. I always assumed I didn’t make the cut because I was dumb which, to be fair, could have still been true, I never did learn my times tables. [J] would find me in the halls, probably after she finished threatening some administrator, and say something about how it’s too bad I’m not in the advanced classes anymore, they are so much more fun and challenging, though not really my speed, better that I don’t have to compete against [C] anyway, I would lose and that would be bad for my confidence. And I would say, yeah, I guess so, and she would walk away smiling because she felt we were in agreement that [C] was the best when actually I just didn’t have the brain capacity to consider anything beyond her first point about no longer being in advanced classes because I was a child. [J] and [C] eventually moved away to san diego, my mom said that [J] discovered a neighborhood there that reminded her of the town she grew up in in Virginia and she wanted to hedge her bets since elementary school was coming to a close and [C] had not yet been crowned queen bee, all [J] had really succeeded in at that point was psychological warfare against a fourth-grader. I don’t think I have seen [C] or [J] in over 10 years, all I know is [C] is engaged and wears wide-brim straw hats and [J] couldn’t be happier. It’s all insignificant now, just crazy to look back at your childhood and remember that even when you felt autonomous, you weren’t, parents constantly intervene, consciously and not, the adults run the show until you become one yourself, and even then.

We walk back to the hotel and my dad demands we briefly visit the “most beautiful subway station in the world,” the toledo station, and it’s all beige marble and honestly just looks like a slightly cleaner Rockefeller center subway stop. And my mom keeps putting her purse into her pants because of the “pickpockets” even though we are basically on a deserted street which I think is hilarious. And we keep walking and I look at my parents and think about how these are the people who changed the course of my life forever, every single moment of every day, even now and even then.

7/12/23

Buonosera from Naples. Woke up Tuesday and ate a bagel with [J] then went home to pack for my trip which should really only take an hour but somehow takes me all day. I find out my flight has been delayed two hours which is great because it means two extra hours of deciding whether or not I should bring an extra t-shirt. The landlord texts our group chat asking if it is "okay" if he raises the rent by $150 a month and I respond saying No It Is Not. I go outside and take photos of my car from all four corners as requested by AAA to approve my claim and I can’t imagine what photos the “quoter” from the repair shop sent if they are still in need of 360 degree images of my vehicle. I finish packing and then go eat pierogis with [J] because we are almost certain I will not be eating those in Italy and then suddenly it is 10:25 PM, who knows where the times goes, and we have to go to JFK because my flight leaves at midnight. This seems like more than enough time to me but I know many disagree with my approach to the airport. What am I going to do for two hours there? Plus a little jog from security is good for the heart.

[J] says he must listen to Double Virgo on band camp in order to not crash the car and I oblige because I think he might be serious. We say our goodbyes and I am through security promptly at 11:05 and on the plane 20 minutes later. The captain greets us all by saying “this plane was delayed. I don’t know why, I don’t think I ever will,” and that’s it. I need something to put me to sleep and while I am trying to figure out if “the weeknd: live at SoFi stadium” or “selena gomez: my mind and me” will be my sweet lullaby, the girl behind me vomits profusely into the aisle. The flight attendants respond to the situation by taping a large newspaper over the vomit spot and then staying as far away from our rows as possible. Eventually the fumes put me to sleep, no help from the weekend or ms. gomez required. I am awakened from my peaceful vomit-induced sleep two hours later by someone a few rows ahead of me screaming for help, saying the man next to her is dying. She yells for a while longer then the flight attendants join her, hesitant at first because it would mean they have to run over the vomit spot, and they ask the man if he is diabetic and he doesn’t respond. They call over the loudspeaker for a doctor but there isn’t one on board. They talk to the man and try to keep him awake and then I don’t understand what happened but the next thing I know the man is back in his seat absolutely chilling. No further questions were asked, I think the flight attendants wanted to go back to hiding out from the vomit.

I land in Rome and begin my journey to Naples which involves two trains, one to city center and one hour-long express train to sweet Napoli. I try to figure out which train is mine and what occurs to me very quickly is that I do not speak italian. This happens to me every time I go to a non-English speaking country, somewhere in my mind I have it filed away that I speak all languages, but I really only speak english and mediocre french. I ask the woman directing people to their trains which one I should take by pointing to my ticket and saying “il treno, dove? spiacente?” and she tells me to wait. I stand around for a minute or two but then watch her tell some other random people with my same exact ticket to get on the train next to us and I realize she wasn’t telling me to wait she was telling me to fuck off and now I’m really sure I don’t speak italian.

I get on the train and pray it’s the right one and then listen to two australian couples go from perfect italian to thick australian accents and it’s genuinely disturbing, like I’m in an adult acting class. I get to the station in Rome and see that my train to Naples is about to leave and so I make a run for it and get on at the last second. It’s 90 degrees outside and the train is packed and doesn’t seem to have much in the way of air conditioning so I resolve to find my inner peace and sweat it out. My mom keeps texting me saying I should “hide my bag under my shirt” and I don’t know if she means my suitcase or what but either way I just say okay, it’s hidden. After 40 minutes I tell my parents I should be in Naples soon but then I look at the map and realize we have hardly left Rome. This should have been a huge red flag but I just assumed that the train would really pick up the pace for the final 20 minutes because I am an idiot. 5 minutes later the train makes a stop that is not Naples, it’s somewhere called “Latina” and I realize what I have done. Instead of getting on the high-speed express train, I got on the regional rail local train and traded my one hour ride for the three hour ride of my life. I tell my parents I’ll see them in two hours and enjoy la dolce vita. I get to sit next to a number of local characters including a middle aged woman in a bikini doing basic math on a legal pad and an extremely tall thin man wearing jeans so tight he could hardly sit down and a group of 15 deaf italians who despite their lack of hearing insisted on playing different top 40 songs from each their iPhones at all times.

I love the train, I don’t even care that it’s 3 hours instead of 1, I have so much time to watch and learn and think. I think about so many things I can’t even write them down. I think about so many things I can’t even think about them.

I get to the station and my parents are waiting and we take a taxi to the airbnb where I must take my final zoom meeting before I am officially OOO. My mom pours us limoncello she got in Capri and I want to drink it on my zoom call but I also don’t want to be fired right before my paid vacation and so I abstain out of respect. We walk down toledo to eat dinner and I eat so many white anchovies I think my body goes into shock. My parents tell me about their visit to Bari, their visit to cassano delle murge where my great-grandparents are from, retrieving the birth certificates from the town hall so we can move forward with getting citizenship. They found out my great-grandmother was an orphan which no one ever mentioned before. Apparently my great aunt told my mom she “might find something interesting” if she went looking for the birth certificate so I guess she knew but wanted it to be a surprise? I don’t know, italians are weird and soon I will legally be one of them. We walk home and the moon hits our eyes like a big pizza pie that’s amore!

7/10/23

Went to the repair shop in stamford to get a quote to send to my insurance for the damages from when that uber driver hit me a while ago. That was not the best day of my life. I parked my car and wandered around the lot for a while trying to find someone to talk to until I ran into a mechanic and he asked me what I was doing in the garage and I said looking for the office and then he walked me to the office which was coincidentally right next to my parking spot. Who would have thought. They send the "quoter" out and it's a man wearing a decorative hoodie with a very large android phone and then he says it is great to meet me and takes hundreds of photos of my car from different angles, he really makes a point of this, keeps taking a step back and looking at the picture on his phone and making this really satisfied face like he has finally got the shot this time. He tells me he will be in touch and it's not clear if he will be sending the repair quote or my car's new modeling portfolio but either way I know I will be taken advantage of so I don't really care.

I drive home and try to finish all my work so I can spend tomorrow packing and then [R] and I leave to go get avocado rice balls and then take the train to meet [L] on wall street. [L] arrives and we take the ferry to governor's island to go to this italian spa for [L]’s birthday that [R] heard about through her boss. They have locations all over Italy and then one on governor's island because that is the natural progression of things. First italy, then governor's island, then the world. When we go to check in at a desk some mid-20s guy is trying to sweet talk his way out of a non-refundable massage he booked for himself and the girl he is with. He starts by saying he has never been to a spa before and didn't know and when that doesn't work he says it's because the girl he is with didn't feel comfortable having a female masseuse, too gay. The front desk lady checking [R] and [L] and I in snaps at us for being distracted before we can find out if that is means for a refund. She goes on to tell us that the spa is “alice in wonderland themed” and gives us no other instructions besides “get lost” and I wonder if this is all just an excuse for poor signage.

We go on to enjoy the inexplicably named “so close yet so far” sauna which was just a normal sauna, nothing close or far about it, then walk through a series of rooms with hanging chairs and bean bags being enjoyed by what I must assume are some of the least attractive couples new york city has to offer. We briefly engage with the “infared sauna” until [R] declares it makes her feel like a 7/11 hot dog and leaves. We try to find the pool but then get lost, as instructed, and end up in some sort of wet catacomb they call the aqua-spa. There was one room with powerful jets shooting from the walls, another room with big stone slabs you laid on and had water rain down on you, but the main attraction was the “scottish room,” a sauna covered floor to ceiling in plaid filled with thick scented steam that could probably kill a toddler. Once you survived the shock to your sinuses it was pretty awesome, and there were a bunch of tiny hoses so you could spray yourself with cold water if you started to pass out. We finally make it out to the pool as the sun sets and we drink very expensive aperol spritzes and eat a tray of olives and cheeses on the ground because there are no tables.

One of the pools has classical music playing underwater and the spa is about to close and so [R] wonders if they might give her to aux, just for a little while, but they start herding us out before we get the chance. We revisit the “so close yet so far” spa where a woman seems to have fallen asleep. After a few minutes the woman wakes up and somehow shakes the whole sauna, she basically rolls onto the floor and then stumbles out of the room, and we sit there for one minute longer to give her her privacy.

The water pressure in the showers is terrible and we joke that they shut off all the pipes on the island with the last ferry. I’m making the spa sound bad but objectively it was very nice, just funny. There is no way to have a luxury spa on governor’s island without it being at least a little bit funny. All the islands around new york have this sort of “it’s a small world” disneyland vibe to them. This all reminds me of the time I told [J]’s friend’s girlfriend who is a pretty successful artist that is was “cool” she grew up on Roosevelt island, mostly because she wasn’t giving me much to work with and I was scraping the bottom of the barrel to avoid sitting in silence, and she just sneered at me and maybe I didn’t realize how that sort of thing could come off as reductive…But whatever it’s a small world after all.

We take the ferry back with the entire staff of the spa and then realize we are starving and uber from wall street to chinatown and while we are in the car [R] recounts how this girl in her class in elementary school used to annoy her and follow her around and how [R] found all these journal entries where she said the girl was dumb and was making up that she was adopted for attention because she had a sister who looked just like her, but she recently learned that the girl and her sister were actually adopted together because that is a thing that happens and so now she has to eat her words 15 years later. We get out of the car and the uber driver tells [R] she was “mean then, but nice now!” and drives off laughing. We eat food and go home and then I meet [J] at his brothers house and he chastises me for not being a dog person, then for not liking movies enough, these seem to be the only measures he has for a person’s character these days. I tell him it is who I am, and it’s not like I haven’t tried to feel otherwise. Last summer I was hell bent on becoming more of an “everywoman,” for my own sake, I wanted to figure out what it was everyone loved and attempt to love or at least tolerate it myself so I would have more things to talk about that fell somewhere between the weather and my deep dark secrets. Ultimately I identified movies, dogs, and beer as the things that were almost universally beloved that I felt next to no affection for and thus began my immersion experiment. I watched “Casablanca” at my desk one afternoon and that was okay. The movie was good, but it didn’t encourage any more exploration on that front because I figured now at least I could talk to someone about having seen “Casablanca.” Who knows how far that could take me conversationally? I chalked that one up as a win and moved onto dogs. I really wanted to sort out my problems here because it had gotten to the point where someone would show me a photo of their dog and I would either nod silently or say something fucked up like “handsome” or “suave.” After countless hours spent with dogs belonging to or associated with [J], I learned that you can speak gibberish to them for a few minutes and people will largely accept this as fondness and move on from the issue. Then came the beer, oh the beer. I started by drinking beer that was identical to sparkling water and learned that if you are thirsty enough you can drink anything and it will taste good. Any time I wanted to move onto a darker flavor…a lager…god forbid an IPA…I would simply forgo water for a couple of hours and then quench my thirst with the finest budweiser or modelo the bucket in the back room of the art opening had to offer. I eventually felt so comfortable in my ability to tolerate beer when necessary that I decided to give it up altogether and now I just drink whatever is least likely to give me a hangover. And if that is not a practice we can universally rally behind, I don’t think think being an everywoman is for me.

