willjnwhitehead

[willjnwhitehead]

The Slip

I found the ticket in one of my grandfather’s old war books. He had about a hundred of them on the shelf, and I’d never really paid any attention to his stuff when I was a kid - the books and the weird knick-knacks that covered his house always seemed like the physical accumulation of age. Over the last few months, however, he’d begun to take them off the shelf and every time I’d go over he’d hand me a pile of yellowing, musty tomes, telling me it was about time he’d gotten rid of them. I think I knew implicitly what that meant. If someone starts giving away the artefacts that have informed their entire life, they’re thinking about what’s next. So, even though I had no interest in the Luftwaffe or the Spitfire, I received them dutifully, determined to find some life in them.

The ticket was a check-out slip for a hotel - a Holiday Inn in Canada. The writing was in french and english, typed in an elegant font which must have died out completely by the year 1980. It fell out of Luftwaffe immediately as I opened it, right into my lap like it was desperate to be paid attention to. After snatching it up, desperate for some glimpse into my grandfather’s elusive past, I realised there was very little to go on. The slip was all printed formalities, identical to the hundreds the hotel must have given out every year. The only places where some personality shone through were the room number and rate, scrawled in blue biro in the top corner. The room number meant nothing to me. I didn’t know which hotel he’d stayed at, and even if I had room 577 was meaningless - I didn’t know if that was expensive, or if it was a single room, or anything. It was probably on the fifth floor, which maybe meant good views, but he could have been facing the car park for all I knew. The rate, however, gave me a small prickle of excitement. Underneath the small, neat RATE, the word EXTRA was scribbled, in all caps and clearly in a hurry. It looked angry, or desperate, and I wasn’t exactly sure what “extra” meant. There was a slight smudge of brown underneath it, or perhaps a faded red. Immediately my mind jumped to all sorts of sleaze, some excess of passion or destruction that necessitated a furious “extra”, and with a slight sense of shame I stuffed the ticket into my pocket, determined not to think about it.

“Should I mention it?” 

I was in the kitchen with my sister. I’d been mulling over the ticket for a while now, unable to stop thinking about what that “extra” could have meant. Last time I’d gone over to his house, my grandfather had fallen asleep to Midsomer Murders with his lunchtime bib on. I could no longer imagine him walking into town on his own, let alone trashing a hotel room.

“I mean, I don’t know. It’s probably the most boring story you’ve ever heard, and you know what he’s like now. We don’t know how much of it will be true, he might mix it up with a movie he saw last week or something someone else told him. It’s up to you though.”

She was right, but there was nothing satisfactory in her answer. He didn’t really seem like the same person he’d been when I was growing up, stern and powerful, but then neither did the man who’d left a hotel room in such a state that it needed extra cleaning. Extra. It was maddeningly vague. I had to ask him.

“I’m going to ask him when we go over tomorrow. If you don’t want to hear the story you don’t have to, but I’m definitely asking.”

She shrugged. “Ask away, I don’t care. I’m just saying you should prepare to be disappointed.”

We went over early in the afternoon the next day, to make him a lunch and make sure he ate the whole thing. He was sat in the armchair by the newly gutted bookshelf. That armchair always seemed to me like an extension of him, with the green sagging leather joining seamlessly with his wrinkled arms. All of this, the shelves, his chair, were inseparable from the man I loved. I knew his house as I knew him, and always imagined the room vanishing the moment he left. The half-emptied bookshelves behind him gave the room a sunken atmosphere, and it felt like something vital was missing. Bones without flesh. The house I grew up with, and the man I grew up with, were fading. I realised how desperately I needed to ask him about the ticket, how much I wanted to see some semblance of the man I grew up with. 

After his soup, with a few drops of tomato wiped from his chin, there was a lull. For a moment, I decided how to word what I was about to say. I could feel myself freezing up, so I pulled the now-crumpled slip out of my pocket and handed it to him, looking up expectantly. He studied it for a moment, then an almost imperceptible smile danced across his mouth, gone as quickly as it came.

“Where did you find this?” He asked, in a neutral tone.

“It was in one of your old plane books. Luftwaffe, I think.” 

“Ah, that’s where it ended up. And you want to know about it?”

“Yeah, I really do. I want to know about “extra”.”

“Extra?” He studied the slip again. “Oh yes, extra!” He laughed a gentle, wheezing laugh. Shifting in his chair to a more upright position, he looked at me directly. I realised then it must have been months since he’d looked me in the eyes, and I was immediately alert.

“Years and years ago I knew a woman,” he began, after a long exhale, “and I had been in love with her for a long, long time. I’d known her at university, but only indirectly. She was spoken about, her name carrying a kind of significance only a few people there had. Every time I saw her, it felt like I was looking through a haze. She was so gorgeous, and so kind - the kind of person who makes you feel like the whole world is frozen around her when she speaks to you. Just being around her made me feel like life finally made sense, like it had all been leading up this. It really felt like that - everyone thought so. We’d been on a few dates since graduating; she lived near me, and coffee had seemed a harmless enough suggestion, one that I could brush off as mere friendliness if pushed. We got on fairly well, despite my fumbling, awkward way of speaking. She’d gone away for the summer, though, and months had passed since those few awkward coffees and spring walks. During the time she was gone, I never stopped thinking about her. I realised that I’d been completely in love with her this entire time, but I was so wrapped up in how awkwardly I was coming across that I never stopped to think about it. I was absolutely desperate to reconnect, to finally tell her what had been building up in my head for so long.

Anyway, we’d booked this hotel. It wasn’t fancy, but it was the most I could afford at the time. It was autumn, and on the drive down we were surrounded on all sides by the most beautiful bright orange trees you’ve ever seen. It felt like they were ushering us along, a welcome parade for the glorious couple. There was a sense, to me at least, that fate was driving us forward and leaving the unspoken past behind. It all seemed to rest on this one evening. The idea of it was almost overwhelming, to be honest. I couldn’t believe we’d be together for a whole night, with no interruptions and nothing to worry about in the morning. It was all I could focus on for weeks beforehand.The room itself was nothing special, a double bed with a view of the car park. There were some hills in the distance, and we were high enough that we still felt like we were somewhere amazing. I remember the feeling of opening the door for the first time, feeling like I was gazing into heaven.

She immediately flopped onto the bed, and I set about unpacking the few things I had. I quickly hid the packet of condoms I had under the mattress, feeling like it would ruin everything if she knew how desperate I was. I realised, as I was unpacking, that I wasn’t really saying a lot. I was chewing the inside of my cheek, stomach turning. I really needed this night to go well, and I wanted to rekindle that fire that I had been feeling throughout the summer. I sat down next to her on the bed and kissed her head, smiling as she turned towards me. She sat up, and we looked at each other in silence. After a minute or two, she reached for her bag and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

Did I mention that she smoked? She smoked a lot. I couldn’t really stand the stuff myself, but for some reason when she did it, all my distaste for the tar and the smell and the coughing vanished, and the sight of her lighting up with one delicate motion drove me crazy. She could have smoked three packs a day and I wouldn’t have minded a bit. Within the first hour, a dozen or so lipstick-stained cigarettes littered the ashtray and the surrounding table, arranged in a sort of wreath, the red of the lipstick like a rose’s head against the white filter of the cigarette. Even if I’d wanted to smoke, I couldn’t have brought myself to spoil such a bouquet. As she smoked, I would talk, about what I don’t remember. It feels to me now like it was probably just sentimental platitudes, but I have no idea if that’s true. When you fall out of love, every talk that felt so vital and life-affirming at the time becomes just another conversation. They aren’t as memorable as we’d like to believe. When she finished her sixth or seventh cigarette, she asked in her cool, unphased voice whether I’d like to order something to eat. Whether I would, not whether we should. It struck me oddly then, and it still causes a little sting in my chest to repeat it now. I think I told myself I was overthinking at the time, but deep down I’d started to know.

