DISTRACTIONS
I broke up with my boyfriend of 3 years and it was as chaotic and dramatic as one could have ever hoped.
Because of the onset stress from breakup and new whoredom, I had a UTI and a half and also TMJ and also hives? Take your D-Mannosse pills and your probiotics, darlings. Wash your hands.
I went to LA to film a commercial for perfume. It was … random and hilarious. I am not allowed to talk about it but I am saving it definitely for my memoirs. Hopefully I get paid for that shit soon because my rent just went up.
I went to a vaccinated birthday party in LA and flirted with somebody when he cut open a pizza box with a knife. I was like, “Cool knife!” Okay I am 18?
The person who drove me to the set in LA (I don’t know how to drive) was a very funny PA who was also an actress. I told I had just broken up with my boyfriend and she said she also had a pandemic break-up. She said that during the last fight, she just couldn’t stop laughing at what he was saying. He was trying to make a point and she was just laughing and laughing, tears in her eyes. She said she got a new apartment and that this would be the first time she’d ever be living alone & that she was so excited about her eco-friendly toilet brush & a new bed she was getting that wasn’t arriving until July because it’s made without glue. I never saw the bottom half of her face because her mask was on the entire time. I miss her.
I’ve been inflicting psychological damage on myself by listening to “So Hot it’s Hurting My Feelings” by Caroline Polachek once a day often in a loop for the last two months. I don’t know if it’s a break-up song or even a crush song. I just like to dance to it and feel full of my certain kind of gorgeous despair. I played it for the LA PA while we were driving through the desert towards the set and when it finished she said, “Again!” And I played it again. When it finished a second time she said, “Again!” We listened to it 10 times, unabashedly.
I made a playlist that is maybe a crush playlist or some kind of Bursting playlist:
?si=f48fc9ee9d0c46a9
Okay low-key I am upset because I typed out an entirely beautiful thing for this and then my lap-top overheated and I lost the draft!
I visited Chicago to spend time with my childhood best friends Puloma & Will.We went to a karaoke bar in Chicago and it was amazing seeing people behave again. Not bad or well, simply just behaving. Laughing & moving & telling bad stories. I loved it. We also went dancing & everybody lost it to “Titanium” by Sia. A man with his shirt open screamed, “WE! HAVE BEEN WAITING! FOR THIS MOMENT! FOR A YEAR AND A HALF!” A year and a half…. for Sia….. Will and Puloma and I were dancing and looking at each other, them with their partners, me with my fanny pack, all of us just cracking up because dancing is the goofiest thing you can think of and because crying and laughing are very close to each other.
On one of our last nights we tried to go to another dance club but the line was too long and we all really needed to pee. We went to pee in an alleyway but all felt really self-conscious about it because there is something about the midwest that makes you feel like maybe you shouldn’t pee in public? So I peed and got piss all over my chanclas while Puloma and Will were guarding me and then when we left we saw this girl in between a door way with her bare white ass held up by the wall just casually on her phone, peeing. Will was like, “Go piss, girl.”
Go piss, girl.
We had a karaoke party on Saturday night. It has stopped being so absolutely wild being inside with other people without your mask on but it hasn’t stopped being euphoric laughing very close to somebody you barely know’s face. Heaven for me is 100 percent a party with my friends and their friends and somebody you have a big crush on in the corner.
My cat Frank went missing from 30 minutes while I was peeing in a cup 4 miles away (go piss girl). I texted my ex-BF because I panicked & he was all, “I’m on my way!” and I fucking pedaled to the medal to get home. I passed by a cat that was run over on the street, brains just blasted on the concrete. He called me but I couldn’t hear him and just kept pedaling, thinking about Frank’s stupid little body dead on the street. When I got home I pulled out my phone and saw a photo of Frank underneath our new roommate’s bed, safe and sound. My ex then told me that to only text him for an emergency (okay, Rihanna…). The last time I wrote this out I said something really profound about how asking for help looking for your missing cat is a habit & then continuing to find him starts to be a favor you have to break but actually … that doesn’t make any fucking sense.
DISTRACTIONS AS PULOMA GHOSH
Puloma Ghosh is a scary Aries who considers everything a challenge and is the best writer I know. When she was in high school she would write weekly comics and everyone would pass them around the lunch table eager to see what would happen NEXT! She has her MFA in fiction from Bennington College and will be part of this year’s Tin House workshop. She is my sister and my confidante and I love how she answered these questions.
What constitutes being a nerd and what makes you one?
Being a nerd is being way more into something than the average person, and dedicating a lot of time and brainspace to it. You love it so much that you're overflowing, always looking for excuses to think and talk about it. And I'd argue that to be truly nerdy, you have to be into something rejected by the mainstream. Which is why even though sports fans engage in the same obsessive behavior, they don't qualify as nerds because bringing up sports at a networking event doesn't make everyone avert their eyes in secondhand shame. Sorry but, if you've never been teased or bullied for it, it doesn't count!