I fall asleep on the couch because being relatable is exhausting and so tomorrow I vow to be something else.

7/9/23

I finally got to watch the real housewives of new york and I think the war is over. [L]'s birthday was on Friday and [R] and I had been planning to surprise her with some of her friends at our house before going out for the evening and we mostly pulled it off. [L]'s friends [K] and [E] arrived early and didn't seem interested in speaking to anyone and asked if we had drinks and I said yes what would they like and they didn't respond and so I proceeded to give them a tour of the refrigerator and listed every liquid we had in stock, alcoholic or not, hoping something might inspire them to speak up. This went on for much longer than I expected, I thought maybe they would stop me out of pity once I got to the stolen wine cooler or the flat bottle of tonic that had been deflating since February, but clearly they were looking for something to shock their systems and so finally I offered them the choice between a bottle of artisanal hard cider or champagne from New Years 2022, both remnants of my ex-boyfriend that I have been avoiding for quite some time now because I sincerely believe them to be cursed and I am not interested in whatever sort of hex or hangover they would plague me with. [K] and [E] are finally intrigued, either by the drinks or my quaint display of OCD, and select the bottle of hard cider and I say goodbye and good riddance to all of the above.

Earlier in the night [N] said he was desperate for a twisted tea and asked if anyone else wanted anything and [E2] said he would love a twisted tea and then [C] and [C2] asked what that was and [N] explained and they said okay we will try one too and I told them they will hate it and [N2] told me not to be such a hater and so I said fine see for yourselves and then [N] and [E2] left to go retrieve the goods from God Bless USA deli. When [N] was on his way out he was devastated to discover [C] and [C2] had left their twisted teas untouched and gone home.

The rest of the night was fun, I talked with [E2]'s friend [N2] who I had met before a while ago when I was in a bad mood so I apologized for that and luckily he did not remember or was nice enough to pretend he didn't. We talk about this girl from Penn who he knows somehow because of djing or twitter or something? She was a senior when I was a freshman and went on to become a pretty successful freelance photographer and so I know her as a legend and he knows her as some girl who lives off the Jefferson L stop.

The next day I talk on the phone with [B] about a party she threw where two close friends of hers, [G] and [H] showed up and proceeded to ridicule the other guests out of nowhere. [B] only found out because her other friend [L2] came up to her later and asked if he had offended [G] somehow, told her about how [G] rolled her eyes when he said he was from Elmhurst, kept making comments about how he didn't even know [B] that well. [B] told me about how [G] has a history of doing this sort of thing but it surprises her every time because why would you come to a party to full of your friend's friends and let it be known you believe them to be scum of the earth? If you had only just met them that night? I tell [B] that some people don't have the stomach for people unlike themselves, they've made some abstract decision about who they are and any time they are met with someone who might make them falter in that choice, they ridicule to avoid having to admit they might have made the wrong call, or even just made the call too soon. It annoys me because what business does anyone have thinking they are fully formed? Just admit you're forever changing and it all gets so much easier...

[J] and I drive to Connecticut with his brother's dog in the backseat and she keeps licking my elbow and not in a normal dog lick way but by sticking her tongue all the way out and tapping the tip of it lightly against the back of my arm every 30 seconds or so. [J] and I have talked at length about what might be wrong with her, the leading theory is that she is so smart she has been driven to madness, some sort of dog schizophrenia, either that or she's possessed. I guess this whole licking thing is part of how she faces her demons and I should really be more sympathetic to whatever mental or paranormal suffering she is experiencing, but I do wish it was more socially acceptable to point out when one's pet might benefit from an exorcism. I would want to know!

[J] and I go to the beach and I read some of the book written by his boss's friend who is an older sort of high profile New York society lady and after about 50 pages it becomes clear to me that this book is actually just soft porn. The author is close to 80 years old now, but it seems she was once quite interested in having sex with cops and the dismemberment of young women, and if I ever meet her I would be curious to know if those interests have persisted over the years. [J] and I go home and shower and then labor over what outfits to wear down to the kitchen even though no one else will be there to see them. We eat fish and decide to move on once and for all and then we watch the first episode of the real housewives of new york as a handshake of sorts because like I said the war is over, the war is over. Jeffrey Deitch gallery likes my instagram photo and at first I think it's [E] who said she runs the account but then I get a weird message from the Jeffrey Deitch instagram and realize it's actually [L2], the girl with the crush on [N] from my 6/29 post. The plot thickens...I respond neutrally and then 10 seconds later get a message saying "you should ask [N] about me" which is funny on so many levels, especially because when the message comes in it just says jeffreydeitchgallery: "you should ask [N] about me" with the big eye emoji. I think [N] should be flattered that such an influential gallery wants his opinion of them. [J] and I pass out watching Mon Oncle because between the real housewives and jeffrey deitch and sexy cops and a dog in the grip of the devil, we've endured more than enough drama for a saturday night in stamford connecticut.

The next day it rains and when the sun briefly shines I say I want to go for a walk and so [J] and I go to some trail by some office buildings and I end up storming away because of some moral question brought about by my bottle smashing last week which was obviously in poor taste but can I please be 25 and drunk and destructive for one night without having to endure a character trial? And this was not the premise of the argument but it is where we ended up because even if the war is over you still remember the battles fought and won or lost or saved for later. And so we went our separate ways and I wandered in a parking garage thinking about morality, what it is and what it was, and if I even care. And what I really take issue with in this whole ordeal is the idea of a moral code, broadly. Invoking morality in this day and age has almost nothing to do with inherent rights and wrongs and everything to do with oppression. The moral code was literally invented as a device to guide, then control, when society was too small and too new to govern itself, we literally needed a list of things not to do because we didn't have a large enough body of evidence to explain why they are wrong, hurtful, destructive, etc. They made it about inherent rights and wrongs so that it would be persuasive, not because of some innate truth. And now when people talk about morals culturally, what they are usually talking about is the right to oppress people, beat women, etc. And when people talk about morals interpersonally, what they are actually referring to are their independent values, built and fortified by their personal and parochial experiences, fundamentally subjective, they misuse the word to try to give the appearance of authority to their beliefs to justify some sort of self-serving behavior and reinforce their own goodness. Later I report my findings to [J], tell him that the issue of my bottle smashing is far more nuanced than he thinks, that his judgment of my behavior is more subjective than he is willing to admit, and that in many ways my right to smash bottles can be justified, not because it is inherently good, but because it is not inherently evil, and [J] tells me I am sick in the head and that I should become a lawyer. I tell him that if nothing has changed in my life in 5 years I will.

Eventually we resolve to stop being assholes all the time and [J] and I return to the beach and I read more of the soft-porn-cop-dismemberment book and it's nice because you can really skip so many words and miss nothing. We watch some of the tour de france with [J]'s dad and see an American biker get bodied by a Canadian riding for team Israel in the last hundred meters and then the American ends up so far behind he doesn't even make it on the podium. [N] texts and asks if I have heard anything further from Jeffrey Deitch and I say no, but don't get down on yourself, one day you are in and the next you are out, the art world moves so fast. [J] and I eat shrimp and then we watch au revoir les enfants and Vive le Tour and I think about how I would totally want to do the tour de france if it meant I could ransack a cafe no questions asked but I keep this to myself because I do not wish to incite anymore discussions regarding my moral compass. I don't think they do that anymore anyway which is sad because we used to live in a society.

[LW] texts me that he is at the Hollywood bowl watching John Williams in concert and asks when I leave for Italy. I tell him I leave Tuesday and he says cool. I ask what he will be up to in LA when I am gone and he says "doing LA things" then sends me 18 photos of the Hollywood bowl, all the same, as always, one outlook with a hundred points of view.

7/6/23

Felt like I had been hit by a truck and then I almost was. Oh well. I sat at my desk for hours doing so many things. Finished my book and cried thinking about the last time I finished a book by this author and hoping it's not the end.

I posted a photo on my instagram story from twitter that said "I lost my job" and everyone thought it was real and people kept messaging me heartfelt wishes and so I had to post a follow up story explaining that I did not lose my job and that I found that picture on the internet. I guess it should have occurred to me that posting a photo that says "I lost my job" might lead people to believe I had lost my job.

I read [C]'s blog about how he was embarrassed by his post from the day before and was genuinely surprised because I read that post and thought it was pretty amazing. I guess that's why social media uses likes, for external validation or whatever, I guess most of life has some system for validation, and an anonymous blog is devoid of that sort of rush, a lot of this is just throwing words into the abyss. I don't even know if [C] will see this, at the end of the day we are all just talking to ourselves to make sure we still exist.

So many secrets and lies it's hard to keep up. I don't even care anymore I'm too tired. I start watching the Hills because I don't have a Peacock subscription so I still can't watch the real housewives. I want to know what they are all about. I want to know what they have to say. But God does not want that for me, not today at least, God wants me to suffer and so challenge accepted. I learn that Lauren Conrad has an internship at Teen Vogue and is ready to give it everything she has. I learn that Heidi Montag has not reviewed the curriculum of the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising before meeting with the dean and she doesn't even care. I learn that the Teen Vogue style is "all about the mix" and Whitney Port would do well to add an oversized belt and cover her shoulders. I learn that Laguna Beach is a small town with big drama but it doesn't even matter because now they are in the city of angels. Lauren's boyfriend cheated on her and now he wants her back. Heidi got her dream job but wants to quit because they won't let her work the clubs. Whitney just wants someone to bring her flowers. And they are all 19 years old and so I think about when I was 19 years old and what it was that I wanted then and I realize I don't know. The closest thing I have to an answer is that I wanted to work at Madewell, I called the three locations closest to my parents' house once a month starting in March asking if they had any openings for the summer. They always said call back June 1 but you never know how things change. And the other 19 year olds who were doing on-campus recruitment for Goldman Sachs and McKinsey and Bain always looked down on me but I wasn't any less motivated than all of them, we just had different priorities. And I imagine Lauren and Whitney and Heidi look back at the Hills and marvel at how far they've come no matter where it is they've ended up and I don't know if I feel the same way about myself, I'm better but also worse, problems get solved then unsolved and then you have to solve the problems you had at 5 years old at 25 years old and you feel like a loser. And I really think that life is just beating a dead horse. You inherit problems in the womb and they build you and destroy you off and on and off and on and so you beat the dead horse or else it will beat you. And these were my main takeaways from the Hills, I guess. Lucky for me there are 5 more seasons.

7/5/23

My brother is in big trouble in Brazil. I find out through an instagram dm request from a random girl that I assumed was hounding me about my username but instead said something about my brother being involved in a scandal and uses his full name so I google his name + Brazil and there it is. Big Trouble. I message my brother and ask what they are talking about online and he replies simply "they are haters" which isn't exactly comforting but at least he answered. I ask about the company and the allegations and where he is and he explains it all and as usual it sounds sketchy as hell but at least he has a handle on it. It's all by the books he assures me, but I'm not certain which ones.

I go buy some mango and try to forget, decide not to tell my parents who are having the times of their lives right now in the Irish countryside. I get 30 texts a day of goats and cows and weird looking stews in the family group chat and I don't want to interrupt that by saying Your Son Is Wanted In Brazil. It's only half true anyway, you can't trust the media these days, and my grandma would probably accidentally respond terriffic!!!!!!!!!!!!! like she does any time I send a message and that might rub some people the wrong way. Your Son Is Wanted In Brazil. terriffic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I call the dealership about the repairs to the car to try to regain some control in my life and instead end up being transferred from one department to the next then put on hold for a while. Sometimes you must let go, I'm trying but it's hard. No one tells you it will be this easy and feel so hard. No one wants to tell you how weak you are when you look so strong, speak so fluently to the representative from the sales department, from the parts department, from the repair shop down the road. No one will tell you you are free to go but won't. No one talks about getting tired from so much nothing. You can be tapped in and still so far. I read [S]'s blog about leaving and wish I could do the same and the truth is I can but I won't. I'm free to go but I won't. I'm too tired from all this nothing.

