we are arguing about whether or not portishead is considered trip-hop. he says they invented the genre, i am skepticle at first, i don’t like how it feels like he’s talking down to me, it is one of my biggest triggers when it comes to men. it’s clear he knows more than me when it comes to this subject, even though i consider myself pretty well-versed in music i really have no idea what trip-hop is, i am using my inference skills. i don’t listen to the band as much as i act like i do, mostly just a few songs off their 2008 album third, but a few nights ago i was sleeping with a different man and he put on their 1994 album dummy, it is why i bring it up now, we are trying to figure out what to listen to, our que keeps running out.
a few minutes later deep water from the 2008 album comes on and i interrupt him while he is eating me out, say see this! this is the song i was thinking of when i hesitated it’s not trip-hop at all. he’s not impressed, he goes on for a bit before i pull him up, i don’t finish, he does but barely, i accidentally bleed on his white bedding, i apologize too much, he’s actually very cool about it. after he plays me a billy joel song that obviously means a lot to him but which i don’t really like at all and i lay on his stomach trying to decide if i want to go home or not. i end up staying the night and we fall asleep listening to brian eno atmospheric music on his google home speaker before midnight. it is still playing hours later when i wake up in the middle of the night and ask if we can turn it off. the window above his bed is cracked open and the cool breeze makes the room the perfect temperature for sleep.
the next morning my alarm goes off 3 times before i finally turn it off, i snooze it each time, it is very early and i am feeling slightly unsatisfied, still craving the physical validation i came here for, and so i initiate sex again, he has to go to work soon and i have to leave to go walk the dog i am dog-sitting nearby in the neighborhood, our temporary proximity is the main reason i came over. we are extremely quick and it doesn’t really fulfill the desires i was hoping it would but i am happy to take this for what it is, at least i am fully awake now. and then the condom randomly breaks.
we both stare at it blankly for a moment, honestly this has never happened to me before, part of me thought it was a thing that only happened in movies. the moment feels much too inconsequential to contain the gravity of a potential life-altering decision. he makes much more money than i do and is also 3 years older than me and so we decide he will venmo me for the cost of plan b and i will go buy it immediately on my walk home. i kiss him goodbye while he’s getting dressed, walking through his apartment with my shoes on, feel strangely like a husband leaving his wife to go work his 9-5 at the office, even though he is the one actually going to an office. this is only the second time we have ever seen each other. i take a handful of chocolates from the easter basket on the table in the entryway of the building when i leave.
later i wander around a walgreens at 8am trying to decide which color of nail polish to shoplift, it is a drugstore tradition at this point, i settle on blue and easily slip it up my jacket sleeve. i also buy one of those refrigeratable peanut butter protein bars and some orange juice. i try to rip the hard plastic package of the pill open with my teeth on the walk back to the apartment i’m dog-sitting at but it’s too difficult, i’m worried the tiny pill will be thrown into the air, i wait to take it with the orange juice until i arrive. the couple i’m dog-sitting for are millenial lesbians, there are graphic posters and candles and vases of boobs all over the apartment, i feel all the nipples watching me disapprovingly. i’ve only taken plan b once before and the situation was incredibly more dramatic, this feels very chill in comparision, i still kind of don’t believe it was a thing that happened, he seemed surprised too, said the last time he’d ever had to deal with this problem was in high school.
i don’t know if we’ll see each other again, i think we both felt pretty neutral about the whole thing. i am too honest when he asks me how i am doing when i first arrive, i get a little too existential about my career disillusionment, a little too specific about my directionless feelings right now, he loves his job with a clear passion that is making me feel a bit jaded in comparision, he doesn’t have as many decorations on his walls as i expected for someone in a creative industry, we both know i’m only there to have sex, but i could have made more of an effort to be fun, be sexy, i spend too long perched on the arm of his couch with my sweatshirt fully on and my arms crossed and a contemplative serious look on my face. we are mostly completely sober. in the weeks that follow at first his neutrality towards me makes me annoyed, i feel slightly like i am owed some vague gesture of romance because of the potential disaster situation, and then i tell myself to stop being a hypocrite.
i wake up this morning a ball of stress, the jackhammers from the construction site across the street (another old house being demolished and renovated) ringing in my ears. i have been looking forward so much to this day off, preparing the whole week every night i get home drenched in sweat from my bike ride home from work too exhausted to do anything else, telling myself i will not waste this time, that i will use it to figure out how to get out of this state of persistent limbo i find myself in lately.
friends ask me how my job search is going and i feel an instant shame rack through my body when i have to say it isn’t going anywhere because i am paralyzed by indecision, they are just trying to know about my life, it isn’t coming from a critical or judgemental place at all, but instead i feel like i’ve been caught doing something wrong, like i failed texas government again for the third time and i’m trying to hide it from my mom, like she’s asking me again why my diploma hasn’t come in the mail yet. feel a droplet of sweat drip down my arm, i’ve been trying to switch to a natural crystal rock deodorant but there are some flaws with the system.
i fight the morning anxiety by smoking a bowl and walking down the street to the bakery and the bagel store i haven’t been to yet, get lox for the first time this year, i want to feel like it’s christmas morning and i’m with my family. go get my grocery shopping done after, 2 tomatoes 1 onion 3 zucchinis fresh ciabatta bread, they’re playing opera music, overhear the cashier girls shit-talking one of their coworkers, she’s on her honeymoon in the poconos in pennsylvania, they make me chuckle. it’s before noon.
