I am afraid. I am afraid. I am afraid. Despite the wide-stretched smile and big mascara-encrusted eyes, I am nothing. But the embodiment of fear. At least for, today, that is. This isn’t a new phenomenon, either. It struck me yesterday, in the late evening, that fear has been my baseline for the past ten years. "What are you so afraid of?" My guardian angel Sharon, a cool blonde, who smokes mentholated cigarettes, and lives in the sensible midwest, asked me the other night. She magically appeared in my bathroom, uninvited (that’s what I get for leaving the window open). Her gold-gilded wings were freshly polished, her square-shaped acrylic nails were filed extra sharp, her pleated khakis appeared to have been steamed and pressed to perfection.
I, on the other hand, was clad in a ratty cheap nightgown slathering serum onto my bare face, primping for bed. I didn’t feel like getting deep with my guardian angel, you know? I was tired. I’ve been tired. It’s been a long few years...
*LISTEN TO GUT PUNCH: CHAPTER 1 BY CLICKING THE VIDEO ABOVE!
This isn’t a new phenomenon, either. It struck me yesterday, in the late evening, that fear has been my baseline for the past ten years. "What are you so afraid of?" My guardian angel Sharon, a cool blonde, who smokes mentholated cigarettes, and lives in the sensible midwest, asked me the other night. She magically appeared in my bathroom, uninvited (that’s what I get for leaving the window open). Her gold-gilded wings were freshly polished, her square-shaped acrylic nails were filed extra sharp, her pleated khakis appeared to have been steamed and pressed to perfection. I, on the other hand, was clad in a ratty cheap nightgown slathering serum onto my bare face, primping for bed. I didn’t feel like getting deep with my guardian angel, you know? I was tired. I’ve been tired. It’s been a long few years...
I don’t know Sharon. I didn’t say this aloud, though. I expressed my bitter sentiment through a silent glare exchanged through the red lipstick-stained bathroom mirror.
Sharon looked at me and sighed. Her pert wings suddenly drooped. And just like that — she disappeared into the thin air. Guardian Angels are many things, but “sweet” is not one of them. They’re harsh ole’ school marms, except with wings in lieu of loafers. What I mean is: They Don’t Put Up with Bullshit.™ If you’re not willing to meet your guardian angel at least halfway, they’ll bail on you. It’s both their best and worst quality.
So now, as I sit here this morning, ditched by my own fucking angel, shaky limbs quivering on the crinkly pink satin comforter that sits over the same bed of the same room that housed me and my hunger-induced angst when I was a teen girl — in the pretty/sticky/sandy town of Sarasota, Florida — I’m asking myself why I was so hesitant to unpack my fears with Sharon. I guess because I fear my fear.
Does that make sense?
Because if I were to confront my fears then I’d be forced to get really goddamn honest with myself, isn't that right? And the truth is uncomfortable and ~disruptive~ to the “order of things" and disruption and discomfort are terrifying?
But all that being said, I’m going to swan dive right the fuck in. Because I’m painting a narrative for myself that is false! I’m not giving myself enough credit, you see! After all, I’m a seasoned masochist! When all is said and done, I’m undoubtedly aroused by pain. Anyone who has ever pursued acting as a career masturbates to their own suffering — don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise — why else would you starve yourself into a fawn and memorize lines only to be rejected by a slew of plump white men?
— So let’s do this.
FEARS.
[I’m terrified I’m making a colossal mistake. I had a solid framework in New York. I had financial stability. I had an emotionally stable partner. I lived in a stable neighborhood in Brooklyn: Cobble Hill. Living in Cobble Hill is practically living in the fucking suburbs. One time my friend Sam graciously gave me a joint when we were out slugging cocktails and when I came home inebriated and teetering in towering Chelsea boots at 2 in the morning, it slipped out of my drunken palms, and thus, I dropped the poor little joint right by the front door. When I went to walk my dogs in the morning, I noticed that the joint was still there, unscathed, sparkling wickedly in the sunshine, like a blood diamond. This is in New York City, sweethearts. A fully intact joint survived 24 hours on the streets of Brooklyn. If that’s not “the burbs” I don’t know what the fuck is. Another suburban aspect of my old neighborhood was the apartment I lived in. My apartment in Cobble Hill was massive. A *two* bedroom. She bore a washer and a dryer, a dishwasher, and a deck — “oh my.” It was in that apartment, I learned how to do normal things, like chew my food without sticking my fingers down my throat…
Which brings me immediately back to fear. What if I can never eat food like a normal person again, now that I’m back to living a depraved, one-note life?
