freakypanther

[freakypanther]

CAN YOU BELIEVE?

There's a place in the middle of nothing and nowhere, where a psychic named Nellie once saved my life. A small, central Florida town off US highway 4 with a population of less than 100 people, 90 percent of whom possess “the gift” as they called it. I was 23 and my best friend Kate and I had been separated by an entire country for an entire year. She had been living in LA and I, in New York City, both of us working our first jobs in advertising, and slowly finding ourselves disillusioned with adult life, and city life, and maybe just modern life in general. That rude little awakening that most millennials had in the 20-teens when we began to realize that after all those many years of toiling away for a degree and a “good job” that maybe capitalism wasn’t the key to everything after all. We’d call each other for hours at a time and daydream about all the things we thought we really wanted.

“What if, what if—omg Kate what if we made a documentary?!. Like just quit our jobs and take the year, and drive around the country interviewing people? From all walks of life! In all 50 states! It will be like the rediscovering of America!” 

“Omg omg. Could we do that? Dude we could totally do that. I bet my sister would let me borrow her car for the summer, and we could just go! How much money do we have between us? What kind of camera would we need to get?”

“Dude, I think we can actually pull this off.”

And so the plans were made. Kate and I cocked back our loaded hearts like a handgun and made the necessary preparations for our year-long journey around the country—to make the great American documentary. The art project we thought, would change our lives! That would free us from this 9-5 malaise! That would make us famous! That would prove them all wrong! That would SAVE America! 

The year was 2012 and the violent political ravine that now exists so deeply in this country had only just begun to show signs of cracking— with the recent invention of Facebook, and the election of Barack Obama. No one knew exactly how to explain it yet, but we all knew something felt different. There had never been so much division in recent memory. There had never been so much hostility at Thanksgiving dinners. News outlets had never felt so inflamed, and a decade before we ever heard the words “make america great again” we could all feel the bedrock of everything we held dear about our national institutions beginning to crumble beneath us. We just didn’t have words for it yet. 

What we did have was a 2008 cranberry red Jeep Patriot, a top of the line Nikon video camera with recording equipment, a general sense that we’d live forever, and each other. So we drove. We picked up the car in Atlanta from my incredibly generous little sister and headed south. We hit Charleston, Savannah, and most of the east coast low country coast before making a sharp turn across central Florida on our eventual way to Miami. 

I suggested stopping in the little town of Cassadaga as a sort of roadside attraction—something to keep us entertained in this long stretch of nothingness. 

“What is it called again?” Inquired Kate. 

“Cass-ah-day-ga.” I read from a cracked, caseless iphone 8 with spotty 2G service. “So it’s like this spiritualist camp. A tiny little town where 90 percent of the population is psychic! Apparently you go to this haunted place in the center of town called ‘hotel cassadaga’ and you choose from the photos on the wall of all the mediums, and just… go to the one you’re drawn to.”

Kate looked back at me with a sick kind of fascination and a smile “Whoaaa. And so like, you have to prove you’re psychic to live there?”

“Yes,”  I confirmed as I read on. “In fact, the city subsidizes the housing of all the mediums. I guess that’s basically how the town makes money—spiritual tourism. Like I bet the only people who aren’t psychic are the mailmen, and the gas station attendants.” 

“Well, I mean we have to do it right?” 

“Right” 

So we took the exit. 

Kate and I rolled up to hotel Cassdaga sweaty, and hungry. The oppressive, July central floridian air threatening to vaporize us. We took solace in the top notch AC of the kitschy lobby of hotel Cassdaga, where we were offered perfunctory lorna doones and lemonade by an unenthused, elderly concierge woman in a panama jack button down and khaki slacks. 

“Just find the one that ya’ll like and I’ll point ya to their address” She perfunctorily assured us. 

Kate and I chose “Nellie” a 70 something latina looking, stout little woman who stared back at us from a 3x5 throw away camera photo on the wall of endless mediums. We made our way on foot to Nellie’s house through an impossibly quaint neighborhood of Victorian homes on sand-paved streets. Some graffiti on a cement wall read “Where mayberry meets the twilight zone!” As I felt the sun begin to set, and the wind change directions. We were greeted by Nellie at a particularly beautiful, blue victorian, and I noted an eerie feeling in the pit of my stomach that had no name.

“These palms trees” I said to Kate. “I feel like they’re staring at us.”

We sat in the screened in lanai with Nellie at a wrought iron card table where she had no doubt been playing solitaire and drinking tea. Were we here first customers that day? That week? That year? 

“You can give me a name, and then ask me a question.” Nellie instructed us. 

First I inquired about my sister, who’s jeep we had arrived in. 

“Will my sister ever get married?” I asked. 

Nelly squinted into the distance. 

“Yes. She will be married twice. The first will be brief, but the second one will last.” 

I suppose I had love on the brain. In hindsight, Kate and I were trying so hard to outrun the eventual implosion of America by opting out of the life we thought we were supposed to be living in New York and LA. But secondarily—I was running from my relationship. I had been with my boyfriend Doc for 3 years, and torturously and secretly in love with my friend Piet for 2 of those years. Kate and I would spend hours on the road wrestling with whether or not I should finally just break up with him, making pro/con lists and beating that horse so dead it decomposed. So naturally, I asked Nellie. 

“Will I always love Doc?” A kind of sadness fell across her face, “He…hmmm…he has to  be left behind.” She answered. Kate and I glanced at each other with goosebumps. 

“Will I always love Piet?” I asked. “I actually see you severing ties with him very soon, maybe by the end of the summer.” 

Nellie went on like that, answering questions about my life, sometimes knowing in great detail things I had never told another living soul. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I noticed the time. “Well, I guess we better get back on the road”

“Wait!” She said. 

“Ask me just one more question” Her eyes piercing through me as though she knew I had been holding just one more question in the sides of my cheeks—the way a squirrel holds acorns. 

“Will I ever get married?” I asked

She took a deep long breath, and in looking over my shoulder as if she had just watched it play out on a tv behind me she said “Ah ok. So I see you, you’re in your early 40s. You’ve become well known in your field for something. And you’re going back and forth from the east coast to the west coast for work quite a bit. I see you’re speaking on a panel with other experts in your field, and you’re playfully disagreeing with them all at once. It’s causing quite a stir. There’s a man in the audience, and he’s laughing on the inside, because he agrees with you. After the panel he approaches you with a business card, and asks you to breakfast. If you agree to go with him, then you will marry him, and it will be a long, happy marriage.”

I chuckled at the unbelievable specificity of it all, Kate and I skeptically smiled and thanked Nellie before shuffling quickly back to the Jeep. Back on the road, we were mostly quiet. “That was weird.” Was all I could muster to say. “Yeah.” Was all she could conjure back, and we made our way through the endless dark asphalt south toward Miami.

After that road trip, life went on. Kate and I grew up. We eventually got jobs, and 401ks again. We never did make that great American documentary, having had instead a great American falling out somewhere in Idaho when our personal issues  boiled to a fever pitch after four months in a car together.. She took an Amtrak train home to LA, and I ended up driving the Jeep home by myself. We never spoke again after that summer. 

We wouldn’t have been able to tell you then, but looking back on it now, a mighty schism had been brewing beneath the surface of everything. Of our friendship, our beliefs, of the world really. I mostly forgot about Nellie and her predictions, except for the occasional late night when I’d lie awake in bed realizing that something she had predicted that day, did indeed come true after all. My sister did get married, and then quickly divorced. I did in fact cut ties with Piet after that Summer. And in the early months of 2020, I did finally have to break up with, and leave Doc behind. There was now a decade of life between that day in Cassadaga with Nellie, and where I had ended up in my early 30s. And in the wake of that violently transformational decade, everything, and everyone–was different.

 Between the years of 2010 to 2020, the loss of faith was palpable, both personally, and as a collective. Americans had slowly lost faith in our national security, in our government officials, in our police force, in the content that scrolled across our news feeds, and perhaps most notably in each other. Donald Trump was elected president, the housing market imploded, nightclubs became shooting grounds, Sandra Bland was killed at a traffic stop, George Floyd couldn't breathe, Wiki leaked, and then of course COVID-19 paused the world—and all those losses off faith that had been festering came home to roost in the queer silence that we found ourselves sitting in at home on the couch. I found myself single for the first time in my life, jobless, rudderless, attending weekly black lives matter protests in a paisley bandana tied across my mouth as a makeshift mask—wondering if we’d ever go back to work again. If we’d ever go out to eat again. If we’d ever go see movies in a theater again, If anything I ever believed about myself and the world would ever go back to normal again. 

A series of unbelievable things seemed to blast up like dynamite every month or so. My dad got leukemia BAM! My mom had a stroke BAM! They’re selling our childhood home BAM! The friendships I thought were unshakable dissolved under the stress of the pandemic, an unruly mob stormed the capital at Washington D.C., BAM! BAM! BAM! And then, just when the dust began to settle, the most unbelievable thing of all happened—I was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of liver cancer at 34. Me—the girl who woke up every morning and ran 6 miles, me the one who my mom called her “healthy daughter”, the girl who did so much hot yoga I had learned sanskrit on the side, me— the vegan gluten free sugar free, ayahuasca drinking,  habitual grapefruit eater. I had cancer. And not the “we’re lucky we caught it early” kind of cancer, but the “here are your options” kind of cancer. 