With a slight tinge of anxiety, I pulled the room service menu towards me. I’d left home with a lot more money than I should have, thinking that if there was ever a time to be lavish, this was it. I was prepared for lobster, steaks, wine, but looking down at the menu I felt a burning shame, a desire to become as small as humanly possible. I quickly scanned the list, feeling my face growing hot, and decided on a tomato bisque. A soup. On the most romantic, decadent evening of my life I chose a soup. I rang downstairs, ordered it as quickly as possible and slammed the phone back on the hook, trying to stop myself from feeling silly. She just looked at me throughout all of this, not saying a word but gazing into me with her beautiful eyes. It was so unbelievably painful for me to sit there and wait. I asked her if she wanted anything, but she shook her head and smiled slightly, like there was a joke I wasn’t in on. We sat quietly and waited, her smoking, me trying desperately to kick myself out of the spiral I was headed down.  

When my food came, I answered the door as quickly as possible, all but pushing the waiter back into the hallway once he’d dropped off the ostentatious silver dish with my pathetic meal inside. I brought it into the room and settled it on the bed, taking the utmost care not to embarrass myself further by spilling any. I opened the lid and gazed upon my feast, a tiny bowl of possibly microwaved tomato soup, with a pitiful bread roll on the side. No butter. I felt like I could cry. I looked up and I saw the look on her face, and immediately wished I was at the bottom of a very deep well. Looking back, I can imagine how she must have felt. A full grown man, hunched over a tiny bowl of soup with a spoon, eyes red with almost-tears. I would’ve run as far as i could if i were her. Instead, she went into the bathroom, taking a bottle of whiskey with her. She locked the door behind her, and I sat on the bed, silently staring at the wall and eating my soup. 

When she came out of the bathroom, she seemed a little drunk. The bottle she’d taken in was nowhere to be seen, and I figured she must have just forgotten about it. She looked at me deliberately, pointedly, as if willing me to say something to her. I asked if she was okay, and she rolled her eyes. 

“I’m fine. You’ve asked me that five times since we got here. I was fine, I am fine. Did you enjoy your soup?” 

I cringed. “Yes, it was...nice. Are you sure you didn’t wa-”

“Yes I am sure I didn’t want anything to eat. If I did I would have ordered something. Why do you keep asking the same few questions? Is there nothing else you have to say to me?”

I didn’t know how to respond. I had so, so much I wanted to say to her, about the place, about my feelings, about everything, but my mind went totally blank. I eventually said, “I’m really glad we’re here.”

“Oh god. Look, do you want a drink? Let’s get some wine.” She picked up the phone. “Hi. Can we have a bottle of wine please? Red. Room 577. Thanks.” 

“Is something wrong? Is there something we need to talk about?”

“No, sorry. I’m being such a dick. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.” I almost laughed at that. 

“It might be a bit late for that, I’m afraid.” She carried on as if she hadn’t heard me.

“I just...I have a hard time with this kind of thing. Those first couple of dates, they were so great. I felt like we were running endlessly alongside one another, never running out of energy. You made me feel boundless. This, though...this feels like a brick wall. We have nothing to say to each other. I can see you picking your nails, chewing the inside of your cheek. I feel the same way. We’re at the end and being here is fucking killing us.”

I was stunned. I couldn’t believe anything she was saying. It felt like she was saying it for someone else, reciting lines written specifically to destroy me.

“You couldn’t be more wrong,” I started, voice catching in my throat. “I- I think I’m in love with you. All this, my nails, my awkwardness...I just didn’t want to fuck anything up. I agree with you, those dates were magic. I didn’t appreciate it then, I didn’t know how special it was. But over the past few weeks, it dawned on me. That’s why I wanted to come here. I wanted to tell you how much you mean to me.”

She considered this for a moment. 

“That’s love for you? Anxiously waiting? A rigid, starched hotel room? That’s hell. What about the exhilaration of finding someone, those first few moments where you realise that they might be someone special? I remember seeing you light up when I told you about myself. It made me feel like the most important person in the world. I never wanted to stop looking at you. Now I can barely stand to be in the same room as you. Can’t you feel it too? It’s like we’re in an airlock. I feel like I’m suffocating.”

My head was spinning. I couldn’t concentrate on a single thing she said. All the blood, drained from my face, was collecting in my stomach. I was going to throw up, or pass out. I couldn’t speak.

“I..I’m so embarrassed. I did all this to...for you. I wanted to tell you how I felt. I didn’t realise. I’m so, so sorry. It’s been months, I haven’t stopped, I mean I can’t stop, I really am in love with you. Tonight doesn’t feel the same, you’re right, but I can make it better. Let’s have a drink, let’s cheer up. The last two hours didn’t happen, okay?”

She just looked at me, exasperated.

“Okay, they didn’t happen. What do you want to talk about?”

As we went on talking, she lit another cigarette. There was no beauty to it anymore, but instead a frustration, and as her hand shook beneath the lighter’s flame I suddenly became acutely aware of how much she needed to smoke. It no longer felt like part of her charm, but a crutch. I realised that my shame was twisting itself into anger, and I looked down and saw my hands were clenched into tight fists, knuckles white. I tried to carry on as normal, but I could feel myself almost boiling over. It took everything in me not to raise my voice, but I managed to keep a sick, neutral tone which I’m sure did nothing for the mood. As we spoke, I tried to rationalise what she’d said in my head. Was she saying she had loved me? Or did she think that we’d lost our chance? Could I win her back? What was I supposed to do? Eventually I broke.

“So is there a chance for us? Are we fucked?” I asked, not wanting an answer.

“I want to have fun. Why do you have to think in such big terms? Why do we have to turn everything into something meaningful?”

“Because I really love you.”

“But I’m not having any fun.”

I needed some space after that. My eyes were swimming and I felt like I was on the verge of either passing out or breaking down, so I went into the bathroom to cool off. Everything felt completely unreal, like the world around me lost all sense. I felt totally lost. On the top of the cistern was the bottle of Jack Daniels from earlier, shining at me as if nothing had just happened. I picked it up, wiped the rim and took a swig. I don’t know what I was hoping would happen, but the alcohol burned my throat on the way down, leaving an evil taste in my mouth which matched the seething anger in my head. I threw the bottle at the wall, smashing it and instantly feeling completely ashamed. I came back into the room and she looked up at me with concern. I went over to the bed and buried my head in her chest, letting her hold me there awkwardly. After a few minutes, I looked up into her beautiful face, and couldn’t help but kiss her. She kissed back, hard, and we began to make love. There was no enjoyment in it, I think for either of us. It felt angry, frustrated. I hated every moment of it, but I needed to feel like something was good. Anything at all. When it was over, I sat on the side of the bed and burst into tears. I couldn’t bear to open my eyes, to see her disgust. The room around us was trashed. In our anger, we’d knocked lamps to the floor, their bulbs lying in shards all around our feet. Her cigarette butts, a mountain now, littered the bedside table. My soup dish was upturned, and orangey red soup had seeped through the cream carpets. In the bathroom, whiskey coated the wall and the shower curtain. I covered my head with the pillow and tried to sleep.

The next morning I woke up with the sun. Looking out the window, I saw the garbage trucks rolling into the hotel car park, emptying cavernous bins full of nameless rubbish. I watched until the glare from the rising sun shone right into my aching, heavy eyes, turning then to face the wreckage of the room. I couldn’t believe that this was the same place that gleamed and pulsed with energy less than a day ago. It just felt so defeated, and my chest felt heavy as I gazed around at the carnage. Everything was miserable, and as I cast my eyes over the place in the bed where she had been I felt absolutely nothing. In that moment I felt so utterly ashamed - ashamed of the mess, ashamed that I had made it, ashamed that I could’ve let myself get humiliated in such a way. All i was thinking about was myself. I couldn’t bear it. I took one last look at the room, determined that I would never let this happen again, and I closed the door. I heard the lock click, and I resolved never to think about it ever again. I would take it to my grave. I went downstairs, checked out and got this wretched ticket. The only physical proof that it ever happened was the word EXTRA scrawled in the top right corner. I hid it in a book I’d never read, and there it stayed. Until today, I suppose.”

