The imperative to source Tesla’s and Ferrari’s makes me want to go to the marble palace and listen to the echoes of my own wretching.
The CEO is now gone, and has been for two weeks. His words, ‘we are in the business of hiring Tesla’s, and Ferrari’s, and Porsche’s. We also need some solid and reliable Honda’s’ churn through my brain pathways every time I review another portfolio, another resume, another copywriter or designer who needs some way to pay bills for their artistic training.
Today, I breeze past the front-desk attendant while she settled someone in the clinical red room, the color of clean blood. My schedule would allow for some blotches on my face, at least for two hours. Some people can cry, and look like they briefly have glassy, yet dewy eyes.
I am not so lucky. I have learned to hold my tears, to breathe deeply, and to create a casing of resting bitch face in spaces of high stakes commerce. In the bathroom, I can crumble, for a few, knowing that no one looks for me. For now, I can tuck my knees into my protruding belly, put my head between my knees, and feel the hot tears saturate my leggings and release audible sobs.
This creates less blotches on my face. The blotches, more of a mosaic of various saturations of all the warm colors, could yield hundreds of hex codes with the eyedropper tool in Photoshop.
The crumbling stops when someone starts punching in the key code. There is enough time to stand from my squat and sit on the toilet seat, usually with my underwear up.
For all she knows, I am taking a long shit.
I wait. Pull some toilet paper from the dispenser, taking my time. In the women’s bathroom, many people hold their poop, I think, when others are in the bathroom. In all my crying jags, people are in, then out of the stall.
The waiting for the mirror check takes the longest. In such a building, the bathrooms have separate mirror areas, ideal for losing five minutes to perfect lip gloss, or pin hair 10 different ways.
When the door clicks shut, I make my escape, washing my hands. I take a paper towel, wet it, and absorb the smell of pulp as I cool my face. The blotch level is a six, the same as a contained yet noticeable splash with a cannonball at the deep end of a swimming pool.
Luckily, I can skate back to my desk, quietly. I am on the outer edge, and I only have to walk past the front-desk attendant, who barely says hello to me. She looks up to my boss, who brags about drinking three $30 glasses of wine and worships the the Kardashians, the Hiltons. They want their own reality show together, and I can’t understand how someone who reads Margaret Atwood worships the equivalent of Ayn Rand, or Anne Coulter.
Or maybe I have always been too wary of tall, thin blonde people with disposable income and who express unironic eagerness to dress as Regina George from Mean Girls for Halloween.
My tears, I try to keep them private. I know their poison tentacles. If tears come, the bathroom stall accommodates the drops staining cloth, the sink soothes the red splotches.
When the top of my head ruptures after a gun smack, my tear ducts clog. Blood streams down past my shoulders, on some $10 polyester orange and white stripe polyester sleeveless shirt.
I need them tomorrow, in a bathroom, to remind me that going to the police office days later would yield faulty recall, relational remembering, a wound in my head.
I refused the ambulance. Where is the $500? Risk management isn’t going to pay my bill.
**
I saw the face for three seconds, and then buried my face in the uneven cement. It was me, and two others. Drunk, kinda of drunk and sober enough to drive.
We walk to a car, a block too far. Do people hop out from an ally behind some bushes and smack people.
Right now, they do.
**
To the reporter who shows up on my second floor apartment at the bottom of a hill, no gate, no elevator, laundry across the street. Her face, full of make-up, asks me if she can record a statement.
I ask her to leave.
**
I don’t know how to shoot a gun. I didn’t want anyone else to get smacked with a gun.
I have a headache. Again.
What if my skull caved in, and brain matter splattered on the ground?
I once wrote a long paper for graduate school about community garden movements in post-9/11 New York City. Brooklyn, specifically, where I lived at the time. The writing process made me fall out of love with living in New York City. I wanted to live somewhere cheap where I could organize my wobbly executive functioning and attempt to piece together 100 pages of coherent writing.