And then if you can believe it—I had a liver transplant. One that did not go even a little bit according to plan. I spent 5 straight months in the hospital, had a total of 8 surgeries, and spent Christmas and New Years in a coma. I found myself in pits of suffering I didn’t know were possible. I prayed for God to kill me, every day for a month. My mother moved from Atlanta and lived out of a suitcase by my bedside for the majority of that year. And while my surgeons, nurses, and doctors were all incredibly skilled— I  credit my survival of that experience to one person— and one person alone. Nellie. 

Because in my darkest of moments—when the core of who I am was eviscerated. When I watched myself violently bleed out into a colostomy bag because my artery had collapsed two days before christmas, when they were wheeling me into emergency surgery, when I woke up with a breathing tube,  my hands were tied to the rails of a hospital bed in the intensive care unit—I just kept thinking “But this isn’t how I go” 

 I know I at least make it to my 40s, because that’s when Nellie said I would get married, to the man with the business card, and the breakfast invite. Everything else she predicted had come true—and that was the last prediction,  just waiting to come to fruition. And that little belief, that small, humble, knowing—ridiculous as it was, kept my spirit from sliding off a cliff into the abyss of death. “But this isn’t how I go” I kept repeating to myself each day like a mantra. “I at least make it to my 40s” I’d tell nurses and visitors. And I believed it, whole heartedly. 

It’s said that he who has a why, can bear almost any how. And that is because bellief is a powerful thing, for better or worse. If you believe anything sincerely enough, for long enough, it can change everything. The right belief can make someone a millionaire in a year, or convince them to fly a plane into the world trade center. 

The beliefs we cling to are the talismans we take through life, the stones that anchor us through the absolute chaos that is everything. They’re the gasoline that makes our engines go. And so it is to our great benefit to choose beliefs that are kind to us, and to each other. Ones that say “yes! Life is good! And Love is endless! You should marry whomever you want, worship whatever you want, dress as a man or a woman or however you want.” rather than “You’re going to hell, you’re angering god, you’re a disgrace!” And this is how we create our worlds, by simply choosing to believe in something. By pilfering around in our imaginations for a tiny spark that we dream up, and holding it tightly in our pocket every day, until that prophecy quietly fulfills itself. 

I often find that the most fruitful things of my life do not call much attention to themselves at all—rather they move stealthily through the mundane moments without much encouragement or fanfare. Yet still they grow, sloth and secret, day after day, month after month, until to my surprise and delight, the seed of an effort becomes a blossom, a drop in the ocean becomes a wave, and what was once a small whisper arrives triumphantly in song as if by magic. 

And I suppose if magic is real then it must live in the roots of things, rather than the flower. Humbly committing to the belief in something imaginary, until one day it just is. 

I used to think magic was something that happens to you. But now I realize, magic is something that you choose, something you conjure and cultivate in yourself. I also used to think I’d live forever—most people in their twenties do. But thankfully, somewhere along the way, life kicked my ass enough that I learned how to believe things on purpose.

[freakypanther]

HEAVY

I don’t know when It started, but I know it was a freight train. Something that slowly chugged with heavy metallic certainty, gaining in inertia and speed until one day it was a runaway bullet. That’s how chronic illness works—slow and secret and cumulative. Gentle like a whisper, and maddening like chinese water torture. Until one day it just suddenly tries to kill you. 

  Imagine someone drops a pebble in your pocket every day for 30 years. At first you don’t notice the weight, but eventually, you’re lugging a 300 pound boulder around, and now, that amount of effort feels normal to you. It has quietly trained you to believe that life should be this hard.  And what's worse, other people don’t know you’re carrying the boulder, but you try so hard to go about your normal life, holding the boulder, doing all the things with sweaty effort that the boulderless people seem to do with such grace—and you wonder why on earth you can’t be so graceful too. It never occurs to you that you might be holding a boulder, because life has always felt like this. Your joints hurt, you’re bloated, you’re tired all the time, and your skin is freaking out. What, is that weird? 

So you carry on, going to school with the boulder, learning to date with the boulder, wearing bikinis, and traveling, and going out for sports with the boulder, having to inexplicably excuse yourself to deal with the boulder in the bathroom because the boulder has a left an open, stinging nickel-sized wound on your upper groin where a cyst has burst, and you need to stop the bleeding. 

I lay on the cold tile of my parents bathroom at thirteen looking at the open, pink flesh hole, wondering what the hell was happening to me. This would be the first of many cysts I would get in my life that would leave a dark gnarly scar on my most delicate bits of skin. I had broken my arm when I was 5, but this was the first time I ever remember feeling a pain that wasn’t humane. I lay there, spread eagle, underwear to the side, a failed attempt at neosporin and band aids strewn about, which just made it sting worse. And in my pile of bandages and ointments, I could do nothing but whimper. 

This is the part in most young people’s lives where one might yell for mom to help, or dad, or perhaps a doctor. But that wasn’t the kind of house I lived in. For whatever reason, I knew concretely by the age of 13, that I wasn’t to bother anyone with my problems. That whatever I was going to get in this life, it would have to be on my own. That whatever I needed to say would fall on deaf ears, or worse incite anger. That really at the core of it, I wasn’t worth helping, and most of all, wasn’t worth hearing. So for most of my life, I kept my mouth shut, and let it simmer. I often felt like a fizzy glass coke bottle someone had shook up. Holding in my breath, and my needs, and my opinions, and my pain, and my chaos—constantly buzzing with low grade tension—not knowing there was any other way. At this point in my life most adults and kids would have referred to me as “shy”, but I wasn’t shy—I was a coke bottle. 

 It’s maybe that kind of internal pressure that cracked some primal valve in me that day. It built heat in my toes and bubbled up through the shin bones, pushed its way through the knees, straightening my legs like two garden hoses where it filled my pelvic bowl with steam that shot up through my spine, neck and finally into my eyes, where they burst open from the force- bringing me face to face with a great white blank abyss. This was the first time the ceiling and I spoke.

 I’m sure I had been speaking to things that felt “above” me for some time before that. I’m sure I had addressed the sky on occasion, just not with such clarity. And never before with such desperation. I wasn’t sure who I was speaking to exactly, just that I needed to speak. “Please.” I said through sobbing gasps to the ceiling. “Please either make this stop or just kill me.” And I meant it. “Please make it better or kill me, make it better or kill me, kill me, kill me, kill me…” I repeated as I drifted to sleep. The ceiling would grant me neither of these wishes. 

I don’t know why we yearn for something bigger than us, but I do know that we tend to call out for it in our most difficult moments. There are things in this life that will challenge everything you thought you knew, that will bring even the most convicted of atheists to their knees, that will level the sturdy cement beliefs about who you think you are. Don’t believe me? Look around a plane that’s just been told it’s about to go down. Look into the eyes of a mother whose child was just killed by a “patriot missile” in palestine. It’s these kinds of unthinkable things that compel us to cry out to the ceiling phrases like “mercy!” or if we dodge a bullet, sometimes “thank you” or in our more powerless moments, a sharp and deliberate “fuck you!”. Now closer to 40 than 13, the ceiling and I have become well acquainted, we’ve had many conversations of varying tones. But none more frequent than in the years after I was diagnosed with cancer. 

It had been three months since I turned yellow. A trip to the ER and an MRI machine had confirmed that the largest bile duct in my liver was indeed blocked, which had caused my body to back up with bile—which accounted for my rather Marge Simpson appearance. Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis or PSC, they told me. An autoimmune condition that causes your body to attack your bile ducts, until they become so inflamed that they clench closed, and eventually, your liver will fail you, and you will die. 

There is no reason, and no cure, and no research, because it’s rare. Oh and also, we need to biopsy it, because it’s possible the inflammation has become cancerous. I wont get into the specifics of this prognosis right now, because all you really need to know is that it was bad. The kind of diagnosis that causes doctors to put their hand on your shoulder and speak in hushed tones when they explain it to you. The kind of thing they send chaplains into your hospital room for without asking just in case you need some support. I waited several months, and endured six or seven biopsies before I finally got the call, alone in my bed one beautiful spring day, about a week before my 34th birthday. The hardest part about cancer honestly, is just knowing you have it. The second hardest part is remaining calm in the several days or weeks they make you wait to confirm if you have it or not. 

 I had been at an Ayahuasca circle about a month earlier where I set an intention to “Finally understand what is making my body sick and heal it.” So In a strange way, as I awaited this diagnosis of doom, I felt cancer-proof. Held by magic. Guided by Aya. I thought—whatever this diagnosis is or isn’t, it’s not how I die.  I know because that’s what I asked for from Ayahuasca. And I always get what I ask for from her. This is some divine lesson, I thought. Some holy experience, and all I have to do is sit back, and ride, and be healed. Something magical is coming to save me. I’m going to be a miracle.  Aya has made me work hard before, but it’s not going to try to kill me, and it’s definitely not going to make me go through chemo. Definitely. 

