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[mollyohmolly]

30th may 2018

[mollyohmolly]

Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor (2016)

(2014 & 2015 & 2016 maybe -- home on 20th & South Van Ness, SF)

Must I, must I go back to that dreary winter to understand how I got here and maybe who I am now that I am here, if I’m anyone at all, if this is anywhere at all? It was two years ago now. I’d just returned from a few months of ambling through Europe in search of a vague nothing and that’s what I found, a vague nothing. A deeper understanding of just how shallow my character dwelled. I returned with two pink eyes and hair matted nearly to dreadlocks and cuts and scrapes and bruises and some other wound entirely that couldn’t be washed away or sewn up or tossed aside. I’d converted all of my dollars along the way into euros or kronur. When I returned, I had places to go, but nowhere really to be. So I took a tour of all the places I could end up. I sobbed in my mother’s bed and she set up a bailout, but I was 26 and had just seen what I thought the world could or might be and couldn’t move back into my parents home. So I took a loan and went back to Seattle and stayed with an old friend while I collected old paychecks and my dog and my belongings and some amends, where I could at least. But I couldn’t stay. So I flew back to San Francisco, the most expensive city in the country then and still now, overstayed my welcome at an old hookups house and then spent a month in my best friends cold bed, drunk and damaged and wholly pathetic. We passed the holidays in dive bars in the Mission because I couldn’t afford the ticket. I could only afford to pay their house’s hundred dollar electric bill, signed: “Thank you for having room for me at your inn.” The dog went back to my parent’s home in the suburbs. I signed a one-month sublet for $900 with two amiable, well-traveled East Bay bros a few days before I got unceremoniously sacked from my unprofitable job at a music venue. New Years, 2014. Surrounded, alone. A strange thing. A drifter. A mess wholly of my own volition. Oh lord, I didn’t let myself forget it. Was I as awful to be around as I was to be? Yet through it all, the belief my mother hates most of all but also unknowingly instilled in me: I always land on my feet. The sublet on the south end of the Mission was just big enough for a bed, an air mattress the bay bros provided. Alongside it, I placed my two suitcases I was living out of, filled only with hair products and a few books and clothing that was become more and more snug. I was unemployed now, rootless, futureless, without cash, not without the love and mercy of friends. A sandwich here, a beer there. Not good for the soul, though. Maybe I lost my sense of self. I tossed and turned in fitful bits, the plastic pulling beneath me. The sublet ended and February, that February, sure it changed everything but it felt awful in every way. I wound my way back through my crash pads: a few days at Laura’s, a week at Todd’s while he was in Portland, a few days in Dana’s bed while SHE was in Portland, a week back in the sublet in one of the Bay bros beds while he, a man I’d begun sleeping with somehow at some point, was on vacation on the Mexican coast. I stumbled into a job, a few shifts bartending at a restaurant in the startup corridor of SoMa. It was enough, I guess. I drank at Uptown, a dive bar on the seediest street of the Mission, and I found a 7-minute song on the jukebox that I inflicted on the other sad sack that were swigging cheapo beers in the bar light. Make me a pallet on your floor, this reedy voice droned. Then Dana made me a pallet on her floor. The middle room of her apartment, for a grand a month. Israel Veintidos of Madrid was taking his goatee and his camera and his mesmerizing, baby-faced girlfriend to give New York a go. He was leaving behind a narrow, sun-drenched room in the very center of the Mission district, and if I wanted it, it was mine. I had a home. I had a live-in best friend and a cat I was allergic to and a wildly eccentric roommate named Heather and her nervous, obese chihuahua Bug. I had a room with two massive single pane windows and floor-to-ceiling mirrored sliding glass doors and a rooftop with a panorama of the fog clouds meandering outside of our sunniest microclimate. I had a key and a yard and a mailbox. I had a bed, a real mattress atop a wooden pallet Israel had constructed. Soon I had light, via a chandelier touch lamp I purchased at an Asian warehouse on Mission Street. I had little else. I bought sheets, pillows. Eventually I bought a desk, that was far larger than I had anticipated. So I had a place in the world sorted but none in my mind, and I can’t recall much of those first few months. They were sad and probably desperate, still. I slept and I worked sometimes and I saved somewhat, and I drank, and I drank, and I cried probably. I had lost all interest in sex, only ever had it in a sloppy haze I knew I would never remember with people I knew I could hate if I needed to. I was uninsured, unmedicated. My weight was ballooning, and every few weeks I seemed to be purchasing the cheapest pair of black jeans at H&M in the next size up. Heather had a tall blonde boyfriend, and they slept with the door open; Dana was seeing this terrible guy who was all wrong for her, but was still someone to make breakfast in the morning. Sometimes I didn’t even know the name of whatever guy I ended up after last call. I only knew it wouldn’t ever matter. “Are you black?” I asked a guy in a dark room somewhere on the outskirts of the city, Excelsior maybe, when my hand drifted up towards his afro of hair.   “Do I know you from somewhere?” I asked a bearded man staring unabashedly into my corner of a dive bar. Stone-faced and monotone, he responded, “Ally, we’ve made out.” I abandoned one date for another guy in the bar. I went out for meals with nice men from the middle of America with thinning patches of hair or lousy startup ideas or fleets of drones. I saw the cobbled together lives of men in their twenties and thirties in San Francisco, bike racks and sunglass collections and creatine powders and growing collections of art pieces without any cohesion. Sometimes we’d go for it again or maybe again or maybe for a little while until it petered out, but other times there was no pretense. “Okay. Bye.” Maybe I wouldn’t know where I was until I stumbled into the daylight. “See you around, I hope,” a man regarded me after a drive home in a goofy Honda Element, yet still I slammed the door behind me. I knew to avoid dating apps after midnight, when men would try to order up women like pizzas: I’ll send an Uber to bring you to me. Too bleak, even at my lowest, and it got low. I woke up smelling like old spliffs in the loft bed of a raccoon-eyed man who had just ghosted Dana, in a converted warehouse on some Tuesday. These things always seemed to happen on Tuesdays. I went for bottled beers with a good Christian salesman from Colorado just to spurn him. Did he believe in evolution? Dinosaurs? Gay marriage? Well then, what about premarital sex? “Can you cherrypick from the catechism?” I asked him smugly. A French man in town for a few days to get “acquired” lifted my shirt and breathlessly commented, “Wow, good, you have huge tits, wonderful.” To say my self-worth was on the floor would be too kind. Sure, I rationalized that I wasn’t who I wanted to be for the person I wanted to be with, but in the meantime I don’t think I needed to be SUCH a garbage human. In there, there must be some self-help mantra about not being worthy of your own happiness. There were good things, good humans, even some quasi-relationships in there, but I’m indulging in a parade of pity here. Yet I’m straying. This is about a home. A two bedroom apartment in the Mission that had been converted into three. Dana and Heather signed it years ago, right before I went back to Seattle and then to Europe and then fall apart. Hardwood floors, a balcony. Only one bathroom, dim and the color of a bandaid with painted tile. They never met the landlord, a stockbroker in New York; he left the keys with the clerks at Mr. Pickles, the sandwich shop downstairs. Mira Rancho housing: brown shingled, on the corner of 20th and South Van Ness. Built in 1982, three years shy of rent control, not old enough to be detailed and charming, not new enough to be modern. A skin-toned lobby with a skin-toned Cezanne print. The world’s slowest elevator tacked together with the cheapest materials, bluish PARQUET, skin-toned wall panels, yellowing plastic grates on the ceiling. Our apartment, 401, on the top floor. Four more doors to condo-owning, entitled fucks of neighbors who resent us, the only renters. A floor above, roof access, the whole of San Francisco stretched out. I spent my last night of my first go-around in San Francisco there before moving away, knowing I was fucking up by leaving, correct, too late. Dana had split the living room in half and erected a wall actually drilled into the ceiling and floor and filled with drywall and covered in beige fleur-de-lis fabric. It blocked off any light from the balcony, so the living room was always dismal. They’d decorated with a turquoise couch and a bad rug and four large rectangular panels of Bellas Artes prints of women, and Heather’s mother had sent up an unfortunate plaque that read, in Comic Sans: “You’re not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.” Heather believed in gold and opulence and being the center of various Mission men’s lives, worked at a Michelin-starred restaurant, and was studying to become a sommelier. There were flashcards, colored in maps, and endless bottles of wonderful French wines poured into massive glassware with paper-thin rims. She was a lunatic, yet she was never boring. One New Years, we walked home after all the steam had been let out of the night, right before dawn. “I know I’m hard to get to know,” she opened up, but that was it, the end of the thought. Sometimes you’d ask her a question and she’d just choose not to answer, as though the question just never existed. She’d put on a sequined pant suit and spin: “Isn’t it STUNNING?” She was striking, womanly. She walked with a slight hunch and very heavy on her feet, with a thin waist and wide hips. She ran all the damn time. She dyed her hair a muted blonde and painted her lips a bright sienna and would put together outfits that always seemed to have one element too many, a skirt over pants maybe. We all took a trip to San Diego, where Dana and Heather had first met. I’d say become friends but can unknowable Heather really be a friend to anyone at all? Dana and I meandered through the mountains and the desert and the valley first and off to even the worst of Mexico, but we also spent Dana’s birthday in their Seattle. Eventually Heather decided to up and go, right back to San Diego, in with an old boyfriend with a house and a company. We contemplated overcharging the room to some tech rando, but ultimately we rented it out to Betsy. This was a mistake. Betsy had come into the fray while I was off on my voyage, and fully integrated by the time I came back, in bands with Laura and also with Todd. We bonded one night smoking outside of the 500 Club after everyone else had called it a night, and from there we were friends. Weekly frozen-marg happy hours at West of Pecos, some adventures, Napa, horse camp, Inkwells, she decided we’d be friends and so we were friends. Even when she was booted from Laura’s band for being difficult. I got a lot of Betsy at once. She broke up with her boyfriend and then we entered into a lot of situations at once: trying to start a photo booth business, traveling through Sweden and Ireland and Iceland, and then she moved in. Oh, we couldn’t be more different. So passive, so active. The trip had been it’s own sort of disaster. She showed up for the flight an hour late and blacked out drunk, and that set a strange tone. We missed trains, cabs, nearly planes. She put her needs fully first. She stole a fucking water bottle from a castle in Ireland, the dumbest theft in modern history. She fell asleep in a plane passenger’s meal. I’d go on but it’s just a laundry list of silly, inconsiderate acts. Implicit in all of this, I should add, is that Betsy and I can make each other better people. We challenge each other and it’s a pain to navigate but I’ll always think it’s a worthwhile endeavour. Dana didn’t quite have that same hopeful incentive to work with Betsy. By now, I’d settled in. I’d flown up to Seattle over a Labor Day weekend and picked up all of the garbage I’d hoarded in storage for over a year. I drove a giant truck down the interstate, hey, a task Stephen and I had planned to do over two years before yet never did. I stayed a night in the college town of Bend, Oregon, and when the concierge drove me to the main drag, he asked with worry, “You’re just going to go...eat pizza...alone?” At a rest stop a woman in a halter top disappeared into a thicket of trees behind a gas station and returned alarmed by the presence of my truck, her eyes shining like a spooked raccoon. None of this is important. I picked up the ten-year-old mattress my grandma bought me for college, some bookshelves, 18 liquor boxes of books, endless piles of outdated and outsized clothing in endless somewhat broken sets of luggage, stacks of blankets. I bought a dresser and I decorated a wall with thrift store gold frames. I put up a calendar, even, the last free one left at the hardware store, so I folded over the impeccable woman in bikinis. My parents shipped my dog back in January, and I began winding him through the city streets he hated, with the noises and the smells and the riffraff. I had made myself at home. So when our lease was up and our rent jacked up by hundreds of dollars, I wasn’t going anywhere. Dana was, Betsy was. They both had boyfriends to plan their uncertain futures with. I didn’t. I’d gone through a Sri Lankan CFO and a French startup founder and a sober fireman who I mosied away from when they pushed relationships. Yet it was what I fucking wanted, to come home to somebody, a plus one, a comrade, an adventurer. Eh, somebody isn’t anybody. Dana moved in with Nick, Heather’s ex, into the Tenderloin against everyone’s naysaying. Bedbugs and drugs, we warned. Never we’ll say we told you so but wait a few months...we told you so. Betsy moved all the way out to Oakland, an apartment I’ve never been to still, with her sweet swaggy boyfriend Jon, Brogan’s best friend, a 25 year old who has never lived away from his parents, let alone with a girl. Then, suddenly, I had two rooms to fill. I put up a Craigslist ad and met a few strangers. Heather and then Betsy’s room was vast and bright and had a view of the Bay Bridge from its bay windows, but the hard sell was the alcove. Dana had dismantled the makeshift wall at Betsy’s demands, so