I left my home of nine years to complete this really long paper that required reading material that I can scarcely recall in detail right now. The book titles, and the general themes, sure. But could I quote a passage? Only if I practiced in my own head in front of a mirror for multiple hours. Staring at myself pretending to be someone else gets boring after awhile, especially when I already have an inborn proclivity to stare at my own image above anything else.
I wish I could quote Lacan right now. In order to do so, I pull up Lacan quotes on a search engine.
“What could be more convincing, moreover, than the gesture of laying one’s cards face up on the table?”
The alternate is face down, my default setting. No one besides me, my thesis advisor who I don’t speak with, and a department administrator who didn’t like my lack of formalism in writing, have read this paper. Most people have no idea I labored for a year of my life reading a stack of 100 books to write this paper. I refer to it often in my own head.
I didn’t write it with an audience in mind. It was a distillation in my own shift of political and personal consciousness, and it weaved through Jack Halberstam and belle hooks as much as highly designed books about the promise of community garden movements.
Is our new form of developing green space in urban environments a new form of colonization? I didn’t ask the question so neatly five years ago.
One of my extreme weaknesses about writing is my intense fear of reading my own writing. I glaze over it, treating revision as fixing items that a more detail oriented person would catch. I am also terrified that someone will secretly think I am a moron and tell other people how stupid I am because I make mistakes. It scares me that what I am writing is by no means original.
My feelings aren’t that extreme anymore. They persist. And everytime I take the Myers-Briggs, I land squarely as an INFP, even when major life shifts occur. This is natural, apparently, for my typology.
It still makes me cringe when people say that mostly abandoned blocks should be razed for greenspace. I think people don’t think too deeply about the history of marriage, a major organizational tool for social relations.
Is Manifest Destiny attempting to inward? In what name?
Oil lips with the tips of taste buds
Liquids clashing
Just her own tone
Of sticky rose fuchsia colliding
With my slimy mushy banana texture
Mint flavor mouth
How do I get lipstick off my face? When did I last wash my cheeks with something besides shampoo trickling down my face?
Quit overthinking. Kiss, make up a beat, her mouth is slimy fruit mouth too. No one wants to walk a plank right now.
An upright stiff will only fall like a feather from a pillow on the edge of a coffee table.
At this time, I have now lived five months in Baltimore. The last place I lived, in Philadelphia, truly brought out every living anxiety in me. Many like to say Baltimore and Philadelphia are similar cities. They are in terms of the depth of police brutality and the institutionalized segregation, and even in terms of the architecture of some of the row house style housing stock.
Philadelphia feels more like a college town, one that venerates youth and people involved in radical politics that judge quickly. Baltimore? Well, I am learning. I don’t feel like hiding under a rock anymore like I did in Philadelphia.
The long-timers in Philadelphia didn’t like the influx of out of towners coming into the city. Like New York, Philadelphia is a tale of many smaller cities, one where people feel an allegiance to their neighborhoods and ask – and judge a person – based on where he/she lives. Baltimore is similar too, I guess. I haven’t exactly attempted to dive deeply into the social scene here upon arriving here. The people I do meet don’t ask me ‘what neighborhood do you live in’ right away. That is actually refreshing. I am not my neighborhood. Anyway, someone who judges you based on the neighborhood you live in is boring if they say something along the lines of ‘oh, too bad we can’t hang out.’ That happened more in Philadelphia than any other place I have lived.
The second neighborhood I moved to – West Philadelphia or Cedar Park – had university bike cops from nearby UPenn and Drexel patrolling the immediate area. Punk shows would happen up the road on spaces along Cedar Avenue and 51st Street, mostly white spaces. This was apparently a neighborhood of mostly wannabe punks with liberal arts educations that acted completely unaware of their own hubris living in a backdrop of a swiftly changing environment that erased the black people who lived there for years. All in the name of progress, and renewal. Or if they were aware, they could only talk about it on social media.
I left after six months and moved to a quieter neighborhood, one without any cool cache in Philadelphia, and I felt quite at home. One great organization in that neighborhood is Books Through Bars – support it.