Then, casually between my crossword puzzle and my oat milk latte, I saw the nameless Atlanta area code appear on screen and just knew. 

“Hey Jessica, it’s Dr.Jong, so looks like your cells are positive for cancer” His bedside tone so flip, he might as well have said “I know, bummerrrrrr right?” right after.  “So it’s gonna be chemo, and radiation, and then a liver transplant. Sorry for the bad news.” 

“Okay. Thank you Dr.Jong” I said calmly as though he’d just told me I needed a haircut, and not a life altering course of medical treatment that at best would extend my life, and at worst would kill me. I gently dropped the phone to my bed and sat still with it for a solid sixty seconds. Then, the switch flipped, and I could feel it coming… the steam heat. It rapid-boiled in me, like mercury rising in a thermometer, then in one sharp spike it hit and hundred and ten. I involuntarily clenched my teeth and chucked the phone as hard as I could across the room into the dense wood of my expensive mid mod credenza. It left a mark, and cracked the phone. My jaw tightened, and a white hot blinding rage escaped through my mouth “FUUUUUUUUCCCCKKKKKKKKKK!” I screamed at the ceiling through heavy breaths. 

Then the tears came, which were mostly gentle, liquid fear. Fear tears. After a few moments of fear tears, while calmly making a portobello mushroom, tomato and provolone sandwich—which is really all one can do in a moment such as this, extra provolone. I paced the kitchen barefoot, chomping on my cheesy veggie stack as I processed this information, steeping myself in fear, letting all the scariest images appear in my mind—my shaving my head, hooked up to an IV somewhere, the look on my mothers face at my funeral. I chomped through the feelings, trying to identify them,  bite after bite when mid-provolone it dawned on me. Wait a minute—this isn’t fear that I’m feeling.  I’m not, not scared…. I…..am grade A, all American, prime meat PISSED OFF. At who or what I wasn't yet sure, but I knew exactlyyyyy who to blame. The ceiling. And I was gonna give it a piece of my ever loving mind. Right now. 

I peered upward at her through a raised eyebrow, taking pleasure in the earful I was about to deliver. I pointed straight up at her in her big dumb drywall overpriced home depot creme & eggshell face and shouted at the top of my lungs “THIS ISN’T WHAT I MEANT BY HEALING AND YOU FUCKING KNOW IT!”.

The thing is—most people who receive a cancer diagnosis are so scared that they’ll pretty much immediately do anything the doctor tells them to do. But I will tell you, I am not nor have I ever been most people. At this point in my existence I have absolutely zero fear of death. Suffering however, that I am quite afraid of. I thought, maybe it would be cool to see what’s beyond this life, I’m kind of curious afterall, and really, what was so great about all this human stuff? Maybe I’ll just have a really beautiful year and then drift off into the great abyss peacefully, without protest. Maybe I’ll sell the house and quit my job and travel and get massages and sit outside all day, and then one day, I’ll just die. I’ve done everything I want to do in this life—I’ve been in love, multiple times! I’ve traveled. I’ve been educated. I’ve made friends, bought a house. Seen the grand canyon. Taken party drugs, been skydiving, learned French, and had sex with a woman. Honestly, death doesn’t sound like that bad of a deal in the grand scheme of things. 

So I wrestled with it. Not for days, not weeks, but months. I found myself in doctors offices where surgeons pleaded with me to start treatment citing the “extremely aggressive and deadly nature of this type of cancer”. Then PAs and nurses who sat with me trying to understand how I could be so stark raving calm about the whole thing. 

“I mean, if I were you I would be worried about it spreading.” they’d say. Trying to coyly terrify me into poisoning myself. But everything in my body was screaming “Don’t do this”. At one point, I looked in the eyes of Dr.Sarmiento, a towering 6ft 2 handsome, salt and pepper surgeon in a white coat— from my five foot one vantage point I must have looked like a silly,  angry little mouse as I squeaked up at him  “Dr. Sarmiento, Frankly I’d rather die than let a bunch of men who don’t have to live in my body bully me into a fucked up treatment plan which will probably just kill me.” He dropped his head in exasperation, and shook it silently, part of him knew I was right, which I believe accounted for the head shaking. If he could have legally had me psych evaluated he probably would have. 

Over the next few months, I wrestled with myself, and my doctors, and my family, and the ceiling. I’d say to her simply “I’m scared.” or the old stand by “Please make the pain stop” or sometimes I’d just inquire “What do you think?” I remember the day the ceiling and I decided that I’d refuse treatment. I went to the kitchen, and pulled out my “liver packet” from the junk drawer, a glossy, hospital branded folder about an inch thick of what to expect when expecting a new liver. I chucked it enthusiastically into the garbage with a satisfying THUNK and let out a primal, rambunctious howl, like I was a cowboy riding into the wild west, an astronaut ricketing into the void, a pirate sailing into deep blueness uncharted. I knew I might die this way, but at least I’d be free. At least nobody bullied me into this desert. I had saddled up my own damn horse and led it here. I brought me here, I brought me here. This is MY rodeo, I’d repeat over and over again. Great risk, but great reward, I thought. I know something they don’t know. Something magic is going to save me. I’m going to do this my way. I’m going to jump off a cliff now—and there’s going to be water at the bottom. The ceiling told me so. 

There’s an ancient parable that shows up in many religious traditions— Jain, Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi and the like—in which god is an elephant. Several blind men stand in a room with the elephant, clumsily feeling around with their hands, describing what exactly an elephant is. One man grabs the ear and proclaims “An elephant is flat and floppy and smooth thing! An elephant is so beautiful!”  Another man grabs the tail and says “No no no, an elephant is long and skinny with a bit of brittle, coarse hair at the end. An elephant is quite a severe, unpleasant thing.” One particularly convicted blind man grabs the trunk and says “You’re all crazy! An elephant is clearly long and noodly and muscular and has a mind of it’s own! Also it keeps needing to be fed!”

I think people put God where it makes them most comfortable, and where it most makes sense to them. In a sunset, or a self help book, a sunday service, or the ceiling. In modern life we sometimes find ourselves Googling things one might have traditionally asked of God— “What am I supposed to do with my life? Enter… How to get over my ex…enter…Does everyone feel this way? Has anyone ever healed cancer naturally? Enter…Am I the only one like me? Enter. Is anyone out there? Enter. 

And this desire we all have, to question, to seek, to know—to speak and be heard, is so deep seeded in the human experience that we often don’t know we're even doing it. Because this life is intrinsically constructed of questions that don’t have answers. Some less catastrophic than others, but all equally weighty as pebbles in our pockets. 

Why didn’t he love me? Why did he leave me? Why did I get cancer? Why did my friend die? Why didn’t my mother take care of me? Why are some people born poor and not others? Why are some people born sick and not others? Why can’t I get pregnant? Why was my child taken at 3 months old? Why was I born in the Gaza strip? Why was I given this? Why me? Why me? Why me?

I have found myself so often in recent years in the depths of physical and psychological suffering simply asking “why?”—infuriated when the ceiling did nothing but stare blankly at my question. One day after a particularly painful ER visit, I popped an oxycodone and drew a scalding hot epsom salt bath, as I often did to soothe myself. “WHERE ARE YOU!? I shouted up naked from the steaming bathwater. “YOU SAID YOU WERE GOING TO HEAL ME, AND I STILL HAVE CANCER! Where are you HUH?! YOU FUCKING coward! I craned my neck back to address her and shouted it from my the bottom of my belly, C’MON KILL ME! I DARE YOU! COME ONNN!”

After the shouting, I took a deep breath and settled into the salty water, the way a toddler tires herself out after a tantrum. My fizzy coke bottle energy simmered down as I became acutely aware of what was left—the glaring, absolute stillness, some primordial silence reverberating through the bottom of this tub, this white, porcelain, water-filled womb. I waited for her weightlessly drifting in the water, and realized how very often in my life I have found myself at the bottoms of bathrooms begging for answers. All great epiphanies must begin on bathroom tiles, I thought. I wonder if Joan of Arc ever cried on the straw of an outhouse, maybe Churchill sobbed on a toilet somewhere before ordering troops in to liberate Norway. 

I took note of the steady, wordless hum of the ceiling, staring back at me. Her expansive horizontal presence alone, a great comfort—even without answers. I listened for her voice through the blankness, realizing that when she does speak, she sounds so very suspiciously like me. 

“Maybe it is just you and me out here babe.” I said out loud, to myself, and to the ceiling, and to the ceiling as myself, to myself, from myself, up and back down again, over and over and over. Her wordless gentle stare loomed over me in a loving way as if to say “you don’t have to explain..

 I know, I know I know.”  

“I am, I am, I am” I said back to her. 

“I know, I know, I know.”

She repeated. 

I thought that even if the ceiling had no answers for me, at least she let me ask the questions. At least there was someone listening, and for that day at least, just being listened to was enough.

[freakypanther]

2022

Next year is a fresh tub of cream cheese. 

It’s the snowy hill that nobody’s sled down yet. 

It’s the September sky with no clouds in it.  

A black coffee without any creamer. 

A morning without a smartphone. 

Just you and the ceiling and the sound of birds. 