we were literally working with no wall at all, which Betsy filled up during showing with a stack of Uhaul-branded moving boxes. I showed it to a sweet, sort of forgettable Indian girl. Betsy sent over a radical, genderqueer, feminist and “probesity” performance artist, who showed up with her mom and they commenced breathlessly grilling me about the lease and the landlord and the terms. Immediately after, a chipper business bro came by in running gear and I briefly fantasized moving him and the activist in just to watch them interact. I’d staved off the landlords congenial threats to “check out” the apartment. “Haven’t seen it in years!” he wrote. J. Michael mostly corresponded in brief, to-the-point emails. While at home for my sister’s wedding reception, I met him for a few Stella’s at Schiller’s bar in the Lower East Side, directly on the corner between his apartment and the friend’s apartment I was staying at. He was midforties, sort of sloppily dressed, but with some trendy sunglasses. He invited me to a house party he’d be throwing that night. We are not friends, bro, I wanted to say, but went with, “Yes, it’s a shame I have to get upstate!” Now I have a face behind the nearly four grand cash I drop off at a Chase bank every month. I purchased a set of three sort of gorgeous bookshelves off of Craigslist for only a hundo, and I drove down to the South Bay in a Zipvan to pick them up from a kind man who helped me load them in like Tetris blocks, far heavier than I could have anticipated. Got stuck in stalled traffic on the way up through dreary Silicon Valley, and the strong and reliable neighbor I’d been hate-screwing had to get into work. David, a total yet adorable weirdo I’d been sort of seeing when I lived in that sublet that sad January, texted me as he does in strange intervals over the years. What are you doing right now? I wrote. Can you help with some bookcases? And then David was some of this summer. I met a young French girl on an engineering internship, 21, heart of gold, brown hair and bright eyes. She was staying at a hostel while househunting, and because she hadn’t booked a long enough stay, she had to move her bags from room to room each night. She came to see the big room, which I’d put up for $1500 to subsidize my rent, but wanted the alcove for the balcony, so she could be French and smoke. “Come, please, just go get your bags and move in tonight,” I insisted without a second thought. Next was a cute, sort of irritating magazine feature writer turned copywriter, but was probably too cute and too irritating to live with, and moments after he left there was knock on the door. Eva Levy had returned with her bags. I love Eva, it’s simple. She’s everything we are told is captivating about French women. She’s vibrant and kind and joyous. She’s beautiful in a pared-down way, but can easily with a flick of eyeliner or some rouge be transformed. She’s young and driven and wise. Especially, wise. With a simple turn of phrase, there’s truth. She’s realistic. She says beautiful things without meaning to. Of an entitled bro who took her attention for granted: “He expects life to give him anything he wants. But life is not fair.” Her internship is managing a production line at a fresh-food delivery service in Richmond, a seedy area where employees pull guns on other employees in the parking lot. The first night, she cooks steaks for me and her and David. “How do you like your steaks cooked?” she asks, and we all look at each other for a prolonged moment not wanting to inflict our tastes on others, but thankfully we all agree that if you’re going to eat a steak it ought to be rare. We sit around the little spray-painted table I brought back from Seattle, the legs of which have been chewed down by a young Brogan. Within a week, she’s crawling into my bed to discuss our previous nights, the way Dana used to. Everyone should live within shouting distance of a great friend. Her magic dress fails her one night; it’s a testament to her youthful vibrance that this dress doesn’t really flatter her small frame, and it was never actually the dress at all. So yes I love Eva from Versailles and her sweet, tiny French parents, Bertrand and Marie, and her charming brother Nicolas, all of whom come to stay with us at some point or another, and even the day Eva and Nicolas and I spend at a BDSM festival on Folsom Street. The apartment is very centrally located, IN THE HEART OF THE CITY I say in ads. Equidistant from the 16th & 24th street BARTS, I add. The Mission was once an Italian neighborhood, I hear, but mostly it’s known as the Latino quarter. There’s bodegas and taquerias and mercados and travel agencies that will get you to Latin America and/or back and most of Mission Street’s signs are written in Spanish. We are two blocks off of Mission, with Capp Street wedged in, sort of a gang corridor. We are on 20th, which is where unfathomably gorgeous street prostitutes mingle in skintight outfits from the Direct-4-U. Then blocks away, there’s Valencia, where every good seems to sell for several hundred dollars and everyone’s ripped from a Noah Baumbach film and all the lenswear is stylishly rounded and people line up in droves for just about everything, from ice cream to bubble tea. And then from there’s Guerrero and then Dolores Park, forever undergoing construction now it seems, where everyone congregates for park beers and to be seen in a carefree group setting. 16th Street is a younger corridor. There’s Casanova and Delerium and I think even a few dancier clubs that you only really go to if you’re coked out of your mind. 24th is a beautiful stretch of road, with not one but three bookshops, a vast expanse of ethnographically sound murals, and Latin shops, and peppered among these is the dive bars that the harder-luck drinkers go after all those years reveling on 16th wash them up. For awhile there was the Attic, right across from the BART station, heavily vandalized and with a persistent stench of vomit. I should have taken up prayer when it closed. “I JUST DROPPED MY SCARF AT THE ATTIC” I texted David. “It’s a goner,” he replied. There’s Pop’s, Phone Booth, Doc’s Clock and Mission Bar. On 22nd, there’s yet another string of bars. Our road, 20th Street, is probably a whitewashed road of privilege. If I head west toward Potrero on the road, which I do daily with my dog, here is what I pass: a pilates reformer studio, a craft-based startup,  a high-end hair salon, an imported beer bar, a messenger bag shop, several startup offices, a corporate green foods caterer, a yoga studio - we are one block in - a Russian history “museum,” a fancy cocktail bar, a fancy coffeeshop, a fancy “salumeria,” a Michelin-starred restaurant, a rock climbing gym, place that sells olive oil and handmade pasta. Yesterday I was walking to the Alamo Drafthouse, around the bend - they serve you pilsners and food via servers who creep around the cinema like ghouls - and I passed a beautifully restored Victorian thickly varnished in white paint with “Accordians P. Greub” etched into the glass in gold typeface, and some very well-clad and aging dilletantes milling on the frigid (SF standards) night. Unmarked, probably invite only. There was indeed a man playing an accordian, dressed in what looked like a pharmacist’s smock. Upstairs, through the glass windowpanes, I could see a man handling, somehow, columns of fire and several glass bottles. This is San Francisco at its peak. Bars build bars into bars for a more exclusive realm. Parties are thrown in “spaces.” Nothing good seems to be going on at surface level. Adults live twenty-deep in cutesy “hacker houses” where ideas percolate or resonate or synergize. A Belgian woman lists a portion of her own room for a grand and a half: “We can hang a thick curtain between us for privacy.” I try to write about all of this for awhile, operating under the adage “The only way out is through.” But it’s a narrative I don’t care much for. It’s just the only one we’ve got. “If I need another month,” Betsy -- who is failing to find an East Bay home with a pool, and has just broken her foot breaking into one -- tells me one summer day, “I want the room of my choice and the lowest rent.” “No,” I respond. I am chill to a very fine point, and Betsy has found it. The last guy I see it is a finance bro from LA. Industry family, too - a cinematagropher and a screenwriter and a sister my age who works for Dreamworks. His uncle was Beaver Cleaver. “Was it weird growing up in LA?” I ask on my roof. He’s taken aback. “I’ve never once thought about that.” LA was his Normal. Kellen’s 25, a Notre Dame alumni. He’s tall, dark hair, the bluest eyes. He reminds me (and then my mom) of a high school friend, so I’m endeared to him artificially. His voice is low and deep and monotone. He paintballs fanatically, he snowboards. At first glance, my first thought, is that’s a face made for a stunning mugshot. I categorized him as funny, which is odd now because I can only remember one joke. Yet there’s something else. It’s when you can recognize a bit of yourself in someone else, something inexplicable. Maybe we have more in common than we know. Things reveal themselves. Snowboarding, sciatica. Mental illness. He’s bipolar, he tells us, sweating in a chair while Eva and I accept this. His father’s an alcoholic and I uncork bottles of wine on the regular. He’s intelligent, dilligently focused. I haven’t given this enough thought so for now I can’t say what it is. I should give this thought, sometime, maybe. Some thoughts for now. We are both self-centered. But well-meaning. Certainly my intentions are better than my behavior. We both recently took the trite dabble into Europe, and I think it meant the same things to us. And I think maybe we both have the same battles with who we can be versus who we are, even if in actuality we are very different humans. All I can say for sure is that I saw a bit of myself reflected back to me on my roof that summer day when Kellen came by and though nothing since has really validated that assumption, something resonated then, and I don’t regret the choice. Maybe that’s interesting, maybe that’s silly: who we are, who we could be, who we get to be. I got into the leftovers from New Years: a bottle of Cazadores Reposado, a case of Negra Modelo. This was all six months ago, which seems like a strange timeframe, because six months ago I was still a mess. Although, also six days ago, six minutes ago, six months from now. In the spring a world of opportunity blossomed. An editor thought I could write. An advertising executive thought I could sell. I thought I could leave. I went to New York and Nashville and then Austin. Texas! That’s something that was real to me six months ago. I thought I could up and go. I resigned myself to thinking I was the master of my own demise. I was the awful human who trekked around Europe and came up emptier than ever, and then scrambled through a series of iffy living situations and then settled into a sort of imposed solitude. If I were going to live this sad sack existence, I didn’t have to do it in the most expensive city in America and maybe the world, did I? In Austin I could have a pool, a car, land to roam. I could dance at honkeytonks and swim in the crick and order smoked meat by the pound, and mediocrity would just sort of be like, okay, you know? I could get by, I know I could. Austin is a place where you can buy a house for 100 grand and be in a handful of fledgling bands and drink three-dollar pours of bad liquor and wake up the next day knowing it’s fine if that’s your tomorrow. I was free-floating in the realm of opportunities. I lifted that ideal from my neurotic stoner Italian coworker Satya, but it was the prevailing them of the summer. Then the bruises appeared. Not bruise. A constellation of bruises. When I ran with my dog, they lit up a bright red and faded to a dismal bruise. What was it? The alcohol? Rough sex with a seedy partner? General lack of vitamins? Then I got health insurance. I went back on my anxiety meds and the amphetamines (for better, for worse, til death do us part) and the birth control and for awhile I drank less and ate better and realized water was the panacea for all my ills probably. After a handful of specialists and frantic internet searches, still, what was it? Leukemia? Lupus? Some new STD yet to be determined? What really happened: my body finally matched my mind. There is nothing seriously wrong with my life, and it is salvageable. But it isn’t well. I haven’t been taking care of it. And it’s showing. I’m aging and it’s unavoidable. My body sent up a flair. When my landlord sent a new lease with a manageable rent, what should I have done? I’ve been far better, but not lately, not for the past few years. I’m in a stable relationship. I have my dog and all of my belongings collected in one place. I have incredible friends. I’m in a city I don’t love exactly but it returns the sentiment. The number on the scale is only tilting downward now. Had I hit 200, what would I have done? I do simple things I should have always done - I wash my face and I take my pills and I slather my skin in moisturizer now and then. I left whiskey behind, I deleted Reddit. I’m trying, and that’s way more than I can say for a long time. I need a therapist, sure, I need to work through some bullshit on my own. There’s not a single person on god’s good earth I feel a specific and personal hatred for. I’m trying. One day, sure, maybe the veil will list and this will all feel sad and weird too. And then I’ll write “In 2016 I was fooling myself.” I have a home, and it’s mine. I bought a blue rug that was bluer than I expected and all my old, wilting furniture is around. I collected a bunch of art deco glassware or Collins glasses or wine goblets at thrift stores and the plants are even getting watered. There’s walls are blank because we still haven’t gotten around to it. I’m home and I’m at my desk. I put a pad on the chair for my nerve pain. I put a new white orchid out. There’s clutter but there will always be clutter. I covered my bookshelves with white lace to put my mind at ease at night. I’m in the place where I’ll write for the next 12 months, it seems. I showed the house to a kindly French engineer named Stéphane with his pretty French engineer girlfriend Cecil. Kellen’s home, glum. Brogan’s lounging in bed. I keep getting it in my head that checking off this endless lists of task will fulfill me, will make me more a human when it only ever makes me feel less. I should end this with a sentiment but I lack one. No man ever steps in the same river twice because it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man, maybe. Where will I be on the 8th of January next year or in ten years or will I be or will it matter or will this drivel even withstand the next few weeks let alone decades or will I, aged 28, kind of a loser, just have to make something of myself now?

