We tell ourselves stories…

A piece of fiction is just one long lie. Let me lie to you.

There’s a certain breed of contemporary writer who seems to store, and cling to, a mental vault filled with every single word Joan Didion ever uttered or wrote, either as a form of prophetic guidance or to break open in case of some sort of literary-adjacent emergency (proving one’s own intellectual competence at a media party). I am not exempt from these allegations. Not even close. And so, with that said, you can likely guess what I’d like to do now, and, if you’ll allow me, I’ll go ahead and do it. I’ll face the literati who will surely roll their eyes (I’m so brave), and I’ll invoke one of Didion’s more-referenced quotes: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” And by God, must we. Look at the wicked state of the world. It’s a reality far too bleak to face in earnest without some narrative, perhaps even some falsity, to blanket it all. I’m sure we’d like to tell ourselves, with all of this mythologizing, that we only aim to understand our own existence better, but there’s no use in lying. Sometimes our stories are a salve — a cocktail to ease the burden of consciousness. Maybe that’s why people are picking up books again, the searing glare of real life has turned out to be jarring rather than illuminating. So sometimes, as collateral for carrying on, we twist the truth and even downright make things up, just as I’m about to do to you. 

It’s fiction week over here, and on the docket I have a petite piece I originally wrote for a reading or two I did and am now sending out into the world. Before I was a reporter, I wrote short fiction (by which I mean my third grade teacher, Mrs. Nelson, would let me bring in tiny stories I wrote to read to the class, printed in baby blue, size 32, Comic Sans font. I just know those other kids groaned every time they saw me pull my little tin stool up to the front of the class). And from the “wild imagination” it took to concoct whatever it is an 8-year-old writes about, also came the leisurely ability, and desire, to tell a white lie here and there. I have a distinct memory of showing my first grade teacher, Mrs. Jacobson, a copy of one of The Magic Treehouse books and telling her my grandmother (who lived in Syria, by the way) wrote a few handwritten lines in it (?????). When I try to think back as to what my rationale could have even remotely been, I draw a blank that only my therapist can likely fill. 

Anyway, here’s one long lie I wrote. This is a piece inspired by a real note I have in my phone of my likes and dislikes, which was inspired by one of Nora Ephron’s final pieces: What I’ll Miss, What I Won’t Miss, and most definitely NOT inspired by any real person I may have previously dated/am currently dating (I’m actually being so serious about this, folks). 

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The Gist:

Over the course of my life, I’ve been called many names: “bitch,” “a preemptively washed up, bimbo-headed excuse for a journalist,” “beefy,” (this one I cannot explain), and, finally, “predictable.” It’s that last one, which was hurled at me by my own mother as I dragged myself into her car 20 minutes after I was already supposed to be at school, that I tend to take the most pride in. It’s a good thing, I think, to know what’s coming next, especially from a breed of species as impulsive, and frankly dangerous, as humans are. For example, here are some things I’ve always loved:

• Big bumble bees pollinating thistles far away from me but within sight

• Quiet 

• When pigeons jump off a curb with both feet

• Cheesecake

• Watching someone pick a penny up off the ground

• The soggy lettuce inside of a sandwich with mayonnaise.

• The L train

And here are some things I’ve always, for as long as I can remember, despised:

• Loud, sudden noises, especially in places they’re not supposed to be

• Taking the subway in the summer

• Sweating at inappropriate times

• Stripes 

• Taking the last sip of water in a glass

• People who interrupt 

• The L train

I’ve been more or less the same person since I severed my long, braided hair in favor of a choppy French bob at the age of 7, and in that same vein, had a similar sense of taste. While each of these lists has grown significantly in the years since the synapses in my frontal lobe stopped playing double dutch in their free time, I’ve never once removed any bullet points from either catalog. That is, until just now, when I heard Tom using the electric toothbrush I kept at his place in the morning (I knew it was mine because his had run out of double A batteries the morning before and he incompetently picked up two cases of triple A batteries yesterday by mistake). In that moment, I felt something far deeper than suspicion, or even disgust, well up inside me. Several seconds passed, each cushioned by the faint sound of vibrating in the next room over, before I came to the conclusion that Tom, the person who had just last month made me feel warm, giddy and even a little romantically delirious, was now enveloping me in something certainly corrosive: apathy.

Apathy has always struck me as a worse temperament to be consumed with than most others. Revulsion at least indicates some level of depth, there is a stirring somewhere in the brain and certainly somewhere deep in the self. And, of course, love is love. Love is aromatic, and intoxicating and indulgent and mortifying and exhilarating and extraordinary and often completely and utterly normal. A week into meeting Tom in March, at least three of those adjectives were in full play. Perhaps more of these words should’ve been gripping me at the time, but he had a dimple in his right cheek that grew slowly when he smiled and that kind of eclipsed whatever else there was to feel or say in any given moment I spent with him.

We’d spent two Sundays in a row at The Met and, sure, he’d giggle at the art that moved me to tears, like Marie Antoinette’s hand-stitched, monogrammed fire screen, and he’d attempt to explain the true meaning of Rothko’s “No.3”: “It’s clear that this is an allegory for the crushing capitalist machine we must all live under to ascend, after all, into nothingness,” he’d say to me. It was all bullshit. He’d gone to school for business, and it was almost enough to make me ask a security guard where the nearest exit was. But, he’d link his pinky through mine as we walked near the windows that looked out to Central Park near the Temple of Dendur and he rested his hand on my shoulder as we stared at the Tiffany glass window aptly titled “Autumn Landscape.” When we’d make the trek to Moe’s Doughs on Sunday mornings, he’d gotten in the habit of getting three donuts, a lemon-filled one for me, a sour cream cake donut for him, and a third, dealer’s choice, for us to split and rate. It was something we’d always had differing opinions on, even a flavor as palatable as cookies and cream would launch us into a debate. Sometimes I wondered if he’d disagree with me on any opinion I had, simply for the thrill he’d get from doing so. 

