New York and I Are In A Toxic Yaoi
it’s a will-they-won’t-they and we’re both boys.
alyssa says there’s a me-shaped hole in her heart. sofia has to remind me that the city will be here. i have to remind sarosh not to be gay. (not in a homophobic way. he just keeps talking about how he misses me. i myself kiss girls).
ive abandoned my elaborate and desperate adventure back to the city, no longer trying to make it back for All The Fun Happening Things At Once Week. this was my tentative plan — wednesday, arrive, in the rv, at the flagstaff car rental place sometime by 11pm. hitchhike (not joking) a few hours from flagstaff to the phoenix airport. drop 20,500 delta miles and $100 on the 6am flight to the city. crash at gordon’s at 3pm. get to harrison’s show by 7. get to the office party by 10. fashion week bender. invite to activation to show to fucking my brains out and living forever. that was the plan. except we decided to cancel the rental car. i think i knew in the back of my mind i wouldn’t get what i wanted. i think me wanting something so desperately sealed my fate of never getting it. i think that’s a theme for me.
im resigning like i said i wouldn’t. i sold my rick owens shirt to finance my flight to ohio. i sold my dion lee dress and now they’re closing. id been growing out my nails in preparation for fashion week but today i clipped them so i could climb rocks better (my traction-less docs have taken me to places many of you wouldn’t go without a cigarette. i am surprisingly good at bouldering). i sold my tickets to harrison’s show today. i saw someone bought theirs for $500.
what’s wrong with new york? the girl reading this.
what’s wrong with new york? that im not there right now.
what’s wrong with new york? that it’s done something irreparable to me to the point where i can look at some of the most beautiful places in the world and think ‘this view is ok but i wish there were people here arguing about the political implications of brat summer.’ this pink-painted mountain range is swell but what would they look like in a cobrasnake photo. all these constellations i’ve never seen before are tight but i wish i were at gonzos making eyes at someone from across the ketamine room. what has the city done to me. in the face of all this natural beauty i was knee-deep in some of the clearest water ever today, picking gold out of the river with my bare hands and all i wanted to do was share uti’s with my friends in the le bain pool.
the night i realize my departure is inevitable, there is too much wrong in my life to be sober. time for karaoke. the bridges of casual and good luck babe had me, michelle, joanie, and caroline on the floor screaming together like that one scene in midsommar. chappell roan songs and the floors of treasure club know me more intimately than many of you ever will.
maddie and i slow dance and wonder who’s doing the boy steps. she tells me all the questionably legal things i could do to stay in the city. i dont want to feel like im running out of time. i just want to slow dance while brandi sings dream a little dream of me. michelle tells me new york won’t be the same without me. ‘new york without me’ is a reality i have to face but brandi snaps me out of my emo reverie, saying, “we’re going to paul’s so im gonna get a bag of shrooms instead of coke.” her responsibility is admirable. i feel like a girl around my friends. i quit slow dancing and twerk on maddie.
“sorry if nothing moved,” i say.
“it was enough,” she says. she never asks anything more of me. we don’t make it to paul’s.
the club is feminine. it’s a void that needs filling. the performance necessary to get in. mixed drinks. dressing up. pop music. the dive bar is masculine. a wordless nod to the security guard and a saunter in. beers. hard liquors. bootcut jeans and the working class. the pool table.
pool is masculine in its instruments. the aim is to use poles to get balls into holes. the triangle that you break is yonic. the first shot in a game of pool. the cherry popping of a weeknight.
pool is masculine in its mentorship. you got it champ. it’s also extremely sensual. you, a weathered man who spends too much time at bars, teaching the cute girl how to rub the tip and arch her back.
pool is supposedly masculine in its execution. if you’re a man who’s bad at pool, you’re supposedly gay. but the masculinity of pool makes it homoerotic for those who are best at it. why are you so good at bending over and playing with sticks and balls.
at 169 i get dive bar courted by someone who tells me, “you look like you should be in an ad for this pool game.” it’s the perfect compliment for a boy-girl-girl-boy. implies my masculinity and simultaneous sex appeal, two parts of me which dont have to contradict each other. it’s a gender-euphoric compliment to tell me i seem like im good at pool. too bad im absolutely shit at pool.
the two balls i get in (pun not intended but certainly welcomed) are mostly by luck. but i look too cool right now. i cant afford to be uncoordinated. me being shit at pool but taking the mentorship in stride and furrowed brow makes me less of a sex object and more of a sex comrade. the guy teaches me how to lose money over dice. the embarrassment of my despair of losing the only cash i had on me (two dollars) is minimized by the fact that the other guy next to me holds his hand of dice expectantly up to my face and says “i need a hot girl to bless my shit.” even when im not in a dress im still a hot girl in a bar. nice. i love who i am at bars. so masculine but still hot to men. what’s a female twink like me doing in a place like this?
