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[thediaryofaudreysaxton]

snow at the beach continued 

I want to talk more about this song, which is about two subjects reluctant, falling in love at the same time anyway. a strong attempt to logically oppose what is bluntly rare. You can believe they’ll be many people with whom you’ll connect with in life. But you realize it really only happens a few times. 

It’s coming down it’s coming down

Hesitant to be fulfilled. entertained by curt uniqueness, perfect in how special it is 

And you want it to keep going because you’re at the beach when it’s snowing. Stars by the pocketful, I’m unglued because of you.

Mehhhhh

My problem is what if you're wrong in the leap? Partnership as debilitating, false, painful. Snow at the beach seems jarring and cold, with the inevitable melt disrupting nutrient rich sand that provides habitats for essential creatures like crustaceans and other soil organisms. Snow at the beach implies a fragile ecosystem magnificent throughout destruction. And I wonder if I prefer a sunny day with my kite over a love like nothing I’ve ever seen.

[thediaryofaudreysaxton]

November 4th, 2022

In her new album, Midnights, Taylor Swift’s worst track is number 4, Snow at the Beach.

She describes falling in love with someone at the same time they’re falling in love with you. Like this synchronized reaction to attention and safety is a catalyst of fate. Taylor says, ‘it’s like snow at the beach, weird but fucking beautiful’.

During my voyage to understand what snow at the beach was for me in my own personal self-conscious, what was weird but fucking beautiful, I thought about clarity. Specifically, tangible actions that provide evidence towards the validity of a perception or a disproval. Every time I’m at work I just want to leave. I don’t care if what I’m writing is good or bad, I know I’m happy doing it. They’re stronger than me. I like to read if I’m not drunk. My room is more comfortable to be in when it’s clean. He didn’t call you back because he was with his girlfriend. You didn’t get the part because you choked. Answers. I don’t often like an answer or see them coming, but I cannot deny their dominance.

My snow at the beach, weird but fucking beautiful, is farting during sex from trying so hard to make myself wet. It’s revelatory in stark clarity.

The evidence states: you’re not turned on but trying to make yourself. What’s up with that? Show him what you want, tell him how you feel, or end it. Farting when you’re having sex is super embarrassing because every-time I’ve done it, I’ve tried to play it off like I just queefed. And I act so turned on and surprised by my own queef, which was a fart, that I begin to moan and pull whatever partner I’m not able to communicate with, closer to me—like we must have each other now. This is love making, this is our air, I just farted, I have never wanted you more.

After the sex, I’m usually able to end the relationship shortly after. I hope in the future I never try to fart out wetness. But I will forever admire a clear tangible representation of how I feel that is illuminating, simultaneously delightful and uncomfortable. It’s like snow at the beach.

The world is much more insane than we ever knew.

Stay tuned tomorrow and I’ll review another track off Taylor Swift’s amazing new album, Midnights.

[thediaryofaudreysaxton]

April 2nd, 2054

Today is my 62nd birthday and I chose a floor length gown made of white feathers. My favorite part about my body is my hands. These bold ivory fingers I adorn in turquoise. Peering at myself in the glass of my vanity, I look beautiful. Sliding on a set of bangles the size of a slinky to each wrist, I bite my bare lip. 

This morning The Scientist and I entered one of my favorite quality air chambers, strolling the halls and escalators of the largest woodland imitation in France. A real blue butterfly landed on my index finger as I spotted a lab engineered boar being chased by a CGI leopard. I loved when it rained.

Tonight I am meeting colleagues and close friends at The Last Speak Easy in Paris, Champs Deux Un Façon. I will eat a caramel apple as loved ones surround me to sing. I miss my husband, the salt of my inner dialogue, but all of the city belongs to me tonight. I am a woman with dried flowers in her hair, winding her way through medieval streets, past cafes and cathedrals, I am daft frivolity. 

[thediaryofaudreysaxton]

November 1st, 2022

I wanted me and the Russian to be more significant than we were. I thought we’d last longer. Being together was important to me. We are split up and I am happier.

