the corners of me burn
            deep purple sea
                            waitin for something
       to wash up on shore
      of desire
        and then missing it
                altogether.
   the point. is a shell, formed
perfectly to be held.
                     but im squinting out at the purple sea
                                      long
wanting
                    to be water & not me
                   everywhere at once
              free    to              dream
engulfing you without 
           grasping
               gaping
                    passion

the cars rushing down the freeway for all eternity

as endless and sturdy as ocean waves

my own little rain-dotted asphalt forever.

the strange alien gravity snug at my seat.

Nothing felt real in this American roadside wasteland.

i couldn’t quite shake the dream.

like a kid playing pretend by the river under the bridge

but she woke up.

suddenly adult.

on the side of some god forsaken road.

interstate fifteen.

suddenly an ache on her left vein

told her play time was over.

because all it does anymore is rain or pour

or take more and more

and leave behind the fallen things

the littlest things that nobody ever sees

they just speed down the freeway

above the pencils and plastic forks in the old palm tree dirt

two left shoes on the old gravel road

and I sit

hidden under the strange tropical tent by the gas station

and nobody can touch me here

I am safe in plain sight

car after car, minute after minute

little fallen drops, getting gas, merging back

onto

the never-ending freeway.

i’ve been here before without realizing it
kicking inside 
                    the great belly
of teal California blues 

endless summer perched at the end of the pier 
heaved a big sigh and
                                                                                        the air melted
soaking sidewalk things in glistening     reality 
                                                                         quiet sun met the mind’s lazy eye
this time was different Venice peak 
look any closer
and you might miss the
heat haze on the road                           ending with ocean
existing nowhere but   in   between 
  here and       further        away

crashing into shore 
opening its mouth wide 
to expose               a roof of searing blue sky 
the usual screen 
wiped clear with the rough cloth
of a perfect beach day
and anyone within the old
cavernous  bright                                                     pin 
on the map
saw themselves there
thru open doors of dark rows of
dusty shelves of solemn bottles
words tucked under fabric sunburnt shade 
and empty cocktail stems moored to 
                                                                 tables around bright corners 

           it was real life for once
walking with nowhere particular in mind
minding business as usual
the windblown traveler inspected a sole of a shoe 
old street pole backbone 
   long bearded beach bum
       feet resting 
           suspended in the dirt and sun
                                                            quiet desolation did not preclude the song playing on
brunch and servers moving thru molasses 

seaside malaise but make it beautiful and strange

a seagull on the trash can reminds me 
that i have eyes too and can watch the world unfold
curious or not
   bird or not
      eyes of the world or not

I was excited because I put the Revere Beach story on there and it didn’t get any comments. Not that the sole reason I post is to receive comments and validation from strangers, but it is definitely one reason why I do it. I crave validation because my sense of self-value is all spun out. When Sammy posted the essay, it made me feel worthy as a writer. Ironically, that feeling I got when I opened instagram to my post was the same feeling that was at the heart of why I got into the whole mess to begin with. That, and I have a hard time resisting a good old fashioned misadventure. I wasn’t all that surprised it got posted though. There had been a hotly debated post about the morality of fucking a 19 year old as an older man:

That’s why I wrote the piece — because the only way for me to truly express my perspective on the matter was to share my personal story about being the 19 year old:

I obsessively monitored the comments. Most were positive or at least insightful. Except for one salty dog who mocked the whole thing:

I got a kick out of that one the most. It was like the commenter had not even bothered to read the whole essay, but rather chose to cognitively process a few choice sentences and then said fuck the rest of this whore’s essay lol. Another commenter went on to say they lacked “nuance” to which they responded:

I typed a response about how the post was taken out of context on instagram and that the intent was not “sympathy farming,” rather responding to a debate. An article from Roe Magazine popped up on my feed and it shed some light on why this particular person got triggered by my essay (the full article by Suhaila Atef is worth a read)

I read my comment to the hater again and it just sounded defensive, and the mere fact that I was responding kind of supported their hypothesis that I was seeking attention (which, not wrong, I do love attention, but there was more to it). Before I responded, I had been anonymous (ish — a fan on the website predicted that I had written it and called it out in the comments).

I quickly deleted my instagram comment. But either way, I suspect OTR’s instagram audience and its webpage audience don’t really overlap too much. Being anonymous is kind of fun sometimes, especially when you are sharing such intimate details of your life, especially when those details are ones you pray to god your parents never find.

But now all that’s out the window because I have this compulsion to share shameful details of my life with other people. So now I’m out here in the boonies of substack, delivering you the piping-hot decade-late goss re: my 18 year old sugar baby days:

I hear someone cat calling, and as one so often does when they’re being cat called, I knew that he was talking to me. I glance over at the perpetrator, who is holding a cigarette in his hand. In his thick ivory coast accent he was laying it on me with a playful, almost mocking, but not mean-spirited force. Like he knew he was the character on the beach that cat-called women, and he was far too eager to oblige to his own amusements. He swayed a fireball nip is his other hand, swaying it up to his lips. I decided to ignore him, as I usually do, and just walk away, but something made me stop short and turn around and walk straight up to him. I wasn’t mad but I wanted to show him up, find a way to tell him that I was a person with feelings too, and not just a prop on his little stage.

“Can I have a cigarette?” I asked.

“Yes, of course!” he said, delighted that he had a few more minutes of conversation, since he knew I would feel pressured to repay him for the cigarette with a few minutes of conversation at least.

I lit it and the scene continued, and now another character popped into my vision, who had been sitting in two chairs next to the cat caller, lounging on the heaving sidewalk facing the hot Revere sun. A steady stream of beach people kept walking past, away from their half-a-mile-away cars, to the mecca of the sandcastle festival. The festival was in full swing.

“What do you think the relationship is between these two?” asked Mats, the cat-caller.

“I don’t know, lovers,” I said, still high, amusing myself with an obviously wrong answer.

