Sunday 12/30/18

The opinions of other people do nothing but fuck with my mood, tamper with my intution, dilute my loyalty to Self. This morning my mother saw me typing and asked what I was typing and after answering nothing and then being prodded insistently for more information, I confessed it’s just a diary. And then she got really excited, too excited, and started saying things about how happy she is that I am writing again. I am not ‘writing’ ‘again’, I said. It’s just a diary. Could hear myself being a bitch. Why should her happiness make me feel like killing myself and start acting like a bitch? She is happy that I am writing, and it makes me want to quit just as much as if instead of expressing happiness she’d expressed ridicule or contempt. I am so sensitive. It’s just that I have this obsession with preserving my interiority, I guess. And her interpretation of whatever this is that I am making, this private object, as a creative endeavor feels like a threat. I don’t want anybody to name what I am doing. I don’t even want anybody to look at me. (Well, that’s not true.) I am so sensitive and I am not particularly interested in controlling my sensitivity (much more interested in harnessing), but I cannot control the reactions of others either. And so probably the best/only thing for me to do with My Life is spend it keeping everything precious to myself. And everything is precious. So I will keep it all.

Monday 12/31/18

Looks like it’s going to be an LSD free New Year’s Eve. Not for lack of trying. Earlier, Carson called and said he thought he found a good lead, some guy with nothing but pink dick and hairless abdominal pictures on Grindr who said he had everything. So Sydney picked me up and then we went and picked Carson up and then the three of us drove all of the way out to Lake Mead, where the everything guy lives. Sydney and I waited in the car while Carson went inside to meet him. We watched him knock and then get let inside, but we couldn’t see the face of whoever let him inside, we were too far away. Sydney and I were laughing a lot while Carson was getting out of the car and even while he was knocking, but as soon as the front door closed behind him and we couldn’t see him anymore, the retardation of the situation and the potential perilous consequences of the retardation really set in. My stomach flipped and I started asking Sydney questions like are we stupid? And she kept answering yes. I asked her how long we should wait before beginning to worry, and she said wait? I’ve been worrying since we left his mom’s apartment. But eventually, pretty quickly actually, Carson reappeared with an exaggeratedly annoyed look on his face. He ran up in the headlights making a thumbs down and a sad face. All he fucking had was crystal meth… but he did give me head.

Tuesday 1/1/18

My 2019 New Year’s Resolutions

1. Figure everything out

2. Never tell anyone anything ever again

3. Be less whorish (spiritually, stylistically, sexually, generally)

4. And more modest

5. Quit smoking before I turn 21 (hot to have smoked, hot to have quit young)

6. Be curious (in classes and in Life)

7. Be a disappointment to no one

8. Punish my body

9. Write something every day no matter what

10. Write more LISTS (my true life’s passion)*

11. Keep a separate document for dreams (write down all of my dreams)

12. Save money (but what money?)

13. Trick Kai into falling in love with me

14. Forget about Kai completely

15. Sustain my friendships against all odds

16. Find a reliable drug dealer

17. Stop stealing

(Editor’s Note: Glimpsing ahead (scrolling lower on the Google Doc) (time traveling), it appears that I took item ten quite seriously, but only for sixteen days. And so the subsequent sixteen day’s worth of diary entries are written entirely in ‘LISTS (my true life’s passion),’ a pattern broken only by the events of January 18th, 2019, I suppose the dramatic qualities of which shifted me out of list-making and back into prose. I do, however, continue to write entries in the form of lists with frequency throughout 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024… and… well…you’ve read the rest… )

Wednesday 1/2/18

Everything I Put Inside of My Body Between 4 A.M. and Midnight

1. Slice of cheddar cheese bread, toasted with butter (4 a.m.)

2. Handful of semi-sweet chocolate chips (5 a.m.)

3. 0.35mg of Norethindrone (12 p.m.)

4. 10mg of Claritin (12 p.m.)

5. Half of a granny smith apple with peanutbutter (2 p.m.)

6. 15-20 snappeas (2 p.m.)

7. Pistachio cake batter (4 p.m.)

8. Extremely large slice (that could probably be considered 2-3 normal slices) of freshly baked pistachio cake (5 p.m.)

9. Full six piece order of China A Go Go crab rangoon (6 p.m.)

10. Another extremely large slice (that could probably be considered 2-3 normal slices) of freshly baked pistachio cake (11 p.m.)

11. Six Marlboro 27s (all throughout)

12. .25oz of Sativa (all throughout)

Thursday 1/3/19

Read more

Sunday 12/23/18

Watching Dateline with my mother in her bed. It’s hard not to get up and go into her bathroom every commercial break to hit my weed pen. Trying to ration out my commercial break bathroom weed pen runs to avoid my mother’s suspicion. It’s one a.m. and she has seen the episode we are watching before but doesn’t remember exactly how it ends. She can’t remember whether or not the husband will be found guilty of the gruesome murder (slit throat, several broken bones, body disposed naked and disfigured on the side of the road across from a Lowe’s) he clearly committed. Sometimes they get away with it, she said. Sometimes she has nightmares about my father and his guns. You just never know… God forbid… Earlier, she asked me if I remembered the son of some woman who used to work at the front desk of my elementary school. I told her that I didn’t and then she said that he just got sentenced to life for strangling his girlfriend to death. Oh my God, is how I responded. Which made her upset. Oh… please… don’t use God’s name in vain.

Monday 12/24/18

I drove to Walgreens to buy claritin for myself and cinnamon for the Christmas cake my mother wants to make for Christmas Eve dinner tonight at my aunt’s (which I’ve been spending all day dreading, dreading, dreading especially since Sydney is doing dinner with her girlfriend’s family instead), and when I walked out with my plastic bag, I experienced this all too fleeting, completely dread-less and perfect moment of happiness and gratitude for my life and really just generally the world at large. It was just starting to get dark out and it was so cold in the parking lot and there were Christmas lights twinkling all over across the drive home and I felt so happy. I didn’t listen to music or anything, just drove the few minutes home down the dirt road and felt so happy and so aware of how happy I felt that I could hardly believe it. Thought, if only I could feel like this all of the time, or at least even a significant SOME of the time… yes… then… But I’m not really sure what would come after then. Seems impossible to imagine.

Tuesday 12/25/18

Christmas Day, what a depressing affair. I woke up this morning at ten to the sound of my mother clanging around pots and pans in the kitchen, and when I went out to say good morning, there were tears in her eyes and cinnamon rolls in the oven. I asked her what was wrong and she said that my father had just left for a hike, that he’d woken up in a bad mood and said a few mean things and then went out, just like that. On Christmas morning, she cried, shaking her head. I hate him, I said. Which made her laugh. S*******, don’t say that! I went into the bathroom and hit my weed pen until I could hardly stand and then returned to the front of the house and put Home Alone 2: Lost in New York on the TV and patted the sofa cushion next to me for her to come and sit until she did. We drank coffee with hot chocolate powder mixed in and looked up from our phones at the television whenever the other person said something like I love this part or Macaulay Culkin is so cute here. Now it’s almost two o’clock and my father is still missing and everybody is coming over for dinner in three hours. My mother and I made a bet. If he shows up before five, I get twenty bucks.

Wednesday 12/26/18

Lately I’ve been dreaming about car crashes. What does it mean? I told Sydney about the one I had last night, where I was driving somewhere in that flat empty space between Barstow and Baker and I was trapped between two semi trucks that kept swerving into my lane at the same time, closing in on me. What does it mean? I asked her. But she didn’t know and was stoned. Maybe you feel trapped. Like, in life. I nodded. I guess. But trapped isn’t the feeling. At least not really. We went to Ramen Tatsu with Carson and then walked around Town Square for like two hours, eating plain flavored yogurt from Yogurtland and smoking joints every thirty minutes in the parking lot by the AMC. We talked about New Year’s Eve, tried to come up with ideas on how to spend it. Carson suggested that maybe we find some acid and eat it at the top of Mt. Charleston. Sure. Five days left until the year ends. The twenty-sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and thirtieth of December feel fake and liminal. It’s all so purgatory-esque.

