Gaping

Fiction drop: https://nomoreprostitutes.com/Althea-Champion

settling - good

For a week or so I was taking big bites and eating fast. I wrapped my mouth around danishes and sandwiches and pieces of chicken and filled it completely, gnawing and gnashing. The week after I was plumper than before, because I had swallowed everything without thinking at all. I ate less then and had headaches, from screens or dehydration, fatigue or my food embargo. I suspected my vision was going slightly also - I was straining to see in a way I hadn't before. I also found it very hard to focus - my brain felt weak, and I vulnerable to temptation. I wanted very much to buy things and indulge… I craved new things: clothes, decor, hobbies, knowledge. but all I felt capable of was aimless thought. The next day I was getting dinner and I though that would be good. I had also lacked a good book for a while. Still I subsist off of scrawny books we have around the house, which I read and reread. I want a large juicy delicious one very bad. (Won’t you send me one?)

The day after that I bought clothes, envelopes, mascara, a pastry, dinner, and an Uber home. My credit card bill shot through the roof.

I felt like flesh and wondered separately if everyone’s flesh felt like mine? so prone to bursts of flame and fits of constriction.

Now I have calmed a bit. I feel quite beautiful actually. settled in my body, at least for the time being, and true to my presentation. 

Settling is aspirational, when you consider it really. peace. 

I had a story published, and I did a lot of thinking about it after the fact, where it deserved more attention, etc. But I’m content with it as is, as it is, in its way, like yesterday was: simple and stunning. I got off work and circled the same few blocks. I spoke to my mother for the first time in months, and then my dad. d, too - I’m getting better at contact. Then I went home, invited w for dinner, and helped c salvage her cod and potatoes. We drank wine and debated the death of New York. Probed each other's relationships to love, sex, and gender. It was entirely unselfconscious; we buzzed, with ecstasy! somewhat inappropriate for such a simple meal on an ordinary Wednesday guided by routine impulses toward food, wine, friendship...(...another example of aspirational settlement.) Will said his goodbyes, give me a few book recommendations, and left. I put Girls on the tv, Cynthia went to bed, and I followed shortly after - we dreamed.

terminal

 All of my socks have holes in them. I am out of almost every product. I know, I know… but I did order a new calendar! I have many plans… And the calendar’s theme is hope. Funny, because that was front of mind this year. Keep the faith, I said. And the faith I kept. 

A mole on my arm scabbed over and for a few days I thought I had cancer—the doctor at Urgent Care said I didn’t (♱). But naturally I started planning: I considered potential subletters and figured I’d move in with my grandparents and then start treatment —that is if my prognosis was the manageable sort. If it wasn’t, and I had months or a year to go, then I would be challenged in a much different way. My first thought, in that case: kermit. 

I am a person deeply tied to the future—it is in many ways my lifeline. I do hardly anything without thinking about it, not so much in a responsible way. Moreso along the line of, how nice it will be. But I do consider it very much, and am highly responsible. While this was borne out of necessity—I have been in sole charge of myself for a long time now—I quite enjoy responsibility. I look forward to owning a house very much (it’s my one real goal). I relish in saving and planning. Etc. A future is the greatest gift, and to not have one would depress me endlessly. A future, actually, is the one true salve of my sadness. I do not take it for granted. Everything I do, quite literally, is for it.

But if I were to resist the reaper, which I likely would because I’m not one to really give up anything (ie. my holy socks and dried up mascara tubes), I would like to live my life quite similarly to how I do now—isn’t that sweet. I would give up my ---, surely. I would write during the day and work at the restaurant at night. I would stop saving, obviously, and eat at my favorite places, plus a few more I want to try, with my beautiful beautiful friends. I’d order the freshest thing on the menu. Drink lots of wine and coffee. Buy the best olives, cheese, and tinned fish. With my meager savings I would buy a car and take long drives alone to the woods, listen to music sometimes, sit in the sun, and stay in motels. I would use my new car to visit g in Philly, m in Boston, i in Florida, and my cousins in Maine and Sacramento. Hopefully I would make it to London to see e, who I would then grab and take to Mexico City. But mostly I would enjoy my days. 

