One of the first rules of writing a novel is to READ NOVELS, which is something I don’t do very often. I’m sorry, I’m very particular and picky. I am more drawn to articles, essays, poems, posts, tweets, short stories, instagram stories…or I’m watching movies and taking pictures of our giant TV screen like a boomer loser, “Babe, can you rewind? I need to take a picture of something that reminds me of my novel I’m definitely writing," my husband dutifully rewinds and I snap some pics to let get buried in my photo app.

I have too many thoughts and not enough written down. Too many Pinterest boards and not enough writing. TOO MANY PLAYLISTS AND NOT ENOUGH WRITING. Are we noticing something here?

I fear my story idea for my novel may have rolled away from me. It’s too bloated, too many ideas and not enough direction. I have lost the core of the thing, if I had it ever, at all.

I’ve written about six scenes, I have an outline written in a journal I finished a couple months ago.

It’s a story I’ve been working on for almost a year now. Started as a short story idea, it has already changed so much from that initial spark.

I recently read “The Blanket” by Mary Gaitskill and it made me want to throw everything I have already had put down. A video game called “The Path” inspired me as well. A character in it gave a breeze of life into my protagonist I had been struggling to animate and bring to the living. YES, this is what we NEEDED!

This entire article is hilarious to me actually. Because I’m writing about not writing, writing about how my novel idea is failing instead of, y’know, WRITING THAT.

I thought maybe posting about my novel idea could perhaps humiliate me enough to actually work on it. Now I don’t know what it’s going to do. Even now as I’m writing this, I’m hesitant, considering turning the proverbial car around. I fear that once I release my hardly baked idea, something is going to “happen.” Or worse, maybe nothing will.

It came to me like a dream. A brief image- boy holding a microphone in one hand, into the open mouth of a girl, he’s recording her sighs and sounds, his other hand his between her legs. He wants to play a woman like an instrument. That’s it, that’s the idea.

When I first wrote it, it was two teenagers, an older teenage boy who was about to graduate high school, and a younger teenage girl, sixteen and obsessed with watching amateur porn on her iPod late at night. The more I thought about it, the less I liked them being so young. I wanted the girl specifically to have more agency. So I moved the story to happen in college setting and I made the girl character much older than the boy character, who was now between 19-23 years old, depending on how insecure I was feeling about “writing something problematic.” I was inspired greatly by “The Piano Teacher” which I was reading for the first time.

So then my next predicament: how do I make the female character “innocent” still? She needs to be sexually repressed, maybe? (Again, I was super into “The Piano Teacher,” to a fault I realize now.) But why is she sexually repressed? I know, childhood trauma! This is when it started to feel unnecessarily cruel and mean. I had really horrible things happen to both characters. The female protagonist’s step father sexually assaults her as a young girl, (I had just recently reread Mona Simpson’s short story “Lawns” and was deeply moved) and the male protagonist’s mother allows him to get sexually assaulted by numerous older women in the name of “sex positivity.” At first I thought I was actually a genius. Finally, I was getting to the nitty and gritty of this. But then I started to feel like I was being exploitative or something. It felt deeply wrong. And to make it worse, the story was spiraling down into an even darker ending than I anticipated, where the male protagonist rapes the female protagonist. What upset me was how easy it was to make it darker. To “go there” and once there, feel like I had hit some sort of “truth” and could finally write something “real ” because it was so horrible.

It wasn’t until I read the aforementioned Gaitskill short story that I realized I think I needed to rethink everything I had down so far. It’s a short story about an older woman entering a sexual relationship with a younger man, and the sex they have, and how they sort of accidentally fall in love. It is written with so much tenderness and knowingness. There’s a scene where the male character is in the library and is looking through a book, and gets so worked up over the sudden vision of his sexual encounter with this woman, that he accidentally drops his wad of chewing gum from his mouth. What does he do? He closes the book with the sticky substance still inside. I took a screenshot and tried not to bonk my head against a hard surface over and over and over.

“You need to keep reading if you want to be a writer. You need to actually write if you want to be a writer.” Oh my god, well maybe I’ve got it all wrong. I can’t just read whatever the fuck. I am very particular and precious about books I read. Ever since I was a child I had a test: if I am taken by the first page, I will read the book. If the book doesn’t suck me in within the first couple sentences, I will not read it. Go ahead and call me an illiterate pig fuck, I probably am, but this is always how I’ve read things. And this is also how I find so many “heart books.” Books that speak directly to the center of my being. “The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky” by Jana Casale. “Intermezzo” by Sally Rooney. “Sarahland” by Sam Cohen. “Walk Two Moons” by Sharon Creech. “Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance” by Alison Espach. “Either/Or” by Elif Batuman. “Sharp Objects” by Gillian Flynn. “My Dark Vanessa” by Kate Elizabeth Russell. “How to (Un)cage a Girl” by Francesca Lia Block. “Dog Biscuits” by Alex Graham. “No One Is Talking About This” by Patricia Lockwood. “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov. “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” by Phoebe Gloeckner. “The Pisces” by Melissa Broder. “The Chronology of Water” by Lidia Yuknavitch. “I Love Dick” by Chris Kraus. “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger. “Fun Home” by Alison Bechdel. “I’ll Give You The Sun” by Jandy Nelson. “Clumsy” by Jeffrey Brown. “Because of Winn-Dixie” by Kate DiCamillo.

The more I read the more I get upset with myself. I’m never going to write like that, SO WHY THE FUCK AM I TRYING. But then I see a book get published and see how much I dislike the writing. Find the story trite or try-hard. Well shit, maybe I can do it…

But then it’s like I’ve never read a book in my life, like I have totally forgotten what a story even is. My writing has always been one long flowing thought I follow all the way down. Now I have to make outlines and save a cat? Like all the magic that I feel when I write has gone away. But ahhhhhhh, REAL WRITING ISN’T JUST MAGIC AND WRITING SHIT OUT OF YOUR ASS. IT’S HARD WORK. MAYBE I’M JUST LAZY AND DON’T LIKE WORKING. MAYBE THIS IS IT. MAYBE YOU’RE JUST NOT CUT OUT FOR ANY OF THIS. Then we’re just back round again to self-loathing.

So where am I at now? I don’t know. I haven’t written anything for my novel idea in two weeks, I’ll add pictures of Cameron Winter to my Pinterest board for my novel idea, call watching videos about “how to write a novel” some kind of “research” or whatever. I’ll scour Substack and YouTube for any sort of insight into writing a novel. Am I supposed to feel this lost and crazy? Or should I abandon this idea and start a new project? Or am I simply not cut out for this sort of thing? It’s like I need permission from others, asking strangers online to please be my god and let me know if I am worthy, or if I have it in me. Am I brave enough to try? Or do I need to be humble enough to accept the fact that I simply do not have the chops?

I sit in silence. I keep my screenshots and pictures of TV screens with dialogue in a film that give me visions and flashes to my own story, so deeply tucked under my subconscious, it’s practically nothing. And yet…there is a twinge, a quick image that crosses my mind, makes my heart flutter, makes me whisper, “God? Is that you?”

there are some artists you see a photo of and just think, “i don’t even need to see your work right this moment, i know you’re going to understand me.”

today i found myself googling “how to write a poem” and it filled me with so much shame. how sad it is that i feel the need to ask how to do something i’ve done my whole entire life.

less gourmand perfumes and more perfumes that inspire you want to write a short story.

wanting to write a book that behaves like the internet: the reader will go down rabbit holes and be moving back and forth thru the text. images & words, footnote hyperlinks. iykyk.

blake butler’s audiobook of Molly has suddenly disappeared from my internet library.

want to write about how john cassavetes, anthony bourdain, and leonard cohen have the same kind of masculinity that makes me want to melt.

there are multiple tiktoks of anthony bourdain that i have saved on my account that i’ve been meaning to write in my journal about.

sometimes i’ll make a list on my notes app of things to do when i have downtime or i’m feeling bored. these include: make apple cobbler, pick up infinite jest again, journal about anthony bourdain videos, take out garbage, start thank you notes to wedding guests

oh yeah i got married. i’m going the dolly route and not talking about my husband or writing about him because he’s that precious to me. my writing will not change due to my marriage. i will stay crazy, i promise.

i’ve had enough cold brew to maybe start writing about Taylor Swift’s decline into disgrace thru the lens of leonard cohen’s “new skin for the old ceremony.”

movies are in constant dialogue with one another.

sometimes i despair, “i am not a real writer!!! i am a fake, a phony!!” then i remember i write a review for every single movie i watch on letterboxd.

i write even when i’m not writing. i write when i’m thinking. i write when i’m walking. when i lie awake at night, i am writing. i write in dreams.

Like I really love the TV show Bojack Horseman, even though a lot of people find it to be cringe lib slop. The show has made me cry countless times and I’ve rewatched it too many times to count.

I let myself listen to whatever music I like and try not to judge myself too harshly for it. Putting so much value on what men in my life liked musically speaking really did a number on me. It’s something I’ve been unlearning for over a decade.

I’m embarrassed by the things I like because there is an imaginary audience that watches my every move. Sometimes it’s a sea of faceless people, other times it’s only one very specific person. I am on watch and on guard. They tell me things like “you should probably be reading something more intellectually stimulating” and “you should probably be finding a way to write about this in a more academic way, otherwise it’s useless.”

I want to watch the Robert Altman movie about a wedding that cleverly explores social conventions and American traditions, yes, and I also want to laugh my ass off at Carol Burnett’s character and look at how pretty the lighting is.

