anyway, as life goes, i woke up one day covered in greasy dog hair and mosquito bites accepting my fate as a taxpaying citizen of america’s finest… the panhandle. so, naturally, i had things to complain about. that’s when i went back. when things get dark, or worse, boring… i always go back.

WOULDN’T U?

i guess it all started at the 555 lofts on the corner of rose ave and 6th in venice beach. incredible location.

it was 2021, i was renting a cement duplex studio for like way too much money (story for another time) that had no real life access to real life windows, which i knew was weird, BUT it did have hardwood white oak floors, a cool metal spiral staircase, and 3 ironically gargantuan skylights acting as a ceiling. so, i considered it a breakeven situation.

my loft was right down the block from flake and american beauty and bluestone and wabi and jeni’s. this meant that the sidewalks were bumping at all times with hot, rich, thin people and famous people and famous people’s kids type of people who looked so homeless they may have actually been homeless or just recovering from their most recent rehabilitated coke bender in malibu.

living there was electric.

every morning i woke up and smiled at the air feeling so lucky to be alive and live in LA. i had never been happier to hate myself.

i was a single dog mom, unemployed, fake not-broke, and truly believed i should channel my inner witch and become a psychic. i mean, bro… did u see those tiktok covid tarot readers?? i was absolutely trying to jump on that bandwagon (this, too, is a story for another time…)

SO for a healthy dose of confirmation bias i saw this fabulous super mean, super gay vedic astrologer who i met through my dog walker who low key was also my shaman and mushroom plug. in LA this is normal.

i wish I could say that was my only foray into paying literal unqualified strangers to tell me things about myself, but it had only just begun.

that’s when I met jessa… fucking jessa.

basically this astrologer was like “honey girl, i’m gettin’ sexually assaulted victim vibes based on where the cosmos land ur chart at the exact minute u waz born and if u don’t deal with this ASAP u’re gonna get endometriosis.”

i’m literally laughing as i type this because it is so fucking ridiculous, but i fully believed him. which, i guess in retrospect was around the time i stopped believing in myself.

to be honest, i don’t want to write this. i haven’t for years and i do not know why i have decided to now. i don’t suppose it will make me feel any better, let alone anything at all… but if there is anything i’ve learned about my relationship to writing, it is that writing is a decision.

even on the days desire feels like death, and death feels like desire. luckily, i have the stomach for it. and when i don’t? sushi and wine… dog eyes and cheese.

so, let’s dive in!

!! WARNING…!!

THERE ARE SHARKS!!!

these sharks are as follows: not good mental health, rape, therapy from therapists who aren’t actual licensed therapist, and hot gross australian men… if any of that tickles ur pickle (and not the good way), tread lightly.

my astrologer was not entirely wrong. at the time i was 26 and what he said felt karmic… but looking back now, what girl in her 20s hasn’t low key been sexually compromised??

i asked him (the yummy gay gumdrop astrologer x endometriosis spirit healer almighty) how to fix this? he referred me to a girl who was a “core energetic” “therapist”. which sounded so terribly fake that i was convinced it would work.

i dialed the phone number he gave me and on the other line was a woman who listened to me cry and talk out my ass. she told me i was special and agreed to make the time to take me on as her client for like a bajillion dollars. and so, the healing journey begun…

though she lived over a thousand miles away from me, i didn’t care. we worked together 2x week via zoom and i just adored her. my not-therapist-therapist was perfect. brilliant and creative and kind and candid, but also charmingly awkward and so confidently loving.

she made a good life out of my broken parts and after losing my job, my apartment, my health insurance, my period, my money, my mind, a handful of best friends, and my boyfriend (who never actually really called me his girlfriend)… it felt kinda nice to feel that life could be good again.

she told me that i was really good at her type of energetic therapy, which i didn’t know i could be so good at, but knowing me and my justly dignified emotional wave and god given consciousness, i can’t say i was shocked.

so, she invited me to an invite only super cool exclusive “core energetics” workshop in vancouver titled METAMORPHOSIS. finally, my emotional liabilities have market value!!!

i zoomed in on the beautiful blue butterflies they were so pretty i almost didn’t notice the zero. then zero. and other zero. then other zero...

fuck i love blue butterflies.

i promised pop pop when he passed away just a month prior to this invite that i would follow blue butterflies if he sent them from heaven. a bit of an oversight i now realize to not specify a location or reason lol but here they were and so i did... to vancouver we go!

VANCOUVER <333

the workshop was sold to us as a “level 1,” the first stage in becoming a licensed core energetics therapist. if u liked the work, u could move up to “level 2” and then continue on until u pay some random institution on the internet enough money to give u the low-grade certificate title of “practitioner.”

sick.

it was winter in vancouver and i was told to dress comfortable. i wore a navy free people onesie and looked like a slutty grown baby teletubbie in pillow talk tilbury lip liner and a push up bra.

i don’t regret that first day of group therapy outfit for a second.

what i do regret is not bringing a gun because holy fucking shit what the fuck did i get myself into…

we were instructed to sit criss-cross-applesauce on the floor and then BOOM. everyone’s jaws cracked like fault lines. 15 excavating their existence all at once, spewing family history and secrets in tongues. eyes gazing to another’s itching to circle jerk the trauma right out their pants.

i couldn’t breathe. there was nowhere to go. no space to be even within my own flesh. i wanted to scream but at the same time remain unseen.

the sicko writer in me could not wait to get back to my cushy hotel and ink devastatingly hilarious prose about these freaks in my journal… but the human in me was paralyzed.

i could not believe that these “freaks” are in fact real people. real people are not characters but live these stories as their real life. and the worst part about all this was that i actually understood them. i was not a freak like them... they were freaks like me.

fuck.

but then luckily, someone started to thrust their dick into a block and then i was like NAHHHH bro i am for sure the least fucked up person in this room.

phew.

and so people were crying and yelling and emotions were just bouncing off the walls like hot tamales let loose from asylum and then somehow dub started playing and everyone got up and started jumping like daycare toddlers stoked on cocaine.

and i kid u fucking not people are grinding all over the place… with like people who are fully married to other people like it was completely normal.

which, apparently, it was. because this is not cheating but rather a physical emotional release with non verbal consent otherwise known as “ecstatic dancing” and is administered in a “safe” container (of horny homewreckers).

WHO ARE WE TO DENY WHAT THE BODY WANTS AMIRIGHT!?

and so i’m like trying to jump up and down but with like jazz hands because how the fuck else do u give nonverbal not consent (??) but also like trying not to touch anyone with my fingys because ew i literally don’t know u and i’m trying very not to cry or laugh or both but then in comes a full on vietnam style flashback to that part of mean girls where the regina wants cady to tell aaron he looks sexy with his hair pushed back and then everyone turns into animals except i’m not cady but like a panda stuck in a cobweb begging for a piece of bamboo to cling to but stuck to a toothpick. that was literally me.

Mean Girls (2/10) Movie CLIP - Cady Goes Primal (2004) HD

and so i’m like freaking out, u know? but then it dawns on me… i ain’t no bitch. i have to double the fuck down.

for the sake of brevity, the remainder of the core energetic workshop went like this:

cry. yell at our moms for fucking us all up. cry some more. hump like pigs (them not me). howl to the moon. take a foam bat and slam it on squishy things while we roar “fuck u!” to the world!! “i hate u mom!” “CUNTBITCHCUNTBITCHCUNT!!” fuck u dad u never loved me—no, fuck me!!! i hate me wahhhh.” group hug.

u get the gist.

to be clear, this is hilarious. yes. but this is a very real experience. we all went back to our own individual lives after these sessions, u know? getting kids ready for bed. swiping right then left on bumble. eating tacos because it’s tuesday.

and there’s this line from summer house (szn 8) reunion that i think about a lot where paige desorbo is like it’s our real lives and then the camera’s there not the camera’s there and here is our life.

and because paige falls under my house of god, babitz, and vino i decided to feel my heart be real. like real life actually fucking for real. u know?

and listen, some of the shit people shared is truly nightmarish. some of it is repressed gayness. a lot of undiagnosed who the hell knows… but for me, it was good ol’ fashion college date rape.

i’m gonna give it to u straight:

i was 21 studying in australia. his name was adam. and the other was dan. they were brothers. and yes they both are uncircumcised.

i met adam at the pav at a sunday party and he was straight out of a billabong ad. tall, tan, stupid. so delicious. he asked me for my number, gave me a kiss, and told me he had to go but wanted to see me again. god i felt so cool u guys…!!!

the next weekend adam invited me and my american cunts over to pregame the bars with his aussie cunts. so we did, obviously.

wouldn’t u??

1 drink led to 3 which led to lights out all at once. everything was black, body dummied, can’t speak, should probably alert the police black.

next thing i remember is waking up to the feeling of linen sheets on my bare sunburnt skin, chapped lips on my neck and skin hard and wet between my legs, biting from behind.

still in the haze, i assumed it was adam. not that it would make things right but it would at least make sense.

however, when i opened my eyes adam was passed out naked beside me. those chapped lips on my neck were ones i hadn’t recognized.

i turned over my left shoulder and there dan was. just fucking me from behind like a piece of meat.

i am numb as i write this. it was disgusting. if only i could feel that disgust… then maybe i could finally be fucking angry.

i screamed and ran to a corner of the bedroom. instinctively, i grabbed whatever scrap of clothing i found on the floor and put it on to cover up what was mine. i remember that part so vividly. that pathetic piece of fabric i desperately clawed believing it was my armor.

adam yelled at dan in a loud but idle way. it was verse. dan smirked and yelled back then turned his back and walked out of adam’s bedroom and into his own just across the hall as if this was a normal thing brothers do.

a twist to the knife.

my stomach told me then what i can only bear to stomach now… this was not the first agreement these boys had made about a woman’s body.

but then, it was just linen sheets and chapped lips.

i think the part that still gets me the most is how easily i went back to bed with adam after dan had left. for years i couldn’t understand why i did that? why didn’t i run? how fucked in the head i must be to think that was my only option. that staying was okay??

today what i’ve come to land on is less of a story and more of a chemical reality. i felt so sick i could barely stand.

that much I remember. not being in my body. everything was dizzy and sleep was the only thing that felt in reach. i’ve learned to make peace with that truth.