Baltimore is not perfect. I moved here right before Freddie Gray was killed by police, and I have heard some viewpoints that are deeply rooted in ignorance about the larger history of segregation in this town. Many people want to heal though, and people are opening up about the micro and macro aggressions that happen. There are also more deaths and killings. There are far more abandoned properties in Baltimore, and far more mixed crowds in select public spaces. I guess it is better than Philadelphia – I feel like people are trying to open more conversations here. I am eager to read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ new book.
Sometimes I would bike from where I lived on the north side of town into Philadelphia for work. Garbage littered streets would transition quickly to well manicured avenues, and reams of condos crept out to what real estate types would call ‘transitional’ neighborhoods. The streets became smoother as I rode into Center City, and this type of transition isn’t limited to Philadelphia. It is in Baltimore, in Atlanta, and especially in New York City.
I don’t know where this post is going, or what the point is, really. The theme of my life since I moved here is to learn to open up again, learn to trust people again. I don’t know when all of that stopped – I pinpoint it to the advent of the smartphone, when people quit paying attention to things that aren’t fun and easy. Living in Philadelphia just deepened my mistrust, somehow.
I am intense, I like layered conversations, and I am a private person. Maybe I was born that way, yeah, uh-huh? It used to be acceptable to be like this and to not have people accuse me that ‘silence is not a possibility right now’ or ‘silence is complicity’. Well, I think that point of view lacks empathy, and there are people who survive in silence. Instead of silencing them more, how about meeting people where they are, and not expecting people to hold bullhorns or shout the loudest.
What good is someone having an anxiety attack because of the loudness of a bullhorn, or a siren, or the sounds of people screaming over each other?
Philadelphia is an extroverts city. It was hard to survive – and to even be there for communities – and always have to be in a position to articulate my thoughts and feelings on the spot. It was all about who could be the loudest, the coolest, the richest – no wonder people call it the sixth borough of New York. It was the lonliest place I have lived, and I was lucky to have a supportive partner through a lot of the negativity that I felt around me.
Yet the people in Baltimore seem friendlier, and more open to quiet people, those who may not scream their point of view the loudest. I met many critical and negative people in Philadelphia – women shamers, reverse racist claimers, body shamers, ableism all over the map, introvert shamers, and people who usually didn’t have kind words coming out of their mouth. And I balk at calling myself politically correct – sometimes it is best to know where someone stands – but my experience with people in Philadelphia was all about screaming they were politically correct without the empathy that comes from giving true and radical kindness to people who don’t hold the bullhorn.
It is lovely to be far away from all of that, and healing has happened thanks to yoga, partner, a job that allows me to project websites for some solid organizations. Also, disconnecting from Facebook, with all the reminders of parts of my life that I would rather forget, helps. I do miss many people, and hopefully I can reconnect in new ways that doesn’t involve that platform.
Now maybe I can connect with people who have lived in Baltimore for awhile who want to start conversations on a number of levels. I am even open to meeting the loud people, so long as they are willing to listen.
I did it. I wrote 1-5 posts a month every month over the past calendar year. Hardly prolific. Getting back on the saddle after a long hiatus from writing requires sticking to some form of routine. The routine over the past year helped me realize quite a few aspects about my approach to creating ideas.
– I tend to process more than I envision an end product. Which basically means I have a hard time finishing what I start. Part of writing requires engaging with an ability to edit, rephrase and tinker. I tend to let it all out, and fhen forget about it. Maybe that generates entertaining writing once in awhile, but the stories I read and enjoy are well crafted, or at least well executed.
– I am not fully engaging the benefits of writing interactively rather than flatly. Since I am not writing for a well defined audience, I can engage in play with displaying content.
– Part of editing my work may require finding a sustained group of writers that I can work with regularly. I am a self-conscious person with a restrained streak. Groups don’t become me. This didn’t work well with the ambitious people who were serious about building connections and engaging in writers circles. Maybe I need to become more serious.
– It is time to have visions and make decisions. Neither are quite my forte, but I have done it before.
1. Keep developing Lissa as a character and don’t worry so much about any intermingling between the reality/fiction binary.
