so long

It's raining and gloomy in New York and I'm staying in bed today - it's ridiculous how easy my life can be sometimes. I was once so obsessed with the movies, especially the realist ones on film, with beautiful boyish girls who moved through the world all quiet and doe-eyed. And the girls who were disruptive and antagonistic and rebellious. But my tastes have shifted. Now I don’t watch as many movies, but when I do they are probably animated or campy fantastical ones, like The NeverEnding Story. I cycle through the likes of Ghibli, The Last Unicorn, Shrek. and then TV. perhaps because I realized all of my previous tastes. I cut my hair short and was a boyish doe-eyed 19-year-old. A disillusioned talk-backing teen. An aimless New Yorker. Now I want to be free, young, light, magic. misery wastes time

Leaving this room is sad, seeing it all empty. I can hardly hear the buzz of the fish tank. It has sunk into the bed's fabric and disappeared. Birds chirp outside, spring? Yesterday it was nearly 80° and everyone went outside to do probably many things but all I saw with an apron on was them sipping on spritzes. 

Two tables say I look like Elle Fanning, which is nice because I usually get Dakota. 

European models talk about a problematic health minister, who is “obviously so obese.” 

I work and work, make more than a thousand dollars and then say my goodbyes because I won't be returning. 

I am sad to leave but happy to go (yes). 

I sit back for a moment with f at the bar, and thanks to his romantic eye, I too look toward my coworkers and watch them do their dance, measuring ounces, pouring, shaking, flirting, rejecting. I love them very much then, and see the magic that everyone talks about - it's so important in this industry to sit back and watch, but the trouble is finding time. Despite love and romance, I stand by my conclusions: Restaurants become toxic entities all their own, and they suck from those who give, as much as whomever allows. If you are not careful, you will wake up all withered and without x amount of years. f, though, is in love with it all and it seems good for him. 

He is the exception, there are those, maybe many of them too. 

He once wanted to act, but now thinks that maybe that desire led him to another. 

This is the path, he says, smiling. 

I order a burger, medium rare.

Re: this room, I hate to leave (l,g,a,a,r,f,n,on,on,on). So many moves have been so hasty, all in a hurry. This one is slower, more methodical, more sad. I am sad but so happy that I am so sad, so lucky. I worry, too. Not for me either. I want everything to be okay (magic).

On my last day in Brooklyn we all sit on the porch. g reads. l draws the yards around us, most filled with planks of wood and brush. But here and there, something: a wire strung around a pole, a planter made out of a basketball, and other examples of recycling taken too far. Mostly her notebook contains renditions of album art or things from our table: a beer bottle, a hand made out of clay with its thumb cut off (broken, a very bad accident, don’t ask). I mend a hat that I found weeks ago for a few dollars, string thread through loops and tie it tight so it all comes together again. We sit and lay for hours, bring snacks and pillows out to sustain us, chain smoke cigarettes, layer up as the sun passes to the other side of the sky. Our neighbors must think we're bums, I think. Lazy sugar babies who work at night and laze all morning. You see we lay like this most days, with a calm about us, a certain self-possession. Hardly a word is spoken and music plays softly until it, too, fades into the background. Our heads sink into our novels and our notebooks. And nothing is left of our breath but the smoke that wafts from what hangs, lodged between our teeth and our lips. 

north

 I went north a few weeks ago to see Niagara Falls. That's Canada in the picture taken from the New York side. A ferris wheel, maybe a boat landing for the ferry that takes you through the falls in the Spring. But it was winter so the water fell through enormous blocks of ice covered in snow. Steam rose up up and then disappeared like our breath. I forgot my passport but the lady across the bridge said it was no big deal, please come over. c said it was because I’m pretty. She asked what was in our bags and we opened them up. a took out her bikini to show the lady, who laughed. Won’t be needing that at this time of year. This picture was taken before I knew I could get in. Can you sense the longing? We got across the border and all was well. Well, there was a lot of snow and it was very cold. We went through the McDonald’s drive through, stayed there a while deciding but couldn’t because the screen we were supposed to read kept changing. We parked, decided on the same thing we always get, then went through it again, ordered two quarter pounders with cheese and a diet coke, chicken nuggets, fries. We found our way into the AirBNB, took the scary painting of a woman with big eyes down, ate the McDonald’s and drank wine from bottles we got from one of those reno’d corner stores that feels wrong inside because they’re supposed to be dingy and for truckers but now they’re for girls looking for natural wine and so-called local cuisine on their way upstate. We played cards then decided to try to buy some weed but the store was closed so we went to the bar on our way back in our pjs. We played pool to varying degrees of success. Some Canadian boy came up to me and asked if I was religious because my dress was long and my socks were high. I explained to him that no, we were just going outside to buy weed from the store but when we got there the door was closed. Does everything here close so early? This is my nightgown. We were going to bed before this. We started talking about this and that, he’s a cook and doesn’t mind trump so much, he made me laugh quite hard and bought me a beer, and then he asked again: so you’re not Mormon? I laughed more and wrote my number on his arm with what he had in his pocket, a Sharpie. The next day a l and me got breakfast: some of the best blueberry pancakes I’ve ever had, all doughy and soft the kind you can taste the batter in, and Canadian bacon, which is Christmas ham—you know that I know that but for breakfast it’s decadent and delicious and we ate it all up. Ava dipped her sausage in the little plastic dipping container of maple syrup and got the peelable lid stuck to her sleeve near her elbow. Our waitress was an angel whom I named Penny, having not been able to ask her her real name. She pointed us to the shop next door where we could dig around and score some trinkets. The shop guy was a sweetheart and said that no one should ever boo a national anthem. The cat in that store was the friendliest cat I’ve ever met, all orange and fluffy and her actual name was penny. We found rings, magnets, records, gifts, pins, charms, books, all to take home. Which we did later that day, through a blizzard and a podcast all about people for whom sex is their sun moon and stars. Specifically the episode with CumGirl47 or something like that. Eventually I asked l to drive the last hour or so, and she brought us all the way home. 