there’s a certain masculinity ive been chasing that i find on the frontier. boy-mode: city edition is much different than boy-mode: Out West. here, i’ve been sliding down rocks and getting dirt on the soles of my feet. my long hair is manly. in the city, i play pool not-well but not-the-worst. theres a gentlemanliness to my masculinity in new york. here im a cowboy. in the city, im chivalrous. carrying my friends’ purses. teaching them to play pool. drinking their ciders when they dont want it. sometimes im like an older brother in new york. most times im like an only son in the country. but when im not being chivalrous in the city, im being rowdy and worrisome. theres a juvenile quality about me that makes my friends concerned. that connects me to boyhood more than anything.
a pool table is like a buffet to me because once everyone forgets about their beers, who else but me is left to drink the rest of them? i already got mono from kissing strangers in france, i dont worry too much about drink cooties. at georgia’s bowling party i didn’t wash my bowling hands before eating finger foods and was joking with dan and ana about my immune system, likely strengthened by that one summer when i kept eating pizza off of dumpsters and smoking discarded cigarettes off the ground. but dan and ana tell me that hepatitis was found in bowling alleys. think im growing up because my health risks are less concerning and more funny to my friends and i. there was something boyish about when my friends would scold me for my trash-food days. something manly and accepting in their admiration and repulsion of me now. “wouldn’t it be funny if you got hep c,” says dan. flash forward to the red40 bit on my last substack and me, nursing a nasty cold.
the last time i was at niagara, i spoke on its reputation only as That Bar Where Try Guy Ned Cheated On His Wife and me and the savoia boys spoke the oasis reunion into existence. (you’re welcome). but now im here for torture’s show. aidan wears the jeans i sold him. maura and pads greet me with open arms and flashing cameras. sid brings us to 151 until they kick us out. noah says we’re going to dymphna’s and i groan at their prices to which he responds knowingly, “i’ll see you there.” when we get to st. d’s, they’re closed even though it’s only 2am. “only.”
we invade doc’s til they close. the image of us is funny, guitars and digital cameras, all young and queerly mulletted against disgruntled republican-passing bouncers and patrons. torture brings up how a certain rockstar was at her baptism. we’re all crammed into a booth, talking about mewing and how it lowkey must feel good to get nutted in. “you would say that,” says noah.
“what do you mean by that?”
“we’ve seen your instagram stories,” says sid.
as my walls come down, my close friends list grows. i’m made. “could you guys tell that im a bottom?” i ask.
everyone is complimenting each other so i joke about everyone being gay so sid and jack make out on top of me. two white boys and me. so challengers. im feminine the way tashi is. deviously.
out of nowhere, everyone gets old and sentimental and mentor-ish, which is weird considering that just moments before we had all been joking about sleeping with each other. jack tells me to keep working on my music — “you were jamming with me and torture and we’re like, goated, so you can obviously hang.” sid asks me to tell him a story — i say i have none but he tells me “i cant wait for you to write a book.”
jack wonders what i’d write about him. "how i was doing lines off records?” asks jack. is he unknowingly self-mythologizing if i put that quote in? later i find some consecutive twitter memes that are insanely applicable.
it’s steve’s going-away-to-war party. everyone seems to be leaving. i met steve day drinking and skating in the fountain and now he is going to the navy but because it’s steve he throws an enlisting party. it’s a cigarettes in the apartment type of night — real army vibes — and steve is worried about secondhand smoke. “there’s fentanyl in the cocaine,” i remind him. “secondhand smoke is the last thing we need to worry about.” it’s oddly maternal of me.
that next night i wear a dress and dan asks me why i’m dressed like a girl. we’re gonna go watch the black keys dj at two fifteen. the type of crowd where, if i want to look hot, i need to look like a girl. gender is the topic of the night. veronica is describing her perfect man. “you want a gay boy,” says catie. catie does not want a gay boy. “i want to fuck the black keys so bad but they’re all married.”
i am so sweaty and sexy and my tights make me look so skinny. this is the femininity of the club. high on the way i look. drunk on the fact that my shadow is as skinny as i want it to be. six different people are eyeing me at the same time and i would go home with none of them. catie asks me if wellbutrin made me horny. “i’m always horny.” this is an eerily similar conversation to the one i had with peter: wellbutrin and horniness. your network is your net worth. if your circle isn’t discussing SNRIs and sex drives then what are you doing?
i run into blu in the bathroom line and steal her away from the public rooftop to the seedy underbelly of two fifteen. not seedy, definitely not an underbelly, but it’s funny to think of it like that. but there were definitely more poppers down here than up there. until i broke the cap and spilled them all. poppers make me feel like a girl.