2 hrs later, i woke up back in panic. it was 6am and everything hit me all at once. i now understood the gravity of the situation I was in. i grabbed my phone and my clothes from last night and ran out the door. i didn’t know where in the fuck sydney australia i was and my phone was fucking dead, of fucking course.

but I could see the sea. when i don’t know what to do, i look for the sea. idk, maybe that’s just the inner pisces in me. but it’s gotten far in life when all things tech fails.

so i walked along the coast for nearly 4 miles, carrying my jeffrey campbells and the weight of numbness that felt like a thousand pounds in the head. from bondi to coogee i felt nothing besides bare toes in sand.

i kept repeating one thought in my head… this is not my story.

this is not my story…

i bought plan b from the pharmacy and washed it down with a diet coke at a gas station. i sat on an abandoned block for about an hour. i let the aroma of gasoline feed fire to my flesh, smoldering any pheromones that bore witness to the lust, the sweat, the rape of the night before, and made myself a promise to never speak about it again or ruin my travels.

me, my beat ass campbells, and the pacific… oh the secrets we share...

i was perfectly normal after those 4 miles. minus the times i got shit faced and cried and told my friends i was sexually assaulted and when they were like wtf and i was like nvm and they were like uh okay and i was like pizza and then they were like PIZZA!!! but i got really good at pretending that never happened, too.

next thing I know I have a foam bat in my hand and am beating the shit out of a foam block screaming my body my choice in front of 10 canadian strangers hugging my legs.

i didn’t like that feeling. i never did, but i guess it felt right at the time?

everyone was kind and loving towards me, which was super sweet and all but god all i could think was GROSS. like is this really that deep or am i making it cut me deeper than my metaphors of gasoline and diet coke because that is what i’m supposed to do here? and speaking of here, how the fuck did i get here? what have i succumbed to? and fuck u pop pop for sending those stupid little perfect blue butterflies.

i felt so embarrassed and furious and deeply inconvenienced by my own life. there was this moment where at one point i remember thinking “who do I have to kill to get out of this?” i’m not a killer. though now i kinda understand the appeal.

because what i didn’t know then that i do now is that once u blow ur psyche wide open in front of people u don’t know, u don’t get to decide what stays urs. those people start getting ideas, theories. they then reflect divergent projections on to u that they want to sever from their own fucked up selves.

and it’s fucking twisted. so twisted because u get a weird, mad high listening to ur own life explained back to u by people who were never even there.

ur brain is malleable.

u are cold as metal, begging the world around u to hammer ur shackles back into something pretty, something solid. wretched for elsa peretti. plz break my fucking wrists for a pair of sterling silver ergonomic cuffs.

make me shiny and beautiful as i once was. plz god, fuck u. do it for me!!!!

they tell u that there are no bad parts. and that this is healing. but for christ’s sake EVERYONE JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GIVE ME GASOLINE AND A DIET COKE.

i don’t want to be whole. i want to be beautiful.

and i know, i know. me writing this as i am now is in fact a fucked up part acting out that ur gonna tell me is perfectly perfect because it’s protecting a more vulnerable fucked up part that isn’t actually fucked up because i have daddy issues because my daddy has daddy issues from his daddy and so technically ur not wrong but fuck, u are so not right…

i just literally can’t subscribe to that logic because is there even a one true logic when it comes to the free will of living ur life!!!??

no.

there isn’t.

and there’s no way around that. anyone who tells u otherwise is looking for funding their summers to tulum, okay??!!

life is hard and i don’t believe in hammering out the details on ur own. but do make sure to trust the hands that hold the hammer.

will they build u? or break u into pieces of little of porcelain only they know how to put back together.

** this is the point of the story where I suggest u see a licensed therapist or a doctor… not a life coach or an astrologer or a shaman or a psychic or even god himself. put the bible down bitch **

after months of the core energetics workshop finished, i was a fucking mess and never looked both ways when I crossed the street, so jessa offered to keep working with me one on one.

i didn’t have an appetite for anything that was not a panera bread bowl. including people. i hated the outdoors, moved home into my parents guest room, never posted online, gained 17lbs, and spent 8 hours a day hating myself and world and everything and everyone except jessa.

the thing that i had swore to myself would never be my story in the name of jeffery god damn campell and plan b became the only thing i knew or felt was interesting about me anymore. my victimhood to not just australia but also life itself became my identity. my entire fucking personality. and i couldn’t break the loop. but i knew something felt wrong so i hid from the world.

and i truly believed i was so fucked in the head that the only person who could give me what i needed was my not therapist “therapist”.

jessa and i met on zoom weekly. we chatted about how fat and sad and broke and lonely i was. and for 50 minutes a week for many many weeks, we was really truly there for me in a way my family or friends couldn’t be. she cried with me. she told me to do hard things and go to the gym and say i was sorry to the people i pushed away. she told me to tell my parents to go to hell because i am the way i am because they were the way they were when i was just a kid. god i felt so seen, it made me hate the people who loved me the most in the only way they knew how.

after that workshop where i was manipulated to relive that night in australia, i was plunged into a darkness of my own psyche so fast and so hard that i didn’t know what was real or not any more. besides her, jessa.

and so in that place she gave me exactly what i needed. her.

and what did she get? me. and my money.

that fucking cunt who i loved so much twisted me inside out and hooked her claws on every crack of my mother fucking brain while she wrapped me in the warm blanket of her words and fed on my need like blood to a grave.

finally, by the grace of god, i was humbled into finding something even more psychologically disastrous than my own brain… living with my mom and step dad for 6 months as full ass adult. my mom has always been clever like that.

i was still lost as ever but had friends in florida (the kind u can call on when ur life is in the shitter even if it’s been years since u spoke) and they gave me a job at their bar and to this day i fully intend to name my next dog melons in honor of mel’s spectacular tits and the fact they (she) gave me this job and brought me back to life.

i waited tables for drunk asshole and let hot girls cut the line at the door so all the men could wait outside and suffer. the nights at this bar were so wild that i finally started to remember what it was like to live again. to be a drunk asshole myself have shitty dudes airdrop me crypto and tan without sunblock and for the first time in a long fucking time not be a victim to the world but rather that bitch who grabbed life by the fucking bottle and shot back mezcal with it.

and so i made bad decisions and drank too much. which is what led me to begin writing again. which then led me to recall my appetite for living again.

and so i decided to dive balls deep into the bloodstream of every moment i was in. i eloped with my first love from high school in a fedex after only dating for 3 months and rescued a pitbull and moved to milan to study fashion and travel and drank most nights and ate whatever i wanted and spent hours walking and looking into windows and watching people kiss on street corners and woke up early just to write about nothing in a cafe alone my god i was happy again. even on the bad days!!!

i threw myself into life in such an extreme way it shot me in straight in the face on my death march, then shocked me back to actual life like those things doctors put on ur chest when u’re dead and shout CLEAR!

whatever that thing is called, I knew it’s what had to be done.

when my demeanor changed in our therapy sessions. and i wanted to talk about feeling happy rather than feeling sad i could feel the air thicken. even through the screen. it was like her face veiled of condescension.

i don’t know how to name it, but it was just the way she acknowledged intellectualized my happy felt cold. her voice choke in what felt like covert hostility. she would say things tell me i was being grandiose or that i was abandoning the little girl inside myself who was hiding in the shadows when her parents fought about money or whatever else i now realize as a married woman is pretty normal shit to fight about.

grandiose.

that fucking word.

it was that fucking word that changed everything.

my happiness, my aliveness was too big for her. she wanted to keep me small. that sick bitch. how could she? i trusted her with my life.

i literally wanted to fucking die every week we met for the past 3 years. that’s more than 156 sessions, roughly $25,000 of “life saving” therapy… my blood in her hands… and u can’t fake a god damn smile for me for 50 minutes???

I LITERALLY MARRIED A MAN AFTER 3 MONTHS IN A SHIPPING CONTAINER AND THEN FLED THE COUNTRY ALONE AND THAT WASN’T TOO FUCKING GRANDI-FUCKING-OSE FOR U THEN BITCH ?!

i ended things right then and there. i wrote a whole email about how her tactics to bring me down felt manipulative. how she was blind to her own projections. how real life was out there, in the cobblestones and gelato and wine and love and people and not in here (our ghetto zoom box).

my sadness was where her power lied. if there was no sad bex, there was no need for her. for jessa.

she was like a fucking coke dealer, u know? like how u need to keep ur customers fiending for more so u sell them them the thing that’s keeping them from killing themselves which ironically is also the exact same thing that is killing them. just not enough so their hearts stop and they have to come back.

and so i did.

after my year in milan came to a close, i moved back to the panhandle. and i was really sad. so, like any addict, i went back for a re-up.

!!! $$$ cha ching $$$ !!!

hiiii mrs. jessa, my bad. i’m back… help me, i’m sad!!!!!!!

she fed me goos and told me that my leaving our sessions was a manifestation of leaving myself or whatever. that i push away the people i love the most when i am in conflict with myself and what the fuck ever.

up until yesterday (i wrote this on april 19th) i worked with her again biweekly. i was certainly more grounded within myself and had the husband now to keep me accountable for not getting drunk off my ill victimhood pleasure. and things were fine for a while. really good even.

there were some really shitty days between me and the husband where i wasn’t sure if we were gonna make it. but jessa really, really helped. she was super great at helping me pinpoint my insecurities. and she showed me the beauty of growing together in a marriage. and how the hard days can feel like ur growing apart but in reality they can be catalysts for personal and marital development acceleration.

and she was so fucking right. the husband is without a doubt my person for life. what i thought would be the end of me and billy because the exact thing that has brought us together and made us so close and i genuinely don’t know if i would have been able to work out those growing pains without her.

jessa truly is so talented and giving to u when u need her the most.

but then again, the more she helped me show up in my own life. the less i felt that i needed her. i mean at this point the husband and i had moved to hawaii for fucks sake. i didn’t have much to complain about.

so, i would show up to therapy with not much to say. the thought of weaning off didn’t cross my mind being that i felt like we had some sort of weird friendship to maintain.

yesterday i went into what became our last session together, i had tears in my eyes as i shared the news with jessaa that i finally found a writing mentor.

what my mentor at the time didn’t know when she agreed to work with me is how long i had been reading her work. how her writing kept me writing, because her lack of logic made me feel alive creatively. like i saw a piece of myself in her that i couldn’t express fully on my own.

the adorable part of all of this is that she didn’t know how hard i struggled with my own mental madness. she didn’t know how many people i reached out to, and there were hundreds, asking for writing internships or guidance… to work for no pay in however they needed… to shadow their process even just for a day. how fucking hopeless i felt for years until her quick and willing response.

i was fucking happy.

i (idiotically) couldn’t wait to tell jessaa… and when i did… silence.

i filled the space by telling jessa that our first facetime is tomorrow and i needed her help because i’m so fucking nervous but also so happy and i really didn’t want to fuck this up, or embarrass myself, or waste her time.

jessa didn’t say anything.

like literal, actual, an intentional 60 seconds of calculated nothing. so eventually i asked her if she had anything to say?

“well,” she said, “i don’t mind wasting ur time.”

then, it finally clicked for the final time. my spine grew taller.

“that’s not what i’m fucking paying U for.”

and so the ping pong game began, except this time i was no longer interested in returning her ball. i had now realized i outgrew what i once thought i couldn’t survive without… her.

u my pretties, there’s a little thing jessa taught me in our very overly priced sessions called “giving to get.” it’s when ur motive to give someone something is anchored in receiving something from that someone because asking for the thing u actually need would require admitting that we’re all needy bitches who need things at all.

see jessa, i do listen! u taught me well.

now let me have the honor of giving u exactly what u need, the thing u are too scared to face so choose to feed on and hollow out in me.

u matter. u are important. i needed u terribly on my darkest days. but u are not welcome to drink me dry so u can stay in bloom.

u are not too smart or too powerful to keep me shackled to misery so u can stay indispensable.

now let me be abundantly clear when i tell u what i need from u: leave me the fuck alone.

consider it a job well done, jessa.

u were so good at what u do that i never need nor want to pay u to do it again.

xoxo

- bx

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yesterday the husband came home from shoveling shit out some meth head’s cement crack ass. it makes me sick to my stomach that junkies like this use their demented “euphoric” high to lock dogs in hot cars then stumble to the hospital for a pb&j.

don’t worry!! the cops got the dogs, mr. nasty-ass-vick-wannabe got a manicured colonoscopy + pb&j, and the husband got paid. so it goes…

anywayz, i was at home making a one pan salmon with lemon orzo. this recipe i found on pinterest and i chose it because had the most stars next to its link. i had been working on this salmon for about an hour, you see. i went to the fresh fish store and bought the elite wild caught alaskan sockeye and everything. i spent at least 3 hours of my afternoon feeling incredibly proud and excited to present myself as a perfect domestic (for once) who surprises the husband with effortless homely things like a cast iron pot of gold and chilled red wine.

i prepped the kitchen 90 mins before he got home so at the 60 minute mark i could tan my body and crimp my hair like trinity on love island (our fav), then spend the last 30 min squeezing fresh lemons over the skillet so the apartment would smell like love and food would be ready to be plated the second he slumped through the door after a long days work of shoveling shit.

for the first time in like maybe honestly forever i was on time. i felt like not a girl, but a woman. i heard his voice through the entryway…

“smells like chicken in here!!”

i screamed “dogs!!!!!!! DAD’S HOME!!!!”

the husband lurvs it when auggie runs up to him with the wiggles and basil loses her mind howling on the couch offering him her favorite toy of the day.

this is my family, my little me’s dream <3333

the husband walks into the kitchen and gives me a kiss with some tongue (hell yeah) and then pans his gaze blankly towards my literal life’s work simmering on the stove.

