A Scene Report Is Just A Diary Entry Using Names You Expect People To Know
freakquencies and its triumphs and tribulations. irish pride and sixth wave feminism and bravopticon. touch grass and me becoming substack-opticon.
friday, 5pm: there is a loss i don’t have time to process because i want to be fun at freakquencies tonight. i can’t cry on public transportation so i wrote a letter on the bus coming home from work. some of it is fictitious but the sentiment seemed transferable.
i watched you deal and rooted for you to make money off of dime bags. i’m getting everything i wanted and you’re not here to see and maybe im not getting everything i wanted but you’re not there to give me a couch or salmon bowl. our minecraft world grows cold and dusty. did you destroy my bed. or did it never cross your mind that you’d need to.
9pm. waking up from my four-hour disco nap. still don’t have time to be sad. i’m skipping all the elliot smith i had queued on the bus and listening to she wants revenge. it’s hot as balls so i need to be scantily clad out of necessity. but i need to psych myself up to feel sexy enough to be almost naked. apparently some of you aren’t used to seeing my forearms. that reminds me of this time in catholic elementary school when someone snitched on my self harming tendencies and the principal called me down and rolled up my sleeves and handed me a stress ball. lol.
at the bus stop im next to a really pretty hijabi girl — my fashion foil. her, covered quite literally head to toe, me with my nipples out. she asks me about my piercing. i tell her it’s fake but she doesn’t seem disappointed. if i intrigue her then my job is done. the guy at the bus stop in a suit is scarfing down kfc. kfc autocorrects to lfg. who needs food when you have aura and energy.
the bus is packed with nurses getting off their shift and east village aritzia stem types. jackdaw and phebes devotees. i love being drunk and i love not feeling anything except for the love of drunkenness. i envy the girls who go out with a no-makeup makeup look and who don’t have that thing where they can’t bear to look at themselves without eyeliner. even if i were a doctor id still wear all my eyeliner.
i know im good at drinking. matt once told me something like. “izzy for as small as you are and for as much as i see you drink ive never seen you super fucked up.” of course i did prove him wrong and black out but it’s cool he noticed that in what i consider the mid days of my little alcoholic stint. if my mom reads this this is, this is the fiction part of autofiction.
10pm. i’m dizzy and walking to meet torture and feeling like bella on that motorcycle, was doing all that scary shit to make edward come back. i pass a short gay(?) guy in a cowboy hat and leather pants meant to look like jeans. his fit gives him the confidence of height. he’s like me.
i write in the present tense but i fear im cursed to never live in the moment because a lot of good sentences come into my head while drunk and they’re accompanied by a preemptive fear that ill forget them in two seconds. i feel like i could be having sex with someone but i’d make us pause so i could write about it. i sip my smirnoff like i imagine id suck dick. hollowing my cheeks around straws. i can feel my gaze being mean. this is good.
we get to home sweet home and i skip the line and all the teenagers glare at me. it’s early but already there’s no room to write and no room to take pictures. everyone already knows the words to “perfume” and it came out less than 24 hours ago. my nipple pops out a few times. praise for my substack is shouted at me.
oh booth devotees, your instagram create mode song requests are futile. i think im getting electrocuted but i dont know by what. it’s weirdly fratty in here. i remember the first(?) time i went to home sweet home — it was on my birthday after the one time me and my friends had a book club on 4/20. i knew maybe a handful of people there. now i know people, now this is the type of spot where id go and know everyone. but tonight the crowd is odd. these are the people with real jobs who dont go out during the week — this is why i dont know them and why they dont know me. ”who are any of these people?” someone asks me — these aren’t the people i see at readings or clubs or any of the four bars we frequent. “they could say the same about us,” i say. they’re probably thinking “what’s with all these weird haircuts. why is everyone talking about wanting to smoke so they stay skinny.” theres not a stomach unsucked or untucked.
12am: there are at least four people i would kiss here. i kiss none of them. im passing the poppers again, heroically yet reluctantly solidifying my status as “the poppers queen of les.” sometimes i like to feel needed. sometimes i like to be known for more than someone who can give people drugs.
i get air and they try telling me there’s no re-entry but harrison comes up behind me and says “you’ll be fine.” he always seems to have my back. at silencio i kept getting groped by this weird tech bro so he and jackson let me chill behind the booth. outside someone tells sam he has a limp handshake. i get told that me and the apparently-former friend from the beginning of this piece have the same vibes. this is just like the lorde version of girl so confusing. but we never got to work it out on the remix. now all we got is the substack. i go back in and get recognized off hinge by a guy. and then from somewhere unknown by a girl.
“i know you, you host a lot of parties,” she says to me.
“not really,” i say. i’m not trying got be difficult im just trying to tell the truth. ive been on a lot of flyers recently but not as a host.