Sometimes things are enjoyed on a surface level and later I can dive in. But sometimes things are comfortable and brought me joy. Sometimes I’m writing thoughtfully. But sometimes I’m just picking my nose.

I am embarrassed by what I like because I am hyper vigilant about what others think of me because I am afraid of not being enough for people or being too much, and don’t want to be abandoned. It’s a shame that the things I like get roped into this internal battle.

there’s a great comic on instagram by harmony becker that depicts what it feels to write:

i’m trying to write, which means i’m not really writing. because writing is writing. it just is. it reminds me of my mantra, a line from Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

here’s the thing: i’m trying to turn a story idea of mine into a novel and it is proving itself to be a very daunting and difficult task, to the point where i feel like maybe i simply “don’t have it in me.” how can i read bad books and think, “christ this is so awful and i bet it was so easy to write because it’s lazy and poorly written,” and yet be completely paralyzed when trying to write my own? maybe because even the worst novels you’ve read, the ones that piss you off to no end that it causes you to write angry goodreads reviews, are still a piece of work that took time, dedication, and yeah, a little bit of skill. skill that i lack, perhaps? i certainly have the time, i can show you my screen time to prove it. i lack dedication, and because i lack dedication, i convince myself that maybe i just “suck” and that i’m simply not destined to be a novelist. because to surrender to the lousy truth is far too painful: i just need to fucking write and i don’t because it’s hard.

writing when lightning strikes makes me feel like god. this is why i have so many meme posts, so many notes in my notes app. i love quick ideas, bolts of inspiration that hit me right in my chest. i used to joke about carrying around a piece of chalk with me on walks because i’d get so many great ideas while wandering the neighborhood with my headphones blaring. “gotta get this down!!!” as if a genius idea is enough to save me. as if a couple good sentences is enough to satisfy. it does for a little while, but then i revisit it and think, “cool yeah sure, but what else?”

there has to be more. i need to do more. write more. be more complete in my thoughts. my quick-witted posts do well because they are quippy and short. are they honest and true? are they written in my own unique voice based on my own observations and opinions and experiences? yes. but they are not fully formed. they are half-baked things that people on the internet like to share because they are often passively reading things that come across their eyes while endlessly scrolling. it does not stir their insides. it does not conjure emotion and deep thinking.

my niece is only 6 months old and her mother works at a library. today i wrote in my diary:

how lucky (NAME) is to have a mommy who works at the public library. i want to make my niece proud by having a book that i wrote in that library. a deeply intimate truth. embarrassingly honest, but it is.

if i want to make it happen, trying won’t be good enough. i have to do it.

but then it came to her: “lena dunham!”

the feeling i had was the equivalent of getting smacked across the face and then spit on. “oh!” was all i said.

honestly though, sure, why not? i was chubby and thick necked with plenty of tattoos splashed across my arms and legs. my hair was atrocious, short and thin and fine and bleached a godawful blonde with my dark roots poking out at the top.

or was it something more spiritual? could she sense the fact that people found me to be very annoying? that i had no friends and “used to” be a writer? that i had OCD? that i was generally hated by the public?

whatever it was that she saw, it hurt my feelings. “just got clocked for having lena dunham vibes :(“ i sent to my now fiance. woe is me, the ugly, chubby girl in a sundress.

today is may 18th 2026 and i just finished reading lena dunham’s new memoir, and find myself scrolling online to find that many people have…changed their minds about LD?

i had always secretly loved her, even at her most hated. any video or post about her on any social media platform was met with comments by people claiming she had sexually assaulted her sibling (not even remotely the case, and she addresses this situation in Famesick.)

she reminded me so deeply of myself, which was probably why i was so hurt to be compared to her. i, too, think if there was a lena dunham stand-in for lena herself, and she was told the same thing i was, that she would be positively mortified and endlessly wounded. we’re just that kind of girl.

her peculiar taste in men, her affinity for adventurous yet chic women who boss her around and tell her what to do, her self-loathing, her art coming from a place of needing to connect to people—yes! this was me, too!

Famesick was unmistakably sad. i was shocked at how sad it was, honestly. her deep loneliness, the passage where she describes her current feelings about jack antonoff were especially painful to read, because i understood it too well. something about needing so desperately to befriend an old flame’s new loves. very fiona apple à la “Ladies,” and it’s no coincidence that apple allows suffers from OCD.

some passages made me revert back to my old Swiftie ways, envisioning a TS post-Matty Healy reading Famesick and going “YES YES YES, THIS IS LITERALLY MEEEEE.” And is it no coincidence that TS is a covert narcissist? Much to consider…

i’m as much of a writer as the next instagram meme admin turned substack word-vomiter, so maybe i should’ve been honored to be compared to somebody with a compelling writing voice. maybe that’s what that stranger saw in me: i was a writer, perhaps a voice of a generation…?

i have since lost 70 lbs (on good days it’s actually more like 80, but i’m writing this after coming back from a trip and eating literal pounds of meat and red velvet cake at a wedding in Texas, where everything’s bigger, including me, apparently) and don’t get the lena dunham comparison any longer. the only comparison i get now is that i look very much like my mom and act very much like an unhealthy combination of both my parents.

but i am so very pleased at the switch up in regards to LD and her reputation. gosh, i must confess, i even went to her mom’s instagram page, where i found a touching post dedicated to Lena. mommy and me pictures abound, along with a childhood photoshoot of a toddler Lena, making a face i certainly would’ve made as a child. the picture moved me. i have a lot of trouble accepting and forgiving myself for things i did and didn’t do. i look at childhood photos of myself and hate that little girl. it’s an ugly feeling i have inside myself, that i am deeply ashamed to feel, let alone type out. but that picture of little Lena made me feel like maybe, just maybe, i can forgive myself?

what about not writing at all? what about daydreaming about writing? sitting in a cafe with your journal, your laptop. scribbling away or tiptapping away, with a coffee and croissant at the table, phone on DND. you have so many great ideas, and they flow out of you effortlessly.

or maybe in your daydreams you acknowledge the fact that it’s not so romantic. writing is a skill, after all. so you imagine a harder working version of yourself. one that gets up and writes with tears in her eyes, because NONE OF YOUR IDEAS MAKE ANY SENSE AND YOU ARE ACTUAL A FAILURE. except you’re not, because at least you’re dedicated, showing up every single day to the table to WRITE. how pathetic am i to fantasize a version of myself so realistically? as embarrassing as my daydreams at work, where i imagine conversations with the people i had just stood in the same room with in unbearable silence. in my daydreams, i am witty and know what to say. in reality, i am standing there, saying nothing.

for most of my 20s i let myself believe in the mythology of my life: maybe i’m just too weird, too misunderstood and strange for the rest of them. now that i’m 30, there is a part of me that realizes this isn’t a secret badge of honor. it’s mostly just a lonely place. one where i’m ashamed of being so afraid to say something in a group of women who have no reason to dislike me. that are certainly not thinking negative thoughts about me, let alone talking shit. and yet, my mind says otherwise. but it’s okay! i’m just different than them, maybe even better. but the older i get, the less this feels right. maybe this is the first step to changing: being aware of the fact that my social awkwardness isn’t cute or special. that it’s going to look more and more like antisocial behavior from an aging adult who suffered from trauma and mental illness and never did anything to help herself get better.

something i will write but not get into: something unfathomably traumatic and horrible happened three days after my last substack post. i still have not written about it. i use that as a marker of how awful it actually is/was. an event so horrible, not even i, a writer, could write about it.

there i go again. calling myself a “writer". i swear it’s something i do because i have no other real vocation. or nothing else that feels right. for a time, i felt like “artist” was most accurate. but i haven’t created art in years. unless you count a painting i made of my grandma’s dead cat Sally, or the countless useless items and distinguishing facial features on my Mii characters in Tomodachi Life.

would you believe me if i told you i used to write poetry and submit them to literary magazines with my full chest? i used to write bad lyrics and record myself singing them, poorly, to my wretched black acoustic electric guitar? i used to be so full of myself, telling myself i was so full of life. ART WAS LIFE. THIS IS WHAT IT MEANT TO LIVE.

but then i wondered when i was going to be discovered, my genius talent. why did i get rejection emails every day? why did people only listen to my music because they got some gossip on boys i dated in high school, or because they were disgusting men who wanted to send me pictures of their penis?

there is no community of artists or writers i was apart of. i was an island, and always was. i took great pride in this. “i love being alone” i wrote in the comment section of a post on being alone. see, i can’t be crazy. someone else online feels the same way i do. i think.

at work the other day, my coworker who i’ve known for years now told me, as she often does, that she was terrified of me the first 9 months she knew me. i’m usually tickled by this story, a tale i often get told by people who end up liking me. “god i thought you were so serious! such a bitch!” the day she recounted the tale, it hurt me. i know i’m sensitive because i’m due to get my period. but this was such a powerful sting. i’ve been feeling especially loserish and foolish lately. i am getting married and my bridesmaids are my sisters and my fiancé’s sister. i don’t have any friends i’m inviting that aren’t already friends with my fiancé.

my other coworker a couple months ago asked me if i had any friends. i told her that i didn’t, but that i knew a lot of people who want to be friends with me. this was meant to be funny, but ended up sounding unintentionally sad. i had a drunken night with an old coworker (noticing a pattern here, guys?) where i told her my deep dark trauma that occurred this past January, ended the night telling each other we loved one another. she’s been texting me asking how i’ve been. i’ve been avoiding her texts. i hate when people want to talk to me.