It’s me finally giving myself a break.

It’s learning to enjoy my beauty, and letting go of the need to fix. 

It’s fresh fruit and fresh air. 

It’s at least 8 glasses of water a day—and so many bike rides. 

It’s time where I do nothing but exist. 

It’s freedom from the need to monetize my creativity. 

It’s investing in my friends. Really hearing them, and for the first time—

It’s allowing them to hear me—letting go of the fear of being seen, and speaking up. 

It’s putting more stock in the little things—and knowing that they are actually the big things. Relishing in the way my relationships have become fewer, but deeper. The way the light creeps into my window in the morning, and you can see all those little floaty bits of dust that are usually invisible. 

It’s staying grateful for everything. My health, my name, my body, my sisters.

It’s never forgetting how lucky I am to have seen so much, felt so deeply, and learned so fully. Gratitude for every country I’ve visited. For every book I’ve read. For every set of lips I’ve kissed. For every emotion I’ve ever felt. I’m just happy to be here. 

It’s knowing when to walk away—from people who don’t feel like sun on my face.

It’s knowing when to stay with the people who don’t—and have compassion for them, without selling myself out. 

 It’s learning who is worth trusting, who deserves to know me deeper. 

And who is just a lovely moment of conversation in the day. 

It’s learning to spot a lesson while I’m learning it. 

It’s restraint. 

Finding my power in myself. 

Releasing the need to control anything or anyone around me. 

It’s gossiping less, and volunteering more. 

It’s crying, and dancing, and masturbating as needed. 

And If I’m lucky it’s love. 

Sex and touch and laugher and resepct. 

Overlapping with a man who has no need to defend anything. 

No desire to critique anything. 

A man who has healed so fully that he can see me for who I really am, 

and not who he is afraid he’s not. 

Or who he wishes I would be. 

Or who he’s afraid I will become

But who I am. 

And for you baby I will do the same. 

I will trust you, and you will trust me. 

I will see you, and you will see me. 

I won’t own you and you won’t own me. 

And we will find joy in each other, and lessons in each other.

And through all of it we will not blame each other. 

And we will stay curious about each other. 

And we will not label each other. 

And we will find adventure together—

In places we’ve never been, like Patagoinia and Bangladesh. 

And in the deepest parts of our hearts, 

The soft little spots that not everyone gets to see. 

And if next year, I don’t find that. And my greatest love turns out to be myself. 

And none of this happens at all—

It's learning to be joyful about that too. 

Because we’re all gonna die anyway. 

So we might as well enjoy whatever happens. 

Ride the wave that comes at you. 

Play the hand you’re dealt. 

Be grateful for the place you are. 

And always always always, find joy in the radical acceptance of the current moment. 

I’m just happy to be here. 

Again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Nothing to fix. 

Nothing to find. 

No one to fuck. 

Nothing to buy. 

Nothing to earn.

Nothing to achieve. 

Enjoy. 

[freakypanther]

You are not your weight because you have been both skinny and fat during your life. So that is not what you are.

You are not your skirt size because that is just some cloth with a number printed on it. And you are definitely not a piece of cloth.

Does this look like a woman to you? No that is just a skirt.

Can a skirt give birth or fall in love or be creative?

No. So that is not you.

You are not a flowing long hair do because that can also be cut or died and shaved or changed.

You are not your tits because you have not always had them.

And maybe one day you will lose them.

But you will still exist. So that is not what you are either.

You are not a little box on a piece of paper that says female because that is just a made up word created by a human just like you. That is just an idea.

You are not your relationship status because that is just something you are doing at the moment.

You are not your name like "Jessica" or "Clarissa" or "Bethany" or "Kat" because those are literally just some sounds.

Because the patriarchy is a matrix and once you know you are in it. then you can choose to leave it. and instead just do whatever the fuck you want. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Because women are not something fixed or definable, or separate or special. They are actually just people.

[freakypanther]

Stop looking at me.

For as long as I can remember I’ve been getting nervous in front of people. When speaking, when reading, when presenting, when performing, when eating, when playing kickball— when breathing really. And the truth is, I’ve gotten REALLY good at hiding it. Maybe everyone is good at hiding things about themselves—but I know I’m at least in the top 10% of professional hiders of my social anxiety. You know what, that probably doesn’t give me credit enough for managing my self-generated chaos. Let me try this again—I’m VERY good at “faking it till you make it”. 

For many different complicated, freudian, and therapy-ripe reasons—speaking on my own behalf is something that has not felt safe to me from a very young age. Full disclosure— I’m still actively unpacking this in therapy.

The first time I remember an ‘incident’ that involved not being able to speak was “popcorn reading”. That harmless little learning device that 3rd grade teachers the world over employ so that they don’t have to do anything the morning after their TGIFriday happy hour. Easy peasy— Sheila M. reads the first paragraph, popcorn to Timmy H. who reads the next one, then Sandra Y.— and so on and so on.

I am not exaggerating when I say this experience elicits a full-blown trauma response in me. Sweating, increased heart rate, inability to breathe, the room spinning, fear of passing out, the sense that I might cry, or die, or vomit at any moment. How I have made it through multiple experiences of this in the last 34 years and not elected to become a hermit, or a monk, or a mime, is  testament to my absolutely unflinching desire to evolve as a person. I’ve been purposely throwing myself into these kinds of PTSD-inducing situations over several decades, hoping that one day I’ll just master it, and the chaos will magically disappear. And honestly— sometimes it does. Some days, I do my mediations, and take my deep breaths, and I AM the public speaker I always wanted to be. Other days, I am so incredibly just not.  

This trauma thing. It’s just a part of me. It’s not the only part of me, or the best part of me, but it’s there just the same. The object in the bottom of my proverbial backpack I keep forgetting about until something prompts me to look in the bottom and I’m like oh damn...you again. I thought we had settled this. Guess not.

I can’t tell you how many F’s and big fat “ZEROS” I took on assignments growing up because they involved a speech in front of the class. Reports and presentations that I had actually read the book for, and had really good thoughts on. Nah— I’m good I’ll take the F. That was my reality for a while. 

I heard that public speaking is the #1 reported fear in America or something—above shark bites and actual death. But for me, this is something bigger. Every time I’m asked to “read aloud to the class” in my adult life, a big red “trauma” button gets pressed somewhere in my brain and a bunch of little emergency men who work up there start running around throwing water on all the brain fires. Meanwhile, my rational inner monologue looks at me with a side eye and is like...

“Girrrrrl. What is the actual problem? There’s nothing life-threatening happening right now.” But the more she talks, the crazier I feel, the weirder I sound, the less I can breathe, and the more demoralized I become. 

As you might imagine, I do not like this very much about myself. 

As you might also imagine— I have willingly chosen a career that routinely requires me to “read aloud to the class”. Except instead of a 3rd grade story book— it’s a script I wrote, from the most vulnerable recesses of my soul. And the ���class” is a bunch of executives and clients who likely will not understand it,  but will inevitably have something to say about it AND are actively deciding if it cuts mustard enough to spend millions of dollars on, all the while wondering if If I’m the “the right creative for this job”.

So you know. No pressure. 

I think in life, we seek out the lessons we still need to learn. At the moment, this is one of mine. 

And here’s the crazy thing. This fear— it’s not for lack of preparation or ability. I’m one of the best writers I know. When I’m relaxed, I can read words on a page like nobody’s business. Literally someone should hire me to record their audio book— assuming no one will be watching while I record it. Isn’t that fucking frustrating? To be really good at something, and nobody knows because your body just won’t let you do it when people are watching?

For me, it’s bigger than just stomach butterflies. It’s something primal. Some deep-seated, long-ignored need to be heard. To be understood. To command the room. To be listened to without criticism. To be loved for my thoughts. To have room to exist authentically. To feel comfortable saying what I need, what I want, and most importantly what I think. Because let me tell you something I know for damn sure— ideas? I fucking got em. I have SO many creative ideas. Most of the time I feel like a Coke bottle full of fizzy ideas that somebody shook up. Ready to explode at a moments notice. 

I contained the Coke bottle for decades— until around 26 when I sort of cracked. That chaotic hiding of the self is something I learned to do as a child. A skillfull coping mechanism I mastered in order to keep myself safe. And when I look at that scar tissue, that 30 year old band-aid I still carry around with me, I’m not so much angry at it, but in awe of it. 

My adult self reaches out to that smart, scared little girl in me and she says —

“Wowwww! You’re so amazing! Look what you learned to do so that you could survive! You’re so intuitive! You’re so resourceful! Baby, you’re a survivor. You should be so amazingly proud of yourself, my little one. Look what you managed to cope with. You did that all by yourself? Let’s go get an ice cream. You fucking deserve it.”

And so I woke up this Sunday morning, and took myself to get an iced coffee—which is my adult version of an ice cream. I sat with that baby version of me that’s still so present, and listened to the words she needed to write on a digital page to me. A page that maybe nobody will ever read aloud, but that deserves to be written just the same. Words that deserve to exist, regardless of anyone else's opinion of them. And I say to her— 

“What an amazing life raft you built for yourself. But now that we’re on land, it looks pretty heavy. See? Look around. You’re safe now. Do you think we could both let this thing go together? Here, I’ll help you.”

