god, i forgot how much i hate this visor. in the under 2 minutes it took to put the get-up on, any sex appeal and visual personality i possess are gone. the woman (dressed like this i look like i am 14. and not in a waify, lolita-esque way. in fact, i look more like the last 14 year old boy of his class to have a growth spurt, pre-pubescent and pathetic. woman is absurd…) staring back at me in the mirror is almost unrecognizable. any curves i delude myself into thinking i possess are concealed by the superlatively unflattering uniform t-shirt that reads the franchise’s fictive brand name with a pseudo-germanic aesthetic where my breasts once where. my carrie-bradshaw-meets-stevie-nicks hair (as i was told at a houseparty at holloway road), which dances and flirts on my behalf, is now pulled back in a bun that sits like a turd at my nape of neck. my pattie boyd bangs are pinned flat against my temples as to accommodate the visor. i always say my bangs are my feature. equally a heraldic device, like a courtly crest, but more importantly, a synecdoche, a distillation of a particular self-conception i like to nurture often: the artistic, romantic lead; an unraveling ingenue.

alas, aesthetic must yield to utility and labor.

3:40pm

your brain can make any scene tingle with mirthful possibility and whimsy, i tell myself. use that to your advantage. maybe this won’t be so bad.

3:44pm

then i tell myself: hold your breathe, annnnnd, in you go. dive in nose deep.

i thrust open the glass door.

3:45pm

there he is, in his commanding 5’3 stature. his elastic shirt strains as to cradle his bulbous stomach. his hands work with mighty finesse, a master of his craft, of ‘partial-making’ (transferring a former half-batch of ice cream to replenish a current tub). minimal splatter, the mango sorbet is obedient. a healthy jiggle with the spatula follows, a spanking on the rim to get rid of the excess. then a precise yet dauntless slice of the wax-coated paperboard, a dramatic and swift one-handed depackaging. he hears me as i go to wash my hands. “emilia! welcome back!” the familiar mild indian accent. he greets me, after a whole year year, in a way that is warm on the surface and immediately instructive beneath it. there is always that second layer with him, the gentle reminder behind every sentence: remember, you work for me. you are here to work for me.

sam, THE BOSS, is exactly the same. nothing has changed. i am sure of it.

here are some facts about sam which i think will help characterize him.

• sam calls every man that walks in solo into the shop ‘bossman’. “what can i get for you bossman?” maybe he has no male friends and this, he believes, is the most attractive option to gain platonic kinship. or maybe he is seeking validation of his masculinity through the greeting. because what’s more masculine than the 6’1 beefcake of a man, venturing, on his own, on a monday, to spoil himself with a tasty little sweet treat. yes he has the app to collect points. he’s working up to be able to get the 2 pints deal. he’s asking for two scoops, one of midnight cookies and cream and caramel cone. and can we please try to dig for a healthy serving of the gluttonous mix-ins. no toppings though. i guess he draws the line at rainbow sprinkles, as if rainbow sprinkles might disturb the smooth enforcement of his heteronormative coherence. anyways, sam saying bossman always makes me giggle. i fear this is not a bodega, but a franchise location in a highfalutin plaza sandwiched between a hot yoga studio and a starbucks.

• i had an ex-coworker named sergei. he was russian, obssesed with digital anime popstar hatsune miku, owned a pet fox he brought back from russia, the son of a UFC fighter mother, and schizophrenic, but affable. sergei told me sam had 3 wives. i have never heard sam talk about his partner(s). although we talk about ambiguous day-to-day occurrences in our lives and inoffensive facts (like what i had for lunch before i came in, what i study at uni, what nationalities we are, etc…) my knowledge of sam’s home life is unsatisfyingly bleak. moreover, sergei did not like sam. was this a racially motivated comment on sergei’s part? i will likely never know.

• sam does worry when i close late. he says that we are a team and watches the cameras on his phone until he sees i am done. that being said, i have closed the store on my own, at 1:15am before. profit and concern, like fat and water. one will always win out. we know which one the management at the franchise will pick.

3:55pm

i can hear my first customer of 2026 enter. my heart sinks into my ass. what if i forgot how to scoop properly? what if my wrist betrays me in front of God and sam, who is always watching through the camera? fuck i need to upsell everything too, as always. any toppings for you today? gummy bears, hot fudge, strawberries, pinnapple, and whipped cream? why not all 17 options? why not a collapse of the concept of a “topping” itself into unbounded excess? waffle cone or cup? better yet, waffle cone dipped in chocolate and cookie pieces. dragged through sprinkles. and straight cane sugar, and lard, and unicorn shit. “is regular size okay for you?”, i will ask, innocently (not mentioning, of course, the mini or the small). just what we call regular, which should more accurately be called an extra large but you don’t need to know that, dear first customer of 2026.

i turn around, smile plastered on my face. fortunately, it lands somewhere between very sweet and welcomingly, non-portentous. you are in good hands, dear customer.

4:06pm

i realize i know how to do and make pretty much everything. it is all still second nature.

is it a good thing that apparently, some of my precious brain space is reserved for sundae recipes?

4:20pm

sam comes back. he leaves me a key for closing. he will periodically come in, every hour or two, usually unprompted. sam loves to do this. pretend he’s there for an innocuous reason, but really it is to make sure you are still correctly positioned inside the machine. being a slave to the management above him, the owner of the location. above sam there is NATE. all i know, which is very little about the mystical NATE, amounts to this:

1. he lives in texas. i like to imagine he lives in one of those enormous McMansions, aesthticaly stuck in 2014 with interior design that reminds you of the cheesecake factory, with a giant pool.

2. everyone has always said he is extremely scary. if you get a call from nate… oh boy. you’ve fucked up.

3. the funny thing is, i have heard his voice once, during my interview. i thought i was being interviewed by an employee, because, believe it or not, NATE sounds like the social chair of sigma chi at a mid-tier state school, not a demonic capitalistic overseer. key word: sounds. he very much is, given the state of our tip system (i will get to that later), his revocation of our music priveleges only to be replaced with algorythmicaly optimized customer service pop slop that genuienly should be used in CIA enhanced interrogation techniques, my shift schedules, and his affinity towards a one-man show (as in, one person operating the entire store for 9 hours).

but more personally, sam does this also because he relishes in reminding himself that he is THE BOSS here in maryland. relishes in confirmation that his worker bees are stellar, always doing something. that is like, the franchise’s number one policy. you must be doing something at all times. partials. taking cake orders. making chocolate dipped cones. restocking the cups. cleaning the bathroom. you are not getting payed to relax.