And that was it. When the story ended, I had to take a second to readjust to where we were. The armchair shifted in front of me, and my grandfather shrank down into it, his body withering right in front of me. The room felt cold and distant once again, the empty shelves enveloping everything in front of them. A small smile played over his lips as he watched me take in the surroundings. He didn’t seem to be bothered at all.

“Are you okay?” I asked, after a moment of him smiling and me bewildered.

“Oh yes,” he replied, and I could tell he meant it completely. He seemed almost satisfied, smug. “I’ve never told that story to anyone before, you know. It always felt too painful, too embarrassing. When I closed that door for the final time, I wanted it gone. I thought I could close it off and never have to think about it again, that it wouldn’t be a part of me if I willed it not to be. Telling you everything like that, I realised how stupid I was to think that way. I was so embarrassed, I thought that closing that door and never opening it would make it disappear. I thought she’d stay the way she always was in my memory, and I wouldn’t have to see that last look on her face. The energy, the effort I put into keeping it closed...it was never worth it. What’s the point? ”

I realised I’d been gripping the side of the chair I was sitting in with surprising force, and I relaxed my hands. The air in the room seemed to be lighter, and we sat in silence, allowing the atmosphere to dissipate. After a moment, I felt like I needed to say something. But as I looked up, I saw that he was gazing out of the window behind me. I turned, and I saw that it had started to rain outside. Immediately my mind went to my bike. I hadn’t bothered to cover it because it was so sunny that morning, and now it’d get soaked. However, seeing the look on my grandfather’s face as he watched the rain gently falling, I let the bike slip out of my mind, and sat there quietly, the silence punctuated by a thousand tiny patters.

[willjnwhitehead]

starburst

I’m thinking about the girl who was stage manager of some production I did tech for. doing tech meant pressing play on sound effects when someone came through the door and playing the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack before the show started and during the intermission. I had actually been asked to help the cast with their English accents, but they needed someone to press the sound effects buttons so I did that as well. The girl came to the rehearsals the week before the actual shows, and really knew what she was doing. I knew that she knew I had no idea what I was doing, because I was really nervous and kept fucking up. I had my finger hovering over the play button for the whole performance so I wouldn’t miss the cues, but I kept triggering the door sound during the emotional parts of the show. Everyone got annoyed at me about it, and I was really nervous I’d do it during the actual thing and everyone would think someone was about to walk in but then deciding not to and leaving. It actually might have been interesting if I’d done it enough times - like amping up the tension or representing indecision or something - but I don’t remember what the show was about and actually it would have just ruined the play.

When I was finally getting it right, and getting less nervous and more bored about the whole thing, the girl trusted me a little more. She was always on, checking everyone was doing their jobs and sternly reprimanding people for pissing about with the wigs backstage. She was always eating Starburst when she was working, I guess to keep herself focused or maybe she just liked Starburst a lot. She offered me one once, and I took a green one. In America the green ones are apple, not lime, which is so exciting. She saw I took a green one and wrinkled her face up, asking me if I wanted a better one. I said no! the green ones are great, and she said ...okay and walked off. I wondered if I came off weird, which wasn’t unusual because worrying about being weird was essentially the only thing on my mind at that point in my life. I ate my green starburst and went on with the button-pushing. 

The reason I’m thinking about her is because from that point on, she used to pass by the sound cubicle on her way round the theatre, while she was busy telling people off and getting everything right, and silently place a handful of green Starburst on the desk in front of me. She never even looked at me while she did it, and she was always gone before I got the chance to say thank you. I really think that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. I don’t think she’d even remember doing it now. That’s the high-water mark for kindness if you ask me - a mundane, everyday kindness which doesn’t draw any attention to itself. 

The play went as well as an am-dram play can go, and on the closing night everyone went out for drinks, but the girl wasn’t there. She only appeared during rehearsal week, and was never at any of the shows, so I slipped out quietly right after the show ended and went home instead. I wish I could say I never saw her again, but I saw her all the time. She used to wave at me when she cycled through campus, and we had a class together. It was just totally normal.

[willjnwhitehead]

we have to carry

We have to carry everything bad that happens to us with us for the rest of our lives. I can’t get my head around that. We have to carry everything bad that happens to us with us for the rest of our lives. 

The first time I thought about it was when the drug safety people came to our primary school with whole trays full of drugs for us to peer at. They had plastic safety glass over them, so to me it seemed like I was at a museum, examining the powders and pills the same way I did the desiccated butterflies and dragonflies they had at New Walk. Each drug carried its own myth, laden with alternate names each more ominous than the last. It reminded me of the devil, each of whose names seemed to evoke some new form of evil than the one before. Beezelbub, Lucifer, Satan. Great names, they really get what he’s about. God’s names seem to split him off, weaken him. “God” eclipses them all. 

The drugs mostly scared me, especially crack cocaine, which my teacher wrote on the board as CRAC for some reason. The horror of addiction and psychosis terrified me, and I was thoroughly put off the majority. Except LSD. LSD had such a weird power over me, exacerbated I think by the museum exhibit trays. The sheet of LSD in there was like a faded comic strip, albeit one with the same panel over and over. I can’t remember what the picture was, I want to say Bart Simpson but I think that’s just cause I saw Bart Simpson in everything then. The drug safety woman told us that LSD caused hallucinations, and said that one person had imagined a giant marshmallow was chasing them, which made us laugh. She said the person killed themselves because of that, which made us stop laughing. She said that LSD remained in your spine for the rest of your life after just one “trip”, so you’d be doing the dishes in thirty years and suddenly the marshmallow would be there, presumably warming up to chase you to your death. That really got me. In your spine, forever? I barely knew I existed, and had no way to grasp that something could ever be forever. Really weirded me out.

Years later, when I actually took LSD, I realised that the marshmallow thing probably didn’t happen. I spent most of my time on it silent and sweating heavily. I forgot all about the spine thing until I had an extremely minor flashback looking at some patterned carpet, which shifted about a tiny bit. Suddenly I remembered that it would be with me forever, and it was weirdly calming. It’s like a memory that won’t ever lose its power, a real and physical reminder that the past happened, and you’re the same person it happened to. I think it’s the only good memory I have that hasn’t lost its intensity.

I emphasise good memory because they’re the ones that fade. The bad memories stick around. Cruelly, they somehow manage to get stronger with time, like they’ve rolled around on the floor of your brain and gathered dirt to become twice their size. I haven’t had anything truly awful happen to me, and still the bad things in my life swirl around my head constantly, refusing to be ignored and impossible to forget. I have to carry them, I have to keep them, even though I never want them. It’s not just me either; everyone in the world has to do this. Every bad thing that happens is etched into everyone’s brains.

I’m really obsessed with grief at the moment. I think it’s because it’s the most obvious case of bad things sticking around. Everything I read or watch about grief seems to tell me that you never really get past it, so to speak. You just learn how to keep it beside you, and stop it overwhelming you. It follows you unfalteringly through your life, with you as you yourself die. That really freaks me out. It feels childish to say, but it’s so unfair. I don’t want that. I don’t want the bad things, and I can’t believe it’s impossible to live a life without horrible mistakes or dead friends haunting you the entire way through. Are there any adults who go to sleep without having to fight off the bullshit past reminding them of all the horrors of their life? With LSD, you get wobbly lines every few years or so. With ordinary boring existence, you get unbearable sadness and regret all the time. Maybe I’m just depressed.