[mollyohmolly]

the first half of age 26

(now five years ago, last half of 2013)

26 overall: not a banner year. I briefly toured a bit of the world, and I’ll keep that as my solace, but overall this will be remembered as a year of grave missteps. And will I ever learn? Yet to be determined. For the sadsack rundown, this year I: -gained 40+ pounds -moved back to Seattle for a sad, sort of humiliating summer -got two telephones stolen off of me -had a few falling outs -remained single for the duration -did not advance my career (read: begin) at all -drank myself into oblivion many, many nights -spent a stint homeless and broke -got fired -borrowed money from my folks -shipped my dog off to my folks since I was too much of a deadbeat to take care of him -am now laid up in my room because I tumbled down a hill blind drunk and rolled my ankle out and don’t have health insurance There were beautiful moments nestled in there, but they are momentary delusions at best. Began my year in maybe my favorite place on earth, a stretch of coastline along California Highway 1. I was living in a hippie home in Lower Pacific Heights in San Francisco with a ragtag group of weirdos, and I was working at a rock venue in the city’s trendiest/most rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. I was sleeping with a chatty blonde boy -- the lights tech -- half because we laughed a lot and I was lonely at the time, and somewhat because he lived around the corner from the venue. I convinced a Canadian boy I had met the previous summer to fly down for a birthday adventure, so he booked a WestJet. If you want something, ask for it. We had a great story if left adbriged - we met dancing in Vancouver one warm August night; lost track of my friends, got locked out of the house I was staying; he stayed up with me all night in a diner; took a bus back to the house as the sun came up over the (?) mountains. (Leaving out making out against a car, sleeping together.) I moved to San Francisco that autumn, and the next March I flew back up to Seattle to get Adderall/show off my California tan, he bussed down from Canada, and we had this idyllic weekend with friends and laughter that in some ways made me idealize Washington all over again. From there, we moved on to Skypes and sexts and adorable phone calls where I just listened really for signs of that damn Canadian accent in my lonely little bunk. My best friend from high school decided to move down to San Francisco from Portland, chasing the sun and good times and whiskey. Laura arrived the weekend of Bay to Breakers, a veritable bro fest. Our friend Lisa was there that weekend with her bro boyfriend Jeff, and we did the whole brunch/Dolores/Divisadero bar thing. I took her everywhere; things were not going to be so lonely. One night, Laura and Todd the light tech and I went to see Akron/Family show at the Independent on Divisadero. I was really the only one stoked for it, as that band had provided the soundtrack to many forlorn rides on the 595 from Olympia to Tacoma to Seattle during college, staring out at the gray Northwest. Turns out their sound had changed from foresty to bad electronica. Laura bailed and Todd walked home, and as I was walking home Nick the Canadian sent me a series of beautiful text that stirred my weary little heart after months of near-despair in San Francisco. “I don’t know what it is, but you get me in a way I’ve never been gotten,” is maybe the last thing I read before I felt plunged forward onto the concrete. So that was the night I was mugged, and the next day my mom and aunt flew into town, and there I was with bruises up and down my knees and thighs and a busted-up hand from punching a grown man in the nose with a strange shock of untapped strength. My heartsick mother replaced my phone with the newest model and we spent the weekend by her pool and exploring the city somewhat. She hated my house, but loved the wharf. Rented a Mercedes and careened down Lombard. Took a duck out, wore a sailboat shirt. Nice time, glad to have had it. I picked Nick up at the Oakland airport in an Audi we had rented for the weekend. He picked me up, he spun me. My hobby, as Stephen said, is importing boys. Tim, Hadleigh, Andrew, Brian, Jake: my favorite moments are at airports. I wore this white summer dress, he wore bright shorts. Went back to my house, my roommate Ryan called him a “Canadian ken doll.” We packed up the car with some tent, some muenster, and off we drove. Highway One is maybe one of the most magical places on earth, a stretch of impeccable California coastline. Craig and I first drove down years and years ago now, had dinner at Orson Welles’ old cabin, sat by a fire on a ledge at the end of the earth. So that’s how I wanted to spend my birthday, figuring that would set the tone for the rest of the year. Put on a playlist, drove into the sunshine, down long expanses of exquisite coast, his hand on my leg, his sideways smile in my periphery, all lips and hair and restless energy. Stopped in Santa Cruz, had lunch on the beach. Felt like we’d been together for years, a wonderful illusion. Bit of his temper towards others was cropping up. Didn’t care. His arm around me, always. He ran up behind me on a ledge. Stopped at coves, watched sea lions. Fell in love for a few days. Put up a tent alongside Big Sur River, then drove to the Henry Miller Library, got into a bottle of Bulleit and some Arnold Palmers. Watched a very formative band, one of my favorites, Two Gallants, play their melodies under soaring redwoods. Nick wrapped his arms around me while the singer smiled that golden smile, elbows rubbed off of his sweater, a brilliant perfect night, drove back, built a campfire, felt like it would never get better, and it never did. So for a weekend, we were this brilliant couple. We never could be: he lived on the other side of a border and it wouldn’t work. But we got along just fine, had the same sense of humor, had a great time because it was fleeting. The next day we took our time getting back to the city, stopping and climbing along bays and ravines in Carmel and old churches in Davenport and everything was wonderful. Met Laura at al our regular bars on Divis on Saturday night, got daydrunk with all my coworkers at the Chapel on Sunday, went to a fancy cocktail bar in the Haight, blacked out, made out, bought a grab bag of bullshit from the bodega for dinner the last night, made out, cuddled, cursed, laughed, cried, bonded, Monday morning my birthday came around and we rented another car called “Maple Syrup” and drove to Crissy Field and he took me to lunch at a French restaurant in an alleyway downtown -- drove him back to Oakland and after he checked in at the desk he came back out of the airport door and instructed me to give him “one more hug” before he flew away. Everything in California fell apart all at once. My $550/month sublet ended and housing was bleak. My parents wanted to ship Brogan back, but he had nowhere to go. Washington State wanted $800+ for my stint on unemployment. The Chapel was giving me a few measly shifts a week, and the money wasn’t stretching, and I couldn’t afford a down payment on lease in this tech-rich city. By fluke, I saw a Facebook posting for a $667/month sublet in Seattle with a group of Seattle University alumni that I somehow had ended up friends with. If I could reverse any decision, it would be this one. But I’m not sure; the summer that followed was one mistake after the next and the regrets would only stack and marinate, but maybe I’d have ended up worse. Maybe moving into Laura’s new apartment would have strained our friendship, maybe a lesson in humility was necessary, maybe it was just nice to have my dog around for a summetime and maybe I wouldn’t be in the apartment that I’m in now if not for a series of disasters. Or maybe had I stayed I would have met a great lad and had a great adventure and now I’d be splitting finances and writing for a living or I’d have lucked into some office job that I’d grow to resent, but wondering gets me nowhere. The fact is, I made a terrible choice, one that I thought would fix everything but just launched me into an awful, unshakeable depression that I’m only now beginning to see the other side of. I decided to move back to Seattle for the summer. With money that my grandmother had left me after her passing, I had booked a plane ticket from New York to Reykjavik to Amsterdam, and then a return ticket from Copenhagen a month later. It was very financially irresponsible, but fuck it, I figured. I doubted my ability to ever have my feet on steady ground, so I may as well get something out of the messes I make. So I moved back to Seattle for the summer. I can’t think of this past summer without cringing, fully. Everything I did was wrong. Everything was bad. I lived in Judkins Park, which is a good mile or two out from Capitol Hill, where I drank and worked and hung. I had all of these illusions of life back “home” after forgetting that I did leave for a reason; there was nothing left for me. It took me a few week to find jobs, and when I finally did, I took anything I could get. I got a job through my old manager at a new high-end restaurant called the Old Sage; the only job left was a fucking host. For weeks, we had to come in in the mornings to train and get the restaurant ready for open, taste scotches at 10am, and for what? So I could work the door at a total dud of a restuarant that was priced above what anyone was willing to pay on 12th avenue? They threw me a few shifts bartending at The Coterie Room down in Belltown, which was painful in its own way. The other job was a fucking GRAVEYARD shift at a hipster DINER that just opened, Lost Lake. Embarassing. So for 8 hours a night, from 10am to 6am, I would sling fucking breakfast food to drunk people who would have to wait upwards of an hour for the stoned cooks to put their mush on a plate and then I’d tip out every goddamn person in that terrible system and walk with like, $150 maybe, and then I’d walk home the 40 minutes to Judkins Park to save money and I’d try to make it interesting by trying to listen to a new album on the walk home every day, but all I’d hear is the familiar chorus in my mind: you’re 26 and walking home from a diner and you live a sad life and you should quit it all you fucking desperate idiot. And they’d do first call at 6am so there’d be this group of fellow idiots on the bar side at dawn and then I’d walk home listening to Wolf Parade: “I’m a disaster. I could not be burning faster. I walk into webs, and take my meals with weirdos.” Then I’d walk Brogan and sleep through the sunshine and hope it all would end. I did not end up with Nick. I was honest with him when he left San Francisco, saying I would not pine for him and that I couldn’t promise anything but that I’d of course love to see him again. We made plans to go to Banff for his