[R] and I try to go to the public pool but the line is too long, it's the hottest day of the summer so far. We walk home, buy more mango, eat it straight from the container then go back to our desks in our swimsuits that never got wet. I make plans with [C] then eat dinner too fast with [R] and feel sick. I sit with [C] in the heat and she implores me to give the RHONY a try and I promise I will and then we talk about books and friends and how things change. We both read the Bell Jar late enough in life to know that most women who feel understood by Miss Plath have fundamentally misunderstood Miss Plath. They just think it's sexy to feign insanity, but let me tell you—most people, rightfully so, have a far lower tolerance for insanity than they're willing to admit. Anyone who says they like insane girls actually just likes normal girls who think they are insane because they get a little down sometimes. No one will tell you that no one likes insane girls.

I walk home and it's still warm out but now it feels nice instead of evil. [J] is in the neighborhood and we decide to meet up and he is taking longer than I thought so I do some laps around the block until he texts he has arrived. We sit down at the bar and plan to play cards but don't, there's too much to discuss, and then we get tired and walk home and split an ice cream sandwich that tastes like alcohol. [J] has been laughing about a video of Arnold Schwarzenegger all day and he shows me and it's pretty funny actually. I want to watch the first episode of RHONY and [J] agrees to at least the first 10 minutes but I can't get it to play and so we end up watching Private Parts instead and there's no way we could have known what sort of damage that decision would cause and maybe now I understand why people hate Howard Stern.

I'm not going to change how I write about what I felt then just because of how I feel right now. It's getting late in Brazil and I'm so tired from all this nothing.

7/4/23

Wake up feel weird. [S] is asleep in the windowless living room and it's so dark I bet it feels like being dead and I'm jealous. [R] and I go to get coffee then come back and flicker the lights to try to make a sort of artificial sunrise for [S] and it works and he asks if we were sending a message in morse code. [S] leaves and [R] and I go eat food then come home and sit at my desk and attempt to get my life in order. I've been left with this sinking feeling, the past few days have felt like when the bar closes and the lights turn on and everyone is a little gray, eyes a little more yellow than you expected. And that's a bad feeling outright, even worse in the morning when the sun is shining, birds singing, and it's all still gray and yellow and not what you expected. Too much living I guess. I was supposed to figure out what to do about the repairs to my car. The july newsletter. Seeing if the oral surgeon takes my insurance. Running out of contacts. Need new prescription. Need optometrist on this side of the country. Need to call my grandparents. Need to do the spelling bee. Drink more water. Resolve the issues. But there's no time for any of this because of America's stupid birthday.

I drive with [J] to [M]'s party because last night [M] told me his room is huge and I want to see for myself. He's right, the room is gigantic, and I never knew how badly I wanted a full size dining table in my bedroom until this very moment. I'm acting really weird and my stomach hurts for some reason and [M2] asks if I'm on mushrooms and I wish I was because then at least I could explain my poor behavior. People are hanging out around the table and having a good time and I feel like dying so I close my eyes because if you can't see them they can't see you. Eventually we go to [M2]'s to eat ribs and [J] grills while [M2]'s neighbors shoot off hundreds of fireworks 10 feet away. [M] says he is glad he finally knows what it would be like to grill in Iraq.

[J] and [R] and [L] and [E] and I pile into my tiny car and drive home. When everyone climbs out it looks exactly like one of those scenes where 100 people get out of a clown car. [J] and I try to find a parking spot and it feels like we are in an action movie because we keep narrowly missing exploding fireworks. Once the car is parked we watch for a while and they actually look really beautiful when they aren't an imminent threat to the sanctity of your motor vehicle. [J] and I watch Caddyshack and listen to the world outside and know that it's better right here.

7/3/23

I'm skipping 7/1 and 7/2 because mostly nothing really happened. The storm was wild and the full moon is making me crazy. I'm supposed to go to the beach today but it doesn't happen. I go home and try to write but it doesn't happen. There's nothing to do but watch a movie, [J] says, except I don't want to watch a movie, I never do. This is our fundamental disagreement. I try and fail to make some sort of meaningful use out of my day off which was stupid to begin with because I have a remote job and most of my days feel at least a little bit like days off. I try and fail to come unstuck and then the day is gone and it feels like the jury is hung inside me.

[S] arrives and [J] leaves and we all know it but we sit at the table on the deck and pretend this was what was supposed to happen. The party is soon and [J] returns and the pizza arrives and we move inside when the rain comes. [T] is the first guest, so early there is nothing to drink yet and so the boys leave to get the liquor and [L] and [R] and I light candles to make believe our house smells like anything other than tomato sauce. [R] pours a glass of milk because "it cools her" but leaves it on the countertop too long and it curdles because of the wet heat trapped in the walls and I pour it out before she notices. The boys return with vodka and cranberry juice and more people arrive and go to the living room and [R] and [L] and I huddle by the AC in [R]'s room drinking bastard capecodders.

More friends arrive including [S2] who tells [R] the last time he saw her she was "coming down hard with the chit chat" to which she takes great offense. She tells [S2] he didn't leave her much choice, were they going to just sit there in silence? And it becomes clear these two are not a match made in heaven so they go their separate ways. I keep walking past groups of people and saying "hello fellow Americans" and I don't know why and no one hears me anyway besides [S] so I don't end up having to explain myself which is good. Eventually we arrive at the room tour portion of the evening, which is the only real reason to have a party at your apartment if you're annoying like me. No one wants to see your trinkets or look at your books unless there is a party at your house or the promise of sexual intercourse and I have gotten in trouble for the latter too many times so house party it is. This is always a bit of a pandora's box though because everyone always finds the one thing you wish they wouldn't and so eventually my copy of "Putin's Russia" makes it into circulation but that's the price I'm willing to pay to show off my giant penny from the Lincoln presidential library.

[R] resolves to get very drunk and finds great success. I break out the Ed Hardy Sangria and it tastes like ginger ale in the worst way imaginable. Through some divine force the bottle ends up empty anyway and we play hot potato for like 10 minutes straight in front of the 6 foot wall of mirrors because that's living. [S] breaks out the anti-jokes. [R] won't stop watching the arabic reels. We all leave the house to try to go to the bar down the street that I think is cursed but it's closed and so we go to another one that I think is even more cursed and it's open and we drink moscow mules and talk about remote jobs and other things I forget. I ask if I am selling out if I don't quit my job and everyone says no, health insurance is usually more valuable than your pride and I guess I agree. We leave and things get twisted for no reason besides too much of everything.

I stand on the fire escape and break glass bottles in the street and in the morning when I wake up they are gone.

Re: Put the shoes away when you remember. So many days have gone. Do you think I’m smart? Do I care? Fold the clothes and put them away. The room is getting hotter. You aren’t going to get the sweater back. The tea is cooling. Drive away. The second you become conscious of what you are doing you aren’t doing it anymore. Put the words down put the clothes away. Im thinking about the long dress and the skirts are piling up because there aren’t enough hangers. And how am I going to put it all down. I’m thinking about the truck parked on the street and the man buzzing at the window and I need to drink more water because of my throat. My eyes won’t focus because I need more water and I asked about the party in the backyard tomorrow but they still don’t know. He says I have a very important brain in that head of mine and I still don’t know. Do you get what I mean? You put the thing between your teeth and chew it off before it chews you.

6/30/23

Re: I want to blog so bad. I want to blog so bad but first I have to eat this broccoli. I read [S]'s post and it made me want to blog even more but it will have to wait until tomorrow because of the broccoli. Today we are the champions. So much to say about the last few days. So much to say and it all will be said in due time but today we are the champions and it's a beautiful life, almost as beautiful right now as after 10 craft cocktails.

I am accidentally 3 minutes late to my 8:10 AM zoom call because what kind of zoom call starts at 8:10 AM? I thought it started at 8:15 and so now I have messed up but as it turns out no one cares, they are all too excited for the long weekend. The meeting ends and I begin my hydration regimen in preparation for the river challenge tonight. [R] comes home with a ham and cheese croissant for me which is awesome. A bunch of other things happen in the morning but I am too tired to really register any of it and the next thing I know I am on the subway to downtown brooklyn to check the mail at my office as penance for my tardiness earlier. I open a bunch of checks and sign them and bring them to Chase bank and then jog back to the train because I can't stand being in downtown brooklyn for much longer at this time. Everyone looks at me weird because I am jogging in loafers but jokes on them because I actually do this all the time, I make a point of running in all my shoes just in case one day I really need to. And whenever they realize you don't have time to put on sensible shoes in an emergency I'll be sprinting away in my Havianas flip flops...

I ride the train back with a group of 8-11 year old boys in swim trunks who are clearly hell bent on beating each other to death before they hit puberty. The boys take turns putting each other in chokeholds and then one boy swings on the ceiling hand rail and nearly decapitates a 3-year-old girl so that he can hit his friend in the face with his crotch. The mom of the 3-year-old promptly whisks her away and then the boys all point and laugh at her and yell that she is "on that pussy shit." And maybe they were right—how can we raise our daughters to be strong women if we always retreat in fear? If that woman was a real feminist, she would have thrown her 3-year-old in the ring.

[R] and I drink gatorade and get on the train and talk about sandals and the alaia shoes I want but can't afford and also don't deserve. I manage to get us lost on our way to the restaurant even though I am using google maps. We meet [M] and [J] and [S] and it's the first time [R] is seeing [J] since the whole ordeal and it's a little weird but fine and we eat our weight in instant noodles. [J] brought me a lily from work which was very nice. I put on my sunglasses because it can all be a bit much sometimes and a little sensory deprivation is exactly what the doctor ordered. [S] follows suit and borrows [R]'s Miu Miu sunglasses that were originally purchased out of spite. [S] asks what that means and we tell him he will think less of us and so we will have to discuss it at a later date, maybe after drink 5 or 6. We finish eating and a woman chases [S] and [R] and I out of the restaurant and demands to see the venmo transaction even though someone already checked. [R] says it happens to her all the time and then tells us about once when she was at this sushi restaurant we always used to go to in Philadelphia she only had the exact amount of cash she needed to pay for the food and so she didn't tip and then the host chased her out the door and demanded to know why, asked if the food was bad. She tells us that she didn't feel like explaining the real reason so she just said yes and then the host didn't know what to say so he just let her go. I say that in that scenario is may have been justified for the host to chase her but [R] says chasing is bad for business and she's got a point there.

We walk into the river still wearing our sunglasses and I must say it is the most pleasant experience I have ever had in this bar so far. No hostility, only darkness, sweet darkness, I can't see my own feet. We sit at the corner table with [S] and I in the middle, [R] and [J] flanking us, [M] sits across. We order drink 1 with so much clarity. [M] orders chips and dip with so much foresight. [R] loves the drink with egg white and anise and orders one for herself. [M2] arrives with the prize and orders a Guinness. [J] orders a Guinness too, they're doing the Guinness challenge. [S] refuses to pace himself because he wants to be a champion. I speed up to join him because I Love Destruction. We Love The Office Daiquiri. We Hate The River Punch. I text my friend [C] from the bathroom Happy Birthday Love You So Much. She's in Stockholm. I wish I was in Stockholm but I Love It Here So Much. [N] arrives. I don't know what I say to him. I try to order the next drink, they tell me I've ordered it before, I say Fuck You I'm A Champion but it turns out I'm wrong. I Hate This Ranch Water But I Want To Drink More Of It. Nobody told me being this drunk would feel this good. He Stole My Drink, I insist to [J], He Stole My Drink And It's There In His Hand. I abandon this belief for my own good. [S] and I talk about grad school. We would love to go except Providence is a shit town. But maybe if we all went together, everyone in this bar, if we all packed up and went to Providence then it wouldn't be so bad. A Tree Falls In The River—what the fuck does that mean? Drink 7 and I still don't understand. [R] is talking to the bald man who went to NYU many, many years ago. I keep asking him what school he went to and he keeps saying NYU and I think to myself, that's not so far from here, does he live in the dorms? But then I look up and remember he is 40 years old. It's okay to be 40 years old and live in the dorms, I think to myself. And I want to tell him this but I don't know if he'll agree. The Carrot Top Is Criminal. Who let them serve this? I should drink another. Then the waitress from Canada comes with the final round and the second they hit the table they are gone and We Are Champions. And champions deserve a slide whistle. That's what [M2] says, at least. And champions get to play the slide whistle in the corner of the bar. This is amazing news. And my sock feels wet because the final drinks appear to have been distributed equally across our stomachs and the table. And I forget the rest, I forget the rest until we're outside and [S] is vomiting and I am grinning because I Am A Champion. And we get in a car and go home and I think I go to sleep, I don't know, it feels like I've been asleep for hours now, and it's midnight but the night was over before it started and that's a beautiful thing. I'll never hear the words that I said and that's a beautiful thing, if not one of life's greatest horrors. And you never get back time spent even if you don't remember spending it and that's a horrible thing, don't think about it. And tomorrow I'll wake up and remember that I've forgotten, what a horrible thing, I'll want to forget it and I'll be in luck.