[willjnwhitehead]

Writing

I’m trying to write something new for this every day. I am not going to promote it to anyone at all, and it’s weirdly comforting that even in the age where everything can be accessed by everyone at any time, something that I do can (and will) slip completely under the radar. I’m trying to get to a point where I don’t care either way if someone reads this or doesn’t. Nothing too personal to get embarrassed over, nothing too general that this might be a block of copy.

I want to get much, much better at writing. I want to lose the constant self-conscious perception I have where I try to write in a specific voice, or I perceive myself writing in a try-hard, contrived way. I want to stop trying to put jokes in where they don’t fit, because they always make me cringe when I look back. I just want to try and get whatever happens to be in my mind out of it without too much interference on the way over.

Writing with a known audience in mind absolutely destroys me. Even at the lowest level, I can hardly write a Letterboxd review without deleting and rewriting about five times. I know that some people who follow me are real film snobs connoisseurs and will have much more robust and profound opinions than I do, and I don’t want to offend them or have them laugh at me. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t. I just don’t want them to have the chance.

I think the bottom line for this is that at the end of it I’d like to have something to show for my “wanting to be a writer” claim. It’s something I’ve always told people I want to be, including myself, without any actual reason. I like the idea of being a writer, but maybe I just value the respect given to writers more than the respect given to, say, actors. Or maybe it’s the coolest job i can actively imagine myself being able to do. Either way, I’ve convinced my friends that I ought to be one, despite having next to nothing to actually show for it. 

I never felt that practice actually worked for me, I can never see the results of my practice. Except when I play guitar. And except when I was revising at school. I’m not telling the truth. I am just way more inclined towards instant results and am completely put off by the long term. I should be able to 1. have a brilliant idea in the centre of my thoughts at all times and 2. be able to express that idea in the most dazzling yet accessible language possible. These exercises are to get the latter moving, to try and shift some of the slag blocking up all of my thoughts. I have truly no idea how to get the first one going. I’ll get back to you (me) on that.

[willjnwhitehead]

Horror

I recently watched Saint Maud. I had the idea that it was going to be one of those big A24 hitters, after catching wind of it during the early marketing days. It had an Instagram account, a buzz from critics very early on, it seemed like they were banking on it as a kind of Hereditary/The Witch alternative horror. Of course, the pandemic gutted its release, and it ended up kind of spluttering out, getting a very limited release and almost no audience. I didn’t see it in the cinema because I’m lazy and haven’t left the house in months. 

We ended up getting it on DVD this week, and the cover of the DVD seemed to confirm my perception of it. The bold font and black/red colour scheme yelled at me that it was going to be brutal and disturbing, the hysterical critical reviews hailing it as sensationally terrifying etc etc. I was excited. I love to be scared out of my mind, I love to feel truly horrified in the deepest part of my psyche. I felt that first watching the marionette scene in The Others when I was about 12, and I have been desperately chasing the high ever since.

BUT, it didn’t deliver. I came out at the end just a little bit perturbed, but basically unfazed. I don’t blame Saint Maud itself for that at all, because I really don’t think it was aiming at what I’d been led to believe it was. It just wasn’t the horror movie that I wanted it to be. I wrote that in a dull Letterboxd review and almost immediately got a comment from one of those weirdo 7,000-films-watched Letterboxd masturbators saying “why is it not horror? Everyone says it is, and I agree”. I tried to respond with something pithy, then something smart, then settled on a pathetic “it wasn’t scary :(”, which felt so stupid.

Saying “it wasn’t scary :(” feels like such a subjective take, and made me feel like a total dummy. Like I would say The Hangover isn’t a comedy cause it didn’t make ME laugh. But I’ve been thinking a little bit about it and I think it is absolutely crucial that a horror film induces the feeling of horror within you, which ought to be less subjective than humour, which has much more of a socialised element to it. Horror cuts to your core, past and through all facade.

Horror is, for me, entirely dependent on a sense of loss of control. I think that the best of all horrors are ones in which not only do you not have a sense of what will happen narratively, but you also have a sense of total helplessness as a spectator. This is why found footage, which places you as the unwilling and non-autonomous protagonist, is so effective. And it’s also why the stock house invasion or slasher movies are so impotent now. You know what will happen, you are distant from the characters. You’re just anticipating the gruesome. 

Losing control is horrifying because you become naked and helpless, at the mercy of whatever the film is going to subject you to. You’re incredibly vulnerable, whilst still in the complete safety of your house or the cinema or wherever. There’s a weird kind of euphoria to that, of being able to comfortably experience something so existentially disturbing. That’s what’s so exhilarating about watching a great horror movie. I’ve received all the profound ego-shattering effects of true fear, but without all of the inevitable trauma that would come with a real event of horror. It’s cleansing and life-affirming, like an acid trip without all the sweating. 

SO, Saint Maud was not a horror film in that sense. Although immersive and often disturbing, there was never a sense that we as spectators were out of control. We could never identify with the protagonist, who was plainly delusional from the start. The atmosphere was one of distance, of observation, and so the few times we were expected to be scared, it came off sad or odd. I never felt the cold chill in my bones, because I never felt myself to be a part of its world. This isn’t a knock against the film itself, I thought it was an interesting character study with some great ideas about the physical aspect of spirituality, but it wasn’t a horror. 

[willjnwhitehead]

Last Stop

He woke with a start. His headphones, which had up until now been relatively docile, had suddenly squawked with distortion. Opening his eyes slowly, with the reluctant consciousness that waking abruptly brings, the man looked around. The compartment was dark, and completely still. The soothing rhythm of the train’s movement, which must have been what sent him to sleep in the first place, was now completely absent. A chill was in the air, as if there was an open window, but he couldn’t tell whether the doors were open or shut. Checking the time, he groaned and rubbed his head. If now was 10:25, then he’d missed his stop by at least 40 minutes. Where the hell could he be? Fumbling for his glasses, he peered up at the digital display a few rows ahead of him.  Please wear a mask when onboard our service, ensuring it covers your mouth and nose entirely, but remember that not all illnesses are vis- yes, yes. God. What stop is this? It wouldn’t say. Standing up, he tried to gauge whether he was actually alone on the train, but the darkness felt oppressively consuming and besides, the seats were too tall to see even a few rows ahead. Annoyed, he rose into the aisle and went to the door, first peering through the glass for some kind of clue as to his location. 

There seemed to be a kind of fog beyond the window, so thick he could barely even look outside unless he pressed his nose to the glass and cupped his hands around his face. The fog was not close to the window, but somehow he couldn’t focus on any certain point. There was nothing to look at, and his eyes trailed outwards in a futile effort to land on something. Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he turned on the flashlight and held it up. The second it touched the fog, however, the light vanished. He turned the phone round to check if he had somehow switched the torch off in his haste, and was rewarded with the sharp LED beamed directly into his eye. God, fuck. He rubbed his eye and looked out, now inhibited further by the shapeless blob of bluish grey obscuring the view out of his left eye. The light was useless. Either there was nothing to see out there, or this ridiculous fog was covering it all up. Sighing, he pressed the button to open the electric doors.

But nothing happened. Gripped by a sudden panic, he pushed the button feverishly again and again, but the door remained resolutely shut. Feeling his heartbeat rise, he shut his eyes and breathed slowly and deeply, trying to focus on the situation. Opening them, he suddenly noticed a glint in the corner of his eye. Through the glass he could spot a tiny orange glow, its distance impossible to gauge from the thick fog. Ah no, wait. it was impossible to tell because it wasn’t outside, he realised with a start. The glow was a reflection, and as he turned round he breathed a sigh of relief. Glowing opposite him was the button to open the doors on the other side. A lightheadedness overcame him and he laughed quietly to himself. Moving over to the other side, he pressed the button and the doors yielded immediately, almost mockingly. However, as the door opened, an incredible chill came over him. He hadn’t realised how warm it was inside the train, but accessing the outside world reminded him that it was November and 10 o’clock. Of course it would be cold. Bracing himself, he stepped off the train. 