The pair were in fact father and son. Al and John.

Al’s ears perked up at the snide comment.

“You know what, you’ve got the gift of gab,” said Al to me.

No one had ever said that to me before and I feel special and I felt like he might really believe it.

“Your accent,” Johnny said, “It’s not from here.”

“People have said that to me before,” I said.

“But you grew up here,” said Al.

“Yeah, I grew up in Sharon,” I said.

“Oh you know what’s in Sharon,” Johnny said, shooting a glance at his father.

“Sorry, that’s a private joke,” he said.

“Oh,” I said.

“Well, anyway my mom is from Georgia and my dad grew up just outside of Chicago—“

“See you said Georgia, we say, ‘Joh-ja.’”

They offered me their extra beach chair, I sat down cus I was in the mood for an adventure.

John showed me a picture of the one week old baby that had died. It was months premature, and it died after one week in the world. The picture showed an angelic head, in black and white, eyes closed and mouth curved just so slightly up in a knowing slant. It was tragic and beautiful. The baby had so much character you could just feel it through the image. But I had my defenses up so I said, “Oh man that should’ve come with a warning.”

“What, you’re showing her the baby?” said Al.

“Yeah, well I just wanted to prove a point,” Johnny said.

And Al told me a story about how he got 15-20 years sentenced but he studied law in jail and talked his way out of it. I told him about my drug habits, smirking boldly, curious how the old gangster might respond.

“You better be careful, you never know who you’re talkin’ to.”

I felt silly and delinquent in his presence, as he reprimanded me for sharing my secrets, and I know I shouldn’t have said anything. I forgot that this wasn’t a confessional and he wasn’t the saint. He was the sinner after all.

“Hey, take it easy kiddo,” Al said, sensing my paranoia. “I’m only here to entertain myself.”

“Same,” I smirked.

I told him I was running off to LA in a few weeks, so catch me if you can.

“Why are you going to LA?” Al said.

“Because I want to be in a movie, why does anyone go to L.A.?” I retorted.

“What sort of movie?” Al asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, “something artsy.”

“Something artsy?” he smirked.

“I don’t know, you asked!” I said, suddenly self-conscious again.

“I know, I’m just busting your… chops,” Al said.

And I knew that what I was really trying to say was that I want to be in a movie that is my life. And I felt like I was on the cusp of some glorious fantasy. And being on the cusp is almost better than the real thing. And I am writing my own dialogue and we’re all taking part in this beautiful disaster of life that is play that is the amusement of it all. Thats why I love festivals.

“What do you want out of life?” Mats swayed towards me and gaped the question out, trying to be seductive or pensive but his drunkenness prevailed as his primary feature.

“Um,” I said.

“Yeahhhh you know, what are you loooooking for?” he swayed back.

“She’s just looking for the next chapter in her book!” Al said.

“He gets it” I said, smirking.

“I do, I’ve been around a while,” Al said.

Out of the blue, Al gets philosophical on me and asks, “If you had to decide, would you wanna keep your eye sight or would you wanna be the best opera singer in the world?”

“What kind of question is that?” I asked. Even though I knew what kind of question it was already, I just didn’t know my answer. Or maybe I did know my answer and it scared me.

The sandcastle festival was in full swing and people and staties and police horses flocked around us. We sat across the road from Sammy’s Patio. And the sadness and joy and everything about life was at arm’s length.

And now I’ve gone full circle, the circle of life on Revere beach—sitting with the “cool kids,” the old Italian mafia beach tanners on the sidewalk of Revere Beach who I used to notice but never say more than “good morning,” on my way to work. And I felt at once like I finally belonged. Like I have found my family, my tribe. Of dirty cheaters, coke dealers, gangsters and mafia men, the most genuine, kind-hearted dudes in the world when it comes down to it. And I’ll probably never see them again and that was okay because we took it seriously and said everything we needed to say already.

Al asked me why I didn’t have a recorder. And I said, “I don’t know, I’m embarrassed — I feel like a creep if I’m recording things people say.”

“A good reporter has a small recorder,” said Al.

“Hey do you guys ever sit and tan on the other side of the street on the sidewalk that’s next to that tiny little park with the American flag?” I asked, since I could’ve sworn I’ve seen them there before, or at least Al, with his straw hat and aviators and old-spotted olive-smooth skin.

“No that’s pickle park,” said Johnny quickly.

“What’s pickle park?” I asked.

“You know… we don’t go over to their side, not that I have a problem with them or anything, I just don’t sit over there with them. It’s our reputation, you know. They’re good guys.”

I burst out laughing. “You don’t like pickle park?”

“No,” Al and Johnny both said.

“Just three banana heads on the beach!” Al said.

“Four!” I said, trying to be part of it, but not exactly sure I wanted to be. The only other time I’ve heard the term banana head was from Marco. I thought he had made it up but it was a slang that wove the degenerates of Boston together by some ridiculous and inconsequential turn of phrase. Like a wink and a nod at who you were talking to.

“We’re going to see the sandcastles, are you coming with us?” I said to Al.

Johnny and Mats had already agreed to go with me.

“And give up all this?” Al says, gesturing grandly at the near-blinding bright tan carless street with all the porches and the abandoned lot and the folding beach chairs and the passerby’s with long nails and phones in their hands.

By the time we got around to seeing the sandcastles, many of them had been maimed by a storm that had rolled in at an opportune time. It was almost more interesting to see the meticulous work of half destroyed sand castles. It was like the wind and rain caved to their secret childlike desires of smashing giant sandcastles from the heavens. It was the satisfaction of destruction, right there on the sand.

When we returned to our sidewalk spot, I felt nauseous from the sun and the worn off ketamine.

“I’m gonna go in the water,” I said.

“Careful, you’re on the menu!” said Johnny.

“You know the sharks run the Cape now,” said Al.

“I’ll be back,” I said.