4:24pm

a customer orders a mango-rasberry smoothie. funnily, smoothies are very popular, despite the smoothie king 15 seconds down which sam works at and oversees as well. it is generous to call this creation a smoothie given that it mostly contains sorbet and vanilla ice cream. a milkshake wearing a fake mustache.

i blank on the measurements. have to go consult the laminated instructions in shame. i’m embarrassed and hope sam doesn’t notice. i put the blender pitcher on the scale and start measuring the ice cream. an alarming amount of sorbet accumulates in the pitcher. that smoothie title should definitely be revoked. sam turns around, notices the amount and without a word, inserts himself between me and the scale and picks up the pitcher, re-calibrates it, and proves to me that i was fucking up without saying a word. it is so fucking condescending i want to pull my hair out. the customer makes a joke about it being my first day. i tell him this is my first day back after working here for the whole of last summer. i hope the edge to my voice is only apparent to me. sam disappears into the back to deal with something involving fruit. the customer apologizes for making me look bad in front of my boss, and i think, jokes about coming here often and having noticed that sam is a mega over-bearing asshole who works his employees to the bone. i fake a laugh. he ends up tipping me 2 dollars.

i am reminded, for the millionth time, that minimum wage jobs in customer service suck 90% of the time. i want to put my hand in the blender. make a canabalistic, masochistic smoothie.

4:39pm

i make my first dazzler sundae. a regular (remeber, in reality, extra large) banana split. this customer wants to switch out the ice cream flavours. fine. i’ll allow it. one scoop of belgian chocolate, a laddle of strawberries, and 4.5 banana slices. one scoop of mint chip and 5 pinnaple pieces. i shudder. one scoop of vanilla (some decorum, finally), 4 banana slices, and a pump of hot fudge. lastly, whipped cream and a vibrant maraschino cherry. i hand my newborn to the customer, covered in imaginary amniotic goop and gloop and crust, imaginarily writhing in my hands. with imaginary toenails. they grow up so fast!

4:50pm

i go to turn down the temperature. lo and behold, some functions of the AC system are broken. this is the coldest it can get. i mutter “godfuckingdamnit” and then pretend its a ferocious cough when a customer walks in.

5:10pm

i go pee.

5:15pm

i grab a broom to sweep up a mess children made before my arrival. i lust for the times when we could control the music. i want you, i want you so bad. honey, i want you… i quietly sing into the broom. i try to tune out the playlist blasting, and increase the volume on bob dylan’s gravely croon in my head. i twirl myself, pretend the broom is no longer a mic, but a lover.

5:16pm

i remember the reason we don’t control the music is because my other ex-coworker amber, played 2hollis on her second day. apparently it scared some children. i would always stick to songs in the summer-folk-rock space that are broadly palatable, inviting and kid-friendly if you didn’t listen too closely, like fleatwood mac, red hot chili peppers and dylan. occasionally i’d throw in something a bit more eccentric like ween.

amber wore sharp black eyeliner and fake lashes, and used her first paycheck on a joint for her and her friends. i gave her advice on the university application process. she really wanted to go to an all women’s college, and indeed, she’s going to be at wesley now. amber quit the franchise after a month to go work at brandy melville. i screeched at her that she couldn’t work there because, unfortunately, brandy melville has an especial talent in finding the most incompetent girls and then immediately hiring them on the spot. and she was not incompetent. ergo, she could not work there. the incompetence at their job is an international phenomenon. i once went into the brandy melville in covent garden and asked one of them where the skirt on the manequin could be found. she drawled, with so little behind the eyes, “uuuuummm… i think we sold the last of those.” i went upstairs. there was a whole rack of them.

i chuckle at myself. i hope amber will like college. a customer walks in.

5:29pm

i realize i should chop strawberries. instead, i pleasure myself by cleaning. aside from interacting with customers, this is my favorite part of the job. i get the multi-purpose cleaner, a rag, and a glove. i adore the satisfaction of seeing the place get all pristine and white. i do the obvious: the counters, the table, the current dishes. then i get into the real nitty gritty. i crouch in front of the main freezer and notice splatters of dried cream on the glass. i contort myself into the awkward space, one knee on the floor, my back protesting, and begin scrubbing. the rest of the employees would never subject themselves to this. at that moment sam walks in. “see this is why i like you! always cleaning! she’s back!” he laughs.

i can spend a lot of time enumerating my frustration about sam: the patronizing comments, the way he often repackages my ideas as his own, the managerial habit of taking credit for every molecule and atom in this universe. but sometimes, praise makes me feel like a fucking sunflower titling to the sun.

5:58pm

doordash ping. order with 9 items. blaaaaaaargh!

6:00pm

two customers walk in. i have only gotten through 2 sundaes out of the 9 items. i curse under my breathe when doordash lags and i can’t add more wait time to the order. the first of the in-person customers orders a mango-rasberry smoothie. i hope this is not a bad omen, in reference to the earlier debacle. this time, i make it correctly. i serve the second in-person customer. another person, a dad with two kids walks in. i start preemptively stressing in my head. i get annoyed with myself for every time i cursed the unknown names of those making my doordash order and the abstraction of the doordash driver, the “Alex M” or “Daniela” entrusted with delivering my treasure, when it took a long time. this is what they were likely dealing with.

turns out the dad and the two kids are the ones picking up the order for themselves. they are celebrating a family get-together. because i am the best, most charming employee that every lived i entertainingly explain the situation, involve them in casual, low-stakes but genuine conversation, and suggest to the kids to pick out a flavor they didn’t order and munch on a sample because “we can’t have y’all waiting empty handed!” (it comes out with a slight southern twang, my hands coming to my hips) whilst i complete the remaining 7 items.

6:21pm

i think back to my pub job in london. i think about talking about politics with british customers, going on a rant about the DNC delaying the 2024 autopsy report and establishment democrats. they would either chime in with corresponding knowledge or listen intently. i think about talking about britpop and trance with my london coworker. i think about getting wasted with my london coworkers and trying to learn how to roll cigarettes from my london coworkers. i think about customers flirting with me, buying me a drink. i think about the drunk customer who told me “i’m not a drunk, i’m not really trying anything by saying this but i need to say that you are the most beautiful women to walk this earth.” i think about the confidence and growth that job taught me, bloomed out of me. i think about how much larger i feel there. i yearn. go a little melancholic.

i wish i could unlock the feelings of the pollyanna i was last summer, the girl who loved scooping ice cream simply because it was her first real job. the first job that required IRS forms. the first job that produced a paycheck from which money was mysteriously withheld by the federal government and then, months later, partially returned (which i immediately spent on london boiler room tickets).