“why am i like this?” is such a useless question because i know the answer. it’s because of how i was raised. it breaks my heart a little bit for my younger self. in high school, i was friends with a girl whose parents were first generation immigrants from vietnam. the other girls who pretended to be her friend would treat her so fucking terribly. at lunch they’d giggle and sneer, ask her to say something in vietnamese, like a party trick. she’d turn red and stare down at her food. she was quite clumsy and scatter brained, often dropping her books and walking too fast in the hallways, making mean jock boys make fun of her. i remember people saying she wasn’t very smart for an asian. all of this made me tender towards her. she was a person. she was my friend. and yet. one day, she wrote down on my notebook “deep deep down, i think you’re a good person.” why deep deep down? why couldn’t she see myself as a good person straight up? it’s like she didn’t like me and my friendship wasn’t enough, despite the fact that i felt i was the only person who really saw her as a real life person.

i was hurt by people, of course. but i also did my fair share of hurting others. but why couldn’t they understand my home life situation? why was i chalked up to being a bad friend and a bitch when in reality i was suffering tremendously from an unhealthy household?

zendaya’s character in The Drama is poked fun at in a passive aggressive way by a Haim sister for not having any female friends. how sad it is that her maid of honor is the wife of her soon to be husband’s best friend. that’s me. that’s my level of pathetic. of female loneliness. and it’s something i don’t notice until a coworker asks me what i’m doing this weekend, and i tell them nothing much. go on a walk. watch movies with my fiancé. make a nice dinner and enjoy a glass of wine or a cocktail. i’m supposed to have friends but i don’t. and i’m meant to be worried about this, but i don’t until i feel the judgmental eyes on me. the one that says, “oh so you’re a freak” or even “oh poor thing was traumatized and grew up in a toxic household and doesn’t know how to make nor maintain adult friendships!”

i rely on astrology and “knowing myself,” as i argument with these made up phantoms in my mind. “i’m actually just an aquarius so that it explains it” and “i love being alone, i wish i was alone right now” (my favorite thing to do ever since i was a kid, quoting my favorite movies and tv shows when i’m uncomfortable and can’t find my own words to explain myself.)

i used to pace around the basement with my iPod blaring with my headphones on. i was in high school and i’d wear the carpet down with my wandering, i’d daydream of being a youtuber and making music videos with boys i had crushes on. i’d come up with fictional characters and stories. i made my dream boy in my mind so many times from the age of 12-16 until one boy made the mistake of actually liking me. and then i projected all my fantasies onto that poor 16 year old boy, and basically went crazy when he was a normal teenage boy and wanted distance from the far too intense girl making art all about an idealized version of him.

where was i going with this? is what i’m getting out. this writing is my endless teenage pacing. it ends eventually, but not with any real sense of resolution. more like an abrupt stop, like a parent telling their teenage daughter they need to go to bed.

thinking about how i’ve still been going on my daily walks, in spite of the dreary intense cold. my phone comes home with my freezing, like a block of ice i carry inside my home. like something a child would do, like why is your pocket of your winter coat soaking wet? because they wanted to bring in their snowfriend. many such cases...

new mitski looks exciting, love the cat motif and these maximalist promo images. i love artists who are interested in making art, not content. truly engaging with life. i feel the same way about letterboxd reviews. love the ones that add a flair of the personal, a life well-lived and now documented. i, too, enjoy the quippy one-liners every so often. but the true gold resides in the personal essays disguised as letterboxd reviews. my favorite ones i’ve written are all personal too.

my favorite songs right now are: waiting man by king crimson (the studio version and the live version) and one more color (sam dent band version) from the sweet hereafter soundtrack. speaking of which...

on saturday the 11th of january, i took a walk alone to pick up some wine and three different kinds of m&ms. it was already dark and snowing gently. i hate the cold and snow almost as much as i love it. it’s difficult to explain unless you’re a person who is from a place where you get intense winters. the dead quiet of a winter’s evening, how you could just lay in a snow bank and be happy to die there.

that same day, my fiancé and i did a double feature of bus accident movies: margaret and the sweet hereafter. i knew i was going to like margaret, i’ve wanted to watch it ever since i watched a video essay about it by a very small creator who also teaches high schoolers. his insight into cinema is fascinating and i love his channel.

but the sweet hereafter was our third atom egoyan film. we watched exotica months ago and i didn’t know what to make of it. we then watched family viewing, which had some interesting ideas but was more or less lackluster. but the sweet hereafter... that movie made me feel crazy. i ended up writing about it, specifically sarah polley’s character who will haunt me possibly forever? (that’s who’s singing in one more colour by the by.)

that saturday i also had a beautiful whole milk miel latte that i enjoyed inside an actual cafe, something i hadn’t done in a while. something so perfect about honey and cinnamon together...

i chipped my tooth on sunday on some of my aforementioned m&ms, my back molar, that ended up getting polished down due to the lack of damage to anything serious, and i didn’t have any pain (other than the pain of having multiple anxiety attacks and needing to take multiple doses of my hydroxyzine. but that’s neither here nor there.)

i think the tooth chipping was bound to happen considering my diet for the past week or so has been popcorn and m&ms and sugar free soda. like that simply cannot be good for a person’s teeth. the thing that’s my skeleton that can be seen by the human eye. i hate that. i’m also very insecure about how yellow my teeth are, but i’ve asked my fiancé if my teeth look more yellow colored or bone colored and he says they are more bone than yellow. i will take these wins anywhere i can.

on my walk this afternoon i dreamed up a shirt: in the style of those “DUMP HIM” heart shirts but instead of “DUMP HIM” in the center of the heart image, it’s “UGLY.” being ugly feels true to me. something beautiful in being ugly.

“You like?” Spoken by the perfume seller broke my trance. I was twirling my mousy blonde hair, standing like a fool in my Universal Thread parka jacket I had emergency purchased my first winter at school. I wanted the ornate bottle of liquid to change who I was, not unlike I wanted my first drink of liquor to be. As a girl I loved fairytales, I believed in magic, in witches, I yearned for their magic potions, mixing various shampoos and body washes and conditioners in the bath, thinking “Please let this one make me pretty.”

“I love it, I’ll take it.”

***

The Christmas concert was the biggest event of the school year, regardless of which year you were in. A junior in the choir will be having the same meltdown as a freshman in the band as a senior in the orchestra. It gets broadcast to the school’s radio station, a livestream on the school’s website, a professional television recording that gets released shortly after on the local channel, audio recordings get put on CDs available for purchase, and this year is the first year the recordings are getting put on streaming services. The permanency of the internet daunted many students. “If I fuck up the slapstick in Sleigh Ride, that’s gonna be on Spotify forever, and I’m gonna have to fucking kill myself,” I heard a fellow percussionist lament in the common room, with his head in his hands.

Luckily for him, the Christmas concert went about as good as it possibly could have. Or at least I didn’t notice any glaring mistakes. The only mistake made wasn’t even by anyone in any of the bands, but the faculty: there weren’t enough seats. After each band is done with their performance, they sit in the audience to watch the others. There are designated areas and seats for each band, a certain number of chairs reserved. Our band was missing one.

We sat in the audience row by row the same way we sat on the stage, but being a percussionist meant you were never sitting, you were always standing, and you were always the last. I didn’t have a seat.

I stood there a moment, definitely blocking the view of the many faces behind me, contemplating what to do. Stand somewhere along the wall? Go back to the band room and listen from there? Wait out by the entrance? Our band instructor was sitting towards the front, twisting around to see if we had all made our seats. We locked eyes and he was glaring at me, with a “why the fuck aren’t you sitting down” look on his face. I widened my eyes at him as if to say, “because I don’t have a seat to sit on.” I broke eye contact with him after getting pulled down into someone’s lap. Lionel, who wrapped his arms around my waist and sat me down, was the one in the final seat. I turned my face towards his, which was mere inches away, I could smell cigarettes and wintergreen mint on his breath when he whispered, “Just sit here. This is the last band anyway.”

I peered up to see if our band instructor was still giving me glares, but I could only see the back of his shiny bald head. And so for the last 30 minutes of the program, I sat in Lionel’s lap.

Lionel was a lit major who did percussion in the band on scholarship. He was an incredible multi-instrumentalist, taking to the snare drum as gracefully as he took to a marimba. I wasn’t as flexible, I was okay at everything else, kind of, but excelled at the timpani. Something about tuning a drum in felt special to me, I took great pride in my timpani playing.

I never had any sort of big feelings towards Lionel until that evening, with his arms around my waist and his breath down my neck, asking me if I wanted to go around the back for a cigarette. It was after I had said yes, and we had stood up, and I noticed how tall he was, his hair long and hay-colored, eyes wide and brown. I suddenly felt very stupid, which is how I knew I had a crush on him. I beat myself up over this sort of thing, I have for years. How quickly and easily I develop feelings for a person after they give me the tiniest bit of attention, or a simple brush of the hand when passing out papers or something. My brain plays out a whole film of our potential love affair, our potential future lives together. And I turn hot and red and find it difficult to make eye contact. And then nothing else happens.

But I went to have a smoke with Lionel, followed him to the band room to retrieve our winter coats, and out the back door. I wonder if it was the perfume that cast some sort of spell on him, to think I was a cool girl like in my daydreams. Or maybe it was just the fact that I was a girl who sat on his lap for 30 minutes. Maybe it was just that. Horniness does strange things to men, or so I am told by my friends, who have horror stories on the matter.