It was over when he learned I was bad at cleaning his kitchen. That I flung myself into bed without removing my street clothes. Done when he used his phone flashlight to show me a pad Thai noodle I’d let fall on the floor. He took too long to get ready so I’d ask if we could just meet there—my need to change environments urgent and his cautious. Can you wait for me? He’d ask. I want to go together. I wanted to be a girl that I wasn’t, so I said OK, I will wait for you. He was confused why my bare feet and twisting body were always disrupting his fitted sheet, but the answer was I liked sleeping next to him. To prove what I felt real, burying into his bed by clinging to all his covers was my most natural. The sheets were somehow always cold to the touch, and I felt looked after and held.

He did weird accents for me in the car and made me laugh when he sang out loud. What he found joy in made sense to me and what he hated was fair. He let me wrap my entire body around his right arm while he drove. Holding far past his elbow, I tugged and curled. A mundane moment becomes perfect when you hang on a man like a baby koala. I force myself to forget this when I’m single. I squeeze his right hand with my two, shoving all three hands in between my legs and latching my thighs closed. It’s safe and special, feeling clasped and attached. But eventually I remember my supreme pleasure, my potential. Holding on tight and acting completed, I realize I am lying and feeling lazy, and I don’t know how to communicate truth.

We met at a bar, and he wouldn’t take his eyes off me. My cheeks went hot as I returned from the bathroom, when I shifted in my seat, or played with my hair. He stayed looking at me. The Russian dared me to copy him, and I met his challenge as best I could. I was being fingered in public. Tousling my scraggly hair in overalls and no makeup, I played my part as the typical Portland native. As an illusive and charming fairy, I asked the friend sitting across from my desired, ‘When was the last time you felt the most alive?’. Tilting my head and pursing my lips, I glanced at The Russian. When his friend took the bait, interpreting my whimsy as earnest and thus his own cringe as judgmental, and began answering my question, The Russian glued his eyes on me and smiled. He shook his head at me, thus admitting he knew what I was doing. Happy I was perceived as deceptive, The Russian became even more handsome.  

He made sure I ate dinner and would rush to join me in bed after I had been fed. He’d rest his head in my lap and wrap his arms around my waist. He’d smile with his eyes closed. Sighing into me and looking fulfilled, this guy who was good to me would fall asleep. I would read and he would rest. What we had felt important to protect. But slowly and then all at once, I was asked to be happy or his girlfriend. The choice was very easy even as burrowing into him felt so good.

[thediaryofaudreysaxton]

October 30th, 2022

Mastermind

My main goal in existing is convincing people to love me. I’ll exaggerate how much I appreciate what you say. Baby, I’ll touch your arm to uplift your moment and I’ll make you repeat why you’re likeable.

I adopt a man’s interests and experiences as my own, acting aloof and surprised when he tells me we have something in common. I fall asleep to our imagined next make-out session and spend the morning replaying our last interaction. Scheming for my beloveds’ attention has been disappointing, isolating, rewarding, humbling, and fun.  

I have stalked men I desire, researching their whereabouts and appearing.

He posted his location on social media; he is watching a soccer game at a bar. But what bar is it? I watch the story again. I spot a distinct lamp and the head of a fox nailed to a wood paneled wall. He pans down to his beer, and I see a bar top painted evergreen. I know where he is. He knows I’ve been to this bar before. He wants me to meet him. I look around. The only problem is I am at work. My chest gets heavy. After two weeks of him responding to my incessant texts with one-word answers, I know where he is. My hands sting, and I open my eyes as wide as they’ll go. Taking a deep breathe, I bolt for the bathroom. A patron asks me for a to-go box, and another wants to close his tab. I ignore them. Closing the bathroom door behind me, I pretend to vomit. Flicking sink water and my own spit onto my forehead and neck, I slap myself in the face three times, hard. I scrunch up my hair before furrowing my brow and exiting the bathroom. Walking up to my manager, I admit I have unfortunately thrown up. I believe I need to go home. My manager frowns and ask me if I’m serious.

I am serious.  

Thirty minutes later and I put down my backpack at a table directly behind his head. He’s laughing with a few friends. I know the friends’ names, where they’re from and where they went to college. I know how long they’ve been dating their own girlfriends and I know they like to ski. I’ve never met any of them in person. I text my man, ‘Look behind you,’ and he turns. And there I am, smiling and waving.