“oh. salmon.”

“yeah! salmon! you wanted to be healthy tonight right?”

“yea i just kinda hate salmon.”

my heart sinks to my butt and i wanna cry.

SINCE WHEN DOES THIS MOTHER FUCKER DESPISE SALMON!??!?!?! YESTERDAY YOU WERE LITERALLY SLURPING DOWN PHO WITH VIETNAMESE BEEF BALLS LIKE REAL LIFE COW TESTICLES I KID YOU NOT AND TRIPE (WHICH, FOR THE LUCKY UNINITIATED, IS A COW’S STOMACH LINING AKA EW AKA GROSS AKA WTF NOW YOU HAVE STANDARDS) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the husband goes to lie on the couch and play stupid games on his phone while i stand in the kitchen alchemizing my tears into fire, using every bone in my tiny body to stop myself from throwing this lemon salmon shit directly at his stupid face.

• 8 months ago i moved our dogs and all of our shit across the country to hawaii solo with a week of help from my (angel) mom

• 7 months ago i cried on sel's birthday because everyone i loved was in milan drinking and dancing and celebrating one of my fav humans while i sat alone in a kakaʻako café reading in the neglected corner like a freakin’ loser on a saturday pretending i prefer it that way while the husband was golfing and drinking with all his medicine people and i was still out of breath from trying to make friends at 7am run club with people who obviously had enough friends already(and were still in college)

• 6 months ago i got a job at a brewery and quit after 3 days because i was the oldest server there, everything smelt like cheese fries, and i was bored

• 5 months ago i signed up for yoga teacher training and alas!!! finally the wind found my sail and i began navigating this island as a woman of her own

• 3 weeks ago i graduated from yoga training

• 2 weeks ago the husband bet me 20k cash that i would never actually teach a yoga class because i don’t follow through on things

• 4 days later i fucking did - sign up here ᵕ̈

i stare at this pink flesh losing color as heat rises from the pan to my face and recall everything that has happened between us over those 8 months. i decide to feel it all at once then never again.

i have no more energy left inside me to waste on trying to untangle it all even if i wanted to. i am empty.

because between every stupid essay i shitpost on the internet is my entire life you will never see. there are a thousand uniquely normal dramatic and tender moments that never make it to your feed. some that have been so terribly cruel that i can’t even go back there in my mind, others that have been so deeply loving and vulnerable and irreplaceable that it makes the brutal ones feel embarrassing to put on paper.

but in this moment of soured orzo and rejected salmon i sip my now lukewarm chilled red wine and there is only one thought that comes to my mind…

** BITCH I DON’T WAKE UP A FUCKING SWAN!!!! **

i do not float prettily across the little pond of your life like some erect feathered angel sent to absorb the ripples of your brain!!!!!

and honestly bro, i don’t care how much shit you have to shovel out of some sick fuck’s asshole (that you get paid like a lot of money for, mind you) i need you to not forget that.

i am not a swan!!!!!!!!

do you not see these expensive korean sperm serums and organic pua keni keni monoi oils of maui that i have lined up on the bathroom sink every morning and night??! of course you do. you see them every time the credit card bill comes. well, what you may consider my waste is my personal mutiny to delay the truth of time for just 4 more weeks, babe. and that is important to me.

i have spent the last 10 years of my 20s fighting to become myself (like for real this time) and now that i’m 31 i feel like i am fighting even harder to preserve her... i’m tired man.

how do you not understand that when i look in the mirror to tan my body and crimp my hair for me but also for you i will always see a reflection as 3 women glaring back at me…

1. who i am today

2. who i miss i was from 3 summers ago in mexico

3. everything in between that i will never be on the internet

man, i stood staring at this fucking stove for an hour and i swear to fucking god each time i heard the timer beep i could feel a twitch in my ovaries like 2 little ticking time bombs saying if you don’t have sex on the exact right hour on the exact right day, month after month, year after year, until you have 2 - 3 healthy happy babies your uterus will explode and then i’ll die because all i’ve ever wanted is to be a mother but just not yet… give me like 5 more minutes god!!!!

and so i vow to never cook a salmon again. instead i will be chicken. jack harlow basic vanilla baby choke ya poultry ass killa chicken baby and delay my vitality and ambition and collagen in the name of family and love because i am woman and that’s what we do.

we will be the wife and the mother and the muse and the pornstar and the wit and the calm and the secretary and the chef and the cow and the caretaker and the artist and whatever the fuck else life calls for… but for god’s sake please know i wear your compliments as flesh. i inhale them into my lungs as breath.

and now that i know you hate my fucking salmon i’ll take the knife and stab myself because of course i’m the problem it’s me and then turn it towards you BECAUSE I AM NOT A SWAN AND YOU WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND THAT!!!!!

then we will break bread laughing over my female rage (that isn’t really a joke) and let the fruit of our love ripen in the heat of my (completely justified) breakdown and you will promise to be (a little) less dickish next time and i (don’t believe you but) say i ok and we will watch kenzie clam slam on cake in witness of megan thee stallion and against all sockeyed odds… all will be right in the world again.

@racquelanndSo Hysterical!!!! 😂🤣 #loveislandusa #loveislandusaseason8 #loveisland #loveislandreview

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you know my pretties, on our worst days i still believe i married the perfect man for me (albeit one who could grow a better beard but he has a full head of thick beautiful hair so like it’s fine) but still...

STILL, there are invisible boulders on my back that women started carrying straight out the womb. that have been imprinted on us before our mothers’ mothers had the right to use their voice and ask who the fuck even put them there in the first place. and no matter how much creatine you smoke nor how jacked you think you’ve become, you will never (NEVER) be strong enough to know what it feels like to carry the invisible boulders of woman.

so just shut the fuck up and eat the salmon.

OKAY? LOVE U BYEEEE !!!!!!!! <33333

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Our sweet gay Tracy got a TERRIBLE haircut that makes him look like Lea DeLaria from orange is the new black and i’m obsessed.

I squealed in pure joy when i saw him and told him it looks really good, though we both know by really good i mean you got BOTCHED my guy!!!!!

He says “mhm thankssss” in his stupid fake nasally accent that is FAKE as FUCK, looking right past my face to let me know he still hates me in the most dramatic unbothered heteroshit chauvinism way that he can muster.

I give him a deadpan smile looking straight into his blackhole evil eyes and then ask Emily what she thinks so he knows i still hate him too.

“IT SCARY. SO BAD! NO ONE LIKE!”

I told you she’s perfect.

Adorable little monsters, aren’t we?!

THEN in a flash i am GONE… lost in ugly his lesbian haircut picturing us dropped into a timeline where the Plaza has become Litchfield Penitentiary and we are in a bang off contest and he’s Big Boo and i’m Nicky Nicholas and i tell everyone in the building he has crabs and all the old rich tiny japanese women run amok and i feel very proud of my imagination for gifting me this disgusting intrusive thought before remembering i forgot how much i love Natasha Lyonne and really need to finish Russian Doll.

Anywayz, i have news about the husband.

He has gotten a job offer for the exact job he wanted at a whopping $6 an hour higher than he hoped for!!! It’s truly astonishing how the world spins effortlessly in his favor.

2 days ago he went golfing with guys from the ER who have super aggressive sporty names like Travis and Chase. By the end of the front 9 (and conservatively prob like 3-100 beers) Trav was like yooo i can get you a second job with $$$ and the husband was like yooo T baby, talk dirty to me and then Chase was like call this Guy and say honeybaby72xox sent you so i can get the $1000 thank you check in the mail and then he’s gonna get you hooked up at my hook up *wink* *wink* 1

Funny how recruiter talk always ends up sounding much like leave the gun, take the cannoli lol

So anywayz, like i was saying, the husband texts that Guy before bed and by 6am the next morning Mr. Guy called him and asked lots of flirty cute important questions about real life things, where the husband then got to pop his doctor shit and LOAD his plate from an imperial-sushi-all-you-can-eat-chinese-buffet-steakhouse (+ side of fries with parm import from parma). By 11am (i kid you not), he had a job offer in his inbox at the exact place he wanted to work with a solid compensation for a job he hadn’t even applied to yet all while making his new bestie Travis a G.

And that’s his life! Rinse and repeat.

Listen, if you’re gonna be reading here quite often, i need you to know that you should skip over almost everything i write except what i share about the husband… he is unjustly good at doing life (especially considering life has not always been so good to him) and there is this weird kind of knowledge you will acquire by reading his orbit.

It’s quite magical to witness, really. Like i’m not even kidding i for real sometimes look at him talk and am like he’s Obama.

The husband has an exceptional talent for unwittingly being exactly the right person for almost every room he walks into (with the exception of that room being an at home birth, his medical brain can’t compute).

From military trainings… sound baths… gay bars… pickle ball tournaments… beers with my girls from fashion school… singing at open mic nights… officiating at my jewish mom and bonus dad’s wedding confidently saying jewish words while being literally 0% jewish… etc.

Somehow he has a very human yet charming way of becoming something to everyone.

Like that one time at my friend’s wedding he ended up standing next to this guy who everyone knows to be a giant dickhead and so i was like “babe that guy is a giant dickhead.” So naturally, the husband starts making light sport talk and jokes with lil dicky but while also low key dropping big fancy words + obscure stats but in a chill way that was not enough to embarrass the guy but also just cunty enough to let him know the husband could be an even BIGGER dick if need be. Legit like 20 min later (not even kidding) sir dicks-a-lot had basically spent the rest of the night trying to S the husband’s D.

It was spectacular.

Which brings us to today’s problem… i married him.

Which i did not fully realize until much later after we eloped in a fedex that would mean sleeping next to mr. wonderful and all his glory every night for the rest of my nights!!!

Which okay yeah. That’s cool and great and all because he is my absolute favorite person (obviously) BUT that means he is also a huge pain my ass… because if he could become like 17% more mediocre i could feel 75% better about my own mediocrity!!!

Like i actually have to do things now, which is how i have recently discovered how subpar i am at said things. It seems “doing your best” is only not totally demoralizing for the first year when your husband literally saves people from dying in the back of a plane between hospitals and comes home to make you lobster and steak and then you’re like “i have cheese.”

This has been especially irritating to me as of late because rejection keeps piling and time keeps flying.

I have applied to hundreds (HUNDREDSSSS) of jobs over the past 3 years and have gotten rejected or (worse) ghosted from all of them.

INCLUDING YOU FOR BEING THE BIGGEST GHOSTER OF THEM ALL BECAUSE YOU’RE TOOOO BUSY WITH YOUR COOL LENA DUNHAM BOOK LAUNCHES AND WEIRD ASS BATHHOUSE PANEL PROMOS TO KILL A DREAMER’S DREAM WITH DIGNITY WHILE ALSO TAKING 10% OF HER BREADCRUMB PAID SUBSCRIPTIONS TO FUND THE VERY PEOPLE WHO ARE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING THEIR JOB AND REJECTING LITERALLY THE COOLEST PRETTIEST PERSON EVER (ME) BUT DON’T BECAUSE OOOLALA LENA IN A BATHHOUSE HOW COOL ARE YOU?! (but also like whatever you suck and ily)

And THUS, i remain a modern day woke trad wife by day and an aspiring substack celebrity by night though those two often feel indistinguishable when you’re not getting paid.

