mistaken identity

Ethereal blonde wisps frame her angel face. She looks up, filtering her fake surpise through wide eyed naïveté. You smile and her eyes shift from your gaze. You haven’t seen her in weeks and still she can’t trust you enough to look in your eyes since you left. I was never really there, you argue silently, and she half smiles like she can hear you. You know what she’s thinking and you don’t want to be reminded of her, not the way she laughed nor the way she looked curled up in your crumpled sheets fast asleep in the late morning sunlight. You smile again, forcing the memory out of your head, and then you’re both acting like you’re BFF that never talk, or two people that haven’t met. You’re about to drown in the agony of the moment when she disappears inside the club. You forgot she always smelled like honeysuckle.

The night ends on a quiet note and you stop off at the bar on the corner to grab a beer before heading home. You can’t stop thinking about those fragile shoulders, the tiny midriff encircled by blue fabric, the bony hips dancing in a gauzy, floor sweeping skirt. Her face is all too clear in your mind and you approach the memory tentatively, afraid of what it might do to your already wrecked mind and limbs exhausted with self restraint.

Another beer and you’re gone, back, reliving the first night you meet her. She’s dressed in black, all porcelain skin and red lips and that wispy blonde hair that floats down her back. She tastes like cotton candy mixed with THC and her eyes dance like the twinkling lights that dot the Hollywood hills at night. Tonight she’s laughing and full of love, not the painful kind but the friendly warm kind that you find in a stranger’s eyes on the subway. She never knows what’s going on, but she gets up every day and tries to make sense of the buildings and sky and people. Red lips, dewy skin.

10 drunken text messages later and you never want to see her again. She’s not there, she’s everywhere. She’s the girl who left you for the TV star, times a hundred. She’s silent, content to play any role you create for her, alive in your bed but waiting conspicuously for you to make the next move. You wonder if she’s like this with all the guys she meets and that weakens the moment considerably.

If only you knew. We fall in love daily and get our hearts stomped on, but we get up and keep dancing on tables, downing peach vodka and kicking up our platform heels. We rock the miniskirts so you know what you’re missing and we never stop flirting to remind you of what you almost had. You are always surprised at how easily we move in and out of your life. You drop the act for a second, in a moment of vulnerability, but when we respond you’re gone. And we always move on, smiling softly to mask the empty pain of waking up alone.

K's story

I remember being a little girl and going to the beach with Mom. I was glad to leave the desert for the water. The summer heat was unbeareable unless I was near water. Pools don’t count. I don’t care if I ever see a pool again after last summer. I can still feel the sting of the chlorine. The summers become more frenzied each year. I’m not sure how much longer I can live from season to season. People look at me and see luxury and elegance. Inside I want to scream, I’m still that scrappy girl who threw sand in my sister’s eyes and pulled her hair.

I hate their assumptions about me but I hate missing out even more and that's what keeps me in the game. Showing up at glossy hotel lobbies and running through the hills all night in heels is now routine. When I can fill my days with work and nights with magic I feel alive. Scenes from rooftops and art openings and treehouses sear my memory with a tingling, almost painful pleasure. I drip elegance on camera but after the makeup comes off I laugh and dance and become my gawky goofy self again. I miss my siblings now. My brother is in a band and he never comes home anymore. My sister sticks around to share some important moments but never without drugs or a new boyfriend tagging along. I miss the sandy beach days where it was okay to get all messy and the worst that would happen was that Mom would forget her cell phone and shrug her shoulders as if to say, oops, I guess we have the day all to ourselves. We would dig holes to China and smear wet sand on our noses before diving into tide pools as warm as bubble baths to emerge shiny clean before getting dirty all over again.

I breathe in the salty air. The sun and the wind beat down on me until I can no longer keep my eyes open. I think about what I might do that evening and then I think about what I could do differently this summer to slow the chaos. I crave the energy of the city in the heat but I don’t know how to get a read on my own emotions in that setting. The energy drips and melts from one night to another with barely a moment to reflect. I’m sick of planning my life in five second increments of found time. Miami, Los Angeles, Tokyo. I keep all my jewelry in little ziplock bags and am ready to travel at a moment's notice. Sometimes I forget if I’m going across town or across the ocean. City grids snap in and out of my memory before I can remember where I've woken up. I have survived a few years of this lifestyle but plane rides are still long as hell without Ambien and yet too brief to feel like I have actually gone anywhere.