6/29/23

Good morning from hell. I have an 8 AM team "check-in" that I can guarantee will have nothing to do with me. These are typically very quick which might seem good but actually it just means I forfeit 2 hours of sleep to stare at the camera on mute for 10 minutes. I'm not exactly in my right mind at this time and so I semi-consciously decide to join the meeting camera-off and say I can't get the audio to connect and lay the phone next to my head and close my eyes and pray they don't ask me to come off mute and contribute something for once. It's my lucky day and so I thank God and also Jesus and then sleep until 9:25 when I am tasked with recording the number of participants in 3 different zoom rooms on a google spread sheet—74, 85, and 91, respectively. This woman's work...

[J] has gone to babysit my car during street cleaning but learns that today is a holiday so the cars can stay put. This is good news, but I think the NYC parking authority should unpack why they feel it's okay for the streets to be dirty on Eid al-Adha...

Apparently a baby lives in my building now. No one moved in or out and I never saw anyone pregnant but now there is a baby stroller in the entryway. I think the baby lives in the secret basement apartment my landlord refuses to acknowledge even though there is a welcome mat and multiple pairs of shoes outside its door. A middle aged Polish man used to live there which I only found out because one day I was going in the front door and this man was sort of loitering behind me and I went inside and then waited in the stairwell for a minute and then the guy unlocked the door himself and went down to the basement. I realized I had seen this man maybe 10 times before at the laundromat but who knows if I will ever see him again because he has been ousted by a baby.

I'm really tired and I know this for a fact because I keep scrolling through my Instagram feed and liking pictures of food and thinking wow that looks good who made that and every time without fail it is a post from the NYTimes food instagram. I like probably 10 posts before I free myself from this cycle because what can I say I've just got a lot of love to give...I drag myself to RiteAid where I come to the punishing realization that they have run out of gatorade zero, all flavors, and now I will be forced to choose between normal gatorade and some impotent miniature bottle of harmless harvest coconut water that still costs like $8. I wander the aisles for a while until I find a secret stash of vita coco in the beer section for only $4. I buy it and learn that Reese Witherspoon at age 47 is happier on her own for free 99.

I meet [J] at some gallery in chelsea where we see Tony Hawk and then we go to another gallery where we see him again. We run into some other people at the second gallery and it occurs to me that I actually have no interest in speaking to another human being at this moment in time and so after 5 minutes of trying to muster up the strength to participate in friendly conversation I realize it's a losing battle and tell [J] to meet me when he is done and I leave to go to the deli around the corner. I drink a Coors light at the counter which is definitely not allowed but no one says anything and I really think I've discovered the best bar in all of chelsea, maybe all of manhattan. It's the perfect place to be alone with your thoughts and a beer that tastes like sparkling water and a 100 calorie pack of cheeze-its. [J] joins me and brings [J2] and we take a taxi downtown to go to another opening. [J2] launches into an extended discussion of [J]'s career and so I let boys be boys and stare out the window at the gnats and smoke that have descended upon the city.

We arrive and see lots of people and I'm still not totally sold on being alive because I'm so tired and I'm missing my beautiful deli bar and so I announce that I require a drink and leave the opening with [J] and [E] and [J2] and buy a truly surge that is truly disgusting, but it makes me believe in a future where I will want to be alive, maybe even want to be alive and be with others, and so I keep on sipping. On the walk back I talk to [E] about this girl [L] who works at the LA location of the gallery [E] works for. Apparently [L] had seen an instagram story from a few weekends back when we all went to mansions where [N] was in the background of a photo of [E], so [L] sent her some sort of aggro message but didn't really explain anything. I say that I have never met [L] before but heard she has some intense thing for [N] and has been watching my instagram story for like 2 years now even though she doesn't follow me. I still don't really know why, I guess to gather more intel on [N]. [E] says it was really weird because she is basically [L]'s boss and who cares that they were in a photo together? I agree and we both marvel at the small, small world.

[S] meets us with his friend [J3] and then they leave and go to another party and everyone at the opening heads to the river. I talk to [T] and his sister [A] who is in town for a little while before she moves to Chicago and we end up talking for a long time because she is my age and went to the high school I was supposed to go to and so we both had a lot of important name-dropping to do. I tell her I refused to because everyone seemed scary and rich and bitchy and the uniform called for penny loafers which I detested at that time and she confirmed all my suspicions and said she hated the penny loafers back then too. We find out that we apparently did the same weird after school musical theater thing when we were in 4th and 5th grade. [T] joins in and we end up talking about growing up in a family with 3 kids and about their dad who disappeared for like a week on a wilderness expedition and almost died. Then we are approached by this downtown chick [PH] and this artist girl [L2] who knows my friend from college, [B], because they grew up in the same town in new jersey. [L2] annoys me because I hate when girls have those stupid short nicknames like "El" or "Viv" or "Char" because bitch that is not a nickname that is a syllable. I know you can't dislike someone because of their name but sometimes people have so little else going on for them that the name is all you really have to go off of. But I digress...[PH] starts talking to [T] and [L2] begrudgingly asks me about [B] and I say I haven't seen him in months because he has a girlfriend now and has gone off the map. We have a really awkward boring conversation for like 2 minutes and then [PH] glares at her and [L2] straight up runs away. Eventually [PH] leaves, probably to go gather some torches and pitchforks to start an angry mob, more likely to just go do some lines in the bathroom, and I resume my nice conversation with [T] and [A]. It's all so bizarre to me. Every time I interact with one of these downtown with a capital D people I walk away profoundly confused. I think one of the things I am most curious about in this world is what these people are trying to achieve. They say they want to be artists or writers or curators or whatever, but the only claim I have evidence to support at present is that they want to be drunk coked-up bitches. All the business about art and writing and culture is besides the point, just to delude themselves into thinking there's some greater purpose. And if success from these venues promised anything other than permission to be the worst version of yourself at all times with few repercussions, I think we would have a lot more real estate agents and HR associates in dimes square.

Later inside [S] tells me that [PH] recorded a cover of a lady gaga song in earnest which surprises me because it seems so directly opposed to whatever ambiguous goal she's gunning for. Then it dawns on me that the answer to all my questions about these people is actually much more simple than they want license to behave poorly. What they want is to be somebody, anybody. By any means necessary.

[M] arrives with [J3] and we talk for a little while about his cursed apartment and then [J] and [J2] and [S] and I leave to continue the party in Brooklyn even though I have to wake up at 8 AM again tomorrow. We go to 7/11 and get pretzels and gatorade zero and [J3] buys a giant beer and then tells me and [S] we are disturbed alcoholics for wanting to do the river challenge. I try to explain that the river challenge is not a want, it's a need, but he'll never understand...We stop at [J]'s apartment and then uber to mine and I bring the boys out to the deck and tell them to enjoy themselves, you're only young once, and then I retire to my room to rest, finally rest.

6/28/23

Hour long zoom meeting from the "cafe" except this time I turn my computer a different direction and say I am in my roommate's room. They ask why and I say the electrician is in there and they have no further questions which is too bad because I had a whole story prepared about a faulty outlet and the landlord ignoring my texts until finally today out of nowhere he tells me the electrician is on his way and just before the meeting began he rang the doorbell and so that's why I'm not at my desk. This is the sort of information you miss out on when you don't have a curious mind! But there's no time for my lies because what we need to discuss is the scheduled posts on Linkedin and the hyperlinks, so many hyperlinks. The meeting ends and [J] gives me many awesome things he found at Ross in Miami and I am eternally grateful. If that sounded sarcastic it's not, they really have a good thing going for them down there...

I walk home and think about the openings going on the next few days and how weird it is that I go to so many. For me it's really just something to do, I'm mostly in it for the free drinks or maybe seeing someone I know, but this is really a lot of people's livelihoods and so sometimes I feel bad for being so casual about it. But then some random dude will give me the meanest look I have ever seen for simply existing and then I stop feeling so guilty. I walk a few more blocks and start thinking about suicide which seems to be the natural progression of things. I decide that I will never kill myself, no matter how bad it all gets, because I know deep down that for me suicide would just be about attention because I am a middle child through and through. And though killing one's self is certainly an effective way to garner some attention, it doesn't have the necessary returns. And then I wonder why I feel the need to privately take a stance on suicide on this particular morning, and then I remember that I listened to all those podcasts yesterday. Huge mistake.

[R] and I put our laundry in and sit at the coffee shop and talk about work drama and dentists and I text [A] and she tells me she has been up all night because she drank a paan-infused cocktail at a fancy indian restaurant in the west village. She says she drank a black tea recently and stayed up all night too. I wish stimulants had that effect on me but that's my own fault. [R] and I leave the coffee shop and go home to eat and [R] force feeds herself a banana because she is trying to learn to tolerate them. She says they "are a convenience" that would "support her lifestyle," especially once she becomes the CEO of the big Big Pharma company.

I meet [J] at Cafe Himalaya and then we go to the Karma opening for the artist I have never heard of but I am supposed to know. Whoops. Leonardo DiCaprio is there and I am almost 26 and so I really want to at least talk to him before I age out but no dice. We see [D] and he tells us about how the artist just bought some sort of batman-style castle house in LA with more gates than bedrooms. There's an article on it, he says, and then I think about how there are probably even more gates than they are willing to own up to, because why would you allow an article detailing all the security measures taken to protect your home to be published? That is essentially handing a to-do list to anyone interested in robbing you. I would love to ask the artist about this but I still don't know his name. [J] sees his old friend [B] who then disappears to the afterparty. I overhear someone saying it is at Indochine and we decide to take a gamble. [D] comes with us and then tries to beat a pigeon with his umbrella. He says he is anxious because he took a huge edible, but it's unclear how that relates to the pigeon-beating. I guess it calms him.

The afterparty really is at Indochine and the lady at the door asks if we are on the list and [J] says yes, his name is [DK] and he has a plus one and she says oh good and lets us inside. [D] leaves, maybe to go traumatize some other birds, and [J] and I settle into our new lives. We talk to [A2] who, the first time I met her, went to great lengths to tell me I looked like her ugly friend from home. Tonight she tells me I look like Linda Cardellini which I am not sure is true but is certainly a step up from the hometown girl. I don't know why she always wants to tell me who I look like, probably some sort of psychological warfare, more likely for no reason at all, but at least we're on a good trajectory here. Maybe next time she'll tell me I'm beautiful like Christian Bale.

[J] and I sit on a bench and he drinks champagne while I drink the strongest whiskey soda of my life. I'm not in the mood to be hungover so I keep chugging glasses of water with every sip which means eventually I have to pee and so does [J]. We go to our respective bathrooms and mine is tiny with two stalls and whoever was in there with me must have very powerful lungs because the strength and volume of their snorting was mind-blowing. I find [J] and he tells me he was joined at the urinal by the infamous [NF] who stared at him for a while then let out a huge fart. We consider bringing the scoop to [A2] to write about but we know she's not brave enough.

I talk to [B] for a while about his childhood in Virginia Beach, his major art career starting at age 16, his family full of engineers, how he can't live in the same city as his sister but soon he'll have to. He is shocked to learn I am Irish which I don't understand because in my head all white people are at least a little Irish whether they like it or not. Eventually he leaves to "do business" which is actually just smoke a cigarette outside. From my general understanding of artists, though, it seems that more often than not "doing business" almost always means just smoking a cigarette outside.

The party is winding down so [J] and I go to [J2]'s book launch at kgb which is basically over. [J2] asks if [R] is coming tonight and I say I am sorry to disappoint him. [J2] loves [R] and always asks about her which I think is nice and so I promise him I will make sure they meet again soon. A man whose name I can't remember sits down at the table and tells us he is down and out about his divorce and how he hates dating and asks why all relationships are just 2 year cycles of falling in love then backtracking to indifference or hatred. I tell him, honestly, I do not know, because I am only 25 and this has more or less been my experience with relationships so far. I say that obviously I don't wish for that fate, I just have no evidence at this time to disprove it. This makes him more depressed which is fair and then he gets up and sits down at the piano and plays Joni Mitchell. I ask [J2] how recent his divorce was and he says 2014.