Anywayz, stay with me here. Because regardless if you find yourself in a situation that is as deliciously stupid as mine, there will come a day where you catch yourself thinking like a bitter bitch over remarkable trivial stuff.

(source: me, currently - see above)

Sooner or later life will do what it does and someone you love will get something you want or has something you don’t or cartwheels through doors that keep slamming you in the face.

And for a moment that won’t feel good. And you won’t feel generous.

Which, inevitably will feel embarrassing. Because being bitter toward someone who has done nothing wrong and deserves to be happy only makes you more bitter towards yourself.

Then angry.

Then sad.

Then dumb.

A bruised ego in the face of love is one of the more humiliating conditions of being human.

If this has never felt true to you then COOL BEANS KAREN YOU WAY MORE EVOLVED THAN THE REST OF US and your friends are prob boring as hell (which in that case, i’d personally suggest surrounding yourself with people doing things way cooler than you and let it water down your drink every once in a while - it’s good 4 u!!)

You see my pretties, to adore and to envy through the same gaze is to witness something fabulously shitty about being human… the heart is not a civilized place.

It acts as a country without democracy… there is no such thing as equality in emotion. You don’t just get to just pick one feeling and toss the others so only the shiniest one remains. Emotions will pile on top of each other again and again until the day we die.

There’s this quote i like from Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov… “the more i love mankind as a whole the less i love man in particular.”

It’s so on the nose, right? Because the problem is never with the person we love but with the story we tell ourselves about love. There is a real big fucking difference between people loving the idea of love and people and actually loving actual people.

I think loving the idea of love is a just a fruity little way to avoid intimacy. To love someone fully is to truly reckon with yourself through the mirrors others hold. And that is very VERY humbling <3333

For me the husband’s success will always reveal the truth of my own hunger to achieve. Which, i find both very annoying and very necessary for my own growth.

The clearer i see what i’m not, the more i listen to the instinct that naturally rises first.

Oddly enough though, something that keeps surprising me about this kind of love is the span of her arms… how much of us she can hold at once. Envy as admiration, embarrassment as devotion… all the endless multitudes of feeeelings happening at once.

It’s dizzying.

But i fear the act of love without embracing its complexities would be a great tragedy. A boring sterile waste of the human experience.

So no, i don’t care to stand on the moral high ground of pretending i never want what others have or that i am only ever happy for others when sometimes i do feel sad for myself.

That is a fainthearted way to move through life.

I rather be dumb again and again and again until it makes me smart enough to know that in the end, we’re all big idiots and nothing matters except for the things that matter.2

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just wanted give you a lil update on

LIFE.

♡

here is my burn toast situation this morning:

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ALSO…. correction on the bull tarot card: IT WAS A BUFFALO (which is even more adorbs)

okay that is all i got for ya!!!

xoxo

- Bx

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Today I am user41 on boobs.com staring down pussycupcake with her 3 dildos, possessed by the innocent wonder of a 13 year old boy who has just discovered both the internet and Katie KATY Perry’s boobs all at once.

Listen, this is not how I thought my morning was gonna start either… but people change!

Perhaps this is just a side effect of 2 nights at the Four Seasons, floating on 13 miles of Larry Ellison’s BDE.

Let me explain.

It all began with a Smoke 24 and unwelcomed aioli.

Will (one of the husband’s friends from work) invited us to Lānaʻi with a few of his residency buddies for an overnight. Now, if you go to the pineapple island that is Lānaʻi you’ll prob stay at one of two resorts: the Four Seasons or Sensei. Both are gorg and owned by the billionaire Larry Ellison along with 98% of the island.

It’s like Hawaiʻi’s version of Hollywood but where Hollywood people go when they need a break from Hollywood but not being rich.

Now, if you stay at either resort your flight is included in the hotel fee (dope) and they send a little plane over to pick you and your friends up from Honolulu at any time that you want (super dope).

You don’t have to go through TSA and the mini airport lounge is private and stacked with free coconut water and macadamias and fancy bidets. The plane ride is only 25 min and the view of the pacific is so bright and blue it looks otherworldly.

Once you land in Lānaʻi the Four Seasons will send a car for you and your bags and you never see them again until they magically appear in your room!!! The whole thing is so seamless and rich that it feels like you’re under hypnosis. The employees learn your face and name so fast that it becomes very easy to mistake 24 hours for real life.

After checking in we headed straight to Malibu Farm for some yummy yums and mezcal, naturally. I skipped food because I had a body scrub scheduled at 2pm and didn’t want to be naked and bloated… naked and drunk HOWEVERRRRR is super fine with me.

The scrub involved seaweed from Patagonia and “the best salt from all over the world!” When I asked mi scrubber where exactly “in the world” she said “everywhere!!” So whole foods.

Anyway, if you’re sunburned do not get a body scrub.Your legs will feel eaten alive by fire ants and you will spend the rest of the day walking around with the crooked gait of a woman trying to hide her UTI. Yeah.

Anyway, Allen and Jess, were running late to lunch because they have a 2 year old so the details don’t matter much.

Allen is Will’s bff from med school and Jess is his wife and they are from savannah. The vibe of Jess is warm southern charm where every sentence sounds super friendly but also like she secretly hates you and Allen is very Allen. He is khaki in every conceivable way. His voice is flat and his energy gives the background character from the office. They’re lovely.

So Will decided to be a cutie pie and order lunch for Allen so it was hot when he sat down. He got him same thing that both him and the husband ordered… a chicken sandwich on brioche with all the works and a side of fries.

15 minutes later, enter Allen: “who ordered for me???”

No “hey” “hello” “thanks man let’s party”, just straight chicken sandwich investigation. He looks at Will in pure DISGUST as if he’d backed over the family cat or something.

Will, blessed with the beautiful disadvantage of naivety raised his hand and said with full joy “me!”

This is when we all found out that ALLEN HATES AIOLI. HATESSSS IT!!!

Like so much he took this as a personal offense which was super uncomfy because this was our first time meeting Allen so we had no context and couldn’t tell if this was a joke or war.

Because I was on my second Smoke 24 I decided it was my personal responsibility to heal the table by throwing up the gen z heart hands and going “in the club we all fam!”

Aioli did not like that.

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Anyway, the boys golfed. The girls laid. I mostly did my own thing because my rich bitch vacation personality was wealthy-childless-stay-at-home-wife / one smoke 24-away from getting pregnant.

In other words, couldn’t stomach the small talk.

SO about 4pm I ran into Amy (Will’s wife) in the lobby. I’ve met her twice before but still wasn’t super sure whether she liked me or not SO I took it upon myself to find out in the most efficient and potentially offputting way possible… “hey girl wanna get more drunk and do mushrooms??”

And she was like fuck yeah. Confirmation: obsessed.

So we popped that chocolate amuse bouche and were like HOT TUB (?!?!?) then sent the husbands on errands while we gossiped. Will to fetch 4 espresso martinis and the husband to procure me a new bikini and sarong for the occasion.

We all met in the hot tub 10 min later. And there is this large bald man in his 60s marinating in the bubbles while his cutie rat chihuahua lounged on the ledge beside him like a god damn king.

And so we waddle into the tub like giggly drunk college kids on spring break. The husbands were giving frat boy energy (mine especially with his backwards hat that hits some deep americana friday night lights bone in my body I DIEEEEE) and the wives hanging on them like desperate horny little tri deltas. It was so fun, so 22.

ANYWAYZ the husband looks at baldy and goes “you look rich as fuck man teach me your ways” and he’s like “cash flow.”

So then we leave the tub with our newfound rich people knowledge and I notice the husband has acquired a new accessory… a tiny white towel? I go “ babe whose is that” and he goes “Mike’s” (Mike being baldy) and then gives me a sassy little blue steel wink and goes “now that’s cash flow baby.” I chose not to investigate further.

We wondered through the never ending maze of hallways with Mike White eyes and finally found our room after dropping off Will and Amy at theirs so we could drink more and toss grapes into each other’s mouth.

Pause: at this point I realized the husbands were developing a male friendship with Heated Rivalry undertones and it made me feel very proud. I just love watching the husband love on his friends and them love on him back. It’s adorable! Like if the husband was like I’m gay now and I would be like okay slay babe but Will or bust.

So anyway we got back to our room and had very VERY not gay sex. I promised the husband that I would wait to publish the details of our sex life until I write the novel BUT let me just tell you that I was slut. That lucky fuck.

GUYS IT WAS SO GOOD THOUGH!!! And cosplaying rich at the Four Seasons made it feel way more steamy, you know? Like mid ooolala I was like OMG I GET PORN NOW. LIKE THIS IS WHY PEOPLE BECOME PORNSTARS. BECAUSE THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME AND GETTING PAID LOTS OF MONEY FOR IT WOULD BE EVEN MORE AWESOMER.

So then I’m like let’s do it again and he’s like Nobu and I’m like crispy rice. Bet.

So with wet hair and the glow of glorious sex that lasted 20 minutes but felt like hours we prance downstairs holding hands.

At one point I stopped to fix the straps on my heels and the husband bent down to do it for me and I remember thinking I can’t believe he’s mine.

That I get to do this life him until the day I die.

And that I get to explore this magical island with the person that I absolutely adore the most who adores me back 10x more and that together we’ll spend the rest of our lives building worlds within a little universe of our own.

I look down at him trying to figure out how to tie these stupid straps and am so overwhelmed I begin to cry. Because I am so impossibly lucky and this feeling is too big for my little body to contain.

I wipe my tears before he rose from his bent knee, having fixed my unraveled strapy mess the same way he fixes everything in our life. He gives me a kiss, tucked a loose piece of hair behind my ear, then grabs my hand and we start running because we are SOOOOO fucking late for dinner.

Mid run we bumped into Will and Amy who were also late and sprinting to dinner and in that moment I knew we were vacation friends for life.

We walk into Nobu and I lead the pack to the hostess because I’m me.

She brings us to the table and I immediately initiated a photoshoot because Amy in her silk dress looked too beautiful under the Sagittarius full moon not to. I hand our phones to the husbands and they are being actual idiots and taking the worst photos ever like ew. But it doesn’t matter because I’ll train them later.

This moment was for the girls. Every girl I had ever been and every girl I had yet to become and all the other girls inside those girls. The photoshoot was for US.

So then Aioli and Jess arrived carrying two glasses of chardonnay they’d smuggled from the room (vibe) and then they’re like ugh noooo photos boooo and I’m like NOPE absolutely not. You’re hot get in here mama lemme get your good side.

She rolls her eyes and walks towards the backdrop. Though I can’t yet relate, in one passing look I saw a future version of myself in her. The exhausted wife who spent all day keeping a small human alive while the husband fucked off to golf and drink beers and is in desperate need of a night that reminds her of her old self. The one with the tight pre-baby body and newlywed glow and enough free time to fuck in the shower.

So I made her get in the picture.

Because she looked beautiful and deserved to be reminded of the absolute MILF she’d become. And selfishly because one day I’ll be standing exactly where she is pretending I don’t want my photo taken and I hope somebody ignores me.

I showed her the pic and she smiled. But then she went back to being a bitch so I decided to be one too. Lol.

Anyway here is where the BOOOOBS COME INTO PLAY!!! Boobie play!!! I know you’ve been waiting for this moment because #titties.

Gathered around a giant round table, we drank and laughed and ordered an shit ton of sushi and steaks that you have to grill yourself on hot stones with chopsticks.

The salt air brushed the back of my neck and in that moment I remembered that I’m tan as fuck living in hawaii and am in stupid love with the husband and our life and for the first time in a long time I am in love with my fucking self and I can’t believe I am doing this here right now and that I can with full presence because my queer yoga bff who doesn’t shave her armpits or legs and rocks it off with the confidence of a woke dominatrix baddie is at our cozy apartment watching Auggie and Basil and being auntie of the year and just incase she decide to kidnap the dogs and run to the ridges we have Emily. And Emily protects us at all costs.

