Hi, thanks for being here. It’s November. If you missed it, this month’s forecast is out. I hope you enjoy this week’s essay. You can update your subscription if you like what I write and want to support this project financially. And if you’re somehow here without subscribing, you can do that below.
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In Mitchell’s backyard, after a game night I’ve sort of invited myself to, it’s cold and dark. We’re drinking pumpkin beer. I am talking about how I’ve felt monstrous this week from my various illnesses. I start to quote Taylor Swift, and he beats me to it. Everybody else is a sexy baby. Earlier that week, I texted another friend that “sexy baby” is a synonym for the “hot dumb” archetype. I begin to tell him how afraid I was this week. That if I didn’t see anyone for a week—and if they were busy with their own plans—that they would forget me. Irrational, but the quiet of my life was suddenly unfamiliar. I was scared.
Then a raccoon appears amongst the tangling ivy on the patio. I can’t believe it’s here. I only recently had wondered if any raccoons lived in New York. Its tiny face peering out from behind the grill. I want it to come closer, but of course, it’s shy and we are human, so naturally shy, too.
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This isn’t how friends treat each other, my friend says during book club about Sheila Heti’s depiction of friendship in How Should a Person Be. The novel was my selection for our book club. I’m oddly hurt by the book club’s panning of my pick, but I am diplomatic. It is just a book. But it was my book. I know I’m hurt because I identified so much with the book. The diplomatic thing to do is to not pout.
I ask, haven’t you ever had a friend you feel like the premature version of? That they are you, if you were the best version of yourself? This impossible measurement before you realize people aren’t meant to be mirrors for you. That your friends aren’t a vehicle for your own self-actualization. They aren’t as replicable as the image of yourself in the mirror.
Sheila realizes this in the section we all highlight. “There was only one Margaux—not Margauxs scattered everywhere, all throughout the darkness. If there was only one of her, there was not going to be a second one.” They believe it shouldn’t take someone a whole book to realize this. It’s possible it took me a whole book to realize this.
I look at my friends’ faces on the screen. They don’t know any twenty-somethings as self-involved as Sheila Heti is in this novel. I wonder if they have forgotten they know me. I almost ask them if they have read my writing lately.
“Backstage,” Margaux Williamson, 2014 (?)
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I’m sitting cross-legged on the sticky floor at Public Records for the launch of Forever Mag issue four. Eileen Myles reads some poems and talks about their new anthology titled Pathetic Literature. What isn’t pathetic, they ask. The crowd is eager. The last time I saw Eileen read was during the summer at MoMA PS1. I had received a phone call a few minutes before that made me cry in the garden. It was so hot, I dripped sunscreen-laced sweat onto the courtyard’s gravel. Then Eileen read poems about vampire-realtors and the East River Park. Tonight they read about pajamas, what the cat drags in. A line says: I didn’t want you anymore like that. That one stings.
I enjoy myself in waves, and then like all readings, I want to fast forward to the part when it’s over. Eileen leaves during the next reader’s autofiction piece about being the boyfriend of a reactionary podcast host. Anna Delvey zooms in from house arrest later for a Q&A. Someone asks her who does her nails. I can’t stay much longer. There are other people to meet up with. I send texts, share my location, rally the friends I’m with so we can leave.
Before we go, I take a copy of Forever that someone leaves in the bathroom. I find a new Sheila Heti story inside of it.
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We’re gaining the hour back, someone says an hour before we get it back. We all groan. But really what’s saved? An extra hour to put another song on the jukebox at Josie’s. I’ve been here before. It’s coming back to me. In this sliver of time between time itself, between darkness and more darkness. If you’re not awake for the light, is it actually saved? I spend Sunday morning with my eyes half open. It’s technically afternoon in the morning. (“It’s Sunday now for all you lonely fuckers, but for me it’s always Sunday afternoon.”) Yesterday I woke up and ate pretzels for breakfast before biking to Ikea in the humidity. I thought I was going to die when I biked back up the hill from Red Hook to Park Slope. The hours I spent yesterday amorphous and textureless.
Today I force myself to move my body again. The day is stupid humid again. I see a sign in a restaurant window for a winter menu. I realize my confusion doesn’t exist in a vacuum. No one knows how to be.
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My friend says she likes it when a book describes what a character is eating. How a person should be—you are (“to be”) what you eat. A Kind bar waiting for the F at Bergen Street. Carrots, pretzels, and hummus for lunch. The broth from chicken noodle soup, avoiding the chicken chunks. $5 for a single head of Romaine lettuce (I stare at the produce section for thirty minutes). Alison Roman’s tuna salad salad. Sugar free Snapple Ice Tea. Ikea pizza. (How a person should eat: not this way.) Annie’s mac and cheese leftovers. Scrub dinner. More water than I’ve drank in years. I count on my hands. Only five drinks. We talk about pizza. Then we get more creative: noodles in hot broth, Doritos, burritos, until we give up and get pizza a few doors down from Lucien.
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These are texts I send: I miss you. Even though it’s only been a few days. There should be a word for wanting to be friends with someone when you know they will be far away from you at some point in time. Long distance yearning. Out of sight, in my mind. You’re in my thoughts, you might as well be in my prayers.
