This is Issue 22 of Obsessions.
There was a time in my life when I left a dirty city to go visit a very muggy city on a plane, as you do, with my good friend and roommate. We wrote poetry together on the plane, and we ate poh boys in a bar at three a.m. in the morning. I was in love with someone the way you are when nothing really is at stake except for the feeling of being poked by a 1000 needles at once. I was in love at a time before you could phone in a celebrity and ask for advice and the celebrity could say honey walk away. Then, the celebrity, who would be infused in the poisons of late aughts, probably would have said, Honey, why were you in love with a straight girl? I think about this straight girl a lot. How I loved her selfishness. And I think about how a therapist or a friend would say thatâs not love without knowing itâs cracks and crevices. And they are right, it wasnât love, but it also wasnât not love.
Sometimes when I dot my wrists with Ylang Ylang I wonder if Iâm trying to smell like her. Ylang ylang smells like sex and depression.
She was always in a hurry and always focused on herself. But she was a striking brown woman so I never got that icky feeling that you get from Sex and the City. I donât know what that means.
God, it tastes like blue ice cream to watch a woman be selfish. I love it.
I went through that super idiotic stage where you donât say anything directly.
S and I would be taking a taxi back form Manhattan to Brooklyn and I would say, âLook my heart just jumped out of my chest and fell on the concrete.â
Or I would see a red rose on the subway stairs and say, âLook that flower looks like you.â And I would cackle a little because the flower was a bit smashed and sitting on the subway steps.
I learn shit somatically.
I donât have an easy lessons for you or me. I think Iâll stop drinking coffee once I get an ulcer.
I stopped talking to my Mother literally after not being able to make it to work because of wild symptoms of C-PTSD. (I will talk to my Mother again by the way, and fortunately you are not my therapist or my fiancé J).
In that muggy city, I bought a water stained copy of Anne Sextonâs Complete Poems and I read over and over the lines, âYet Iâd risk my life on that dilly dally buttercup called dreams.â
I donât see S in the same honey brown light anymore. She had twenty pairs of black shoes and only vinegar and wine in her fridge. It was 2008 and we were all still wearing skinny jeans. I was taking nude portraits with cibachrome film which made my nipples look bright orange like I was out tanning in Miami. I hadnât found my queer community so I was toning shit down. Shouting out taxi windows rather than looking narcissistic straight girls in the eyes.
Renee
P.S. Nan Goldinâs very queer film All The Beauty and the Bloodshed, loosely about queer NYC culture, photography and the opioid epidemic, is now available on HBO Max.