And she cries. And I cry. And I say thank you sweet pea. Job well done. And I hold her, and say “there, there, now doesn’t that feel better?” And we both watch that life raft drift into the endless everything. Toward the horizon until it’s almost out of view. A tiny speck of red that represents danger, now just a tiny speck of muted orange. Hardly recognizable as a life raft anymore. Now it’s more like a spark on a match head, bobbing up and down in a sea of blue potential— ready to ignite me with verbal desire— should I ever really need it. 

And the guy in the coffee shop next to me offers me a tissue as I type.  I sniffle and say “thank you so much” without hesitation or shame. I’m at an age now where crying on my keyboard at 10 am in a coffee shop doesn’t matter so much in the grand scheme of things.

In the pit of me.

In the center of me. 

In my belly. 

At my core. 

From the cunt to the crown of my head.

I have much to say—and so much desire to say it. 

To turn up the volume on my life and belt as loud as I know I am. 

To exist so incredibly on purpose.

And say what I mean. 

And not apologize. 

And be able to breathe while it happens.

And let everyone watch. 

To manifest the full expression of me, and be seen as such. 

My friend Ashley would say “I think your throat chakra is blocked.”

And that is probably true. 

But my heart chakra would probably give it a run for its money. 

[freakypanther]

Fruitful.

I often find the most fruitful things of my life do not call much attention to themselves—

rather they move stealthily through the quiet moments without much encouragement or fanfare.

Yet still they grow, sloth and secret, day after day, month after month, until to my surprise and delight, the seed of an effort becomes a blossom, a drop in the ocean becomes a wave, and what was once a small whisper arrives triumphantly as a song as if by magic.

And I suppose if magic is real, then it must live in the roots of things, rather than the flower. Humbly committing to the belief in something imaginary, until one day it just is.

[freakypanther]

Trouble with my meat suit

I was too fat to go to the wedding. 

I put the skirt on— then took it off, and put it back on, then put something else on—then put the original skirt back on again. 

I felt like an envelope full of spaghetti. 

I walked the three blocks to the park to meet you.

I felt like pudding in a cup.

I got to the door, and turned right back around. 

I was too fat to go to the reception. 

I left my date there. Oops. 

Sorry buddy, not sure how to explain this one without looking crazy. 

It’s a woman thing? I don’t know.

“Um. I’m having trouble with my meat suit.” 

He laughed. 

So did I— but it didn't feel that funny to me.

I saw them dancing in the window. And singing, and electric-sliding, and champagne-ing. 

The girls with normal-sized tits, and normal-sized thighs, and cheeks that don’t dimple when they smile, and arms that don’t flatten out like silly putty when they drop them against their sides. 

What must it be like to look forward to being tagged in the pictures?

Oh, the freedom!

To dance every dance and not care what your ass looks like from that angle. 

Ever seen a photo of yourself on accident and it kind of ruined your whole day?

It feels like I don’t deserve to be in the pictures.

It feels like I don’t deserve to do the electric slide. 

It feels like I don’t deserve to laugh at the party.

It feels like I should go home until I’ve lost enough weight to be inoffensive.

So I didn’t go.

Because I was too fat to go to the wedding. 

My body doesn’t deserve to wear a strappy dress. 

Who does she think she is?

You’ve got to be a single digit dress size for that.

You’ve got to have ballerina arms to be taken seriously. 

And tiny little boobs to be loved. 

Oh! To be so lovable!

To not need a bra to run to the bodega!

You need a dainty little neck for things like that.

And calves that don’t look like sausages. 

Nobody falls in love with a smart girl. 

Nobody falls in love with a sad girl. 

Nobody falls in love with sausages for legs.

You might get ‘I’m flattered but…” 

Or  “I love you but I just don’t think of you like that”

Or worse “You’re more like a sister to me.”

Women with ballerina arms never get “sistered”. 

I was too fat to go to the wedding. 

So I hid instead.

I hid in the green plastic playground. 

Right outside the party tent.

Right at the top of the slide castle. 

Where no one could see my body. 

Where my meat suit deserved to be.

And more importantly where it felt safe.

“I can’t do this today” I said gently to myself. 

“This is just where I’m at right now.” she replied. 

Today is a hard day. And that’s okay.

This is not an exercise in self-love. 

This is not an exercise in body positivity. 

It’s an experiment in radical honesty.

About how I really feel about my body.

Not about how I WISH I felt about my body.

Or how I KNOW I should feel about my body.

Or how I THINK other women should feel about their body.

But how I actually do feel— about my body. 

Today. Right now. In my bed.

Crying like a baby. 

Tugging at my tits wondering if my new insurance will cover a breast reduction. 

Thinking that if I had been thin I would have gotten that promotion.

If my boobs and been smaller, he never would have left. 

If my neck had been dainty, he would have said “I love you” instead.

She would have reached out to me sooner.

They would have given me another chance.

It would have all happened differently. 

This is not an exercise in self love. 

This is an exorcism.

I was too fat to go to the beach that day.

If I had been thinner, the surfer guys who live out in the Rockaways would have befriended me first. 

They would have asked me questions, and bought me margaritas, and asked me to come home with them. 

They would have fought over me, and assumed I knew what I was talking about when I talked about how the stock market was all about perception.

They would have jumped at the chance to “paddle out with me sometime”. Thin women have friends in every borough. In every city. In every country really.

They get free tickets to stuff, and backstage passes to things, and standing invites, and they know lots of boys who secretly want to sleep with them.

Thin women say things like “yeahh I mean I think he’s kind of obsessed with me” and laugh about it because it happens all the time. 

Thin women have the luxury of rejecting moderately attractive men. 

I do not like this meat suit.

It makes me feel like cattle. 

Like livestock. Moo. 

Like I was born to be slaughtered. 

And poked, and prodded, and critiqued, and impregnated, and raped, and fondled, and herded. 

And told what to do. 

Like a pig on display on a platform. 

How round is she fellas?

Is it the good kind of round or the ‘fat bitch’ kind of round?

How much exactly am I worth to you? 

And why do I believe you when you tell me?

And when will I stop having to think about it?

And when can I stop having to plan around it?

And when can I stop having to compensate for it?

And when can I stop having to apologize for it?

And cover it up enough, but not too much.

Who’s gonna buy my cow if I give away the milk for free?

Or worse! If I don’t groom it in all the right places.

Your eyebrows are too thick! Rip them off!

Just kidding they’re too thin! Tattoo them back on! 

Big tits!  No— now small ones!

Blonde hair!  Now curly! 

Shave this! But not THAT!

Sexy now! But not later! 

Horny here! But not over there!

Plump on the bottom! But skinny in the middle!

Smart but not intimidating. 

Confident but not bitchy. 

Interesting but not weird. 

Funny but not funnier than you. 

Hey girl.

Take care of me but don’t be uptight about it. 

Suck my dick but don’t think about anyone else's. 

Fuck me without a condom but don’t get pregnant. 

Take birth control but don’t get mood swings.

Make me babies but don’t get fat. 

And never forget— you’re just wired this way. 

It’s biology. You have no say in the matter.

You’re at the mercy of your meat suit. 

That’s how it works. And if you get upset about any of this well, that’s just your meat suit hormones talking.

Yes it seems my meat suit decides all kinds of things.

You will do the desiring. And I will get “desired.”

You’re the one who does the fucking. And I’m the one who “gets fucked.”

I’m the one who has an expiration date. 

The one whose eggs are running out.

Who is unsexy for being pregnant.

But selfish for considering abortion.

I’m the one who goes to the clinic and has the thing shoved inside her, and has to look at the mistake we both made, that we both wanted, but is somehow my fault, and I’m the one who will pay for the procedure.

And worry about how it affects my future

And get the stretch marks 

And buy the serum

And use the jade roller

And snort the collagen

And lift the thing

And tuck the thing

and feed this fucking thing with my boobs

and pleasure your fucking thing with my crotch

and suck that fucking thing with my mouth 

And plug this thing up with a wad of cotton 

And bleach the thing

And wax the thing

And oil the thing

And maintain every fucking thing while at the same time doing all the other fucking things extremely fucking gracefully, and for fucks sake I’m so fucking over it. 

I’m so fucking tired, and it’s so fucking heavy.

Can I please just put this meat suit down?

[freakypanther]

Normal is dead but I am not.

Picture this. It’s a Monday night in the liminal space between normalcy and aftermath. It shouldn’t matter what day it is but somehow you just know that it is in fact— Monday. Years of life in the agrarian calendar die hard, and now your body can sense the beginning of a work week despite the lack of actual work, or restaurants, or movie theaters, or anything normal. You climb a rust-colored fire escape (that would certainly not pass a New York City fire inspection) to the top of your friend David’s tar-slicked roof. By normal neighborhood standards you are absolutely being too loud— but most people welcome the racket these days, if only for the comfort and thrill of white noise that doesn’t come from a television. The air begins to chill as the sun bleeds out of frame and succumbs to the ink-soaked sky that is south Brooklyn from below. You shiver from lack of layering, but push through the numbness for a few laughs and puffs of a joint with another human. You’re in the liminal space between winter and spring— the transitional weeks that no one quite knows how to prepare or dress for. A hoodie is too hot by noon, but a tee shirt is too cold by 6. 