What if this mistake of mine can never be undone?
What if it’s irrevocable?
And am I self-destructive, in that I actively *chose* to sleep on a friend’s couch in an unhinged neighborhood in a very different part of Brooklyn: Williamsburg? Have you been to Williamsburg, dear reader? If you have, you know that Williamsburg is the antithesis of Cobble Hill. Williamsburg has rats. She has hypodermic needles scattered across the streets. She’s as littered with hipsters as she is with crushed beer cans and cigarette ash and last night’s clip-in hair extensions. She reeks of kaiser rolls and fireball shots and roofies. She’s laden with gaunt models flaunting their toothpick arms, freely roaming the streets like panthers, unaware of the teen girls they’re terrorizing with those Adderall thighs and “I’m naturally skinny” lies. She’s got wolf-packs of barely legal girls lounging around bars in their flimsy bra tops waiting to be devoured by lecherous boys in bands who have never had to pay rent because they mooch off girls like me: Jews with clean bangs who take care of things. She also has daddy dykes (like me) and muscle fags (like Owen) that look you up and down, up and down, with big, unreadable eyes the one night you’ve finally mustered the courage to grab a drink alone at the gay bar….
And did I mention the…rats? I did.
But did I mention that the rats are
everywhere in
Williamsburg?
Yes, they’re rampant in all of New York City, the rumors are true. But Williamsburg rats are specific. They aren’t sleuth rats, like the ones that live in Cobble Hill. The rats in Cobble Hill are elusive like leopards, you hardly ever see them in the wild, you can just feel their presence, their danger lingering in the air. On the contrary, Williamsburg rats are fucking shameless. They skitter across your open-toe sandals in the sunshine. They skitter across your moon boots during snowstorms. They skitter across the subway platforms in the springtime. They live off chewed-up opioids and old coke bags and undercooked chicken wings and slabs of greasy pizza. They’re junkie rats.
And while I’m not afraid of junkies —
I’m very very VERY afraid of rats, you see. I have nightmares about rats at least three times per week. I have since the earliest iterations of girlhood.
So why
Then
Did
I
move out of my rat-less neighborhood into a neighborhood where rats are the ring leaders of the circus?
I don’t know, Sharon.
But once one has lived among the rats, is there even such a thing as going back? I don't think so.
Today, I’m not in Williamsburg. I’m somewhere with fewer rats but more shame, so it's sort of the same. I'm staying at my parents' house! In my thirties! And girl — my money situation is well, bleak. As of writing this, I don’t have health insurance anymore. I left that behind in Cobble Hill. My dog, Luka has health insurance, thanks to my best friend Ruba, who I was living with in Williamsburg, the rat neighborhood. Ruba is so together these days that she was able to secure my dog insurance. If I told her I didn’t have insurance she’d call the cops. If I told her how truly broke I am she’d pull a Glock on me. Ruba has gotten really organized in her old age. She has savings. “Investments.” She pays an exorbitant amount of money for her apartment in the rat neighborhood, which is, subsequently, probably the coolest, most coveted place to live in the entire city. Williamsburg is ~gritty~ but very glittery. And a part of me, the part of me that felt like I was suffocating in Clorox clean Cobble Hill, secretly (maybe) deep down, wanted to live among the sparkly rats again. Because here’s the truth. I am a rat. And that scares me most of all.
Except I’m not as fertile. Rats are fertile, for most of their lives, right? They don’t worry about aging out of having children. I, on the other hand, live in fear that my uterus is harboring expired eggs. People tell me this is irrational and that I have plenty of time and that I’m a product of the fear-mongering fertility market —
but baby.
I’m in my mid-thirties and biology is real. And I do want to have a child, one day, so badly I can feel the weight of regret every time I gaze into the distance. But I’m also not financially, spiritually, or emotionally ready for all that, and that scares me too. Like if I’m not ready now — will I ever be? Most girls my age are ready to be moms. Most girls my age refer to themselves as “women." I should probably look into that.