“Any plans for Christmas?” He asked. He had placed two cigarettes in his mouth and was lighting them both up.

“Just going back home,” I said.

“Where’s home?” He handed me one of the lit cigarettes that was just dangling from his mouth.

“Georgia,” I replied.

He nodded and took a drag. I had drunk cigarettes before, I knew that in order not to choke on the smoke I needed to focus on my breathing, which was difficult because he was making me so nervous. I was able to inhale and exhale like any normal smoker, thank God.

“You going home?” I asked.

He shook his head, tapping some ash off his cigarette, “Staying here. Going to get some writing done.”

“But won’t finals be over?”

He smirked at his cigarette, “It’s not schoolwork.”

“Oh.”

“I’m working on some short stories.”

Never in my life had I heard something so cool. I imagined him sitting in a cafe just off campus, drinking a cappuccino and typing on a typewriter, looking out the window longingly.

“That’s so cool,” I said, dumbly.

We stood in silence for a moment.

“What’re they about?” I asked.

He laughed at this, like really laughed. I felt stupid but I realized how much genuine joy it brought him, so I thought maybe it was worth feeling a little stupid if it meant he was that pleased.

“That’s a loaded question,” he said, “but the one I’m working on now is about a little boy who runs away to the aquarium on the day his parents tell him they’re getting a divorce.”

I imagined this little boy in the story wearing a navy little jacket, running rosy cheeked, tears springing out of his eyes, straight to the whales. A huge mama whale with big loving eyes looking straight at him through the glass. How his own tiny little reflection was right on top of this behemoth. I could smell the water.

“Wow,” is all I could think to say.

The silence settled in again as he finished off his cigarette, mine was only half gone. He was about to light up another one when I offered him the rest of mine, which he took. Our fingers touched during the relay, electricity zapped through my entire body from that place we made contact.

“I’d love to read it,” I said.

“It’s not done yet,” he said.

“Well, when it’s finished then.”

He smiled and said “Sure, why not.”

Without my cigarette, I started to feel incredible lame in my Universal Thread parka jacket standing next to Cool Smoking Lionel, in his very cool, likely thrifted and vintage suede jacket. If only I was smart enough to continue the conversation. If only I was witty enough to come up with a clever joke about the concert we just watched. Or even a sexy, flirtatious acknowledgment that earlier this evening, I was sitting in his lap.

Nothing. Nothing came to mind. I thought of my perfume and how I thought it was giving me some sort of powers. But I couldn’t even smell it on me anymore. The magic must’ve gone away. Or maybe there never was any.

One of us said something about being cold, I don’t remember if it was him or me, or if it was him remarking on how I looked cold, or me saying that to him. Again, I don’t remember. The last thing I remember about Lionel that night was the way the lights outside the building lit up his boyish blonde hair, and him holding open the door, and how tall he seemed, and how all I wanted to do was curl up inside that suede jacket of his, that likely stunk of cigarettes and coffee, I didn’t even know if he drank coffee, but he did in my fantasy. My cappuccino drinking, typewriter tapping, short story writer. I wanted him to lay naked in my bed and read me his short stories while I put makeup on at my vanity. Maybe if I were a different girl, we would’ve kissed. But we didn’t.

We got separated almost immediately after entering the building, his friends pulling him one way, my friends pulling me another. Something about a party, my friends were saying. Something about a secret jazz show at the speakeasy, his friends were saying. We made eye contact one final time, he gave me a little nod, and I nodded back. I hope I looked as cool as I felt.

When I got back from holiday break, Lionel wasn’t there. I heard that his mom and stepfather got into a terrible car wreck on Christmas Eve and died, causing him to not come back for the next semester, and then he never came back at all.

I graduated with a degree in band instruction, taught middle school band for a while in town, and eventually started instructing at a local high school, where I met my now husband, who was an English teacher.

I never saw Lionel again, but one day his name caught my eye. In a pile of books my husband had by the bed, there it was: Lionel Welles. A collection of short stories. I paged through the book to see if the little boy who ran away to the aquarium was in there. He was. I was startled to see the boy wearing a navy blue coat, did I mention that to Lionel? I had just imagined that, I never said anything, right?

There was another short story that caught my eye called The Christmas Concert. Where the narrator shares a cigarette with a pink-haired girl named Peach, who has a lip-ring and a tattoo of a chrysanthemum on her left shoulder. She stands shivering in her worn motorcycle jacket and reads a passage from the beat up book she always carries around with her. These words provide strange comfort to the narrator, especially when days later, he gets word that his parents have died in a tragic boating accident:

On my school notebooks/

On my desk and on the trees/

On the sand on the snow/

I write your name.

I never read his short stories, so I’m visiting them for the first time. What sparked this revisitation of Salinger was actually revisiting early Wes Anderson films, which are so ridiculously Salinger-esque. The Royal Tenenbaums is like a Salinger novel.

This is what I love: when people take the things they love and it becomes something else. Like Anderson loved Salinger and Peanuts, so he made the Royal Tenenbaums, a film that feels familiar yet brand new and entirely unique.

I’m listening to a playlist containing Swedish Christmas songs, which I found while searching “Fanny and Alexander” on Spotify, a series I watched last week made by Ingmar Bergman, who is quickly becoming a favorite, which lumps me in with every other cinema consuming person in the world.

I watched Eddington yesterday and I hated it, it felt so cruel. I’m so used to watching movies that are filled with so much love and care, so much tenderness and honesty, that Eddington felt like someone was laughing at me and everybody else. It was something I feel like maybe I had outgrown. I don’t know. I don’t want to feel cynical like that anymore.

I saw some TikToks by people revisiting Catcher in the Rye in their adulthood and expressing their new found love for the story. I was reading the first couple chapters of Catcher in the Rye the other day, and found myself enjoying it fully. Holden is so damn funny. That’s another thing I enjoy about Salinger, his “goddamns,” which also reminds me of “evermore,” a December classic at this point. Harsher words are used way more often I fear, like “fuck” and “shit.” I miss the softer ones, like “damn” and “hell.” There’s a sort of sophistication to them now.

There’s a blog out there written by a madman, breaking down every single frame of Eyes Wide Shut. Over 154,000 words are written on this blog, about one single movie, which would be a 400-500 page novel. That’s huge. I imagine internet things in this way sometimes. Like I’ll imagine this blog as a book, a giant paperback that I can carry with me when I’m traveling. A companion, a Bible of Schizoposting. I love thinking about books I wish existed based on things I’ve seen online. I would love a psychotic 500 page book on a topic I care about. Someone going mad with the details, losing sleep and hair.

I found a TikTok by a person I will keep anonymous, mostly because she seems to be a very private person and I understand that my account is not a very private place. But she posts these incredible paintings of Taylor Swift and Alice in Wonderland, she has this insane theory that she’s been trying to plan out involving how each Era of TS exists inside the other, and how they overlap and reflect each other, like a sickening house of mirrors situation. She’s drawn these little squares with colors on top of one another that represent the different albums. “They look like granny squares that you could quilt together!” a commenter says. These interactions ignite more inspiration. Which makes my heart positively swell. This is what the internet is for: sharing our schizo-ass conspiracies and weird art and thoughts.

There’s this TikTok I came across of a woman comparing a certain TS song to making her feel like a bird going south for the winter and her bird crush being a part of another flock, and how the song captures the ache of not being able to see your bird crush again. The wind against my feathers, I could feel it. The air. How can someone do that? Was it TS doing it, or the person posting this, saying all this? The magic is in the art-making and the art-understanding. The art simply sitting there does nothing. It is an object, the music is a file that has yet to be pressed play on, the movie needs to be watched in order to be understood.

I lost 108 followers on the day I posted my review of the new TS album. I’m sorry for being a disappointment to the people who thought I’d be above that sort of thing, but I guess I’m not. I thought I had exorcised that demon out of me, but it seems as thought they have more shit to say on the matter...

The truth is I used to be a Gaylor which I think is caused by being a Smart Swiftie, or being interested in thoughtful, deeper readings of the text that TS provides us. I have since been fascinated by the Gaylor offshoot, Performanceartlor (we must come up with better names you guys!) This is all a show, this is all a facade. Better that than the likely reality that she may just be stupid, vapid, shallow. I understand the blogger breaking down every frame of Eyes Wide Shut, everything must mean something, otherwise what does it mean for art? For us art lovers?

There’s something from the movie Jane Austen Book Club that has always stuck with me, I’m serious. There’s a book club consisting of mostly women (and one Hugh Dancy, but does he really count as a man?) discussing Jane Austen novels, and one member laments on the idea that when Austen was writing a character for a novel, that even Austen herself may not know the deep inner life of a character, that the character has secrets and motives that she was unaware of, but that the readers are able to find.

