Margarine

Fiction drop: https://www.hobartpulp.com/web_features/margarine

suckers

Five or so weeks ago I left my room in Bushwick. 

For three weeks I drank, worked, and cried a lot.

Two weeks ago I went to New York for a job interview and stayed at Alausi’s place in soho. We all had dinner on the floor and drank beer. I saw an apartment in Chinatown the next morning. The landlady asked me if I was single. I said yes, and she offered me the apartment.

A week ago I worked easter brunch and moved into the Chinatown apartment. Now I live with sometimes up to five other people. Three of us have rooms. My landlady made me lunch while it rained. I’m so happy to be back.

This past week my landlady went to China. Her husband went to North Carolina. I became gravely ill and took the train home. I melted honey in hot water and squeezed lemon into it. I bought a pink nightgown.

These elixirs are healing me, that and advil. 

Today I feel a little better. My throat feels less full of fiber glass. I finished a story.

Tomorrow I will start house sitting again.

The next day we’ll drive up north to see the eclipse.

The day after that I will answer phones at a glass shop.

In a few weeks Ellie will go see the horses race in Kentucky. I want her to wear my hat because it was made for such an occasion. Then I’ll find another subletter. Move somewhere else. I’ll intern, help Ellie move to London, go to Vienna or Portugal. And then what?

I’m such an ends justify the means person that I forget the means are all my life is made of. I always think the future will be better, which is sweet of me. But then I make myself suffer in the meantime because historically it pays off? that’s what the stories told me. Pay your dues. If I accepted my life as is, I think I would be a happier person. Life neutrality. But that’s for suckers.

baby brain

I'm so young I'm just like a baby. Just past a year old screaming and crying hurt so bad cus I don’t like to lay that way ouch. A baby brain inside a grown woman. I have her impulses. Abandon! Investigate! Revel! Nothing can hurt me. I will skate along on the charm of my big bug eyes. If I were to go missing, they would go on the flier: The girl with eyes that bulge! Thank God for these eyes of mine, because surely they’d be missed. I can also see from miles away. Only in front, though. That’s the issue. You hear all these things about hindsight, but I never look back. That 20/20 is different from mine. I see very clearly, but seeing is different than knowing. I don’t actually believe hindsight is 20/20. I very rarely make sense of things. The past is so dreary. Visual delights gone by are nulled by bitterness. I am so focused on focusing on the road ahead. Rumor has it I can pave with thoughts alone. 

Rumor has it there’s a solar eclipse. I fear I won’t be able to help looking it straight in the eyes, and it will be the last thing I see. Would that be so bad? How lovely it would be to possess such big eyes that can’t see a thing. Facial ornaments. We have other organs that don’t function, but they aren’t beautiful or at eye-level. I would need someone to dress them up for me. Hang ornaments from lashes. Rub smelly creams underneath. Smudge pastels on lids. I want them so beautiful no one could ever imagine them being of use. Trouble is I would never get to see.

Bella

Everything on the internet is liable to be fiction. Keep this in mind. 

I’ve been feeling quite awful. My husband, from whom I am separated, served me divorce papers on our anniversary that doubled as the Fourth of July. This wounded me because though I didn’t want to be married, I didn’t want to be divorced. I thought he felt the same. My estranged sister came back into my life and sobbed on my shoulder. I found her annoying and told her we are better off estranged. 

No bookstore in all of Manhattan will hire me. This is fair because I give them no reason to besides a flaccid interest. I am abandoning my family, 3 older and 3 younger brothers, because something in our home is making me sick—I suspect it's mercury poisoning. They keep tuna stocked in the cupboards and I can’t help myself.

I will return when I’m stronger. This will probably be after two months of wallowing because I can’t eat tuna. Some of them still don’t know. I have put it off because it hurts my pride, plus conversations make things pompous. I’d like to return as if only one night has passed. 

I fell in love once and its failure left a gaping hole. I find most experiences are like this. Ecstasy is the feeling of being pierced. Sometimes moments scrape the sides but most of the time they flail in a cavity. Often the whole is never filled again. I’m not describing addiction, but I might as well be. Nothing will ever be as good as my first can of tuna in oil. My problem is after experiencing ecstasy, I fear I never will again. This is not true. It’s proven time and time again. Other holes are pierced. I am a junky, I am, I am, I am. My name is Bella and I’m a junky. I promise new holes will be pierced. I promise. I am right.

grizzly

        I'm surprised by how afraid I am. I’ve never thought of myself as afraid, I think because I’m confident-reckless. I make a lot of last-minute decisions that often lead to good things and then admire myself for them afterward. I can see a few steps ahead so I don’t think these decisions are reckless. they're just decisions. You can consider quite a lot in a minute.

I made a bad decision and I knew it was bad before I made it. I told w that I was about to make a bad decision and he said okay because I told him I had no other choice. I’m now suffering because of this decision and trying to get out of it. It’s working so far, but I’m dreading taking responsibility, dreading so much that I could puke. I don’t blame myself for making it because I had to but I’m disappointed that I'm so afraid to make it right. Rise, rise! The matter is more complicated than this.

I’ve just been bad lately. bad at my job, bad at being good, bad in my executions, bad at pretty much everything. Just bumbling away (I have no reason not to...). It’s because I’m disdainful. because I’m suffering from this bad decision I made. But I had no other choice! If I had someone right next to me I wouldn’t mind taking responsibility, but these things you have to do alone, or over text. Once I’m good it’ll be good. 