birthday. A few weeks later, I was moving a few hours from him but it was too late. He went home to the girl he’d previously quit. She was plain, fit, dull but probably sweet, into yoga and beer and running, 27, and more importantly, local. I think they live together now. Well, fuck. My romantic life was one dud after the next and mostly didn’t happen because I worked around-the-clock for very little pay. Zach Tyerman returned home from med school briefly and we met up at Manhattan Drugs for drinks, then Poquito’s for dinner. We met on my roof the night Craig stole my passport to see me again; a few weeks later Craig and I were dating, and we did that for a few years. Zach moved in around the corner with a guy I had once dated, Ryan Calderon. He hit on my friends, he flirted with me. He was a goofy fellow; Craig and I would joke about it. Zach and I would study at Vivace or Roy Street a lot during the wintertimes. He brought me to dinner to meet his mother and all his aunts, and I won them over easily since I wasn’t dating him so I wasn’t nervous impress them. His parents would come visit me for brunch at 22 Doors. I wrote his essay for med school; he got in. Our friendship was predicated on never sleeping together, so as I got dressed and drank the first few whiskey lemonades of the night, I promised myself: don’t sleep with Zach. When I saw him, he looked sort of great. He had a new haircut, more gentlemanly, and he was dressed well, and age seemed to have softened his features in a nice way. And it was way he treated me: he had flipped the switch to on, and without the usual teasing contempt he reserved for women with boyfriends. He used to say I had some frustrating charm. And I only frustrated him further that night. In assuming sleeping with him might ruin our friendship, not sleeping with him was probably more damaging. We went to Carly’s going away party at Big Mario’s. She was flying off to Hawaii for the summer to be with her parents, who were negotiating a divorce. I’d be taking her room in the third floor of the condo until she got back, the very week I was leaving for Europe. Kaitlyn had decorated the bar with palm trees and tiki lights, and I showed up drunk, and I regaled Zack Bolotin and Shaun Callahan of the story of my very last night in San Francisco. While waiting in a bar on Mission Street, I was approached a man who offered me CINCUENTA for “in-house” services. Mostly I was offended by the price. (Also that night: left my purse with the keys to my apartment with all of my luggage in it at another bar. Right before my flight, while all of my roommates were out of town. Always a fuckup!) Anyway, between dinner at Mario’s we had segued briefly to Linda’s and picked up a friend of Zach’s from highschool, a kind, outdoorsy guy named Alex. And now at Mario’s, Alex had his hand on my leg underneath the table and Zach stormed off into the night. Sent some wild texts. Trying to make amends the next day, Zach seemed to take the whole thing very personally. “He should have read the situation!” and “I feel like you were doing this to hurt me for some reason.” It seemed a lot like when Zac found out about Andrew, so maybe it runs in the name. But anyway he didn’t miss much: Alex and I went back to Judkins, fooled around, and somehow when Kaitlyn and Carly got home, Brogan got out and bolted, and I ran FULL SPEED down Norman Avenue -- never sprinted so fast in my life -- and across fucking Rainier Avenue through traffic BAREFOOT and eventually cornered him and scooped him up by a parking garage maybe a half mile from my house and then realized I wasn’t wearing shoes. Alex invited me to a bonfire at his house the next day, to which I responded (sort of joking? but kind of not?) “I’m not going to Ravenna.” To this day, Zach kind of rudely alludes to this whole situation via text. Fourth of July was my first day at Lost Lake, so I went down and began that awful chapter. While there, I ran into Eric, a thirty-something man I had met the previous summer at a soul night at Chop Suey. We had exchanged numbers, but I ended up with a friend of his, a real weirdo named Aeden. There was still something about him that made me incredibly nervous. And our story had a very loose end. But not to worry! We tied it up that night. Todd flew up to Seattle for his birthday and we had an okay time. I picked him up and he was so incredibly chatty and I realized this was a terrible mistake and I was so irritated the entire ride up from the airport. But it was his birthday and he had flown up, so I figured I’d just show him the town and try to have a good time and not give him any illusions about this being a lasting relationship. So we did. Went to the docks, some bars, Belltown, walked Bro, had some good adventures, rented some cars, did poppers with Tim, made him dinner, he had the time of his life and he still waxes poetic about the week so all in all, I’d say it was his version of my weekend in Big Sur. Then I met Party Bro, a guy who came into Lost Lake at 5am in a puffy vest and a shiny cap and ordered chicken fried steak with a kind friend, then conned me into staying by offering to buy my Uber home if I stayed for first call. He was a real douche and I knew it and he knew it and that was that, I guess. He was unapolegetic about being a party fiend and in love with his own damn life. But I guess I figured that was what I needed; I was leaving in a month and I wasn’t trying to find a reason to stay in Seattle. This was a guy I had 0% chance of falling for. He tried to kiss me getting into the Uber. Then he came to a bar, Montana, where I was hanging with Drew and Brian who’d flown in and tried to kiss me. Then I figured I wouldn’t put out for him, because that’s the way to keep these guys around for a good time. He asked me on a date, a real date. He made reservations, he picked me up in his car, it was a warm summer night. I wore a little black dress and heels, he wore dress shoes, we looked great. He ordered a big platter of food on the back patio of Poppy, and I decided not to tell him how picky of an eater I was, and gamely tried the salmon. I’d like to think we both brought our dating a-game. Then we went to one fancy cocktail bar after another, and he didn’t let me pay a dime the entire night, and Doug Wargo saw us and whispered, “Whoa” to me. We went to Sun Liquor Distillery and then plain ole Sun Liquor and it was a great first date, and I could tell he was very well rehearsed at first dates. So that was an okay thing to distract me from the bullshit of the rest of the summer, there was some dancing, some nights at dives, a canned bullshit speech the night he introduced me to his friends, and of course after I slept with him it sort of petered out. On his birthday at Havana, Kaitlyn let him buy us shots and then told him she was not a fan, and then her and Carey and I sort of ran off into the night, so that was that. During Block Party -- all the roads in Capitol Hill get blockaded off and a bunch of bands perform -- I worked all three nights at Lost Lake, so I got to go all three days for free. It was okay. Not what it used to be, or I’m not who I used to be. It ended spectacularly: Party Bro came in to say hello and kiss me good luck at the beginning of my shift, and towards the end of the night he came in blackout drunk holding hands with a rando girl, and then tried to text me some bullshit - so I put my phone down on the counter behind the bar, never to see it again. Felt like a real fuck up - hadn’t had the phone for more than a month or so since the last one got mugged off of me, and now it was gone again, and for what? Some scumbag I was just hanging on to so I could feel a little less lonely for a little while? Cool. Spent some nights with Nicholas, as has been our way for years and years, but by now it meant less than ever. Whenever I look back on a bad time, I try to rationalize it by considering maybe some good came of it. I did this for San Francisco round one: at least I got to ride out my crippling loneliness in solace, and also I got a great friendship with Drew. Out of this summer, I got a surprisingly great friendship with Carey. The first few weeks in Seattle, I stayed in his room downstairs while he was on a motorcycle trip through Southern California. It was great because the doors opened to the yard, where Brogan could frolic. I spent those weeks with Kaitlyn, a solid friend, and Carly, a peripheral friend. They complained about weird passive-aggressive text exchanges with Carey, a weird poster he’d hung in the bathroom, and the general living situation with him. He wasn’t so bad, I countered. “You’ll see,” they forewarned me. He returned, I moved upstairs, we shared some whiskey, and then we just sort of got along really well. He got along with Brogan. We had the same interests in life, although despite being a stoner, he was way more motivated than I was. Not a hard feat. We were into the same music. We cared about similar things. Liked the same beer and whiskey and bbq food and that made for a good summer hang. We had met summers ago, had practiced our Spanish on each other at cafes, and then had a fairly unspectacular session together before a Weakerthans show, so all of that was out of the way. Things were cozy. Kaitlyn was getting involved seriously with a guy, and so it was just me and Carey a lot. We’d hang on our computers, stay in an watch TV, ride his bike to the bank, grocery shop, share car2go’s to the hill, grab drinks or dinner, catch shows, drink beer, plot our lives. Spent a lot of time on the T-docks along Lake Washington. It was like the best parts of coming home to someone without any of the messiness of a relationship. One night at Judkins Park, I felt this weird desire to just tell him everything that made me tick somewhat incorrectly, just because I felt like at that time it wouldn’t affect his opinion of me really because it didn’t matter, but at the last moment decided against it. I didn’t know how to begin to phrase it. We were in a car2go, headed to the hill like usual. Fuck it, I figured, I like this friendship at the very basic, well-functioning level that it is. All of this would ultimately implode while I was in Europe, but for a few months Carey was one of the people I was closest to, if only from proximity. I do remember nice nights: -Tim got tickets to Hairspray! and it was weird and we almost left and it was raining hard but we were dressed up and it was fine -Seeing Elway with Carey and Peter at El Corazon - the pop-punk soundtrack to our summer -Brian came to town for Block Party weekend in July -One night at Montana with Tim & Drew & Brian and then also Party Bro -Wandering around the hill with Feven -Going to Fisherman’s with Kaitlyn, where we used to work, and getting the tour from Jim -Seeing a lot of sunrises -Seeing a lot of sunsets -A lot of days spent at Madison -Block Party with