The rest are things I already plan to do, but if I was terminal and money thus ceased to be an issue, and my pride in making it expired, I would do them all in quick succession. How lovely, though, really, to be so close to this ultimate life. How lovely to live so close to my desire. What a gift 𒀬 After all, this life is made of days. The end lends importance to the means, but the means are all we have. Enjoy, please, enjoy! And if you focus each day on the how, I believe the what will become a much richer thing.

the dream

 Yesterday was the equinox, and today is cold. Equinoxes are important to me and many of my friends, so we tend to celebrate them. That, full moons, new moons, many moon phases in general. I feel the need to acknowledge the seasons and the moon. Not woo woo. the moon and the seasons are just important, some of the most beautiful things in the universe. The moon literally. Seasons more symbolically. Though we didn’t do anything big* 

*I am unbearably exhausted. My heel is bleeding, but my burn has healed and the scab fell off. I was wrapping it in a pair of silk underwear because gauze stuck to it and stung when I peeled it off. And then n told me her French grandmother said to sleep with a silk handkerchief around her neck when you feel a sore throat coming. It will ward it off, or help it heal. And I thought, in retrospect, silk heals all things. Doctors, take note, for your sake and mine. The day before I pulled glass out of my mouth while eating a heaping bowl of rice and wilted spinach dressed with lots of soy sauce. I had already been feeling like something was wrong, but this solidified it. Though little has changed… there’s not much I can do at the moment but wait. My feet feel like only bone. And my future is very hard to imagine, though I’m trying. See:

I did rearrange my apartment with c. But I was very anxious afterward… I felt that I had disrupted our Spot. Before it was very, very beautiful. Shells were everywhere and light bounced in and out. The space was open, light, and largely impractical, ie. We had a tv that sat probably 10 feet away from the couch. For the first few months we lived there, a white metal bed frame sat there without a mattress. But still I laid a quite pretty, little, silk kind of baby sleeping bag on it. (Ah, silk again)

I have always been precious, but especially lately. I feel very sensitive to magic, that charmful quality native to beauty. Call it divinity, that’s what I’ve begun to do. Not necessarily God, but I say that too.

The space is much different now. Still lovely and special, with shells and lace hung from nails left behind by dozens of past tenants, though indefinitely divided and far more practical, and I find something about that a bit boring and sad. It’s the same way I feel when I ride the subway with corporates. How sad to know the rest of your life. I’ve always considered resignation a tragedy, even if it’s not a bad thing. I am so attached to not-knowing. I find that life lacks when it is made up. It is so much more when it unfolds like this and oh! that! But I also struggle because I cannot imagine a future… it is one big hazy cloud in which figures occasionally take form and then blow away. But it is all one big dream! Oh just let me be (free)

flushhhhh

I burned myself on a motorcycle. The exhaust pipe bit me, but it’s my fault. I was wearing ballet flats—I know, but I was on my way to a wedding. 

I wrote in August: My pack of cigarettes is flattened like a piece of bread. Some are crooked, half smoked, broke. I don't smoke unless I truly need. I’m being taught what need means. I'm not pleasant on the brink, but I'm happy because I impress myself (hard). Every week is a challenge, but the game excites me. I eat after I starve, sleep on my feet, use every second. and not just to work, but to write, sit as I am now in thought, and socialize. And it's all put to use. Ah, to make a machine out of my brain and body! (and heart?) very satisfying. A man is playing his clarinet on the train. It is a perfect, playful tune. I'm grateful for him and his instrument. Thank you, Man with your Clarinet! I am at once satisfied, delighted, relaxed, and heartened because of you!    Now I sit outside the laundromat, under the cover of the awning. It's raining a bit. It's getting dark as it nears 8 o’clock—the days are getting shorter. Thunder crackles a bit, or cars drive over metal panels that create a road. August lightning strobes. The shop opposite me is called Lantigua Deli. Its red awning casts aglow the wall that suspends it. It's such an old image: The corner store, fluorescent lights, two guys—one big, one small—leaning against a red wall. Thunder splits the sky open. Now rain pours, when before it drizzled. I'm sheltered now inside the laundromat. 30 minutes to go. Lights flicker here, too. I'm happy to be here. My life is good, better because it's hard. I am up for the challenge, it's quite amazing. I ran outside, was instantly devoured, completely chilled. I'm so awake, completely tight.