Thursday 12/27/18

Read more

Sunday 12/16/18

Fell asleep last night in Jamie’s bed between Jamie and Ava. Which is not a particularly unusual circumstance except for the fact that I don’t exactly remember how the circumstance came to be. All I remember is drinking three big underage beers with Anna at Claremont Craft Ales and then drinking two big underage shots of Kirkland tequila at the senior apartments after that. I opened my eyes this morning to Ava’s face five or six inches from mine, already awake and looking at me. Which made me jump. Which made her laugh. Which woke Jamie up. He rolled over to face us with his eyes still shut, took a deep inhale through his nose, whispered what the fuck, then rolled back over and started snoring again. I wanted to ask Ava if she remembered me getting in between them last night, how it happened, find out if I was invited or not, but she rolled over and started snoring again too. I lied there for another ten minutes maybe, staring at the fat crack in their bedroom’s ceiling, then crawled out from between them and hopped over the bed frame and quietly crossed the hall and fell asleep again, except this time in my own bed.

Monday 12/17/18

Today I ate birth control, adderall, claritin, half a piece of vegan banana bread and two fat wedges of a cara cara orange. Everybody is going to the 709 House tonight to party but I want to stay in and start packing, I think. Or maybe I will start packing and then go to the party. This morning I wrote one thousand words on Jeffrey Gibson in a fugue state and then submitted them to Professor Anthes without ever re-reading what I wrote. Fuck it. Felt so good to be over and done with that I went ahead and submitted my Russian Novel final to Professor Warner, too, even though it isn’t due till Friday afternoon. And with that, so concludes (academically speaking at least) the second to last winter semester of my undergraduate life. It’s almost five o’clock now and the sun has already begun to set. I am watching the sky from my bedroom window and feeling depressed, a little, because my bedroom will be somebody else’s bedroom soon. The cat is going to miss the big window. And the secret compartment in the back of the closet where she likes to nap. And Jamie, too.

Tuesday 12/18/18

This Google Doc is full of drugs and drinking and stealing and self hatred and self sabotage and codependency and complaining and shit talking my nearest and dearest, my loved ones and cherished friends. If anyone I know or have ever known in my entire life were to somehow get their hands on this Google Doc, I think my life might have to end. Either my life or theirs, it would have to be one of us. And I am too squeamish for murder, probably, and vaguely interested in suicide regardless of the situation. But that fantasy is aside from the point at hand. Which is that this Google Doc is full of sins and bad habits and that I’d very much like for that to change soon. Not tonight though, obviously, because I’m going to party. And not tomorrow either, or Wednesday or Thursday or Friday. Or Saturday, of course, which will be my first day back in Las Vegas, yet another impetus to keep filling this document with self sabotage and shit talking. Fuck it, impossible. Let’s forget about it for now. Practice self acceptance instead. THIS GOOGLE DOC IS FULL OF SELF SABOTAGE AND SHIT TALKING BECAUSE I AM A SELF SABOTAGER AND A SHIT TALKER AND THAT’S OKAY BECAUSE GOD MADE ME THIS WAY. AND LIKE, SURE, GOD ALSO MADE ME CAPABLE OF CHANGE, BUT………………………….. (ellipses continues infinitely)

Wednesday 12/19/18

Dear self, it is four o’clock in the morning and you are drunk. You showed up to The Motley half an hour late last night to work the last shift of the semester with Elle and Priya. You were late because you were with Cooper in his room at Pomona, testing out the six-foot bong he just bought. You took a rip so powerful that you temporarily lost vision in both eyes. Yikes. Then you lied down and asked him to play Astroworld and encouraged him to steal the last two beers out of his roommate’s mini fridge and crack them open for you. Which he did. And yes, there was this vague sense in the back of your mind like, aren’t I supposed to be somewhere else right now? But you chose not to investigate that. Then your phone started ringing and when you saw it was Elle calling, you remembered that the somewhere else you were supposed to be was The Motley. So you chugged the rest of the stolen Corona and, feeling paranoid and over-stoned, begged Cooper to run to Seal Court with you in the dark and maybe even hang around in the seating area of the coffee shop with his laptop until you get off. But he wouldn’t come with you. I hate you, I really do, you slurred, then ran off. You sprinted up past Frary and across the big lawn and all of the way through CMC and didn’t stop until you got to those stone steps by the back entrance to Seal Court, where the dumpsters are. You stood there alone in the dark for a minute or two out of breath, saliva collecting in your mouth, feeling pathetic about your body’s distressed reaction to engaging in five or six minutes of cardio. You thought to yourself, I should really go to the gym tomorrow, then threw up beer and bits of the poppy seed bagel you had for lunch all over the steps and part of the bannister too. Oops. Then you washed your face in the bathroom, lit a Marlboro 27, smoked about three puffs of it to get the taste of vomit out of your mouth, put it out and clocked in. You apologized about your lateness to Elle and Priya, neither of whom cared. They were giggling behind the bar, taking tiny sips out of a pink sparkly Nalgene filled with lemonade and vodka. Want some? they asked you. And your answer was duh.

Thursday 12/20/18

Read more

Sunday 12/9/18

Called Cooper and said hi, do you want to come over in your pajamas and bake pot brownies with me in my kitchen and then eat too much of them and get really high, so high that we are a little bit freaked out for like an hour or two? But then the freaked out feeling will pass and we will just be like, super chill and super hungry for the rest of the night? So hungry that maybe we will want to walk to the grocery store below the train tracks together at like, sunset to buy a bunch of potato chips and ice cream and things like that to bring back to the haunted house and eat in my bed? While we watch the complete nineteenth season of America’s Next Top Model on my laptop? Do you want to do that? And he said no. Can you believe it? So I called Paul and made him the same offer and he agreed and now he’s on the way over with a quarter pound of THC butter he made a few weeks ago. Which is so great because it will really expedite everything and I didn’t really want to have to go through the whole heating up the flower in the oven/using the cheesecloth to strain all of the stems out part of the process anyway.

Monday 12/10/18

(Editor’s Note: I am remiss to report that a record of the events of Monday, December 10th, 2018 does not appear to exist. I am not sure what happened on Monday, December 10th, 2018. As you will notice below, reader, the notes from Tuesday, December 11th, 2018 do not report a reason for not writing the day prior. Which is mysterious and statistically unlike me. Additionally, there are no pictures on my camera roll taken that day. I even checked the physical diary I occasionally wrote in that year, to be sure I didn’t leave anything there. But Monday, December 10th, 2018 does not exist there either. I am not sure why I did not write anything on Monday, December 10th, 2018. Maybe it has something to do with the pot brownies I made and consumed on Sunday, December 9th.)

Tuesday 12/11/18

This morning I went to the last Russian Novel lecture of the winter semester and also my entire life. I sat in the back and felt a little bit sad. Which was nice. I liked the feeling of sadness so much that I quit being present and spent like, half an hour really trying to sink into it. I looked around the room at all of my classmates (none of which I ever really spoke to, aside from the shy Harvey Mudd freshman who served as my discussion partner whenever Professor Warner would ask us to find a partner and discuss) and thought, the likelihood of this specific group of individuals ever being gathered in the same room alone together ever again is slim to none. Actually, just none. But the longer I spent trying to exploit and extend the sad feeling, the less sad I felt. Before releasing us, Professor Warner blew the room a kiss goodbye, thanked us for our curious minds and begged us not to leave our final projects for the last second. Right. Let’s try.

