DISTRACTIONS as It was Your Period for $2000
-Why are my boobs so huge and sore???????
- Why did I watch Tik Toks of that baby whose whole thing is that she’s really chubby and why does it make me want to buy baby clothes to fold???
-Why did I sing “It’s a Beautiful Day” by U2 during sad Karaoke with my roommates and cry when Bono was describing bees fucking flowers?
-Why did I feel like a braless woman in a nightgown looking out a large window by the sea??????
DISTRACTIONS as WALKING
- I talk on the phone to my therapist while walking because all of my roommates are always home & even if I am behind a closed door I feel like I don’t have privacy so I guess a better way of having privacy is walking through Bed-Stuy talking about all of my shit so people can hear me through the windows?? This also feels like when I put something on close friends on my instagram story but then publicly tweet it.
-My calves are fucking huge from walking I seriously look like that cyclist from The Triplets of Belville Belview Bellevueaeex French French.
DISTRACTIONS AS ROBIN SHANNON
-Every day at 8:05 AM we wake up to Corny O’Connell hosting his radio show on 90.7 where he plays horrible music that is exclusively Lisa Loeb & other sad white women accompanied by bongoes. My boyfriend turns it off because he can wake up at ungodly hours (8:05 AM) and literally shakes himself into the waking hours like a large dog but I need to listen to it for 50 minutes in order to wake up otherwise I fall asleep & start lucid dreaming & that is always frightening. Also, after 50 minutes Robin Shannon comes on with the news & something about the tilt & tone of her voice while she says shit like, “Cuomo under fire again for lying about dead nursing home residents” is so comforting to me. She’s given updates about the vaccine and tells me that it’s 42 degrees in Central Park & I am never ever in Central Park but I’m happy she told me that. Robin, I love you.
DISTRACTIONS AS HUGH GRANT
-Okay watching the Undoing which is about these rich people on the Upper East Side & how dramatic their lives get when they get involved with people who are poorer and hotter than them. Anyway Hugh Grant.
-Hugh Grant’s face is comprised of 8 giant, extremely deep wrinkles & yet when he smiles I feel like I am ovulating in 1998 while wearing Mom Jeans.
-Hugh Grant doesn’t look a day over 60, which is exactly his age.
-I hope one day I can make myself believe that Hugh Grant is flirting with me. He is 95 and in a wheelchair & we are eating at the same table for something, a big award show for streaming services & he is all, “Ehhhh… hello…. these meetings are ghastly aren’t they?”
DISTRACTIONS AS CAT COHEN
These interviews are all about reading because I want to make reading hot again! I want to know if reading is hard for you & if you struggle liking it or if you are secretly a nerd!!! This week I interviewed the one & only Catherine Cohen about reading. Cat Cohen is the Frank O’hara of our times in that she is the only person I know who can look at something and say "These things are like those things,” & I laugh & also cry & know that the sentiment will last a million years. She is the author of God I feel Modern Tonight and you’ve seen her on Search Party & listened to her on Seek Treatment! Thank you Cat!!!!!
In what ways in reading sexy and in what ways is it sexual aversion?
Reading is always sexy when you’re holding a physical book—bonus points if the book is very old/ yellowed/ falling apart in your grasp and you’re reading it on a train through alps of some sort. Reading is always unsexy when it takes place on a kindle/ phone/ tablet/ laptop ! I’m sorry if you’re reading this on your device-I don’t make the rules :((
When’s a time you felt extremely smart?
Whenever I mail something and it arrives where I wanted it to go…I feel very smart for having done that
What’s a book right now that you’d kiss right now on the mouth?
No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
Have you ever pretended you read a book to impress someone else?
LMAO too many times to count. I told a conference room full of TV execs that my favorite book was Middlemarch because I think it is the longest book I have ever finished, but when they asked me what it was about I literally couldn’t remember even one part of the plot XOXOX
Why do girls love poems?
because in the winter poems are cozy like having your hair stuck in your turtleneck and in the summer poems are breezy like lifting your hair off your sticky neck before you slurp a strawberry snowcone near a stream <3 poems are snuggly and savory and short enough to read in one luxurious bath of either hot water or sunlight (take ur pick)
FINALLY THE BOOK THAT I READ
My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Initially picked up this book in October from the Playground Coffee Shop free Library, which exclusively curates books by BIPOC. Read more about what Playground does here.
This book made me miss my goth sister, who I also bought this book for for her birthday but obviously she didn’t read it (nobody reads because reading sucks). I am sucker for things about sisters (I famously watched Greta Gerwig’s Little Women 3 times & cried every single time) and I was no less a sucker for this book. Arti told me that the number one thing about this book is that it’s fun and she was right. It felt like binging a Netflix series except I wasn’t participating in a stream & I had agency over my eyes.
Korede is a nurse who follows the rules and has always lives under the shadow of her beautiful sister, Ayoola, who, at the start of the novel, has killed her boyfriend, Femi. And this is the third dude she’s killed, so yikes! Being a nurse Korede is good at knowing what to do with bodies and cleaning up. She is her sister’s literal, though reluctant, partner-in-crime. Korede is like, “You’re technically a serial killer now can you stop …” and Ayoola is like, “Stop being so dramatic ughhh” and then posts herself having a great time on snap chat which is the most accurate portrayal I’ve seen of my sister and me. Ayoola then takes a liking to Korede’s boss, the handsome Doctor Tade, who Korede, is of course, in love with. We’re supposed to be frustrated with Ayoola and her selfishness, the way she thinks the world revolves around her, but I think we also are supposed to love her. She’s funny and cool, and uses her beauty as this intentional tool. When she says the men she’s killed deserve it, you kind of believe her. Flashbacks show the girls uniting against shared gender-based trauma, and the book’s fun, flashy nature makes you more open to this more serious tone. The book, which takes place in Lagos, is also clear about the corruption of the police. You never once want Ayoola to be “brought to justice,” because you, as a reader, wouldn’t get the kind of catharsis you’re craving from the goofy & incapable cops. I would read a thousand more books about Ayoola & Korede & watch probably like, a whole season of a show.
FINALLY some poems:
#1
what’s happening to our eyes
like the space underneath them
"she looks like she’s going shopping with those bags!”
drink more water take yr vitameans
am i healthy enough aka
does i make it look like the doctors
are gonna listen to me
#2
i told you i think about him
when i walk home freezing
holding an empty cup of coffee
so that i can properly bring it to it’s
next life as a straw, delaying it’s fate
in the pit that will plug up our atmosphere &
i think about him every time i
examine the bottom
of a plastic jar & look for the arrows
pointing at each other like
that snake who thinks he has to keep the
world together by holding his
tail in his mouth because
he hasn’t been told yet
he doesn’t have to be strong
#3
did you know i’ve only ever individually won
a prize twice & it was to go to Spoken Word competition
in 2015? & the other time was when
mr. E gave me a sliver of his tie because I did all of my
HW & that was just like a thing he did, his little prize
& we were all still surprised that he was the leader of a child p*rn ring
y i k e s when am i ever gonna let go of that?
the commercials in between my favorite cartoons
all feel like dreams, little beautiful worlds away & in a way
that’s like everything i’ve ever wanted to be was thought up
for me by dudes in t-shirts at a drawing board wanting to make
money, having some version of me in mind.
love u bye