I took a week off and now I am confused. I almost regret it, but I don’t. The wedding was beautiful. l and I met at the restaurant where we met and became its centerpiece, both dressed in blue and brushed, blonde hair. We danced and talked and I felt so happy, a happiness that was manifold: 1) We were drinking quite heavily. At points I felt dizzy and maybe about to be sick, but l steadied me. So, I'd eat a bit of cake, take a sip of water, maybe freshen up in the bathroom or smoke a cigarette, and then I was ready to continue. 2) We were surrounded by an incredible beauty. The wedding was at the couple's home. It overlooks the mountains and the land surrounds the house like a horseshoe. A white tent rose over tables decorated with candles, hand-picked arrangements, garlands of perhaps grapes or some orb-shaped fruit or vegetable. In the right corner a rustic lemon cake sprawled, which the bride took a bite of just as we arrived. To the left was a sloping dance floor—which no one slipped on, mind you—that faced a band of rotating players, which sometimes ft. the groom himself. Random groups of chairs peppered the property, each marked by a canopy of lights that seemed to float higher as dark set in. And down the hill Prosecco flowed from a tap and batched cocktails could be scooped out of tin wells—a drinking station fit for Puck and the rest of a midsummer’s night dream. And 3) l is a wondrous person who makes me, in turn, feel wondrous. He drove us in his old Saab, which he started down by his thigh. He lit my cigarette with its lighter. And even called me a talker.

I’m still nursing my burn, but it's started to harden. Before, it was red and raw and fleshy, so vulnerable it hurt to look at. In jersey I ate too much red meat and drank too much coffee, so much red meat and coffee that I began to think differently. Other people's thoughts swirled. they have no place in my brain. I’ve just about managed to get them out.  It was cold in jersey. Wind blew newspapers off the coffee table and onto the floor, where they squirmed.

I do often wish that I was riding backward on the train, straight through New York, onto Raleigh, Florida, New Orleans. I’m flushing the summer away

Roxy

 I sat across a young man at a table a week or so ago. I was with d and we ran into a group of his friends outside a restaurant. We sat there and smoked a couple cigarettes. The young man was very tall and thin. He was already drunk. The blazer he wore swung back and forth from his shoulders. We walked to the bar and he walked either very far ahead or behind us. When he noticed he fell behind, he would shoot up again, though shot after shot he would miss. He didn’t seem to know how to work this long body of his yet. 

He ordered one or two drinks at the bar and talked to just about anyone. People approached him and he approached others. He smiled and laughed easily and his long hair flapped in the stale bar breeze. He sat back down with us, a table made up of the boys he went to prep school with— and me.

He sat cross-legged and called himself a poet, but other than that said nothing else. Around his friends, he seemed depressed. He crumbled inside the costume, Slouched over, the blazer looked hopelessly bigger than him. He began to fall asleep on himself. 

If I were to tap him with a spoon, I thought to myself, he would crack, maybe shatter. If he were older, I would wonder. But he was my age, so I pitied.

I asked him what he was drinking.

He said whiskey.

Straight? I asked.

I dated a gurl named Roxy, he said. When we broke up, I stopped taking it on the rocks...

How to beat the heat... sip sip sip

 Summer is a vulgar season, and that redeems it. Bride and groom sit at the end of the bar. They sip their drinks sullenly through straws. They stare down at the oak. Occasionally they look up and smile into her phone camera. 

She is Korean. Her white dress is short and her veil made of nylon. He is Italian. His tuxedo is traditional. I watch them and feel sorry, because they seem unhappy on their wedding day. But people in New York become not so much people, but impressions of them… so I’m only a little sorry. Heat is a confusing sedative. People cannot think or speak properly, so they scream out loud or in their melting subconscious. Bodies burst out of clothes. People don’t bother to wrestle them back in. Man and woman are sweating at the end of the bar. But yes, stay just as you are. sip sip sip

This week my emotions were like bombs. I saw them in front of me, popped them in my mouth, swallowed them naively, and they burst inside of me. I rode the N from les to the edge of astoria, drawing a horse, and then back to les and into Brooklyn, drawing a lady. I got off and took buses back to queens, smoking cigarettes at transfers and crying uncontrollably behind big sunglasses. sip sip sip

While cold makes me sink deeper into my body, heat makes me want to escape it. Summer heat makes me feel as if I’m on the brink. My skin feels too tight, my hair too thick, my time too long

Sometimes New York gets me in a tizzy. I can find the people in it bleak and belonging to a world that is offensively small. And I don’t mean small, like, the barrier of entry is too high, or exclusive, or impenetrable. I actually think it would be somewhat easy to penetrate; so many of those inside want so badly for love by someone halfway attractive, talented, or with some professional potential. I mean small as in spoiled, unimaginative, repetitive, and predictable. It happens. I understand. I’m sure it’s livable from the inside. But watching it has depressed me. As has the heat. sip sip sip