Lily
I get home around midnight after walking through South Philly from Point Breeze to Dickinson Square. We go upstairs and fuck!! the mattress is bare, no sheets. D asks me not to yell fuck!! unless it’s actually an emergency, as this is one of his “pet peeves.” I concede that this is a fair request. The sheets are in the dryer in the basement. D gets them and we make the bed, but while we’re doing this, he tries to play “Warm Leatherette,” which he knows I love, from his phone speaker. Saying you’re “overstimulated” is annoying, but that’s what I am! I can’t ignore it! I request, maybe unkindly, that we play the so-called “quiet game.” Okay. That’s nice and calming. I tell him, I love these sheets, they soften with washing. I ask him to touch my hair, that will make me less anxious. But it’s up in a wet pink scrunchie so I take it down. I love you. I make a comment about my nervous system being grateful, like I know anything about that. Start crying. Have sex. After, D goes to read in the bath. I go to sleep at one in the morning very late, body heavy. This week I’ve been crying about nothing (not nothing) in a hormonal way.
While sleeping, maybe 3:00 am: classroom management stress dream. Someone is sitting at a desk in an empty room and I have to ask him if it’s okay to leave. Can I leave? I feel dread. I’m supposed to be somewhere else but I can’t get there fast enough. Kids are fighting in an unmanned room! It’s sweet when one’s dreams correspond so literally with waking fears.
I wake up with the alarm at 9. Throat dry. I’m not hungry because my friends fed us dinner last night. It consisted of wild-rice stuffed acorn squash and a drink in a wine glass: gin, tonic, and elderberry Manischewitz. I can’t wait for hipster restaurants with hand-written menus to start culturally appropriating Manischewitz. Maybe they already have, and I’m not cool enough to know. Gut shabbos. The drink was frosty and light purple and easy. I had a few. Text A about going to Uniqlo later. Maybe I will buy a full price merino wool sweater.
Around 9:17, I get out of bed, and by 9:20, I’m making coffee for D, who’s kind of awake, to subvert the apparent straight gender exceptions of this project by being a woman who brings my boyfriend coffee in bed. In the cold kitchen, I play Arthur Russell (Iowa Dream) from one of the four identically named Anker Soundcore speakers around the house. It’s very hard to connect to Bluetooth because they all have the same name on my phone: “Soundcore 2.” Every day I encounter this difficulty and it’s not getting easier to manage. I should now confess that D normally brings me coffee in the morning, not the other way around. While the water boils, I empty the dishwasher, feeling virtuous.
From around 10:00 to 11:00, I hand-make an invitation for our families to invite them to Thanksgiving at our house in a few weeks. I use vellum and my fun idea is to take a photo of the translucent paper in front of our front door. In the top right corner, I draw a really demented turkey that A later implies is indicative of my declining mental health. I tell D that I am not open to feedback on this particular invitation as a result of my emotional lability. You get what you get and you don’t get upset. In bed, we discuss how the prospect of hosting Thanksgiving makes me feel, which is “trad.” My family usually eats Wawa gobblers or various vegetarian side dishes. Last year, for example, I remind him, we ate prepared bean salads and samosas from a grocery store’s catering wing. In the course of that conversation, D asks me if I’m secretly a Russian spy and demands that I tell him if I am. I promise to not keep something like that a secret for too long.
Around 11:00, I eat yogurt and granola, and start an argument about the definition of the word “sexy.” I get dressed in the same pair of jeans I’ve worn every day this week: a 6 day streak. They are soft like my sheets, but dark gray and not white.
At 11:30 I begin my walk towards Uniqlo. Pass a real estate agent with an undercut and a fanny pack ostensibly showing an apartment to a single man wearing expensive looking brown boots near 13th and Christian. I get anxious about the prospect of living alone, even though it’s him and not me, and his boots are clearly nicer than my boots. I call my mom and talk to my parents about their upcoming trip to go birding on Staten Island. Do some mindful walking to Arthur Russell. Unmindfully, I switch to Death Cab for Cutie (Plans): crazy eyes tongue sticking out emoji, you know. Around 13th and South, D calls and asks what words I’d want on a monogrammed green tote bag. We brainstorm and they’re all overused: babygirl, spit, acab, 215. None of them are pithy enough. We hang up, and my phone auto-plays the song I was listening to before he called. Ah! Death Cab for Cutie becomes embarrassing, even for me. Nourished by Time it is. Daddy. Broad and Spruce.
12:16pm: Uniqlo on Chestnut Street. They are PLAYING CHRISTMAS MUSIC. This is definitely not what I was hoping for. I find A upstairs in the jeans region, and she tells me she’s just texted me warning me about the music situation. Too late. We suck it up and find some discounted sweaters. We wait in line for the fitting room and we talk about the psychoanalysis conference she went to last weekend and her work and my work. I indeed purchase a merino wool sweater, blue. We decide to get lunch at Bleu Sushi, but on the way, A asks to stop at Aesop for hand cream. After trying the three hand creams and washing our hands several times and drying them with the soft white hand towels, we each purchase one. Well, hers is technically a body cream: geranium. Mine is a hand cream: it smells like incense (notes from the package: Vetiver Root, Petitgrain, Bergamot Rind). We are served tea from mugs with a Kafka quote on them by a nice boy our age who compliments A’s Mannequin Pussy sweatshirt.
