anticlimactic file export
digital ties + songs to give head to + an old story about the boy next door
there is a boy who i follow on spotify. his name starts with a j. he used to be my neighbor. in 2020, before covid happened, i was living alone (or, with my incredibly intelligent but anti-social friend from montessori elementary school and another girl we found on facebook who wasn’t around much) in a duplex north of campus in austin. i’d found and signed the lease a year and a half prior with my longterm girlfriend at the time. i’d just returned from studying abroad in new zealand, just been dumped by my study-abroad-boyfriend over facebook, just downloaded bumble (amongst the other dating apps) for the first time in my life.
j and i had similar music taste (i didn’t realize at the time how common this was, especially in austin, especially amongst fellow indie 20-somethings). and he listened to me. or, at least, once i was taking a bath and angstily listening to bon iver’s live-version of blood bank while underwater, and we had a promisingly intimate conversation over text. he told me about his sister and i confided in him about my breakup. i was naive and i was sad and i wanted to find a Companion to replace what i’d lost and i wanted it as soon as possible. after all, why else does anyone join the apps.
we went on two dates. for the first one we got pizza at a place near our houses. where three years later i would go to have a final relationship exit interview dinner with someone, the night before i dropped them off at the airport to fly home to europe. i got the same type of pizza both times.
for the second one, i went to his house. next door. he had a lot of roommates, i was envisioning a world where we all became friends, where they took a little bit of my newfound loneliness away. we sat on the floor in his room and played songs for each other. it felt hopeful (read: we were splitting a cheap bottle of wine). there may have been a bit of guitar serenading, i don’t remember. i do remember he told me about his recent acid trip listening to depression cherry in the back of his friend’s truck, on their way to 360* bridge. i remember he was the first person to ever play me the black death angel song. i remember we said it sounded like trains. to this day it is one of my favorite VU songs. i remember i played him sleep the clock around by belle and sebastian. i remember him asking if he could kiss me during the buildup.
later, both of us cried in his bed (me more) after having incredibly unfulfilling and upsetting sex. he played me the entirety of the new toro y moi album. i didn’t like it. it’s amazing how someone’s music choices during a hookup can drastically influence one’s emotional experience. other negative associations include frank ocean’s blonde, bon iver’s for emma forever ago, radiohead’s in rainbows, anything by KAYTRANADA or tame impala, anything you’ve listened to while having sex with anyone else (i am a hypocrite).
now i sometimes prefer to just be in silence. without all the ghosts.
i stayed until 3am. he swaddled me in his new gravity blanket. this experience has replicated itself since 3 times. different people, different gravity blankets. it’s always nice. after, he walked me back to my house next door. we never saw each other again. when we slept together he was about to graduate, was studying something like aerospace engineering. i have no idea what he is doing in life now, where he is, who he is.
but every once in a while i’ll see his name pop up in friend-view on the desktop version of spotify, and i’ll check out his profile to see what he’s been listening to.
and i found myself doing it just now and i am thinking: crazy, this world we live in.
what would it be like to have these people be permanently gone, to know once you move out of the house next door that there is no going back, no knowing anything about them anymore. to be certain that unless fate intervenes in some serendipitious way that they’ll be lost to time.
all this to say - yesterday my ex-girlfriend from 5 years ago requested to follow me again. we unfollowed each other years ago. or, she blocked me, i can’t remember anymore. i accepted and requested to follow her back.
and it’s got me thinking about digital ties.
about the way i/you/we all ask people we’ve just met and might never meet again, but who we don’t want to lose forever, to give us their instagram handles. how half the time when i have this interaction with someone i never see these people in real life again, but instead get to know them through the tiny fraction of themselves that they choose to share on social media, knowing full well it won’t lead to any sort of real-life connection.
about our collective desire to possess, our inability to let people go. maybe we don’t have to. about that scene from the worst person in the world (2021) where they actively choose not to exchange facebooks after spending the entire night together, despite how much it was magic. about how, when they meet later by chance, it doesn’t work out anyway, likely never would.
if anything it’s just interesting, our ability to gain access to almost anyone - if we try hard enough - via the internet. could also insert: overwhelming, dystopian, stressful, depressing, hopeful. how it’s almost harder to stay hidden from all this overt connection. about an ad i saw for instagram lately that made me audibly grimace. all about that word: connection. i looked but i can’t find it anymore, because all that comes up when you google ‘instagram advertisement’ is tips for how to advertise yourself on the platform.
and all day i’ve been listening to this song state bird because a musician who went viral a year ago for a very sad song you’ve probably heard on tik tok somewhere posted a clip of herself singing a new (also sad) song where she mentions the man she’s seeing gave his ex-gf head to it. and i was curious. and turns out i like the song very much. and i’ve been trying all day to imagine what it would feel like for someone to give me head to it, if it would be a positive or a negative experience. and i’ve concluded it would almost certainly be negative. and i’m wondering how she (the ex gf in question) felt about it. feels about it.
and right now i’m waiting for a very large file to export. it’s 1/3 of the way there. while i keep waiting i’m going to go clean the kitchen.
we sort of have a cockroach infestation, but they only come out at night. every night at 9pm i relinquish my control over the kitchen, accept it is their domain now. luckily they seem to stay almost entirely within the confines of the room, during the day they hide behind the wall. but we plan to move within the year. i don’t think the situation is salvageable, no matter how much we clean and use preventative all-natural peppermint insect repellent spray.
and i don’t know any of my neighbors here. but there is a man named earl who lives in the apt in the basement. he has a girlfriend named candy, and a small dog that walks behind him without a leash.