I met Soup Can Dick when I was 24 and he was 21. He would be the love of my life for the following three years. ‘Soup Can Dick or bust’, I would say under my breathe after a mediocre tinder date or drunkenly kissing a coworker next to the bus stop.  

When we first met, we spent every moment together. But after three weeks of fucking me every night, letting me wear his t-shirt, and telling me I was so God damn hot, Soup Can Dick tried to phase me out. I was not going to let him. I knew he wanted me. He was wrong, lying to himself. I was his. And we were good together.

We met when I was couch surfing in my hometown. It was the summer my mom asked my dad not to leave her. The summer she laughed too loud at things not very funny, the summer indiscretions were revealed but our house was not full of the apologetic flowers she deserved. It was the summer my dad admitted through indifference he not only found my mom utterly annoying, but a hinderance. He wanted to live a fulfilling life. It was the summer I never slept at home but did not have my own place. The summer I was not a good older sister, a defining attribute I rely on. My knees were constantly bleeding, scabbed, and then broken open from riding my bike drunk. I crashed into poles, thick bushes, and parked cars.

Soup Can Dick did not want a girlfriend, but he would fuck me after I bought him Thai food and took him bowling. I would never get over losing at my own game, failing at convincing him to need me. But I did eventually move on.

At 27, with three years of gathering tactics, I graduated from stalking men to following them. I first saw The Clown at a comedy show he was hosting. He performed comedy every single night of the week in public places, and I went to all of them. He let me. He saluted me hello and told me thanks for coming. I began following him on October 9th, 2019, and only stopped because of the pandemic.

In October 2019, I had just returned from Costa Rica after dating an established research biologist who was most definitely gay. We were together for 9 months. I told him I loved him when I knew I did not. I had wanted us to be true, but I ultimately traded anal sex for the opportunity and privilege of working with the largest sea turtle in the world.

Leatherback sea turtles, Dermochelys Coriacea, weigh as much as a car and are vital to the vitality of our oceans. I liked to touch their soft vaginas as they birthed a clutch of eggs into the bag I was holding. The endangered sea turtles were always knocking me headfirst into the sand with their front flippers as I strained to record their coveted length and width measurements before they returned to the sea after nesting. With feet pruned from following her into the water, I took pleasure in licking the salt off my upper lip as she slowly and heavily swam away. I didn’t know if the salt was from the sea or my pores. As researchers, we wore all black to camouflage with the night.

My favorite part was waiting for the nesting sea turtle to excavate an unnecessary nest on land. I wanted so badly to tell her that the eggs would be relocated to our hatchery. There was no need to exert unnecessary energy. Just give me your eggs now, I told her in a whisper. But alas, I waited two hours while she dug, her back flippers extending deep into the ground like an accordion. These last living dinosaurs have brains the size of a penny, so I would sit directly behind her, unnoticed, patting her shell good job. Me and a giant sea turtle, alone in the Caribbean at moonlight.  

[thediaryofaudreysaxton]

October 28th, 2022

I hate solitude, but I'm afraid of intimacy. The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself which to turn into a dialogue with another person would be mortifying and destructive. I often decide desired conquests are superior to myself, which puts me in a pit I claw out of slow. Fingernails muddy. I overlooked what I didn’t like because being alone got hard. When I’m ready to begin again, ready to stand tall, I'm proud I climbed my way out of the pit. But more than that I'm furious they let me see them as better than they are. After this, I fear I become quite nasty. The company I need is the company of strangers, at a bar or a café. It’s already hard enough to tell the truth to oneself.

[thediaryofaudreysaxton]

October 25th, 2022

I love writing for many reasons. I want to live twice; in an augmented reality coded by me. I want to swallow the electricity between two attracted hands touching for the first time and spit out a strong river in early spring. I want to repeat my experiences. Infiltrate moments with newness; sitting at the park alone I see a black dog with three legs looking like the easel I drew on as a child with thick markers that always wore the wrong colored caps. My ex wrote a short story about a beautiful girl with an amputated arm. He kept referring to the left side of her body as a puffy stump. Parallel observations, and past connections. I want to make things up, exaggerate, lie, destroy, and love. I want to recall a static memory, I was desperate to be noticed, only to expand on it. I want to dream.  