and when i get home i watch 4 episodes of the sopranos - i’m not enjoying it as much anymore, he quit therapy a few episodes ago and the therapist is my favorite character, but i need to see if carmela finally takes control of her life and has an affair. spoiler alert: in the finale of season four something even better happens, she leaves him. i have two seasons left.
afterwards i make a lengthy to-do list, clean my bathroom, do the dishes, make my bed, move around some decorations, transfer the to-do list to post-it notes organized by theme in a loose graph structure on the wall, lay down and listen intently to every station on the radio twice. and then i let myself drift off, take an afternoon nap. think about wanting a person in my bed who i am curious enough about to hover my hand gently over their belly and ask what did you eat today not because i am trying to take care of them but because i want to know what i am holding.
i sit now at my desk facing the window, which faces out the road in front of our house, only two stories up, i can hear the voices of almost everyone who passes, i’m sure they can hear and see me too. watch couples come home with takeout for dinner, watch the kids across the street walk their dog, the mother guiding her daughter rollerskating (they’re light-up and purple) down the sidewalk. try not to look for that car i am always almost seeing everywhere. try not to see me walking home in the middle of the night months ago calling a number i don’t know yet is never going to answer me again. not the time i finally try coke and i want to say you were right, i was just scared, not the time i lock myself in the bathroom mid-threesome on ketamine while she’s taking a smoke break and he’s getting us 2 different kinds of fruit and i’m thinking i’ll just give it one more shot, not even the time that fiona apple song comes on the radio in the middle of the night when i am alone and i feel so sure that it is a sign. let it go, let it go, let it go.
the sun set a few minutes ago and i wish it hadn’t. wish sometimes i lived in alaska where right now there is 16 hours and 34 minutes of sunlight a day. it feels so much harder to do things in the night, it’s odd to think that at one point i felt completely the opposite. nights in high school and college where i would make a pot of coffee at 10pm and settle down to write an entire essay, finish an entire editing sequence, write an entire script - it was the only time it was quiet and i was focused enough to get anything done. these days, i wake up at 6:55am on the dot almost every morning before my alarm. bodies change. i might still pull an all-nighter yet tonight, if only to prove to myself i am in control.
i’ve been listening all day to a musician i found recently whose spotify bio says she still has a flip phone and there were no screens involved in the creation of her new record. still implies she never had a smart phone at all, i don’t know if i believe her. her voice is beautiful and it reminds me of that middle-aged mom who went viral for writing a wholesome omnichord synthpop song about her stoner daughter.
later while trying to focus on writing this i get distracted by an ad and end up spending $50 on urbanoutfitters.com buying underwear (and a pair of pbr socks) and i come across these ridiculous manifestations of meaningless consumerism: big pickle chalk + oat milk t-shirt.
i let my phone stay dead all day until 9pm and when i charge it is only to send my family groupchat a photo of the salsa i make (out of the 2 tomatoes and the 1 onion), following my dad’s recipe. it was one of his signature things when i was a child, we’d all make a massive batch one afternoon and keep it in a huge blue marble bowl in the fridge, my sibling and i would eat it by the cupful for meals, for a week all of our breath smelled palpably of garlic, it reminds me of home, today i miss my parents, but i don’t call, i don’t know what i would say, the job thing again, right now it is enough for me to just think about them. it is a weekend evening and the me i normally am would want to be out doing something, would have wanted someone to hang onto, but tonight i find the only person i want to spend time with is myself.
slowly and many hours later than i intend to, i start ticking the post-it notes off on my wall. i have another day before i have to go to work again, be grateful for the time i have, i used to have much less, it’s easy to forget.
p.s. this is a poem i read this week that made me laugh.
SELF / ACRE by megan stockton Even though the grant committee said Thank you & Unfortunately & Please Understand & Not a reflection I do look around my new boat home and think how dingy the orange carpet is, how wavy the pages of all my poetry books got in the roin through the window how my voice wavers similarly & all the emails I meant to respond to. "no $$ no problem" I write a friend before realizing I've misquoted Biggie who said "mo money mo problems" which, though it is a direct inversion, the syntax implies a different outlook. I drop 12 drops of reishi mushroom tincture in my water. I am living outside of my means. I look down at my left nipple and see how it sags slightly from where it used to be pierced & think how I am fond of it and fond of Fox, who I sold my rose gold ring to after work at Denny's in Key West. Give me $80 I said she said o.k. and handed me $60 and I said o.k. When will the ants discover my hideout, my leaky boat, sugar coatd coffee stained? When the sun sets and I get lonely I stare at the mist settling on the river and text friends and I feel better looking at pics of a pile of kale leaves frm a garden in North Carolina, a dead tree in Oregon, her red lips in NYC. I send her the Lispector story about stolen roses wanting to know if it's gay or not. At night A drives around the abandoned neighborhoods looking for old rose bushes to take and replant in her yard, to see if they'll take in the same way I'm trying to see if this new city will take. Forgotten rose bush planted in my brain, my heart. I cry when i get a job as an office assistant to a local blacksmith I call my girlfriend and I cry & i say I just don't know if I can work for a man again. I don't know if I can take it. Every day the lots with the old boat wells carved through water with decades old cement remain undeveloped and the snakes weave through the grass and old white brick sticks out of the mud I think, life is fucking livable, after all. and even though I know the waterfront can only be wild because of some paperwork stuck in bureaucracu I cherish it, and I cherish my own wilderness hoping it will stickaround despite as C says how shameful lives can be. The old tug boat creaks against her ropes. The water is high this year. On good days I think I have something to sell. On better days I think I have something to give.