I give up and embrace the chaos that the summer brings, inviting it into my fragmented head. How do you know if you're okay when your basis for reality hinges on appearance and artificiality?? I muse and then the relative importance of the sharp, pierecing summer energy becomes apparent.

venice

we want red bull candy and febreze on our keychains.

we love poptarts with frosting, unheated.

we want glam beats and dirty disko.

we get our picture taken by sketchy photographers who ride motercycles and think they have immortalized us with the camera's flash. (they are too late.)

we want to go back to the 90s but with cell phones that take video.

we expertly apply lipstick in darkened car backseats.

we cover the smell of pot smoke with island-scented body spray and too many parliament lights.

we get our movies on dvd, before the release date.
(we never pay retail.)

the story of our life plays out on screen and online,

via dirty texts and secret emails, in pixels and ringtones.

we define ourselves through itunes playlists and facebook status.

we play chess with two boards, on a chalky cliff overlooking the sea,

we believe in up to 10 possible dimensions.

we have art wars with digital cameras in real time, on cement, in darkness.

we pour champagne on rooftops while fireworks rain down at new years.

we kiss on dirty beaches at four am. while trying to google the sunrise.

we live on Mexican food and sushi.

lost:exhilaration&panic

can’t catch up, it passes
disappears into the night
its 3rd and 120 and 2 am and
a rusty fence leads to fourth,
just walk a little west
coats pulled tight around the dress
shock me, alone and grieving
faces melt into the rain
endless messages turn blue
I walk the streets
past garage doors and parking
spots to the place where I find solace
staring at the eyes of strangers

Thanks, 212

I hate los angeles street. I want to cry when I think about it. Fuck those bull shit parties, man, that shit is so last year. Standing around holding drinks, trying to look cooler than the crowd. I mean HELLO. We would never stay at a party like that, except we wanted to see Trip. Correction: I wanted to see Trip. And I said so, almost even texted him while we waited in line for the bathroom but I had no signal.

Strangely, however, on the topic of Trip's return to LA four days after dumping his latest girlfriend, Elisa remained quiet. There’s Alex, she said. Let’s call Theo. Was that him over there? She went to find out.

Jaz and I ambled about through the crowd of eastside rock chicks and underage boys in skinny jeans, trying to get into the music. An ice cream truck parked outside to serve snacks. I picked up free energy drinks and smoked a couple cigarettes. At 1:30 am, forty-five minutes after we should have left that lame party, we sprawled out on a vinyl couch and waited. Trip is being a nerd, Elisa said. It was the first time she had mentioned him on her own the whole night.

When he did walk in, with Theo at his side, Elisa sent me to go say hi. I touched Theo lightly on the shoulder. He hugged me and l ooked quickly in his eyes. He smiled. The five of us left the party and headed north on the 5 to Trip's. Jaz had to pee when we got there so she dashed off to the bathroom and spent the rest of the night texting her ex-boyfriend. Trip found clean cups even though we all had waterbottles of vodka in our handbags and we headed into the living room.

Elisa sat on the couch and stared defiantly into Trip's eyes. Theo and I sucked down a joint and he led me over to the corner of the room to show me some new vinyl. I could feel fire in my head as I bent over to examine the records. I selected some downtempo house and we all kicked off our shoes and danced in the middle of the room.

Later Theo gave me a tour of the rest of the apartment while Elisa and Trip remained on the couch. I started to stumble on a step. We grabbed each other instinctively and I caught myself shooting a quick, longing glance at the full-size guest bed. After one second too long I reluctantly left his embrace and went back to the living room to check on Jaz.

In the car, Elisa explained the situation.
“Theo is such a team player. Winging Trip like that? Taking you away so we could talk? They totally planned it.”
I fell silent for a few minutes, thinking about her words.
“You have to hit that,” Jaz slurred. “Why aren’t you hooking up with him?”

I stayed silent a minute longer before speaking. "We're better as friends. He’s not in my city.”

thank god i moved

call me old fashioned, call me spoiled, call me ocd but im starting to need tranquilizers to enter the shower. really strong ones too not that clonopin shit that the doctors think will solve all your anxiety, but xanax and valium and stuff that precludes driving and operating heavy machinery. I need the squinty haze of the pills to navigate the horrendously gross truck-stop inspired Hewitt bathrooms because I am ocd, or spoiled, or old fashioned, and I find the entire process of bathing in such filth to be a farce. The fact that everyone wears shoes in the shower, to rise above the two inch foamy sea that forms in every shower stall, ought to be an indication of a problem. sure, the experts recommend shoes to head off althletes foot. isn’t that kind of gross that you can actually get a disease from the SHOWER? I only wonder what other diseases they aren’t telling us about. I’m sure the lurking bacteria are just dying to impart their hepatitis or aids onto my dewy little skin. my skin turns red and scaly now that I live back east, and I am certain that it is the shower.