“you do a lot of stuff with harrison and jackson, right?”
“i mean, we’re friends. i don’t dj, if that’s what you’re asking.”
the cute guy who i thought was gay is kissing a girl now. we make eyes at each other right before he leaves. just like that one black kids song. “everyone’s on molly and making out with each other.” well yes. people bring out their portable chargers to keep recording harrison. respect.
2am: i try to leave. i get double-ambushed by freaky men. maybe they can sense that someone ostensibly easy is about to go home and they swoop in. Guy 1 asks to get me another beer and right after i say no, Guy 2 puts his arm by my head to try and cage me in. i push him away and he tries to apologize with a hug. torture calls me and while i’m trying to answer, Guy 3 keeps trying to ask me questions and when i respond with curt, one-word answers, he keeps touching me.
“are your friends here?”
“yeah. texting them now.”
he laughs at this and grabs my shoulder and i shrug it off and he smiles. sometimes drinking makes me love. sometimes drinking makes me mean. but i think at this point i’ve sweat every toxin out of my body to the point of sobriety. it’s all coming from the heart when i say “dude. i’m very clearly not interested. dont touch me.”
Guy 1 shoves his drink in my face again. can a girl be on her phone without getting hit on? it’s time to leave. im not getting roofied by a guy in slacks. i somehow make it outside. Guy 2 is back and staring at me. “can i help you?” and hes just staring at me in that stupid all-white outfit. where the fuck do you think we are. italy? he tries to talk to me again and i say “for like the third time dude, fuck off.”
Guy 4 shows up, having seen the entire interaction. im bracing myself. he opens well, telling me im hot but complimenting my style — “your look is so cool and badass. why aren’t you in there?”
“people are weird and men suck”
“oh im sorry… i wish i saw you in there.” the point flies over his head like a plane on a certain september day.
”cool. good meeting you.”
“im here because i wanted to party and its tight seeing all these cool people. im from miami. where are you from?”
“ohio. good meeting you.”
“you dont want my number?”
“no.”
im listening to bikini kill and hardening my gaze so i dont get assaulted. i pass a couple dancing on the sidewalk and soften involuntarily. i pass a bratmobile (green car) while listening to bratmobile (the artist).
saturday, 10am: i go to my morning shift. uneventful.
4pm: i leave for dan and ana’s irish pride barbecue. im writing on the train to pass the time. me and the girl next to me are both taking pictures of the weird shoes across from us. i want to take a picture of her taking a picture but alas. i end up at a very magical-feeling above-ground subway station. a few years ago, i was on my way to see this boy and was getting off at this stop for the first time. id fallen asleep but woken up right on time, for some reason. i met his cat and his mom while dressed really freaky.
5pm: i meet teeny latini and the bravopticon (bravo panopticon) catches my baby voice. georgia and i are on video talking about how no one cares about writing unless there’s a possibility it’s about them. no one opened my substack until i said there was a possibility i might have blurbed them. this troubles me. but there’s something perversely satisfying in knowing that bravo now can typecast me as The Struggling Writer. it’s better than The Chick With The Baby Voice. “i got covid at the peter vack party,” someone says. “that’s going in the stack, bro” i say.
6pm: i help light fires and go boy mode. dylan is flipping burgers with a pocket knife. im flipping burgers with a stick i found on the ground. elizabeth tells me to post it on that reddit where guys post pictures of the sticks they find. im not boy enough to be tapped into that. (the day after writing this, dan posts a picture with a stick and proves my point). but i am walking around with a stick on fire. i am blowing hot coals for the people who dont know how. put us on an island and let me fend for and feed all of bushwick. this is gender euphoria. this is spike lee’s do the right thing. this is the first time we’re all out in daylight without any drugs.
“if you have a four loko young enough, it rewires your brain and gives you something to search for for the rest of your life,” someone says. the same can be said about hanging out with your friends. it’s saltburn summer. it’s call me by your name summer. it’s laying on grass summer. a helicopter flies over head. “izzy hide,” says serge. he’s only half joking — “if anyone were to be on a watchlist it would be you.” what do you mean “if”
7pm: i want to stay out in the wet heat air until the fireflies come out. why are there no fireflies downtown? i run around catching fireflies and think of the time i saw my dad grab a dragonfly out of midair with his bare hands. i have to quit running after fireflies because sixth wave feminism is happening right before my eyes. it’s the kilt blowing competition. dan makes sure that everyone “enthusiastically consents to being objectified.” they try to get me to partake in the kilt blowing competition but im in some pretty heavy duty jorts. next time. as ana’s thong is on display, two orthodox jewish guys walk behind her and point. you’re welcome.