Ambulance sirens drone in sonic slow motion in the background and feel almost angelic— like renaissance church bells, but sped up a few hundred years. Like a seraphim singing in autotune— electric, eerie, lemon-scented and sad. You twirl your hot pink hair and wonder if there are always this many sirens in a day, or if you just notice them now that there’s something significant about them...

The winterness of the springtime starts to get the better of you and your nose begins to run, so you rub away your goosebumps and noodle your way backward down a metal ladder with the grace of a gangly grandpa on a tightrope. You mount your trusty bike in the queer silence and pop your earbuds in to drown out the other worldly oddness of the evening. You wonder what your ex boyfriend is doing but become distracted by the unmistakable THC tingle in the soft tissues and sponge cartilage of your face. “This must be what a soul feels like on it’s own” you think, as you motorcycle-kick your bike pedal into the remarkably empty street. And in the silence, you nearly hear an engine turn over on your Bianchi as the wheels begin to pick up momentum. Uphill, counter-interia, almost achey. Careening toward the inevitable glide with every single pedal. 

You feel energy begin to fill your body in a way that lifts your breast bone, expands your lungs, elevates both eyebrows, and turns the corners of your lips upward involuntary as a random but strangely appropriate song comes on your playlist. 

The wind picks up and so do you, the early April air blasts against your wide open eyeballs like a hair dryer on two peeled grapes. And then your wide open grapes start to pool speed-tears at the corners like a downhill skier. You make your way to Washington street, past the projects, then the townhouses, the poor people, and the working people, and the neon-lit bodegas— that are occasionally still open. You stop at a red light and watch a woman swap a cigarette with a homeless man for cash and wonder how bad either of them needed it. The landscape levels, stills, and jumps tax brackets and the architecture starts to look like home again. 

Now you’re riding so fast you think you must look like one long hot pink blur- a viscous gradient, smeared to the wind from Flatbush to Bergen- living in liquid, both somewhere, nowhere, everywhere at once. Both at home- and still on that roof with David and that lit joint. And you feel it true— that you are both here and there. That you are both then and now. You are the past and present and the same time. You are everything and nothing, living entirely within context, and entirely without it.  You are nobody and everybody at the same time. You are everything.

I am the homeless man and I am the Crown Heights library, and I am the teacup blossoms and the Hasidic family on 4th ave, and I am the night and the hairdryer and the skinless grapes that’s it’s blasting as I speed-bike down the hill. I am China and the town of Wuhan, the bat that started the virus, and the Chinese doctor that warned the world about it. I am the virus, and I am the daytime— I’m Jay with the big dick that curves perfectly upward, and his dead dad, and the tractor trailer that killed him when he was only sixteen. “Oh yeah” I think as lick my lips for moisture- I am also my mouth. 

I am the crimson red lipstick that bleeds across the edges of my smile, and I am also the calcium hinge that drops it wide like elastic clown pants to make noise. And I am the sound it makes when it laughs out loud, and also when it cries out in anguish. And when you feel that you are all of those things at once and can no longer contain them to a single body—you scream. You scream right into the empty night, right at the sky and right at the city. You scream at yourself and also at everyone you have ever known. Not from the belly, but deeper. From the cunt to the crown of your head and out the spout of the space right above you. You rage volume at the sleeping goliath for everything it ought to be and isn’t. For everything you wish you were but aren’t, For all the things that should be able to happen but for whatever reason don’t. You scream for everything and everyone that needs but lacks. For the mother wondering where her next meal is coming from. For the man who sleeps on the steps of the bar two blocks from your house. For the babies in cages at the border. For the fear in the hearts of little black boys who walk to the store for a Gatorade, just hoping not to get shot. For the fear in the hearts of the cops that will murder them, and the apathy of everythign surrounding it. You scream for all those things and think that maybe nobody hears it, except maybe the people in the million fucking dollar townhouses on the tree-lined streets of Dutch-architecture Brooklyn. Hiding quietly in their mid century modern bed frames from all the chaos, from all the death, from all the pain, from all the truth. Numbly nodding off through the queer silence, wondering if there are more blood curdling screams on the street than usual- or do we just notice them now that they seem significant? Then you dismount your little blue Bianchi, throw it over your shoulder, and open the strange little side door to your apartment like a choreographed dance, one you have danced so many times before. You drunkenly climb the creaky old stairs of your hundred year old Brooklyn building, collapse on your 3 year old leather couch, and wonder if this tiny apocalypse will ever mean anything to anybody but you. So you just write it all fucking down- and suspect it might be useful to somebody at some point later. Maybe when this shit is all over.

[freakypanther]

Bits and Bobs

One particularly chilly day after my guitar lesson, I indulged in a fifteen dollar Uber instead of the usual G train slog. “Remmy” picked me up in white SUV that smelled like essential oils. I collapsed in the backseat exhausted, ready to get home and bliss out with white wine and re-runs of something stupid— in no mood to have a long awkward conversation with my Uber driver. 

“You have a lot of fire.” He casually declared. 

My rational head said “I’m sorry sir, excuse me?” but my possessed mouth uttered to my surprise

“Yes, how could you tell?” 

The words lept from my lips as if sourced from somewhere else. Some calmer, more still, more minimal, more honest version of me. It’s strange how people behave in the back of taxis. That liminal, leather-lined space so wonderfully fleeting, you become whoever you want to be for a few miles, a few mintues, a few moments, a few melodies. Bolstered by the knowledge of a route that’s finite— and also somewhat anonymous, we tend to speak without filter or consequence. Like gently odorous confession booths on wheels. Like sanctuary in constant motion. Like churches that happen upon you whenever they damn well please—and somehow also when you seem to need them most.

[freakypanther]

Special Chaos

1.

The following is not exquisite. No trumpets or triumphantry. No Elephants in a photographable ocean waving their wands, or tits out on a beach in Thailand. Nothing to fix, or find, or fuck. It’s ripe with worry and wanting. It’s aching and breaking from the inside out, over and over again. It’s nausea in a hotel room in nowhere in particular. It’s flagrant ignorance in the face of human suffering. Fallow faces that are driven by with one index finger like shopping malls on a highway. Suns that burn out hot and leave us hungry.  Honky tonk in a tin can that’s gone sour from sitting. Quiet desperation and a bouquet of wilting white bodega flowers. Self indulgence with a hang nail and sexy playlists.

How do you absorb the Atlantic and still wring it out to dry? How do you look at life through endless windows and still feel that you’re a part of it? What do you do with a world that likes to scream at you? How the hell am I supposed to drink this champagne from a firehose? 

Your pictures don’t inspire me in fact they piss me off. My therapist thinks I owe her more for her thoughts. I talk myself in and out of desire. I eat myself in and out of happiness. I throw myself up and down the same set of stairs. I find myself expanding and contracting. I cannot seem to fit back in my skinny jeans. I cannot seem to fit back in general. I cannot seem to look back at all.

I brush my teeth and tank it. I talk a lot and tank it. I trust too much and tank it. I found a strip shopping mall where the city meets the sticks and took a long weird tour of the essentials aisle. I’m not sure I needed anything.

I watched you get married and wondered why. I watched you get sexy and wondered how. I expanded my mind like a web but caught bugs in it. I felt alone and fired up the usual mechanisms. I stared into a database that is endless volumes of special chaos. And everybody likes it. And everybody hates it. But everybody needs it. Especially me. 

[freakypanther]

Fixing a hole.

There’s an inch of fat on my upper inner thighs that wasn’t there a month ago. I’ve had a little jones for pad thai. I’ve been eating it in amounts that are way beyond what’s advisable throughout all of June and some of July. I now affectionately refer to my legs as  “pad thighs” (hold for applause). It’s more than just a craving though, it’s a hunger. I often find that consumption is my answer to confusion—not always in the form of noodles. I get that itch and I try to run it off, drink it off, sex it off, travel it off, shop it off, sing, bike, sweat and surf it away- pick your poison. Rather, pick mine. 

I have all this energy. All this crazy fizz that’s shook up in me like a glass Coke bottle. I think it’s been there for as long as I can remember. This fear in me that I am too much, too fat, too crazy, too pointy, too big, too small, too emotional, too embarrassing, not smart enough, not beautiful enough, not interesting enough, not good enough, doing it wrong, upsetting everyone, ruining everything. Those are hard things to hear that you think about yourself, even harder to write them down. And they’re hard things to keep bottled up. No matter how tightly you try to contain them, they never really go away. They greet you every morning, and sleep with you every night. They doubt everything good that ever happens to you, and say “I told you so” in the midst of something bad.

So for a very long time I just put the Coke bottle in the back of the fridge. Hell, I don’t even think there was a fridge. It was in a shoebox, in the back of a pantry, in the corner of a garage, in a house I didn’t live in anymore. And if anyone ever asked about bottles or soda or sugar or fizz I said “What do you mean?” and I walked down the street every day and said “I”m fine—let’s talk about YOU, or THAT, or HIM.” And I smiled in a way that said I’m so so so great. And stepped in a way that said, check this shit out. And on some level, I was great. It was a pretty good system.