Kait and Carey -a lot of cab rides -Drew packing up my room -kareoke at Pony with Tim & Stephen and then also Ryan McMichael, in town from Paris -Dom sleepover -SubPop festival in Georgetown -weird rose wine night at some fancy place in Eastlake with Kait and Erin -Marc driving up from Portland and little adventures - exploring Seattle -weird perpetual flirtation with weird Linda’s bartender - a loose end that will likely never get tied up -knowing it was all fleeting But mostly I’ll remember how weird it all felt. Saying farewell to Seattle was all too easy. My illusory trip in March had been washed out by a stale, sad summer. My time there was dead and gone. So I did what I’ll look back on as truly idiotic: I left with absolutely no plan, and not enough resources to return to anywhere. The government had tapped my bank account and drained some money for my unemployment debt, and living in Judkins Park had cost more than the $666 rent, with storage, cabs, and general well-being. I was bloated from eating diner food all summer, and had maybe $1200 amassed after everything for my trip. I quit my jobs with very little notice, so as to burn the bridge and not tempt me to just return to them when I got back. I planned on bringing Bro to NY while I was away so my folks could watch him, but Carey offered to watch him for help with the next months’ rent. Because Bro was acclimated to the house and oddly adored Carey, I figured it was best to leave him be rather than hurtle him across the country. This decision maybe would come to overshadow my summer in Seattle as one of my worst decisions of the year. So off I went. I flew to my parent’s house in upstate New York, and Tim arrived the next day. We hung with our old friend Erika, who had since had two children with one more on the way, and had also gotten married. It was strange. I was sleepy. We spent all day gathering last minute supplies, like locks and weird sheets and walking shoes. (The locks were too small, the sheets were pointless, and the shoes were only broken in by the end of the trip.) Then we packed up our bags, they drove us to JFK, and we boarded our Icelandair plane. Look, I won’t ever regret this trip. There’s a million minute things and some very large ones that I would absolutely change, and a lot of it is within me. I went on this trip very, very lost. I went without a plan, and even less of a game plan for when I returned. I didn’t expect to find the answers out there, but I was hoping that it would at least give me some perspective, or I’d gain some interesting experiences. I’m getting old and I’ve got to get out there any way I can, and I did. All that aside, I went about a lot of things the wrong way. Timothy and I agreed from the get-go that this trip would almost certainly at times try our friendship, and it certainly did. But this friendship’s endured bouts of bullshit before and it will again, oh well. First stop was Iceland. I had become transfixed by the place via Google Earth many moons ago; I’d spun the globe and found this strange land where people actually lived, and a little lagoon where people swam, and it seemed otherworldly. (Years later, my sister would become transfixed and sully my interest a little, but nevermind that.) So we booked the free layover and a hip hostel by the water. Got my first passport stamp at customs. Bought a few bottles of liquor at duty-free. Took a shuttle to our hostel, and our very first night, things went awry. I was anxious to explore, but Tim was cranky and didn’t like the taste of his vodka and just wanted to Skype with his boyfriend. The hostel was a ghost town -- off season in September -- and I sat in the dead but beautifully curated lobby and wondered how the trip would go. We had absolutely none of it planned, minus a few vague ideas: for me, Barcelona was a must; for us, the labyrinth in Berlin was a long-time plan; and for sure, our flights were leaving out of Denmark. It was fucking freezing in our hostel room that night and the next and the next. The next day was better, we explored downtown Rejkjavik -- a small town by any stretch of the imagination -- all of the magical street art and skate parks and rad dads in thick sweaters and the whipping wind and the little shops and cobblestone walks. Then we took a shuttle with a nice Canadian couple to the Blue Lagoon, and it shot straight up to one of the more surreal, magical moments of my little life. The drive there looked like we were scaling the moon, and we drank vodka 7up out of Icelandic water bottles. We changed in futuristic locker rooms where I shared awe with an older Canadian woman. “Look at where we are now,” I must have repeated several dozen times to Tim. And then I spun around in the warm water memorizing every curve of each hill and every plume of smoke and the expression on every placid face, like I used to when I was young, and I filed it all away for when everything else gets bad. We drank some expensive beers and paid via our wrists, and then I had a truly spectacular exit: we ran to catch the bus, Tim pulled my arm to lead us to the correct one, and down I went, headfirst into a beautiful glacial spike. Boarded the wrong bus and then the right bus with a bleeding head gash and napped the whole ride home. Tim fed me water and ibuprofen and made us friends for the night, and then I went out dancing with a fresh head bump. I’d eventually fall in every country I visited, but the first fall is the deepest, and I gashed a hole in the only pair of jeans I’d brought with me, day two. Same ole story, different backdrop. But Iceland was weird and magical and met got my first taste of traveling life, where everyone hails from far-flung places and asks each other, “How many months have you been out?” Met a cute girl from Baltimore - danced all night - drank water - Haarlem - dance clubs - regulars - beautiful intriguing blondes as far as the eyes could see - winding streets, whipping wind - met some rando, deliriously stylish Icelandic students in a closed-up Mexican shop/drank their tequila - the next day was one of the most painful mornings of my life: hungover to hell, freezing, massively dehydrated, and with a gaping head wound. Veronika from Baltimore left a bottle of alcohol and a note in her wake, off to drive off towards the Northern Lights, never to be seen again. But that’s how it goes. And later I got drunk on that traveling life and also a Mexican writer’s Mezcal - walking down the hall to a huddle of chairs by the window, seeing their silhouettes in the light from the water and the mountains - seemed unreal. Some Canadians, a German girl, two English blokes, the Mexican, and once we drank everything up, we went downstairs to where a man named Magnus was hosting a bunch of beautiful, sweatered musicians grown and raised and grisled up there, with a set by a man named Snorri. And so the night went - up a hill just following along, a feeling I felt once in the Hollywood Hills - in a corner of a bar with a softspoken man who studied caribou in Greenland - dancing to a song I vowed to remember as I recorded the moment away in a small room - every moment stranger, colder, kinder than the last. We barely made it out of Iceland. I stayed awake all night, just Tim, the caribou man now, and me in that cold 8-bed room. Got us up for the 4am shuttle to Keflavik. Babysat Tim the entire time, nausous and obnoxious. Got on our flight to the Netherlands, Tim vomited while we were taxiing. Then again. Cruised in to another odd world, this one with long swathes of colored fields (tulips!) and long rings of canals. Then we got to Schiphol and my card was rejected at the ATM, despite forewarning my bank of impending travel. Also, despite paying the $25 for international service, that was also a fluke. Exchanged some cash at an exchange to get by, Tim bought us Burger King in Schiphol for being such a baby, and I secured a place to stay via Couchsurfing. The address was maddeningly confusing and the directions even murkier, but we got on a train and winged in and finally things were feeling foreign, with all the gibberish on the signs. I’d found a nice Scottish lad to put us up for a few days, and he had a flat on a canal in Leidseplein that his corpo job put him up in and he let us stay in for free. It was lovely: white walls, exposed beams, two floors, very modern. It looked exactly like where Craig would live and how he would keep it.  The lad was nice, his speech very garbled. He gave us the entire top loft, which led to a garden patio. Spent about four days in Amsterdam. It was my first European city, so I drank it all up - the bikes, canals, flower shops, buildings from the 1500s on, cafes, languages. I had never visualized Amsterdam much. The Red Light district was disarming, fantastic looking women framed in little windows offering themselves up. Not sure what I expected there. In some windows, they were doing mundane tasks, like snacking or texting or removing nail polish. Went to the photography museum and saw a photograph of Newburgh, New York. By a canal, flipped through an entire photo book of self-portraits over several decades; watched a man’s body degrade, shift, had to briefly confront my own terror of aging, already felt. Ate an expensive breakfast and realized we ought to start scrounging around grocery stores to save our cash - hated having to give so much consideration to money but necessary. Smoked in a weed cafe, but all the weed in Europe is cut with tobacco. Tim found a massage chair, changed his world. Found a really old cafe, felt really weird in it, got lost on the way back. Still a lot of fresh panic from that mugging last spring. Didn’t go to any of the big museums or the beer tours because I don’t know. I’ll save that for when I’m older. This trip was, as I’ll repeat often, the sampler platter trip. It seems like a very American way of saying I’ll dip my feet in a few seas or whatever. Went out with Iain, our host, nice bloke. Kind of was over Amsterdam and the cold after a few days and ready to journey on though, and convinced Tim the sun was what we needed. Years ago, I planned to do a semester in Barcelona. I had spent a semester in New York studying art, which consisted of just going to galleries and museums and plays and ballets and operas and concerts for a few months and somehow getting college credit for that. I lived in the ground floor of a classmate’s fucking $7 million dollar brownstone while there, and I split the roommate with my classmate Kate, and we plotted replicating the program in Spain. And we hammered out the details and I saved up several thousand dollars to do it and then when the time came Kate -- working parttime as a florist in Olympia -- did not raise the funds and then my relationship fell apart and I moved into a terrible apartment in Capitol Hill and postponed the trip to the winter, then the spring, and then by