I screamed at my dad he’s a liar while my mom hid in her room, sitting crisscross on her bed. With a quivering lip, her big eyes wet, she shook her head and wailed.

I intentionally brush my thigh against his going east on the train and my heart begins to beat in my throat. Pretending it’s no big deal, I notice both are jeans fit loosely. My toes begin to painfully sting like they’re frozen and thawing too fast. I consider meeting his eyes, but I don’t, I’m scared he won’t be looking.

When I start reorganizing relationships, conversations, timelines, and moods—I discover the truth has little practical relevance. I find comfort in amplifying a fact and creating what hasn’t happened yet, but what I wish would.

They told each other it hadn’t been for nothing. When he said he’s always felt desirous of more and different, that was not true. Some of it was good.

We kissed for the first time on the train’s platform. Soft and swift, he lingers on my mouth before retreating like a long neck dinosaur. He’s kind, eats only tree stars. I look up at him and shake my head just like my mom, but this is surely a different kind of disbelief.

I write a book and give a reading in Paris. The bookstore is dusty, particles made visible from the golden air coming in through rafter windows. All of us cramped together. I wear a thick headband and chew on my pen grinning while I read to my twenty-three attendees.

I often wonder if by recalling and then recreating events, I’ll ever be able to see myself or someone else as a real person, with faults I endure accept and process. I am addicted to extreme feelings but inept towards patience and thoughtful intimacy.

Why do we want some moments to matter more? Why do we look for answers in other people’s eyes? I love being alone because it’s never not true. I haven’t eaten in two days and I’m not hungry.

[thediaryofaudreysaxton]

October 23, 2022

Four months ago, I was in Costa Rica to write. I love writing for many reasons, but my dreams aren’t rare.

Pursuing my illustrious desire to be a voice of my generation in the space where lush jungle meets warm ocean made failure seem quite unlikely. I ate candied peanuts, dried banana, and undercooked fried eggs. Waking up to shrieking birds and howler monkeys, I smiled next to my blank computer screen and took comfort in smelling the rain as I knew the sun would break through in the afternoon. Three days in and I hadn’t written a sentence.

This didn’t matter. The idea of going after my dream in paradise was euphoric, my potential a neon and explosive. Thinking about what I could do, instead of doing it, can feel like enough. Give yourself time, I told myself, you’ll get there. There is plenty of time before you must go home, before you must work for money instead of desire, time before your ‘normal’ life begins once again.  

Then I crashed my motor scooter on a highway going 50mph. Blacking out the crash itself, I remember coming to as I lifted my face out of a shallow creek in a ditch on the side of the road. My face beat like a drum and felt like a slab of marble. Tasting blood and looking down at my body, I saw that my left knee had completely blossomed. She was in full bloom, her mangled petals of my skin and flesh hanging low. Mistaking my exposed muscle and bone for a stick and a rock from the creek, I briefly attempted to pluck and dig them out of my body with my fingers until I realized they were a part of me.

During the three weeks I spent in three different hospitals after the crash, I had four blood transfusions and three knee surgeries. I went to the bathroom into diapers and gave the doctors my blood from a device they had sewn into my collarbone. Once back home, my brother brought me a stuffed animal sea turtle that I held, cried into, and used to wipe away snot.

Everyone kept telling me they were so glad I was OK, that they were happy I was alive. They sent me wilted roses, chocolates with cherry centers, and books about why hard times make us stronger. How lucky, they told me. But I wasn’t grateful, I was angry, and they had become ugly, which made me feel hideous.

If I was dead, I wouldn’t even know it, I sneered under my breathe. And if I was as lucky as they told me I surely must be, then I wouldn’t be covered in bruises from self-administered injections. I wouldn’t be cleaning my vagina and armpits with baby wipes. If I was lucky, I’d be back in the tropics, undoubtedly writing the next great American epic novel with my toes in the sand sipping on a raw coconut.  

As I sit here writing this, waiting for my moment of epiphany and enlightenment dutifully given to those who have plummeted into earth, I recognize my circumstance is an advantage and I am lucky. And all I really am is just lazy. Putting myself in an optimal environment for productivity, focus, and ambition— didn’t erase how I’m actually just scared to fail. I cant expect success if I never try. I am not entitled to my dreams. My aspirations and desires are not just going to happen because I wish they would. But maybe the harder and braver I work, the luckier I’ll be.