By 1:30 we are eating lunch special sushi. Love that they have a roll called the “Scranton Roll.” Scranton roll? I think it has salmon skin. A has a few awkward miscommunications with the server, and I suggest I take the lead on our remaining interactions with her. When we leave, the server says, unbearably flatly, I hope you dine with us again. She stares past us, at the wall. “Born this Way” is blasting. Chastened, we go to a coffee shop with ~graphic design~ where I, I am embarrassed to admit, order a “rose matcha latte.” Huge mistake. Tastes like bath water. My cosmic retribution for going to Aesop is that the rest of my day will taste like fancy soap. A is going to meet up with F, after her clinical, we all convene briefly at 8th and South, before I walk home. I pass at least three buoyant and chubby toddlers on the way home. When I reach 8th and Tasker around 3:00pm, I think to myself, feeling grateful, perfect beautiful Tasker street, in a rhythm which I walk to beauti-ful/ per-fect/ tas-ker/ street. I’ve been teaching sonnets to 9th graders and reading about phonics instruction, so I’ve got syllables on the brain.
Late afternoon light beams through the window, and I take off my clothes and fold the pile of clean laundry. D is in the bath again. When he gets out, I draw a new bath and listen to a podcast about psychoanalysis, because A talking about her psychoanalysis conference earlier in the Uniqlo fitting room line reminded me I like thinking about it. They talk about how the basic structure of it as a “discipline” is ambivalence. Black mold on the bathroom creases stresses me out and makes it hard to listen. I fantasize about scraping it off. Lately I’ve been washing my hair in the bath and shaving in the bath. All of the different hairs mix together. When I wash my hair in the bath, it dries somewhat crunchy, but it ultimately has a nice texture. I hope it’s not from the little leg hairs... I apply my new hand cream and go make a pre-party dinner, which I eat alone by 5:50pm. D is working upstairs. Unfortunately, every time I lick my fingers while cooking, they taste like the new hand cream. Artificially smoked. Dinner is sandwich bread toast with a hash brown, arugula, sliced tomato, fried egg (easy), green onion, and hot sauce. It’s so dark outside, suddenly.
At around 6:30 we get in D’s Subaru and he drives us, first, to the state store on Columbus Boulevard for two bottles of wine to bring to hosts, and then to Lansdowne for a party. We take 95. Tonight we are going to three parties. I have to pace myself. The suburbs feel open and dark and chilly. We can’t see any house numbers, but we figure the one house on the block with the Palestinian flag is our destination. By 7:15 we are listening to a multigenerational crew of people in the living room sing Solidarity Forever (all of the verses, not just the chorus), which isn’t what I was expecting, but it’s pleasant. A 10 year old hands me a song sheet with all of the lyrics as he announces “song sheets!” like a town crier. There are a lot of old teacher friends of D’s at this party, and I get to talk to them about teaching, our union, etc. Via mingling, I learn that many of the people at this particular party met in divinity school. I talk to one divinity school student about how there is a chaplain at every port, and I remember to look up “maritime chaplains” later. I talk to another person, who used to be a labor organizer, about the difference between a DO and an MD. The bathroom has a chandelier and there is a table so covered in food there’s no room to put a cup down. One person I talk to, wearing a knee-length applique skeleton hoodie, teaches K-8 art and describes her impossible workload in a way that makes me feel like fighting someone (I’m drunk, I realize. Sour Monkey.). I say, digging deep for something meaningful to say, the kids must look forward to your class every week. She concurs, and we both accidentally drop cups on the ground. At some point, the group singing stopped, I notice. Sad. I enjoyed hearing it in the background.
It’s approaching 9:00pm, so we drive to Gojjo for the birthday party of another of D’s friends. It’s upstairs. I drink two vodka clubs, enjoy being a plus one. We stay for two more hours, and chat and laugh. We smoke one cigarette on Baltimore Ave. It’s blurry but topics discussed include: someone’s recent abortion, career change, circumcision, potential pregnancy, confirmed pregnancy, what to do when you run into your enemy in public, when the mozzarella sticks will finally arrive, the definition of a cabaret, public interest law, the movie Speed with Sandra Bullock.
Around 11:00pm we head to the third party. Three is too many!! I’m having fun and party hopping with D makes me happy. We park at 6th and Bainbridge in 2 hour parking (D will move the car in the morning). The friend’s apartment has super high ceilings and an oil painting that I like. There’s another huge food table. People are dancing near the couch. I eat a slice of pizza and some salad, have a glass of white wine. I talk to some men I’ll never see again about Georgian Bread and Southampton Spa. We also discuss flexitarianism and rising fascism. I meet the mother of a current student at the school where I work, and I tell her to please tell her daughter to come by my classroom and say hi. Something like, I know she already has people she can go to at school, but let her know I'm around! to which the mom responds: everyone can always use another person! It’s true. People dance some more and she joins them. I notice our host has a book of neurological drawings on her coffee table that my mom also has. Neurons look like trees and their root systems. The host, a neurosurgeon herself, tries to show me her tattoo of one of the drawings, but it’s too deep under her shirt layers. Next time, I say. Next time! I nudge D. Gotta go, I’m tired. We walk on side streets home, and it’s already past midnight.
@oceanicfleeing