summertime my grandmother had passed and my cousin was getting married, so I spent it back in New York instead, and I never went to Barcelona. So if there was one fucking place I was going on this trip, it was Spain. It seemed like the place where I belonged, if that’s such a thing -- I loved the language, and I loved all the stereotypes -- the siestas and the long nights and the lax sense of time and the beaches and the dancing and the casual drinking and the small plates and it seemed like it would fit well with my idealized self. So we went. Tim chose the hostel, I whined, it was kind of the worst -- a lot of younger kids, a late-night hallway brawl, not much charm, but a big patio and, you know, a place to sleep I guess. Food was cheap. All was well. We arrived unexpectedly the first day of Barcelona’s biggest festival, La Merce. Just a wild party in the streets waiting for us. I’d met a South African bro on the plane ride, who at first weirded me out because he never moved from the middle seat when the aisle was open, but was rather nice, spoke with a vaguely British/Afrikaans accent. We ventured out on their relatively simple train system to where the festival was, along the way met a cute guy from Seattle, now studying mathematics in upstate NY at Cornell. Brilliant! The festival was brilliant as well and perfect and wonderful and all else, and beer was a euro on the street, and we wound our way through these little alleyways to find a bizarre dance with a bunch of gigantic puppets, and children building human towers in white with red sashes, and drank Manhattans in some pub, and danced to this African woman who was intensely wonderful and I promised I’d look up though  I had no reference. We caught a train back - walked the wrong way drunk - Tim was pissed and drunk and weary of me probably - furious - walked ten paces from me and I’ve never felt such weird tension, disappointed - ended up getting in a cab and it was playing this British kid Jake Bugg - “Broken” - his voice was wobbly, maybe a little contrived - but at that moment it broke my heart in a million little ways and I couldn’t shake it and I felt rejected kind of cruelly by a friend and it was sort of crushing - this came at a time when I felt wholly rejected, kind of cast off, adrift, and I needed something, anything, because I was not enough for myself. We acted the next day like nothing had happened, as we do. We met up with the South African, Stephen, at Barceloneta, and for the first time I swam in the Meditteranean, and it was warm and lovely as beaches tend to be. We agreed to meet up again, and a memory burnt into my mind is meeting up again at the Arc de Triumf for the festival that night - Stephen in his backpack, but further off, for some reason a perfect image: Sam Hopkins, the Cornell baby genius, leaned up against the ark, one foot up, with a bar of dark chocolate tucked into his flannel, hair askew. We had a lovely night and then another and then they, too, were gone from our lives, with vague promises to meet again in Capetown or Seattle. On a Sunday we climbed Montjuic for another part of the festival that allegedly included a circus, but instead ended up at an EDM festival. I was out of sorts with Tim and it was weird when maybe it could have been wonderful if I didn’t live so much in my goddamn head, or wasn’t so sensitive, or maybe if I took more of the molly that our new Swedish comrades offered up. There was another girl named Ally that only fueled my crumbling spirit, although I can’t place why. But there was a bunch of sweet humans, and we had a good night, a Pernilla and a and a, should have took more drugs maybe, should have let go for once, but the fear was burrowing into me and I felt it hard that day and that night and even at some dark salon bar I would have loved, I felt so entirely out of sorts. I felt wholly undefined. And it’s not easy to snap out of it in a communal room with three German guys. We decided to slow our pace because the time we had already spent in transit was irritating and who ever is in a rush to get out of Barcelona? So I found the next hostel and it was a damn good decision. The next week was long and wonderful and cozy. Within a few minutes of settling in, we met a Slovakian girl named Nina and a French-Canadian boy named Dominic, and set off to the beach with them, and collected other friends that week. We found L’Ovella Negra, a little pub for travelers that offered sangria by the five-gallon bucket, and the hostel offered a full slate of activities mapped out on a chalkboard. That night we went to La Merce and then a club and there Dominic the young French Canadian, off to southern France in the morning, kissed me and we kissed again among all the characters along Las Ramblas and then I told him he should stick around a few more days and when we got back to the hostel he booked his bed for a few more days and then we made out in a space made for hanging out clothing to dry. Should have left it at that night, but no. He stayed. We collected more friends, had more adventures, went to more clubs and bars, went off to Sagrada Familia, insane and intricate. Connor came along, a big, moody young guy from San Luis Obispo. The “tour guide” for the hostel was a Polish girl named Kate, but she was so casual about her role, it actually made for a way better experince. Kind of a rather beautiful weirdo. A few more. I settled in with Dominic because, I don’t know, looking back I needed affection, and he was sweet and simple, and he liked little things like going to the Dia  market together to make a simple breakfast, and maybe I just wanted that feeling of someone wanting to be around me so much. Ended up kind of hating myself for it, but not til later. For now everything was nice. Dominic and I went to Park Guell. We took naps, woke up at odd hours, drank one-euro wine by the bottle. Gave Tim and I the airing out from each other that we needed. Easily one of the best feelings was when we all decided to stay even longer, and lined up by the desk, and rebooked our rooms again. So Barcelona will always exist as this time in my life when reality was suspended and I was maybe the maximum amount of cozy one can be before death. Could never list half of what we did there. Decided on Berlin next, since we were eating up a lot of time in Spain. We only had a few bad moments in Barca. One night we agreed to go to a gay club for Tim, and everyone backed out, but Dominic and I still went and shored up enough euros for cover and drank shit beer in a musty room while Tim whined for a good half hour that no one would do gay things with him when we did, in fact, come hang. Another night we all took Adderall, and Tim became kind of a dick, and Dominic was kind of a youth about it and reacted poorly to his now-racing mind, and Connor disappeared for a solid 24 hours in the Barri Gotic, and I just felt elevated and chill like I always do when I take it. And while he was grouchily coming down, Tim and I squabbled a little bit about our tickets to Denmark, because sharing finances AND making travel decisions together was kind of becoming a burden. There was also the morning we left for Germany, because we hadn’t actually communicated about getting to the airport after the ticket-booking showdown, and when the time came Dominic, now claiming he loved me, took awhile to say goodbye to, and we had to run to Plaza Catalunya to board a shuttle, didn’t speak to each other once during that ride, and then RAN across the entire airport with our fucking backpacks, while all the while thinking: If we don’t make this plane, this might be the end of our friendship. So then there was Berlin. I broke down that night in my hostel, the Heart of Gold. Finally everything caved in. It dawned on me that I was heading “home” soon but that I actually did not have a home; my parents were in NY, my dog and belongings in Seattle, my best friend and a few solids and a job I guess were in SF. But they all felt like I was going backwards, without any forward momentum. I had an 8-bed room, but I was alone in it, and I slept for a solid day, and when I woke up I had no concept of where I was, and it was one of the eeriest feelings I ever felt, though peaceful. I had created nothing meaningful to return to. So I wallowed a bit. Berlin was cold and drab and I felt like I was coming down from Spain, and that familiar yearning for a sense of belonging. So a dull panic washed over me. Germany’s history is bleak, so attempting to distract myself playing tourist was futile, so I just wrote by the River Spree. A group of deaf people sat around me, the only person occupying a bench, and one stood in front of signing to them. Felt surreal, like a joke I’d laugh at later. I sat up late and read the internet in the lobby, also a 24 hour bar, the only area with wifi. It was meant to promote interaction over technological addiction, but in actuality it caused everyone to gather in the lobby to plot out their days on their devices, alienating everyone. One night, a lovely moment: a rando group of travelers gathered together playing music, a quiet performance of “Fly Me to the Moon.” My aircraft was grounded, and they offered to rebook me. “I’ll meet you anywhere in the world,” Dominic wrote from Toulouse. So I contacted my parents, upset, and they booked me flights to Paris, and I told Tim. Discouraged, I posted on FB about my flight being grounded/being bummed in Berlin, spoke with Carey about the delay, and got a message from Dana putting me in touch with some friends of hers. Had another bad moment with Tim the next day nearing the Berlin Wall, but kind of getting tired of telling those stories now. Doesn’t matter. Later he tried to make amends when he found a festival -- it seems we arrived just in time for their Reunification festival -- and I tried to muster up some excitement, but I’d been so weirded out in my hostel and with Tim it was difficult. Rode a ferris wheel with a Syrian, watched the poppunk band The Wanted perform, got a scarf for the cold, drank an Irish coffee. Taryn told me that if ever I feel weirded out while traveling, to find an Irish pub, and she was right. They’re the same everywhere. Checked in to Tim’s hostel since he convinced me it was better, but switched rooms to an all-girls rooms to allow us more space. Somewhat bolstered by the promise of Paris, and not ending the trip on such a sour note. But then Dana’s friend Warwick contacted me, and I met up with him and his wife and their friends in a little smoky pub in Nuekolln. In high school, I had a penpal named Colin, and he spent a semester abroad in Copenhagen, and he’d written to me about the Dutch concept of hygellig. Cozy. And I’ve been chasing it ever since. And then there it was, at Leidak. I drank nearly two liters of wine, got reamed at by the old German cashier in German, got on a random train, wandered around in