Wednesday 12/12/18

It’s the last day of classes before reading days. Feels appropriate that the last day is falling on a Wednesday, my fullest and most densely packed fucking day. The punishing final push. I am typing this into my phone from the back row of Native American Art while a movie made by a Cherokee interdisciplinary artist plays on the projector. Not paying attention and neither is anybody else, really. It’s a sea of dimly lit phones under desks. A girl in the second row has her whole laptop open, scrolling urbanoutfitters.com with her brightness turned low. Feel starving. Haven’t eaten since who knows when. I woke up this morning at six, showered, drove to campus and worked the opening Motley shift and then ran here. After this I’ll work the afternoon shift, (drink like three cappuccinos and steal a day old poppy seed bagel maybe,) then run across campus to Pomona one final time for one final excruciating lecture in Lighting Design. Oh. And celebratory drinking with everybody at Jenna’s apartment in Upland tonight. Of course.

Thursday 12/13/18

Read more

Sunday 12/2/18

Coming back from watching The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show Holiday Special (rancid waste of time) and getting drunk at Jenna’s, I drove straight into a DUI checkpoint posted up on Towne Avenue half a block down from the haunted house. Half a fucking block. It’s things like this that leave me no choice but to believe my life is nothing but one long sick celestial game. I rolled my window down and the officer smiled and waved me right through, I didn’t even have to stop. I was so excited and relieved that I drove right past the driveway. (Stupid bitch, holy fuck.) So I had to circle back around and drive through the checkpoint a second time. I rolled my window down again and the officer smiled again and almost waved me through again, but then he was like, weren’t you just here? And I had to point to the haunted house and improvise some bullshit about how I just moved in and sometimes still get lost, and how, also, I felt a little nervous maybe, seeing all of the police cars so close to the house, wondering if maybe something was wrong. Said all that drunk as a fucking underage skunk, but he believed me. So I thanked him and said goodnight and pulled away really slowly, leaned up against the wheel as to not miss the driveway in the dark, and parked. The checkpoint was so close I could still see the officers through the gate. So I waved and yelled THANKS! again, wobbled upstairs, looked out at them some more through the window and made a promise to God that, as a show of gratitude for letting me off, I will never drive under the influence ever again. It’s a good promise. Wonder if I’ll keep it.

Monday 12/3/18

I ran into Carrie by the Cube and didn’t recognize her at first because she dyed her hair blonde and gained probably thirty pounds. She was waving at me like crazy from all of the way across the reflecting pool, but my eyes are fucked and the prescription I wear in my contact lenses has been expired for two or three or four or five years. She was so far away that even if she hadn’t gotten fat and blonde, I probably wouldn’t have recognized her. I tried to kind of look around without making it look like I was trying to kind of look around, wanting to make sure that she was indeed waving at me and not somebody behind me. But there was nobody behind me. So I kind of smiled and raised my hand a little, awkwardly, and she motioned like she’d meet me on the other side of the Cube and started walking my way. Panic. I started walking towards her too, a stranger as far as I knew, just to not have to stand there and wait, feeling uncomfortable in my body. Even after I got a close, I couldn’t figure out who she was. She looked familiar, kind of, sure, but it wasn’t until she spoke that it clicked. Carrie. Tried hard to conceal the moment of recognition but I think the shift was palpable anyhow.

Tuesday 12/4/18

In my dream last night I was on a date (or something) with Shia LaBeouf at Le Pain Quotidien. It was nighttime and we were the only people inside of the restaurant, there weren’t even any waiters. It was just me and Shia LaBeouf and we were sharing some bread, tearing off pieces from this enormous baguette with our hands. He was getting annoyed with me because I was only tearing off pieces of crust, leaving all of the guts of the loaf for him to eat. His annoyance with me hurt my feelings and so I started pouting kind of, not eating, and when he realized that he’d upset me he started throwing pieces of bread at my head. Trying to make me laugh, I think, and eventually it worked, I started laughing. Can’t remember anything else. Woke up with a debilitating crush on Shia LaBeouf, obviously. Thought about him while I showered. Thought about him while I drove to campus. Thought about him all throughout The Russian Novel, didn’t pay attention to Professor Warner for a second. Thought about him while I drove home. Then smoked a bowl, locked my bedroom door and rewatched American Honey on my laptop in bed, to look at and think about him some more.

Wednesday 12/5/18

Skipped all of my classes today and all of my Motley shifts too because Naomi is back in California for a little while (on winter break from her study abroad program in New Zealand, of all locales) and she drove all of the way down from her parent’s big house in Palo Alto to see me. It was so fun, she said. I went to Starbucks three times and painted my nails between Fresno and Bakersfield on the 5. She pulled into the driveway this morning and I showed her around the house. Drew was in the kitchen, pouring Captain Crunch and 2% into a sauce pan because all of his other dishes are soiled. (Again!) He and Naomi had sex one time two years ago (doesn’t count, I don’t even think he ever got fully hard, she said) and so watching them greet each other this morning made me laugh. Then I got into her passenger seat and we peeled out and drove all the way to LA. We listened to rap music in the car and parked on Melrose and ate vegan Mexican food for lunch in the garden at Gracias Madre. My fake ID worked on the stupid waitress and so we drank three Palomas each, too. Talked about boys mostly. Boys in Claremont. Boys in New Zealand. Boys in Palo Alto. Boys in Las Vegas. Then, inebriated, got back into her car and started driving east down Melrose looking for a tattoo shop I went to last year with Daniel and couldn’t remember the name of. Just as we were about to give up, make a u-turn and walk into one of the thousand ‘not the one I went to and can’t remember the name of’ tattoo shops we drove past instead, there it appeared on the right. We went inside and asked the guy at the front if they had room for us and he said depends on what you want, what do you want? Which seems like something we should have known before we walked in, but we didn’t. So we looked at each other and told him that we’d be back soon and went into the Italian restaurant next door to confer. We just wanted a place to sit and decide on a tattoo together, maybe sober up a little, order a coffee, but the Italian bartender was this really old pervert who was really into us. He poured us two shots of tequila each and watched us swallow them both and clapped and laughed and yelled. By the time we walked back into the tattoo shop, we knew what we wanted (I guess). So a guy with ear lobes drooping to his shoulders and a barbed wire neck tattoo led us upstairs and stenciled the word ANGEL (with slutty little wings on either side of the a and l, plus a slutty little halo above the g) onto our bare upper ass cheeks. We were screaming a lot even though it didn’t hurt and we were laughing too much and really annoying the guy, I think, whose name I kept getting wrong and in this moment still cannot remember. And it all felt like a little bit of a funny joke in the moment, but now that I am all alone in my bedroom again (Naomi back on the midnight road to Palo Alto, no fucking money whatsoever in my bank account, sober…) I’m like wait. Why is the word angel written permanently on my ass?

Thursday 12/6/18

Read more

Sunday 11/25/18

I’ve been “home” for less than twenty four hours and despite my deeply integrated and thus far lifelong tendency to leave a suitcase unpacked post-vacation and live like a vagabond for weeks on end, I went against my nature today and put everything away. Felt great. I smoked a celebratory joint, stole two celebratory milligrams of Xanax from Drew’s room (while he showered… I know, I know…), swallowed one of them, pocketed the other, went down to the kitchen and ate two toaster waffles with my hands, standing over the toaster. Felt fat and thought about making myself puke but then remembered that I haven’t had anything to eat since that bagel at the Barstow Starbucks yesterday and decided that the toaster waffles could stay. Good Sunday. Now I’m going to get drunk and read about T.C. Cannon for Native American Art and then probably go with Ava and Jamie to see Creed II in the Village, though I couldn’t care less about Creed II. It’s just that I simply cannot think up anything better to do.