I'm a fangirl-type nerd because I spend at least 50% of any given day thinking about, creating, or consuming work from the many fandoms I'm into. I have secret fanfiction accounts (Will Zhang take it to your grave). I spent a lot of adolescence either getting teased or trying to desperately hide my fangirl tendencies from people outside my inner circle. I've only lately gotten comfortable being open about it.
What do you think drew you to reading a lot as a kid?
I just always loved stories, in any form. I'm super impatient, too, so having a book around kept me from being antsy. It was armor against boredom and awkwardness. I've been like, a little socially awkward for as long as I can remember and bringing a book everywhere was like a safety net, somewhere I could hide away when real life made me feel uncomfortable or underwhelmed or overwhelmed.
How did writing fan fiction shape you as a writer? And if you could expand on your freaky slash fic please do …
Writing fan fiction just kept me always writing all the time. I just tallied it up out of curiosity, and I wrote 234,911 words between 2005-2008, the height of my teen fanfic-writing career. That's like, 4 novels of 50-60K words. I wrote a 46.8K word story at the age of 14, which is kind of cool. I'm simultaneously so embarrassed when I read them and also so proud of myself.
Fanfiction gets disrespected in the writing community because it's not "original" and they're not "your characters" but who cares, you're still putting words on a page, thinking about language and how you can make the moment your leads' eyes meet feel charged. You learn so much about writing engaging plots. Internet-age fanfic is serialized for an audience and community from day one. You have to keep people reading and commenting and subscribing.
Re: my freaky slashfic .... I actually didn't publish much of it. I was terrified that my parents and friends would find it. Instead of keeping a diary I wrote freaky fanfic and drew like, a lot of freaky slash fanart on loose printer paper that I destroyed shortly after in a panic. I was really looking out for my future self.
When does reading suck for you and when does reading rule?
Reading sucks when it's prescriptive, and I'm being forced to read something that's not interesting to me, that I don't connect with. There are so many books out there, I never want to suffer through one because someone else decided it was "good." Spark Noting Huckleberry Finn in high school didn't ruin my life.
Reading rules when it's clear and alive in my head and makes me feel real feelings. Because it's just like, black text on a page. I hate being sappy but I can't help it, I get emotional just thinking about it. I love reading so much. It's fucking magic.
What’s a book that makes you hate writing and what’s a book that you have to put down because it makes you want to write?
There are no books that make me hate writing. If I love reading something, I want to write something as good. If I hate reading something, I want to write something better.
I can never get through a Mariana Enriquez short story without stopping to write something, even just a line. Her work makes me want to write so bad, and I think reading her has made me a better writer.
THE BOOK THAT I READ
Isle of Youth by Laura Van Den Burg
I haven’t been able to read a book in an entire month & I was finally able to sit and read this. Before I went to Chicago I was like YEAH I’m gonna go to CHICAGO I’m gonna go on so many TINDER DATES I’m gonna CATCH UP with the 4-5 people that I know here I simply won’t sleep and my brain will be blasted from extreme extroversion. But there was something about being with my friend of 15 years that made me want to be very introverted. I just wanted to sit next to her silently and read while she drew because she doesn’t expect anything of me or maybe I know everything that she expects from me. Anyway, reading Isle of Youth made me want to write again. Laura Van Den Burg is so poetic in her prose and all of the woman are so lonely even when they are around other people. The first story “I Looked For You, I Called Your Name,” really messed me up in the best way possible. It’s about a woman who goes on a honeymoon with her husband who she feels doesn’t really know her. There’s this really beautiful moment where they visit a waterfall and he’s talking to her but the water is so loud that she can’t hear what he’s saying but she doesn’t want to tell him that but she’s also like, I can’t believe he can’t think to not think that I can’t hear what he’s saying. In another story “The Acrobat,” a woman goes to Paris with her husband to fix her marriage but it doesn’t work and she follows this acrobat to a weird party. She never fully sees his face. I really loved this final scene & how it’s about her realizing she can be on her own (okay this READING SUCKS is deeply psychological):
Finally, here is are 2 poems:
it’s too intimate to apologize for falling asleep
same thing with saying good morning.
how about, instead,
a montage of thieves using disembodied hands
to access a code that will unlock a room
full of secrets and money?
or a montage of resentful hitmen
breathing all heavy & deciding, finally, to put the gun down?
or what about a time-traveling space drama based on shakira’s “whenever, wherever”?
we could be old garbage cans tied together,
we could be a bucket full of rain.
In the kitchen we come to the understanding that earth will go on without us.
In the zoom room I say whatever your brain hole is dripping, I’d love to sip from it.
In the year we met we had so much hope & not even about each other.
in the waiting room at the dentist office the soap opera glitches & the girl in the hospital gown says I can’t believe you led to me to believe you loved me just so that you could sneak into my hospital room & slip experimental drugs into me while I was in a coma.
in a rented bed pulling at the hair sprouting from my stomach
in the car Samuel tells me I can feel the credits rolling, can’t I
in that picture sitting on the rock I look like somebody’s gorgeous dead grandmother
in my dreams you’ve wrapped all of the ballet flats from my early 20s
in a stinky little bouquet
& given them to someone new.
xoxoxo