17. The Week in Me
I am nothing if not a hat trick of an entendre.
It was my Pre-Menstrual Deathwish Disorder, but in the moments it becauled my perspective it was that my mother told me (again) that I should go on Ozempic because she fears that my fat heart will give out any day now. If only she knew counting her conditional, caloric love was the bigger strain. If only she internalized the understanding that I was onto her. It’s not about health, it’s about her hating my fatness. Everyone’s caught onto everything you do, everyone’s caught onto.1
It was that I started writing a post about The Music Man, and my propensity to score the scenes of my life, whether my fantasy life or my past life, to music in my head. I couldn’t reach the next sentence. I couldn’t reach a point I thought would resonate with even one reader, offer anything besides the further elucidation of myself. And who cares? Does my tattling on myself to God’s Green Internet do anything for anyone? Does it even do anything for myself? Does talking about myself make me feel better, or do my words just knit and purl chains from my fingertips to the past, to old patterns, to old situationships?
It was that I cut my finger open - so much blood, more than I have seen it shed without Eve’s bite in a good long while - endeavoring to scoop La Mer off of my out of its broken porcelain nest and the bathroom floor, because even though I got that shit for free I was not letting four hundred dollar face cream coat the tile and not the wrinkle around my neck that makes me think of “The Green Ribbon” every morning of my dumb white life.
But I dropped that container of La Mer cleaning my bathroom, condensing bottles of Zyrtec, debating whether to throw away a sleeve of opaque pimple patches I will never use because it’s only fun if you can wake up and hold them up to the light to see the gunk that sleep and hydrocolloid have pulled from your face, riding out a true and rare moment of manic depression in its most fearsome manifestation: cleaning.2 And honestly, that I was cleaning terrified me. That shit ain’t me. I, the tattler of self, the laboriously self-consumed, the person my therapist calls out for being “far too self-aware to not acknowledge,” was running from a periodfueled chemical imbalance of eldritch nature and intent.
Simply: I was cleaning my bathroom, and that’s terrible.3
So I did what I never do - not with books I hate until they’re over even if it means I grow a Princess and the Pea mattresstack of untouched adventures on my nightside table, not with my old boyfriend who I kept on Emergency Bypass throughout the pandemic because he needed someone to call gakked out on what was luckily, luckily not fentanyl at from 2:00am EST to 8:00am EST on a Sunday4, not with a single shard of an expectation, not with grinding the thing I’m on into dust that I have the cosmic, unholy nerve to tell my friends is glitter5:
I let go.
I wrapped up my finger, deciding that no La Mer was better than La Mer stained with my own blood.
I ordered Shake Shack.
I closed the tab on the post I had been not writing.
I let go.
And I wrote something new.
Read:
This article on “ReBorn Baby Moms” who adopt, publicly walk, and use real baby formula to feed their chillingly lifelike baby dolls….*Hayley Williams voice* This! Is why! I do not Tik-Tok!
Anna Marie Tendler wrote a devastating essay on the one, the only, the icon, Petunia. Long live Petunia Tendler Mulaney.
I sent
this poem because I am stupid and did not understand it, and she turned it into a lovely, considerate analysis. I am honored and humbled to have inspired any words by Hattie, ever, but especially these:
Watch:
What else is there to recommend but The Bear? The Bear, as I had to explain to two very offline people this week, is a show about a small dog with a Michelin-starred resume who needs brown contacts6 named Carmy Berzatto, who returns to run his family’s sandwich shop when his brother commits suicide. The second season premiered in entirety last week (on Hulu). I believe it is superior to its predecessor, and it didn’t even take me until “Fishes” using the Darlene Love song from Home Alone 2: Lost in New York….implying that Carmy must be the Kevin McAllister…but then you realize that all three Berzattos are abandoned in their own ways…AND Donna has been abandoned as a widow and can’t take cooking alone anymore to decree it so. I came down on the opinion that it surpassed its first season, hard, by the time I saw Will Poulter and his tightass little tshirt and tattoos in the Marcus-centric Copenhagen episode. This season serviced its supporting characters nigh flawlessly, supplying centric episodes to my favorite characters (Richie’s episode “Forks” may be my favorite episode of anything of the year). My lack of full confidence comes from my belief that they were given more screentime at the expense of Sydney having a developed arc that existed outside of her being able to support The Bear and Carmy’s opening night with the tools she learned on her solo restaurant trips and study of Coach K. Her arc towards being a better, more confident, and more successful chef is deeply realistic, but I did not feel that it dramaturgically served her as much as Carmy and the overall team, and in what I feel is a rare inclusive misstep for The Bear, allowed for the tired narrative of a Black woman’s emotional, extracurricular labor to bolster others - even though The Bear is a dream of hers as well, time is taken to show her father inquiring as to the viability of her comeback and how she would be compensated and credited. My hope is that this was intentional storybuilding, with plenty of bonding moments between Sydney and Carmy as sleight of hand, leading to a larger conflict next season. I’d love to know if you (dis)agree in the comments.
All this said, it is my one complaint I hope to look like an idiot for speaking. Tina doing Freddy Fender karaoke….girl. The writing was taken to the whetstone, and the audience was spoken to at the top of its intelligence. The guest appearances, many incorrectly identified as cameos because they were kept secreted away until the premiere, were deployed without the feeling of a stunt. It is crystalline in its clarity that the actors brought in were as likely to have asked to appear on the show as they were asked, and every single performance was delivered with only the showiness required to honor the character and the writing. I won’t spoil them, but feel free to text me about the speech Stevie gives over Christmas dinner and how emo it made you. Mikey Berzatto, as usual….(redcated since some of my coworkers read this).
And, of course, if you did not watch The Other Two, please log onto Max and correct that right now. You have a long weekend. What are you waiting for? I am including the below as your motivation but I could have sent you any random 90 seconds of this show and you, if you have taste, would be on the floor hitting a “mimimimimi” laugh like goddamn Beaker.
Also, the dumbest thing I have ever done: turning down the actual 8 Gay Men with AIDS poster from the show set.
Listen:
Kelly Clarkson on Las Culturistas was as joyful as I could have dreamed! Also, her song with Steve Martin makes me extremely, extremely emotional? I just picture Steve Martin playing his little banjo and I get very emosh? I don’t even ride for that man like that??
I had a conversation about Spice World (stop the presses) this week that led me to watching the movie but also to bumping this on repeat for an entire evening:
That little moment where Melanic Chisholm faces away from the camera for no reason just to turn and belt out “BOY WHO THINKS HE CAN”….she invented music.
Intrusive Thoughts with Tara:
I love one man.
Love you bitches,
TG
While other men have broken my brain, my balls, and my spirit, Jesse Lacey remains one of if not the only man to ever break my heart.
The depression I am celebrating my porcelain anniversary with (Porcelain! I shit you not! I yawped when I Googled the anniversary gift for 18 years! It ties to the La Mer! It all ties together!) is the Edies Bouvier brand: I am going to stay in bed, that house is not getting organized, like that dust is going to emerge not bunny but whole ass Secretariat, but I will run my mouth, and I will be adorned by an immaculately winged liner and a jaunty little majorette baton.
He once kept me on the phone for, I shit you not, fifteen hours in one day. The rest of that time I spent getting (outdoor, distant) bagels with my friend Lou and intermittent napping. It wasn’t even an emergency that time - at one point, we were sending each out our favorite SNL clips.
"And who cares?" - I do.
Also, Will Poulter is everything. I submit Bandersnatch as evidence of this.
The Lex Luther meme, and that’s wonderful