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I microdose shrooms in Long Island. When you don’t think too hard about it, Long Island is the perfect place to microdose. The shrooms are compressed into tiny chocolate squares. I don’t taste the dirt or the horrible texture I remember from the first time I took them. We’re about to eat oysters that are too large to eat more than a few of them. I almost back out because I’m not feeling well, but we’ve come a long way for the oyster festival. I tilt my head back and try not to chew the soft and mucous-like body within. Texture is tough for me. The one other time I did shrooms they were in their natural mushroom form. I struggled to chew them without gagging. Now the oysters make me gag, until the other foreign substance in my body makes me forget any unpleasantness. I know the drugs are working because my face feels full. We wander through tents selling tchotchkes and homemade jams. I stop and stare for too long at a booth selling bedazzled purses in various shapes. Taxis, nautiluses, cats. The shop’s name is “Lolita’s First Purse.” Lolita wouldn’t be caught dead carrying one of these. I hope I don’t hallucinate a giant oyster walking around. Outside the tents, the sky is Pixar blue. My friends are separated from me in the crowd, but I don’t feel lost.
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Before the leaves started to change, I used to walk around the city listening to nothing. My friend said he couldn’t believe this. Everyone has headphones in when they walk around. I like the sounds of the city. The sirens, the random screams, the conversations between two friends breaking down one of their love interest’s erratic behavior. Fall is romantic, so I need a soundtrack. I want to hear Julian Casablancas sing as leaves fall onto my head. Now I can’t walk anywhere without listening to something.
Three albums came out this week that seem important to the progression of the rest of the season. Arctic Monkeys. Lily says, don’t listen to The Car if you want to stay in a good mood. Carly Rae Jepsen’s album is arguably better than the album that overshadows it. Which is of course, Taylor Swift’s Midnights. I’m not sure how uncool it is to still like Taylor Swift. Twitter memes the album over the course of the weekend. There’s a tweet about how she makes music for women who give painful blowjobs. I feel secondhand embarrassment for days. It’s haunting because it’s probably not untrue.
I listen to Midnights on its release night, headed home from a walk around Union Square with the friend who thought it was strange that I didn’t listen to music while walking around. This friend, like many friends right now, is heartbroken. On the train I can barely hear the words to the songs because a man in a Penn State Musical Theater sweatshirt is talking louder than my headphones can play. Unfortunately, I do hear the lyric from “Anti-Hero” that calls “everyone a sexy baby.”
will there be a “sexy baby on board” sticker next???
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I’ve had two people ask me this week if I’ve written any poems lately. A poet friend and I talk about how we feel like we wasted time writing poems. I don’t think either of us actually believe what we say, but it feels good to share regret as much as it does to not write poems anymore. My favorite song from Midnights is “Sweet Nothing.” Taylor mentions writing a poem on the way home in the song. She is an incredible lyricist, but a terrible poet. When I read her poems, it makes me feel like maybe I didn’t totally waste my time writing poems because there are worse poets than me. Have I written any poems lately? No, but I guess I could write poems on the subway. But instead I copy down her lyrics. To you I can admit I’m just too soft for it all.
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Sometimes I feel like a very expensive dog, my friend says a week before I cradle a very expensive dog while out with friends in the West Village. This is maybe the softest dog I’ve ever held. Puppies at this age are very susceptible to life-threatening viruses. I feel protective over this puppy, its silky coat and ears too big for its small body. I think of equivalent softnesses in my life. Everything falls just short of this dog’s softness. The camel coats my friends wear, the teddy bear coats everyone seems to be wearing this year. My cats after I brush them. An expensive leather couch. My own hair after I add semi-permanent dye for my upcoming Halloween costume. A thin wool sweater I buy at Uniqlo. Nothing as soft as this small creature whose heart beats too fast in its tiny chest. In undergrad, I wrote a lyric essay titled “Project of Softness.” If I wrote a new project of softness, it would just be a catalog of all the too soft things in the world that can only be held for a few minutes before someone asks for it back. I ask people in the group, do you ever feel like a very expensive dog or a very dumb dog? No one answers my question.