Peace feels so far away. Come back! I’ll be back for you. So soon. My body's too hostile a place for you now. All I can do with every part of me is get out of this decision.

cold

Saturday I went to a party and talked with a guy for a really long time because he reminded me of adam driver’s character in girls. The resemblance startled me in a good way. He was an actor from texas. He worked at an equinox where he’d met Cary Elwes. I told him that I fell in love with Westley from The Princess Bride at a very early age. He told me that his dad’s favorite song is the one I’m named after.

Sunday I met a at mud but there was something going on. So we walked around the block and saw three people just like us sitting at a bar drinking coffee. This was all we wanted to do. We sat down next to them and looked at the menu and laughed at the prices we weren’t going to pay. We ordered a latte and an americano. Sure, some bread. We talked about our friends and how we felt about the people we are and aren’t sleeping with. We laughed so loudly that the restaurant manager came over and introduced himself. After passing back and forth a pleasant few sentences, he told us we were incredibly delightful, and then seemed to make the fact we stayed that way his personal business. He came back, gave us his card, told us to email him so we could set up a reservation. He came back again with two enormous warm cookies. We gushed over him, paid the bill, and drafted an email.

I bought mittens that were on sale because my hands hadn’t been warm in a week. I think they’re perfect. 

In winter you get creative because it’s very cold outside. Every walk between buildings is desperate. Every entrance a magnificent relief. 

I like being at the mercy of freezing temperatures. After work last week I sat outside and talked on the phone for ages. The night before I read outside of a bar until my friends met me there. I like the way cold clears my head. I like the way it makes me vulnerable in a very physical way. I like the way I can feel my body tighten. I like how my cheeks stiffen and flush and my nose runs. I imagine being poisoned feels this way.

I had never seen the city as beautiful as it was when a layer of ice coated it. It distilled every building, person, rat. All anyone thought to do was keep moving, though they needed to be slow because their limbs had hardened and they were in danger of slipping. I think this kind of distillation of purpose is beautiful. One must only perform their function when they are out in the cold. Every movement and layer and plan you make is in defense of your precious warmth. Humans so rarely possess such a gracefulness. Real grace only really exists outside, naturally, and in design. We are beings! Made of hot blood! chaos! That’s what makes us! but when submitted to a deep cold, the world and all it contains becomes lovely and still. My favorite color is always blue; right now it's the palest of them all. A breath of calm, cool air. As you wish, in a color.

Those who don't like winter, who think I’m false or brutal or whatever for my sentiment, I’m sorry you read this. I’m actually a cancer.

*A lot of this only applies to being cold in the city. Being cold in the country can be much more dire.

personality

I chatted forever with my hairdresser: He told me about the car accident he got into around when the time changed. One minute he was driving and the next he was being shaken awake by a good samaritan wearing thick glasses and chunks of his brain were on the side of the road. He was told that after he regained consciousness he was furiously walking around holding two cigarettes between consecutive fingers smoking them both at once. He acted this out for me. Now he can only hear vowels and gets tired easily and randomly. I like him because he says crazy things that are filled with truth and we often see eye to eye. He talks sporadically and nimbly leaps from one topic to the next. Sometimes when he notices himself in the mirror he stops talking altogether. He takes his hands off my hair to touch his own. He gingerly fluffs the curls of his perm.

He said that physical violence underpins all interactions between men and that is why they are simple, why the so-called patriarchy rules in terms of crime and violence and law and order and retribution. Women rule in much more powerful, covert ways that have to do with emotional manipulation and psychological warfare. A man’s dignity, too, comes from his restraint, how he knows he is capable of physical harm and chooses to mostly abstain. And how he can be counted on to dole out harm and favor when called upon. A woman’s, well, comes from a much darker and more magical place. 

We spoke of the power of personality, which is something that has personally interested me as of late. I told him that I recently watched iron claw, which charmed me despite how much it descended into melodrama. Zac Efron’s grotesque muscles and superhuman jaw, each of their hideous hairstyles and spandex suits, and the fraught psychological dynamic between father and sons made the cast of characters very visually appetizing and emotionally delicious, a freak show fit for Nightmare Alley, for which I’m a glutton. 

In it Zac explains to Lily James that though their fights are meticulously choreographed, those who win are deservéd because they proved their athleticism, agility, and strength of personality before, during, and after their matches. And we come to understand that the latter part is most important when a younger brother is deemed more fit for success than the stronger and more disciplined eldest because of his oratorical skill. He more skillfully crafted image, and so became more successful as a wrestler. After all a wrestler’s persona exists all the time in the ring right beside his powerbomb or jackknife. One makes the other more magnetic, more exciting, and ultimately more valuable in either case. And yes athleticism and agility are impressive, though charisma and magnetism is what makes one more, what makes one great.

I told my hairdresser that I think The crafting of a compelling or interesting or magnetic persona is much more socially valuable than what the person behind said persona actually creates or adds in any artistic or intellectual or even political capacity. He agreed: One goes to war for the sake of image, and people are executed in its preservation, ie. communism. This is why such figures like Marina Abromović, Rick Owens, Marc Jacobs, and Terry Richardson, who are true artists with true tastes and possess true senses of what makes one alluring, are kept close by those in power, celebrities and politicians alike, because they understand that their influence hinges on public perception, and such a thing is fickle unless you know how to command its sway and more so make it work in your favor. Image is paramount in any public arena, and its cultivation must be undertaken with great seriousness and with the help of great expertise. Such has always existed within royal courts, oracles, advisors, and first ladies; and within all of these official and unofficial groups of power players, the artist, who is schooled in the creation, composition, and manipulation of image, is always paramount.

I spent four hours in the salon chair and only got a partial. My hair is kind of brown now.