Monday 11/26/18

Woke up around nine this morning and dragged myself into the shower for the first time since who knows when and then out of the house for Native American Art early enough to get coffee first. Went to The Motley and asked the girls if I could go behind the bar to make myself a cappuccino and they let me. Ivy was working and seemed kind of shy to see me. She cut her hair short over Thanksgiving and when I reached out to touch the ends, which were flipping out in a cute sixties way between her shoulders and her ears, her cheeks turned pink and she buried her face in her hands and couldn’t look at me. Which probably means nothing. I made my cappuccino and then asked Talia to come out into the alley for a break and a cigarette with me. We sat on the milk crates and I told her that I think I have a crush on Ivy. She rolled her eyes.

What? I asked.

Nothing.

Tell me!

It’s just… you’re so easy. You like everyone who likes you.

Tuesday 11/27/18

Went to The Russian Novel in my pajamas. Bombed the Crime and Punishment exam, probably. I did my best considering the test covered the entire book, which I never finished reading. Made some bullshit up in my short answer to a highly specific question about the ending. I tried to obscure my cluelessness with nice syntax but Professor Warner is no fool and so probably I will show up to class on Thursday morning and feel unhappy when I look at my grade. Whatever. I came home, took one of Jamie’s beers from the fridge, drank it in the shower, put my pajamas on again and went back to bed. Didn’t sleep. Just lied there on my back with my knees bent and tucked up to my chest, letting episodes of Bojack Horseman I’ve already seen one thousand times before play again. Around six, Cooper called and told me he was at Jenna’s and asked me if I wanted to come over there. I said no, but you can come over here so he came over here and brought Jenna. I took them up to my room and we smoked a blunt, played with the cat, ate sea salt potato chips on the floor and gossiped about whatever for two or three hours. Once it was dark, we bundled up and got into Jenna’s car and went for a drive up to Mt. Baldy. We parked over a cliff on the side of the road somewhere high and sat on the hood and looked up at the stars until our noses and fingers got numb. On the way back to the haunted house, I sat in the backseat alone and felt jealous when Cooper and Jenna gasped and pointed through the windshield into the sky at a shooting star I couldn’t find and got to make wishes without me.

Wednesday 11/28/18

This morning (in the dark at six something in the morning before my Motley shift, no less) I took one for the team and washed the nastiest load of dirty dishes the haunted house’s kitchen sink (and perhaps the entire world) has ever seen. All of them Drew’s, of course. On Monday night, Jamie, Ava and I made a pact to boycott the kitchen until Drew cleaned up after himself. But my God, that fucking smell. Intolerable. Every time I went downstairs I had to hold my nose, and if somebody didn’t get to it soon, that rancid scent of sweet decomposition would’ve probably begun traveling upstairs and into my bedroom. Gross. I let the kitchen sink water run steaming hot and then put gloves on and scrubbed without ever taking a breath through my nose. Gagged one thousand times while dealing with a bowlful of what appeared to be leftover yogurt (at least I hope it was yogurt and not something looser that gelatinized over time into a yogurt-esque substance) that had started to sprout fur and fluorescent colors. Kept picturing the essence of the furry fluorescent mold rising with the hot water steam into my open mouth and worried that I should be wearing a hazmat suit or something. When it was over, I threw the sponge away and didn’t feel as accomplished as I thought I would. I was sweating and itching beneath the latex and I felt so faint and hot all over and nauseous and like I might die from contact with a rare toxin.

Thursday 11/29/18

Read more

Sunday 11/18/18

Feel strange. Body aches. Last night I fell asleep next to Cameron thinking about what to say to him in the morning to make it so that he understands I don’t want to fall asleep next to him ever again. And I had it, the perfect combination of words, but by the time I woke up I forgot them. So I didn’t say anything. Didn’t even wake him up, just got dressed and left. I walked around the corner to Frary and had two fried eggs and a cup of mint medley alone at a dark little table in the corner for breakfast. Finalized my schedule for next semester on my laptop. I stacked everything on Mondays and Wednesdays because why not? Ceramics in the mornings, Russian Autobiography in the early afternoons, Chemistry in the late afternoons, and, on Monday evenings only, a seminar for 19th Century American Art. Easy, I think. Tomorrow, or maybe Tuesday, I am going to do all of the things I said I’d do today. There’s still daylight left but it feels “too late for me” to do anything somehow anyway. Feels “too late for me” in general. It’s not about the light. It’s something metaphysical. I need to read three chapters of Crime and Punishment, shower, do the laundry, clean up, call my mother back and think about what I am going to pack for Vegas. Going to leave on Wednesday morning, I think, even though I could technically leave early Tuesday afternoon. Just don’t want to. And I am not sure what to pack because I am not sure how long I will be there. Through Saturday, probably, or for however long I can bear.

Monday 11/19/18

Today I woke up late, rode Ava’s bike to campus (the Rodeo is rattling… I showed Jamie last night and he said it’s probably just a loose heat shield and I said what’s a heat shield and he said I’ll fix it later, just take Ava’s bike), went to Native American Art, bought a vegan sandwich for lunch at The Grove House, then walked to Cooper’s room. We split my sandwich and killed a six pack of his roommate’s Stella Artois and watched The House of Yes (1997) on my laptop. I love the way Parker Posey starts scream laughing when she finds out her brother is engaged, and I love that scene where she says OH PLEASE, IF EVERYONE AROUND HERE IS GOING TO START TELLING THE TRUTH, I’M GOING TO BED! Cooper likes that line too. We rewinded three times and decided that we should start saying that, but inserting whatever we want for “telling the truth.” For example: IF EVERYONE AROUND HERE IS GOING TO START HATING ON TURNT TUESDAYS, I’M GOING TO BED. Or: IF EVERYONE AROUND HERE IS GOING TO START DOING LAB DRUGS, I’M GOING TO BED. On the bike ride back to the haunted house, I connected my wired headphones and cruised slow. That Beach Boys song Logan and I listened to nonstop at his father’s house in Emerald Bay the summer after high school played on shuffle. Don’t worry, baby (don’t worry, baby). I let the whole track play for the first time in a long time (too scared to take my hands off the handlebars for long enough to hit skip). I didn’t cry. When I walked through the front door, Jamie and Ava were standing around the kitchen, stuffing the large plastic alien from Halloween into a hoodie and propping him upright in a chair at the table. Made Ava take pictures of me sitting next to the alien like he was my boyfriend, but the creative direction of the photoshoot got a bit confused when I picked up a big knife.

Tuesday 11/20/18

THINGS PACKED IN MY DUFFLE FOR THREE NIGHTS IN LAS VEGAS:

1. Fur jacket

2. Jamie’s striped sweater

3. Jeans

4. Black babydoll dress (for dinner)

5. Black long sleeve dress (for another dinner)

6. Two long sleeve tee shirts (one black, one white)

7. Silk nightgown

8. Sweatpants

9. Two bralettes (one black, one white)

10. Three pairs of wool socks

11. Three pairs of underwear

12. Big sunglasses

13. Noise-cancelling headphones

14. Crime and Punishment

15. Laptop

16. Chargers

17. Uggs

18. Hairbrush

19. Toothbrush and toothpaste

20. Skincare

21. Klonopin

22. Birth Control

23. Claritin

24. An eighth of weed

Wednesday 11/21/18

It is 11:11 p.m. on the night before Thanksgiving and I am sitting up in bed, looking around at my childhood bedroom and feeling very depressed. Wearing my mother’s pink silk pajama set. Thirty minutes ago I ate two milligrams of Drew’s klonopin and now I am listening to “Topanga” by Trippie Redd in my headphones and thinking about Cameron, who just texted me happy danksgiving with a pink sparkling heart emoji. Idiot. Did not text back. My period is late and I am starting to get paranoid. Earlier I told my mother that I needed tampons as an excuse to drive out to Walgreens and buy a pregnancy test. Not enough time has passed since my period was due for a pregnancy test to work accurately and so I knew that taking it wouldn’t quell my paranoia but I went and bought it anyway. Also bought tampons (as evidence to support the lie I told my mother but also in the hopes that I will begin bleeding and need them any minute now), a bottle of zero calorie Arizona green tea with ginseng and a copy of Elle magazine with Kiera Knightley on the cover. Bought the magazine and the tea as a way to maybe “distract” the cashier from the other two purchases. Drove home and took the test, negative. Didn’t feel better, as expected. Shoved the negative test and the instructions back into the little pink box and then zipped the pink box into the interior pocket of my duffel bag. Please God. Please God. Please God. Please.