it’s my second time reading at catie’s series at old flings. and it’s my second time doing it without poppers. either way, maybe i am good at this writing thing because i counted at least four people who told me they came just for me. fabio is here — who is so bushwick it hurts, who is so bushwick it felt weird to see him with all the east village heads. a few people who found me through past readings and followed my breadcrumb trail of flyers, a surprising amount of loose friends from undergrad, and eli. it’s a night of me just going, “you came!” all gracious and pleasantly surprised. there’s a joke about surprise coming in there somewhere.
adeline reads about how The Lovers hang upside down Like That. pan to brandi and redd sucking face like one of them was bitten by a poisonous snake on their tongue. cute. brandi says she’s on shrooms and we all look beautiful. i can’t tell if the second statement is caused by the first. brandi goes pyro mode and says, “my favorite place to write is in his bed after i fucked him silly.” ana and dan look at each other like cartoon thieves caught in spotlights.
elizabeth reads fanfiction about hawk tuah girl and david portnoy that’s too classy for archiveofourown — highest honors. “he wants your spit. your tuah!” her serious and sometimes corporate voice that she uses to read about bullshit like this that unemployed people love is my favorite form of dichotomy. “although dave was four inches shorter than me, his jewish bravado made him tall.” this line makes me poke peter, who is crown-chakra to the world, frantically typing his poem to include everyone in the room.
page isn’t here or there but a secret third thing (inside catie’s phone). im in cahoots with catie, asking her to let me wait because i have three different people texting me telling me to wait for them. of course, they’re three of the latest people ever. serge is late because he was watching madmen (presumably on the peloton). lucas is late because ???. noah had business stuff to do so i record my poem for him. but im glad i waited. theres crack in getting mentioned in a poem. theres crack in seeing someone react to you mention them in your poem.
there’s no way to humbly come offstage after reading poetry for ten minutes. i feel like a douchebag even though everyone is clapping. strangers are talking to me about my poetry and ive been socialized to blush. what the hell. gabriel catches me outside and shows me that he wrote down lines of my poem — the line about war and indie sleaze is a fan favorite. he asks me about what certain lines mean and analyzes my sex life. shannon tries to loosen me up for a photo but all i know are brooding writer portraits of me smoking. she knows my pieces better than i do, referencing something i allegedly said about hunter schafer.
“i never wrote anything about hunter schafer?” i say.
“didn’t you?” she asks, cryptically, and walks away. i go through my notes app and find the poem she was talking about. it was one line in one poem from almost half a year ago now. damn. what supplements do you guys take.
brandi is really excited tonight. “the creative director of supreme taped the show. there’s so many famous people here.”
“who else?”
“well, peter—“
“PETER?!” i guffaw. (all love).
we go to shinsen for abby’s birthday and i know everyone. but it’s the opposite of opp central. it’s bestie town. even people who i dont see out too often are here. sam is here. justin is here. cabe is here. someone who i mistook for arlo is here. other girl i apparently shared a class with is here. i promise i don’t know everyone but once, at a dinner, i was talking to ngawang and jack — who were saying that i knew everyone. i tried telling them that wasn’t true, but i got interrupted when the girl who came to take our order said, “your name is izzy, right? you were at that thing at mehanata last year?” comedic timing hits like a bus does a british twink (tony, skins) and another british twink (the smiths, there is a light) and rachel mcadams (regina, mean girls). i run into at least five people with whom i had had previous individual sexually charged encounters with and i can tell they’re all sizing each other up, wondering how the other person knows me. i have to introduce them all to each other. i feign bashfulness but secretly love that people know that i fuck.
on my way out, brandi tells me and eli, “i fucking love when people die, because now they’re here,” and she points emphatically to her heart. i point to redhook on the map and eli and i get home at around 3. i have to be up in 3 hours to get back to my apartment to clean it all out. i cut my hair in the sink one last time.
in the morning i pass this new age cheese shop called hokkaido. why is your cheese store named after a city in japan. that’s like. a pasta shop named los angeles. i have a confession. i think of hokkaido only in the voice of british 2010s youtuber tumblr star og softboy dan howell, back when he went to japan with the boy that he was, at the time, only hopelessly and anxiously speculated to be in love with. i was never a dan / phil shipper. i didn’t have to be. i just knew in my bones.
it’s friday and i need a place to sleep. don’t tell my mom. i solicit the most reliable people ever — strangers on the internet — with the most reliable form of communication ever — instagram stories. i make sure to make it a little poetic so it’s not completely sad if no one responds.
“have to be out of my apartment for the next four hours. on two hours of sleep. got home an hour ago. i would love to nap but alas. accepting my fate and playing into stereotypes.i am finding solace on saint marks.not beating the 'chick who hangs out on the steps of search and destroy' allegations. like i said last night im like patti smith but worse and asian. stranded on st marks. just saw a fucking lantern fly. new york never changes. i never stopped being a college freshman.”
an unknown number calls me — it’s aidan, whose number i didn’t have saved.