[thediaryofaudreysaxton]

October 21st, 2022

The Men of Mine reach for greatness after I cut off their hands.

I need space, I tell him.

I am not sure I want to be in a relationship, we repeat.  

72 hours later and your man has applied to grad school. Your disregarded meat head is eating quinoa on a Wednesday. Oh hey, he tells you over the phone—3 days after the dumping. He’s submitted a referral for therapy and checks his email on his iPhone 9. Your dumped man sits cross legged on a faux leather couch, the color onyx. Tomorrow your trashed suitor is having his tires replaced but for tonight he’s cooking his own meal. Your man runs errands, sautés vegetables with avocado oil, and picks up groceries and fresh linens. Your toxic muck trash goes on walks through moss-colored hills just outside of the city and afterwards chugs room temperature green tea while he stretches. Your man has become light-hearted and non-possessive. He makes you laugh because he’s funny, talking in a silly voice, your man convinces you that you’ve made a mistake. Long-term connection comes from acceptance of another you will yourself to believe. It isn’t always easy. Asking how your day went, your man, your overlooked glossed over partner, encourages you to keep talking.

I am not sure I want to be in a relationship anymore, you say.

Ok, he replies.

I’m not sad or happy, he says. I’m just trying to live day to day like I did before I met you. Can you do me a favor? He says and asks you to listen to this song because it reminds him of you.

[thediaryofaudreysaxton]

September 28th, 2022

When stressed and embarrassed with how shitty I am capable of writing, how trivial and unimportant, I take comfort in knowing I have been writing since the age of 4.

March 12th, 1996

I Pld hOse

I Hd fn

When annoyed by the constant fear of failure, how chaotic I feel when lazy, and how I have no idea what I'm doing, I remind myself I started to lie in my own journal the summer before I got my period. In August 2004, at age 12, I wrote I had my first kiss in a porta potty. This never happened. His name was Jacob and we met in Junior Lifeguard class, which was true. I wrote about wanting to club myself with a brick and drown when Laney, who was older than me and objectively prettier, pointed at the blonde hair living on my thighs, and laughed in front of everyone. I didn’t know it at the time, but I would be waiting to develop her plump rack for at least 18 more years. I also hadn’t known you were supposed to shave above your knees. On the second Friday of Junior Lifeguard class, the last day, we had been playing capture the flag. Jacob and I ran into the blue porta potty together on the hill near the tennis courts. With one hand lying delicate on the empty sanitizer box, and the other on the grey toilet paper dispenser, I looked up at Jacob. The sun beat directly against the blue plastic walls, giving the illusion we were in an experience room also functioning as a sauna. Leaning into me and smiling, Jacob gave me my first kiss. Long, and smooth, are lips barely moved. We melted into each other like bare feet into wet sand against the ocean’s tideline. I wiggled my toes.

I couldn’t get over how soft lips were. We went to different middle schools, and I wrote down in my journal how I would never see him again. He did not have a MySpace.

The truth is my first kiss would be more than three years later and in front of 30 peers, as I was assigned it for a scene in sophomore theatre. The truth is my first real kiss was with Matt Lyons in his basement one year after that. It was the first time I had drank beer and with his braces jabbing into my mouth and hard tongue choking me, I went home with disappointment and a bleeding bottom lip.

Sometimes I wonder if Jacob and I really did kiss in that toilet. It's hard to believe I made the whole thing up as the memory feels very real.

[thediaryofaudreysaxton]

September 27th, 2022

After the chemicals wore off, doing as you asked like picking up my wet towel off the ground or letting you cum inside me, pissed me off and made me hate you. As your girlfriend I must listen to your unnuanced thoughts about the city's infrastructure followed by your rambling concerns about your humidifier. You have the audacity to ask me what we are doing tomorrow after voicing pathetic insecurities, like claiming a stranger made an unfair assumption about your character that ruined your entire day. However, like the stranger, I really do not care.