And I know these moments are fleeting and that tomorrow the sun will come up and the husband will realize that I booked us another night at the Four Seasons without asking the price and his face will go numb and he’ll break out the calculator again and real life will return as it always does.

But tomorrow isn’t tonight and tonight life is perfect.

I look up at the full moon and think about astrology because tonight I like my horoscope and I smile to the stars because I know a new quantum leap has just begun and no one at this table knows it yet but me.

So I sit a bit straighter and sip my lychee martini with the seduction of knowing that I am now someone who is standing at the beginning of something. And then I think about the girl who hated herself and used to wipe down sticky tables in a gross mini skirt after closing shifts at the bar in TRAMPa and had no idea that life would lead her to this moment and I close my eyes real tight and thank the god I only believe in sometimes for all the magic and bullshit that came between because I wouldn’t trade it for a damn thing.

Then I say one last little prayer that I never get so rich I stop feeling the thrill of nights like this but just rich enough to keep having them in super cute clothes and tap back into the convo with some serious questions because I hear Will in say…

“I was just a 13 year old boy who liked boobs so obviously I went on boobs.com but then I did it like a lot and so my mom called t-mobile to find out why the bill was so expensive and they’re like boob.com“

SO then get this… his mom took him to the priest to preform an actual EXORCISM and he’s like I told the priest that I’m fine I just like boobs and the priest then whispered in his ear I understand I have a drinking problem and then sits Will’s mom down to let her know her son had a boob addiction and he cured him by exorcism and holy water. But then a few weeks later his mom found more boobs and tried to go back to the priest for more exorcism the priest was in REHAB. Thus, the second exorcism never happened.

And I am like bro keep talking because I can’t wait to tell the pretties this shit but then fucking Aioli interrupts our flow with an “I have a story!” and I’m like “this better be good Aioli” and he’s like “my grandma was an exorcist” and I’m like “tell me more.”

Apparently she used to go into people’s homes and make lots of money by literally exorcising their demons which was a career that began after she became convinced Aunt Bethany had been resurrected as a Native American baby because the 1 year old babble was very “Navajo.” She was later diagnosed with bipolar.

And I was like “alright Aioli that was fucking good. You’re the man. The husband and I would now like to be godparents of your child sleeping upstairs.”

And then aioli laughed in his weird flat beige way and paid for everything.

After closing with a sambuca and espresso at the bar, we order more wine and headed down to the beach. Amy, Jess, and I sat off to the side talking about life, love, and the pursuit of slaying dragons then danced to glass animals while the husbands rolled around in the sand laughing and speaking gibberish under the moon.

Nothing made sense for the rest of the night except the moon and the fact that everything was perfect and this was the best night of my life.

So yeah anywayz this morning I googled boobs.com to see what the fuss was all about and that’s when pussycupcake and I found love in a hopeless place.

Will was right.

I plan to continue supporting her work.

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Face down ass up mother fucking busted.

Caught with hands so red my palms are bleeding into the compostable paper cup i spent $5.79 on: $3 for coffee, 79 cents for tax, and $2 for each of the chiquita bananas who remember my order and sprinkle my dogs with glitter and googly eyes like every pup cup i order is their last.

The husband looks at me like an adorable drunk who just stumbled into his trauma bay. Bloody and stupid. In need of resuscitation - his.

This is what I get for marrying a military medicine man. McSteamy in matters of crisis, McNugget in matters of coffee cultivation.

Rancid and delicious. My god i am so in love.

But you see my pretties, i had to get the $5.79 this morning. The kaka’ako cafe just got new cups and they are very excited about it. And so it was important to me that i show my support.

Banana #1 tells me they are better because they are doubled lined for heat retention or something like that so they don’t need to use those stupid cardboard sleeve things anymore.

Banana #2 chimes in that they still use the sleeves though because Mary, Jane, Francis, Doe are complaining about their fingers burning through the lining.

I roll my eyes as i fill my double lined yum with hot kona and half & half that has certainly been sitting out too long because i know Mary, Jane, Francis, Doe personally. They are tiny old japanese women with immortal silk skin that live in my building above the cafe. They have lots of money and that’s what makes them important.

Every tuesday afternoon they gather in this weird dingy cement room called “the clubhouse” on the 6th floor by the pool with mirrored windows that you can see out of but not in. They sit like jail birds perched on metal folding chairs around a long plastic table like the one we used to play beer pong on in ZBT.

ZBT (zeta beta tau for the non greek acquainted) was one of my favorites. It was the top jewish frat house on walnut ave filled with rich, short, skinny, “nice jewish boys” (meaning minimal STDs) from jersey. Except for a few like Tanner. Their honorary jewish black pledge.

Tanner was one of my good friends from year 1. He is super tall and super hot and super not jewish and a rare gift to us all. He fit in perfectly.

I think he married a blonde girl from back home he was dating at ‘cuse but i’m not sure because we fell out of touch.

Regardless, ZBT was only kinda creepy sometimes and had great themed parties and was very generous at heart. Never short on key bump offerings or warm xanax juice. Which again, was very generous, but not really my thing because my sinuses weren’t built for blow and Laney was prescribed adderall anyway.

ZBT was great. Like leaving school for summer camp on the moon.

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Anyway, as i was saying, the little old japanese women gather in the clubhouse during the hottest part of the day which is usually around 11am to forage for seeds on how they can siphon more money out of us tenants. The entire operation is chaired by my nemesis. The littlest bitch ass pecker of them all… my gay building manager.

He is so angry and so stuffy all the time because he’s committed himself fully to the exhausting bit of being a seething straight in suede james perse loafers and tantric mala bead bracelets stacked halfway to his elbows.

And so the tiny old women gather in the clubhouse and yell in japanese at my gay building manager whose name is TRACY(have i told you that yet… his name is fucking TRACY!!!!!!!!!!!!) to do more things better and so tracy begrudging does in his own fake cis white masculine way. It is incredibly offputting and weird and fake as FUCK!!!

He makes our lives hell which he loves to confuse with power. And so he stomps around the building in his own repressed homosexual way in his gorg italian suede and horny healing bracelets with the stare of a man on an edibles bender, terrorizing his sweet maintenance minions who are forced to put up with him but secretly talk mad shit behind his back.

That’s why i’ve created an alliance with emily.

Emily works the front desk. She is a 4’10” zany asian woman in her 40s or 60s. She is an absolute firecracker with boxy orange hair, taylor swift bangs, and a surprisingly excellent ass.

Her voice is high yet monotoned and feels like a fluorescent light slapping you in the face in the most comforting way. I only understand about half of what she says though this hardly matters because emily usually ends the interaction by telling me how sexy i am which i very much appreciate.

Once a week i bring emily soft serve ice cream at 7:30am because it’s her favorite and because that is the earliest kaka’ako cafe will sell me soft serve and it’s very important that emily gets her ice cream since she has become my secret informant inside tracy’s regime.

For example, like that one time he tried to tow my car after i parked overnight in guest parking because i had too many groceries and forgot my key fob and used the closest entrance because i am not a pilgrim. And so tracy girl saw this as an opportunity to impose suffering upon me personally (as i am a perfect target resident for hemorrhaging money).

BUT thankfully, EMILY <3333, blessed be her name, stopped the entire operation before he could swing his small pish in my face and cost me a $250 day from hell.

I told the bananas about this and they were PISSED. Word on the street is tracy has “a thing” for the guy at express towing off queen st. which i cannot yet confirm except to say that it does support my speculations on all accounts.

So as you can see it’s very important i get emily her ice cream.

And i know all of this to be true because every tuesday i walk down to the 6th floor pool with my $5.79 to tan for exactly 35 minutes front and back to maximize the UV and minimize my wrinkles because whatever fucking girl math that is it makes more sense than lathering in 50 spf and baking all day. Which i cant do (even though i can because i have the time) because i’ll go MAD. MAD I TELL YOU… MAD!!! And because being pale is a non option, this is my system.

So i sit like a wet seal basking in the hawaiian sun, staring at myself in those creepy reflective windows where they can see out but i can’t see in long enough until i realize how fucking creepy that actually is and notice the old ladies beginning to gather behind the glass. Then i listen to everything.

And so you see i’ve figured out this entire ecosystem that i pay a pretty penny to inhabit and this is what my husband does not understand. That i need to do this investigation work every single day because it is my job and i take it very seriously and so while he does his whole emergency doctor combat boot shtick i must be out here in the field dissecting the humdrum and reporting my findings back to freaks like me on this hellhole internet.

SO this is why i must pay the $5.79 each morning for my coffee and put us at the brink of death by a thousand cups. Because there are things happening on the 6th floor inside gay tracy’s old lady junta that require my attention.

And so i giggle and tell the husband he’s right and let him type things on the calculator while i cover my mouth to suppress audible laughter so i don’t irritate him further while he does excessive number stuff that i truly don’t care to learn because that’s what i have him for.

I suspect this is why the divorce rate is so high. People don’t want to pretend anymore. They underestimate how much of relationships is just tactfully pretending to care about the other person’s little projects. The husband and i are very good at this.

I pretend to care about his need to golf and drink a minimum of 4 beers so he can hit ’em straight on the back 9 and he pretends to care about my need to spend $350 on a psychic in connecticut to align my chakras to improve my fertility over the phone. Because what we both know and never say is to play the game is to be so fucking embarrassingly devoted to each other that love and delusion become indistinguishable.

And so we have become very good at forming our faces into expressions of interest that strangely enough are starting to become real. It’s a very interesting development and will therefore be added as a branch of this investigation.

There is a fine line between oppression and division of labor and i love to walk it like a dog. This is why i will never knock a woman for leaving men to do the boring stuff. They love boring things! They yearn for taxes and war movies and dave ramsey podcasts.

And i do not.

Life is too short and i’m beginning to believe it’s okay to be shallow at the expense of feminist remorse. I see no advantage in pretending otherwise.

And so i say you’re so right babe and tell him that i will buy less $5.79 and give him a kiss then tell him about this grey lady bug that has been visiting me all week with spots that look just like hearts. Can you believe that?! Heart spots!!!

He smiles and says it must be good luck! then thanks me for hearing him out.

I say of course babe but i really need to go now because i have to write and so i prance off in my black little low rise pants and crop top tank with my floppy little tits and get back to my investigation work from bed.

It’s 9:04am and i’ve already saved the day!

I slide under my freshly fluffed Piglet In Bed linen and sip on my double lined $5.79. Oh if only the husband knew how much that duvet cost us…

You see my pretties, men just want to feel heard. Which I honestly find beautiful when they’re not saying anything stupid.

The day is mine again!!!! I am rich!!! I am freeeee!!!

Now back to work.

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and a very happy mother’s day to all the mamiiiiiz on the stack - earth would be DOOMED without you.

today’s episode is a banger if i don’t say so myself…

from the mouth of athens in milano to germany to new york, i’ve rounded up some of our favorite people to give you bubble butts something to talk about:

brutal truth.

today we discuss grown men forcing their high school legacy hoodies onto women, stalking the guy you’re talking to’s ex and finding some shady shit, a woman’s right to her fake instagram account, and the emotional whiplash from balancing going out with friends, posting online, and being depressed in bed.

this was SOOOO much fun and i can’t wait to surprise attack more friends into blessing us with their questionable wisdom and advice <3333

Send your questions here - we’ll answer on a bi-weekly cadence!