Immediately he knew there was something wrong. There was no sign of danger, as the fog which pervaded the area was still present so there was no way to even see anything troubling, but the chill of dread began flooding his brain. Why couldn’t he see even a foot in front of him? How could he possibly move with no landmarks to guide him? When has there ever been fog this thick? It reminded him of an old Beano where Dennis or somebody used a knife to cut open a solid cube of fog, which was otherwise impenetrable. He’d thought that only existed as a kind of myth, a “back in my day” that his parents would constantly discuss where minor occurrences had been distorted by heady nostalgia and the inevitable corrosion of memory into grand events. But here it was, literally staring him in the face. This was so wrong. This just doesn’t happen in real life. Almost unconsciously, he backed into the train, the doors whooshing closed in front of him. Immediately, the warmth of the enclosed space enveloped him, and with it a kind of sensation of safety. This, at least, was known. A tiredness overcame him, and he slumped back into a seat, content to simply wait. Trains often wait interminably in these bumfuck places. Stations with nothing but 10 metres of platform and fields on all sides. No one ever gets on or off here, they exist solely so the cheaper trains take three times as long as they need to. He’d just wait until they got to somewhere real.

A flash of movement at the other end of the carriage. The ticket man! Of course. There’s always a ticket man. The countless times he’d hidden in the toilet, or searched his bag for a nonexistent railcard whilst being stared down by an overzealous conductor vanished from his mind. He’d never been so happy to see someone whose entire existence he despised. Scrambling up, he made his way down the carriage, trying to gently call the conductor’s attention. As he was moving past the seats, it occurred to him that maybe he should be acting a little differently, shouting or running or something. Filing past the seats with only the slightest of haste, he felt sure he was about to crash into someone’s leg and apologise embarrassedly. After all, he had no reason to think he was the only passenger. It would be insane to think that. It’s not too late, and this was a busy route. Someone could be in any one of these rows. Of course, he didn’t see anyone as he bustled past. But that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Stop being so narcissistic, the world doesn’t revolve around you. God, it felt like he’d been walking for ages. The carriage stretched on forever. It felt like one of those old Hitchcock zooms, like the one in Vertigo. You pull back and zoom or whatever and the corridor becomes three times as long. He shook his head. You always think you’re in a film. Not everything is a film. Eventually he reached the door at the other end, opening it triumphantly. 

But, of course, the conductor was long gone. This new carriage stretched out before him, empty as the last and identical in pretty much every way. No wait. Identical in literally every way. He could have sworn this was the exact same carriage he just left. The condensation on the windows even looked like it did in his. Curious, he walked to where his seat would have been, and gasped. A bag, just like his, and a jacket, just like his, lay there. Mouth agape, he stood reeling at this sight. Were they his? That couldn’t be possible. And, in fact, didn’t he always put his coat on the seat next to him? This was bundled on the floor carelessly, something he would never dream of doing. Yes, he was being silly, this wasn’t his stuff. It was maybe the same kind of bag, and the coat was the same colour and perhaps the same brand, but there was no way this was his. Examining the coat, he shook his head and smiled. He had Velcro on his sleeve cuffs, and this had buttons. It was a much nicer, and probably more expensive, coat. Bastard, he thought. Still, it was a weird coincidence. Not that weird, because he was hardly on the avant-garde of fashion, but a little weird. He stood up, and suddenly there it was again! A flash; someone was definitely moving somewhere down the carriage, just out of his peripheral vision. He snapped his head round, and froze. Someone was staring directly at him. In the gloom, he could only make out the whites of their eyes, wide and unflinching. Frozen in fear, he stared back. Neither broke their gaze for what felt like forever. Eventually he fumbled for his phone, aimed the torch at the starer, and sighed. It was a poster. One of those warning posters. Do you know what a train conductor looks like? He looks just like you. The image of the conductor stared out, with a “guilty until proven innocent” stare sure to get thousands of potential ne’er-do-wells to pull out their wallet for a ticket. The relief of this quickly gave way to an anger at the poster’s existence. It was obviously designed for intimidation, and had totally worked on him, albeit in perhaps a different manner to what was intended. He moved over to it, and stared directly back at the conductor’s eyes, before moving to the next carriage. 

Opening the door, he was immediately beset by the notion that he wasn’t alone. The perpetually out of sight conductor was nowhere to be seen, but there was an atmosphere of the lived-in, as if someone had taken up residence. It didn’t feel homely, per se, but he got the sense that he was intruding on some private domain. Tiptoeing through, he noticed a cluster of belongings towards the middle of the carriage. Coats draped over the tall seats, and newspapers lining the floors. Feeling a combination of curiosity and fear, the man crept over and peered into the cluster. Inside, bundled up in rags and surrounded by suitcases, a sleeping person lay. He could barely make out a mess of black hair, protruding from one end, and two socked feet from the other. The body rose and fell rhythmically, as with sleep, but there was absolutely no noise. The eerie quiet of the sleeping person made the man feel as if he were watching a play. This was a pantomime of sleep, an overacted facsimile which would be convincing on the stage but did not hold water close up. Why were they pretending to sleep?

“Hello?” He whispered, cautiously. No response. The person was dedicated to the act, unwilling to give up the charade.

“Hello?” He ventured again, a little louder this time. Still nothing. Slowly, he moved closer, bracing himself for the smell that must accompany such a person, covered in rags and sleeping rough as they were. But there was no smell. He couldn’t even smell the polyester seats. Breathing through his nose again, he ventured to shake the sleeper gently. In response to this, they shrugged their shoulders irritably, and pulled the rags down so it covered their feet. Doing so caused their shoulders, bare and entirely clean, to become exposed. Goosebumps immediately appeared despite the almost stifling warmth of the carriage, and the sleeper pulled the rags back up over their shoulders, exposing their feet once more. Following this, they resumed the pantomime of sleep. The man hovered for a moment, confused, then began to move away. As he stepped back, he noticed that under the seats surrounding the sleeper were endless sandwiches, packets of crisps, bottles of water, and pieces of fruit that had completely rotted. The sandwiches bulged from their boxes with fermentation, and maggots crawled amongst the fruit. Still, there was somehow no smell. Disgusted and horrified, the man backed away completely, moving to the next carriage.

The next carriage offered nothing new. The layout was identical to the previous two, save for their idiosyncrasies, and offered the bland familiarity that comes with frequent rail travel. This blandness suddenly hit the man, as he purveyed the carriage with its dull colours, tall seats and long thin windows. Without its passengers, the car was characterless. It served a purpose, and refused to offer any more than that. Beset by a kind of grim boredom, the man strove to ignore his surroundings and focus on finding that fucking conductor. He was certain he’d seen him, moving just out of his eyeline the entire time he’d been on the train. He walked the length of the carriage, and opened the door to the next.

And the next, and the next. Moving purposefully through the train, which offered nothing to either his eyes or his brain, the man focused on his goal. By the time he had traversed several more, the tiredness he’d experienced upon getting back onto the train returned. He couldn’t be sure, but it felt hotter than it had back at his seat. The heat was not only greater, but somehow felt closer. He could feel it pressing down on his clothes, sweat making his skin rub against his shirt and jeans, making them itch. It felt like he was fighting through a current, each step sapping him of more energy. The more steps he took, the darker his surroundings appeared. The gloom grew with the heat, the two exacerbating one another, oppressing and restricting his movement and sight. Eventually, he found another carriage door, opening it and praying for some relief.