The faucet squeaked shut in the bathroom, and seconds after, Tom swung the door open beaming at me with a full, toothy smile. What the fuck? Don’t show me the evidence. Did he think sharing a toothbrush in a non-emergency setting was normal behavior? This frightened me even more than what I had originally just assumed was deceit. He climbed into bed, rubbing his feet against one another like a cricket (he would do this, look at me, and utter the word “decrumbing”) before slipping under the duvet. I suddenly noticed his overgrown toenails and how they yellowed slightly where they met his skin. I looked at him - the stubble on his jaw and the blonde curl that rested on his forehead, and thought of just how much I had wanted him to simply want me.

And how, in the last three months we’d spent together, consisting of me and only me schlepping my New Yorker tote bag from my place in Alphabet City to his place in Bushwick, he’d only ever addressed me as “pretty.” I began counting on my fingers, with my hands blatantly over the covers, all of the words I’d used to tell him how borderline splendid he looked in my eyes, which were now admittedly a bit rose-colored. Once I was holding nine fingers up, which severely trumped his two (he’d also called me funny once), I gave up.

I grabbed my phone off of his nightstand, which he’d picked up off the side of the road and painted in yellow and green stripes, a vulgarity I once found endearing but in this instant found deeply unsettling, and opened my notes app. My two lists — “Things I Like” and “Things I Don’t Like” lived in there for easy access and quick amendment. Last week, in a moment of lust and after four glasses of Gulp Hablo wine, I’d typed his name at the bottom of my delights. I felt my cheeks flush: how embarrassing. How rash. How dimwitted and wishful and naive and feckless and how blinded by attention under the guise of affection I had been. After Tom drifted back off to sleep, I inched my legs out from under the covers, into my shoes, and slowly tiptoed my way out of his room and then his apartment. Outside, I called an Uber and in the sticky heat of summer, I broke my own rule and, letter by letter, erased his name off of my list and started a new one for him to spearhead: Things That Make Me Feel Nothing. 

Consumption Junction: 

Objects, thoughts and media rattling around in my mind:

• I, along with the rest of this app, read Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me essay! It’s been really interesting to act as an observer to the discourse that ensued. 

• I went to Copenhagen for fashion week and had the time of my life, frankly. Perhaps a blog about how that trip fundamentally changed me as a person, and woman, is nigh. 

  

  After a mixup at a brand dinner (we were not on the list), we decided to stop at a wine bar on the canal and have a picnic instead.

• The Idiot has finally entered the lexicon of books I am halfway through (The Coin, The Guest and A Place For Us are also part of the roster), but certainly plan to finish. Promise. Apparently this is one of Those Books (on Greta Gerwig’s list of favorite books, etc.), which I wasn’t aware of when I picked it up. It kind of checks out because when I was recently watching Real Housewife Brynn Whitfield’s home tour, she had like five books propped up on a mantle and two of them were this novel and My Year of Rest and Relaxation. 

  

  Brynn’s books

• You would not believe how much YouTube I watch. I’ve cut back in recent weeks, but now I’m back on my grind. I call it Cocomelon for adults because I become incredibly, deliciously, smooth-brained. Someone I consistently turn to when I need to go no-think mode (respectfully) is Olivia Jade.

• The Nars AfterGlow Liquid Blush has saved my life. I’m a pretty simple beauty girl (excluding my Euphoria makeup phase), and I have been deeply struggling to find the right consistency of blush until miss girl over here came into my life. This is the kind of product that creates that faux sort of glow from within.

• I recently discovered Joni Mitchell. My mom came to the U.S. a little too late to know Joni, and so the ritual of passing the Joni torch from mother to daughter was lost on me. Her music has found me nonetheless.

• Really obsessed with

  Liana Satenstein
  ’s deep dive on the iconic What’s In My Bag Kate Spade book. Each photo is its own rich version of iSpy and a total feast for the eyes. I particularly loved Stella Bugbee’s purse contents (but I’m biased because I also love and admire Stella). When I ran into Liana a few weeks ago, I had a particularly stuffed bag and showed her the contents of its innards: leggings, a workout top, a pair of (clean) underwear, hand sanitizer, a pack of very old cigarettes, three pairs of sunglasses, around four or five lip glosses, my keys, a Tamagotchi, sample size Malin + Goetz eucalyptus gel packets, and several pieces of mail.

• Stumbled upon an Indie Sleaze guide/tutorial on TikTok, with The Dare serving as Gen-Z’s revival north star. I was too young to fully partake in the moment and, by the time I was close to being of age, we’d moved on to dressing like toddlers by way of the Twee movement. What if I said I’m both rolling my eyes and ready to lean in to the hedonism.

  

As per usual, I’m donating my money and time toward Palestine and the horrific catastrophe unfolding in Gaza. If you have the funds, please consider donating to Healing Our Homeland or the PCRF. If not, consider using your social media platform for advocacy and/or engaging with your social circles.