8pm: there are fireflies lighting up in my hair. it starts raining so we make it to charlie’s car and i’m reminded of my friends in ohio, in beachwood and shaker heights, of the time before i could drive and would sit passenger side and stare at their rearview camera while we tried to get out of parallel parking. in the car ride home we learn that netanyahu is from serge’s dad’s hometown. we talk about australia and find it kind of funny they have “uninhabitable desert space” because america made vegas happen. but also our capitalist drive is probably stronger than australia’s. it was literally death defying. i hate this country, but at least i can be in a car complaining about it. it’s either this or be in a filipino labor camp getting my fingernails ripped off for being a communist.
10pm: i show up to bec’s manager’s penthouse. the first time i went up to a penthouse it was my friend’s last night in the city. i drank straight warm vodka and then we kissed outside her dorm in front of the westside market. in the bathroom next to the toilet, theres a waterlogged copy of a gentleman’s guide to new york. joan plays her instagram story and in the back of it, people are talking about me giving them poppers. i say it’s actor summer and jake chokes on his vape.
12am: trace and i go filipino mode and play the piano and i twerk while playing mozart. i waltz while she plays some baroque. im sitting on the floor and playing guitar and singing and thinking about high school. i spent so much of it with my fiends in a practice room, sitting under the piano because we tried to fit all 8 of us into what was a cubicle-sized room — this went on until teachers found out that couples would go into practice rooms to makeout and then limited it to one person per room. i make use of the guitar picks obnoxiously in my phone case.
sunday, 1pm: im late to my reading and dont know what im going to read. i write my piece on the train. as of now im debating posting it.
3pm: i get to ridgewood and the dj is playing music that could’ve been in adventure time. amana tells me im reading last — i didn’t make it onto the flyer, but that position has an air of prestige. matthew and crumps talk old guard gossip. i dont know any of the people we’re talking about and they definitely don’t know me. “that makes sense,” says matthew. he explains how im part of “a newer guard.” i also say that i probably don’t know them because im not really rocking with the casually racist literary crowd. this eliminates a lot of downtown. before reading, matthew offers us sunscreen but hands out two tubes — “one’s for the face and one’s for the body.” i didn’t realize there needed to be a distinction. without his tutelage, i would’ve used the body sunscreen on my face. (i end up not using either). matthew reads to the interstellar soundtrack and gets freudian. he and crumps read with sunglasses still on. charlie has a gun (water). lucy is in a frog (inflatable). i take my pills with a mikes hard.
the second reader says something like “sometimes you show up for a story and there is no story. sometimes it’s all details and no plot.” and now im writing about it in my all-details-no-plot sorry-excuse-for-a-scene-report substack.
someone reads and mentions cocaine — ashley and i slowly turn to each other and then burst out laughing. ashley jokes, “im going to do poppers at the touch grass festival.” “that’s getting stacked.” for as much as i write about what’s happening, how different am i from bravopticon? Is substack the next tlc?
sarah is here. this whole weekend feels so ohio. we’re in a house. we’re in a yard. sarah was my friend’s older sister and she was the cool high school senior i was hanging out with as an eighth grader. she took disposable camera pictures and posted pictures she wasn’t even in. people didn’t do that. in ohio your face was your brand. your vsco selfies were your capital. to post pictures without your face — to post pictures of your friends without you in them — self-sacrificing. she’s the reason my middle / high school instagram feed always seems to have a pastel color tint to it. once night me, her brother, and that boy i was talking about earlier spent the night at her brownstone — about 6 years since we had seen each other. it’s nice seeing her out. with as many selfies as i take, i picture the image of my face burned into the screen of my iPhone.
i read lounging like one would do on a chaise longue. renee says she related to my poem and i tell her sorry because “that’s not a good thing. but at least you feel seen.” someone tells me they came to the reading because of my instagram story. people tell me nice things about my writing and i write every single one down. ashley sings new songs and valley sings along. i am filled with love. the yard is filled with ankle tattoos. red underwear under white slip dresses. the kids in the window across the yard. im braiding ashley’s hair and trying to catch the wind on camera. sometimes when someone plays a guitar it looks like they’re jerking it off.
5pm: someone walks into the kitchen smiling like he knows all my secrets — that i’d eaten more than probably anyone there. someone else says, “in fifty years the history books will write about touch grass festival.” kellen sings and as she does, the tail of a hanging kite caresses and lands on her shoulder perfectly. how could anyone ever break your heart?
8pm: on my way home i see a muzzled dog with the kindest eyes. it’s weird to be outside during dusk. im out when its day and out when it’s night. im even out more when it’s dark getting light but never when it’s light getting dark. i truly see the smile in the ihop logo for the first time. it took some drugs for me to find that.
sam does have a limp handshake