[J] and I go home and end up talking about [S]'s blog, how immediately different it became when he left the city. It makes think back to my conversation with [S] and [M] last week about how the best days to write about are the ones where nothing happens. It's sort of an obvious conceit but it really is true, more space means more clarity, when you have a lot going on there are so many variables to sort through to get the facts straight, then so much time is spent getting the facts straight that you never get the chance to figure out how you feel about it. And most days here feel like all facts and no feelings and I don't really know what the point is. And I go to all these openings and talk to all these people just to have something to do and then write about how I don't care and even if it's just for fun it feels like a bit of a waste. And it's not about the city or "the scene" or whatever, I just sometimes forget what I want and that, in many ways, it's antithetical to all this running around.

The cockroach has been eliminated. My little brother sent me 25 more photos from his concert last night, all still basically the same. My grandma keeps telling me to wear my hair back "while my eyes still sparkle" and I wasn't aware that they sparkled in the first place but maybe now I'll think of her every time I wear it up instead of hanging in front of my face. It’s all a little bleak so it’s all very beautiful and I'm going to eat the last babybel in the refrigerator and no one can stop me.

6/27/23

Today is the day my life begins. At least that's what my horoscope says. I have hardly slept the last three nights and so I go do some laps around the track to resolve this because if my life has begun today, I need it to continue beyond tomorrow, to see things through. Because the issue with beginnings is that you never fully understand that something has begun until it ends, and even then. And so today is the day my life begins, whatever that means. Check back with me 20 years from now and maybe I'll have an answer. I listen to the podcast that shall not be named which I very rarely do these days, so let this be a testament to the sort of base-level thinking that has resulted from my sleepless nights. One of the hosts starts in about the Idol, which I hardly even want to mention on here because I am a child of god, and says something about how the Weeknd isn't famous, how he's an "anonymous hit-maker." What I am compelled to impress upon this man is that the Weeknd is not an anonymous hit-maker, he's just from Canada. But this is the folly of our generation. Go ahead and dissent, the men on the podcast are impenetrable. I tell [R], who's from Toronto, about this and she says that if she heard someone call the Weeknd an anonymous hit-maker when she was in middle school she would have sent them hate mail threatening to steal their identity to "show them what anonymous really feels like." But she is not in middle school and so the men on the podcast are safe—for now.

I sit in my car alone today during street-cleaning and the parking ticket man comes by and starts taking down my license plate number because he clearly does not abide by the unspoken rules of the road. And I think we would all be better off if the streets were cleaned not on a bi-weekly basis, but according to a woman's intuition. Unfortunately the officer does not agree with me and so I am forced to speed off before he can copy down the final digits.

I go inside and finish all the work I have been avoiding and then sing karaoke at my desk until [R] comes home and I have to stop. I don't get to do desk karaoke as much anymore because [R] and [L] stopped going into their offices every day and we no longer live in an active construction site. The workmen would make the loudest sounds known to man and I would drown them out with my rendition of the titanic theme song or I Dreamed a Dream from Les Mis, among others. I once mentioned that I do this in a team meeting at work and everyone looked horrified except the CEO and so I guess maybe we are both Japanese businessmen at heart.

My little brother texts me 15 photos that are basically identical from a concert he is at in LA and I ask where it is and he sends me a Google Maps link.

[R] and I walk to meet [L] for dinner and talk about the french population of Williamsburg and why they must behave how they do. We are really at a loss. [L] tells us about an Ivy League alumni singles mixer she is trying to convince her friend to go to next month and [R] and I vow to attend as a show of support, but also because it's $20 for an open bar at a steakhouse in midtown. [L] and I walk home and then I go do some more work. 10 minutes I hear a scream and find [L] squaring up with a giant roach on the wall. She asks me to kill it so I put on [R]'s marni x uniqlo raincoat and pull the hood up for for protection and ask [L] for a shoe. She hands me a furry winter boot and grabs some sort of all-natural bug killer spray to stun it but all it does it make it angry and before I can hit it with the furry boot we learn it has wings. It flies off somewhere and I spend the next 10 minutes hitting things around the apartment with a broom to try to coerce it out to kill it. It is nowhere to be found and I'm tired of looking like an idiot so I give up and go to my room and stuff a towel under my door just in case.

At midnight I drive to go rescue [J] from the Westchester airport and listen to the forbidden podcast again and on this episode they leave Weeknd out of it which is lucky, for his sake and theirs.

6/26/23

Wake up read book join zoom meeting. I ask [R] to babysit my car until I am released from my desk. Someone in the meeting reminds everyone of the woman last summer who always took zoom calls with the dog filter on and refused to turn it off despite urging from her peers and superiors alike. That's the sort of conviction that takes you places, I think to myself, though I'm not sure exactly where she was intending to go. 30 minutes later I find [R] reading the Economist and watching this group of 20-somethings haul stuff from a construction site into a moving truck. I join her in the car, the climate of which could only be compared to that of a rain forest since [R] has decided to forgo switching on the ignition. I ask her why and she says she forgot. After a minute I forget too, and re-focus my energy on what's actually important: watching these 20-somethings throw junk into this truck. The windows fog a bit and [R] and I are feeling good and she tells me that at first she thought they all lived there and were moving out, but now she's not so sure. I guess that they might be in a band but then [R] points out that the thing I thought was an amp is actually some sort of custom stove. We decide they are all PA's because of their vaguely utilitarian outfits and because one of them just returned with lunch, which we take as infallible evidence and so case closed. We think about asking them what show they are on but neither of us wants to open the door and release the steam and ruin the island vibe we've cultivated in this Mini Cooper and so instead we choose to lean into the unknown.

The PA's inspire [R] to go get a burrito and I go home to take another zoom meeting. I start trying to clear my inbox but Rite Aid wants my feedback and American Express wants to tell me where my credit stands and does no one care what I want? A yogurt parfait, I decide, so [R] and I drive to trader joes. We buy some stuff and reminisce about our days in college when we had no idea how to grocery shop and would take an uber with [L] to the only trader joes in Philadelphia and buy a hundred dollars worth of food each in the name of frugality. We thought meal planning meant you bought one of everything so that you could, in theory, make any sort of meal you'd like. And we always wondered why people said eating at home saved you so much money, because it seemed to us that grocery shopping was synonymous with going into debt. Those were the days...though [R] and I somehow manage to go home with 4 kinds of cheese, so maybe those days are these. Ignorance is bliss...[R] spent the weekend in Chattanooga and wants to play me the new EDM sea shanties she heard there and I would love to understand better what goes on in that town.

I was going to pick up [J] from the airport but his flight has been cancelled. The rain is supposed to start in an hour and keep going for a week so [R] and I try to seize these final moments of freedom and go for a walk that somehow turns into a drink and then a bike ride to sing karaoke at this weird place we went once in December last year. We both remember the room looking totally different, much sketchier, but tonight it looks very respectable and the booths that I thought were black are actually light blue. There are maybe 7 other people and they all know each other and want nothing to do with us. [R] asks how we can request a song and the man running the show slams a bucket that says "Tips" on it in front of her and so she returns and asks if I have cash then asks the bartender if she could break it into ones. [R] goes back to tip the man so we can request a song and then realizes it is not a tip jar, it's just where the guy keeps the microphone. We sing a few songs that everyone seems to hate and then leave and I demand we walk because it's misting and it feels nice. After a few blocks it starts to downpour and I am still hell bent on walking but [R] calls a car against my wishes and I give in against my better judgement. We play trivia and lose big time, can't even break the top 20, though it's not clear who we are competing against. The people on the leaderboard are from all across the U.S. and we ask the driver if there is a way to narrow the scope of the competition and he doesn't reply. Usually that would be perfectly acceptable in these circumstances, but the trivia app has a special page for the driver's profile and his specifically says to "ask him anything" and now all I can think to ask is if he is a man of his word. I refrain because I can't handle any more rejection tonight.

6/25/23

Nothing really happened. I woke up and drank a gatorade zero and wished I was still asleep. [L] and I decide the only way to heal is through kimchi fried rice but we have no rice and so [L] orders 3 sides of it from the Thai restaurant down the street. There is a delivery minimum and so she orders curry puffs too, to see what they're all about. The fried rice helps but doesn't cure, there is almost never a cure besides time.

My closest friend from kindergarten through first grade [E] posts on instagram that her mom has cancer. She doesn't announce it, she posts a selfie of them together on her story with a pink ribbon emoji, her mom's hair is gone. I remember her mom as so much younger than all the other mothers. [E] lived with her grandparents and sometimes when I would be over her mom would breeze in with golden hair and leather boots and big shiny earrings like some sort of off-duty celebrity. And I would go home and tell my mom what a beautiful life [E] had and she would tell me [E]'s life was actually much more difficult than mine but I was too starstruck to understand. And [E]'s mom was 15 years younger than mine, now had cancer 15 years after mine, and is this just how it works? Is the timeline much stricter than we're willing to accept? And it reminded me that sometimes we want to live forever more than we'd like to admit.

The flies are on their way out. The vacant lot next door has grown flowers. I saw [N] and told him about how comically ugly my apartment is, how someone clearly went to great lengths to cause irreparable aesthetic damage, maybe because they knew I needed to learn. And life is small only because of what I can remember. And I will never understand the vastness of what I forget.

6/24/23

I wake up and drive [J] to the airport. Technically he drives himself in my car, but it's the thought that counts. I drive home and sing karaoke while I'm sitting in traffic even though it's not really karaoke, I'm just singing along to a random Spotify playlist called "best female karaoke ballads," but it's the thought that counts. There's nowhere to park on my block but I find a spot on the next one and an old polish man taps on my window and asks me to move back a little and I say no problem and reverse like one foot and he tells me that's plenty even though there is still a bunch of space between me and the car behind. There is maybe four feet of space between the front of my car and this giant construction barricade and it's not clear to me how he plans to park his car there but then he starts dragging the construction barricade away even though he has no relation to the construction site. Where there is a will there is a way, I guess. He asks me how long I plan to park there and I say probably until Monday street cleaning and he says great, I'll see you at 11:30 and then rides down the block on a motorized scooter I hadn't noticed until just now.

I go to RiteAid to buy gatorade zero and it's my lucky day because it's buy 2 get one free and even better—they have restocked the light blue flavor. [L] comes home and we make dinner and get ready to go to the party. We have negronis at Good Bar and talk about our apartment, how we'd like to stay, and how we want to do better, prevent the flies, maybe get a kitchen island. [L] says it won't fit and by god I hope she's wrong. The party is said to be BYO and we are at a crossroads because neither of us would like to drink beer, but [L] can't drink whiskey and I can't really drink anything but. I leave the choice up to my favorite god, YesNoWheelDecide dot com, and it tells us the answer is vodka. This is an obvious red flag but we throw caution to the wind.

We walk amongst what must be the majority of Brooklyn's Hasidic population, which seems to be a tradition of mine at this point. We arrive just in time for [N]'s show and it's a million degrees inside the apartment. After we see [C] and [M] and [L2] and [L3] and [J2] and [M2]. So many people. [C] didn't realize we had all been reading his blog and he asks if we thought it was any good and we say yes. I see the Cooper kids and the artschooltop boys and we talk about something, I don't remember what. [O] is with [J3] which is interesting because I thought they broke up but that was all instagram speculation and largely none of my business. [L] pulls me aside and says she was on a plane back from Berlin with [O] a week or two ago and thought he was "very strange." She also says he was with a different girl and they were definitely together and so drama at Astor place I guess...

[M3] the drug dealer is at the party with two boys who "went to school in California" and are friends with this guy [G] who also "went to school in California." I understand trying to be subtle about whatever highly selective university you went to, but going to "school in California" does not have the same effect as "going to school" in Cambridge or New Haven. It's a big ass state and for all I know you went to CSU Long Beach and that would be awesome. They all went to Stanford though, which is boring. I don't remember either of their names but one of them was nice and the other one generously explained what an invest bank is to me, and why do I have this effect on people? Do I just have an aura about me that says I am absolutely clueless about the world of finance and positively desperate to change that? I let him go on for a while but then he starts talking about how he now "works for himself" in Miami and I have to step away for my own wellbeing. He wasn't even there for tax reasons, he just loved the vibe, and I think that is distrubing, no offense. Apparently when I left he turned to [L] and asked why she was friends with "Regina George" which I think is a thrilling interpretation of my demeanor.