a wino daze, and then there it was. I hadn’t taken to Berlin the way people told me I would - it was quiet and cold and harsh and bleak, and I used those descriptors to exhaustion - but a quiet, simple sort of night changed my mind, because it was so quiet and simple, and because the humans were so kind, and because I knew they had endless strings of quiet, simple nights drinking Dada cocktails at little smoky pubs and talking about this or that and maybe some nights were wild but all I ever wanted were the mellow nights I knew they experienced in abundance. I looked around: I would have loved to be a part of any circle of humans in that bar, and I heard snippets of their languages and laughter and I wanted in. I guess it’s that simple: I wanted in. I didn’t feel so much as I belonged with this particular set of humans as I felt I could belong somewhere, a feeling I hadn’t had in a long while. I made eyes with a bright-eyed boy across the way, and my next memory -- this one clear as fucking day -- was being held against him at a U-bahn station in Kreuzberg -- I remember because when we momentarily broke off from me I asked “Wait...where the hell are we?” and he answered, with his sloppy smile, “We’re in Kreuzberg” -- and note I don’t think anyone has ever kissed me quite that fervently -- he reminded me of a schoolyard bully, can’t place why -- and we ended up back at his large flat in Kreuzberg via taxi -- and goddamn if I hadn’t sifted through this night 200x since -- Laurence, you ruined Paris for me. I awoke in his bed with all my stuff back at the hostel in Mitte, but it was settled, I would stay with him for the rest of the weekened - “Now let’s go get you sorted” - since I was just wandering through, there was no pretense about a relationship, no bullshit. And so we went, and we got sorted. Found Tim. I made shit hostel breakfast with what leftovers I had, some stale bread, some scrambled eggs, and while I cooked he came and put his arms around me, a simple movement, but I still riding that high of a fleeting sense of belonging. He was a writer, teaching English, approaching 30, a bloke from Manchester. We napped at his place after wandering around Kreuzberg, and then he went and fucking kissed the top of my head just when “Slow Show” came on, unknowingly, and he held me the whole time as I promised not to fall for the loveliness and novelty of this stranger, but by then it was too late, si claro, he could easily shoehorn into being the next Nick: a beautiful taste of something I’d always want to drink some more of. Nick had done a similarly absentminded thing -- he’d wrapped me up into his sweater with him while waiting for the bus that morning in Vancouver -- and even then my heart was like oh no, oh no. And ever since, I’ve been giving up on decent guys whose only real fault is they never caused my dumb little heart to spike in some silly way. We met Tim at the labyrinth, a plan we hatched long ago. We drank in the corridor for awhile, then got the gold coin - a woman spun me and sent me off - first fright was own damn reflection popping up - crawled around in that wild, haphazard maze for awhile - standing there was Laurence, taller, eyes bluer, hair wilder - found Tim and the other Laurence, crawled on the floor to a neon-white room and danced and crawled back and went upstairs and kissed Laurence for awhile. Everytime you access a memory, it degrades like a shitty jpeg, so I try not to tap into these things anymore. We had dinner back in Kreuzberg at some Italian place and then fell asleep together again and woke up; I had a flight to catch and he had a match to get to, so he walked me to the bus stop and I said farewell and he went, nearly offended, “Wait a minute, kiss me goodbye.” So I kissed him goodbye and went to Paris to meet Dominic “under the Eiffel Tower at sunset.” Paris was doomed from the start. Never agree to meet anyone under the fucking Eiffel Tower at fucking sunset. Never flee to Paris as a means to delay figuring out your damn life. I never gave it a fair shake. Don’t even feel like thinking about it. Flew to Orly and stopped at a McCafe to charge up, got an awful message from Carey, checked my depleted bank account, I don’t even really want to go through this part of the year right now. It’s like a cloud fogged me over from the inside out. Blood went tepid. Can’t explain it. First few moments in France: I don’t know, what the fuck ever. You know what, Paris was beautiful, and odd, and winding, and I had some great nights, drank some great wine, met some weird humans, and maybe some other time in my life I’ll process it, but not now. Point being, by the end of the trip, I was a mess. And I had to catch a flight to Denmark from de Gaulles. McMichael had taken me to the train and bid me well - I fell one last time in the square before leaving. Gave me a strange smile, like we both recognized how fucked up it was, and I remembered him in his apartment on Melrose years ago, and again in his apartment in the first arrondisement of Paris playing “Life is a Pigsty,” wearing the same face. On the plane, tucked into a copy of a The Big Sleep I’d picked up at Shakespeare & Company at Laurence’s suggestion, I found a series of post-its written haphazardly by a drunken Dominic from his last night in Paris and it all slowly dawned on me. Between those and Carey’s increasingly agro messages, man, I crumpled. I’m weak enough as is, but damn. So Copenhagen was weird. Caught the train to the hostel Tim suggested in Norrebro, only to find it all booked up and in fact, every hostel in Copenhagen all booked up. Sent out some flairs on Couchsurfing from an Irish pub where the barman had a vague Manchester accent. Can’t explain the daze I walked around Copenhagen in, carrying my full backpack, feeling utterly defeated. Knowing that all of this navel-gazing and sorrow was overinflated and bearing down on a good time, but maybe necessary, no I didn’t realize that at the time. I just wanted to drift off into the sea and let go of it all. The trip was over, my escape was over, and reality was even bleaker. I could not have charted a rockier landing. And where to? What next? What did I have now? I saw so many lives pass in front of me that I wanted to try on for size, but not this one any longer. Melodramatic, sure, but I suppose in a foreign land all alone there’s some lenience on grand, sorry self-pitying. A Taiwanese man found me on CS and I met him and a few others at a lovely pub after being berated by my taxi for not having a chip on my card. Threw all my krona at him and ran in, backpack and all, to a rather nice place. Had a lovely night with another host and his surfer, a blonde book publisher out of Helsinki. Taoi ended up being kind of a weirdo, but nevermind that. Everything faded away for a little while. Called Dominic to apologize, and perhaps explain myself, wished him the best on his travels. So by the end of the trip, I was a real mess. I hadn’t combed my hair in a month, and it was curly as hell and nearly dreadlocked. I took my flight to Norway, where everyone has blue eyes and everything is polished nicely and beer is nearly 20 bucks a bottle and I was hungry and weary and broke and tried to sort of bathe in the good nights, the good humans, the good stories, the good hours, the good moments I’d memorized from every angle. There was no shortage, and I tried not to let the fear leak in to those, quarantining them to a kinder home in my mind. Took an 8-hour flight back to JFK. Was alerted at customs that it seems I now had two pink eyes. Rushed to the bathroom to clean up before seeing my parents, and there was my mother, and there was her vision of her lost-at-sea daughter: two pink eyes, matted hair, unwashed clothing, torn jeans, kind of gaunt and very tan. They fed me and let me sleep for a day or two and then I broke down in my parent’s bedroom and admitted I had absolutely no plan for what came next and not even an idea of what I wanted out of life and very little money and no way to take care of my pup adequately and all of this came from their 26 year old daughter. They went to work and when they came back, they offered me a bailout: I could come home for a little bit while I got back on my feet. Safe and sound in my bed, I almost considered it. But you know what, fuck that, fuck all of my whining about poor decisions, I love my parents and I know this offer was put on the table in order to help me out and ultimately get me back on the east coast and away from my haphazard nomadic ambling, but thank the LORD I did not take them up at them. It would be like redacting the past near-decade of my life. Ultimately, they gave me a grand as a loan to sort my shit out with the promise I’d repay it from a paycheck at a financially lucrative, upstanding job, and soon, but as it so happens I’m not that on it, but at least I’m not living at home. The following winter was one of the most depressing periods of my life. I entered into a phase of homelessness, unemployment, couchsurfing, meandering, freeloading, and just being a general degenerate while I tried to get my ducks in a row. And I pitied myself, dear lord did I pity myself. More, I despaired every decision that had led me to this life. Couldn’t pin it on any one thing - I was pretty consistently irresponsible. Realized early on I’d have to cash in on every ounce of good fortune I could, cash out really. So I did. I stayed with Nicholas for two weeks in Seattle while I collected Brogan, paid off Carey, paid Tim the remainder for our trip, moved my stuff from one storage locker to a cheaper unit, collected leftover checks, whatever. Got to Seatac, then to SFO. Stayed with Todd for a few weeks on 19th & Valencia in SF, WITH Brogan, but didn’t sleep with him so as not to make it any weirder, eventually he got weary of that arrangement. Shipped Brogan back to New York, stayed with Laura for a month. That took us the holidays. Couldn’t afford to go home for either, for the first time in my life. Thanksgiving Laura and I ate mashed potatoes at an Irish pub, and then drank at Pop’s. Christmas we ate at a Chinese restaurant, and then drank at Casanova. She left from Makeout Room to see about a boy, and so did the others we were out with, so it was just me and this stoner bro, so spent the night with him. Picked up every shift I could at the Chapel, working 6-7x a week. Agreed to a $900 sublet on 26th & Folsom for the month of January while I worked on setting up a living situation. New Years Eve was my last night at the Chapel though; worked the mezzanine bar alone, and when 12 struck I was just sort of there to watch it happen, stayed up into the wee small hours of the morning with my coworkers and then disappeared off of the schedule. Had to go in not once but twice to ask if I was fired, and finally Keith told me: yes, we’re letting you go. Per the owner’s requests. Cool.