6:49pm

god i wish i was drunk right now.

6:52pm

i take my phone into the bathroom. scroll for 2 minutes. exit. i imagine a demagorgic torso of NATE floating waiting for me in the doorway, its second head that of THE BOSS. i stick my tongue out to it.

7:05pm

i have a complicated relationship with doordash drivers. sometimes, you will have brief yet improbably intimate chit chat with them about anne applebaum’s book on the gulag. about my favorite song from CMIYGL. about their kids back home in argentina. about my favorite places in london. sometimes they are nonchalant. sometimes they are silly and flamboyant. all of this i don’t mind. i often enjoy. i understand the arrangement. you are, like the rest of the world, making rent, making ends meet.

and sometimes the store will be slammed with a line out the door, and a driver will creep in and stay near the front. stare at you like a pigeon assessing a floor chicken finger. linger like that for about 40 seconds. then they will unexpectedly bolt up to you the second you step closer to the register (mind you, you are serving another customer) and jam their phone in your face with wide eyes and say one, singular word:

“DOURDASH.”

the women that walks through the door now is not of this specimen though. she has a gen z affect and a fry when she speaks. she begins with hey girl and tells me she’s here to pick up. then she asks for a sample like just the free spoonful (i say of course) and then she explains that she’s like so super thankful because her boyfriend’s blood sugar is low and he is diabetic so like they were gonna go to cvs to get something and he doesn’t want to let her drive so she just only like wants to quickly give him something so he doesn’t pass out. she says it so casually, and i can tell oversharing is just part of her disposition, but i feel a pang in my heart. these are simply people, trying to take care of one another.

i give her a free scoop of our most caloric and rich chocolate flavor with two spoons, one for her and one for him.

7:38pm

armageddon. 6 people in line. 5 doordash orders.

i am flipping and twirling, preforming the choreography for the principal variation of the ballet: La Dernière Employée du Comptoir Assiégé (The Last Employee of the Besieged Counter), a tragic contemporary work in which a lone ice cream shop bayadère battles eleven souls and their simultaneous demands. i gracefully maneouver myself around the space, forced to make long strides in second position as each ingredient, like a quest, is located on disperate ends.

i staple shut the last doordash order, making sure to not crinkle the bag, and hand it over. the curtain falls. roses are tossed (5 dollars have accumulated in the tip jar, 2.55 of which are in coins. great.).

8:16pm

sam comes back and says i need to do partials (i was already going to do this when i got a free moment because i remembered it is a monday. we put half the ice creams into the deep freezer after closing and thus must make room for them). he will help. there i go, working like a dog. this is, aside from cleaning the bathrooms, the worst bit of the job. it is very laborous and can get messy. i shuffle by sam to get to the freezer, and catch a glimpse of a faded tattoo i forgot was there. it is so faded i can barely make it out. a heart, maybe. neo-traditional. a crown above it.

the ink has gone soft at the edges, the lines retreating into his skin.

in this moment, sam is no longer THE BOSS. i am reminded he is a human. with mysteries and desires and impulses to get tattoos. to have something made permanent on one’s body. i try to imagine him walking into a tattoo shop. why did he get it? what was he like when he got it? it must have been ages ago, given that it is so faded. the image doesn’t come.

who were you sam, before THE BOSS?

8:59pm

we finish. sam takes out my trash for me. i am thankful i don’t have to engage in the humiliation ritual that is passing pilates mummies, private middle school girls, and the occasional sexy americana college guy back for the summer that frequent this plaza, with a 5’2 trash bag slung over my shoulder like a really depressing santa claus.

9:23pm

i numb my boredness by the only way i can. suuuuuuuugar. i sample the dulce de leche and raspberry sorbet at the same time. not entirely unpleasant! i feel like marie curie skłodowska discovering polonium. then i have one of cookies and cream, making sure to dig out a plump oreo chunk.

9:27pm

for the next 38 minutes, it gets annoyingly busy. people are more susceptible to succumb to the sin of gluttony (and sloth, you doordash customers) at later hours in the night. the orders get more indulgent– milkshakes with extra whipped cream and sundaes galore.

post 9pm, my favorite customers are the stoners, with their misty eyes, lopsided smirks and slow reaction time. it’s even better when they come in multiples, as they loose sight of their original mission and get sidetracked into making one another laugh.

one time, on a thursday last august when i was working solo, a group of 6 guys, all high as a kite, came in. they called each other ‘big backs’ as each one ordered a more extravagant dessert than the one before. they asked me questions about myself too, were extremely friendly. for a tip they offered me a hit of a j. i politely declined. 25 minutes later, after i thought they had left for good, one of them appeared back into the store and dropped off a ten dollar bill. “sorry”, he said. “it took us ages to find an ATM”. given the condition of the expedition team, i was touched.

10:04pm

i start sweeping the floors.

10:15pm

i finish sweeping the floors. i take a sample, chase it with my diet coke that i brought, and prepare the industrial mop bucket.

i mop the floors, pray to God and then Shiva and Buddha and Bowie and Babitz and my high school econ professor and my entire rushmore of people i worship that nobody will enter the store while the floor is wet and force me to have to redo the whole thing.

10:44pm

i finally finish mopping the floors.

10:59pm

a last prayer: may no mortal soul enter this store in these final seconds. may i shut the heavenly gates, be left to close on time.

11:00pm

a skip, not walk, to lock the door from the inside, doing a heel tap on my way up.

11:15pm

i finish washing up all the dishes, utensils, and blenders.

11:32pm

i finish the maintenance elements, saran wrapping the entirety of the store.

now comes the monday ritual of moving the tubs from the main cabinet to the freezers.

11:38pm

i picture NATE again. this time he is an amorphous grandfather clock, like something out of a lynch movie. he looms over the cabinet, growing in height. moonlight warningly casts through the main window, the open sign no longer flashing. maybe it his vertebrae’s cracking as he expands, or the wood he is made of that is creaking. it is an abrasive, disgusting sound.

“HURRY UP”, his sigma chi voice booms. my biggest flaw as an employee is that i am a slow closer. they do not like that.

then i hear dua lipa’s levitating queue on the speaker. NATE (the clock) disappears. i am reminded that nothing matters. i work minimum wage, at an ice cream franchise. if you wanna run away with me, i know a galaxy… dua flirts away at 75 decibels.

they can pay me an extra 10 dollars for the added time. screw them.