“Okay, Arnold,” Al said.

“Watch my things,” I said, placing my sunglasses and notebook and phone snugly inside my upturned hat, resting it down on the taught fabric of their worn blue beach chair. I left it there to bake. I scampered away on the sidewalk and then on the sand, until I began to smell the reek of seaweed. I breathed in and the salty sea air shot up my nostrils and coated them a clean fresh clear breeze.

I stepped out of my skinny black flip flops and onto the soft, wet, cool sand. My feet wrapped around little pebbles and shells as I met the modest waves and their rush.

The ocean water looked stale, an unsettling green mixed with navy blue. The air felt bathtub-like on the steady rotten New England August day. I wondered how the ocean looked in Los Angeles.

The cool, seaweed spotted water shocked my lower limbs, but it was pleasant change from hot sidewalk.

I waded into the murky green blue brown water, the waves lapping at my calves in rhythm.

I kept wading in, until the cold water reached the bottom of my bare rib bones.

I took a deep breath and blocked my mind from saying no and without any more thinking, I propelled myself head first toward the ocean floor, feet plunging off the bottom of the sand. The cold hit my face first and then my head and neck and then my shoulder blades and then the small of my back and I knew right away the spiritual meaning of cleansing the soul.

Silent solid coldness. I arched my back and aimed my head for the surface, eyes squeeze shut. I pictured myself the woman mermaid standing guard and looking proud of her beauty and grace, at her first and final stop on this earth—pinned to the bow of a tall and important ship filled with men and their amusements.

My face broke through the surface and the rays once again began their parade, evaporating the droplets from my cheeks and returning them gently to the invisible sea mist in the air.

My eyes blinked shut again and my palms ran protectively across my cheeks and eyelashes.

I peed through my fabric shorts and underwear and swam around a bit more until I felt saturated with the good will of the surf. I dove in once more for good measure. I was cool again and the nausea had subsided. I pulled my legs victoriously through the thick shallow water, the ocean’s amorous tug sent all the confidence and vitality of youth through my chest and bare lanky arms. I knew I had life by the balls.

And I enjoyed every minute of my deep throated affair. I loved what I gave and I loved what I got. I was firmly aware of how attractive of a sight I was, a dripping wet girl emerging from the waves, stricken with confidence, completely collected and whole in the midday sun.

I had not expected to take a dip. In fact I had left the house with only my phone and pen and notebook, since I wanted to poke out and see the sandcastles and then go back to business. I didn’t expect to meet a father and son and the cat caller on the sidewalk.

I reveled in my own image and shot up the beach to my flip flops. I slipped them on and made a bee line to the shower station that was on the side of the bathhouse. I could see the backs of Al and Johnny and Mats’ sunny heads above the hefty two foot wall that divided the sand from the sidewalk.

I smiled to myself as I pressed the button for the water and washed the sand from my feet.

The summer was ripe, bulging, close to rotten. It was the last chance, the best chance, the part where if you bit into it you might get a bruised fruit or you might get a piece so luscious that it spews juice into the corner of your eye as its tender flesh hits your tongue and makes it water.

I ran up to my new friends and fell into the chair dramatically, landing softly on the sturdy old chair that the sun kept waiting and warm. My wet hair felt cool against my neck and the sun felt safe and warm again.

Mats played Burna Boy over Al’s pandora and speaker.

I get a turn on Al’s speaker play Acraze’s ‘In A Dream’, and I am overcome with the urge to get up and start dancing.

Mats saw me dancing and began drooling with his eyes. I became self conscious of my skimpy wet outfit. I sat back down in their extra beach chair. Mats tried to yank on my arm to pull me back up to dance some more. I said no but he kept insisting that everyone wanted to see a beautiful girl dance.

“Yeah, I know, that’s the problem,” I mumbled.

Then I had a better idea.

“Twenty dollars,” I holler mockingly, proud of my retort. But Mats didn’t hear me, he was already too drunk.

“That’s a cheap price to pay,” said Al, “but don’t say it any louder so he can hear you… he will take you up on it.”

Mats took a few more sips out of his nips and to my surprise he forgot about the dancing and got philosophical.

“What do you want out of life,” Mats drawled.

“She just wants another chapter in her book,” Al said.

“He gets it,” I said.

I thought back on a time when I would want something from men, like their stories, and think that all they wanted from me was my body, my mouth, my dancing. But now, growing older, I’m realizing that sometimes we all want the same thing and we all went through the phase of sucking cock or cat calling or chasing tail to get it — and that thing is, a good goddamn story, where you’re at the center of it.

Someone walked by and asked if she could take our picture. She looked like she was with the news. She took our picture. “You guys have the best set up on the whole beach!” she said. We knew it. I never found out where that photo ended up.

“So did you learn anything today?” Al said. It was his way of gently closing out our chapter and telling me to run along now.

“Yes, I learned everything. This is the first day of the rest of my life,” I said.

“You guys are awesome,” I said, not knowing what else to say, not wanting to say “I Love You”, because they wouldn’t really understand what I meant if I came right out with it. They might get the idea that I had some ulterior motivation, but I really just wanted to tell them that I loved them, somehow.

You don’t realize what finding yourself means until it’s all said and done. So its no use telling you that I spoke on the phone with Rebecca as the fireworks beat in the background and everything was beautiful. The fireworks were dull and uninteresting.

*

Back in our apartment, Tom and I traded stories.

“Al asked me why I’m moving to California. The funny part is I didn’t even have a real answer.”

“Its not about California, its about the great adventure. Its about the sunny, other side of the thing,” Tom offered.

“I like that.”

“Barbara Streisand got her start on Revere Beach. Didja knowwww that?” I added.

“No,” he said.

“The gangsters told me that today,” I said, plopping my tangled-up half-dried salty sea mermaid head on the pillow and heaving a deep sigh. I gazed up at him with eyes that felt big and open and new.