Thursday 11/22/18

Read more

Sunday 11/11/18

Experiencing unrealistically positive feelings about myself/the world at large as a result of the klonopin I stole from Drew’s drawer and swallowed whole two and a half hours ago. I was hoping it would make me feel sleepy and it is making me feel sleepy, a little, but mostly I just feel immobile and so bottomlessly hungry that I could eat a fucking horse. Ate three toaster waffles with butter already. Still ravenous. Could (and very well may) eat three more. Earlier Ava brought me pain au chocolat and sat awkwardly on the edge of my bed and apologized for freaking out and being a bitch about chores yesterday and for taking things out on me when the real problem is obviously Drew. When she came into my room, I had already eaten the pill and was beginning to feel “relaxed,” so I touched her shoulder (which felt strange and like the wrong thing to do, as there is little to no physical affection involved in our friendship) and told her not to worry, that I understood, and that I agreed with her about the real problem being Drew. Though truthfully, Drew’s bad habits don’t really bother me. He leaves dishes in the kitchen sink and never cleans the bathroom or takes out the trash or buys toilet paper and he has loud sex with annoying girls and gets drunk a lot and never goes to class and leaves all of the lights on and receives like, ten Amazon packages a week and never throws the boxes out or even breaks them down, just leaves them by the front door for weeks, and he smokes cigarettes in his bedroom without opening the windows and plays his music too loud and parks his car in the middle of the driveway sometimes and never, and I mean never, remembers to lock the front door when he gets in or goes out late at night. But it’s like, alright. So what? I do wish he would lock the fucking door at night so that we could sleep soundly, but at the end of the day we’ve got Jamie upstairs who is six foot five and built like a Sequoia tree. And really, we’re only going to be in this place together for another six weeks. This haunted house. Then the semester will end and we will move out, split up. Come back from winter break for spring term and live in new bedrooms, live apart. (Except for Jamie and Ava, who I imagine will live together forever, or until they break up.) Why get strict with each other now when it’s all so ephemeral?

Monday 11/12/18

Things my advisor and I discussed in her office this afternoon:

1. Logic. (Her question: You dropped the class without ever meeting with me? Or speaking with Professor Avnur? My answer: Yes…yes… I was just… feeling so desperate… I didn’t even think about it, I just did it one day… right after a particularly confusing class…)

2. Lighting Design. (Her question: Professor Taylor is saying that your attendance hasn’t been stellar? My answer: Oh…really? (Really, she said.) I did miss one week… and then… I don’t know, I think I was like, depressed…)

3. My sanity. (Her question: How is your mental health? My answer: Right now… like… really good, so good… I’m like, sleeping a lot and going to the gym…sometimes… going to class, too…and…um…)

4. My enrollment plans for next semester. (Her question: How are we going to fulfill the mathematics requirement, should we try Logic again, or something else? My answer: Something else, definitely something else.)

5. My plans for the summer. (Her question: Have you thought about applying for an internship? A gallery in New York, a school in Rome, a program in Paris? My answer: Have I thought about it?)

6. My plans for senior year and the thesis. (Her question: And your thesis, any ideating happening on that? My answer: Not really… I mean… maybe something Soviet or like, Surrealist… or… something more modern, maybe… I don’t know… like Larry Clark or Nan Goldin or something else that’s kind of… like… snapshot photography…)

7. My plans (or lack thereof) for after graduation. (Her Question: So imagine this: it’s the first week of summer, 2020… where are you living, where are you working, and what, if anything, does your degree have to do with it? My Answer: Ummmmm...that’s… I’m kind of… just… trying to just… be like, open and… see where things…like…land…)

Tuesday 11/13/18

Lying on Ivy’s big monk-orange quilt on the lawn in front of Denison, typing into my laptop. It’s clear and warm out, seventy five degrees, and I am wearing navy blue Soffe shorts and a black lace bra. I had a white long sleeve on but now it’s wrapped around Cooper’s head like a turban. He is smoking a hand rolled cigarette and taking pictures of himself and eating kumquats. Anna is lying next to me on her stomach, reading a medical textbook in a zebra print bikini. Ivy is reading too, Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, and her friend Morgan is lying flat on her back with her forearm draped over her eyes, sleeping peacefully in a little white dress, Danskos kicked off. And maybe it’s just the half a tab of LSD I split with Ivy and let dissolve on my tongue after class, but it’s such a dreamy tableau. The colors and textures of everything, the way the sunlight looks on my beautiful friends’ beautiful bare skin, this expensive green lawn and all of the Spanish Gothic buildings, the palm trees, the orange trees, the smell in the air, the way that it’s the middle of November and still feels like spring.

Wednesday 11/14/18

Another long hard day of being charming and perfect and doing everything right and not self-sabotaging or slacking or skipping any classes. I woke up early and shampooed my hair and looked at the weather on my phone and saw that it was going to be pure sunshine. I put on a short baby pink dress with no straps and my filthy AF1s and worked the opening shift at The Motley in a great mood. Talia said, you’re too awake right now, it’s freaking me out. And I said I know right, it’s freaking me out too. Then she turned off the trap music I’d been playing and put on smooth jazz. I clocked out and went to Native American Art and payed perfect attention to the entirety of the lecture. Took notes and everything, and even raised my hand when Professor Anthes asked for a volunteer to read aloud. Then I ran back to The Motley, worked the busy lunch shift, clocked out again and ran all the way across CMC into the depths of Pomona with a bagel in my hand for Lighting Design. I smiled and nodded at everything Professor Taylor said despite feeling deeply irritated with him for snitching on me to my advisor about my attendance. Like, Jesus Christ. I only skipped two classes. It’s not Brain Surgery, it’s fucking Lighting Design.

Thursday 11/15/18

Read more

Sunday 11/4/18

Zucchini noodle pad thai for breakfast at Le Pain with Gabriela. She was wearing a tank top and had a bandage on her arm because she came straight to meet me from her doctor in Whittier. Now I can get HPV and not die, she said. We talked about lots of things but mostly books and boyfriends. I was having a nice time until she said something about how she and Harper were watching me the other night from across the kitchen at my Halloween party. She said they were looking at me and agreeing that I looked so pretty, really pretty, suspiciously pretty, much prettier than I did last semester, before the worst summer of my life, and wondering how and why. What a strange thing to say. Did not know how to react. I blinked I think. I didn’t laugh to dispel the tension. I wanted it to be uncomfortable, for her to feel odd about what she’d said. Though, admittedly, I found it a little bit funny. Also found it highly rewarding, obviously. I sat there and looked at her, not smiling, remembering all of the fastidious orthorexia I engaged in between May and September. To become suspiciously pretty.