when I first moved into hewitt I thought no big deal. well, no, actually I was terrified of of the showers but I figured that if the freshman could emerge totally fuckable from such squalid conditions that I could too. living amonst the bright eyed underclassmen however has changed my mind entirely. this in depth case study on the bathing habits of barnard women has taught me that most of us try to get as clean as possible in the quickest amount of time and that the rest are just grubby. I fall into the former of the two groups. each morning, with exactly 6 minues to spare, I climb onto four inch platform flip flops, wrap myself in an oversized towel and grab my scented-product laden blue shower basket. I savor my last breath of clean air as I near the smelly radius that encompasses the bathroom door. once insiide I try not to look at anything, lest the image of someone elses hair or leftover food or worse lodge itself permanently inside my sensitive brain. I spent three years working at a perfume company for this? I wonder as I lather up with as much overscented bath gel as possible. I alternate between fragrances. KAI contains a heady, overpowering, frantically floral fusion of jasmine, tea rose and gardenia. the perfume itself is sickeningly strong and old lady-ish but as a bath gel it infuses the steam with a cloud heavy enough to transport my mind. scent is the strongest sense tied to memory, I used to tell my customers, and the KAI acts as a tranquilizer in its own way by knocking the nasty bathroom reality in and out of my mind as I scrub down. the other fragrance I use is a blend of my favorite essential oils: eucalyptus, chamomile, bergamot, lavender, peppermint and rosemary. individually each oil functions to clear my sinuses, calm me down, wake me up, calm me down some more, sooth my stomach and eliminate headaches, in that order, and collectively they too help me forget for a brief millisecond where exactly I am forced to bathe.

for the times when I am forced to touch the industrial shower curtain or the silver bacteria masking metal of the stall door I immediately pump a large pouf of my shea butter hand wash to eliminate anything infectious. if my elbow hits the wall in the tiny shower stall (at 125 pounds I can barely sqeeze inside) I scoot forward on my oversized platforms and try not to think about when it was last squeegeed. in addition to taking up valuable real estate, the tiny soap dish protuding from one tiled wall only offers enough space for one product, so I swing the shower curtain open and closed several times to swap face wash for shower gel for shampoo. I debate on pumping another pouf of shea butter wash onto my chafed hands but usually I don’t have time and instead try to touch the shower curtain (or shower head or handle) with as the problem is not the friendly, hardworking cleaning staff that invades daily between 1 and 2 pm. nor is it really the residents, who for the most part try to pick up after themselves. the main reason the hewit bathrom sucks is that it is just shared by about 25 people too many. sharing is all right in kindergarten and its required when your roommate gets a free bottle of champagne, but when it comes to bathrooms it should be outlawed. no one, not roommates, not moms and dads and siblings, not boyfriends and especially not 25 random strangers can be expected to religiously clean up their own bacteria and dead skin upon leaving the bathroom, yet without such strict measures the rest of the occupants are forced to literally bathe in their hallmates' excrements. there is a reason why any two bedroom apartment outside of new york city has two bathrooms as well: people’s sanitary well being depends on the peace of mind that the spots on the mirror and dust on the counter came from their carelessness and not someone elses

back and forth

a slice of pizza and an email send me down the subway steps. a black wool coat can't conceal my royal blue '80s tube dress. my toes scrape against knives. the train skips quickly to my stop. I climb out from the underground. I pass model collectors and blond psychics from LA. Bongo drums over French house emanate out from a second floor venue and I see the psytrance club where the euporhia wears off quicker than the e. fragmented memories rain down Tenth Avenue and lure me into a deafening, velvet-walled club. i quickly negotiate the line and step inside.

keep your cigarettes says the coat checker tells me with a wink. i sip a glass of white wine then quickly switch to jack daniels. this reminds me of my tiny flask and I escape to the bathroom to quickly dump it in my drink while bleary-eyed city babies kiss mirrors and girls from New Jersey tug at their miniskirts and crowd up against each other in line.

the dancefloor swells as the minutes crawl past midnight. i press up close to the stage to try to align my pulse with the bass that drives each song, drowning in vinyl. I soak up the rush of feeling alone while surrounded by a million bodies moving to one beat. felix takes the stage and time stops. I breathe in the robotic strobe light, delerious, alive as he mixes electricity into magic. confetti floats on a dense, artificial fog and I feel like a Care Bear on a cloud or an ethereal princess who will disappear at the first sign of morning light.

The music keeps me prisoner until the very last beat drops and then the city envelops me in a shimmering predawn mist. Trampled flyers litter the sidewalks, enthusiastically imploring partygoers to attend an event that has now just ended. Celine Dion’s Titanic theme echoes out from an all-night deli and a glowing Chinese McDonald’s sign lights the frozen sidewalk dotted with sparkling, nameless stars. with a tiny bleep of a button I capture leafless trees in black and white and stare into pixels representing eyes. I stop at the Gramercy to take in a giant Basquiat hanging above the empty bar and then backtrack to watch the sun rise over Fourteenth Street.

In Union Square I finger a folded bill in my coat pocket and glance quickly at the many empty taxis before slipping my Metrocard through a silver turnstile. Underground a trash train sits abandoned across the platform, bright, serene and dirty. Shiny garbage bags piled high ooze excrement and decay, glinting in the static station light.