favorite moments of the year: -blue lagoon -sam - arc de triomf -cab - pigalle -party bro - poppy -hallway @ kex

[mollyohmolly]

in the wee small hours of the morning

five am, on the dot. 

saturday now, nearly end of september, the 22nd, 2018.

molly oh molly, i’ve tried this at least a half a dozen times or maybe more. i try to write to you because oh lord, writing to myself, or worse yet to some faceless reader, judging, harshly i hope, all these passing thoughts and fears and this turmoil of writing it down, like oh god is this my whole life? is this all it is? so i’ll try one more time, or one last time. it won’t be riveting or revealing and it certainly won’t be worth your while. but knowing that i’m putting it out there, anywhere, is maybe enough. don’t read it. i wouldn’t. i won’t, i hope. you can. i’ll write these to you. to a face, a name. not just into the ether. but it’ll get real dumb. petty, boring. you’ll wonder maybe why you ever gave me the time of day. i wonder that all of the time. i have so many useless thoughts rattling around, nowhere to go, nothing to say. so i’ll say some things. i’d like to make a vow. i am going to write to you, or to this, but really just for my own damn self, for awhile now. let’s say a month. i used to do this: type. into the wild unknown nothing. i say this all the time though. i write you these all the time. i go and i stop. i overthink and then i overload and then i find all of my usual distractions. let’s not worry about that yet. this time i’ll send you this, so i’m somewhat accountable. can’t finish this thought so i won’t, yet. ally