11:47pm

i start the cash count.

11:50pm

i realize i want to exchange my coin tips for full bills and must pause the count.

let me explain something:

the strongest evidence for the despotism of my management is their deliberate refusal to allow credit card tipping. they force upon us the archaic custom of a cash only tip jar, despite the fact that society has long abandoned specie.

thus not only do we receive minimum wage, we also receive abysmal tips.

the day's tips, by providence inscrutuable, amount to neither more nor less than the price of a pack of camels at a gas station. thus doth fortune reveal her mysteries.

11:57pm

i finish the cash count.

12:05pm

i turn off the lights and grab my free post-shift item. tonight, i made a smorgasbord mass of vulgarly mixed ice cream flavors jammed into one regular size cup.

12:06pm

i lock up the door.

12:08pm

i frantically run back, unlock the door, and clock out from our system.

i re-lock the door.

12:09pm

i complete my first shift back. i feel less tired than i anticipated.

there is a pleasing symmetry to the french words of inhale and exhale: inspiration and expiration. i drum these two words into my head, intently and so deliberately doing the act. this is the aftermath of last night’s final excess. as i draw breath into myself, inwardly, i am also receiving, as in the familiar figurative way of creative inspiration. i crave to write. the anglophone world got it so wrong in its decided meaning of the word. i feel so wholly alive as i expire, the french way.

prior to opening the notes app, i sat in this chair for a solid twenty minutes in stillness. chin laid on my right knee, nursing a cup of mint tea, swirling my finger on the rim of the mug. with every passing circle my finger satisfyingly ran over a chip, the tiny interruption arriving with dependable regularity. i occasionally picked at the scab on the heel of my left foot. both my feet seem irreparably damaged, pained and blistered to oblivion. a sobering dose of what my life could have looked like had i continued pursuing ballet. over the past three days they have been adorned with black suede stilettos, beer-soaked yellow-black onitsuka tigers, and chunky boots. they have walked me through three of the busiest days of my life.

a flight home to london from warsaw, upon which i had to immediately descend into a different sort of unreality. there was barely enough time to take the elizabeth line home, exchange one set of clothes for another, and call an uber across the city before arriving at my housemates enchanted-forest-themed twenty-first birthday party. four hours earlier i had been spraying myself with duty-free perfumes and avoiding speeding rolling suitcases; now i was stepping into a wine bar in belgravia populated by creatures who had wandered out of folklore. everyone looked regal. floor-length dresses swept the concrete. dark suits were accented by bright flowers pinned to lapels. one friend wore a peacock-colored gown, a feathered choker drawing the eye to her décolletage. another paid homage to stevie nicks, arriving in a black hat accented with whimsical detailing that placed her between total rock star and woodland witch. a friend of a friend’s had dusted green glitter across his cheeks, as though he had spent the afternoon asleep beneath moss and awoke only moments before.

that evening i drank a casual eight glasses of wine (that is not casual for me). stirring awake at ten am, so began the prolonged hangover. then i prepared for war. saturday and sunday shifts, at my pub in north london.

i do not care for football. i know little about it. the rules remain entirely inaccessible to me. but over the course of those two days i came to understand football less as a sport and more as a religion. in one word, what occurred can only be called liturgical.

arsenal had just won the premier league for the first time in twenty-two years. north london swelled beyond its own physical dimensions. men who looked as though they had not cried since the birth of their child in the nineties looked permanently on the verge of doing so, whether it be from pride, a sense of kinship, or eventually, tragedy. hundreds of thousands had poured through, following open-top buses carrying men they would never meet and yet loved with a devotion reserved for saints and monarchs. the celebration had the scale of a civic myth. red smoke spread through the air like frankincense in church. songs were chanted with such intensity that eyes bulged and forehead veins protruded.

ten hours on saturday. ten hours on sunday. i spent both shifts serving crowds with the determination of a pack mule. the floor developed the texture of adhesive. my legs, my arms, my face, my hair: all covered in every lager, spirit, and soft drink known to mankind. madri waterfalls flowed from the taps, liquid gold with yeasty foam. i think my boss has become a millionaire. we ran out of just about everything. if one were to faithfully transcribe in written sequence every instance of me saying “cheers” over those two shifts, the resulting manuscript would parallel a nineteenth-century russian novel in length and heft.

my customer base is, in all honesty and very surprisingly, kinda lovely. they call me “darling”, “love”, and “dear” with a reflexive quality that it is not really flirtatious, but more so grammatical. requests tend to arrive cushioned by apology. “sorry darling, could i just grab another pint?” “cheers love.” their faces fascinate me. shiny domes poking through thinning hair. crooked, sometimes pointy, sometimes bulbous noses. arms now and then tattooed. deep creases around the eyes carved by decades of squinting into sun and smoke. and bodies looking as though they had been assembled from pints, sunday roasts from grans and then wives, and thirty years of standing in the same spot at the same local. they wore victory well. not elegantly, not elegantly at all, but so enthusiastically. i find something endearing about the certain strain of working-class british masculinity i have found in this special establishment.

our boss, recognizing that his troops were nearing mutiny six hours in, periodically fed us. we would eat our kebabs and burgers with the decorum of medieval soldiers. it was our version of mutton and grain slop. no conversation at all. both of these greasy foods possess the nutritional classiness of industrial machinery. they were perfect. i would chew in silence, feet throbbing. for seven uninterrupted minutes nobody would require anything from me. no pints. no directions to the toilets. just meat, bread, and a moment of peace.

and beyond food, there was alcohol. lots of fucking alcohol. between the many drinks we were bought by jubilant customers, our boss, in amazing spirit, generously allowed us to set up a staff tab and go feral both nights.

it would begin innocently enough. a pint poured during the final two hours. a cheeky vodka shot. then, as the evening progressed and the crowd gradually thinned, the ratio would shift. less work… and more drinking. by the time we were putting up the chairs and wiping down the tables, a collective intoxication would officially settle over us.

eventually the last customer would leave. the doors would lock. and suddenly the pub belonged to us. speakers held hostage. trashy pop. electronic music. reggaeton.