“Maybe you should fact check that.”

*

About a week later I went back to the beach. I saw Al laying like a king on top of the cement wall between the sand and the sidewalk, on his chair, fully reclined. I almost interrupted his sun bathing to say hi but I didn’t.

Some background: I kept getting these pesky emails from PR agencies, even after I ended my unpaid “music journalism” internship. The internship was less about true investigative journalism and more about keeping up with the never-ending churn of public-relationslop. The whole scheme was to trade nice, circle-jerk articles for festival wristbands. And at one point in my life (read: embarrassingly recently) – I was super down for that. You mean to tell me that all I had to do for a 3-day pass to a hot pool party in Miami is type six hundred words that affirm how sick the event was??? Sign me up. It cut out the middle man – I was going to buy tickets with my paycheck anyway. But then I began getting praise for my articles from record labels and artists that I admire, and my ego grew. I got sort of bitter about the fact that the founders of the website were making money off my labor and I wasn’t getting shit, other than getting shit-faced in the VIP section with that one girl from Love Is Blind. The novelty faded out and all that was left was the exploitative reality of the music industry.

I asked if they’d pay me a menial per-word fee. They talked in circles and chuckled and said well you know, you’re so talented, and I’d really love to pay all my writers but we just aren’t in the spot… So I stopped writing for them. They tried to reel me back in with tickets to Shambhala and I almost took the bait. But I strongly believe that you should pay writers. Writing is work and press is valuable – that’s why they make money off the PR-funnel site. Obviously unpaid internships are sometimes necessary to gain experience, so long as there is an actual fucking job at the end of the road, not just another festival.

Okay so that was a lot… but I believe it was important background. You may disagree. Regardless, I am in this bitter state and I am plagued by PR emails. I try to unsubscribe, block, delete, junk them, I try everything, but they keep coming. The relentless sharks. But one subject line caught my eye: “FINAL RSVP: NYLON House in the Desert […]” The title felt… a little desperate? It was sent on Monday, and the event, featuring Diplo and Hugel, was on Friday. Then an idea takes hold and I can’t shake it. It would be so harmless to RSVP. Plus it would come with an extra bonus of sticking it to the man. So I did. I emailed my name and a plus one. I signed it “On The Rag Media Scout” lmao.

The shark smells blood and bites: “Hi there – which media outlet are you with?”

I muster up all the buzz words burned into my psyche from all the soul-sucking emails. I commit to the bit: “Hi there, I’m with On The Rag, an experimental print media and online platform that has garnered the attention of DAZED, LA Times Image, and the Hollywood Reporter. The haute-sleaze publication has captured the chronically online GenZ demo and is distributed in London, NYC, and Los Angeles. Best,”

It wasn’t false. Just pitched well. I regularly shit-post to the OTR site, more than I’d like to admit. I am truly with On The Rag lmao. And if these sharks actually cared enough to look into it for even 30 seconds on Instagram, pretty sure they would be like what the fuck is this. First of all, OTR has nothing to do with the music industry, especially not EDM. Pretty sure OTR’s main audience is like the embodiment of anti-corporate-festival culture: gallerinas, incels, short film producers, and most of all, certifiable hipsters who wouldn’t wish liking-something-mainstream on their worst enemy.

I figured I was a goner, that they would surely look into it and see that I am full of shit. But no. Another bite: “Would you be able to cover the event in any capacity?”

I’m not proud of what I did next, but I told them I would make an instagram reel of the event plus a write-up for On The Rag. I made sure to mention that OTR’s instagram has over 11k followers. (Again, if they looked into this for any amount of time they would realize that the sort of brand jerk off thing that they call press would never be posted to OTR’s instagram).

The next day, I secured the guest list: “Love it! Happy to accommodate you + guest.” What started as a sort of cross between a manic inside joke, a social experiment, and the simple human craving to test the limit of what’s possible, had turned into an actual grift. Unless I actually write something and really do give them press… All press is good press… right? Whatever the case may be, its a scam-eats-scam world, and I am lacking all my fucks about it. What’s the worst they could do if I didn’t follow through? Take me off their email list? That’s honestly the goal. Ban me from Coachella afterparties? Spoiler alert: I wouldn’t even be mad. I might even be proud in a twisted way, like I was when I managed to get banned from THREE fraternity houses in college. But I am a “man of my word,” so here I am, writing this story. How meta.

Maybe you’re thinking, how is all this the universe telling you to go do dr*g$ at a Diplo show? Well, the next thing to happen was even more unlikely than the press pass, and was almost certainly a sign from the universe to go do dr*g$ at a Diplo show (or maybe I’m just a drug addict lol, or MAYBE both). But anyways. After I got the invite, two days later I went to a thrift store where they sell old rolling stones concert tees for a cool 250. I had a gift card. “Would you like a bag?” The cashier asked. I usually would’ve said no but I had decided to walk to the store, and didn’t want to get the pants all sweaty on the way back. So he put the pants in a bag and I power-walked home so I wouldn’t be late for work. I leave the bag with the pants on the bed and rush out the door. A few hours later, my husband sends me a cryptic text: Why is there so much cash here btw.

Huh? I text back. He sends me a photo of a bunch of cash, all hundreds, next to the pants I got. What the fuck.

The day before, I had made a plan to link up with a dealer. The planning of drug buying is an unfortunate reality. You are forced to really think about your bad decisions and turn your fiend intent into reality. It’s embarrassing. It didn’t help that the dealer was confessing his own devastating coke addiction to me and I had to respond like, wow I actually totally feel u…also I’ll take one highly addictive and dangerous, possibly adulterated substance pls.

But now, with this unsettling amount of embezzlement money or whatever-the-fuck-that-was literally landing in my lap, or rather in my pants lol, combined with the press pass for the very next day, it felt like first-world scammer-girlie fate. You can’t convince me that’s not the universe telling me to drive almost eight hours total to go dance with a bunch of self-absorbed, serial-elbower, entitled influencers in the desert.