With a locked jaw and a nodding head, I regret every second of listening to your feeble impressions. I lie through gritted teeth with fake understanding, trying so hard to say the right thing that will make you shut up and I can go do what I want-- like walk down the street aimless and fulfilled, eventually landing in a café to drink black coffee and watch an old man bite into a banana.

My friends tell me if I end up alone it will be my decision. My fault is what they really mean.

A person won't complete you; they are not the answer to any of your problems, they won't make your life perfect. Those delusional expectations say more about you than him, my friend tells me over the phone.

Instead of putting in the work to build a relationship, I tell this friend, I think I'll find someone new and leech off them! I laugh and flail my arm in emphasis, knocking over two glasses. Water cascades onto the occupied table next to mine. Quickly hanging up the phone, I apologize profusely to the bohemian stunner diagonal from me, but instead of acknowledging my prophetic please pardon me, she checks to see if her computer is wet before putting in her air pods and rolling her eyes. I suddenly feel stupid, I am an unstable mess. Ugh, she hates me, I think to myself. Red in the face, I try my best to mop up the spilled water with paper napkins too thin for the task while processing how a stranger has influenced my immediate perception of self.

Being enamored wasn't a lie, it just wasn't sustainable. Making it seem like you were all I needed, I lived on borrowed time. I like how your apartment always smells of roses or mint, as essential oil slowly flows from your rattling humidifier, and maybe you’re right— perhaps it has become dysfunctional and we should order you a new one.

[thediaryofaudreysaxton]

September 26th, 2022

At the beginning; Baby, I’ll leave my mother’s birthday dinner to bring you jumper cables. I’ll forget writing for the day to buy and deliver you a $22 dollar turkey sandwich with double meat and a soda. You’d like me to bring you distilled water and organic honey after I've waitressed for 12 hours? I’m there, slapping deodorant and concealer on outside your apartment, brushing my hair with my fingers. Bored, you say? Well then how about we go bowling, eat lobster riverside, then dessert on a rooftop—all on me! You call me spontaneous but really entertaining a current conquest is just expensive. I’m saving money in order to devote myself to my dreams but who cares, you are you and good god are you handsome. Sugar, watch this grin and feel my fast smooches on your cheek. Watch this my love, I’m going to look at you with bright eyes and a loud laugh. Those comments and observations of yours? The ones I would never agree with or repeat because of how stupid you sound and shallow? Don’t worry my love, you’ll never know my repulsion towards you, and myself for being here, because I'll distract us both by nuzzling into your armpit like a purring baby. I want you to want me and I want us to be important. Through forced adoration I prove intimacy exists, straining for sex and connection to be more than the vehicle to fill time until my battery dies.

Men always say I'm different after they get to know me. Less into them, less generous. Why didn't you see through it all?? I want to scream. You no longer bring me food or plan elaborate dates for no reason, they say. Do you even like me anymore?

[thediaryofaudreysaxton]

September 25, 2022

The Russian tried to break up with me last night by a pond. Ducks dived head first into the toxic muck, pumping their webbed feet to remain vertical upside down. You didn’t even consider me, he said. I know you’re not telling me everything, and he was right. His needs had their spiked boot on my throat and I wanted out. Never being in a relationship longer than five months in ten years, I had the strongest grip on myself when I was alone. 

Compromising for a partner was equivalent to handing over parts of my identity I’d spent years to define. Yielding to his authority was disregarding myself. Following his lead was deciding once again I was too anxious and unsure to lead myself. Being dutiful to my partner meant I’d never be selfish enough to write about those experiences. And if I didn’t have my bravery, I only had a squeaky voice and an upbeat demeanor. Being patience towards sentiments I wholeheartedly disagreed with labeled me a freshly baked lamb and becoming malleable for the sake of his needs meant giving up on mine. 

I spotted the silver buckle of a dog collar in a shallow spot of the water and stepped forward to get a better look as the Russian asked if I thought I’d ever meet a guy who would be OK with me ‘needing’ to go on trips without him? Has this worked for you in the past, he asked? How long have you been single? He continued to goad me and I remained silent, disassociating. I wondered how the dog had gotten home safely without their collar, deciding their name was either Lucy or Balto.  