Monday 11/5/18

Sitting in the back row of this Native American Art lecture, doing my worst. Drinking a coconut milk cappuccino (tastes like shit), digesting half of a poppy seed bagel (fat). I am wearing a heavy silver Tiffany charm bracelet I stole from my mother and a pair of black leather boots that are going to fall apart soon and the baby blue Oscar de la Renta nightgown I bought at Squaresville on Sunday. The silk is very fine and in the sunlight (and perhaps even under the harsh fluorescent lights of this cursed classroom…?), I might as well be nude. Laptop open, “taking notes,” hair over my ears to conceal my AirPods, which are in and connected and softly playing “R.I.P. SCREW” by Travis Scott while Professor Anthes talks about fucking whatever, Jeffrey Gibson, genocide, something.

Tuesday 11/6/18

Sick of being a twenty year old girl studying art history in Claremont, CA. Ready to be a twenty two year old girl with a gallerina job in Los Angeles, CA. Don’t want to live in a rented room in a haunted house by the train tracks in Pomona with my shithead friends anymore. Want to live alone in an apartment in Silver Lake with my cat. Want a credit card and a car that doesn’t rattle when it starts and a boyfriend and a lot of clothes and books and shoes. And a lot of money with which to buy even more clothes and books and shoes. Sigh. Time is a flat circle and I know it’s a waste to be so impatient, to be so lacking in perspective, so ungrateful for the present. But like Jesus Christ, how much longer must this go on? How many more cups of lentil soup for dinner at Malott must I swallow? Whatever. One day there will only be so many cups of lentil soup for dinner at Malott left to be had and maybe I will feel sad about that. And it’s nice to picture that. Me in the future, sad over the soup that currently fills me with anguish and dread.

Wednesday 11/7/18

Leave me alone URGE TO WRITE, I’m depressed. It’s three o’clock in the morning and Kai still doesn’t love me back and I have nothing even the slightest bit interesting to say about anything at all right now, especially that.

Thursday 11/8/18

Read more

Sunday 10/28/18

Woke up at noon in my nightgown with a raging appetite and zero obligations. Last night’s benzo still swimming through my bloodstream, making my brain feel all wet and heavy and clogged with vague anxieties. Went to the kitchen. Found a sad little cup’s worth of coffee sitting leftover from this morning in Jamie’s pot. Poured the remains into Ava’s I <3 NY mug and took a cold sip. Tasted vaguely of fish. Felt disgusted. Smoked two Marlboro 27s in the backyard in an attempt to quell my raging appetite. Sat on the little bench beneath the awning and called my mother, who did not pick up. Then called my father, who did pick up, but only to say what? Which hurt my feelings and made me say nothing, sorry, just looking for mom. Who cares, nobody cares. I came back inside and went upstairs and spent about an hour trying to stop thinking about food. Couldn’t. So I loaded a bowl for the bong and gave in. Went into Jamie and Ava’s room and collapsed between them in bed and said animal fries for breakfast? to which they replied, in unison, animal fries for breakfast! And then the three of us crossed the hall and went into Drew’s room, which was dark and cold and smelled a way that I would rather not remember and therefore shall not describe. He was in bed with his laptop, shirtless, hair springing out from his head in seemingly gravitationally impossible directions. Started chanting animal fries for breakfast until he agreed to join us, then piled into Jamie’s truck.

Monday 10/29/18

Three o’clock in the morning. Still up, still wired (and thanks to the vyvanse I stole from Drew’s room), still writing. I owe a ten page essay to Professor Anthes on grave robbing, or, more politely, on ethically questionable museum acquisition practices, at the top of today’s Native American Art lecture. Eight hours left till the deadline, one page left to write. Feel retarded. There’s been one page left to write for what feels like all night. But there is nothing worth writing that I haven’t already written. What is there worth writing that I haven’t already written? The central object of my essay is this notched ovate bannerstone. Beautiful little thing. Smooth and grey, sculpted with extraordinary, pain-staking craftsmanship. Archaic and highly stylized. Likely used during the owner’s lifetime as a talisman for hunting success, then placed beside the owner in his grave as a talisman for the afterworld. Imagine that. Spending months carving yourself a spiritually imbued charm, cherishing it, carrying it with you everywhere, all throughout your life and into your afterlife, only for another civilization to come along centuries later, crack open your precious resting place with a hoe, unearth your talisman and stick it inside of a glass case with a little laminated placard underneath. Artist: Unknown. I called Kai around midnight and said okay listen to this, it’s like, so fucked up and then went on a fast and impassioned vyvanse-induced rant about ethically questionable museum acquisition practices. Sent him a picture of the bannerstone and said you can feel the spiritual aura, right? Like even through this Google image? He was quiet for a second. Then he said, in a tone so sincere it made me self-conscious, I think you need to go to bed.

Tuesday 10/30/18

Dreamt I accidentally enrolled in an economics class taught entirely in Japanese. The professor looked exactly like Claire Danes except she was fat and wearing a hideous wig. The lecture hall was massive and every seat was full and everybody seemed to understand Japanese perfectly except for me. Professor Claire Danes was being very mean to me about not understanding Japanese. Woke up out of trouble and relieved. Halloween Eve. It’s seven p.m. already and I am sitting alone in Seal Court with dinner (buttered piece of toast, cup of coffee) and my laptop. Campus teeming with pirates and nurses and firefighters and witches and ghosts and football players and cowboys and girls dressed in lingerie with thematic accessories. Passed a girl in fishnets and bunny ears sitting on the lawn with a copy of Beyond Good and Evil. Took a picture of her from afar and sent it to Kai, who replied: the überWENCH. Spent most of the afternoon lying around hungover in Anna’s pink bed like a Victorian woman being rehabilitated after suffering a nervous break. Closed my eyes for an hour or two while she edited her essay and then, once she was finished, lied on our sides facing each other, complaining about last night’s party. Bad music, too many freshman. I left before midnight and drove back to the haunted house alone, drunk and feeling nothing. Tonight sounds more promising. The girls at the 709 House are supposedly throwing something enormous and so are the Jewish guys at that fake frat at CMC. There are options. This is a good thing. And even if both options are fucked, who cares? Tomorrow night will beat everything. Halloween at the haunted house, hosted by Jamie and Ava and Drew and me. And thanks to Drew, who publicized our house’s address via Instagram and already invited everybody he’s ever met, I really think we might rage.

Wednesday 10/31/18

Brutally hungover. Never fucking drinking again. Except for tonight, of course, and tomorrow too, and Friday night, obviously, and then also maybe this weekend. But other than that, never fucking drinking again. Woke up at seven to my alarm ringing and last night’s eyeliner smeared all of the way down to my chin. Showered and booked it to The Motley and made it through all three hours of my shift without vomiting. Miraculous. Sadie took one look at me swaying with my head in my hands in the walk-in fridge and said, do you want like, one of my nausea pills or something? The angel that she is. Every time I bent down to grab milk from the little refrigerator and stood back up without collapsing, it felt like a win. Punched out and then ran straight from Seal Court to Pitzer for Native American Art. Hair smelling like beer and Marlboro 27s. Stomach fucking churning. Tried my best to listen while Professor Anthes lectured about museum collections and repatriation, but there were so many fluorescent lights in that room and I was suffering. So I gathered my things very quietly, made my way to the door without making eye contact with anybody and left. Walked back to Seal Court slowly and sat with my eyes shut in the sunlight, attempting to heal before my second Motley shift, cursing the September version of myself who decided that signing up for two Motley shifts in one day sounded like fun. I survived the second shift by a hair and when it was over and time to race down to Pomona for Lighting Design, I simply could not race. Sent an email to Professor Taylor saying I was sick instead, then got in my car and left. Which actually worked out really well, because I got to spend the afternoon helping Ava tape paper skeletons to the walls and string pumpkin lights across the ceiling of the palatial living room and wrap fake cobwebs up the bannisters and light candles everywhere and put the alcohol on ice and make signs for all three of our bedroom doors that say ENTER AND YOU’RE FUCKING DEAD.