25% gratuity

I am grateful for Arlo Guthrie, roads, trains, gnarled kids and sad parents, weather, laborers, workers, cigarettes, my liberty, New York- its past and its present, beauty, ecstasy, running, pain, my body (wow), the human spirit, consciousness, contrarianism, sensitivity, love, freedom, man, singing, drunkenness, sobriety, the rotten, the ripe, leather, fur, animals, craftsmanship, singularity, a select few restaurants, a select few, relationships in their diversity, my elders, books, handwriting, typing, and a New England sensibility

saltines and soup

At square in tribeca with the lentil soup. The boys in the booth in front of me get a tuna melt and start going on about the pickle. “So what’s with it? When do you eat it, do you just take bites, do you eat it all at once? Well at what point of the sandwich?” I crush one packet of saltines and pour it into the soup in a heap. Eat it in spoonfuls. New York is at its best- dark, cold, not exactly frozen. Yesterday it was—I will stop saying right and wrong, there is no such thing when it comes to places; they cannot achieve rightness or wrongness and sureness is a fraud. Still, it was the most beautiful, completely buzzing, and I loved every person I laid eyes on, even the working women in trench coats, Romaine with his crazy eyes, the men singing on the streets, cracked and on the edge of sanity. I hadn’t felt so affectionately about the city in months. The only place that holds the future and the past and rolls it all into one, a big bursting burrito dripping with juice. I have a roll of cash in my pocket that I will pay for my soup with, that I bought beer with last night, that I hope to buy a pack of nails, a new sink plug, and fly traps with later, but ultimately expect to lose. Yesterday I walked and walked. I walked from bushwick to greenpoint and then my phone died. I sat down at a bar to charge it, drank, and read a book through to the end of lost men wandering in search of God In America, in women, in experience, of hunger and thirst and eating and drinking to no avail. And so I thought of my father and walked all the way to astoria... I crush another bag of crackers, pour it into the soup, eat more spoonfuls. Now the boys are going through their letterboxds, sorted by date released, oldest to newest. Today I transcribed an interview, a grand one. The subject went on and on about wonderful far out ideas. One of them being about how men, between their adolescent relationship with their mother and romantic or spousal relationships with women (who inspire the same kind of feeling, relationship, love?), are lost. Doomed forever to debate the pickle on the side of their plate. Who knows, really, but I dig it. Especially after reading Kerouac. Men roam and roam and latch onto the recognizable boob, something that comforts, quells. But women do the same, of course. In that quelling though are we not further lost? In reversion we are surely not found… is that where searching leads, back where you started? I guess a relationship in theory, by providing what men seek (comfort, security, warmth), frees its members to do more, but that is far too healthy a model for most people... My mother kept a journal when she found out she was pregnant. She was 23 years old and was told to keep track of what she ate. She gave it to me last weekend and I read it in front of her. Most of it was her apologizing for not eating better, for her anger and bouts of depression, when she threw water at “your father, papa, etc,” and telling me that she feared passing it all on. She spoke of how in love she was, though, and how afraid she was of everything falling apart, especially due to her habit of throwing things. And of course a year after I was born, it did. I thanked her and went into my room. We hadn’t seen each other in awhile, but I’m trying to be a better daughter. I finish the four packets of saltines with some soup left to go. The waiter asks if I want more. No, I say. Thanks. The boys in front of me have left. I leave cash under the plastic water glass and go.

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.