The Russian went to my writing, asking how I’d feel about people writing about me (I’d love it). He wondered out loud if he would like what I wrote about him (unlikely) and wasn’t a real relationship, true love, and connection all I cared about? He said, putting everything in air quotes and thus ridiculing my content. 

And I agreed with him, realizing I might never achieve long-term true love because I would always protect my ability to expose my partner over my partner. 

Wasn’t love all I wrote about and wanted? He asked, and I met his eyes in my own. Wasn’t this my dream? 

I noticed all the ducks swam in pairs, one duck dazzling and the other uninteresting. A brightly colored mallard with a dust colored boring one. Was this how harmony was achieved? Partnership; one duck presents themselves as untalented and bland in order for their counterpart to shine even brighter. 

My dream isn’t to have a boyfriend, I corrected him. My dream is to be myself and meet someone who loves me through it all.

I said I was cold and asked if we could return to his car so I could get my backpack. When he didn’t respond I gave him a tight hug from behind and didn’t let go. He watched the ducks as I buried my face into his sweatshirt, wanting very bad for him to be different while feeling relieved I had no intention to change. 

[thediaryofaudreysaxton]

September 24th, 2022

I cut my own hair again. 

The act itself is always so disgusting and ravenous. The thick chomping sound as my pink child’s scissors slice sideways, then vertical, into my mousy brown locks. Me, dead in the eyes, grabbing at random tufts with my fast-moving hands that are both quivering and damp. My cuts are always much shorter than I intend, as evenness is never achieved in the beginning if at all. 

The first time I cut my own hair I was in college.

Four times a week I served bagels and bubble tea at Milky Way Tea and Pastry. We were two blocks west of campus and the café was a converted garage made of painted white brick. I found the place sad and sweet and therefore full of romance. My boss Kyhunghee would scream and scold me in Korean for reasons varying in severity like being late or leaving the place unlocked overnight. Kyunghee’s mouth went wider than a cartoon snake’s when she was stern or stressed. I was the only student employed who wasn’t Korean. All the girls said Kyunghee was scary. I loved watching her long mouth when she was pissed at me, or her alive black eyes as she growled, stomped her feet, then pointed at my untied shoe and tangled hair. It was a privilege watching someone so passionate in their frustrations, direct fierce anger at me and not get hurt one bit. I had no idea what she was yelling but I knew she was displeased. Korean sounded like getting hit by uncooked alphabet pasta coming out of a tennis ball machine, absurd and stingy. She was immersive theatre and this was not a reprimand. Despite her frustrations towards my lack of aptitude, Kyunghee liked me because I was pretty and white, and always in a good mood. Putting on a show, I was a ham for them. When business was slow, I would drop to the ground like a deflated puppet, writhing in pain as I accused a coworker of pushing me to the ground. “Workers’ comp!” I’d shout. I would pretend to sob when we ran out of lettuce and stroke tomatoes goodbye before I cut them open. Every quarter of the hour, I liked to dance.  

 I worked mostly mornings, arriving at 6AM to put frozen bagels on a baking sheet the size of the screen door in my childhood home. I dipped their top half in hot water before a quick dip in poppyseed, everything, and salt. As a kid I liked to follow my mom around because she was tall, and people liked her. I also liked to stand in front of the mirror practicing shifting emotions. My mother adored me but also adored herself, as well as had to combat her irregular and common mood swings, so frequently I was told to get the fuck off her leg and go outside and play for fucks sake can she have one moment of peace god dammit. My favorite part about her at that age was watching her slap her slender and exposed legs when a neighbor or a family friend spoke. This is how you get people to like you, I noted, you exaggerate and hurt yourself.

Pushing through the screen door to our backyard, I often found myself pulling at the base of thick clumps of grass hoping to upheave their ivory roots along with the blades. I liked to play squatted down over a stump in our backyard, pinching wet mud and talking to myself.

“You’re going here today, we will have fun” I said to the clods of dirt before I smashed them onto the stump’s growth ring. “Here we go, hold on tight friend man”.