“i’m gonna come bother you.”
“please do.”
i text him and ask how he got my number. that makes him anxious. i tell him i was just curious but i type so fast my keyboard keeps switching to numbers.
“Why do you hate me?”
“i dont hat3 you but katya did say i would make a gr3at dominatrix because i could make money being mean t9 whit3 guys and i already do that for free”
angelina opens her house to me and cooks me dinner. i cry. heaven, thy last name is hazzouri. she’s staying in for the night and im painting my toes for the dirty mag pool. we’re so domestic. we’re like sisters. it’s intimate. no one has ever seen my unpainted toes before. bec was the first of my friends to see my feet, but my nails were cute and painted. even when i have sex, the socks stay on. not that they notice. except for that one dude who was into feet (i tried to dissuade him by telling him that i had skated to his house. he said my feet didn’t smell. i still take pride in that). theres something so beautiful about a planned sleepover with two girls, and not a “i got too fucked up can i crash” impromptu sleepover. we watch scott pilgrim and do what writers do — draw parallels. we read scott pilgrim from an autofictive lens.
the guy at the party who tells scott about ramona has matt energy. maybe it’s the hair. maybe it’s the glasses. matt is always connecting people. i’ve definitely asked him about a person or two. sarosh and serge are matthew patel — eyeliner, jackets, general flamboyant vibes. alyssa is one of the demon hipster chicks, only in appearance. i love you too much to call you a hipster. the katayanagi twins dj’ed shinsen last night. ive had knives chau type breakdowns before. in the opening scene when Scott Is Dating A Chinese School Girl, ang looks at me. i had just given her the run down on my latest age gap stress. i’ve been in entanglements with gideons and scotts. despite our love life parallels, it would be cliche and wrong to call me ramona. but, the drummer for crash and the boys was a little asian girl in a white shirt, black tie, and leather spiked wrist cuffs. that resemblance was uncanny.
at le bain, our friends are the only ones in the pool. if downtown were a high school cafeteria, what table would we be. i have a flight to catch in seven hours so i go home. it takes me an hour to say my goodbyes. lucas and breaker are both wearing suits. “it’s suit night.” i have my blazer and bikini top like a common whore (and also becuase i needed to pack light. my reading outfit was my le bain outfit with nylon instead of the shirt and tie). lucas gets weirdly sappy. we have a friendship based on banter and we express love through jokes that wouldn’t slide in public. when he tells me he loves me it makes me feel like im dying.
“you made your mark on the city. it’s gonna miss you,” he says.
“ohio is lucky to have you but come back soon,” says breaker.
lucas has breaker take a picture of the two of us. now i really feel like im about to die.
maddie hugs me and holds me in a way that makes me wish i had an older sister.
“don’t tell me this is goodbye,” she says.
“uhhhh”
“fuck you.” she holds me again.
catie starts to cry. i have to comfort her and make her laugh at the same time. “don’t be gay!!!” i tell her ohio will be good for me. “don’t cry! i’m gonna get to do so much drunk driving!” cheers all around.
i like to write in present tense but we both know these are only memories. maybe ‘memories’ isn’t an ‘only’ word. but it feels like im giving up on new york. i googled ‘WHERE TO POETRY READINGS COLUMBUS’ and started wondering which crowd would be most likely to get my lines about poppers and appreciate my free verse. (it’s between kerouac kafe, dick’s den, and bossy grrrl’s — which may be filled with fetishists who would probably love to hear about kevin carpet). look at that. im already imagining a life in ohio. ive started following the local bands and bars — is local columbus now? i don’t even follow any city bands unless they’re my friends and / or they’re hot. is this what having to build a life from scratch is? will they get my poetry? is columbus “they” or “here?”
new york and i are in a toxic yaoi — a whole ‘will they won’t they.’ split between two cities — here and where i want to be (i wish they were the same place). split between two feelings — EVERYONE STOP HAVING FUN WITHOUT ME BEFORE I KILL MY ACTUAL SELF! and the realization that there’s nothing cooler than acceptance. there’s nothing cooler than being cool even where cool doesn’t seem to happen. there’s nothing cooler than being cool outside of new york. this is the new frontier.
i need to push myself to be post clout. even if i am on the list, what does it matter. i haven’t been writing articles because ive been hanging out with ducks and deer. take all my fashion week invites. i don’t need them. there’s gold in the rivers in california.
the city isn’t big enough for my novel. the city isn’t big enough for my poetry / short story anthology coming out at an undetermined date. the city might be too small for my substack. ive been writing about america as much as ive been writing about new york.
landlords, you have won the battle but not the war. i will be back.
Banger
don't give up on new york because new york isn't giving up on u<3 sleepover when you're back. amazing as always