We were already late. We detoured to sit in a parking lot and wait. “He better get here soon, press check-in is now, and we’re still a good hour and a half out,” I muttered. I was becoming neurotic – an aging, anxious gen-zer. I thought about fentanyl and police and robberies and car crashes and all the things that could possibly go wrong. Worst of all was being denied at the door. He finally pulled up and we both rolled down our windows. “Howdy! I’m not going to rob or murder you,” he said. That somehow convinced me. I got in his car. I felt like I was in high school again, I can’t remember the last time I did a parking lot rendezvous. He showed me a mass spec test: negative–fentanyl, positive–cocaine. I knew it could easily be bullshit, but his demeanor was geeky and benevolent, and most people don’t even know what mass spec means. But I will take this opportunity to say: always test your shit.

We sped east into the desert like some regular old poshmark-Hunter-S-Thompsons, with RACK CITY blaring out of the radio.

We got through the door, press badge and all. The scene was out of a corporate dystopian wet dream. Surrounding the stage like a moat was a dizzying array of brightly lit activations. “I think I just saw that influencer girl with 1 million followers that my friend knows. But everyone looks the same nowadays so I can’t be sure,” I overheard someone say. It was true, everyone did look the same, but everyone was also fucking gorgeous and pristine, like little AI Coachella figurines with silky smooth pixels for skin and impeccable style that was almost uncanny.

The collective lip and cheek filler melted into the bizarre influencer funhouse filled with selfies, hair tosses, free merch, and swarms of phones in faces buzzing around glowing mirrors. The forgiving backlight of the e.l.f. Cosmetics mirror was irresistible, even to me, the coked up cynic of the party. My pores disappeared and I pretended like I always looked like this.

The bathroom line was atrocious. Insecure micro-celebrities shamelessly cut the line to assert dominance. From inside the stall, I could hear high pitched abhorrence at the mere thought of attending Coachella Weekend Two. But the open bar and free pizza and cotton candy numbed the bathroom debacle.

The crowd was far from ideal, but what did I expect? Nobody said excuse me when they shoved past you, and one girl even grabbed my arm for some deranged drunken reason. Luckily Diplo saved me by pulling another girl from the front row up to the corporate festival disciples’ most revered sanctuary: the backstage. The arm-grabber saw red in the water; she moved swiftly and instinctually toward the front and away from me, elbowing everyone in sight. I was in shark territory and it was bleak.

But the very back of the floor remained the steadfast source of good vibes and respectful dancers that it almost always is. There were moments where I got lost in the music. It was a good story, at least. The sunrise on the drive back made the San Bernardino mountains periwinkle and kind. The night was a paragon of do it for the plot. I think I’ll leave it at that. The rest will likely be backlash re: the unsavory combination of questionable drug use and abominably-clout-chasing Coachella afterparties.

Scrolls used to be just for the stuff deemed important. Like biblical stories and On The Road. Now there’s no respect for the scroll. There’s just inputs of random hits of squeezed things that make your brain sing and then hum and then rot. Let’s just lump it all into one big scroll. No stations no tuning no tourniquet blood stoppers no order just constant piles of information that have no relation to each other, only a relation to you and your amygdala.

The scroll of life. Now the word is beginning to sound weird, off, not right. The word is derived from Middle English, a blend of roll and scrap. Made from papyrus or leather or parchment paper. I thought when we rid ourselves of physical delicacies such as these materials that there would be no wars, no eyes for eyes, no hide for hide. We’re in a different time. But all is the same. We just traded scroll for scroll.

Some people will never quite know 
    where I’ve been or what I’ve done

in other words

Some people will never really know me

They’ll know some LA shell of me that

Emits wisps of nearly forgotten misadventures

Buried things

In smirks and thoughts and dreams

Like the weird and mysterious little painted plate thing
              that hung from the wall of our Hadley house from the very beginning

Perhaps it was an heirloom

From the landlord

I hope it’s still there

Like how we got high 
  and took a stool 
                                and a paintbrush 
                                                                    and carefully added a dog and a cloud

And laughed and laughed

And you left your grape vines in the bowl on the sturdy wooden table 
      in the sunny loving kitchen 

My mother gave me that table when I moved into my first rental house

The wooden table that still had a few faint colorful scribbles
                                                                      of washable markers

I used to be bothered by how you left your

   grape 
 vines    lying         around

How vain   how    cunty   how     absolutely      confident       

But now I would give many moments just to witness 
                                                                                            our kitchen debaucheries in person

                                       young                           vile                                brilliant

again

We really did have it all

        potential                                   novelty                        momentum  towards…

I don’t know

Something foggy and crisp like auburn leaves shuffling in the wind

Not yet fallen

But captured

                                                           The Innocence of               flight

Not yet knowing

Never considering

how they must

at some point in time

reach the ground

It’s all over now

There’s something rotten about being 27

But maybe it’s just the mango pit and rind I threw away

Not many people know me now

and I think it’s because I’ve lost my way
                                                                      but now i'm 28. and i'm back on my way

But it was real

Which made it even better when I turned around the corner.

It was the deep peach sunset behind Venice beach.

Palm trees and everything.

A real life postcard

I put my skates on and sniffled

It is dusk at the edge

Of the planet

Of venice

The colors fade and there’s a relief

The show’s over

we can pack up our bags and go home now

Follow the ocean breeze

The unseen crash of waves

Sand cradles my head as I lay back

And twirl my eyeballs in space

Mute dark palm fronds

Indigo sky

Navy smoke clouds

Little pale stars

Just one step above me

I like places where you can confirm

Just by looking

That you are on a planet spinning round

And that this whole shebang

This human shebang

Is small and bananas

I intended to post my whereabouts online

But it never realized

Maybe today was meant to be faced alone

The beyond baroque reading was mostly agonizing

There were like six people there in two types:

Grad students and old friends.