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I’m thinking of my late nights in the last few weeks. How I feel in the morning usually surprises me. I want to go back to the night before. To feel the same euphoria as I did the longer I let my eyes stay open. Nostalgia seems like it should take longer to set in. But it’s been the same feeling most mornings. The night before seems unreal as the hours accumulate. Taylor does say it well: midnights turn into afternoons. She means hangovers, but I mean an entire day wishing it was the night before.
”luna park,” joseph stella
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Midnights isn’t an album about the kind of late nights I’ve had lately. A reviewer points out how “Bejeweled” is the only song that makes explicit reference to going out. When I can’t sleep, I’m not thinking in one-liners like Taylor Swift apparently does. I’m not kept up by the same things she is. Not wanting to be trad. Not wanting to be taken advantage of or to lose your money to your record executive enemies. Worried that you scheme too much, and this is the thing that will push your lover away. Midnights is one of Taylor Swift’s least relatable albums, which is actually a relief. I find it unbearable when Taylor Swift tries to be relatable (case in point: “my flight was terrible thanks for asking” when she owns a fleet of private jets). Taylor Swift can’t have the late nights I’ve had because she can’t leave her house whenever she wants. I’m glad I can’t relate.
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It’s me, I’m the problem, it’s me loops in my head. This also loops. No one is mad at me. I tell myself this even when I believe everyone is mad at me. I haven’t disappointed anyone. I tell myself this when I know I have let someone down. No one is mad at me for interrupting them. My friend tells me how I rarely impose, but I find myself not being able to wait for someone to finish their sentence before jumping in. I interrupt a friend of a friend when I see her across the bar, clearly on a date. She gets my number and texts me how she wanted the date to end so she could go home to listen to Midnights. I worried before I got her text that I might have interrupted a pivotal moment in the date. I didn’t. We exchange texts about the songs we like best on first listen. No one is mad at me for forgetting to respond, for not responding, for responding too quickly, for not following up, for sending a text too late at night. No one is mad at me when I decide it’s time for me to go home. I tell myself this on the way home.
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The light is harsh at the party. After an hour, someone finally turns off the overhead lights. Lyrics of the songs that play are projected on the wall. I request The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven.” I’m not dumb enough to request a Taylor Swift song at this party. I would lose song request privileges if I did. I’ve listened to “Just Like Heaven” about two hundred times since my birthday when someone sang it at karaoke. You, soft and only. My friend and I sing the entire song by ourselves on a nice leather couch. No one pays us much attention. I close my eyes and sing the song by memory. On mushrooms, edges loose their sharpness. Colors mute, sounds become less jarring. I decide I really like mushrooms. Which is why, when someone offered them to me in a pill form thirty minutes earlier, I took them. I feel safe to do so. Faces are friendlier, the party becomes less overwhelming. I don’t need to escape back to the roof. I wonder why people don’t take shrooms all the time. Then when I get home, I can’t fall asleep. At four AM, I am reminded why people don’t take shrooms all the time.
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I felt too hot at the party but euphoric up on the roof. I pack my days, the bubble wrap protecting me from being alone too long. Over natural wine in the West Village, I ask someone I’ve just met if he thinks it’s valuable to be alone. He tells me yes. He’s twenty four, he is learning about himself. He says this is the most valuable time of my life. The train car goes dark. We’re asked to evacuate. Several people stomp their feet when the announcement comes on. The rain comes back. The leaves will really change now. I miss everyone I’ve ever touched. I miss the softness of knowing. I like the discomfort of sitting on the floor at my friend’s house where we draw with crayons for hours. Where does water go? The bay to the ocean. The light is soft again. I want to know people better. I want to know them as deeply as they’ll let me. So I ask them questions. What was your childhood stuffed animal’s name? What do you like best about yourself? I ask someone if you could ask just one question to anyone you ever met, what would you ask? They answer, what’s up. I laugh. This is my question.