I talk to [N] for a while about Many Things and then [L] and I leave early because I feel sick. I fall asleep with my shoes on and when I wake up they have been removed. [L] swears it wasn't her.

6/23/23

Good morning rise and grind. I keep saying ich bin müde but I don't speak German, I never will. Too many people in my life seem to "speak a little German," whatever that means, and I need to be different or I'll die. The flies in my apartment have managed to get even bigger overnight and I'm not sure there will be space for all of us if they keep growing at this rate and so I guess I have to move out. They always talk about skyrocketing rents displacing residents, not the giant flies, never the giant flies.

I do some work then send my mom maybe 20 links to an assortment of zippered crossbody bags because she wanted one for her upcoming European travels and asked for recommendations. She then asks if I "might have borrowed" her linen button down shirt because she is a libra and I say "it's happier with me" because I am a pisces. She says she's glad the shirt is happy and then asks for recommendations for linen button down shirts because a mother's love knows no bounds.

I kill 4-5 giant flies in the kitchen with an applied corporate finance textbook I found on the street two years ago and have been saving for this express purpose. [L] watches in horror and then I dispose of the evidence and go take a shower. I get out and [L]'s door is closed and I start talking mindlessly to her from the kitchen but she doesn't respond and then after 10 minutes I realize I am home alone.

I buy a bunch of limes and go to [J]'s apartment to make margaritas. I'm hungry and all [J] has at the moment is bananas and I almost eat one but then I remember I am supposed to limit my potassium intake because of the spironolactone and I already ate a banana today. I google it and though the good people of quora and reddit assure me it's fine, I don't want to risk Death by Banana, at least not tonight. We talk about [J]'s work and career for a while and I offer my two cents with the confidence of a 25-year-old with an applied corporate finance textbook. We go to eat some very intense quesadillas down the street and then go home and play cards and drink more margaritas. We end up drunk enough to want to do "flags" like when we were in Mexico City but I still cant stomach the tomato juice shot and so [J] finishes my flag for me. It's really a beautiful night. Anyway, ich bin müde, whatever that means.

6/22/23

God bless gatorade zero. I wake up late and run home to get to my zoom meeting and the train is delayed so I end up sprinting from my stop and then I trip and fall on my staircase but I'm late so I can't really engage with the whole pain thing and so I scramble up and run to my desk and realize I never made my bed the day before or put away my laundry and so I join the call with my camera off and throw my clean clothes on the ground and fake make my bed and then I turn my camera on and learn that they have decide to cancel the meeting. And so I wave hello while they all wave goodbye and then the call is over. Then I take the clothes I threw from my bed onto the floor and put them back on my bed. I decide to defer folding them and putting them away even further because what's the point now. My horoscope says I'm going to be a mess today and that it will be okay and how could I argue with fate?

A bunch of other things go wrong at work and it appears that my apartment has been invaded by gigantic flies brought about by the rat that died in the wall a week or two ago. This is all fine because once upon a time I lived in Philadelphia. And why would I dwell on these things when I could just walk around my apartment with my hood up to prevent the flies from dive-bombing my ears? Problem solved.

I send everyone in my family a photo I took at the grocery store of "birch water" because I'm feeling kind of lonely but I have nothing to say. My mom says it looks tasty and my grandma says it looks weird and my dad says it looks Italian and I don't know what he means by that.

I get bored and decide to try on a new outfit and it makes me look like that children's book character Madeleine and then I feel weird.

I change into something normal and get ready to go to [J]'s opening but then he says not to be boring, to instead have some fun, and so I change again but when I arrive at the opening I can see from his face that I have clearly made an error. He later tells me that the outfit called for a darker shirt and maybe he is right. He never saw the Madeleine outfit, though, so he can't really understand how far I have come.

The opening is fun and I am enjoying the free wine and I talk to [N] who is a senior in college about his summer gallery job. He tells me next week he is assisting an artist who I have met a few times, [M], and I tell him she is very nice even when she is blackout drunk, which is quite often. I go downstairs for a second and when I return everyone has paired off into new conversations and I'm not really in the mood to infiltrate and so I go loiter in the stairwell until I am. [O] who is in charge of the show passes me on the staircase like 5 times but is kind enough to pretend this is normal behavior. I finally leave the stairwell and go to talk to [K] and [R] and admit to what I had been doing moments earlier. [K] and [R] agree that everyone needs their stairwell time and then we talk about parasites for a while.

At dinner I end up in a conversation with a man who shares many personal details with me but does not seem particularly interested in finding any sort of common ground and so I resign myself to being a sounding board and he tells me of a life-changing night he had in LA once where he was in a park near a museum and saw a woman come out of the woods carrying a rabbit and then they went to a party together that was full of Youtubers. I tell him I am from LA and ask what park it was but he doesn't remember. I ask him what museum it was and he also doesn't remember. And so I try to think of any museums in LA that are near parks with heavily wooded areas but he has already moved on and is telling me about how he is studying chemistry so he can become a therapist that can prescribe medications like a doctor. I ask him if he is interested in psychiatry then and he says no.

One of [O]'s friends from home asks me if I am related to Abby from Broad City which I have gotten before and usually offends me, but she followed it with "because you look like her but much, much thinner." I have never seen Broad City and have no concept of how large or small Abby is but this seemed to be a positive thing in her mind and so I'll take it. [J] and [K] and I leave and go have one final drink at the Magician which I had hoped to avoid because I think it's cursed but we don't stay for long because we are all falling asleep at the table. [J] and I say bye to [K] then take the train home where I eat a dill pickle with whole grain mustard while [J] enjoys some of the new sounds he downloaded to make music with. The submarine has been found, imploded, and I think that's sad. Happy Friday to anyone who is reading this. I'm going to go clean my room now.

6/21/23

Wake up and take zoom call from [J]'s apartment which I have to pretend is a "cafe" because I said it once like 6 months ago when I didn't feel like explaining where I was to my coworkers. It backfired though, because I ended up explaining in detail this "cafe" I had found myself in—why there was a closed door behind me, why there were kitchen utensils hanging on the wall, etc. I told them I was in Greenpoint, and this is what every cafe in Greenpoint is like. And they live on the Upper East Side so they decided to take my word for it.

I walk home through the park and see a bunch of people sitting and having brunch at Five Leaves and I am suddenly struck by this intense loathing for anyone who routinely orders avocado toast from a restaurant. Why would you do that? When you could easily make the same thing at home for like a 5th of the price? And then I pass the "vintage" store that sells used jeans that cost the same as new jeans and it feels like someone is yelling expletives at me. The avocado toast people and the expensive used jeans people. And then I think it's no wonder my co-workers accepted that all cafes in Greenpoint have frying pans hanging from a peg board on the wall and private rooms especially for zoom calls. This place is hell.

It occurs to me that such intense feelings might be due to the fact that I am slightly hungover and so I drink a gatorade zero and lay on my bed and think about what I've done. The day goes by and the hangover lifts and I'm feeling invincible so I go and buy some really expensive kimchi because every day is a gift that's why they call it the present.

Unfortunately the really expensive kimchi is really good and now that I know this I'm doomed. I get on the train to go to the Nina thing and realize that my skirt is actually probably too short when multiple MTA workers chase me up the stairs at the Canal street station and ask for an "instant replay." I actually don't even care about this, I mostly thought it was funny. I see [N] and [J2] and [E] and [T] outside the event and they say hi but not much else and so I slowly back away...I go upstairs and find [J] who is talking to [B] who I have met many times before but never remembers me. She has introduced herself to me so many times that I've started to really appreciate her commitment to rejecting the object permanence stage. I see [D] and talk to him for a while about insurance and the River Challenge and my job which he actually remembers which is crazy because even some of my close friends are still a little unclear on what it is I do for money. The music is how it is and then it ends and [J] introduces me to a guy named [C] who he met a long time ago and also seems to be friends with [D]. He is from Philadelphia and works as a prop master in NYC and pretty much wants nothing to do with me so that conversation doesn't last long. I see [B] outside again and she introduces herself to me for the second time tonight and I think it's really quite impressive. We all leave the Nina thing and go to the River once again and I talk to [M] about t-shirt sizes and how men have no business wearing anything smaller than an XL. When a man requests a size medium t-shirt, regardless of how big or small he is, that's a major red flag.

[N], [J], [M], and I sit down and I ask [M] about what he did for work before nina and he says he got jobs through Upwork for 7 years and shows us the companies he did freelance work for. One was a conveyer belt manufacturer, one was some sort of master class knock off called "DreamBelieveAchieve" or something, and I can't remember the last one. We talk a little bit about his younger brother who is basically my age and wants to live a "normal life" and I'm not so clear on what that means. I ask [M] if what was happening right now, at the River, couldn't be considered normal, and he said, resolutely, that it could not. We talk a little more and then [M] stares blankly in front of him for 20 seconds then gets up and leaves. [M2] told us a few days ago that he had heard sometimes [M] takes a ton of Adderall and then gets weird because his focus shifts unnaturally and if it's true it would explain so much. [J] and [N] and I end up talking about abortion for the second night in a row because I guess there is just something about the River that makes you think about a woman's right to choose.

I go to the bar to get another drink and end up talking to the bartender who I find out is 20 years old and went to UCC in Toronto where I know a few random people through [R]. He was clearly trying to get away from the whole UCC-rich-boys-school image when he took the job because I don't think anyone from UCC would ever work in a bar, especially not a bar run by a woman.

[N], [J], and I start to leave and then I meet [E2] who works for [M] and he tells me about his divorce from this Canadian woman and how he is only 33 and can't believe he is divorced. I tell him it's okay everyone gets divorced sometimes and this seems to really lift his spirits. I try to get [M] to play Black and Yellow by Wiz Khalifa and he refuses and instead plays more 100 gecs. [N], [J], [E], and I go to 7/11 and I get a sweet, sweet gatorade zero because I refuse to endure another day like today. [N] insists on getting two different flavors of taquito and both are ultimately inedible. I tell everyone about what [E2] told me and [E] reminds me that we also talked at length about his parents divorce and I guess I just have that effect on people. Something about me screams divorce, just like something about the River screams abortion. Cool.

6/20/23

Realized my meeting at 1 PM was actually at 10 AM at 9:45 AM...

[J]'s mom's birthday. Met her college roommate who was very nice and shared my interest in Louisiana, broadly. [J]'s dad tells us of a prison there that has a 9-hole public golf course where the top-tier prisoners get to be groundskeepers. [J] and I take the train back and talk more about the art bar which somehow devolves into a conversation about how I am financially irresponsible and maybe I am...but I was responsible enough to get a job that allows me a little financial irresponsibility without totally ruining my life so I think that should count for something...

I get home and find my new phone waiting for me and it's truly a joyous occasion. The whole set up ordeal was annoying so I will spare you the details. I log back into my instagram and remember that nothing interesting ever happens. Very anti-climatic.

I work for a while then [L] and [R] come home and [R] is testy because she is hungry and she tells me I'm going to be eaten alive by bugs and I tell her she is "hungry like a bug" and neither of us know what that means. They go eat sushi and I meet [J] and [M] at the park where we discuss [M]'s recent dates and the Tara Downs artist talk and opening night a few weeks ago when I got too drunk and tried to blame it on the patriarchy. I had told [J] the reason I was too drunk was because I didn't eat dinner and the reason I didn't eat dinner was because I was trying to adhere to the unrealistic beauty standards society expects of women, a pressure he could never understand. I think this is quite impressive reasoning for the state I was in. I apparently drove my point home by saying "there are just no opportunities in this town for a woman my size," which I think is hilarious. If only I had been there to witness it...(sorry [J]).

[S] texts that he is at the River and we bike to [J]'s then take the train and [M] lays flat on the train car bench because he's been "really into laying lately." [S] is outside the bar when we arrive and we talk about how the most interesting days to write about are when nothing happens, the most interesting things always happen when nothing happens. We go inside and [S] orders some sort of weird banana cocktail in preparation for the River Challenge in a week and the bartender overhears us talking and says "did you the River Challenge? Some people are apparently drinking everything on the menu" and we tell him that we are those people. Some random woman sitting next to us at the bar starts talking to [J] and I start talking to [S] and then [M] leaves. [J] later tells me it was because [M] got cut out of the conversation and tried to rejoin but it didn't work. [J] says it reminded him of the time I got upset at him at [T]'s birthday party because he did that to me. Almost no one ever does it on purpose, but it does suggest a certain sort of indifference to one's presence that hurts either way, so I get it. I was lucky I had [R] with me that time or I probably would have left too. Instead I think [R] and I just started being obnoxious because no one seemed to be able to see or hear us anyway. And I think that is a beautiful trauma response.