The final carriage was completely dark. The heat prevailed, and had risen to a level where it was almost imperceptible in its intensity. He could no longer remember what any other temperature had felt like. Groping through the pitch black, he found a seat to collapse into. There was no way he could continue in this state. He found himself sitting on something uncomfortable, and pulled his phone’s torch out to inspect it. 

It was his coat. He was certain this time. There was Velcro on the sleeve cuffs, and a stain which he remembered had come from spilling coffee on it that morning. He felt cautiously on the floor to his left and yes, there was his bag. As he trained the torch on it, it faltered and cut out, the phone displaying its “no battery” sign. Shifting to the window seat, the man sat completely still, gazing out at the nothing beyond the window. Outside, the fog remained, motionless and opaque.

[willjnwhitehead]

why Teens of Denial is the best album of all time

listen i love car seat headrest and will probably continue to do so for a long old time. however, it is impossible to me that they can improve on 2016′s teens of denial, which is the most Me album ever made.

teens of denial is first and foremost an album about narcissism. specifically, it is about intense and obsessive introspection which transforms into narcissism. it unflinchingly explores the idea of being self-obsessed to the point of mental illness, and while it critiques that notion, it does so in a way that is ultimately unsatisfactory. the critique is implicit rather than outright, because to explicitly condemn the behaviour enters the songs’ speaker back into the cycle of introspection which led to narcissism in the first place. i was gonna go track by track to explain this but i just spent half an hour just on fill in the blank and there are like 12 tracks or whatever so i’m gonna condense.

We start the album with the speaker (let’s call him Joe) in a state of self-righteous depression, expressing the urge to beat himself up and calling out those who suggest his depression is a result of not trying hard enough. in doing so, he justifies to himself and to everyone hearing the album (the eponymous teens, which i’ll come to) that the way he is acting is appropriate. he is Depressed and this is what being Depressed entails. However, the lyrics in the verses of Fill in the Blank betray an incredible disdain for others in favour of introspection. he doesn’t know what he wants out of people but he knows he’s not getting it. friends and family are simply utilities that he has no use for. i would argue that the reason he can’t get anything out of them is that his entire outlook is towards himself. no one else can possibly fill a similar emotional spot to this all-encompassing self-loathing. it’s too powerful. Fill in the Blank ends with Joe succumbing entirely to his depression, further consolidating its grip over him and exacerbating his self-absorbed wallowing in sadness. i say none of this as a negative by the way. i love this honesty. it’s exactly how i feel.

moving on, we see Joe’s inability to exist in society demonstrated in writing music (Vincent), parties (Hippie Powers, Drugs with Friends), and trying to maintain relationships (Not What I Needed). In Vincent, we see Joe claim that it’s harder to speak when someone else is listening. this is further evidence for the fact that he is fundamentally unable to relate to anyone other than himself. the idea of finding it difficult to speak to someone who’s listening appears anachronistic - isn’t the point of speaking to communicate with someone else? - but this contributes to the splitting of the self first brought up in Fill in the blank (if i was split in two i would just take my fists). Joe sees introspection as a conversation only for himself, the only person who understands how much he hates himself and how bad he feels. no one else could possibly understand. we see this furthered in Not What I Needed when he brushes off the advice given to him by friends (get a job, eat an apple etc) as meaningless - “they’re just people, too”. however, that last word sparks something of a change in Joe, and the song proper ends with him saying “Will I find out I am just people too?”. His gaze turns briefly away from himself here, and he realises that despite his self-obsession, he is not actually anything special. The interview on the outro of this track could bring us into a whole essay on metanarratives, which i don’t want to go into. god, i’m missing so much out.

okay. drunk drivers is the halfway point of the album, and the point at which Joe is starting to unravel his obsession, or at least come to terms with it. we see him suggest that “you share the same fate as the people you hate”, which is mature and the least solipsistic statement put forth on the album so far. grappling with the notion of death as he contemplates drunk driving, Joe understands that mortality is the great leveller, and that as different as he feels from everyone around him, he cannot avoid their mortal identicality (not a word). at the end of this song, Joe thinks about the voice in his head (splitting of self once more) and decides that he is not his own enemy, but a friend. he decides not to drunk drive. This appears positive but in fact doubles down on his narcissism. the self-loathing, which characterised his self-obsession up until this point, has vanished and been replaced by a sense of superiority. if drunk driving was the reminder that he is not dissimilar from every person on earth, getting out of the car and walking is Joe’s attempt to transcend that. here, he is almost trying to cheat death. this is where we are at halfway. Joe begins self-obsessed and self-loathing, and all that is changed is that he no longer hates himself. 

1937 state park finds Joe attempting to grapple with his newfound self-confidence, which falls flat. he mocks his death-obsessed generation before talking about death in the very same song, he makes fun of a high school teen dream in the hospital. this doesn’t paint a good portrait of Joe, who appears cruel and vain in his superiority. In the choruses, Joe makes it clear that he is unable to free himself from solipsism by refusing to allow others to feel his emotion. it’s clear he hasn’t learned anything at this point except a smug sense of superiority.  

to dip briefly into metanarrative, it almost feels like Unforgiving Girl is a song written by Joe at this time in his life. it’s uninspired and smug, a love song with no purpose other than to show off about feelings. 

cosmic hero and the ballad of the costa concordia both feel incredibly important to the narcissism narrative. In each, Joe wrestles with his newfound superiority and breaks back down into self-loathing. Cosmic hero has rises and falls of hatred. in the verses we see Joe questioning himself, realising that he’s been acting like a bastard these past few songs - “if you really wanna know how kind you are, just ask yourself why you’re lying in bed alone”. The whole thing has been a sham. However, he still has this steadfast belief that he is better than everyone else. The most ugly line (that i LOVE) - “you won’t go to heaven, I will go to heaven, I won’t see you there”. who the fuck does he think he is!

in costa concordia, we start with self-hatred. a feeling of weakness, and impotence. Joe can’t sustain his anger, he can’t feel anything. he is at a total existential loss. he hated himself, then he loved himself, now what is he? after the short interpolation of dido’s white flag, Joe blames everyone else for his mistakes. “how was i to know?”. he refuses responsibility, as he has done implicitly the entire album. following this outpouring, he gives up. he realises all he has been doing up until this point has been useless. he calls himself a man “clinging to the cliff of revelation, so scared of what he would find”. His so-called introspection has not been leading to anything because he’s been too scared of finding what that is. he’s just been stuck in self-obsession with no specific endpoint. so, he gives up on it. “though he made fun of us, he has now become one of us”. he surrenders his narcissism and accepts his normality.

the final full track, Connect the Dots, retroactively looks at the album and Joe’s life and suggests that all of it was the product of childhood, or teenagehood (not a word). “little boy says i’m in love with my fists” hearkens back to fill in the blank, there’s a line about driving which may be a stretch but is drunk drivers-ish. the song is upbeat and happy, and seems to be at total peace with imperfection - “you won’t see who you wanna see there, no one will want to be in your band”. acceptance. the song ends with the declaration “FUCK OFF TEENS!”. The teens, to my mind, are those of the album’s title, denying their own narcissism, denying that they are partially at fault for their own isolation, denying autonomy. i love this line so much.

Joe Goes to School is a bit of a post-credits scene, i think. the motif running through the album is that Joe finds it impossible to empathise with anyone who isn’t himself, and this kind of exemplifies that once more. maybe he isn’t totally cured, maybe he can’t be. he has no idea what the horse is feeling, but he projects potential sadness onto it, which may be a reflection of himself. however, he does not dwell on this, and splits the scene. it doesn’t matter that he can’t empathise, he has other shit to do.

anyway that’s basically why the album rules. it’s exactly what i’ve been going through in the past 5 years of my life, and i have never seen it written so eloquently and sensitively as Will wrote it here. i think it’s phenomenal, and it will always be one of my favourite records. 