But like, why am I so behind in life? Tell me, dear reader, does being left behind freak you out, too? It scares the fuck out of me. Does the concept of “not making it” make your blood run cold? For example: I know, objectively, that I’m “good” at writing. But good isn’t good enough. This is the goddamn Olympics. Anyone who pursues a real career in the arts is (statistically) attempting to compete in an Olympic-level race. Millions of people want to be artists. A lucky few will experience a couple of years of "getting by" on their art. Even fewer will ever have the experience of getting rich off their art — which is what I want. I don’t want to be normal. I want to be fabulously wealthy! I want to win! I want to be GREAT. And I fear that this desire for mega success that has tortured me my entire life — this desire to be “mainstream” — renders me a deeply shallow person.
But mainly I fear that it renders me something far worse than shallow:
Delusional.
Because who am I to think I’m so special? Why am I trying so hard to be someone —
When I could just
—
Be.
Because, of well — fear. If you poke beneath the thin veil of ambition, you’ll probably find that most people wrought with the obsessive need to be famous, are actually just terrified. Terrified of mediocrity. Because deep down they feel painfully ordinary. And they are so afraid of how mundane they might actually be when they’re not being showered with heaps of affection, so they live for the cheap drug-store sequins of validation. And what is cheaper and emptier — yet more validating than “celebrity?” Celebrity is the great overcorrection to banality. It’s the great over-compensation for unabashed insecurity. But the very scary thing about chasing notoriety over a real life is this: fame can be taken away from a person at any time. Fame is never really any of ours to keep forever. Like beauty. Beauty is the same way. You can be a stunning, gorgeous human and get into a car accident and lose the very thing that defined your existence, in a second. You can go from being gasped at for your gorgeousness, to being gaped at for your gore, overnight. Also not every beautiful person ages well. This culture defines beauty as youth, and we all get older. No one can escape getting older. And I’m so scared of aging. I’m so scared of losing my “youthful edge.” (I know that’s cringey. But like. What am I if not the embodiment of what Gen Z would deem CRINGE?) But look. Being young was my entire brand for as long as I can remember. Can you believe she’s only twenty x years old and can write like that? She’s so mature for her age. Can’t wait to see what she does in her thirties…
Speaking of which: There’s this BJ Novack quote, that haunts me every minute of every day. I put it in the opening of my book GIRL, STOP PASSING OUT IN YOUR MAKEUP: THE BAD GIRL’S GUIDE TO GETTING YOUR SH*T TOGETHER. When I read said quote, I wanted to rip off my skin and run for the hills, skinless. It was so real my eyes burned. Here goes: “Being young was her thing, and she was the best at it. But every year, more and more girls came out of nowhere and tried to steal her thing. One of these days I'm going to have to get a new thing, she thought to herself—but as quietly as she could, because she knew that if anyone caught her thinking this thought, her thing would be right over, right then.”
How gut-punching is that?
Maybe I’m projecting here, but I can’t help but feel that you, dear reader can relate because we are cut from the same cloth, right? And I think you and I have a very young energy regardless of our actual age. But like what do we do with all this youthful energy —
when we are no longer
that
young?
And is our innate youthfulness the same thing that holds us back from acquiring the adult shit? Like stable houses we own and lifelong marriages and big sprawling lawns and Cartier watches and children and manicured hands and whatnot? Or are we doomed to be those people who thrived in their twenties and plateaued in their thirties and fumbled through their forties only to become cautionary tales in their fifties? Like: what if I was the hottest, most successful version of myself at 28 and it’s all going downhill from here and I’ll become one of those people desperately grasping onto the past, waxing poetic to my coworkers at my painfully boring, middle-rung office job about how “I used to be a writer!” Have you ever seen the movie, Gia, reader? It’s a masterpiece. If you haven’t seen it, stop reading (or listening) to this right now and go ahead and watch it. It is required watching, assigned by your authoritarian, me. It’s the real-life story of the lesbian supermodel Gia, who died of AIDs at 26. And there’s this haunting scene right before she dies while she’s still in rehab for her heroin addiction. She looks like hell (I mean as hellish as Angelina Jolie can possibly look) and one of her rehab mates is shell-shocked that this Gia that she met in detox, is the same Gia that once stared back at her from the shiny cover of Vogue — because how do you go from being a flawless magazine model to having blue limp arms bedazzled with gruesome track marks? And I’m aware that this sounds like I’m inflating my ego because I’m no model, I know that (do I ever), but that scene has always frightened me just the same. Like what if my younger coworkers are laughing at me behind my back for showing off my book that was published like, a “million years ago” and never “even sold that well?”
What if I never write another book again?