there are few things more comforting than discovering that the people waiting for you at the end of a shift are people whose company you would seek out anyway. there is one coworker, soon to graduate from lse, with whom i maintain an entirely unserious rivalry. as a ucl student i consider it a patriotic duty. yet he has single-handedly restored much of my faith in men our age. he possesses an innate reliability. he is positive without being naive, kind without being performative, and is guided by a life philosophy that is simultaneously simple and mortally difficult to practice for us (the messes). then there is my other coworker, who is quite simply one of the coolest people i know. a fashion student. fierce. tiny. beautiful. in tattoos that sprawl across the backs of her shoulders. she carries herself with the sort of confidence that cannot be manufactured. i love when she claps back at customers. i have told her things i had no intention of telling anyone. gossip about my sex life. embarrassing stories. she will catch my eye across the bar, grin, and usher me outside for a cigarette. every time this happens i experience a petite feeling of pride, as though i have somehow been admitted into a club whose membership criteria remain entirely mysterious to me (friendship!).

i think that is what i keep returning to when i reflect on my time here. not necessarily having new experiences, now knowledgeable about how to work a bar. not even the money. it is the extraordinary luck of finding these singular, remarkable people. in all sincerity, finding this job has felt serendipitous.

my phone is now at one percent. yes, i am hungover. and i am the happiest i’ve ever been to be so.

I cannot decipher what emotions I am experiencing, which only exacerbates the implacable sentiment. I am simultaneously lethargic and jittery. My breasts feel swollen and my lower stomach feels butchered, symptoms of the second day of my period. The inside of my mouth tastes saccharine, a failed placating, resentfully building up extra viscous saliva from all the sugar I binge-eat. Looking at my body invokes abhorrence.

A mild, underlying horniness hums in the back of my mind, but perhaps I am simply confounding it with the all-encompassing relief I crave. In fact, today feels exactly like a hookup with a brazen man I am unattracted to from the moment he approaches me. What am I chasing exactly (satisfaction? affirmation of my utility? a reminder of my own mortality? a temporary filling of the hollow carcass?) I will never know. It is not meaningful enough to interrogate anyway.

This analogous hookup feels too rough, too sloppy, yet insufficient in every worthwhile way. He is too eager, which just makes me even more displeased with him, and disappointed in myself. In the imaginary plot, I look up at the ceiling and catalogue its cracks and water stains, remembering to perform aliveness at measured intervals. Oh yeah! Just like that! Yet nothing about what he does feels desirable. The smell of sweat, the threat of fluids, the choreography; moderate repulsion feels appropriate.

I keep checking my phone throughout the day as though absolution might just arrive in a notification. A message that reads: It isn’t you. Today is just today. Just because it just must be. Instead, I see university emails, app advertisements, automated text messages, Instagram DMs. Just proof that the world continues to operate with offensive neutrality. I cannot bother to write back.

Fuck my life, I keep thinking, as I drink the coffee, as the Victoria line stalls because of an incident at Pimlico (who the fuck even lives in Pimlico?), as I arrive twenty minutes late to my seminar, as unsavoury sweat pools in my armpits from running there, as I pull out a dry tampon during the break.

But then again, nothing about this is insufferable. Tragic. Morally intolerable. It’s just deeply uncomfortable. Just just just JUST just. No divine slight. Just a day that just sits badly in the mouth.

Life is about balance. But how about balancing extremes on both ends?

I have always dreamed of big things. Ate gulp-fulls from the hand before me, juice dripping down my chin. Leaving D.C., I set my sights on one of the most characterizing and demanding of cities: London. A pulsating polyphony of dazzle, grit, bitchiness, and swagger. Will you shift to match its tantalizing rhythm, get romantically lost in its fog, let it guide you by your damp lower back into the cavern of the dimly lit club East? Or will it chew and spit you out by the grit of its molars?

No less pressure is felt at the hands of my prestigious university, demanding precision, imagination, and stamina. Neoclassical columns imposed on by the angles of brutalist additions, tucked between the bustle of Euston Road and the rustle of Bloomsbury gardens. Its lecture halls echo with the writings of Nobel laureates and thinkers who once transgressed the assertions of their time. Be an intellectual, an architect, a dreamer. Think critically, think forward, but remain reverent of what came before. Envision the future, even as you sprint to keep pace with the ever-mounting present.

Hectic is the life. I teeter the line between feasting and being feasted upon. In the mirror, I am at once certain of who I am, exactly who I’ve longed to be, and completely lost. Am I ablaze, or burning?

Silver glitter over-top eye bags. Professional turtlenecks over-top hickeys. Loose tobacco in between color-coded notebooks. 2 P.M., press your body to fit into the tube carriage. 2 A.M., press your body to the beat against the boy from the smoking area.

Will you sink or float in this sea?, they all ask. But have you ever thought about the warmth of the sand that lies on the not so distant shore? The multitudes of patterned seashells lining its coast? The beauty of the castles you may build there instead?

Is there life outside of this? Or, better, is there anything else to live for?

I want to confront that feeling by taking the time to look elsewhere, turn deliberately toward another, equally sacred collective in my life. You beautiful women I get to call my dearest of friends. You turn my life into vivid hues. Let me cherish you all. Let me let you be my muses, each of you in turn!

***

You are stitched into my history, our fabrics intertwined by gilt thread. We shared a tambourine in our elementary school music recital, small hands colliding in rhythm. We painted your toenails sparkly pink, split popcorn under cushioned fortresses. We chain-smoked and cried in downpour, the sky our sister, over the betrayals of sophomore-year relationships that never happened. We have bickered and made up and danced and loved one another continuously for over a decade.

***

Your affection is expressed in touch, flowing from inside of you as if it can’t be contained. When you reach for my hand with no pretense, twining your fingers with mine in the midst of a conversation, for once, I stay in place.

***

Sometimes our love could blur the line between the kinds we’re told to keep separate. We lingered there, in that delicious in-between. A hand hovered near the pulp of your cheek but never yielded. Outstretched, but ultimately pulled back just before it skimmed your skin. In the most silent hours of the night, I ask: what could have been?

***

You inhabit the world around me, live in its objects. Blue mascara. Dart boards. The entire city of Chicago. I find you tucked into the corners of my days, hiding in ordinary places. I walk around smiling like I know secrets. Because I do.

***

We sat in the sweltering heat in our cotton underwear, windows open, the air thick and unmannered. Sweat prickled our upper lips, ran along our spines. We complained and laughed and surrendered, limbs draped wherever they landed, time slowing to the pace of our breathing. Sex in the City propped on a laptop, episodes droning on while we gossiped. In that moment, despite being inside, I saw you as my sun.

***

Sometimes I wonder if I will ever come to feel a love for a man as large as the one I feel for you all. This full. This complete. This sure.