[willjnwhitehead]

Feeling Motivated

EDIT: I started writing this in mid-January and have only just got around to finishing it in mid-February, so probably take everything I say with a pinch of salt. 

Lately I’ve been trying really hard to make myself a more studious and smart person. I think I mentioned it in a previous post, I have a lot (a lot) of new years resolutions. so far they’re going pretty fine - i’ve been taking at least half an hour of exercise most days, reading lots and well, actively engaging in CBT rather than pretending to. part of trying to do all this has made me increasingly aware that i have a future, and that i need to plan for it.

A big part of being aware of the future for me is making sure that the me tomorrow will somehow benefit from the shit I do today. That sounds very “i’ve done one course and am now somehow a counsellor”. I talked in therapy a lot about how I’m unable to be honest or face up to shit that I should because I know it’ll feel bad in that specific moment, even if it won’t ever feel bad again. As I said it, it felt so incredibly dumb to think that way. 

My mental health - or at least my awareness of it - has been improving drastically over the past year, despite me being pretty depressed of late. rather than bundling all my issues into one ball and hiding it at the back of my brain, i’ve pulled them out and am separating each specific strand. The good part of that is that I’ve untangled a few of them (self-esteem, anxiety) and can tangibly point to them and work around or through them. However, the ball is still there, although considerably smaller in size. Without trying to be too obscure, it feels almost as if I used to consider the ball of tangles my identity, that the mess of issues and neuroses constituted who I was. Slowly pulling it apart has induced a kind of crisis in who I think I am, because I’m revealing that the ball is actually made of nothing. The social anxiety that I draw from when I decide how to act around people is not inherently part of me, but rather a facet of the tangle which I need to shift away from. SO, deciding to avoid awkward or anxious situations is not something to protect my self, it merely protects the tangle and ensures it survives. Tangle=fake, real=something else I’m trying to find. 

All this is to say that I’ve decided to allow myself to feel awkward, and uncomfortable, as long as it doesn’t feel needlessly masochistic. I’ve noticed that all the things I do to save my anxiety end up hurting me more in the long run. That discomfort can’t be erased, just displaced, so why not get it out of the way? God, this post was self-indulgent. 

[willjnwhitehead]

My Roommate

Last night I went to a party which wasn’t great, but wasn’t awful. Most of the people in the grad school where I am are quite a bit older than I am and so their idea of a wild night is re-enacting the dance scene from pride and prejudice (which in all honesty was surprisingly fun - maybe i should rethink my stance on period dramas). I got drunk because of my SSRIs, and then I got high on top of that because just being drunk is boring now. I love the feeling of pure stupidity when I’m high, being blissfully forgetful and laughing at how I can’t make sense of basic interactions. a girl who i’m trying very hard to ignore got furious with me because I had a choice to walk home with her, or walk a different way with someone else, and I chose the someone else. Felt paranoid that that was a life-changingly bad thing for me to do, but managed to shake the feeling off. anyway I got home and did some fun high things - ate half a falafel wrap from the fridge, listened to pearl jam (who are great now), then fell asleep with half my clothes on.

An hour or so later, I woke to the sound of my roommate yelling into the bathroom “it’s okay if you’re drunk” and some other incomprehensible stuff. I figured it was my other roommate and left it be. half an hour after that, I heard some *~*authoritative~*~ voices outside and instantly got frightened. it was the cops sounding mad as hell, and my roommate - drunk and in broken english - was trying to explain something. i realised the someone in the bathroom wasn’t my other roommate, but an unknown stranger. the police were by this time banging on the bathroom door, yelling to whoever was in there to open the door. still high, i was extremely scared. my mind flitted between various scenarios: one, where the person in the bathroom was dead; one where the person in the bathroom was the girl i brushed off earlier, and this whole thing was my fault; and one, which i’m still dwelling on, was that my roommate had an ulterior motive for having this person over. he was certainly panicking when the police were there. 

drifting in and out of sleep, i found it hard to keep up with whatever was happening. from what i gathered, the person (who turned out to be a girl who lives in the building) opened the door and was carted off in an ambulance. i heard the police loudly getting angry at my roommate, who was being unhelpful and getting too involved. 

the reason I’m relating this is because now, in the cold light of day, i’m worried that if i was sober last night i would’ve detected something incredibly sinister about the whole event. my roommate knocked on my door this morning, and asked me if i heard anything. i lied and said i didn’t, and he said thank god. he told me to keep him in the loop if i heard any rumours. this struck me as odd. i understand that having a girl passed out in your bathroom isn’t a good look at the best of times, but what rumours could there be if he had nothing to hide? why did he bring this girl to our place anyway? if she lives upstairs, why couldn’t he just take her up there? i’m now worrying about him saying “it’s okay if you’re drunk” too. what does that mean? does it mean “don’t be embarrassed by this” or does it mean something darker? he offered to buy me breakfast, which my sopranos-addled mind has to interpret as buying my silence. 

i’m standing over the toilet, blocked from puke, with a kettle of hot water in one hand and a bottle of dish soap in the other. i know i can unblock it if i have enough time and patience, but i’m not sure i should. i don’t know what i’m covering up, or who i’m protecting or betraying by doing this. i’m still not even sure who this girl was, or if she’s okay now, or anything like that. i’m just worried.

[willjnwhitehead]

therapy is supposed to be a place where you can be your truest self, to a person who is forced to remain neutral whilst you tell them how awful you are on the inside. every time i go to therapy i’m not my truest self, i’m putting on a front because i don’t want my therapist to know i’m a piece of shit. there’s no way i can ever stop seeing her as a person who will judge me for who i am, whether she acts on that or not. when she goes home, she’ll think something about what i said, even if it’s only fleeting. i don’t like that. there’s no way to avoid it. a robot can’t do a therapist’s job because they don’t understand the intricacies of human emotion, but being able to understand those intricacies means that you are also susceptible to them. it’s impossible to be my true self around someone who must necessarily internally react to that, because part of my problem is my intense awareness of how someone must be thinking.

[willjnwhitehead]

New year, new me

Last night I dreamt about my teeth falling out for the first time! Very exciting. Once before I had a dream that a girlfriend’s ex was burning my teeth with a lighter, but I don’t consider that to be the same. Last night, I was pulling them out myself and it was so easy to do. I was incredibly aware that what I was doing was permanent, but I couldn’t stop myself. It was so satisfying to hold them in my hand. Some were bright white and some were yellowish. I’m not sure what that means.

I just moved back to the US after Christmas, and I’m really desperate to not be depressed this term. I already am a little bit, but that’s as far as I’m letting it go. Every time I start something new, be it a semester, a year, a house, anything, I try so hard to get into the habit of being the person I actually want to be. This term, I want to be this guy:

Reads constantly, fiction and non-fiction.

Goes to the gym frequently, but only to stay in shape.

Wakes up early and makes coffee, which makes him happy.

Is honest with himself and others, but not brutally so. Just honest enough.

My therapist said that I hold myself to a too-high standard and that I beat myself up if I don’t reach that standard, which is definitely true. But if I don’t set those standards, I end up just wallowing in my sadness and eating like shit, playing on my phone all day and staying up till 4. Is it better to set high standards and fall short, or set low standards and reach them? I guess the second, but I’m worried I’ll manage to fall short of even the lowest bar. This is the first post I’ve written with no set plan, so I apologise if it doesn’t flow. It was going to be about how I feel about being depressed, but I feel that needs a little more planning and introspection, neither of which I’m really in the mindset for. That’ll be the next one, I promise. I’m not sure who these blogs are for. 