2. Incorporate other writers, images and videos that pertain to the story. Maybe learn enough code to make the videos pop out on the page.
3. Learn how to build an interactive story map that requires 20 minutes of someone’s time and densely covers a mode of study or a short fiction piece.
4. Finalize two previous stories and submit them for publication.
5. Read more contemporary writers, and remember what they write. There is no shame in someone engaging with words.
6. Incorporate fan videos throughout surprise keywords in the post.
Lissa fears a communal living situation. A few days ago, Maxie changed the subject when Lissa asked where they would stay the night.
The last time Lissa visited Washington DC, she stayed with self-described anti-establishment political artists and activists who could afford to live in a four bedroom house. Her friend begged for her to come down for the Pro-Choice protest event Two couples occupied two of the rooms. Lissa had to share a couch with a stranger, Pam had a twin bed in her room.
Obviously, Lissa approved of abortions. Lissa didn’t have anything better to do, and she just finished a temp job as an admin to some Viacom/MTV executive while his secretary was out for a week. As long as she only spent $10. Maybe $20.
At the event on the Mall, Lissa mostly felt hot, constrained and annoyed that only food trucks with sold out hot dogs and potato chips. They walked back to the train to Adam’s Morgan, and Lissa lost the group when she ducked into a small grocer with apples, Cliff Bars and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. She knew the way back, and she didn’t want to make small talk right now.
That night, Lissa drank too much vodka and sodas in the corner, terrified at how fluidly everyone spoke of the days events. All she remembered was staring at the monuments, assembling North, South East and West and shouting at all the right times and squatting part way down to relieve the synthetic plastic rubbing against her back heel. She walked barefoot back to the house once they all got off the train.
The vomit came out a slushy melange of ridged, brown glop on top of a philodendron plant. The plant owner insisted that everything was okay, and that she had similar instances back when she used to drink. Lissa took a napkin and wiped a granola glop off a leaf. Both Lissa and the owner grabbed rags – there were no paper towels – and picked up the thicker bits. The bile soaked into the plant, and the owner had a medium size mason jar to dilute the acidic mix.
That night, Lissa shared a sofa bed with a guy that smelled more like booze, and less like vomit. Lissa slept with her head at his toes. His feet didn’t stink. While he was sleeping, Lissa wished she had more water to drink. That would involve potentially waking up the person right next to her living room space Lissa just stared at his foot at 5am, just as dawn creeped into the background.
His feet – with his middle and ring toe extending past the first toe – struck Lissa enough for her to stroke his toes. She did this for five minutes, not particularly caring if he woke up to her rigid caress.
He did wake up, but without the soft and ruddy face of men who love her toes.
“You have been doing that for awhile, haven’t you” he hissed.
“I thought you were asleep,” she said.
“Well, good job with the necrophelia. Maybe you should sleep on the floor, he said with a sense of snark that Lissa had only ever come out of the mouth of dudes who claim they are indie rock musicians today.
The bus pulls into Philadelphia, below the curves of browned cement, or stone. The whirl on the bus as it turns right, and then left, and then around, then right, sears of a mental list:
Don’t talk endlessly about her crush on Scullye
Don’t brag about how many people she has slept with (14)
Books – what has she read lately? In case the conversation fails
Maybe no one cares why you feel like Mark Corrigan everyday.
This is the third time Lissa takes a trip with friends, or a friend, in the past four years. She forgets to renew her prescription, again, and this time it is two weeks without it. All she can hope is the weeks of anxious nausea stay somewhere in her core, or her head, or anywhere besides her hands whipping back and forth with words and hand motions.
Last time she spread her body on the floor of an intricate bathroom floor with tile pattens that she could not replicate when she got home three hours later. Her phone was dead at the time.
Her friend convinces her the show is full of chill people, and to take the trip to Philadelphia. It will be good for her, she says. Lissa read online that the exhibit memorializes the riot grrl movement, something that she feels is before her time, much like her love of Arthur Doyle Hand Creme and the people who claim that Sonic Youth was much cooler in the 90s.
