lover's spit left on repeat
The weather in Los Angeles can't make up its mind: I'm writing this in front of an open window in a tee shirt, but it's supposed to rain tomorrow, and then for three days straight. So very predictably, I've come down with a sinus infection that prevents me from thinking. My face hurts and my ears are stuffed and I cannot concentrate. Which is a problem.
Because I have work to do, but also because I want to write about going to see Lorde at Staples last week, and how when she started playing Tennis Courts I turned to E and shrieked "this is my favorite Lorde lyric!!!!" Don't you think that it's boring how people talk. I mean. It's matched only by Charli XCX opening Sucker with you said you wanna bang / you wanna bang? / fuck you / SUCKER, in terms of conjuring the gleeful disinterest that is, in my opinion, the best part of girlhood. The part where everyone sees this glossy shell and wants something from it, until you split it open like the carapace it is, and rise up disdainful and adolescent and impossible to interest or tempt or tame. Toss your hair, drawl out making smart with their words again / well I'm bo-o-o-red. Be rude in a way you're already starting to sense they won't let you get away with for long.
31 isn't very old, and it's not that I feel old-- really!-- only that I feel older. They way I used to walk around-- cutoffs and chapstick and a lot of hair and this thin sheen of nervy invulnerability-- no longer applies. What's in its place? Going to strength training, I guess, learning how to do squats, and to buy fancy moisturizer and put it on twice a day, and also how to say dismissively, I don't have time for that kind of bullshit, and mean it. The difference between being bored but voracious, and actually knowing how not to care.
Growing up is hard like you have to throw everything you have at it, all of your tenacity, to navigate a path across sheer rock face. This part of growing older, and trying to doing it gracefully, is something else entirely. Acknowledging that I've built things, but also that they will take work to maintain. If you want to be pat about it: making sure I have the energy to keep things running, instead of keeping myself so constantly on the run.
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Those are my sickhead thoughts 4 u, Tinyletter. Thanks for reading 'em. I will be healthy in April (I will!) and teaching YA Fiction for Writing Workshops LA, which I am very excited about. I love YA so much and am amped AF to help people create work that does the genre justice.
You can also find me on a panel at the LA Times Festival of Books! Sunday April 22, 12:30 pm, YA stage, me and Amy Spalding and Mary HK Choi and Gloria Chao. I haven't read Gloria's book yet but Mary's has the best text messages I've ever seen in a novel. (If this sounds like a minor accomplishment to you, a) think about how many stilted text convos you've had to suffer through on the page and b) try to write one yourself, I dare you.)
Finally, I wrote something! About what the phrase "cult favorite" means in beauty and why it's so often deployed to describe products that are massive international bestsellers, as well as on a few legitimate hard-to-find well-kept secrets.