Thursday 11/1/18

Read more

Sunday 10/21/18

Maybe I am constitutionally suspicious of ordinary experiences. Maybe pain itself has become desirable because pain feels like proof that something extraordinary is happening. I spent a long time on the phone with Kai. He was talking about his ex girlfriend. Saying that she used to let him make superficial cuts into the skin around her breasts and thighs with a pocket knife, and that she liked to be hit hard in the face during sex. He knocked her clean out one time with a requested punch to the left temple and had to nurse her back to consciousness, hold bags of frozen food up to her face all night. I’ve never felt so jealous of something so disturbed in my life. We hung up and I looked her up online. Found her Instagram. She is a little bit goth and a little bit fat and dresses like she was molested during adolescence.

Monday 10/22/18

After a thirty-six hour agoraphobic bout of not leaving the house or descending from the second floor, not even to go into the backyard for a smoke (I still smoked, I just smoked upstairs, inside, with all of the doors closed), I felt desperate for sunlight and food. So I drove to the Whole Foods 365 in Upland with all of the windows rolled down and spent forty something on one double-lined paper bag full of bullshit meant to last me till Thursday. Celery juice, two honeycrisp apples, cheerios, slice of vanilla cake, vegetable broth, chickpea puffs, pickles and seaweed. Am I stupid? I think I might be stupid. Then Paul called and told me that he was back in Claremont already and asked if I’d like to go see a movie or something. So we bought tickets for Beautiful Boy and met at the village and sat together in the center of the back row. I enjoyed it very much and suffered all throughout. I cried in the dark. Hard not to project my brothers onto Timothy Chalamet’s character and my mother onto Steve Carell’s character and myself onto the younger half-siblings. It’s like, pretty much exactly my life. After it was over Paul wanted to hang out, smoke, go somewhere, eat something, but I felt so sad. Told him that I needed to go home and get into bed alone and call my mother immediately.

Tuesday 10/23/18

Midnight. About an hour ago I felt tired and couldn’t sleep and Kai wouldn’t answer the phone and I wanted to roll a joint, put myself to bed, but there wasn’t enough weed for that. How depressing. Smoked a meager bowl instead. Scratched around the empty grinder. Considered ordering some more. Looked at my bank account. Less than a hundred in there after yesterday, buying that bag of stupid fucking nothing groceries. I was feeling so helpless, but then this evil thought occurred. It dawned on me that certainly, were I to enter Drew’s empty bedroom, I would find enough weed to roll my joint and perhaps I would also find some other things. Without thinking about it too much I got up, left my room, crossed the hall and went into his. Just like that. Trespassing with the intention to steal. Committing an invasion of privacy. Generally being a bad, immoral person and doing the bad, immoral thing. And it felt so easy, felt like nothing. I feel strange about it now, of course, but in the moment it was, conscience-wise, a breeze. His room was a mess. Shit everywhere. Shit all over the floor, all over the unmade bed. Smelled bizarre. I walked over to his desk and found everything I wanted and more. Pre-rolled joints, flower and wax. And in the top left drawer: tiny bit of cocaine, generous amount of mushrooms in a vacuumed sealed bag, ten or so unidentifiable tablets sitting in an empty Altoids container (acid? ecstasy?), a prescription bottle of zolpidem, a prescription bottle of percocet and a prescription bottle of vyvanse. Took two small nugs of weed, a handful of mushrooms, one unidentifiable tablet, two zolpidem and three vyvanse.

Wednesday 10/24/18

The house is full again. Jamie and Ava got back around three. Felt like a puppy, watching Jamie’s truck pull into the driveway. I ran downstairs and kissed them both and sat in their bed for hours while they unpacked their clothes and showed me all of the turquoise and leather trinkets they bought at a kitschy southwestern themed tourist shop on the side of the highway in Arizona. We got high and ordered a bunch of food from Sanamluang. And just as the food showed up, so did Drew. Ava set out bowls and plates and forks and knives and spoons and arranged all of the plastic containers across the enormous (seats twelve) dining table. Instead of positioning it so that the four of us could sit close, pass food and talk easily, she set it up so that we each had two empty seats on either side. Jamie at the head of the table, Drew at the other end. Ava and I across from each other in the middle seat of each long end. I ate a spring roll and looked around and decided the scene was ridiculous. Four stoned twenty year olds eating takeout together at this massive banquet, sitting absurdly far away from each other in ornately carved wooden chairs. We went around filling each other in on what happened since we’d split for break. Jamie and Ava described the hot springs they swam in and the twenty-two mile hike they did across a sandstone mountain. Drew talked about trying lab drugs and sleeping on his older brother’s loveseat in Eagle Rock. When it was my turn, I told the truth. I talked to the ghost, read a lot, had nightmares, barely left the house. Left once to go swimming, another time for Whole Foods, and then I went to the movies with Paul. But mostly I just snooped around your rooms, touched your stuff, stole your drugs.

Thursday 10/25/18

Read more

Sunday 10/14/18

I want to buy expensive perfume or a plane ticket to Hawaii. Something pointless and fleeting to temporarily alter my life. Read the first three chapters of Dead Souls this morning and enjoyed them. The story sprawls. I like all of the lying and scheming. I like the vagueness of the text. I got to the bottom of chapter three easily, before noon, and felt good about myself. Felt capable. So capable that I went into the closet and started sorting through things. Unzipped the Prada bag I stole from my mother. First time unzipping it since last summer. Found a pair of her sunglasses, a room key card for The Mirage, that wooden comb I love and a little bit of ketamine in a tiny plastic bag. Glamorous. Poured the contents of the tiny plastic bag out onto Dead Souls and used the teeth of the comb to break up the crystals. I lied down and went somewhere else for twenty minutes and then realigned with my surroundings. Didn’t feel good, coming to on the closet floor. Didn’t feel that bad, either. At the end of the day I just want the best out of life, for things to feel rich and interesting, to be happy or at least never bored. And I think I can make it happen for myself. It’s just that I have some bad habits to kick and this marked tendency towards passivity. Nothing, probably, that cannot be pushed past.

Monday 10/15/18

Anna is sitting at her desk, sighing and smoking a Marlboro Gold and talking to me and Cooper about her thesis again. Something about French colonialism and Western medicine. Something about Louis Pasteur. Still not totally sure, no matter how many times she’s laid it out for me before. It’s just that her voice takes on this terribly condescending tone whenever the topic comes up (and she is very creative at finding ways to make it come up) and I have no choice but to tune her out. Cooper tuned her out a long time ago. The other night, in a situation sickeningly similar to this, he leaned over and whispered remember when she was getting ready for the MCATs and we thought that was bad? I remember. And now here we are and there she is, gesticulating, rubbing her temples, going on and on again. Cooper is on the floor, etching an impressively detailed erection into the title page of my copy of Dead Souls, and I am lying in Anna’s pink bed in my little dress and knee socks, staring at my reflection in her closet mirror. Not liking what I see. Haven’t brushed my teeth since yesterday. Haven’t showered since Thursday. Dry face. Hair tied back in two greasy braids. When I walked in, I kicked my clogs off by the nightstand and before a second could pass, Anna’d already picked them up and placed them back down nicely by the doorway.