» if you’d like to have a cameo where you answer some q’s send me a dm and we’ll make it happen «

SUMMER IS HEREEE!!!

what’s got me feeling hot:

andddddd yoga + gossip xoxoxoxo

send me ur recs <333333

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last night i had a dream about an old friend i was really close with when i was living in LA. her name is amber.

the details are fuzzy but i remember dreaming that something shitty happened to me. not in a murderous true crime way, but like a socially humiliating way. which if you know me is basically my most recurring IRL nightmare.

in the dream my face was red, heat rushing my cheeks. i turned around and there she was, sitting crossed legged, laughing at me with that high pitch, adorable snorty laugh of hers… affectionate even when at my expense. her hair was still short, the same bright blonde too.

her laugh made me laugh, of course. deep and uncontrollable, until i couldn’t even sit upright anymore. i threw my head back onto her knees, looked up to find her eyes already filling with tears. she was always crying from laughter, from the sheer overwhelm of being around people she adored.

people liked to blame the weed, but i always knew it was just amber’s way of feeling everything all at once… a kind of beautiful emotional overflow. truly.

she always said that word at the end of her sentences. now i still hear myself say it too.

i woke up with a sudden gasp.

i checked the time, realized i’d slept 90 minutes later than i meant to, and shot out of bed to boil water for my lemon. my chest tingled with anxiety but my body kept moving even though my brain went dummy.

make a smoothie for billy.

1/2 banana with peanut butter for me.

walk the dogs.

coffee.

ingest a medley of pills.

wash it all down with miralax so at least the day starts with a small victory.

the newest addition to my pill lineup is lexapro. i’m 13 days in, which is apparently the part where everything gets worse before it gets better. it’s been delightful…

think: barbed wire sternum, anxious jitters, naps on naps on naps, etc.

still, i stay the course because this serotonin pursuit is bigger than me. billy’s golf game depends on it.

this all started when my doctor inserted what felt like medieval metal clamps into my hooha to swab my cervix to confirm i am thriving.

i told her i was a mess. that my period was late and i felt a bit insane but i’m not pregnant and my body is like being so mean to me and i have no energy and i can’t focus and i should be happier than i feel most days because life is great but i just wanna sleep and lalala.

she pulled the scary contraption out of my holy stunning beautiful botanical garden and said “i think you have pmdd.”

i asked if that meant i was dying or barren or menopausal or if we could maybe start with why there are two d’s in pmdd???

she said no, giggled at my frantic reaction. she explained that pmdd stands for premenstrual dysphoric disorder and, in simpler terms, it’s like a super not fun hormonal disorder where you only feel like yourself about 10 days a month. prolonged bitch season, if you will.

… oh the plight of a woman.

i’m not sure that i actually have pmdd, but then again she’s the professional up my vagina, so i defer to authority.

(though i have had the sneaking suspicion that my serotonin hasn’t exactly been popping off in the clurb for a while now)

she told me supplements like calcium, vitamin B6, magnesium and other things i can’t remember could help OR she could prescribe a low dose of lexapro.

i said let’s not waste anyone’s time here… gimme them drugs, girl.

on my morning walk with the dogs i thought about the dream again. how the red wine, lexapro, melatonin cocktail likely pulled some buried nostalgia to the surface, though the truth is i’ve likely been carrying guilt about old friendship fallouts for years.

i contemplate texting her and how that would look…

like what would i even say?

“hey amber, i’m sorry i was a dick 4 years ago. you didn’t deserve that and i miss you. i’m still sort of a dick but at least now i’m on lexapro!”

shit.

whatever.

i laugh to myself - so this is being alive, eh?

a series of pathetic emotional monologues and drafted texts you never send?

i keep walking.

walking and ruminating.

my specialty.

i’m really missing friends out here in hawaii. i don’t believe in regret but i’m certainly feeling the shame of letting people i love drift out of reach.

i suppose that’s my cross to bear in this lifetime. one of the ways the universe keeps humbling me until i figure it out… how to hold onto the people i love.

we all have our thing, right? apparently this is mine.

back home i pour another coffee and watch a fruit fly circle around the other half of the banana i never finished.

i guess dreams are funny and a little cruel like that. they let people wander back into your life as if nothing ever happened, like you’ve just run into each other at a party instead of years later inside your own head.

then you wake up, chug your miralax, pop your lexapro like a good girl, and carry on with the ordinariness of being alive.

i don’t know if i’ll text amber.

but it was nice to see her again.

truly.

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i write this to you from the quirky little café that lives right under my apartment building that i’ve now adopted as a second living room on the nights when billy works late and i’d rather not sit alone with my own shit.

watching other people, i’ve found, is almost always more interesting and, frankly, far more productive than circling the same 3 thoughts that eat my brain alive every night.

it’s 8pm and i am endlessly impressed by the ambition of this menu… thai coffee, ham and cheese croissant, bagel pizza, curry chicken, steak (just steak), and a chocolate strawberry swirl serve yourself soft serve machine… though i am equally sure i will never order any of it (minus the tuna melt incident which i’m still not ready to discuss).

still, i study the menu in front of the cashier out of what i like to think is social courtesy so she can believe i’m a flexible, spontaneous diner who is momentarily paralyzed by the multiverse of delicious options that her establishment offers… though she almost certainly will just read me as an awkward inconvenience.

i order a pinot noir.

i like drinking at this café because i treat it like a bar and it treats me like royalty with a better than decent playlist, functional outlets, warm lighting, and a 19 year old girl working the cashier that IDs me every time... the modest indulgences of a woman over 30 who lives out of her laptop.

i look really good today.

stunning in fact.

paler than i’d like for a girl who winters on a pacific island, but still, gorgeous nonetheless. i’ll tan tomorrow…

vanity. oh the vanity bx!!! spare us don’t you think??? no.. no i will not. i couldn’t possibly…. because…

today is the day i begin living as a woman with a PERM.

now if you’ve been following me for the past, idk, month, then you know that i was pretty much willing to sell a kidney for this perm.

why you ask? because i have 3 personalities (sometimes more depending on the moon and my blood sugar):

1. spiritual breathwork yogi boho barefoot woman

2. milanese art teacher with strong opinions about chairs & cups & pens

3. tattooed rock n’ roll girl with selective morals & leather pants

and i fear a perm rightfully suits all the character within me, even on the days i just literally can’t.

regardless, turns out, a perm is much harder to organize than i thought.

first. you must actively revolt against your better judgment and visualize a future where you do not resemble chutney windham from legally blonde being electrocuted, then take a blood oath to obey the first cardinal rule of perm maintenance that you're forbidden to wet your hair for at least 24 hours after getting a perm, at the risk of deactivating the ammonium thioglycolate.

second. you must enter a tiktok rabbit hole and lose at least 3 hours of your life and whatever remains of your screen time ego learning the difference between a korean perm vs japanese vs what can only be described as a deep south pageant perm plus and how to describe the type of perm you want... s waves, c curve, spiral, digital, cold, etc. the nobel committee is really sleeping on cosmetic science IMO.

third. pay a lot of money for the privilege of looking dumb as hell for 5 hours while every strand of your hair is rolled against gravity and ever so tightly into little rods so you look like a brainwashed grandma while you saturate in chemicals.

fourth. you must find someone who will actually perm your hair. many stylists will decline you if your hair is too highlighted, too processed, or weak and shitty. this is a deeply humbling process... ask nicole.

fifth - lastly. your hair must actually take to the perm… which unfortunately mine did NOT the first time around. meaning, beyond the obvious heartbreak of a hundred curl-less curls, i had to do the far more painful thing… sit there visibly disappointed and confrontational in a room full of many mirrors and lined chairs full of client witnesses, with absolutely no music playing.

you know, it never ceases to amaze me when i have to explain to a business that the service i received is, in fact, not what i paid for - ex: paying for a perm and leaving with exactly zero curls on mi head.

but no, truly. can you imagine paying $400 to dunk your head in a chemical spill expecting to emerge a mermaid and instead leaving looking like a god damn milk dud, which is literally a bottom of the barrel movie snack (i will die on that hill).

anywayz, i’m proud to report that i rose above my inherent people pleasing tendencies and told her “with all due respect this is the exact same hair i walked in with” which was a very diplomatic and mature way of me saying “bitch there is literally not one curl on my head.”

to which she said “ooooohhhh, ooooo, mhmmmm, yes, yes… i see…” (which suggested she absolutely did not lol), then cautiously said “can i try again?”

i smiled and in all sincerity said yes, of course.

if there’s one thing life has forced me to admit, it’s that most people are worthy of a second chance… after all, that’s how i got me a husband. plus, most disappointments in life, i’ve found, lose their edge once i’ve taken a lil nappy poo, eaten buttered toast, and poured a drink. the pretty in person remedy.

today take 2 was reinstated. i’ll spare you the details because all that matters is that i look fucking FAB right about now and my energy cannot be contained.

let me tell you something, my pretties… something that took me time to learn, and mostly by accident.

if you want to make it through this life feeling like yourself, you need to be a little wild and a lot of weird. you have to let yourself want things for no good reason. like a threesome or falling from the sky attached to a stranger or brilliant diamonds and emeralds and pearls. whatever you fancy.

you have to feel your blood rush to your cheeks because your reflection looks so intense it kinda freaks you out in a good way. like you’re actually who you want to be today, even if yesterday she would’ve embarrassed you.

you have to let yourself move slow and flirt with flowers and flip your hair and zone out for a minute. lean back… pleasure matters more than anyone responsible will ever admit. without it, life has a way of drying you out and making you ugly. that i’m sure of.

i don’t think life is about being good.

i think it’s about staying interested. in yourself, in fun, in others, in becoming a threat to your own boredom...

the world will absolutely try to sand you down into flattened curls and beige walls and grey sweat suits and bloated mornings and mean boys with boring linkedin posts and lalala... all the things that don't feel like the beautiful part of you anymore.

and so i believe in second chances and cold perms. and color and beauty like other people choose comfort and stability.

i wear the clothing that introduces me before i give the world a chance to decide.

i spend the money i watched my parents feel guilty about even if it bites me in the ass because i know i’ll always figure it out.

i hope you do too.

this isn't everyday, of course, but there are moments that build seasons… seasons for being greedy about feeling alive.

for looking expensive because you've decided you’re god's favorite and that feels powerful.

for being a little vain because you need to be a little vain to play the game. and after 3 decades of being here, a woman on earth, you’ve more than earned the right to enjoy how it all looks and feels on you.

there’s a line between self love and narcissism, though both have their uses. but i believe there are worse things to be than someone who likes themselves enough to be seen. like a heroin addict.

eat perfume.

get the perm.

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It’s 76 degrees in hawai‘i and I’m sitting on my lanai in a hoodie eating a popsicle because I’m sick like that 🤪

Nicole (my husband’s first cousin/now adopted as my own & by inescapable force my new bff) just left after visiting us for 10 days. Which, in hindsight, feels like exactly enough time to either fall in love on vacation or permanently destabilize the idea of it all in favor of a soul searching adventure + a super excessive amount of bikini bachunga booty cheeks.

So, as 3 grown adults determined to stay fruitfully young 4eva, we decided to use the time to test the fantasy of love in paradise. What we didn’t anticipate though was how quickly fantasy unravels under the spell of reality in modern dating.

10 days in Hawai‘i…

And instead of chemistry, there were questions. Instead of whimsical confidence, a chemical spill of emotional whiplash.

Watching it all unfold in real time reminded me that while freedom is fun, being single can still be a real bitch sometimes (even when you’re hot and on island time).

Naturally, nic’s trip began the way all good single hot girl vacations do… salty hair, low stakes, and deleting everything off her (old as shit) iphone in effort to clear enough storage to download the holy grail: Hinge. * and at the modest cost of $9.99 - a steal!*

Let me introduce you to nicole.

She’s not some angel dropped from the heavens. She’s a weirdo in her own right, dramatic when the moment calls for it (as am I... prob arguably more according to my husband lol).

But she is, without question, the kind of woman most people would be lucky to land.

She’s a real life mermaid. Beautiful, one with the ocean, and if you checked her pockets at any given moment there would likely be a pound of sea glass inside.