But LA set the bar low for agony

As I walk past a dude sprawled out on the sidewalk

A thick belly with a rough hair button exposed

Under a street light.

I swerved to avoid the belly and felt guilty

For even considering a poetry reading to be agony.

As I walk past the bum tents.

But it really was a gloomy event…

It used to be something more.

Twenty poets in line, each with five minutes to share

‘It was thrilling’ said the third reader to the empty, nearly dead room.

Hanging on by a thread, this old literary scene seemed.

How hard it is to reach out and touch people’s bare souls

Nowadays

I wander the broad barren western streets

in my dusty yellow crocs

craving something real

desperate for a thrill

But the harder I long, the further I get from it all.

I don’t want to grow old and appreciate

the color lilac and bees buzzing and porches creaking

It all sounds so depressing

Depressing that I could be content with the innocent winks of earth

Depressing because it means

That I’ve given up and surrendered to the flow

There’s a part of me that believes if i resist and spit and hate and moan

That the Universe will be the one to cave

That it will shudder and turn around with an eye roll

and expose its secret lair of forevers and bubbling knolls of knowledge.

I get back to the apartment and open the door

and there’s balloons and a plate full of lines.

Well turns out you can’t manufacture vibes

We’ve tried every substance alive and every youtube video out there

Nothing seemed to make us know what to say to each other.

Sometimes people just don’t click.

i missed the sun today
in a fugue state
until 4 p m 
 
picking toes until the bottoms are soft and exposed 
like i started to peel an orange and forgot to remove the white stuff

i sit naked at my desk and look in the mirror at my curved spine and small lumps of breast
that almost touches my thigh because my foot is on my seat in front of me

my chopped hair floats just above the shoulder blades that poke from my back like little nubs of wings
like an angel that had them clipped as a child because of a natural disaster
and was told she would never fly

her serious nature 
cajoled and confused

she practiced flying anyway
with the magic plush hanger from a princess dress
from the bunk bed to the rug and back again
and again…

a PT told me once that my scapulas were winged and this could be fixed with exercise and more PT
but i didn’t feel like sewing up the last shred of evidence 
that i was different and wounded and helpless

i think of that light place just above the stairs to the basement of the old childhood house 
just between the ceiling and the junk on the shelves and the washer and dryer that went on and on
just between the folds of my dreams and the lost memories of the womb
a place that was there for me when the silence killed me and no one would look at me
i sat on the stairs to the basement and shut my eyes tight and looked up at my place
my safe quiet place full of pillows and blankets and softness
and that everlasting light that wrapped me in love
the light that could only be described as just right
and no one was there it was just me i would play and play and laugh and fall eyes shut 
face down into the pillow clouds

sinking

sinking

floating

and somehow everyone was there to see
between the lines of my long black eyelashes scrunched onto my cheeks
i never told anyone about this place above the stairs to the cold unfinished basement lair
I knew it was real and i knew i had been there
and that someday i could reach there again
if i just held my breath 
and concentrated on it

hate stems from jealousy.

there’s an overload of beauty and curating 
going on 
on the feed 
i can’t stand it

ive got to get away from it. 

its too much
too too much
for this feeble mind
to take

the hollow walls
snarky comments get deleted
temperature falls 
shivers  and cramps

what comes of us all
when there’s too much
good
treasure
beauty

its repulsive in its gorgeous glare

pour some out, then i'll have less
but when there’s some on the plate 
the fun never ends

old poor old gary 
just wants pie and cigarettes and beer
just wants to look up at the starless night
and sigh and think there’s other life out there
pontarius is the planet he’s from
he says when he’s drunk

im not an endless crunk the sea parts so i can drown 
my head is a mile wide a maggot ridden balloon just one spine of a prickly branch presses bulges nothing happens the worms slink away from town all i do is wrong  not enough input yet too much congestion makes the machinery confused and sullen and ringing ringing tearing scratching bleeding well whatever never mind…

i create my own winter you have to in la
its winter because i said so i don’t care if its july i will refuse to see the sun and the sky
refuse the way that it is 
refuse the pool deck 

i was lured by the pool
sun incubator of fools
marooned on the high floating red eyelid ship 
that skewers up the thoughts and presses them down
warm calm
lays them out to dry
warm and alright
and the thoughts go boo boo-boo boop boop bee boop boop...

i might've lost myself in search of other people
fate gets vengeful when you take it by the hand 
and lead it around 
to parties and bars 
like its your bastard love child.
la got to me. i thought i had It. but so many people here have It that i start to fit in. blend in. fade into the bleach fumed background of artists and scoundrels.

i stared too much too long
the eye of the storm. feels calm but chaos erupts
divine intwined wrath of freedom
ropes the sun cranks it like spotlight on what i could become 
who’s watching who’s waiting whos praying there’s something 
a whirrr a low drone 
cruising by the wreckage of my mind
fool 
whispers fate
its all been done said brake take a stand in line for a chance
no one has met and caught my abhor so much as the whore who got pregnant with an idea and tore 
up the letters i sent 
the delicate road maps in pen 
and i tried i really tried to show you 
to make sure you were there for it 
but you got cocky beaded sweat loopy about things 
this isn’t a game where you pretend to—

more sludge! more sludge! goddamnit!
what’s truth! where have we gone
to bed to the tomb i saw the devilish grin of the morning sin and grew skittish 
there’s nothing to lose

on this grey ball of worms 
writhing hoping seeking believing 

ive had enough 
o dear fate take me home 
there’s no choices anymore there’s no road there’s only zeros and ones

Like a Dalí dream,
lit matches
and a motel room scene
fingers bent
cherry red

long ribbon roads
leading us right up to the
silent silver sky

Going up
      going
going
       going
                                                     West

On seventy i.

Gas station stalls.
smooth summer calm.