[willjnwhitehead]

i watched a video of jenna marbles talking about white privilege

There’s a video of Jenna Marbles talking about white privilege going around twitter and I decided to give it a watch. All I really know about Jenna Marbles is that she’s a Youtuber, which means that she’s incredibly reliant on satisfying an audience. I also know she’s quite into identity politics, as most big Youtubers are in one way or another. I can’t help but connect her in my mind to Paul Joseph Watson. They both perform politics in order to make their money, and all we know about them is what they project to us.

In the video, Jenna Marbles is sitting round a table with Scott Disick, Khloe Kardashian (I think) and two other people I don’t know. I have no idea why they’re all together, or what it’s for. I can’t imagine how Jenna Marbles is connected to the Kardashians, but that’s not important. They’re playing some game and Jenna pulls a card that asks her to expound upon her understanding of white privilege. She does so fairly shortly and states what she wants to say very simply. The video, which is captioned something like “i love jenna marbles”, makes it seem like she’s providing some new or unusual insight, which I don’t think she is at all.

 I was thinking about this in bed last night, and there were two things that bugged me about the video. First, I was annoyed with her for “performative wokeness”. I tried to unravel what I meant by this, because I tend to latch onto phrases like that without inspecting their actual meanings. I think that she answers the card because she knows she’s being filmed and wants her audience to recognise her as a woke icon, someone who they can identify with and respect for their opinions. In the present moment, this is obviously important because so many people are being outed as awful. My gripe is that this act by her is purely financially driven, and not based in anything. However, I could be being totally cynical! I know nothing about Jenna Marbles except how she makes money. I don’t know that she’s just doing it for the money. And even if she was, is that a problem? Who cares about her motivation, if the result is that a progressive politics is propagated? I don’t have answers to these questions. I’m not satisfied by the questions. I’ve still got to think about it.

Secondly, I was annoyed when one of the other guests says Marbles’ answer goes way over their head. It feels like they’re trying to make it seem like Jenna’s answer is incredibly complex and either that it’s normal not to understand her, or that we should worship her as a political mastermind. What she says is basically that a) white privilege exists, and b) we should acknowledge it. This, in 2018, should not go over anyone’s head. It should be a base part of most people’s understanding. I’m sad that the guest can’t even begin to understand it. Rich people don’t need to understand anything. Nothing affects them. 

[willjnwhitehead]

my dad

In 2015 I had maybe the worst period of depression of my life (so far!) on a family holiday in Devon. My mum’s the second of five kids, so it was us and four other families in an enormous house by the sea. I was having a really rough time, taking advantage of my entire family’s barely-disguised alcoholism and getting silently wasted every night and not-silently puking every morning. i was also super into punching myself in the face at that point, really wanting to leave a bruise to let everyone know i was Not Alright. My mum kind of got it, I don’t know how, but she told me in so many words that I could essentially duck out of the holiday if I needed to. I didn’t want to give in like that, so I tried to join in. 

One night at dinner, we were talking about my auntie’s anxiety and empathising, and my dad was kind of shaking his head and being quiet in the way we know he does when he’s desperate to disagree. I felt belligerent and asked him if he’d ever felt anxiety, and he told me he’d never felt any emotion that wasn’t directly connected to an event. This really fucking bummed me out. I couldn’t believe that he said that to me when I was feeling so alone. I think what made it worse was that I believed him completely. It made total sense. Right now his father has cancer and his mum has alzheimers, and he’s functioning better than I’ve ever seen him. I’m astonished at how good he is with dealing with stuff that would destroy me. I felt so totally different from him then. I got angry with him at the time, and told him he was lying and that he was just being a contrarian for the sake of it. I knew he wasn’t, but I really needed him to know I was upset.

Since then I’ve always avoided talking about mental health with him because I’ve never thought he could quite grasp how deeply entrenched it is in my personality, and how unavoidable succumbing to it can be. A few months ago, however, I accidentally got into it. One of his huge pet peeves is getting up late. As a certified Normal Guy, he wakes up at 6 every day without a problem, and goes through the entire routine of telling us kids we’re wasting half the day by getting up late. He was in this mode on Skype and I told him I’d love to get up early but my brain wouldn’t let me, and he laughed because he thought I was joking. Kind of annoyed by this, I said I’d love to be an early riser, I’d love to be able to go to the gym in the morning, but my brain’s broke etc etc. Rather than joking about it, or saying “I know I should”, I actually told him why I found it hard. He was kind of taken aback after I said it all, I guess cause I’d never spoken about it before. We moved on quickly.

He knows I’m on SSRIs now, and that I’m really trying to get on my feet. We’ve never spoken about it, but I know he remembers our conversation about getting up early, because he wakes me up at 8 every day with a cup of tea. He’s never done that before. The cup of tea feels infinitely more valuable than forcing him to empathise in the way that I specifically want him to. I can’t force him to understand how my brain works, but I know he’s a good person and he wants me to be happy. 

Basically, what I’ve learned from living on and off with my dad is that it’s selfish of me to expect that everyone sees the world the same way that I do. I really don’t want that anymore. It’s much more important that I’m able to communicate my viewpoint in a way that the other person will appreciate. I can’t expect them to care about stuff just because I think it’s important. I can yell at my dad about him not feeling abstract emotions, but that won’t change that he doesn’t. Reading this back, this realisation feels so obvious that it doesn’t need stating, but it’s really changed the way I interact with people. 

[willjnwhitehead]

the man sitting in front and to the right of me

On the bus back from London today there was a man sitting in front and to the right of me, and he talked the entire way home to the woman sat next to him. I had my headphones in so I couldn't hear what he was saying, but every time I looked up he was talking and I never saw him nodding along to something she was saying. I really felt angry about this man, and at first I was ashamed of my reaction. I didn't know him at all, and I had no idea whether she wasn't enjoying the conversation or not. I just hated how he was talking all the time. He also kept grabbing at the bus's curtains, and he knocked the emergency hammer off the stand which set an alarm off. That made me furious.

I'm not sure why I was so mad at him specifically, but I think it's maybe because I feel like I could accidentally become him quite easily. It would be like slipping on an old jacket for me to become a guy who just talks about stuff he thinks is very smart and important, oblivious as to whether his audience is paying attention (I'm very aware that I'm doing almost exactly that in writing this down publicly, but I've convinced myself I don't care if anyone reads this). A girl I dated briefly was shocked when I told her people have said I was quite shy. She said I was really good at talking, and I don't know if that was a compliment or not. We haven't spoken since October so I'm starting to think it wasn't. I used to always think that I was introverted out of necessity, and that if I was to let myself be more outgoing, I would be absolutely insufferable to be around. When I started to work on my self esteem, this was the first thing to throw out. I'm worried that maybe there's a shred of truth to it, because I am an insatiable show off at heart, and I really love attention.

I also think of all the people (men) I know who are obsessed with their own myth. I was absolutely guilty of this in college, reading Bukowski and Kerouac and Ginsberg and so on. Kerouac in particular, who imbued life with magic and mysticism, which is what made him so intoxicating. It made me think I wasn't just smoking weed at the bottom of my friend's garden, but was somehow connected to an expansive universe where every one of my actions was of the utmost symbolic importance. Anyway I got over it in time (to an extent) but plenty of guys I knew at university were still wrapped up in it. One started a blog featuring stream-of-consciousness posts about him wanking and watching fight club and reading philosophy. It was all super "it's been done" stuff - referencing how his state of mind affects his writing and spelling things wrong because it occurred to him to do so etc etc. He truly believed his ordinary take on the world was revolutionary, and it made me so embarrassed. I really don't want to come across like that, but I do have such a desire to be known and respected. So silly, but unshakeable.

I could be throwing all of my own personal stuff at the man in front and to the right of me, who might have been charming and kind. The lady to his right and directly in front of me could have been enthralled, sad to see him go. I don't know. I was just really angry at him.