Inspo—
“The culture is lit and I had a ball / I guess that I’m burned out after all” —Lana Del Rey, The greatest
“In a world myriad as ours, the gaze is a singular act: to look at something is to fill your whole life with it, if only briefly. Once, after my fourteenth birthday, crouched between the seats of an abandoned school bus in the woods, I filled my life with a line of cocaine. A white letter ‘I’ glowed on the seat’s peeling leather. Inside me the ‘I’ became a switchblade— and something tore. My stomach forced up but it was too late. In minutes, I became more of myself. Which is to say the monstrous part of me got so large, so familiar, I could want it. I could kiss it.” —Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
“Take me with you!” —Steve Winchell, The OA
What is it about the common cold that has me sitting on the corners of my coffee table, clawing at my own nipples like a newborn, imagining my ramen broth is the delivery guy’s nut levels of horny? I have to remember to masturbate regularly. I left a load in the pantry of my nutsack for five days because I was depressed, and I can’t shake the suspicion it spoiled, curdled, and from there this virus emerged. This feeling comes out of nowhere, zipping out of the depths of my infirm despair to rattle me. It connects and disconnects to my body, distinct from the loin-tightness I got watching Tom Hardy in Venom. It’s an existential kind of thing, it’s stir-craziness. I wonder if this struggle between illness and resilience is part of what I am, if craving a stranger’s breath against my skin is just another way of wanting to share a body, microbes and all. Tom Hardy doesn’t even get shirtless in Venom.
I get colds like Joan Didion gets migraines. Despite being one of the healthiest people I know— well, I mostly know drag queens and DJs— I tend to get sick with something mundane but debilitating about three to six times a year. There seems to be a rhythm to it, further evidence to me that astrology is real. The date on the prescription cough syrup from my last respiratory-tinted cold is exactly a year ago. This is around the time the sun laps around my ascendant, the point in the sky that creased into the east while I was cut from the womb. Virgo Risings tend to have some kind of lifelong fixation on their health, information I can do more with than “get rest and drink water.” CityMD has since switched to a cough suppressant that barely works and doesn’t get you high at all. Which leaves me sickly and sober, idle hands and a bad attitude. Maybe Marianne’s right, maybe I bring it upon myself.
The last time I worked before getting all the way better, I looked into the eyes of a demon on the other side of a doorway. I hadn’t been taking calls for weeks and decided I wasn’t too weak or contagious to try making some money, although I was still coughing. It’s not that he was especially ugly or brutish or grotesque. I can’t afford to be that sort of shallow. It’s that he looked wrong, intuitively evil, a monster from the unending nightmare between one past life and another. I stepped into the dim apartment. He was particular, nervous when I would touch anything. It wasn’t his own place, he mentioned, but was dodgy about explaining whose it was or why he was in it. I was not afraid he would hit me or rape me, nothing physical. I feared the eventual moment at which I’d turn him over and have to look into his eyes again, at his wicked face, and try to make him cum. I feared what I would see there, but mostly what I wouldn’t, how I would carry that void with me. This is how a demon curses you, by wrapping your thoughts around an absence, knotting them there.
About ten minutes into touching his back, I couldn’t hold in a cough any longer. An ugly one, what else. He perched on his elbows and sighed, expressed his annoyance and concern for himself. I took my out, explained how I don’t have the kind of living where I can take any more time off work than absolutely necessary. But I can leave if he wants, and I understand. I did, with a reasonable portion of my rate, and relieved I wouldn’t have to look at this man again. I resolved to always wait out the residual cough.
I get so jealous of the living, fucking world. I scroll Twitter, which is full of people fucking, and then I scroll Instagram, which is full of people I am desperate to fuck me, but who are on very fun vacations fucking each other instead. It’s not that I need to cum, but that my productivity and my sexuality fill in for one another. I get used to filling my time with contact. I feel like I’m trying to nap next to a flower bush swarming with bees, and they’re an endangered component to the ecosystem as we know it, so even moving away from the sound of their buzz seems uncouth. I care about the bees, the only ones around here doing the good work of sucking the last dregs of fertile nut out of a tumorous planet. What if this is the final summer? The next one is an election year, and my Saturn return. Could be armageddon after that.
I haven’t worked most of this month, haven’t even made a sex tape to recruit other income. I’ve been texting a particularly patient client for weeks, waiting to be well enough to finally meet him. He has a way of messaging me unusual among clientele even if it shouldn’t be, casual but to the point, thoughtful but brief. Doesn’t make it weird. He’s just easy, is all. We are only trying to schedule a time for a transaction, but I find myself turned on. I can’t put a face to him, and shouldn’t bother. He messages me once every few days, asking if I’m feeling better, and I have to tell him I’m still benched. He offers his well wishes instead of disappointment. I find this the most comforting.
XO
TY