 Standing in front of the mirror in my 4-bedroom apartment I am 20 years old. I have not watered my plant for one week and today after work I found a debit card on the ground and without hesitating, scooped the blue plastic up and stuffed the card into my hoodie’s front pocket. I bought a kid’s meal at Qdoba with the stolen card before throwing the uneaten meal, as well as the card, into the trash near the library. Inside the library I had a cliff bar for dinner and looked for hot guys, planting myself near the spiral staircase on the second floor. I wrote about how The California Boy broke up with me again 5 days ago, but I had gone over there last night and sucked his dick before he made me go on top. I had felt full and stupid, rocking back and forth up there. I closed my laptop and left for my apartment, believing both everyone was watching me, and I was completely invisible, as they reeled at how unnoticeable I was.

 It was a Friday night. I had never cut my own hair before but when I looked into my own eyes, I realized I was attempting to put mascara on while brushing my teeth. I didn’t know how to slow down but I knew I wanted to look different.

Today was similar, except I’m better at cutting it now. 

[thediaryofaudreysaxton]

September 23rd, 2022

blahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[thediaryofaudreysaxton]

September 22, 2022

Slippery self-doubt. Why am I doing this? How is this happening again? I told him I was loyal, that I accepted him without doubt. My frustrations are inconsequential compared to my innate adoration of your essence.

Now these words make me gag because of how impatient I am towards anyone who is not me. 

[thediaryofaudreysaxton]

September 21st, 2022

When I realized I could see myself with The Scientist, I slept with his best friend the following weekend; an instinctual rebellion and clear escape.  

The Scientist was now a neuroscientist, but before that he was just the boy I’d known for 15 years. We swam in rivers and laughed until we choked making fun of our exes. He took me home, annoyed me, and answered my calls. 

I saw our potential in the morning. The potential life of The Scientist and I. 

Fully clothed, we lay in his bed staring up at the white stucco ceiling in silence. The air felt hot as a I adjusted my corduroy pants, tugging at the hip closest to his own vertical body. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 

We had spent the previous evening making out at a bus stop in the rain. It felt weird and inappropriate and totally hot, me and my best guy friend kissing. 

We would live in a high-rise in a major city like New York or Boston, wherever The Scientist’s chief lab and team of researchers were located at the time. We’d move a lot. I was adaptable. I’d grow my own basil on the roof and he’d insist ‘the help’ tend to the garden and not me. Don’t muddy your softs hands, he’d tell me. I’d frown, kiss his cheek, and then twirl in my satin umbrella skirt—a skirt long enough to reach down and touch our heated floors. I’d skip off across the foyer and into my dense study to continue smelling first edition classics. I’d wear chopsticks in my long hair (I’d have extensions), open a home for foster-care children, and collect oddly shaped rugs. We’d attend gala’s where The Scientist would accept prestigious awards. I would charm his inferior yet distinguished colleagues, and he would adore our union because I made us both more likable. Intellectuals from every corner on earth would know me as The Scientists Wife; a magnetic woman who brought new thought to concert halls in Oslo and Stockholm. The Scientist’s wife, what a lust for life, her genius a surprise. Mars has two speeds of sound, the human genome has been decoded, and Audrey Saxton enhances the opportunity in every space she enters.  

I met The Scientist when I was 15. We had AP History together. He was funny, smart, my same height, and kind of ugly. A pale jewish boy with butthole eyes, a thick penis, and a particular mix of sexual bravado and extreme self-hatred. He was arrogant and judgmental, I was excitable and chubby. We were both severely insecure but hopefully I’d always be better looking and he more successful.  

We would live independently, in this life I let us have in the moment between sleeping and waking. He would be gone a lot and I would fane disappointment for the sake of our egos. Adhering to the expectations of my gender, I would miss him as he continually chose his research over me and our family. But in reality this would save me. Save me from growing bored of him, liberate me from complacency, allow me the constant thrill of conflict and delicious resolution. I would remain free and the chains attached to welcoming his bountiful resources would be brittle because of our history and thus loyalty. I would accept his gifts giddy and we would both know I could have been anything I wanted.  

When we woke up after a night of pressing our mouths into one another, dry humping in clothes, touching tongues, we were quiet. 

Next, we were loud. 

We both turned on our sides to face the other and we screamed bloody murder. We laughed and we cringed. Grimaced, grinned, and pretended to throw up. This is so fucked up, we both said. And we pinky swore not to tell anyone and agreed that this meant nothing.

 We were just friends.