My muses–you are not the interlude while I wait for something else to begin. You, not any man, hold my hand. You wash off my mascara when I’m drunk, wetting the cotton with micellar water and rubbing oh so gently. You read my stupid Substack. You order fries for the table when I lie that I’m not that hungry. You delicately clasp necklaces on the nape of my neck. In all these intimate ways, you say more than I care for you. You say, I want to know you and who you will become. I want to share my life with you.

You are my supporters, my role models, my companions, my confidants. Not my lovers. My loves. I love you.

I want you to listen to me when I say you are whole as you are. You are not incomplete, waiting to be punctuated by a partner. You are women. You are souls. I know you are whole. You make me believe that maybe I am too.

i will start off this one with a lament you’ve definitely heard before. *READ IN A TRANSATLANTIC ACCENT* oh mama! when will i finally fall in love!!!!!!! when will my heart sore out of its chest, buoyed and tenderized by the arrow of sir cupid?? when will i be swept of my prettily painted feet, toes pointed to the sky, whisked away on this saccharine and hilly ride? hand in hand with a beau? when will it be my turn? … if ever? will i truly feel for someone, ever? am i capable of it? or am i doomed to a life of solitude and chagrine…?

ok. that’s enough.

alas, cat’s out the bag: i have yet to fall in love. the capital-lettered, stomach-dropping, shit-inducing, life-reordering kind. even though i may not have experienced love in all its perilous glory, i have lived in its outer rings. i have had flings and crushes and the alike, the perhapses, the maybes, the could-have-beens.

i’ve felt timid, heart palpitating at the sight of a gaze met. i’ve rehearsed conversations in my head that never happened. i’ve woken up with pesky little maroon bites on my neck. i’ve reached for fingers to interlock with mine. i have been marked by these boys, in more ways than one. they’ve left imprints on my confidence, my expectations, my sense of self.

so why not honor them a little today. reflect on the past, get a little sentimental maybe; be a little uninhibited. here’s what all of you have left behind in my mind.

A~ your drive, your morals, and your clarity of vision will grow you into an unimaginably brilliant and successful man. you are pressed shirts, fresh pale leather car interiors, and a million dollar smile. i also know there is a part of you that might have solemnly retreated inward, one you’ve purpled and shoved away. i hope you are able to extend it your hand, show it the light, and bask in its iridescence once it’s out in the sun again.

Z~ you showed me i could be fallen for. despite my inability to meet you there, you showed me that there is something worthy of desire. you held up a mirror i didn’t know i needed and i left knowing i wasn’t invisible after all.

E ~ thank you for the romance. for rolling me a mangled cigarette under the watchful moon, slow dancing in the rain to a fuzzy serenade by julian casablancas from my broken iPhone 11, dipping me with a flourish into a new years kiss. the 15 year old who stills lives inside me will never forget that night.

O~ you were my first adventure into adult freedom! tracing that small, scratchy tattoo on your wrist as we tubed back to halls felt like eternity, balmy to the touch from the booze and the moment. you taught me that i should go for what i want instead of waiting to be chosen.

T~ this one still stings a little. your beautiful, enterprising Masonic brain, well-oiled cogs always turning, churning out brilliance. that’s what drew me in. i loved listening to you talk. your expressions were never errant, your ideas never desultory. i thought there was potential, something profound forming. bald humility: that is the one thing your mind could not wrap itself around.

J~ how i adore your handsome, boyish face, adorned with that eye-brow piercing. i remember this queer little wayward thought i had the last time we saw each other. as i sat straddling your hips in airy stillness, watching you absentmindedly play with the necklace dangling down my torso, i wanted to lick your chin, its outline barely visible in the dark outside. and perhaps your dimples too for desert, which i felt oh so lucky to likewise faintly see. i hope we will meet again someday! i’m oddly sure of it. maybe in another city, another version of ourselves.

M~ you were intensity. you were a spark that burned a little too hot, too fast. everything felt urgent. sloppy and voracious, because we couldn’t get enough. i remember you in incremental moments, blacked out in between. my curls getting caught in between our cheeks, pressed together. my head tipped back, drinking in my own laughter. hands, moving curiously and gingerly. steadying me. we had fun didn’t we?

L~ at first, you made me shy and bashful, my blush blooming from the tips of my ears down the hollows of my neck. you unlocked something within me, primal, raw, and uncompromising. i seismically yearned for the first time, in the blistering heat of July. i took the plunge into the cold sea, turned around and bit the tip of your nose, hungry. i welcomed unparalleled, risk for the first time in my life. unveiled were many immolating consequences. you taught me that what feels tender and special isn’t always honest. maybe it’s not as logical as that. i don’t think i’ll ever truly know. now, i’m okay with that.

and so here i am, still alone, still wondering and fantasizing colorfully, occasionally yelling into the big fat void. but maybe, just maybe, this is the laboringly long preamble. the scrapped duet sheet music. maybe all these almosts and well-not-quites are important evidence that my heart does know how to stir, how to soften and melt down.

and when love finally reveals itself, i hope the reigns by which it pulls me in prove to be familiar. i hope it will find me a little battered by more experiences, a little more wise, and still wildly, defiantly, smotheringly hopeful.

A small, yet mighty pop.

The sound startled her into glancing at the woman to her right: her freckled neighbor wearing John Lennon-esque spectacles. Their eyes met. Two taut seconds passed.

Then, unexpectedly, involuntarily, the freckled one released a delighted little gasp, followed by laughter, full-bodied and glorious, as if it had been sitting inside her chest, waiting precisely for this moment.

The headscarfed woman smiled, shy and uncertain. A silent communion. Culprit and confidant. Two strangers, momentarily threaded together by crisps and the choreography of this accident.

What a beautiful thing, I thought. What a ridiculous, beautiful thing.

The buttery smell of pastry and stale coffee wafts from the Gregg’s behind me, mingling with that of asphalt and cigarettes.

I stand in front of King’s Cross St. Pancras Station, ready to endure the longest eleven minutes of my life.

There’s a temperate wind blowing, enough to pinken cheeks and frizz hair, but not enough to chill or become pernicious. Perhaps it’s my woollen turtleneck that’s keeping me content.

Instead of letting the length torture and weigh, I try to be present.

Two separate women in berets pass me by. “…he’s so good in that science fiction feature,” a father and his daughter wearing matching parkas discuss fervently.

A man in a purple jersey limps across Euston Road, one leg stiff, the other triumphantly climbing forward. He’s either drunk or suffering a minor injury.