I think of this every time I write fiction, I have to understand that there will be secret feelings and thoughts my character has that will be unknown to me, until I let someone else read it. The creator of the art does not have the key to every locked door: the art-lovers, the readers, the witnesses are the ones that have the keys.

i had made out with one boy before this, we would lay on top of each other on the couch at a house our mutual friend was house-sitting. we would drive over to our friend’s house and ask for the key to the stranger’s house just so we could make out on the couch. looking back, i realize how absolutely selfish and insane this was. but being seventeen is all about acting as selfish and insane as possible.

but me and my very good friend had a huge make out session in the living room of his house, we were on the rug and my entire body broke out in hives due to all the dog hair that was on the rug and we had been rubbing all over each other on top of it for hours.

i remember there being a point to which i wanted to do “more” but didn’t know how to go about it. the urge to suck on something, the urge to DO something. i sucked on each of his fingers instead while he watched. there was a point where he pulled my jean shorts and underwear down and kissed my bare bottom. we were both very stupid.

the day after this all occurred, i was listening to a sufjan stevens song on my iPod and thought, “i should probably figure out where my vagina is.” i had never used a tampon, it scared me way too much, and i had never inserted anything inside myself. is that odd? a seventeen year old girl who’s never done anything like that? i was too scared to be ashamed, i think.

i ended up putting my finger inside while listening to this sufjan stevens song by the way, which is my favorite thing about this whole story. very on brand for the kind of person i was at the time. and then it turns out it didn’t matter anyway, because me and my very good friend quickly called off the whole thing because i was still too much in limerence with my ex boyfriend and he was also scared that i was kind of crazy (i was!)

after that i had a couple months break from anything being inside until i got a boyfriend. he was best friend’s with my ex boyfriend who i was in limerence with, and it all felt like a sick cosmic joke. on our first date, my ex was texting my date asking how it was going. my date asked my ex what gifts i’d want for christmas and my birthday. my ex had wonderful ideas that my date never went through on. being seventeen on the brink of turning eighteen is a nightmare.

fingering happened and the sensation was much different than when i slipped my own finger inside myself. there was context, there was no sufjan stevens playing but there was a gold rush in my stomach. i didn’t know how else to describe it, this new feeling.

i wrote a song about all these sexual feelings i was experiencing. i referred to the sensation as having “stars on my tongue.” i recorded this song and uploaded it to my soundcloud and my ex played it at work while my date was working with him. imagine the air filled with deep fried grease and an indie bedroom pop wannabe in 2013 singing a song about sexual frustration.

the real big moment was eight days before my eighteenth birthday when my date and i, who was now officially my boyfriend, had sex for the first time. i remember the exact thought i had as he entered me, and it was this: oh this all makes sense now.

“WHERE THE DRY OUTSIDE MOVES TOWARD THE SLIPPERY INSIDE” although i wouldn’t necessarily describe his penis as “dry” more like covered in latex and strange lubricant from whatever condom he had tucked away in his bedside drawer.

the thing about having sex for the first time when you’re seventeen and still in high school is that you get to go to barnes and noble with your girlfriends and drink starbucks coffee and look at books and magazines while you tell them every single detail you can recall. we had sex in the late afternoon and i was pouring over the event over coffee mere hours later.

and then the other thing about having sex for the first time when you’re seventeen and still in high school is that you basically use every single opportunity you and your partner hang out as a chance to have sex again. we had sex a lot. basically once or twice every time we hung out on the weekend. which was every weekend. and sometimes on weekdays when we found time.

it used to be like this: we’d put a movie on, we’d start making out on the couch in his basement, my shirt would get pulled up, my boyfriend would stop to look at me and say, “i want to be inside you.” that’s how he’d put it. and then we’d walk over to his bedroom, which was also in the basement, and have sex.

after we broke up, which of course we did, he was going to college hours away, and also what the fuck were we thinking, i had sex with my very good friend because we were both single, and it was very bad. i almost forget to count it, i almost forgot it happened. even now, i look at my very good friend and think “that definitely shouldn’t have happened.” i reminisce far more on our make out session than the time we actually had sex. there is a softness there.

it reminds me of how so many girls i’ve known have horror stories for their first sexual encounters. and i always felt so lucky to not have that. my first sexual encounter was with a very good friend who i trusted very much and i felt very safe with.

the older i get, the more clinical my slippery insides have become. not something like a myth or a mysterious place inside myself. it is an organ and needs to be checked up on. my pap smear was unpleasant but not traumatic, which is, again, something girls i’ve talked to have said. i still don’t use tampons, the thought of putting something up there has always disturbed me. my cavity is used for pleasure and connection or study and examination only.

one day i will have a baby and my relationship to my slippery insides will change and grow yet again. and one day i will cease to menstruate and my slippery insides will have a totally different meaning to me. the ebb and flow of life, me and my slippery insides.

it’s strange, it’s like i can’t even bring myself to type out her full name, it’s easier for me to refer to “her” as IF she’s a person anymore, as TS. the entity, the brand...

but i do want to write about something i’ve been rolling around in my mouth like a loose tooth, something that fluentlyforward said on her podcast regarding TS...

FF was a fan since debut, since the first few chords of teardrops on my guitar hit the radiowaves, while her dad was driving her to school, FF was like “who is THIS...”

i can relate, i was twelve and at a stay-up-all-night-slumber-party at my friend’s house. it was april and there was still snow on the ground. my best friend was sitting at the computer with me, as we usually were, we were the two most plugged in internet girls, the rest of them were watching tv or horsing around or braiding each others hair.

but me and bestie were at the computer, and she was showing me the music video for teardrops on my guitar, and i was fucked forever. that little blonde bitch owned my twelve year old ass from then on. forever and always. for evermore. etc. etc.

FluentlyForward described her younger self listening to TS’s debut, specifically OUR SONG, and daydreaming about being a southern belle, she was like, YES, our song IS a slammin’ screen door!!!

and i was like “FUCK YES THIS IS LITERALLY MEEEEE” because i TOO was a young girl maladaptive daydreaming to TS. debut and fearless quickly became the soundtrack to my daydreams. envisioning myself in a music video, slow mo longing eye contact with me and my 6th grade crush, matt, oh my godddd his eyes green and hair dark and i’m in my green hollister shirt and i’m doodling in my journal, hearts and swirls, padding across my bedroom floor playing dress up.

GIRLHOOD, THIS WAS. TS HELPED ME EMBRACE MY GIRLHOOD.

FluentlyForward brought up such a good point tho, she was like, “TS was also cosplaying as a southern belle, she’s from Pennsylvania!!!!”

the older i got, the more betrayed i felt by TS. because this whole time i was mistaking her confessional writing for TRUTH. which is A LIE.

TS has ALWAYS mythologized her life, turned it into FOLKLORE, she was constantly weaving her life into FAIRYTALES. she was the girl in the dress who wrote JOHN MAYER a song, but was she...literally?

just like me, was i LITERALLY in my best dress, fearless? no, i was in my bedroom, pacing the floors with my headphones on...

there’s nothing wrong with this. if anything, this brings me closer to TS, who i’ve felt so far away from ever since the ERRORS tour, and TRAVIS KELCE trademark****

she reminds me of how fucking autistic i was, (am?) there’s something about how she changes into whoever she’s dating (although i think this is more of a personality disorder thing, BPD anyone? Crazy Ex Girlfriend anyone? I’m just a girllllllll in loooooooove....) and she changes who she is to fit whatever narrative she wants to be in.

listening to FluentlyForward and i almost had to pause and cry. FF is describing Wi$h List!!! off the SHOWGIRL FLOP ALBUM that i didn’t even bother to listen to, and she was like, “this isn’t our girl...this isn’t the girl i fell in love with...TS would want a house with a bookcase, a big library, a garden, a spiral staircase, a skylight in the kitchen...” she painted such a vivid picture, and i started seeing visions of TS in her fairytale house back during the OG Speak Now era.

Speak Now came out when i was a freshman in high school, it was my first TS album i bought with my own money, my sister had borrowed and ripped Debut and Fearless from her friends. Speak Now was MINE, the same way Speak Now was ALL TS, no co-writers, just a girl in a dress writing you a songgggg.

i cut up the insert of the cd and collaged it into my art book, my collage diary filled with paints and girlhood. like oh my godddd.

FF talks about TS being a vlogger, a myspace enthusiast, a tumblr blogger, like yes, i think people often forget these are the origins of TS. a fellow chronically online girl. so one has to LAUGH when TS claims in interviews that she’s terribly OFFLINE these days. fuck that noise, mama is definitely on /travisandtaylor, pulling at her bangs.

why do i know this? because that’s what I’M doing. and she and i are connected by an INVISIBLE STRING. these mentally unwell swifties that kiss her ass and STAN billionaire TS on twitter are not the parasocial ones. the ones that hate TS now, the self-proclaimed RecoveringSwifties are the real parasocial ones. it’s me, hi, i’m the problem, it’s me!!!!!!

it’s because i know whatever...THIS TS is, is not my girl. no way. i’m not supporting this monstrous billionaire with filler face and poorly written lyrics and booze bloat. but i wonder...i always wonder...was there ever a girl in her bedroom writing songs? was there ever a girl crying the whole way home? was there ever a girl terribly afraid, admitting how delicate something is? oh my god was this a lie ALL ALONG??????

why were we all so impressed with folklore and evermore, OMG the confessional writer is finally writing fiction!!! and TS is smirking like “oh my god i’ve been writing fiction this WHOLE TIME. I WAS LYINGGGGGGGG.”

was it all smoke and mirrors? was it really SCOTT SWIFT, SS, creating a billionaire? i’m feeling sick...but most of my youth was built on lies. santa clause, the easter bunny, true love, buying a house with a white picket fence, the american dream, a promising career.

fuck you TS, fuck YOU!!! (lies, lies.)

but whatever is next? I like every tweet i come across that makes fun of TS, yes, let’s laugh at the billionaire. it’s all i have, the only stones i have to throw. and the best part is I KNOW IT HURTS HER. you can see it on her ugly fucked up botox face even, “THIS IS HELPING :))) IF YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT MY ALBUM, YOU’RE HELPING ACUTALLY :))))” i can see her seething. i’m laughing. but i’m also crying. because i don’t know that lady.

confession: i’ve been listening to evermore this entire time... i blocked TS on spotify because i don’t want to ruin my spotify wrapped LOL i listen on youtube instead...i listen through the albums like how i used to listen to TS. put the cd in the cd player and i put my headphones on and daydream. yes. this time i’m writing, i’m so PRODUCTIVE, and i’m high on too much coffee...

the ramblings of a MADWOMAN, this is. an INSANE chronically online former-stan, poisoned by the internet and celebrity brainrot. yes, sure, fine. but for me, i was touched and seen and heard and felt by an artist, (can we really call TS an artist anymore? i fear not...) and i...miss her. or what she used to be. or what she meant to me. whatever i thought she was...

we mythologize one another from afar. or at least that’s a part of my folklore of her. TS...god i still can’t bring myself to type out her name.