She’s kinder than most. More forgiving and loyal too. She’s smart, adventurous, genuinely hilarious, and has been through things most people wouldn’t survive without letting it harden her. Mean that.

BUT, most importantly, she can put down a cheesy gordita crunch like it’s nothing and still maintain a tiny waist, great boobies, and a yummy booty cheeks (which, in theory, should be working in her favor).

Turns out that combination doesn’t carry the weight it used to. After this little experiment, I can say with confidence that online dating doesn’t reward the “good girls” anymore… it rewards the shock factor.

Lemme Cook:

The first guy she matched with met her on the beach. Billy and I followed at a distance under the pretense of “watching the surf with our dogs,” which is what married people do when they crave drama but require plausible deniability.

Also, we needed to make sure he wasn’t a murderer.

I watched him arrive like a blonde buff ken doll that immediately began malfunctioning out the box. Shirt off. Back on. Off again. On. Off. A man negotiating with his own chest in real time, how cute... Eventually, he settled with on. Thank god. Idc how many abs are attached to your fur sir, a hairy nipple on the first date is, like, wildly aggressive. I don’t even understand how I’m writing this rn… but here we are.

Anywayz, she had to call him to explain where she was while he stood frozen, scanning the shoreline in that specific male panic that sets in when a woman isn’t exactly where/doing what he’d already assigned her in his head.

He was fine. Tall. Fit. Less cute in person, but within the acceptable margin of disappointment. Intelligent on paper, though not enough in person to notice he spent most of the date talking about himself. She was upbeat, funny per usual, and stayed sweetly curious (a reflex in women that has now proven to be strategically useless).

They parted after an hour or two so she could meet us for a hike. The same hike he’d claimed took him 6 hours and required calling 911 because he got lost in the dark. It took us 40 minutes, but I digress.

He didn’t text her after. Not to ask about the hike or to check if she made it home, knowing she had a 1.5 hr drive back in the dark.

She wondered if it was because she’d left her Invisalign in.

*no comment*

So, we did what any rational family unit would do... became assholes and reduced him to a baby back balding bitch. Otherwise known as… dead to us.

But we’re not here to talk about my asshole. Mostly his.

Because, you see, my pretties, we all know silence feels like rejection, but I’m no longer convinced it is.

When there’s always another option in your pocket, no moment feels final enough to act on. Infinite choice breeds zero conviction.

Unless you have a shock factor that cuts their haze, you kinda just evaporate.

The problem with that is the thing people assume is a “turn on” in this sort of arrangement isn’t doing much in actuality. For women or men.

It’s not as simple as a sexy photo or compatible interests or a tango of chill but not too chill, smart but (god forbid) intimidating. That’s all kinda baseline behavior by now.

Everyone’s hot. Everyone’s interesting. Everyone’s cool.

So if everyone clears the bar, who’s left to raise it? If everything is accessible, what becomes memorable?

Today’s media landscape trains your brain to wonder if there’s still someone better a swipe away. So when you’re trying to make plans or are even face2face sippin’ lychee martini’s, you’re competing with the idea of another woman he hasn’t even met yet but could at any given swipe.

The truth is, the concept of possibility is way more seductive than reality. And historically, that doesn’t exactly bode well for behaved women…

I know this to be true because of the extremely legitimate research we conducted shitfaced at Wang Chungs’s karaoke bar later that week.

The Super Legit Research:

The night started wholesome enough. An espresso martini for me and billy and a full titty halter top w. a flower in the hair for nicoley girl (aka the female universal sign for »open to love but will settle for a make out«) ᵕ̈

However, the bar was pulseless. Like dead AF. I did a lap and finalized nothing was going to happen here, so we left.

On principle, we refused to let the night fail and so to Wang Chung’s we went.

Wang Chung’s is precisely how it sounds. Iconic.

It’s a waikīkī gay karaoke bar with aggressive neon lighting, a full draft line of kicked beer, and honolulu’s most eligible bachelors hidden inside an absolutely random hotel off a road with minimal street lighting that briefly reminds you you’re too young to die.

Needless to say billy and I got litty titty. At one point he lifted me over his head and sang “beggin’” by måneskin so beautifully that every girl and gay in the room got a little more fertile just standing in his echo. I tried to sing “not ready to make nice” by the chicks, but they played “livin’ on a prayer” by bon jovi instead and some burly bunker boy stole my mic… welcome to my life.

Anyway, it was in this state drunken, feral state we were feening to stir the pot. Billy took nic’s phone and started blasting outrageous messages to men off her Hinge.

By morning, her phone was on fire. It was insane. Men were actually responding earnestly to the mayhem. Like lots of them and asking to meet. The same kind of men who had previously contributed nothing suddenly alive.

LET’S UNPACK:

Billy literally said: “muscles for days. that back shred reminds me of making tissue paper collages in south africa during the 2012 tissue paper shortage.”

AND HE RESPONDED WITH “Lmao thanks. Let’s hang out while you’re here. What are you doing wednesday?”

Beyond the fact that I’m both impressed and deeply unsettled by the man I married’s ability to generate such a sentence, I was more confused at the fact that every single one responded with a chuckle, a thank you, or a let’s get together instead of running for the hills.

But then I got it… the shock factor.

The messages worked because they didn’t sound like someone waiting on attention or hoping to be liked. They were careless. Like as if the sender was already entertained with or without a reply.

The problem with that though is, most people can’t just decide to be marginally unhinged in a charming (but not concerning) way. It only works if you actually mean it, which most people don’t. And I get that. We all want to be chosen… have feelings be mutual. Playing it safe on the first text makes total sense.

So I don’t think the answer is pretending not to care in order to hold the power. That wasn’t intention behind Billy’s lets call it “blast off” (lol). I think it’s more about engaging in something serious without taking yourself so seriously.

Like, I wonder if those guys questioned if she had handed the phone to her friend? I know I would. But even then, why would they still want to meet her?

The best answer I can come up with is relief.

Which, TBH, feels in short supply these days.

It’s amazing how quickly the pressure is lifted the second someone gets a little weird (and i don’t mean it like that u perv!!). There’s no obligation to say the right thing, no fear of being judged.

And even if the message is coming from a friend, maybe that almost makes it better??

Like, a subconscious nod that she has a life with humor and people who feel comfortable grabbing her phone... she’s not alone, spiraling on the couch watching “he’s just not that into you” whilst eating a fistful of sour candy and chocolate.

(which, to be clear, I mention purely as a hypothetical and absolutely super not from me + nic’s personal experience like whatsoever…)

By taking the pressure off another, you disarm their hesitations. The energy stops circling that inevitable and slightly nauseating Q of “do you like me?” and shoots it straight with a “buckle up buttercup if you want in”.

Which is why I think these men moved faster than usual. Because things that are fun offer relief and to quote the icon herself… that’s hot.

God, imagine how much easier life would be if we offered each other a little more relief and a little less scrutiny.

Isn’t that the point of all this anyway?

On her last night, 2 men emerged from the pile… one hot 5’9” jiu jitsu coach and surfer, one 6’7” beefcake. She chose beefy (which I think had less to do with height correlating to heart being that jiu jitsu man was willing to drive 2 hrs to meet her… and more to do with a deep human fantasy to be temporarily *respectfully* objectified like little porcelain doll by a man with hands the size of boulders).

*hey, we don’t kink shame here at pretty in person*

So anyway, nic and beefy went on a coffee date. He showed her the indie book app he works for. Even installed it on her phone. She made him laugh. And they walked the beach while she (most likely obsessively) picked up (a shit ton of) shells, which I think instead of charming he might of clocked it as mildly… um… quirky?? But in like an alarming-ish way???

After they parted because he had a tatty appointment she received no text. Again.

Fucking hell… I just don’t get it. Like if anyone takes the time to try to get to know me I’m thanking them for their time. Closing the loop.

So, I did what any qualified researcher would do… ask Instagram.

82% voted YES they text after a date, even if it’s not a vibe. Here are some notable takeaways from the homies.

So this means nicole is either having truly abysmal luck or she’s terrifying men in some unknowable way lol. Both are possible BUT on the real, nicole is like actually a cool girl. Like she doesn’t suck. So I don’t know why she would be the exception?

SOOOOO… we asked him.

Here’s what I conclude… a post date text is how people want to think they behave. But wanting to be decent and behaving cordially inside a cultural script written to remind you of the endless possibilities you have just one swipe away are two different things.1

Nicole, like many other guys and girls I know, are not as unlucky or unwanted as they might walk away from a date feeling. I think she’s just stuck inside the gap between intention and action where options feel endless and silence is kinda just easier.

Like beefy and light bulb emoji mentioned, context is doing more work here than we like to admit. Different places produce different dating norms, but unfortunately the silence still lands the same everywhere. That’s just cost of being human.

In NYC, things move fast and are competitive. You’re often having a drink with someone who’s already mentally halfway out the door.

In Florida, of course, there’s always the risk they’re your cousin, which tends to speed things along… lol.

And in Hawai‘i, everything is transient. People show up fully, but lightly. The emphasis is on the moment rather than the outcome, so experience doesn’t automatically mean anything comes next.

That night, day 10, the sunset was a non-set. Not an orange hue in sight. And after being rejected by beefy and the sun, morale naturally shifted to Taco Bell.

Then god decided to thicken the plot.

The moment we stepped up to order, we were denied. Literally in person at the window because of too many online orders????

YUP. TBell actually looked us in the eyes and went “nah”… a level of humiliation I didn’t know existed… until she chipped her tooth putting her retainers in.

And that, my pretties, is how nicole’s very own unpaid season of People She Met On Vacation x Love Island came to an end… with no man but lookin’ hella tan. I think that’s a fair trade.

So that’s the tea! Idk what any of it was supposed to teach us really… about men or principle or this swipe happy hamster wheel everyone’s running on.

But I do know this… if someone takes the time to sit across from you and ask about your life, that’s not nothing. And anyone who treats it like it is can take a soggy cheesy gordita to the face.

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Because pretty in person is not just a blog but a relationship hotline, if you’d like take nicole out, you may send me a message!!! But you better freakin’ text her when you’re done. Or else I know a guy who gets weird in the DMs.

I have exactly 57 minutes left on my flight home from mexico to hawaii. I’ve eaten 2/3 of a large venchi pistachio chocolate bar that I bought in the airport and every bite makes me feel slightly sick, which isn’t like me so I’ll keep eating it anyway.

I wish I had an altoid or something aggressively minty fresh to reset my mouth, but I’m out of my own stash and will have to accept that god has other plans for me and my breath today.

Speaking of today… today is a good day.

Everyone on my plane is hot. Alarmingly so. Especially on the Cabo to San Diego leg. The kind of hot that makes me want to drink more water, paint my crusty nails, and appear generally more polished without giving anyone the satisfaction of knowing I tried.

I was with 25 girls this weekend for my best friend’s bachelorette. Yes, 25. It was a perfect split between my her childhood and college friends. I fall on the childhood side so, naturally, I arrive armed with both the grace and entitled arrogance of having known the bride almost the longest and therefore am very significant in the formative plot points of life:

• pepperoni nipples

• four lokos

• tampon tutorials

• house party ended with a mini van full of angry suburban moms

• + many other nefarious moments thou shalt not speak of on the internet

Since I’m the friend who lives the furthest away, being with my home friends always feels slightly disorienting in a way that makes me wonder why I ever left.

In my bones, I know I was never meant to stay home. My curiosity and appetite for a unconventional life were always going to take me elsewhere. And yet, I must admit…

Nothing hits quite like being back with my tragically white east coast girlies, making rap videos to big sean’s masterful ballad of “I don’t fuck with you”, running around in wrestle mania masks + bikinis like we’re selena gomez on spring break, losing twerking contests we had no business entering to hot strippers with bow tattoos blooming out their assholes (which, fair), wearing sparkles as we dance on tables, and just the freedom to be weird and do stupid shit like that even though we are no longer in high school and in fact in our 30s.