[S] and I talk about many things while the random woman talks [J]'s ear off. [J] tells her I am a pisces and she tells us that she is a scorpio and she has a lot of pisces friends, they are all "wah, wah" babies. I say that I have no scorpio friends, and return to my conversation with [S]. She can do the math...lol. Somehow [S] and [J] and I end up talking about abortion and [S] says he would definitely try to keep any child he created which I understand even though I probably wouldn't. We get ready to leave and I try to whisper to [J] that we should not bring the random woman with us and he agrees and then I get up to go to the bathroom and when I return [J] informs me he had to do damage control because apparently she heard me...whoops. I feel bad because I only said that because of a similar thing that happened a few weeks ago where [J] and I ended up with an awkward tagalong for a night. Another beautiful trauma response. [J] says it doesn't matter, but I vow to explain this all to the random woman should I ever see her again. We go to clandestino and [J] demands to know who the staten island art review is and [S] won't say and then I realize that they unfollowed me and [S] insists they never followed me in the first place and I say that's not true and also how did you know that...

We all take the train back together and say bye to [S] who will be gone for a week, then back, then gone for months, who knows how long. It's sad! When we first met I was convinced we would never be friends because I'm alway suspicious of anyone who makes references and [S] is basically a walking encyclopedia for Contemporary Urban Culture...but as it turns out he is a Real Person and it has been really nice getting to know him better over the last few months.

[J] makes some sort of bastard pasta and I finish the NYT spelling bee and that's that.

6/19/23

Phone arrives tomorrow. [R] and I were going to try to go to the beach again today but we decide it's too risky. Plus once you've experienced the muddy asphalt shores of Bocuzzi nothing else hits quite the same. We sit at the coffee shop for a while with our books that we don't read and somehow end up talking about my little brother's poor money management skills, namely how he poured thousands of dollars into a vinyl record collection comprised almost exclusively of albums from the last 10 years. Different strokes for different folks, I know, but I just don't think the Weeknd intended for "The Beauty Behind the Madness" to be listened to on a bluetooth digital record player from Urban Outfitters. Except now that I think about it, that is probably exactly how the Weeknd intended for it to be listened to.

[J] comes in from Connecticut and after a brief deliberation I decide to go back with him. We eat extra sharp Babybel cheese while sitting in traffic and he tells me about a David Salle lecture he listened to and I complain about how boring artist talks are and he reminds me I have only ever attended one and I tell him that was plenty. I understand that many feel that art is Serious Business—and my point here is not to disagree—but I do believe that one always has a duty to their audience—to engage, to entertain, whatever. Not to put on a show, but to at least present the possibility of saying something that could add to a person's understanding of your work. If you are not even going to pretend to contend to be interesting in any way, you may as well stay home and let the art speak for itself.

We arrive and go to the beach and though it's no Bocuzzi, it's still pretty nice. I drink some white wine from a metal water bottle and [J] tells me of his plan to open an art bar, or at least compel someone else to, and I think it sounds like a great idea. We talk start-up costs and angel investors and I resolve to try to get 100 dollars from [M] every time I see him and so by the time we have to leave the beach for dinner, I'm certain we are about to be in business. And maybe there was a little too much wine in that water bottle...

We go to [J]'s "uncle's" house to eat pizza and everyone is talking about the Godfather and I am smiling and nodding but the truth is I have never seen it. Surprise! Eventually I expose myself and everyone implores me to watch it as soon as possible. I promise them I will do better, but as a young Italian-American woman I just feel that no movie could outweigh my lived experience...I keep this to myself as I have no interest in being proven wrong. [J]'s "uncle's" wife shows me pictures of her adult son who she tells me is short but doesn't suffer from "short-person-syndrome" and I'm not sure how to respond so I just say that's awesome and she agrees.

We go back to [J]'s parents house and [J] and I go to the roof so he can smoke and I think about how the first time I ever came here was exactly one year ago. I refused to go in the house, I would only meet him at the beach and he had to promise me that I wouldn't meet his parents because that is something that happens when you are dating and I assured him we were not even though we were. It was impenetrable logic, still is. Life is one big circle even when it's not.

We are too tired to watch the Godfather so instead we watch Dazed and Confused and I feel intensely nostalgic for the last day of school. Nothing ends like it used to. And nothing begins either. It just goes and goes and goes.

6/18/23

Still no phone. I had a dream where everyone was being raptured by Lady Gaga and you had to hide in a bathroom stall until your time came or you would be killed by some sort of monster. Then I was in [J]'s parents house that wasn't their house and they had loaned it to me for the day but I was feeling really guilty because there was a huge mess in the backyard, presumably my fault. I went into the refrigerator and there was so much broccoli. I went to go clean up the backyard but then someone told me [J]'s S-I-L [D] had already gotten started and I remember feeling really grateful. I snapped back to the rapture portion of the dream where [R]'s boyfriend [E] was telling me he had been reading my posts and really liked them. Brag. Then I learned that [J] had prepared an art portfolio for the rapture, everyone was doing this, and I didn't understand how or why.

I woke up before anything could really happen and I'm almost certain the whole Lady Gaga rapture bit was because of her new Nurtec commercial. And I think it is beautiful to see what a woman can achieve when she is migraine-free.

I go to read and bring my watch so I can have some sort of tether to the modern world but then I realize both the minute and hour are off and can only be fixed through an app on my phone. It's no problem really, though, because I figure out that my watch is simply 7 hours and 24 minutes ahead.

The book I'm reading says something about "a grown man who, having attended Dalton, always asked what high school you had gone to, in the hope that it had been Dalton" and I thought of one of [S]'s posts from a while ago about people asking where you went to college and how that's more often a question about someone's upbringing or social class even when it's not. I do it all the time, though, probably subconsciously for some insidious reasons about trying to quickly contextualize a person to 'succeed' conversationally or whatever, but also for some depressing reasons like I have no idea what to talk to people about in this city most of the time. People in New York aren't exactly forthcoming with personal details and with every interaction I become more aware of the fact that I have very little knowledge of the sort of cultural ongoings that seem to be considered appropriate icebreakers around here. And so where are you from, where'd you go to college, etc. etc. That's all kind of beside [S]'s point, which is more about 'Bohemian Larping,' pretending to have nothing when you clearly had your own car in high school (I did! There is really no shame in admitting this...). And when I'm not just absolutely desperate to find some common ground with a person, I like to delude myself into thinking of my little questions about colleges and hometowns as a sort of exposé. You're from santa monica and went to brown and you have no job but the rent still gets paid? Interesting...

I know there are exceptions to the rule and maybe I should just mind my own business but I don't know who Hype Williams is, I don't think I ever will, and so I'm left with no choice: could you please, I'm begging you, tell me if you have any brothers or sisters?

[R] comes home from her glassblowing class (no further explanation) and I decide to refrain from further indulging myself with this morality play. [R], and [L], and I get in my car (not even the one from high school...a different one...honesty is so important...) and try to go to some random beach in Connecticut before the sun sets. We sit in traffic for an hour and a half only to be turned away by some Greenwich teen park ranger who was maybe enjoying his newfound power a little too much. I swear he was all but vibrating by the time he watched us make a U-turn out of the parking lot. We go to the only public beach we can find nearby, "Bocuzzi Beach," and are greeted by a sign that says "NO DRUGS. NO ALCOHOL. NO GAMBLING" which seems like a reasonable enough request until we realize "Bocuzzi Beach" is actually more of a park where you can peer at the bay through a chain link fence. Knowing this, I find it hard to imagine enjoying the uninterrupted view of what seemed to be a series of industrial rock piles out on the horizon without at least one of the three banned items. In fact, I find it hard to imagine enjoying this without all of the above.

We give up on finding a beach and instead go to the discounted liquor emporium where [R] starts referring to herself as "Little Miss Bocuzzi." I must say it has quite a nice ring to it. We go home with a 2L Ed Hardy branded sangria that we plan to use as a vase once we have dealt with whatever toxic substance currently occupies the bottle. I should clarify that this does not necessarily mean we will be pouring it down the drain, though we'd all be better off if we did.

We go home and I join a father's day zoom and I learn that my younger brother, [LW], had treated my parents to some sort of "Wes Anderson experience" as a father's day surprise. I do not think my father is really a Wes Anderson fan, same goes for [LW] and mother, and so I'm not sure who really wanted this to happen. "I was just trying something out," [LW] says.

Zoom ends and [R] and [L] and I go to Good Bar which seems to have been overtaken by the people of Australia and [R] says some derogatory things due to her British heritage and after one drink I do think I'm starting to see her perspective...We talk about our individual experiences running into Anna Sophia Robb and conclude she must live in the neighborhood and then 5 minutes later she appears and it is quite apparent to me that we conjured her. [R] and [L] post on instagram to raise awareness of my dire situation and that's amore.

6/17/23

No phone. Woke up heartbroken for other reasons but let's blame it on the phone because that's easier. Tinder code. Ouch. No more TMI.

Walked home the same way I always do. It seems like every woman in Williamsburg has her tits out today and it seems like every man in Williamsburg is really enjoying that. Okay sorry no more TMI.

I don't care that I don't have a phone but I do care that I am locked out of all my accounts because of stupid two-step verification. Tinder code. Ouch. Maybe the people of the internet will think I'm dead, but actually probably no one will notice. I go to the ATT store to try to put my phone number on a temporary SIM card and the ATT guy tells me I'm not an authorized user on the account but gives me a pre-paid SIM and tells me to have my dad call customer care and activate it and so I remember I am actually still a child. My dad is in the [redacted] annual meeting and so the SIM card will have to wait. I'm getting intense deja vu for the last time I lost my phone, it was to the most skilled pickpocket in all of London who managed to grab it from my inside jacket pocket while I was drinking monk wine on a street corner. And so maybe they were not all that skilled and I was just drunk as a monk but I do want to give credit where credit is due. I worked myself into a frenzy trying to get a temporary phone until I returned to the US and ultimately it was a huge waste and so this time around I'm just giving up and giving in. If you need to reach me text [R] or [L] or just wait until Wednesday or the next time I'm at my computer lol.

As it turns out I am quite hungover from the Bar Italia backyard garden fest and so once I depart from the ATT store I walk to Key Foods to seek out my beloved light blue gatorade zero. But here is the kicker: it is not actually zero calories, it's 10. They market it as zero because one serving is 0 calories, but the bottle actually contains 2 servings and somehow by their logic when you double 0 you get 10. Why not just call it gatorade 10 and preserve whatever's left of customer-corporation trust these days? No one cares about trust these days.

Everyone has plans with their boyfriends tonight and I have plans with GoDaddy dot com trying to wrangle my custom domain and what I'm learning is that I may be an idiot. I do the NYT spelling bee on my desktop and text my grandfather once it's done and he tells me too bad about my phone and that he has been seeing some good deals online. I stare at the ceiling for a while which can actually be quite productive. My skirt from Ukraine has arrived and it's too short in my opinion but it would help me blend in with the weekend warriors of Williamsburg and you know what? Maybe I'd be better off.

My mom texts me around midnight asking if I'm sure I can't retrieve my phone from the depths of the porta potty and she's completely serious.

6/16/23

The river challenge has been postponed. Instead we are going to a Bar Italia concert and not to expose myself but I have never listened to one second of that music in my whole life so I guess tonight's the night. I'm not even ashamed but no one asks and so I smile-laugh-smile-laugh. Sorry if you think differently of me now...I check my email and find out my days off for Italy have been approved so ciao bitches! I'm going to find my own Bar Italia in old Napoli...