***

big wins? i’ve been doing yoga everyday for the past couple weeks. yoga with adriene really is that girl. i’ve been trying my best to also take pictures of her dog benji. like he’s on my iPad screen and i take a picture of the screen with my iPhone. something about taking a picture on your phone of a screen. fuck screenshots! i wanna see the digital screen and it’s little textures. added dimension. the dimension into the ether (the screen.)

i also drink my coffee on my yoga mat. lately it’s been stok cold brew, the ESPRESSO one, with whole milk and s’mores flavored creamer from chobani. i’ve been religiously measuring and counting my food and calories for almost a year now, and i really want to stop but it’s been arduous. this morning i didn’t measure, no numbers, just an eye for the right coffee color, just the tongue for the right coffee taste. i’m going to pour myself another one. i hope calories learn how to kill themselves because they’ve caused me so much pain. i am drinking my coffee from a mug shaped like a chicken. i got it for christmas years ago. mother hen carries the coffee in her body.

***

mourning internet personalities who escape the internet and i have no way of checking in on them, reading their writing, looking at their photographs, basically not having any access to their personhood. thisishangingrockcomics, taylor ruth baldwin, morphinesleep, WHEREARTTHOU? i want you to write a book that i can purchase in a paperback, preferably in the same size and feel of danielle chelosky’s PREGAMING GRIEF, and carry it around with me and pull out to read random passages and treat it like a bible. fuckhead, i miss you!

i say this with my instagram account deactivated. i was in my luteal phase and feeling despair. i had a meltdown in bed and sobbed to my man about how much of a failure i am. i am currently on day 5 of my period and i’m feeling good. my hormones are trying to kill me.

***

i free-bled in the creek this week. i also free-bleed my last day or two of my period due to pad fatigue. i will never put a tampon up my vagina ever in my life. that mere thought depresses me. i don’t care if i sound too woo-woo and granola, but free-bleeding or bleeding on a towel or even some sort of underwear specifically made for periods is the way to go. pads are also fine, but the smell…

***

CONFESSION: i am addicted to music. right now i can’t stop listening to MEGA CIRCUIT by japanese breakfast. after my shift, i exited the building and put my headphones on and queued the song up. the drums, the BUHDUHDUHDUN, it reverberates through my entire body. it’s also about loving an incel, which i mentioned michelle zauner talking about in a video in an earlier substack post. are these things called posts? or articles? or essays? who cares honestly.

DEEP DARK CONFESSION: i listened to PUT YOUR NUMBER IN MY PHONE on repeat one night when i couldn’t fall asleep for maybe…an hour? like a true hour of listening to that song on repeat. i was listening to it on repeat for so long that it felt like the song never ended, that it was a continuous song that went on and on and on… i know ariel pink is cancelled to hell and back, i will never forget when he went on tucker carlson, it was the funniest thing that ever happened, but he really put his whole pinkussy into that song. TALK TO MEEEEEE, it’s now or never babe…

i listened to that song a lot my freshman year of college too, pre-cancelation, back when he was like, cool i guess? i never really got into any of his other songs, if that’s any consolation.

***

i’ve enjoyed lorde’s new album, but my unpopular opinion is this: broken glass is cringe because i find songs about eating disorders to be a bit cringe and too on the nose. it’s just embarrassing… i don’t know. maybe this is something i have to work through. but using broken glass as a metaphor…good lord(e) can we please stop?

***

getting into the bad habit of not wanting to eat and wanting to just drink things. i have coffee and think i can just have another. and another. and another. and skip food entirely. just have a zero sugar soda! just have a tea! just have water! just have an electrolyte beverage! food feels unnecessary at times. convince myself that if i break my food fast that i end up craving food that i don’t need. like in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD how immortan joe convinces the people down below that if they drink too much water, that they’ll become dependent and addicted. but you NEED water to live. just like you NEED food to live. and yet…

***

gonna go for a walk now…

you find eli’s channel, wandering whispers, he’s cute, that’s the first thing you think. and for the first time in a long time, you don’t think. his hand movements mesmerize you. you feel your eyelids getting heavy. his silky, soothing whispers. men usually terrify you, make you feel uncomfortable and wrong. but eli’s voice is tender, comforting. you fall asleep within 7 minutes. he is your new favorite asmrtist. you hit subscribe when you awaken.

you go to work, you come home, you listen to his asmr all the time, on walks to work, on walks home from work, while you’re sewing a shift dress from old fabric you thrifted, he’s in your ears constantly. you feel a weight being lifted from your shoulders. your mother remarks on how much calmer you seem. you smile at her.

eli posts on the wandering whispers community board, he says he’s starting a patreon. “no pressure to join at all whatsoever” but you became a patron in minutes. you are giving a cute stranger on the internet that helps you stay calm and fall asleep, that soothes you through panic attacks, and keeps you company on walks, two dollars a month. you’re not even sure what kind of content he’s going to provide but you don’t mind. you just want to be closer. you just want more.

the patreon gets filled with behind the scene videos, a tour of his various microphones and set up. in these videos, he’s speaking normally, no whispering or soft spoken monologues like his youtube videos. he’s “being himself” as he describes. you find these videos less soothing, but somehow more comforting. like how facetiming a friend may feel like, if you ever facetimed any friends. you start listening to these videos while hanging out at home on your days off. you sit outside on the back deck, tanning on a towel, laughing at his off the cuff jokes.

there are videos of him and his wife, samsara, a beautiful woman who paints lemon trees and sells them to rich people living in la, discussing their relationship, how they met, how long they’ve been married. you realize he’s ten years older than you. she’s seven years older than you. they’re in an open marriage, they seem so much older and wiser. the patreon community that you are apart of start jokingly referring to eli and sam as “dad and mom.” you do something you’ve never, ever done before. you start leaving comments. you don’t feel anxious about it. for the first time in your life, it doesn’t make you anxious being seen. eli “likes” your comment. you scream and show your mom. she smiles, not sure what it means, but liking what it’s doing to you.

he starts making ambient music, you start streaming his music on spotify. field recordings of his backyard home just outside la. you can hear the ocean. you pretend you are sitting beside eli. you feel somewhat ashamed, but you’re so at peace, it almost doesn’t matter.

eli decides to make a discord so that he and his patrons can have more intimate conversations. he says he wants more connection, and that his asmr channel and the patreon have changed his life. you comment about how excited you are to join, and that his channel and the patreon has also changed your life. you become a regular in his comment sections on every social media platform eli has. he likes every comment, and even starts to respond.

on instagram, he sends you a private message. he asks you about commissioning a dress for his wife’s birthday. you post your sewing on your instagram account. you forget that people can view your social media and perceive you. you’ve been living so much more openly and freely lately, you haven’t had the chance to feel insecure and second guess yourself and your posts. you tell him of course you can. he asks where you’re located. you say you live in the midwest. he asks how you’d feel flying to la to stay with him and his wife. you tell him you couldn’t afford it. he told you not to worry about it. that he would fly you out. he says they have an old sewing machine, and that he has the fabric. you say ohmygod of course. it gets figured out. you get coworkers to cover a couple shifts. you tell your mom and start crying. your mom kisses the top of your head, she says she’s so happy you’ve found a friend.

samsara picks you up from the airport. la is hot and you feel almost too tired to be anxious. but samsara intimidates you. she’s so beautiful, tall, her skin smooth and dark from the california sun. she smells of coconuts. her dress is a flowy and orange with a haltered top. you steal glances of her body and try to guess her measurements. she catches you looking at her chest and you burn a hot red. she smirks.

their house is open and lush, lemon trees in the yard, a hot tub in the back, a garden growing tomatoes and spearmint and basil. you enter their abode and samsara says to put your things in the guest bedroom, right next to eli’s recording studio. “he’s in there now” sam tells you, and puts her finger to her lips like a librarian shushing. you nod and try to be as quiet as a kitten. you put your ear up to the wall shared between the guest room and the recording studio. you can’t hear anything but you convince yourself that maybe you can hear the tiniest clicks, his fingers grazing a microphone cover, the softest whispers. you close your eyes.

eli emerges from the studio at suppertime, where you and sam prepared grilled corn and fresh pasta salad with tomato and basil from the garden, and mozzarella made from scratch at the farmer’s market. you are starstruck with his presence. he’s shorter than you thought he’d be, a lot thinner also. you are reminded of the old saying “the camera adds ten pounds.”