Dawn suddenly
stirred 
       squinting her sleepy eyes
raising her deep endless indigo hair 
   an inch past        
                                                            the vast pillow of the sky
and slowly summoned
her wild morning air

we rose with the cowboys on horses
and swooped on free
through the hopeful valley

my lungs filled
      my spirit stilled

and Dawn opened my eyes

to the odd movie-like crank
of her swan song

of time, just for her, standing still

the lazy yawn
of forevers stirring in hills
awakened to the real morning show

Suddenly we arrived.
It was just you and i.
to a no man’s land called home
to a song someone wrote
on Sunset Boulevard

I had got it in my head that I would be able to get more writing done away from the city and all its yearning and desperation and its exponential energies of its general fame-starved, celebrity-ridden population. I was wrong. I spent the week reluctantly slinking around parking lots and side doors and drinking whiskey and soda with ice and smoking parliaments and rereading old unfinished passages that I had written. I was doing very little writing and a terrible amount of drinking, worrying, overthinking and texting. There was nothing else to do. There was an In-N-Out and a Shell gas station and a strip mall and I felt that I could be anywhere in America and it felt impossible to do anything creative in a place so devoid of any sort of meaning besides calories and fuel. The only ocean around was the endless parade of freeway passengers in vehicles going god knows where. The sky was dark and cold and it was raining and there was nothing good on TV. But then again, hell is your own goddamn mind, and there was something soothingly eternal about my self-inflicted hotel purgatory.

I begrudgingly missed the wilderness of LA, where at least people were doing things other than eating lukewarm burgers and guzzling gas and going somewhere else. I was beginning to feel like a massive failure, and beginning to hate my cringe self more and more every time I unironically mentioned my unwritten “great American novel,” and i began to wonder whether I was turning into a spitting image of my father, an incredibly talented, under-appreciated artist who never quite reached the level of fame he deserved. Am I destined to always have the wrong impressions and never really know what’s really going on? Has the pursuit of truth and beauty finally been slain by the greedy churn of Public Relations and Press Releases? These things weighed on me as I forced myself to type out my wretched thoughts from the plane to Miami Music Week.

Epilogue: Maybe fame is just the frail crystalline byproduct, the throwaway chemical at the end of the reaction. Art is the real thing, the prized set of molecules that we all seek so desperately. And sometimes, it's right there in front of our eyes, the real deal, all along. And so we make scenes and we shake our asses to the beat and we party until the bitter end. We resist. We weave threads of life and create myths about things that don’t really exist, like Los Angeles. And that night, Los Angeles felt real and available, suspended in solidarity within the underground current of tales that reside in walls and wails and beating drums, pins and paper and pens and ink and oil.

I read Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish last night as tears streamed freely down my cheeks. The poem gifted me real tears, real feeling, real knowing.

Cam said, “Not much will make you cry like that.” He eyed the cover of the culprit.

“Oh, that’s a good one,” said Michael, nodding at Kaddish in my hand, a few nights earlier. It was at the Reverie Bookstand grand opening.

The book of poetry in my hand becomes almost unbearable and I get a jolt of anxiety that makes me want to leave immediately. I consider leaving the book behind and getting out of there. The party was winding down and I knew nobody and nobody knew me.

I peered around the room to see where to make a purchase, but it wasn’t immediately clear. What looked to be the sales desk had turned into a DJ booth.

Finally, I spotted a transaction in the crowd. A guest clutching a pile of books tapped her phone against another phone. The only way to buy a book was to catch Tim, the founder, and his phone. Tim smiled and said to the guest, “thank you, good to see you.” I started to walk up to him but I was cut off by a friend swooping in to bid farewell.

I got sidetracked by a conversation that started with me standing next to someone holding a Modelo who finally turned to me and said, “Great party.” I agreed and we struck up a friendly conversation. He seemed at ease with himself and his surroundings, in a drunken sort of way. I, on the other hand, had just chugged a whole coke zero and it was almost nine at night. I was feeling everything except ease.

He noticed my platform doc martens, the same ones I walked down the aisle in. We paused the conversation to listen to the music and he got excited. He goes up to the DJ to make a request. I look over and all I see is a cozy coating of dust surrounding the various knobs and mixer buttons. He comes back, drunkenly triumphant, and he has a recommendation for me. “Pet Shop Boys,” he said, “It’s an electronic band.”

The only reason I was even aware of the grand opening was Michelle Lhooq’s instagram story. I had followed her a few days prior because I found her newsletter that features ketamine and raving and other gonzo things and could not believe my eyes. I only found her newsletter because I read another article about women in music journalism. It felt like writer girlies fate. Michelle Lhooq, if you’re reading this, you’re cool as heck, ty for sharing such cool things!!!1!1

Anyway, I look around to determine Tim’s whereabouts to see if I could slide in and buy the book already but he’s busy trying to get the lid off a champagne bottle. Suddenly there’s the finger-in-cheek noise and the cork disappeared into the ceiling and everyone cheered. He begins to pour the bubbly into little paper cups like the ones at the dentist.

My party companion strikes up conversation again, and I respond politely, but keep an eye out for my entrance. Tim hands out champagne and says some more goodbyes. He sees us and I make eye contact and he pours up a couple cups and comes over to us.

“Hello, thanks so much for coming, would you like some champagne?” he said, graciously.

“Sure,” I said. “This is a magical night, thanks for having us.”

He smiled and agreed.

He walks away and I completely forget to ask about purchasing the book.

It was a magical night. And cross my heart and hope to die, I wasn’t even on any mind-altering substances to skew my imagination, except for maybe the coke zero.