I conjugate pouvoir in the passé simple in my head.

Je pus Tu pus Il put Nous pûmes Vous pûtes Ils purent

I laugh to myself at Vous pûtes because I am mature.

I loosely listen to “New Age” by The Velvet Underground through my one working headphone.

I let my gaze blur and stare at the lights of cars. They become little shooting embers streaking the street. I refocus it. I’m met by the stare of enormous Lila Moss, her face stretched across the side of a double-decker bus like a modern day deity of consumerism.

Only six minutes have passed.

What makes someone cool? It is a seemingly innate quality, something one cannot strive for, but just has. It is precisely this: effortlessness. Anti-performance.

Come forth the paradox. We desire coolness, and so we try to be cool. We are inclined to imitate it, to reproduce its signs: the undone hair, the loose fit, maybe even the haircut. But the instant we try to obtain it, it slips through our fingers. Unfortunately, coolness evaporates quickly and at low temperatures; it curdles in the face of self-consciousness and calculation. It is hyper-visible and invisible at once. We recognize it when we see it, yet can’t quite name why or what it is. It can only exist as something tacit. What can make a photo like Sevigny’s compelling is not the slapping on of a grainy film-like filter (taken in 1994–these are true vintage; their authenticity is precisely the point) or even that she is dressed in some vaguely stylish, bohemian way, but that she is in no way curating herself or this photograph.

My Instagram page has been filled with “cool-girl” gift guides full of Paul Frank wallets, funky tights, and CDs, “cool-girl” Halloween costumes, pre-styled and pre-approved, “cool girl” hairstyles, and even “cool girl” beverages. Capitalism feeds on the scarcity of coolness, a metaphysical sensibility that is meant to transcend commodification. ; but what resists commodification is quickly mimicked, turned into raw material for the market. Consumer culture seizes these moments of unmanufactured style and chicness, repackages them, and sells them back to us as consumable signs of coolness: racks of ready-to-wear je ne sais quois. You can be cool for the low price of 59 pounds and having to endure an itchy collar. It is kitsch. It is banal.

But I won’t lie to you–those Brandy Melville tanks and Urban Outfitters joggers coo my name too.

However, I have come to think otherwise. What if we could all be cool?

I know I am not really saying anything new here. But the important bit is what this means is that we can all achieve ‘coolness.’ All we have to do is just to stop fucking trying so hard. A fuller embrace of your instincts, carving your place in this world, for you. Coming into what renders you distinctive. Having dialogue with yourself.

No doubt it requires effort. The refusal to let awkward encounters or small humiliations calcify into shame. To weigh on you. To tell the hangxiety off. “Was I being weird last night?” Good. It is simultaneously the hardest thing in the world to do–and the most intuitive. The most radical, and the most natural.

Of course, the oversaturated advice of East London creatives and Surrey girls alike resonates here, too: shop secondhand. The point is not merely to reject the churning beast of fast fashion but to slow down enough to ask: what truly feels like me? Spend wisely and with intention. Talk to yourself. Talk to a pair of trousers.

At the same time as coolness is an exercise in self-ownership, it is equally one in self-liberation. Poet John Keats criticized the aesthetic sensibility and intellectual climate of his time with ‘negative capability’, but I think it reigns true in reference to what I propose, too. He describes it as “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason” . Negative capability is about tolerating ambiguity in artistic pursuits, rejecting the impulse to resolve experience into philosophical or rational clarity, prioritising the Romantic intensity of experience, earnestness, and faith over clinical explanation. This is the discipline of effortlessness: to unclench, to resist the impulse to present, to posture, to constantly signal. To live with what is unresolved.

In this way, Keats’s insight becomes a modern guide. We can learn to embrace our own ambiguity and contradictions. Coolness isn’t some taunting club you wait an hour in line for, fretting over your outfit the whole time, only to have sobered up and still get bounced. It’s a byproduct of inhabiting oneself fully, with curiosity, playfulness, and trust. You already are cool. Just be cool about it.

So begins the move. It starts with an eight a.m. flight (five a.m. wake-up call, because because my mother has airport anxiety. We munch on a shared egg sandwich and blankly stare at a wall, sat on a bench forty-five minutes early to boarding).

The next two days, we drag ourselves back and forth across half of London collecting my dispersed suitcases and boxes. An unsavoury sweat pools in my armpits in the face of no air conditioning on the Victoria line and three layers of clothes, inconveniently appropriate for the weather above.

Moving into my new house feels like one of the most overwhelming, laborious projects to date. By some miracle, it goes extraordinarily quickly. Still, it is far from painless. Something you should know about me: almost all processes I undertake in life (writing essays, doing my makeup, among other things) mirror the act of closet reorganization. From beginning to almost-end, I appear to accumulate an ever-mounting, disastrous mess. Only once I reach the precipice of being done does my anguish dissipate, revealing a sliver of clarity towards a victorious final product. All that is to say: for a while, my room is a heap of clothes, cables, books, perfume, prints, and too many trinkets to reasonably fit on my shelves. Now, however, it is a delight. Warmly aglow with various fairy lights, broadened by the presence of a mirror, made colorful with throw pillows, a fashionably organized clothing rack, and an eclectic selection of posters, it is a cozy masterpiece. I am very happy. Hopefully, it will ward off the forthcoming seasonal depression!

In spare moments of rest, I devour Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love–like a kid eating a popsicle, afraid it might melt into a bright, sticky mess in my hands. A fixture of the literary liberal-darling canon, she makes me feel like a younger sister secretly rifling through an older sister’s diary, yet with the eloquence of someone in her thirties who has already lived it all. From sleazy, glittery-eye-shadowed adventures at Exeter University to her twenties spent in London, I get a little thrill each time she mentions something familiar.

Next matter to report: an ex-fling and his sidekick meet my mother when she and I run into them at Argos. Mustard-yellow stool in hand, grip slipping, I motion “hey!” The conversation does not go terribly. Maybe just a little awkward, especially as said mustard stool actively fights me while I continuously try to stabilize my hold during the interaction.