during dinner you are shy and quiet, witnessing eli and samsara’s interactions. light conversation about their days, giggle at their jokes. you feel the same as you do when you watch their videos together. it isn’t until eli asks you a question that the spell is broken. you tense up, you stutter, uh i uh. eli smiles at you, his eyes crinkle, samsara looks at you a little worried. you think she hates you. or at least finds you strange. you decide to focus on eli’s gaze, and you remember the comfort he’s brought you for months now. you settle into his vision and remind yourself that it’s just like watching his videos, there’s just another camera, and it’s pointed at you. but eli is behind it. you settle. you soften. you open your mouth. you remember how to talk. he finds you amusing, you melt, samsara focuses on the cob in her hands.

you find eli easy to talk to. you discuss your middle names and tragic middle school stories. you find him relatable despite the age difference. he opens up about his agoraphobia, something he’s only mentioned in passing in patreon videos. you tell him about your horrible anxiety, “but you’ve seriously helped me so much.” he reaches for your hand and squeezes. he whispers, “you honestly don’t know how much that means to me.”

there is a kind of routine that reveals itself while you spend weeks there: breakfast of coffee and oatmeal, samsara spending most of her days painting in her studio, running errands, meeting with customers, so it’s just you and eli for the most part. you sew samsara’s dress, it’s fabric from significant garments in her life, your job is to spin it all into one beautiful collage of experiences. something wearable and unique. eli starts inviting you to the recording studio. you feel like a fan visiting the set of friends or something. you say this to eli, who laughs. you can’t believe the things you say to eli. the way you have thoughts now and how quickly they pour out of your mouth without hesitation.

he starts asking you for input into his videos, he asks your opinion on the way things sound. which microphone sounds better. which camera fits the mood of the script. you help him with his asmr and his ambient music.

you tell him that you eventually have to go back home, your coworkers only willing to cover so many of your shifts, only so much paid time off you have. eli says he’ll pay you for the time spent helping him with his work, along with the dress commission, he says you can live with them for as long as you’d like. you haven’t paid for food once. you’re technically not actively making money but you’re in this limbo, in a dreamlike state where money is no object. you just spend your days creating with eli, spinning thread, listening to whispers, mixes of dishes in the kitchen and twinkling bells.

you explain your situation to your boss, who doesn’t understand, but says she’ll hire part timers in the meantime. you explain your situation to your mother, who doesn’t understand, but says she loves you, so much.

your skin gets freckled and tan from the california sun. you start gaining a little weight and your clothes get a bit tight. eli says you looked too thin when you arrived, and that he’s happy that he and sam are able to provide you with delicious and nutritious meals. you explained to him before about your anxiety being so bad that you could hardly eat. you feel yourself healing. eli remarks on this. even samsara, in passing moments, eyes you up and down and tells you how great you look. you beam. sam let’s you borrow some of her clothes. airy, billowy garments that keep you breezy and cool. eli doesn’t like when you wear samsara’s clothes, you ask him why, finding this strange, but he doesn’t explain. he gives you some old wandering whispers merch to wear instead. you mix the both of them to try and appease them both.

eli’s been begging you to star in an asmr video with him. you explain how shy and nervous you are around cameras. “but you’re not shy and nervous around me,” he says. “let’s pretend it’s just you and me.” you hesitate, for the first time in months you hesitate, but eventually succumb. you sit next to him in front of the camera. whisper into the same microphone.

your joint asmr video becomes one of his most watched videos on his youtube channel. “they love you,” he says. “they love you, they really love you!” he asks if you’ve read any of the comments. you tell him you’d rather die. you tell him that sounds mortifying to know what people could be saying about you. she asks him how on earth he does it. “i love when people talk about me,” he winks at you. you laugh but it doesn’t feel like it’s coming from your stomach. more like your chest. the kind of laugh you practice at work.

“you should really look at the comments",” he persists. you wonder if you’re missing something, you finally check, your stomach in knots the entire time. the comments are positive. all of them. a lot of them are about how cute you are. “she reminds me of a little ladybug!! so sweet :)” you find yourself smiling at this one the most. you remember your bedsheets at home, the little ladybugs on the little leaves. you feel homesick for the first time.

you continue reading. comments about how well your voices come together and come undone. how the whispers entangle and entwine. “i got tingles for the first time in years thanks to this video.” you can’t help it. you start to tear up. is this what eli feels like all the time? feeling completely seen? you ask him. he looks at you confused. he finally shows you his phone, the comments he was actually referring to.

“y’all are sooooooo hot together omg”

“um, please say you’re dating right now!!!”

there is a pit in your stomach, a stone that you thought had passed long ago that has since returned. perhaps it had just laid dormant all this time, waiting for the right moment to pulse and harm again.

your reaction doesn’t bode well for eli. he avoids you for a while. doesn’t ask for your help in the studio. you spend more time completing samsara’s dress. finishing touches at this point. you start to miss your mother. you start having dreams of laying in a hammock, ladybugs surrounding you, you can’t see your mother in the dream, but you can feel her there. you dream of samsara making a lemon meringue pie that you consume and vomit in the garden, eli holding your hair back, but you keep pushing him away. he won’t leave. your anxiety revisits you like an old friend, you struggle to fall asleep, but you don’t watch wandering whispers anymore. it doesn’t feel right somehow. you lay in darkness. you hear the ocean. you miss the midwestern birds and cicadas. you wonder if this was maybe a bad idea.

samsara’s dress is complete and you knock softly on the recording room door. it opens, you peer inside to find eli deep in thought at the computer, headphones on. you clear your throat, you try your best to make your presence known, but are too afraid. he turns around to face you.

“sam’s dress is finished,” you say.

eli nods sadly, “would you come here and listen to this?”

you feel lifted, forgiven by him, you just want things to go back to how they used to be. you tell him of course. he slips the headphones off his head onto your ears, like putting earmuffs on a little kid about to go outside and play in the snow. you feel guilty for feeling so weird now. he’s done so much for you. let you live here for free for so long. you wonder what’s wrong with you. you wonder why you can’t just be normal. eli can sense your tension, he rests his hand on your shoulder, comforting. you smile at him, mouthing “thank you.”

he presses play on a track he’s working on. it makes you cry. it’s sad and moving, despite the lack of lyrics, the lack of words. when the track is over, you explain this to eli. you tell him that he somehow finds a way to move you without words, just sounds, just noises, just music, just unintelligible whispers and vibrations.

eli says the song is about you. is for you. he’s looking right at you. he is sitting next to you. you can feel his body heat. he leans in to kiss you. you let him. you kiss back, trying to figure out his rhythm. he kisses unlike his whispers, unlike his videos. he kisses hard and wet. he moves things along, fast and hard. an image of a mirror falling into sharp shards comes to mind. this is what his kisses feel like, you think.

you stop thinking then. you become your own voyeur, you are floating above two kissing people, fumbling bodies, slurping and gasps. you are not in your body. you float in the air. you float out the recording studio to the backyard, you float above the hot tub, you can feel the hot mist.

you are snapped back into your body when eli starts saying things you wish you could unhear. words like cock and suck and fuck and tits and come and pussy. you do what you are told to do. you just do it, like when you’re at work and your boss tells you to do something. an automatic thing, an unthinking thing, muscle memory almost. you had a boyfriend before, a long time ago. you remember how to do things. you remember the movements. you feel skin in your hands, you feel your hair being pulled, you feel hot slaps, you feel but don’t quite feel. you wish you knew how to describe it instead of feel it. actually, you wish you were as far removed from this experience as possible. you wish your mom could pick you up. you wish you could just disappear. fingers enter and exit, he comes on your face without asking.

eli acts like things are back to normal. you spend most of your days together, even more so now that the dress is complete. you think of ways you could escape. you text your mom and ask her to call you, “pretend someone is very sick and that i need to come home.” she calls your phone within ten seconds of sending the text.

“mom?” you answer.

“you don’t have to explain anything to me. please come home.”

you turn into a puddle of tears. you can’t help it. there is a release. you are nearly free. you can almost taste it. it tastes salty. eli tries to comfort you, you are stiff to his touch. you remember how odd it is that he used to be so calming to you. how quickly things can change. how easily people can ruin things. you say you have to go home. you say your uncle is very sick. eli asks if you were close. you continue to cry, don’t answer. he waits until he becomes irritated. he says you have to stay for samsara’s birthday party, at least. it’s on friday. you think you can survive until then. you say okay. he asks you for a blowjob. you give him one.

eli gifts sam the dress you made her in the morning at breakfast, she says it’s gorgeous and that she’ll wear it to the party that evening. you spend the whole day helping them prepare. making cucumber sandwiches and angel food cake with fresh strawberries and homemade whipped cream. you help hang up lights and streamers. you make lemonade from the lemons from the lemon trees in the backyard.

just before the party, samsara tells you to change into something nice, and offers her wardrobe. she stands in front of the mirror, admiring her figure in the dress you made her. the dress you realize you still haven’t gotten paid for making. you choose the orange dress she wore when she first picked you up. you slip it on, and it fits beautifully. all of her clothes smell of coconut. when her eyes reach your body, she stiffens, but quickly softens and turns back to her reflection. “i wore that the first time i met you,” she says.

you tell her you know.

she says, “it’s a shame you have to leave so soon. i know eli really liked having you around the house.”

the way she said it made you feel like she was describing a dog.

she looks at you once more, eyes you up and down, settles on your face, looking at you with…what? pity? she smirks and says, “i’m sorry you couldn’t find what you were looking for, out here with us, living here for free.”