Tuesday 10/16/18

Sitting in Logic (back row, center, as per), drinking dining hall coffee out of a dining hall mug and pretending to work on a practice problem. Thinking about Kai and getting lonely. Called him last night and he didn’t answer. Then he called about an hour ago and I didn’t answer. Not because I couldn’t or didn’t want to. But just to have executed some pathetic act of trivial punishment. I guess. This morning I led discussion on the first three chapters of Dead Souls for The Russian Novel and it went well. Feel exhausted by my minor accomplishment. Feel incapable of paying attention to Professor Avnur and his convoluted practice problems because of my minor accomplishment. So proud of myself for not fucking up this morning that I must allow myself to fuck up right now. Bullshit, sick of myself. Imagine if it didn’t have to be like this. How can I make it so it doesn’t have to be like this? Exam on Thursday and there’s no way I’ll pass. Next week, the window to drop a class without it becoming a problem for my transcript ends and I am thinking: might as well give up, drop right now.

I gave up and dropped right then. Or not right then, but an hour or so later, from my bed after class. And then I went into Jamie’s room and started to cry. He told me and Ava to get stoned, drove away in his truck and came back with beers and a cheese pizza from Blaze. We sat around in the dining room together, drinking and playing card games until really late. As if there were something to celebrate.

Wednesday 10/17/18

Listening to ASTROWORLD alone in my bed. Cooper just left. Think we may have just had a bad argument but I am not sure. Usually I am sure when I have just had a bad argument. But the conversation was so nothing and the evening started out so ordinary. We were lying in my bed, drinking Jamie’s grapefruit double IPAs, playing with the cat and looking at our phones and talking about whatever, class, boys, when he said he was hungry. I said same and he said should we order something and I said sure and he said sure or yes and I said same thing and he said they’re not the same thing and I said okay and he said so is it sure or yes and I thought for a second and said it’s sure, I guess and he rolled his eyes. So I said what and he said should we order something or not and I said sure, again, which for whatever reason really pissed him off. And him getting really pissed off over something so stupid really pissed me off. So I said what the fuck is your problem, just order whatever you want and he said never mind and I said why but he wouldn’t talk. Several minutes passed in silence and I started to get sick of being held hostage in my own bedroom by his fucked up mood, so I asked him if he wanted to leave and he said sure and left. Finding it hard to care. Felt bored writing these sentences. Who cares. Nobody cares. He’s very feminine and also a Pisces and so it’s not really his fault. But still, my God, how much longer can I tolerate this dynamic where I am always being made to feel like I’ve said or done something wrong?

Thursday 10/18/18

Read more

Sunday 10/7/18

In bed. Just a little daylight left. Cat meowing at the door because she can hear Jamie moving around downstairs in the kitchen and she’d rather be with him. Trying to write one thousand words on humor and fate in Eugene Onegin because one thousand words on humor and fate in Eugene Onegin are due at midnight. Actually, they were due yesterday and I’m late, but Professor Warner is a very understanding man. I emailed him asking for an extra twenty-four hours and he emailed back: OK. Taking an extension for the first paper of the term. Not a great first impression. Plus, I am shy in discussions and always sit near the back and whenever there is an opportunity to go in for office hours I don’t go. And so I would really like to write something smart, something smart enough to make up for everything else, but I just can’t concentrate. And nobody in this house has any adderall or vyvanse. Just weed and benzodiazepines and like, hallucinogens. I opened a blank document and set the font to Times New Roman and the size to twelve and filled in the header and the title and typed: In Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin weaves comedic detail into… And then typed nothing else. Wonder what my problem is. I read the book. I liked the book. Might’ve even loved the book. In fact, I called Kai this morning and read to him from page ninety-six (since he’s so obsessed with being all alone):

IV. 21

But then, the love of gentle beauties

Holds greater hope than kin or friend:

Your claim upon their tender duties

Runs uncontested to the end.

Of course. But Fashion’s whiplash swishes,

But Nature, headstrong and capricious,

But People’s ever-potent frown—

And the dear sex proves light as down.

What’s more, the husband’s sage opinion

Must ever from his helpmeet true

Receive its full and honest due;

And so our ever-faithful minion

Is in a flash enticed away:

Where Love is, Satan likes to play.

IV. 22

Whom to believe, then, whom to treasure,

Our sole resort and citadel,

Content our words and deeds to measure

Obsequiously by our own ell?

Who spreads no slander that defames us?

Who fondly coddles, never blames us?

Who takes our faults without a fuss?

Who never gets fed up with us?

O idle seeker, phantom-breeder,

Less thwarted ever be your quest,

Love your own self, I would suggest,

Respected and deserving reader!

A worthy object: surely none

Could possibly be greater fun.

Monday 10/8/18

Had dinner (couple bites of lentil soup, black coffee, two Marlboro 27’s and a clementine) with Cooper on the lawn in front of Malott. He was wearing jeans and this grey long sleeve with a silver chain around his neck. When he walked up, I said oh my God, you almost look hot. Which he didn’t like. But it was just a joke and all I meant was that he looked more masculine than usual. He says I shouldn’t equate looking masculine with looking hot. But what does he want from me? Last night he showed up to The Motley in a fucking hot pink sarong. I don’t want to fuck a guy in a hot pink sarong. The lawn was crowded as ever. Ran into George (eating soft serve in the sunlight with that mousy brunette who used to date Riley… interesting), Anna, Professor Koss, my evil freshman year roommate and two of the six girls Logan fucked after we broke up. Cooper ate like, ten chicken tenders and didn’t say much. I smoked and talked fast at him about wanting to drive to LA again soon and about Halloween costumes and about how low grade reports are due to the registrar’s office on Wednesday and I’m worried I’m going to get flagged and about some drama I got clued into between a polycule of lesbians neither of us personally know.

Tuesday 10/9/18

There are eleven dollars in my bank account and there will continue to be eleven dollars (or less) in my bank account until Friday, when I will receive a check for something like four-hundred dollars from The Motley. Fucking pathetic amount. I have eleven dollars and three cigarettes and a quarter ounce of weed and I’m sleepy. Feel fried. But what from? Professor Warner cancelled The Russian Novel so I slept till two. Woke up with an hour to make it to Logic. Called out for the cat, couldn’t find the cat, went downstairs searching for the cat, found the cat (under the staircase, taking a nap). Coffee and a cigarette in the backyard with Jamie. Showered. Hallucinated a nose bleed in the mirror. Touched my finger to my nose and then looked at my finger expecting blood but there was nothing. Got dressed (jean cutoffs, tank top, Dansko clogs). Drove up Towne Ave. Made it to campus with a few minutes to spare. Went to The Motley. Said hi to Anna. Saw Camila, felt shy. Took a cup of black coffee and an apple from Malott. Sat around the humanities building courtyard biting my apple, waiting for Professor Avnur to show up. Spent most of my time in class feeling confused and desperate and stupid and full of dread. Went to the bathroom in the middle of the lesson and felt like I might cry. Texted Kai: when you said Logic was going to be more philosophy than numbers, you lied. Went into Malott again to steal sustenance to make it through the night because I am poor. Another apple, a bruised pear, two clementines, two slices of sourdough toast, two cartons of whole milk and a to-go cup full of dry cereal.

Wednesday 10/10/18

Sleepless. In a mood. Three a.m. Long day ahead. Have to be on my way to The Motley at like, seven. Here is how today should go (God willing):

4:00 a.m. - 6:30 a.m. : sleep

6:30 a.m. - 7:00 a.m. : wake up, shower, feed Isa, get dressed

7:00 a.m. - 7:15 a.m. : drive, park, smoke a cigarette, etc

7:15 a.m. - 10:15 a.m. : morning shift at The Mot

10:15 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. : sit in Seal Court and read Paul Chaat Smith essay

11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. : Native American Art History

12:45 p.m. - 3:45 p.m. : afternoon shift at The Mot

3:45 p.m. - 3:55 p.m. : ten minute window to find Paul or Cooper, whoever is closest and packing, and get stoned

4:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. : Lighting Design

8:00 p.m. - whenever : go home, catch up, get my life together, eat something, whatever

Thursday 10/11/18

Read more