I didn’t always feel this way though.

As an only child, I have a paradoxical relationship with solitude. It is both my hell and my safe space. And for many years, the girls I grew up with truly saved me from fully disappearing into it. They pulled me out of a tense house with constant plans to go to carvel or gino’s pizzeria and filled the silence I was used to with incredibly brutal, sibling-like bluntness I wasn’t otherwise privy to.

They were really funny and audacious and gave much shape to time I would’ve spent alone scribbling in my journal, getting lost in my own head in a weird ass way that only children know.

But as I got older, I think I started mistaking being alone for being deep.

We all build our own private hell. It’s our biggest secret and our biggest flex. Which, is something I find much comfort in. I like knowing no one can ever fully enter our minds or know us the way we know ourselves. All the things I’ll never say out loud but will surely take to the grave…

My hellscape, mr. solitude, gives me a weirdly perverse comfort. Maybe it’s creativity. Maybe it’s control. Maybe it’s the satisfaction of knowing it was me (and only me) who got myself through some hard, sleepless nights. I’m not sure. But I’ve always found that kind of hell intimate and easy to romanticize.

While in truth, it’s probably a little narcissistic.

Anyway, my narcissism aside!

What I’m trying to say is somewhere between consuming a medically concerning number of passion fruit margaritas and shaking ass in the pacific, I realized something very important:

I like life.

You see my pretties, there is much to be learned by spending time alone. But joy, like true, genuine joy, tends to require other people.

And when the default becomes being alone, it can pass for healing/boundaries at first. But eventually, days just start to drag and life starts to feel like a chore.

Alternatively, when you let yourself get pulled into other people and all their noise, their brutal opinions, their mess, their laughter, their scandals, etc… life stops feeling so serious. And everything feels a little more worth celebrating.

Life becomes a holiday.

Listen, we don’t escape the hard parts of life, and pretending its complexities can be solved with a trip to cabo and a few margs would be a fool’s errand.

Family drama will prevail, rent will eat your savings, money still matters more than anyone wants to admit, and that hot girl online with a seemingly invisible waist will always make you believe your ass is not #phat enough.

There will always be grief and pressure and days that feel heavy for no discernible reason. But goddamnit we do get to decide how we carry it.

Alone, or at a table of people who refuse to let you sit solo (while a very intimidating mexican woman blows a whistle in your ear and pours bootleg unnamed orange liquor[?] straight down your throat).

I’ve been very lucky these past few years. I’ve studied fashion in milano and traveled to many countries and fallen in love and rescued dogs and moved to hawaii and successfully escaped a corporate job life and cooked food that actually tastes like food and read books that cracked me open like a cage free egg and STILL…

I’ve robbed myself of fully enjoying all of it’s sweetness by clinging to an old stupid affinity to being alone. By which manifests inwardly as not being enough and outwardly as being misunderstood.

I guess there’s an allure to the sad girl.

She’s cinematic, introspective, and very committed to her inner monologue and diamond tears.

But she’s also exhausting. And honestly, not that fun.

In the end, I don’t think life is meant to feel manageable. I think it’s meant to feel a little ridiculous. Like an ongoing bit that’s little too loud, a smidge bitchy, and mildly hungover.

Life can be your chore or your holiday.

The choice is yours.

Just please don’t confuse doing it alone with being deep.

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hello you beautiful people !!!!

i missed VN-ing you so let’s walk & talk.

<3333

—

Written - Jan 8 . 2025

it’s 9:46am and i’m currently sitting my boney little booty on a cold, lonesome barstool in the san diego airport and sippin’ a buenaveza as I wait to board my flight to CABO!!!!

(airport beers don’t count, right?!?!)

we’re off to celly my bestie for finding an angel man who loves her so much that he agreed to put up with her antics for the remainder of LIFE!

i am so damn exited.

it’s been MONTHS since i’ve gotten the chance to enjoy some quality girl gang time… between all the moving and travel and life just life-ing, getting together with my all my girls in one place has become a rarity.

looking back, i don’t think i really understood how special it was to be a girl in her 20s, living in the city just a block (or lil train ride) away from all my friends… and the older i get, like the deeper i grow into womanhood, the more i realize how important female friendships are and where i’ve fallen short.

so take this as a sign to call your bestie and spill some tea and have some giggles!!!

anywayzzzzz

i have a shopping / packing meltdown voice note I’ll send you guys next tweeeek once i’m back in my body ᵕ̈

i’m currently reading I Regret Almost Everything by Keith McNally and so far, it doesn’t suck… though, i will say i’m on chapter 7 and it is pretty depressing haha.

i haven’t read a memoir in a minute but i saw my friend’s husband’s dad reading this on vaca and minetta tavern is one of my favorite restaurants so it got my attention… nothing like a lil NYC lore!

aside from that i’ve been beaching and eating and loving and reading and music-ing and hiking and creating and doing my best to figure out this new thingy i’m doing called island life… god i have so much to share - idk where my head has been!!!

we’ll run it back next week.

G2G ABOUT TO TAKE OFF!!

x0Xo

- Bx

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And on that note. . .

A moment for the jet black hair while I wait for mi elevator ᵕ̈

My spirit when I realized I paid $52 for this mid ass bite but am too emotionally committed to stop and shall now suffer in overwhelm, forevermore.

LOVE YOU BYE !!!!!!<33333

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But none the less, substack first!1

HOPE YOU GET OUTSIDE AND SMILE BIG AND POP UR SHIT TODAY XOXOXOXOXOXO I G2G BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE YELLING AT ME TO HURRY UP LOVE YOU BYE <33333333

This is our cooler getting ready to partaaaayyyy!!! Idk what else to take a picture of rn lol bYE ᵕ̈

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Fingers sticky with Swiss chocolate melting down my hands.

There’s no AC in Europe. I’m sweaty, jacked up on sugar, and stupidly happy on this summer Sunday.

I hand picked each cherry at the local market in Basel and my mother-in-law hand picked this chocolate bar just for me.

These cherries know how much I love them and my bonus mom knows how much I love chocolate.

To be seen is its own kind of mercy.

I’ve been thinking about being nice.

And how sometimes you need to be mean to be actually nice.

And how mean-nice is way more real than nice-mean.

And that I’d love to see more of that on Substack. Or anywhere, really.

I woke up this morning to a notification from a stranger named Whit (who I now subscribe to) and to say she made my day would be an understatement.

SO today we sing. Today we dance.

Today we eat cherries with our hands while chocolate drips down our fingers like feral little joy drunk squirrels and send bottomless sunbeams to the energy vampires still hiding behind their shade.

Because smelling like pit stains and chocolate is way more fun than suffocating under bullshit vernacular.

SEE U NEXT WEEK XOXO

<333333333

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Like, this is a shockingly embarrassing reveal…

Shout out to Good Mythical Morning!!!!! You guys are savage and we’re obsessed.

Final Score:

Choose your fighter… (but don’t choose Jim u fool!!!)

XO

- Bx

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No but seriously where do I order from rn cause I can’t feel my brain & need someone to burrito wrap me in a blanky & sing me sweet lullabies about chocolate from Dubai until my cravings for everything and nothing are gone.

Oh. Actually, maybe a burrito would be kinda nice??

WILL WRITE SOMETHING OF SUBSTANCE SOON.

Here’s a video of my dog:

Catch ya later, h8zzz !!!

- Bx

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Coffee is Good.

DAMN.

Life is Magical.

x0xoxOxoxox0xOxoxOxox0xoxO0o0o0oOo

♡ ♡ ♡

- Bx

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It’s Wednesday. Go forth. Have a hump. And look at pretty stuff.

Otherwise, what’s the point?

Love you,

BYE!!!

- Bx

Voice Note Housekeeping: Free subscribers get a 3-minute teaser—just a taste. Paid subscribers? You get the full shabang.

The other day I published this note:

It came from me rambling in the voice note above—fresh out of Publix, clutching a shiny new box of Sugar-Free Watermelon Red (my fav & it’s so addicting I’m screwed), still reeling from these two essays that slapped me in the face just hard enough to be a useful wake-up call.

Amie’s Substack

I didn't want a job

There is no greater crime in our culture than to not want to work…

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2 years ago · 5009 likes · 502 comments · Amie McNee

Internetly

She Made $170,000+ By Being Delusionally Confident

Hi there. 👋 Internetly helps writers become profitable freelancers, hone their written craft, and go nomadic. To join 2,455 smart creatives, subscribe below…

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2 years ago · 65 likes · 14 comments · Alice Lemee

Lately, money and creativity have been taking turns kicking me in the shins.

(So fun)

Mostly because I’m unemployed and going stir-crazy, but also because the thought of working some soul-draining job makes me want to lie face down on Publix’s icky sticky epoxy floor, right next to the raw chicken beef tallow, and never get up.

Yeah, I went there.

Meanwhile, the urge to spend money I don’t have on plane tickets to Europe and expensive jeans that make my ass look downright delicious is unbearable.

I think I have magpie syndrome.

Quite the conundrum, no?

Anywayzzz, these essays reminded me why it’s crucial to be completely, recklessly, unapologetically yourself—even if that means being a Mermaid floating around aimlessly until she finds the most divine coral reef to call home.

[^…still not over it]

’s piece I didn’t want a job gave me some sort of nameless thrill. Or maybe it was just anxiety.

Probably both.

Because, damn. I feel that.

I also want my one silly little life stuffed to the brim with love and art and culture and fashion and music and beauty.

I want to orbit interesting people with that mysterious, sexy business savvy. And people who are smarter, funnier, and more talented than me—because, I have to. It’s a necessity.

I need it.

All of it.

I want the whole damn thing—money and joy. Not one at the expense of the other.

It’s not that I don’t want a career, it’s that I refuse to accept some sad consolation prize when I know damn well what’s actually meant to be mine.

Am I wrong for that?

Does this ambition make me superficial or selfish?

I don’t think so.

It’s not like I’m a bad person, you know?

I know what’s most important in life: family, friends, good health, etc. But why should that have to come at a cost of the other fun stuff?

It shouldn’t.

And I refuse to let it to.

Every time I scroll the featured tab on Substack, I feel both exhilarated and doomed.

There’s so much talent. It makes me want to be better. It makes me want in.

And I don’t want to do it alone—what fun is that?

I want to be in it with you and anyone else who feels that same manic itch for fun and creativity and connection and adventure.

reminded me in her piece of something I desperately needed to hear: stop rejecting yourself before the world even gets a chance to. Be delusional. Be brazen. Be the kind of person who walks into a room and orders life to unfold exactly how they want it.

And I want that.

I want this—Substack, this ridiculous digital blog thingy, Pretty in Person—to be my adventure that leads me to it all. I want to live anywhere, make enough money to create freely, and turn my absurd little thoughts into something that makes a band of bad bitches feel like they can take on the world and slay some serious dragons.

Is that so much to ask???

(No)

I think it’s finally time to read the infamous Anaïs Nin that everyone on here raves about, though I have a feeling the second I crack her open, she’ll grab me by the collar of my pilled cashmere sweater, shake me out of my lazy-lizard daze, and demand that I start actually living.

And then? Who knows—chaos, mayhem. Or even worse… the confidence of Britney Spears in a Pepsi commercial.

That’s some scary shit, man. Not sure if you guys are prepared for that...

(Me neither lol)

So0oO0oOo, ya.

If you made it this far, thanks for humoring me—you’re a real one.

PLZ don’t forget to subscribe before you press that gray ‘X’ in the top left. It fuels my madness and, in all sincerity, is a big part of creating something better than I ever could’ve dreamed up on my own.

OKAY THANK YOU LOVE YOU BYE.

-Bx

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