she spins around and walks out of the room before you get a chance to open your mouth. you stand where she stood, look at yourself in the mirror. you don’t even know who that person is. but then you step closer, examine your face, you find your freckle constellations. there’s your big dipper, your orion’s belt, your recognizable sky. you look down at samsara’s vintage vanity, her million rings and necklaces and perfumes. you see a small pile of little bug bodies in a tiny glass jar. you pick it up and jingle it next to your ear, little crispy wings and legs tap the glass. you see they are all ladybugs.

you leave samsara’s room and exit their house through the back garden. guests arrive and say hello to you. they must recognize you from the asmr video. or maybe they’ve seen your ghost haunting their hallways, maybe they’ve seen you in the window. you breeze past them, you keep going, keep walking, you’re not sure where. you just walk. and walk. and walk. you’re surprised nobody has tried to stop you. you’re also thankful. you keep on until you eventually realize you need to call an uber. you go to the airport. your uber asks where your luggage is. you realize it’s back at the house. you shrug. he doesn’t care anymore and starts to drive. you roll your window down. rest your head on the edge. ocean air flips your hair around, it breezes samsara’s dress, coconut fills your nostrils. you decide you hate california and you’re never coming back.

at home, your mom doesn’t pry, she simply has your favorite meal ready for you to eat. “welcome home, bug,” she says.

it takes a while but you start working again, picking up shifts whenever you can. your coworkers remark on how different you look. before you would’ve self consciously touched your face and asked “in a good way or a bad way?” now you just smile and say “i know.”

you start biking to and from work, without headphones on, just taking in the sounds surrounding you. you start recording your bike rides and upload them to your laptop and edit them. you record yourself tapping on various objects in your bedroom, whisper about your upcoming sewing project: a tapestry of experiences, a physical collage you are invited to touch, maybe even wear. it’s just an idea, you say. you upload the video to youtube. people find you organically, some know you from the wandering whispers video, some don’t.

eli messages you about your uncle. he asks you if you’re okay. he says he still has your clothing and belongings at the house. that he can hold onto them until you visit again. he says he saw your video and watched it over and over until he fell asleep. he says he’ll share it with his followers. he asks why you haven’t been responding. he asks if samsara said anything to you. the messages eventually stop. he drops a new ambient album, songs you helped work on are on there. the song about you is on there. it doesn’t make you cry. it’s entitled “freckled baby.” his fans on his subreddit discuss how it’s probably about you, “samsara doesnt have freckles.”

“whatever happened to her?” you wonder the same thing sometimes. the mirror reflects somebody more familiar, but still someone unfamiliar. perhaps a person you are learning about every day. a person you are getting to know. you think you like her. she knows she likes you.

a new girl starts staring in eli’s asmr videos. you don’t subscribe to him anymore, you don’t follow him at all, you don’t give him two dollars a month on patreon anymore. he still never paid you for the dress. for the time. for any of it. you know he probably feels like he was the one who was swindled. you let him believe whatever he wants to believe.

there is an apartment building you are looking at living at, close to your mom’s but even closer to work. your mom is so proud of you. you buy new clothes. you never want to see a lemon ever again in your life. you hate the smell of coconut. you have 2,202 subscribers on your asmr channel. you keep biking and hit record. you sit outside to record a whisper video. a ladybug lands on your face during the filming. you smile. you close your eyes. you continue your life. or life continues through you.

• did you know michelle went to college for creative writing even though she didn’t really get into reading until she was in college? i was the opposite. SUPER into reading when i was in elementary school throughout high school and then my love for it really died down. i just realized i got my first iPhone in college…coincidence? mayhaps…

• anyway, michelle talks about how she wanted to write like a GREAT MALE WRITER and wrote short stories about war and shit. #shesliterallyme

• except for…she really isn’t, i WISH that was me. because when i was doing my stint in college cosplaying a creative writer, i was writing thinly veiled fiction about things that happened to me in high school. BOO HISS, THROW TOMATOES AT HER. if anything, this is what i’m doing NOW these days. my fiction pieces are loosely based off of people i knew and things that happened to me or people i know. like girl, you’re a cliche. write short stories about being a white drunk male in the 40s and how he’s coping with the war!! be michelle zauner!!

• i’m reading lorrie moore because michelle zauner recommended her and said she loved her writing. alright!! we love when women support women!! michelle also discussed infinite jest, a book i will think about for the rest of my life and never read. she said it was actually incredible, and that she really is interested in “incel lit” and i was like. girl. YEAH. she gets it. michelle GETS IT.

• i have gotten the “femcel” label before on my posts in the comments and even on subreddits. i remember YEARS ago on the redscare subreddit someone saying dankzell is the female r crumb. this did awful things to my ego (inflated it like a balloon! please stop!)

  • side note to the note: i tried to find this post on reddit and can’t find it and now i feel like i’ve made it up but I KNOW I HAVEN’T, PLEASE BELIEVE ME DESPITE THE LACK OF PROOF!

• i think it’s easier to write the way i do because i’m in such a committed and loving relationship and have been in one for nearly 10 years. like yeah i can write like a deranged femcel because…i’m really not one anymore? or maybe i IDENTIFY as one.

• there was a podcast i used to listen to, BABY GENIUSES with emily heller and lisa hanawalt, and in an ep, emily said she culturally identifies as being single despite the fact that she’s in a committed relationship, and is now married to that person. like YES i feel that, i am culturally single. i am culturally femcel coded.

• this is why i like lorde’s new album a lot more that solar power. super disgusting, very grotesque female. can we start making that a thing? grotesque female. or the grotesque feminine. yeah i'm into that. like how lorde is singing about someone tasting her underwear and spitting in her mouth and how she rode someone until she cried. like. do i really have to say it? #shesliterallyme

• i love how i just started typing and all this shit pours out of my proverbial mouth and onto the screen and now there’s a cohesive theme: #SHESLITERALLYME

• i love when i see myself in other people, and when other people see themselves in me!! the internet is a great place to find other people. the internet can be accessed through screens, which double as mirrors… something something something. dig there if you want, i’m stopping because i’m too afraid of what i’ll unearth.

like i looked up the “substackwriter” tag on tiktok and scrolled for minutes, past the same skinny pretty women who all live in, idk, new york or whatever, posting about how they LOVE substack and it’s like BLOGGING IS SO BACK BABY and that they feel like carrie bradshaw with their tiny little tube tops and flowy skirt tip typing on their cunty little laptop.

i’m literally writing on my iPad that i use when i turn into an iPad baby (lay on floor or bed, on stomach, with one of my legs at a 90 degree angle, craning my neck to watch a movie or a YouTube video) and i’m wearing underwear and the top i’m going to eventually wear to work. it’s raining outside. there is an empty dr pepper zero can on my nightstand. i am not carrie bradshaw. i’m bloated and holding in my pee.

so substack is intimidating because all the girls who use it are hot esoteric tiktok users who also vlog their skinny girl alt lit lives on tiktok. but it’s also intimidating because lmfao I CANNOT WRITE AN ESSAY TO SAVE MY DAMN LIFE.

i have an english degree, which is pathetic to say the least, but it’s from a school nobody knows about or has ever even heard of, so maybe that’s more understandable. the concept of writing an essay is SEXY to me, of course, offuckingcourseitis, i was in my early 20s during the era of Publications of Big Sex Essays By Sexy Girl Writers, durga chew bose, tavi gevinson, lena dunham, etc etc etcccccc. But my brain doesn’t work in that way. i guess what i mean is: i am not very smart and i cannot make up for my lack of smarts with drive and passion and hard work because i’m also very lazy.

this is why i’m drawn closer to things like Instagram. like i can post on a whim, on an impulse, this is sort of how i’ve always written anyway.

i wish i could be sexy cool girl writer with her messy desk and notebook filled with esoteric musings and cool posters on the wall and empty wine bottles and clove cigarettes (? clove cigarettes are actually super gross also do people even smoke those anymore?) but i’m not. i’m schizoposting on the IG or tumblr, violently typing on my phone as fast as my chubby thumbs can go. posts visit ME if anything, i am never carefully writing an essay or complete thought. this! now! even this thing now! is just a cosmic fart ripping through my head into my fingertips as i tip tap on my iPad keyboard that’s connected via BlueTooth.

i’m never going to be the It Lit Girly!!! i am too broke, too weird, too stupid, and too lazy. but a girl can dream… a girl can, as a treat, look through the “substackwriter” tag on TikTok and pretend to be a girl who can write a coherent thought, plan out an essay, come up with their own original ideas. mmmmmm the concept of being smart, mmmmm the mere delicious THOUGHT of putting in hard work and coming to a satisfying conclusion.

substack isn’t like blogging though because blogging is a lot more personal and crazy and while it was still very performative, the kind of performances happening on substack are a lot more, uh, pseudo academic, whereas tumblr performance was like. pretending to be the craziest most misunderstood girl in the proverbial tumblr high school? like take me to tumblr prom? (are you guys too young to remember this stuff…)

anyway! nothing inspires me more to write than my deep longing and desire to be a writer and to be writing but feeling too negative and down on myself about it so i write about wanting to write through writing about how i am a piece of shit. and the crowd goes wild, rah rah rah.

actually though, my letterboxd has given me such satisfaction because i’ve actually written some reviews on there that i’m actually proud of, and feel relatively smart while also being personal and fun! i don’t want to share it quite yet but, IYKYK. so maybe i DO have the chops to be a substack girly…to be determined!!!!