[J] and I leave his apartment together and on our way out a Caribbean plumber reminds [J] that tomorrow isn't promised and he's so right. We part ways at the train and I continue my walk through the park and remember that it's Friday and I forgot to move my car for street cleaning. There are only twenty minutes left and so I just keep walking because it's probably too late anyway. I run into [R] and [E] who are on another level because of some bread from a bakery on India street, not the country, [E] clarifies. When I get to my car there's no ticket and I know for sure I'm the luckiest girl in the world. I sit in the car for the remaining 5 minutes of street cleaning just in case. I text [M] about how to make this website look like anything other than what it does and he tells me the first step to editing a website is to grow up editing myspace and xanga html. This may be true but it doesn't help my case and so here we are. I send [J] all the photos I had been withholding over the last few days including one of "The Farmer and the Deli" that I passed on my walk along the highway and he tells me its famous for some reason, I still don't know why.

[R] is applying to get her American driver's license and I tell her that what is more important in this moment is that she come with me to get coffee. She agrees and we sit in the coffee shop for a while reading our horoscopes. Mine says I am in for a day of romance, laughter, and fine dining, and I inform [J] of this just in case he wants to get ahead of the curve. I force [R] to look through my eBay watchlist and she smile-laughs-smile-laughs which I appreciate.

I do some work and then watch [R] try on a skirt I bought on eBay when I was drunk or delusional and it looks much better on her than it ever would on me. I leave the house to meet [J] in the West Village to eat a burger at Corner Bistro. The host says we can sit outside but only at a table that is tilted 45 degrees and when he brings out waters they slide down the table and nearly fall into the street. We eat our burgers which [J] declares are good but maybe a little too good and perhaps should taste more like they will kill you. We walk to a bar nearby and [J] rips a flower from a tree and gives it to me which I think is very sweet.

We get on the train to the Bed Stuy mansion where the concert is supposed to be but it turns out it's actually some dumb Ion Pack event and you need tickets to get in. They go as far as to say "the list won't save you" in the event description and I have to ask why anyone would buy tickets to an event that didn't guarantee them admission. I really think that's the premise of the thing, tickets, but like the Caribbean plumber said: tomorrow isn't promised. The Bed Stuy mansion is allegedly inhabited by six Georgian artists who are being put up by a hotel magnate but they are nowhere to be found. We are denied entry and instead sit in the corner of the backyard garden and drink our contraband white claws. Tragedy strikes when I become bold enough to venture into the standalone porta potty and it claims my cell phone as its own. I had been using it as a flash light and lost my grip and the second it hit that blue, blue shit water that light was out—forever. I grab [J] and pull him into the porta potty and ask him if I should reach in and try to save it and the second the words came out of my mouth I know it's over. Someone outside yells for us to hurry up with our drugs and [J] exits but I still have to pee and so I say goodbye to my sweet iPhone in its watery grave the only way I can.

[J] buys me a I'm-sorry-you-dropped-your-phone-into-the-shit-abyss-at-the-ion-pack-bar-italia-concert-at-the-bed-stuy-georgian-hotel-magnate-mansion artisanal cider which is very considerate of him. We return to the back garden and now [N] has arrived. We spot [M2] and I immediately start propositioning him to sponsor the river challenge and I'm really pulling out all the stops because I have nothing left to lose. I keep telling him that this event will ne not only momentous but also historical and that if he knows what's good for him he will get in on the ground floor. [J] leaves to go retrieve the drinks [N] brought us and hid in a bush and after maybe one minute of persuasion [M2] takes out his wallet and slaps a hundred dollar bill in my hand. He then googles the lyrics to some song and starts softly singing to himself. I don't know what song it was but it was a beautiful moment for us, I think, [J] returns with a giant mango bud light seltzer and then the security guards tell everyone to leave and so we all walk to some bar nearby but never make it inside because we have to finish the giant drinks retrieved from the bush. A guy named [E2] who I have met one or two times before is outside with us and I remember he went to Emerson and so I ask him if college was just everyone going back and forth saying "I want to make a *film*" and he says yes actually that is exactly what it was like. He then asks me if going to Penn was just everyone going back and forth saying "I want to make a *business*" and I say yes actually that is exactly what it was like.

We walk to another bar with a taco truck outside and I eat some of [J]'s chicken quesadilla and nothing else really happens.

6/15/23

Another day of More Life. I woke up an wrote some of yesterday's entry then realized I only had 10 minutes before my Very Boring zoom meeting and so I ran to the coffee shop and then ran straight back to my desk and smile-laugh-smile-laughed my ass off to make up for the fact that I spent most of the day before walking along the side of a highway. Personally I considered it a form of professional development, but corporate America is not ready to have that conversation yet. My meeting ends and I return the the coffee shop with my half-finished coffee to sit and get my money's worth. [R] comes with me on her way to her office and we end up talking about astrology and family and living far from home. We talk about how family is sometimes the only thing that makes you feel like you existed before a person or before a place. Only since moving to New York have I really understood that. Because it's not really about homesickness or liking your family or feeling like they understand you or whatever, it's about context. Without that tether your life starts to condense in this really disturbing way that forgets all those years before and makes everything about right now. And so every decision has too much weight, every decision seems life changing. And sometimes only your family can snap you out of it, remind you when you felt like what shoes you wore to take the SAT would be the difference between failing and getting a perfect score. [R] leaves and I try to read my book but I keep getting texts from [redacted] so I give up and go home. Some stuff happens but that's privileged information...

George Michael of Pill Cloud Virtual Pharmacy texts me to inform me my prescription will be delivered tomorrow. This is awesome news because I never imagined my spironolactone would be hand delivered by a celebrity. This even more exciting than when my former psychiatrist Ben Shapiro tried to prescribe me antipsychotics, albeit less politically charged. Life is one beautiful mystery.

I go to the laundromat down the street from which my unspoken ban has been lifted. Last winter every time I tried to go the Polish woman who owned it used to sweep me out the door with her broom. I still don't know why, but now she has outsourced her labor and forgot to include my name on the list of customers in need of a good sweeping. Last week I caught her eyeing me across the street while sitting in an SUV. I finish doing laundry and decide to go play tennis on one of the handball courts in the park. I haven't played in over a year except for maybe once with [L] in Rhode Island last September. It's too hard to get a court in New York unless you want to pay $80 or wait for two hours and my ex-boyfriend used to do the former but unfortunately I did not love the game of tennis enough to continue with that. And so to the handball courts I went. After hitting for a while a man playing basketball on the other side of the fence shouted "who hurt you?" And I wish it was that simple...

I meet [R] to drink slushies and we discuss some of the privileged information from earlier and then move onto more exciting topics like her new collapsible bike helmet and whether either of us could pull off bangs (the answer is no). We eat sushi and then I depart to have a Conversation with a Capital C if you know what I mean...And now everything is how it is. There's lead in the pipes which I have been saying for months and maybe now I'll be taken a bit more seriously.

6/14/23

I would write about what happened yesterday but we're all friends and it's too weird. So I'm leaving that part out. I woke up and went to the coffee shop and started reading my new book which was awesome because I hated my old book (Rabbit, Run) and I can't express my relief when I read the words "Ah: runs. Runs." because it meant it was finally over. Thank You John Updike. I wrote a note in the back of it (I always do this when I finish a book, I like to think about where I was and what it meant then, because the next time I read it, if I ever do, it will be different. Always is.) that said: "Another doomsday declaration from [redacted]. Last night I wondered if I might die soon. If you don't know, you'll never know." So dramatic. But I couldn't resist the last sentence because a car drove by at the exact moment I had put pen to paper playing "Juicy" and I heard the line and I just had to. Sue me. Everyone seems to love this book, but I do have to wonder if my feelings of potential imminent death stem from enduring 325 pages of flowery sexual language that I could only imagine was written to distract or disturb. More likely: both. And so I started my new book, "Either/Or" and so maybe my prognosis will improve.

I go home to join my Very Long Very Boring zoom meeting where Very Important Things are discussed that have Very Little Relation to me. I spend the meeting finishing my Very Important task of copying and hyperlinking 400 google drive links into a spreadsheet because I'm a boss like that and you should never use your brain on the job, it's a waste. I do my usual smile-laugh-smile-laugh to feign authentic engagement and no one in the meeting gives me a second thought because I'm a boss like that.

The next two hours are [redacted] because I'm a boss like that.

The rain starts pelting my AC unit and I think about how sadness isn't weakness, it's sadness and that's much, much worse. [R] and I leave the apartment and get on the train to go to my office in Downtown Brooklyn and check the mail. There are two people wearing the same shade of neon green sitting across from each other in the train car and I take it as a sign. [R] is the first person to ever see my office, it's a glass box in a WeWork knockoff that seems to be home to a number of transient men carrying large stacks of cash for unexplained reasons—but this afternoon it is home to us too. I open $50,000 worth of checks and [R] and I say terrible things in service of female empowerment. We then decide it's time to pop some pills, also in service of female empowerment because everyone deserves a little substance abuse as a treat. I take the checks to the bank and kiss them all goodbye and [R] and I go to the Trader Joes in the basement of the food hall that smells like caramelized onions in a bad way. We buy sliced cheddar cheese and prosciutto and low carb wraps and sit on metal chairs in the caramelized onion basement food hall and ask ourselves: why? We have theories, but no answers, and if only someone could please intervene? But that's not how this works, [R] reminds me.

We walk back to Greenpoint along the side of the highway and I say the same things over and over again and [R] doesn't complain and for that I will always be grateful. When we reach Williamsburg the Hasidic community is thrust upon us and [R] says look at the bright side, maybe they'll like you better now that you're not a shiksa. And I consider the bright side but once a shiksa always a shiksa. We get caught in the rain once we reach the park and stand under an awning while the sky alternates between downpour and sun. [R] says there will be a rainbow but I keep waiting and it never comes.

[S] texts me and tells me I've been selected to join the secrets club and for a second I forget everything that's ever happened to me and it's the best feeling in the world. [R] reminds me of a video she sent me over the weekend of her jeweler in Toronto and tells me I should show it to him so he can see what it's like growing up Indian Canadian. I am not Indian or Canadian so I will leave this matter to [R], but the video is awesome... Anyway, we're doing the river challenge this weekend and I can't wait to show off what four years of binge drinking in college can do for the feminist agenda.

We meet up with [L] and resolve to go see Chungking Express and are too late to take the train so we call an Uber. [L] tells us about the how last time she was in Hong Kong her grandma specifically forbade her from ever going to the Chungking mansions because they are "unsafe" and the driver overhears and says "just like the Bronx" so we decide this car ride may be better suited for quiet reflection rather than conversation. The movie does exactly what it's supposed to, everything big feels small and small feels big, and crying feels like a waste because why not just go for a jog? Life is a series of heartbreaks, being alive breaks my heart. We go to Dim Sum Palace because it's still open and eat eggplant and I realize it's the first thing I have eaten today besides that slice of cheddar cheese in the onion-food-hall-basement. [R] talks about her soon-to-be published article in the wine magazine and how a man she met through her boyfriend's clay studio said everyone knows that magazine and she should refer to it by its name instead of saying "this random magazine about wine and stuff" because that's embarrassing. I've personally never heard of the magazine but for such an impassioned response I have to believe it is an important work of literature in The Community. I tell everyone I'm going to lose 15 pounds for no reason besides it's what it says on my driver's license. In California they have you self report and I was 16 and hadn't weighed myself since I was 11 and so I just put that number down even though it neglected the fact that I had grown 7 inches. People need to stop talking about their summer bodies and start focusing on achieving their driver's license weight...

When we leave the restaurant [L] spots [RB], the former love of [R]'s life because of his wealth and status and service in the Singaporean military, and because she seems to have a penchant for men who appear to be perpetually sneering. They only met once—for twenty seconds freshman year—but that was enough. He's walking with a friend wearing a backpack with an investment bank logo I can't quite make out, so we follow them down the block to get a closer look. They stop at a light and we pretend to talk about a decrepit 3D painting of a beach scene someone had thrown away on the sidewalk. [L] applauds its ruggedness, I commend its departure from traditional opinions of value, and [R] says it's a real piece of shit. Then we end up tailing them for a few blocks because we suffer from mental illness.

I've been texting back and forth with [redacted] and who knows what will happen now. Last week I saw a video art thing and I could hardly pay attention after a while because I kept being struck by the thought of what you become to someone once you are no longer someone to them. Will they remember you as so many things or just one: who you were to them. And the heartbreak is always in the details, it just never occurred to me that the greatest heartbreak may be in realizing they never noticed the details, they couldn't decipher your footsteps from a strangers, never paid attention to how you brush your teeth or make the bed or whatever. And none of those things really matter, except that they do. And I wish I never noticed, but love does make you pay attention for better or for worse. And if you don't know, you'll never know...

anyway cool story though

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