Last time she went to a riot grrl event, some girl she met through OKCupid and who had sexy glasses and was a lesbian took her to a show at Goodbye Blue Sunday. Lissa decided to date women for a year. Now she dates both, but mostly men. They are the only people who seem interested in her, and at the end of the day, she is a bottom who likes to get on top once in a while, and prefers not to get pregnant, and who doesn’t want to give blow jobs to large cocks several times a week.
That makes life complicated on OKCupid.
Everyone at the show seemed to have a clear cut identity, or at least some attachment to Bratmobile and Bikini Kill. Or Team Dresch. The OKCupid date thrashed to the songs, grabbed Lissa by the breast and kissed Lissa’s forehead on the body to body dance floor. Lissa’s sweaty back did not make her feel like making out with anyone, and she snuck out the front door to avoid the fire hazard in case one of the amps exploded onstage.
Kathleen Hanna married the guy from The Beastie Boys. Maybe there is room for me, Lissa thinks.
Like the riot grrrl covers show, all the people there seem like her art school classmates – visually polished, gregarious and able to articulate their stance on some form of cultural theory or art history that Lissa could only emulate in her bedroom, or her living room when her roommate was away for a determinate amount of time, or anywhere that doesn’t requite her to say something witty or insightful on command.
Maxie at least could appreciate long silences on the bus. Lissa doesn’t ask too many questions about where they are staying. At best, it is on a pull out sofa an Maxie’s old friend’s sofa. At worst, it will be at a collective commune where everyone looks at Lissa like she is an alien because she looks as queer as a mother baking an apple pie.
Lissa met Maxie through OKCupid, but they agreed right away that a sexual relationship would end up in dramatic loss. Maxie is a gold star lesbian, and Lissa slept with more men than women.
Payday. Or, Lissa’s birthday check clears. All Lissa wants to do is walk into Gourmet Garage and buy a blueberry pie and tiramisu with pistachio ice cream and melt chili and mint infused chocolate on the side. She can binge watch The Sopranos on her roommates cable. Her roommate mentioned something about heading Upstate this weekend, and Lissa knows it will be one of her few opportunities to make a mess in the kitchen and not clean it up right away.
Last time that happened, Lissa woke up with five second long farts and a churling stomach that contributed to the rand and almost salty sent emanating out of her orifice. Her roommate also came home early. Lissa heard her sigh loudly and storm into the bathroom. Lissa quickly put on her mostly brown streaked terrycloth robe and walked as lightly as possible to the kitchen. They weren’t her dishes. She didn’t have dishes before she sublet her room.
The memory of that stomachache lead her to open her flip phone and search for someone, anyone, to grab a drink with tonight that wouldn’t involve talking to a bunch of people she doesn’t know.
Lissa knew her roommate would be away all weekend. Too bad she couldn’t just call someone, anyone up and invite them to blow her on the sofa.
Lissa knows Kara is at a literary event where people read things and then talk about things she hasn’t read, and Kacey is probably pre-gaming it before seeing one of the bands she promotes perform. Sometimes Kacey likes company, but tonight was apparently a sold out show with one of the bigger bands she works with. Even Lissa knows that she is far from the ideal arm best friend candy to have when some band flies in from Denmark and wants to be surrounded by cute perky girls who talk about current bands that sound like a poppier and digitized version of Yes.
Three texts come in a row.
David – Aw, it has been too long! Working tonight, but brunch soon? Jaime – I feel illlllll. Sore throat. I wouldn’t come near me if I were you. Cassie – Do you want to go to dinner tomorrow? I am exhausted and about to pass out.
Lissa sighs, not particularly wanting to travel to Jackson Heights to watch television with Marah, who ended up crying and viciously ranting about a co-worker who stole her project. She doesn’t want to listen all that much tonight.
At least the check could go towards new felt point pens and brushes. She walks down Broadway towards Pearl Art Supply and picks up a new 6B and a tube of cardamom blue paint as well as some linseed oil and a small canvas.
Connective Cube 