I read: Is this the story of my life? Friendship is possibly the greatest romance. I’m beginning to repeat myself.
Christian took this of me and Mitchell at my birthday party, and sent it to me this week.
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It took me two months to finish How Should a Person Be? Since moving to New York, I’ve become a horrible reader. I tell myself this is because I am learning to slow down my mind as other parts of my life speed up. Still, I feel like I haven’t finished the book. I’ve written about it in fragments the last few months. I dog-ear it, I underline it, I put it next to my bedside, into my crumb-filled tote bag. It embarrasses me. It enthralls me. I complain about it, then go home and reread a passage. I see myself. I read an old NYT review of the book. The reviewer compares the narrative progression to the “episodic aimlessness” of reality television. It’s a novel from life, of course there’s aimlessness. People like reality television because it is just a blown up version of regular life. Sheila Heti builds a fence around what she values: regular life. I want to build that kind of fence, too.
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On the street outside of Mr. Fong’s, it smells like shit. Later, we will walk towards the East Village. It also smells like shit. Someone explains it’s actual shit from the sewers. It’s horrible. Still, we stand on the street. Lavender and gin. Blue eye shadow. Paper straws. Marlboros. Tulle skirts. Beautiful strangers and friends. The world is full to brimming with enough shit, Sheila Heti writes. What difference does it make to add my (art)? The group has all been to something arty tonight. The gallery opening was a literal window, someone explains. where are you going? I see a piece of art that reads: The thesis became clear…or so I thought. The bar fills up with undergrads. Christian calls the inside, R.L. Stine’s The Nightmare Room.
It’s getting full of undergrads, a friend says.
The city or this bar?
Both.
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I can’t stop thinking about the plot point of Sheila buying the same dress as her friend Margaux. This purchase almost destroys their friendship. I’m hosting a clothing swap on Friday, in part because I want new clothes without paying for them. Also in part, because I love having items that once belonged to my friends. I want to have the same yellow dress as my friends. Maybe subconsciously I want to look more like my friends. I catch myself mimicking their gestures. The same yellow dress as when my one friend holds their hand up while they sing. The same yellow dress as the way one pronounces room. The same yellow dress as “are you having fun? what are you thinking? do you like these people?” The same yellow dress as too many Instagram stories. The same yellow dress as curtain bangs. The same yellow dress as the same yellow dress.
painting by David Hettinger
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There is a couple across me on the subway. They are too drunk. Mercifully, they feel it now instead of tomorrow. Maybe they will still feel it a little tomorrow. Their bodies will bounce back quicker than they will in a few years. The boy holds his head, the girl’s arm laced around his shoulders to grip the pole. There is a man holding a vase of real flowers. He starts dancing. I still have eight stops. I take the steps — every loss is a step. Sure. He’s punching the air. I guess he is going to win her back, the girl I imagine he’s lost. The tears don’t come until I’m out of the subway onto Flatbush Avenue. Recently two different people have told me how good it is to let yourself cry. This is something I know. It’s been a terrible week, for more people than just me. I tend to forget this. That there are more people than just me. And then I remember. How I’ve been: alive. Miserable. Grateful. Let these people have their nights out. I ferry myself home and cry until I sleep. I don’t write this to make you worry about me. I write this so you won’t worry about me. I wake up the next morning, held by the returned messages on my phone.
Will I see you tonight?
Yes.
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Patience is not kind. Patience is exacting. Patience can keep its own score. Patience is thinking all the obscenities you would yell at the second driver who blares their horn at you while you’re on a Citibike doing nothing wrong. Patience is not being able to wait for your friend to respond to your invitation before you invite more friends because you know they’ll come anyways. Patience is moving in a group. Patience isn’t love. Not necessarily. But when someone loves you, they will find it in themselves to be patient with you and your flaws. You can be exhausting and kind. Your friends can be exhausted with you and kind to you still. Patience is a boundary. “Boundaries,” Sheila Heti writes, “barriers. We need them. They let you love someone. Otherwise you might kill them.”
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I go to a small gathering. Seconds after I walk through the door, I eat a piece of pizza. I realize it has anchovies on it. Someone asks me, didn’t you just eat dinner? My body has remembered its hunger. Starve a fever, feed a cold. I pull the pizza apart like a picky child. Anchovies get under my nails. I try not to be repulsed by myself, as I have been repulsed by the myself this week. I like anchovies (I am a Hot Girl who likes Hot Girl Food after all), but I’m not in the mood for their saltiness. Not now when I am so thirsty.
Only an hour earlier did I eat six oysters, praising their saltiness. I could eat a thousand oysters. Thinking about all the minerals reentering my body after losing so much to illness. Thinking about dunking my head into the ocean and getting a nose full of seawater. Sputtering. Imagining the swims I’ve taken with friends and will take with friends. The swims I’ve taken on my own. A winter beach visit to the Rockaways. Maybe I’ll swim then. The small plastic cups for the wine are easy to break. I laugh loud. I say, I love you, I’m sorry, I mean it. On the roof, I swallow wrong and begin to cough freely. My friend blesses me. People are dressed beautifully. I can’t believe how many beautiful people can be in one room. All of these are possibilities.