Later, my mother takes my best friend (now roommate) to a beloved restaurant of ours. Sparkling water, an exquisitely done steak bavette salad, cheesecake and szarlotka (Polish apple pie) with milky vanilla ice cream gaily fill my hungry belly. Aside from food, we talk about going into our second year of uni, the city of Montreal, and looking for work in London pubs. God, my mother is the chattiest woman alive. Like mother, like daughter…

On the tube ride home, my best friend and I plan to ask our favorite bar to help us fundraise to build a school for Ugandan children (I am absolutely not joking). To us, it makes perfect sense: with its sticky gingham tablecloths, dingy smoking area, and picture-frame-and-Christmas-light-decorated walls, we pick the “speakeasy” (which can technically get away with the name due to its underground location) as our partner establishment. The place feels just weird enough to say yes.

I also venture to campus to pick up a new student ID (I conveniently lost my last free exemplar the night before leaving London for the summer). Wind in my hair, Bob Dylan’s Wigwam, with its glorious trumpets, is my walk-up song. If you ever plan to study there, you should know that UCL student services sit in a liminal space: sometimes astonishingly efficient, helpful, and coordinated, and other times panic-attack-inducing. Once, I choked on a peanut butter wafer in Waterstones after being told my extension might not have been processed and was at risk of a twenty percent grade deduction.

Waiting to pick up the ID, I sense something my mother discerned materialize before me. In your second year you carry yourself differently. I observe those in the separate line for returning students beside me. They replace the nervousness, awkwardness, and fidgeting of new students still lost on campus with a slight irreverence: an almost irritation at waiting in line, at being in the presence of first-years, now among a class of elites. A touch of blasé. I catch myself mirroring it too.

I feel more adult now too as a house owner (well, renter). Having a dining room to sit at of my own is, to me, the benchmark of adulthood. There are two sides to this coin of adulthood. On one hand, it’s beautifully liberating. I walk with zeal across my ends, proud to be schlepping Lidl bags two blocks. I have a favorite brand of cigarettes, pay a water bill, can choose a wine to go with dinner. On the other hand, it can feel like a cavernous pit beneath your feet, a never-ending stretch of expectations and “not doing enough.” There is always someone to connect with on LinkedIn, some better position you could be in.

Finally, with home-owning comes found family. I feel as if joy might quite literally burst out of me like a mini confetti cannon whenever someone asks whether I want anything from the shop, what movie we should watch, or if we should go to a local pub later. Friendship now, is a light hearted shit-talking of neighbors, doing work together on one bed by candlelight, or being offered yogurt from the same shared spoon. It’s a sort of really sweet peace.

This year’s gonna be a good one. Cheers!

i’ve made you promises, again and again, that i’m trying to grow. that i want to be a braver individual. and i’ve meant it! this summer, some things did shift. not all at once. not dramatically. but in small, particular ways.

if you’ll let me, i’d like to offer a brief account of my progress. just a handful of moments that feel like they mattered, in the form of a humble list:

• i got a job. you were right (of course you were). wore a tragic uniform with a neon visor. possibly developed carpal tunnel. who knew scooping ice cream could teach me dignity? learned to mop floors efficiently, take criticism without shrinking, and extricate myself from self-perception (part insecurity, part aggrandizement). self-consciousness was traded for humility and deliverability. nobody has time to worry about all of life’s personal woes when there’s a line out the door. would come home sticky, exhausted, and proud.

• threw myself a birthday party. drank too much cheap wine. laughed until my ribs ached. let myself be celebrated. didn’t apologize for being loud or sentimental. for the space i occupied, the noise i made, or the way i kept endlessly repeating oh my god i am so happy. was filled to the brim with rosé bubbles and love, so full i think some of it must have spilled over. what a tender night.

• i admitted i wasn’t doing well earlier. that i had fallen back into old patterns. slowly, i began the work to become okay again. therapy. lexapro. a lot of ice cream. i had to relinquish control. no epiphanies, just struggle and leaden overcoming.

• reached out to old friends, the ones i thought i’d lost to silence and time. they answered. like no time had passed. they forgave me. or maybe there was nothing to forgive. was reminded of how precious and needed girlhood is.

• chain-smoked cigs under the stars with a boy. he was disarmingly earnest and handsome. told me i was splendent, while holding my hips and absentmindedly toying with my necklace. he made me feel seen, somehow knew how to say all the right things. maybe one day we’ll find ourselves in the same place at the same time. hope is a beautiful thing.

• i thought a lot about confidence– what it looks like, how it feels. i’m not there yet. but i’m closer. more certain i can get there one day. and for now, that feels like something worth noting.

i’m a believer these days. in myself, in the slow work of healing, and in pistachio ice cream.

see you soon, emi

Rewatching A Complete Unknown, a scene quietly undoes me. Elle Fanning’s character tells Bobby her schedule (school, CORE volunteering, painting class in Queens) and reminds me how beautiful it is to be young, studying in a big city. She enumerates these in front of a subway stop, their stomachs warm from Chinese food, which they ate over a discussion charmingly eristic in tone. He asks her out after. To me, this moment, this captured frame (literally), feels emblematic, and I realize, as I do time and time again, that something completely transcendent exists in ‘university years’ as a transformative phase in one’s life.

No matter the setting, there is something truly magical about it. You feel emboldened by your youth and freedom, riveted by the task before you: find yourself. Who are you? Who will you be? What can you do? you ask yourself every time you open your eyes in the morning, after every drink you drain, every cigarette you inhale, every piece of literature you read, every new philosopher you fascinate over.

My parents always speak of those years with a far-off gleam in their eyes. They recall them as the best of their lives. Not legendary per se, but luminous. The way my mom tells her stories… she could almost light candles with her words.

Wine on night trains; seven friends dog-piling into a tiny Fiat; the first of Coca-cola bottles in Poland filled with vodka post-Perestroika; black stockings on legs; cold sweats in the face of third-year exams; study dates (unbeknownst to her) during spring days in the lush park; she becomes so nostalgic remembering these memories aglow, as if she wants to inhale them, to hold them in her lungs for just a second longer.

I seek tasks for myself. I’ve cleaned my parents’ house from head to toe. I got hired, started a job that perversely, only schedules me for weekends in the evening. Its delusory busyness. I am left to my own head’s demise on a 9 to 5 schedule.

I go on walks and listen to audiobooks. Its a desperate act. The heat is sweltering. I need to move my feet. I become moist all over. I get assaulted by the vibrant greenery. I want to become hungrier, to at the very least earn my next illusory task: going about acquiring or preparing a meal.

These audiobooks of mine must entail tortuous philosophical musings. A British narration of Milan Kundera spiels in my ears as I walk and walk, sweat pooling in crevices behind my knees. I chew on said musings. I need to hear about others’ mental suffering to quiet my own. I need stimulation, need air to breathe. Suffocate the suffocation.