I arrived at 7:47 PM, later than I planned, because a man sitting on a couch on Sunset Boulevard said, “Excuse me, Miss, could you get me some water?” and I told him, “No I’m sorry I can’t, I’ll be late,” and hurried on. He yelled after me, “You don’t have to be sorry, just say no!” But I was sorry, and I remembered one time when I was on a bus from New York City to Boston and didn’t have any water for five hours and how thirsty I got and how thirst might be the worst feeling in the world. I thought about leaving another person thirsty and I turned around and muttered to myself, “Poetry be darned,” and went to the corner store where I picked out one of those Gatorade waters with electrolytes for the couch dweller and a coke zero for me. I almost bought myself a tallboy but thought better of it. The cashier didn’t even scan my coke zero and I smiled because it was like the cashier was in on it too.

I went back to the couch on Sunset and made eye contact with the man who asked me for water. I bowed my head and said “I got you this.” And he said, “Did you know that drinking carbonated water is only good if you have an upset stomach?”

“No, I didn’t know that,” I said.

“You didn’t know that?”

I shook my head. He looked at me with complete flabbergast on the dark street.

“Well, anyway thank you for the water. Have a good night,” he said.

“You’re welcome. You too.”

I walked away from his couch again, but this time I felt like everything was alright. The poetry readings were supposed to start at 7:30, but when I stepped through the open door at 7:47, I was greeted with the warmth and chatter of a crowded party. There were containers of food by the window and an empty square table surrounded by the walls of pure wooden bookshelves. I noticed later that the books had room to breathe, almost like a record shop, where you could flip through a row and look at each of the covers. There was someone tending to a tea kettle on a low wooden coffee table surrounded by floor cushions. Someone with a rabbit tattoo peered over an “I Love Dick” book.

I’m pretty sure I was the only one wearing a graphic t-shirt. I got mine from the Los Feliz Flea, it was a t-shirt from BIG K.R.I.T. 's second studio album Cadillactica. I was definitely the only one hiding their eyes behind blue tinted frames.

Almost immediately someone spotted the coke zero in my hand and asked where I got it. I told them I got it at the corner store down the road.

Just then, Eric approached the square table and began to settle the crowd.

“Should we burn sage before we begin? Is that offensive?” he said.

The crowd grew quiet. He read this poem:

If you have time to chatter,
Read books.

If you have time to read,
Walk into mountain, desert and ocean.

If you have time to walk,
Sing songs and dance.

If you have time to dance,
Sit quietly, you happy, lucky idiot.

― Nanao Sakaki

Then Michael read “Procrastination Blues,” a poem about leaving art behind.

“A premonition,” he said. And chuckled wryly. The fire had taken his home.

He told the silent audience about returning after it burned to dig through the remains.

“Ceramics do well,” he said, with another wry smile.

Here we all were, because Tim opened a bookstore. “Out of the ashes of my hometown, there is now a bookstore,” he wrote on instagram.

“I totally just got called by a book,” Michael said. “It's a cool feeling.” I knew what he meant. The way he said it reminded me of my dad. And I thought of being a kid falling asleep on blankets on the floor before soup at Friday night’s Shabbat dinner and my dad sang songs and read stories of mystics. My favorite was the Baal Shem Tov.

“One more poem I wrote. I didn’t wanna do it from an iPhone but I didn’t have a printer,” he said.

I typed the quote into my notes app and I thought about how I must look. One of those damn zillenials glued to their phones. But for some reason holding a pen and scribbling into a notebook in public sounds far more embarrassing.

The last poem ended with Michael professing, “I love you all” and it reminded me that I did the right thing going back to the man on the couch. I didn’t even miss any poetry after all.

I began to notice the details of the place.

A Jack Kerouac book on the top shelf.

A Borders book store hand cart atop the bookcase.

A bowl of hot liquid is passed behind the DJ decks.

A 1979 Playboy magazine with a cigarette ad “less tar than the leading long.”

They had the Be Here Now book.

Cigarettes wafted in thru the open door.

And something about the night and his poetry made me go up to Michael and tell him the story about how I was going to be late but then the bum was in on it and I arrived just moments before the poetry began and he knew what I meant and said with a smile and nod, “Well, we were waiting for you!”

And it made me remember a different time and place and space when I rocked back and forth in my seat on the cold morning porch in Joshua Tree as I witnessed the earth tilt unbearably slow and grow light and then warm under the influence of 420 mg of mescaline HCl. And how we were making breakfast later on that day when it was nice and warm and dry and still, and the sun surrounded us and held us in its womb inside the house, and we played the Grateful Dead and “eyes of the world” came on and I fucking knew what it meant for the first time. We are the witnesses of the physical realm, all connected, all in on it, the collective consciousness, the eyes of the world.

Like Alex Grey posted on Instagram:

The cosmos is within us. We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.

— Carl Sagan

My eyes graze over spines as I wondered what book would call to me this time. I find the poetry rows. I’ve not read much poetry but I wanted to learn more. And this beat old place seemed like the perfect place to start. I open Allen Ginsberg’s poetry book to a page where the first word I see is “premonition.” So I had to get it.

I bought Kaddish by Allen Ginsberg and I blinked and told Tim that the night was magical from behind my blue tinted frames. He agreed.

We did nine ohms toward the end of the night. And that night, it made total sense to do ohms on Sunset Boulevard.

Then, Michael read out of a book of Jim Morrison’s poetry. I had also picked up that book and read a few verses but rolled my eyes and put it back. Something for everybody. Then a poem by 14th century zen master Ikkyū Sōjun:

Her mouth played with my cock the way a cloud plays with the sky.

And right then I was happy to be wearing blue shades so that I could comfortably avoid eye contact with everyone.

I read Jack Kerouac and drove to California and found a bookstore with the beat books beaming in and out of consciousness from the shelves, and some old heads reading poetry by a square table. I knew there was somewhere a circle being closed or maybe a wormhole being opened or what’s the difference really.

And I totally blew off my deadlines for that stupid magazine where I trade articles for show tickets. And I thought about leaving it all behind to run away and write poetry and climb mountains and sit on the floor sipping tea and talking philosophy. And I smiled to myself because I would usually be horrified to miss a deadline.