And I did all the things. And I went to all the therapists. And meditated all the meditations. And got all the money. And controlled all the narratives. And kept all the secrets. And held it all together. And fixed all the problems. And entertained all the people. And bothered no one. And most importantly kept my mouth shut —because I knew that nobody could argue with that, and consequently everyone would love me. And everybody did. And I was happy. And life was good. 

And then one day without warning, someone I hardly knew looked at me in the eyeballs and casually said “So what’s the deal with that Coke bottle?” and I froze. 

Because for all my whining, and pining, and dining, and doing, and going and growing, and working, and improving, and being the best, the first, the most, the only—I still couldn’t beleive or accept the existence of a girl I had shoved in the back of a fridge, and left alone to deal with whatever problems she was causing for simply existing. 

In fact, I had buried her so deep, for so long, I wasn’t even really sure I knew her anymore. So I sat in that stew, and confused myself over and over. And I called out to her, and ordered a lot of pad thai. And took a lot of personality tests. In case you’re wondering, I’m an INFP. I’m an enneagram 4 wing 3. Aries sun. Leo moon. Cancer rising. Fire rabbit. My blood type is AB positive. My aura is crystal, magenta, orange, and red. My akashic records are “chill”. My life line is very pronounced. I’m choleric, rather than sanguine. I’m a carrie. I’m a 90′s kid. And my ancestry is 100% all over the place. 

But none of it mattered. And I shouted “Jesus! Who even are you!?” And she said “Pshhhh. Please...don’t act like you don’t know.” 

I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. I’m intense and exciting. Playful, sexual, and powerful. Creative, intelligent, deep and wide. Confident, charismatic and independent. Intuitive, ferocious, and made to move. I am not an island, but you like to pretend that I am. I work hard, but I could work better if you were nice to me. I’m patient, especially with you. I’ll try anything once. I’m excited by possibility. I think most things are possible. I see myself in everyone, it’s easy for me to connect. I’m good in a kitchen, and behind a camera. I have a way with words and instruments. I love strange things. Odd things. Old things. Quirky things. Magic, Mississippi, and marbled tomatoes. Art made by adults that looks like it was made by kids. Summer rain and slide guitar. Etta James and the East River. Blood oranges and my bare feet out as much as possible.

And I said, Okay. “Well what the hell do you want from me?”

Then she leaned in and whispered “Bitch—let. me. out. of. this. mother. fucking. bottle.”

So for the millionth time in my life I have an extra inch of fat on my thighs that I’ll spend a month working off. But for the first time in my life, I don’t consider myself garbage because of it. And that’s the best way I can think to describe my summer so far. And if you don’t get it—well, for the first time I don’t really give a damn. 

J

[freakypanther]

In memoriam.

In Birmingham people sang “Porter!” and spoke in drunken tongues. His ex-girlfriends wept in the front row church pew, shaking hands with each other for the first time and offering each other tissues. Men marched the streets with bottles of bourbon, the way he would have wanted. Whiskey tears ran astringent down the riotous faces of grown men, dust kicked up on their cowboy boots, and the Nic Bar stayed open late in memoriam. I imagine magic light kissed the bacchanal of a procession. Had I been there, perhaps I would have taken a seat in the front with the many multitudes of widows. 

These days I’m very concerned with saving time, so I probably wouldn’t have had time to cry. I’d have worried about who was going to make all that potato salad— had I been there. The church bells probably banged in tandem with the pings of my alarm clock in New York City. It’s not quite as grand of a sound as the chapel, but it can be just as holy depending on what you’re waking up for. These days I pay a man who milks a metal cow that flavors my coffee in the morning. I walk the six blocks to an electric train, or flag down an aluminum horse- and it gets me where I’m going. I watch the bridge as I ford the Hudson River, and think unsettling thoughts about air quality, but smile at the raunchiness of it all too. All the nature here is planned. It’s not cradling us benevolently like should, but compartmentalized to the parks and occasional special squares on the sidewalks. As a hometown, the city is as abrasive as it is invigorating. Still, I could not bring myself to step on a metal bird to take me back to Alabama for the funeral. 

The last time I was at the Nic bar, I nervously made circles in the drink puddles with my ring finger. I looked at him, then back down at the bar, then back at him, over and over just like that. I couldn’t look him in the eye anymore. I sat with all the ease of a whore in church. I giggled more often and louder than than I could help. Sometimes things just don’t fit the way they used to, and that can make a person squirm. I imagine Porter felt at ease the last time I saw him though. Even at a bar in Manhattan, he was still at home in himself, like he always was. His very southern way of being stuck out like a sore thumb in midtown. A grown man strutted by us in nothing but a pink thong an tiara, but it was Porter who people stared at. “Wrong is a relative concept” he said, “Weird is what you make it out to be.”

When I was 17 and he was 25, he looked just the same, but more God-like. I drove my Jeep through most of the southern states to his parent’s home on lake Apalachicola. It was there he first seemed important to me. He always said “please” and “thank you” even as his party guests destroyed the living room. “That’s just good manners” he said. On fourth of July weekend, when all the campers went home, the counselors crashed his parents couches without asking. It was our Saturday and it was sanctuary. An adolescent nirvana, a moment frozen in time without any children to look after, but certainly without any adults present either. To us, that weekend was the truth, it was the light, it was what we thought adulthood must feel like- but in retrospect was the purest form of childhood. Porter was probably enough years older than the rest of us to have known the difference, but if so, he didn’t say anything. He probably wanted us to milk that baby bliss for as many moments longer as possible. That was the kind of guy he was. He worshiped a tall tale, and would rather you be joyful than enlightened. And that was the the kind of secret thing people appreciated about him.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Julie Mara giggling like a little girl and touching the forearm of the the lifeguard, Adam Zimm. She splashed a bit of beer on the carpet before sheepishly following him by the hand into Mrs. Porter’s upstairs bedroom. Evelyn Porter had hung the savior a second, third, fourth, and fifth time in her living room, dining room, guest room, kitchen window, and most prominently above her four-post bed with a 12-foot painting of white Jesus. When Porter threw parties we suspended the holiness of 4 out 5 of them momentarily in a coat closet. Except of course the upstairs oil painting, which would require much more than a coat closet to conceal. I sipped a plastic red cup of non-denominational whiskey as Porter approached me from the masses. I never understood what he saw in me at all, but never dared to question it either for fear of finding out. I wish I could recall anything we talked about. I mostly remember his stare, and how very much taller and older than me he seemed. And I remember he made me nervous in a good way. Whatever it was he went on about, it was probably a lie, and most likely a wonderful one. I used to love that kind of thing. 

An otherworldly shriek rang out from Mrs.Porter’s bedroom. I was sure someone had died, and quietly noted the CPR certified among us, as well as the intoxication levels of each. Julie raced hysterically crying from the bedroom, down the stairs, and out the front door of the lake house. The party went pregnant with pause as Adam hobbled to the bannister as if he’d seen ghost. He stood before the congregation, a sea of teenage eyeballs demanded and dreaded an explanation. “It’s Jesus man...he fell.” Adam glanced at his feet in shame. “On top of us man. Jesus fell on us... while we were... you know.” Adam let out a sigh of guilt before descending the staircase and darting out the door after Julie. It was beside the point entirely but I wondered what base they had gotten to before Jesus stopped them.

Porter nodded without wavering. He was the anecdote to all things hysterics. His calming, sage, 25-year-old presence assuring us that the Lord would forgive us. And we believed it. He placed his hand on my shoulder and softly floated upstairs to survey the damage, leaving me in the corner with my thoughts as the party eventually faded back to casual blur. 

I never met anyone like Porter again as long I’ve lived. People thought of him as something more than a just a man, and so did I. Looking back, I imagine it was an awful lot of weight for one guy to hold up on his own though. He was like Atlas, but just for Alabama— which is a lot less to hold than an entire globe, but we weren’t not heavy either. New York let’s you off the hook that way, you can just hide in it. Sometimes I think it easier to be part of the blur than a God among men in a small pond. If Porter were still alive, I’d call him and ask how heavy it really was.

[freakypanther]

Can you write a smell?

DRY ERASE MARKER. Noxious ecstasy, the kind of thing you’re not supposed to love but do. Like gasoline’s younger less potent cousin. Both sharp and evil, the stuff of CEOs, and fermented lemons. Sour gone bad, so bad it’s good. 

MY POTTED BASIL PLANT. Almost mint, and not quite licorice. Too faint to be Italian- clearly born of city window light rather than fields of olives or cypress trees. It’s pungent, but there’s something off about it. An herb out of water. Forever an immigrant. European elegance with a Brooklyn accent. 

THE F TRAIN. Communal, if humanity had a scent. Pheromones from all four corners of the world. Earthy on the uptake, with the slight aftertaste of bologna, and just a hint of cumin. It’s at once familiar and unsettling. Undertones of plastic and brown paper bags- if you close your eyes it might as well be a high school cafeteria.

[freakypanther]

How to feel small.

This summer I started surfing. I wasn’t really very good at it. I’m still not really very good at it in the grand scheme of things. But still, like most things athletic, I picked it up faster than the average amateur. It’s one big whopping cliche. Girl gets bathing suit. Girl gets board. Girl takes ONE lesson, grows hair impossibly long, and spends all her time talking about the “waves” and “vibes”. But there’s something to the hype of surfer life - and I think I can finally, sort of, articulate it. At the end of the day, surfing just makes you feel small. And that’s what’s so big about it. 

Our lives condition us to beleive that we are the most important things in them. That this is all just one grand saga in which we are the heroes. And while that is true, in a sense, it is also quite hazardous. Generalized anxiety seems to be the common cold of our time. Almost everyone I know has at some point in their life struggled with panic attacks, depression, and dissatisfaction of their lives in general. All in all, it’s a reaction to the very humbling realization that we are totally and completely out of control- of literally everything. The sadness, the gloominess, the fear, it’s a collection of symptoms that stem from expecting things to go one way, and then they don’t. I think it’s hard for most people to let go of what they think SHOULD have happened. And that is totally understandable. It’s counterintuitive to put your hopes, and goals, and desires, and brains in the backseat. It’s feels weird, and wrong, and scary. 

But maybe we’ve just been taking ourselves a little too seriously in general. We let our thoughts get so big and important, that we forget to think. From that self-centric vantage point, we often don’t see what is so obvious: WE ARE SO TINY. In terms of the universe, we are specs... on a crumb... on a molecule... of dust. Our lives are at once so insignificant, and entirely everything. Despite our best efforts and grandest plans, we really don’t control this shit. The universe asks nothing of us except to exist with it. And if you want it, and if you need it, there’s quite a bit of relief in that realization. 

You don’t have to be the cruise director. You can just ride. You don’t have to be the best surfer on the beach. Just pop up. The conditions don’t have to be perfect. Just see where this wave takes you. 

Letting go of what you THINK should happen, will often open you up to what is actually going to happen. And most of the time, that’s the better option.

The most striking thing about paddling out, is the sudden realization that you are at the mercy of something quite large, and more powerful than you. The break doesn’t care how badly you wanna stand up. In fact, the ocean isn’t really phased by your presence at all. When a wall of water comes at you, you have no choice but to surrender. If the wave goes left, you go left. If it’s done breaking, so are you. And perhaps the most surprising thing about leaning into this total lack of control, is you’ll suddenly feel quite powerful. Because when you stop fighting the current, you become it. 

And you stand up. And you look out. And you cut left. And the wind hits your face. And you remember “oh yeah, I AM the hero of this story.” All because you had the courage to feel small. 

[freakypanther]

A city we’re still willing to pay for and not totally sure why.

The only thing you can count on New York City to do is change its mind. With a population composed mostly of transplants, and a real estate situation you could call “fluid” at best, the city as a concept is amazingly transient. Maybe this is what drives so many of its inhabitants to drink. Faced with the idea that nothing is forever, they resign themselves to owning nothing but the glass in front of them, the person beside them, and the barstool they currently occupy. Terms like “tannin” and “vintage” are usually reserved for west coasters, but there’s none more proficient in spirit than a gothamist — if only for hours logged in the field.

I think you become a New Yorker the day you stop hearing the background noise. The day you can carry on a conversation in a bar despite the circus of suits, ambulances, glass crashing and cackling that will inevitably fill the cell-sized room to which you have willingly brought yourself. The day you can comfortably go to work after having consumed two or more cocktails the night before. And the day you know what you drink. For me it was a Gin and Tonic. Easy. Classic. Clean. It transcends seasons and they always have it. There’s also something vaguely old world about it, which is something New Yorkers crave more than anything in a city drowning in change. At the bar, I’m a G&T. At my buddy Piet’s house, I’m whatever Piet is having.

The son of Kenyan and Dutch immigrants and the product of Brooklyn, Piet pours me something as ambiguous and mouthy as himself. We perch in the open window that is little more than a thin membrane separating us from the stumbly citizens that float slowly home through the concrete veins that are the streets, and the arteries that are the avenues, because like us, the city too is tipsy. And though that familiar alchemy that only the summer, a bad weather friend, and great cocktails can produce has silently filled each of us, we know that we’re drunk in a New York way. It’s not garish like being drunk in Las Vegas, not smarmy like Los Angeles, not as innocent as Italy, or as easy as the South.

It’s a weathered kind of feeling, bone dry on the palate with a finish that tastes like Thursday, pairs well with Friday, and looks like you’ve seen some shit. Bold and warm, with the scent of metallic potential. Notes of sweat, swishers, capitalism, fifty-dollar bills at a time, taxi leather, the Hasidic man that won’t shake your hand, the French bulldog you swear you’ve seen before, the celebrity that didn’t quite faze you, curry, and the faintest whiff of uncertainty. 14.5% alcohol by Volume.  

[freakypanther]

Experiments in Fiction

Joey looked right at me, not through me. He was at an age where his eyes could still meet mine without it meaning anything. They glittered like two saltwater infinity pools- in stark contrast to the city water in which he waded. His eyes were premium and perfect, the boyish frame that surrounded them, fairly laughable by comparison.

 From all four corners of the concrete, American flesh heaved in the August sun. The soft fatty patches of girls who’d been blessed with early puberty were stuffed in string bikinis they didn’t seem to have yet earned. Their breasts swayed in quiet and sophisticated desperation, overflowing gently from their spandex onto the damp city concrete. Their mouths curved with the slyness of salesman, their eyes lit with the innocence of a child. It was a devious kind of coy. “It’s Nabvakov’s nightmare.” Joey whispered to me in waist-deep water. I didn’t get it, but giggled anyways. 

The scent of chlorine fought with the visual of a dozen baking, half- naked strangers. Chemicals didn’t exist comfortably in the same space as desire. The noxious mixture fueled a tension that felt unspoken, but blindingly obvious to everyone involved. Children not yet crushed by the weight of burgeoning body parts wore out their tiny frames with abandon. Their knobby knees writhing to stay afloat, their electric hands wriggling in revelry, their shrills like dime-store party horns sinking beneath the aquatics. A zoo of inflatable creatures danced weightlessly on the waterline, removed from the reality of the city pool. Zebras, monkeys, and a neon pink donut filled to the brim with the hot breath of children, threatening to burst. The wet vinyl swelled and puckered at the seams like the girls in bikinis wished they could. 

The softer seams of a candy apple colored one piece hugged the body of a lifeguard in curves that mimicked the lines of a luxury car- graceful, gleaming, athletic. A boy drifted weightlessly, belly up on the buoyancy of a elephant. He stared on her with awe as she whipped a lanyard around her finger both ways and back again. The physics of the whole thing-hypnotic. She swiveled her index in a manner quite Fibbonacci, a primal coiling motion designed to entrance the gazes of men everywhere, but of the city pool dads in particular. Her non-chalance carried with it a certain kind of power that only people in uniform can embody. The men gazed on her with desire both delicious and deviant. The boy looked look in a kind of elysium, worried only of the whistle she threatened to blow that would signal the end of the 12 and under swim block. His eyes widened same way he’d stare at a man in the same uniform, breathless- with the ability to view her as something to aspire to, ever fear, rather than something to keep. 

Oblivious divorcées lit cigarettes from the comfort of their plastic lawn chairs. Three or four finite line segments began to breathe as live things in their skeleton hands. With the flick of a lighter, they’d give birth to it- instantly, the smoke snaking seductively from the end of the ember. The delicate, pretty white rolling papers evaporated in real time as if driven by a metronome, pushing towards the leathery crease between Mrs.Hutton’s middle and index fingers. As the embers crawled ever toward their destiny, the wind carried a spark west toward the shallow end. The tiny toxic firefly singed itself out in a puddle the size of a footprint, and the temperature of bathwater. The moment quite fleeting, the day quite mundane, the sun burning out hot in the distance, giving way for summer’s last breath. 

I gasped in the same moment, collecting a mouthful of breath, trapping it in my cheeks as I sunk below the waterline. My eyes peeled wide with the stinging cool of the chemical liquid that kissed them. His eyes stared right back at mine, his legs crossed like a pretzel. We hovered like two swamis in the aquamarine void, both fighting to submerge last from our blissful surreality. Both just stubborn enough to believe our bodies were beyond the act of breathing. The grand delusion of youth and competition suggesting that we’d live forever. For the first time I noticed the sharp cut of Joe’s jawline, distinguishing itself even through 4ft of water. The ballooning in my mouth began to taste stale as my nostrils released bubbles every three seconds or so against my will. Joe locked eyes with me while doing the same. Both of us struggling to sustain ourselves in the simple bliss beneath the waterline, for as long as physically possible. 

[freakypanther]

Bone and Bread pt. 2

Fourteen 10-karat, princess-cut paves dotted his single shot, antique Remington Rider. Hank was what we in Suffox referred to as “Loud Money”. Everyone had dealt with the recession, each in their own way. The many got married, the few moved abroad, and some shot squirrels at close range. i wouldn’t call him angry, just frustrated- like the rest of us. I wouldn’t call him violent, just rural. Most people don’t understand that distinction.