The Day
They Named This Place After the Boygenius Song
After Lorrie Moore, "How to Be an Other Woman" and Fran Lebowitz, "My Day: An Introduction of Sorts"
8:56 AM - Rise.
8:57 AM - Stand in the bathroom mirror and ask CeCe to name for you all her tattoos. “The art of the album is dying,” she says.
9:04 AM - Try on her shorts. Do a spin. Take them off. Try on the red ones. Take them off too. Try on another. Try on all her shorts.
9:12 AM - Descend the stairs to learn about an espresso machine. Remember your old co-worker Alex and how he tried to teach you to draw a fern in a latte the same way Troy Bolton taught Sharpay to play golf. Make an oat milk cardioid. Sip on its X-axis.
9:18 AM - Spread margarine with a jagged blade and excruciating care. Play Bananagrams. Lie about a W.
10:40 AM - Drive to the post office and take note of how brown the eyes of the man behind the counter are. It accidentally becomes a staring contest. He’s playing to his strengths. You may cry, but do not blink. Unwrap your boots when you’re back in the car.
11:12 AM - Hike the plains. Wonder about the Donner Party. Wonder about Pangea. Wonder if you’ve been making the right choices. Put your bare feet in an ankle-deep river and hum Pink Pony Club. You’re cairn building and might concuss a speckled dace but do not submit to rumination; find a bridge and stand in the middle of it.
2:14 PM - Conquer the summit. Swim a mountaintop lake without any clothes. Pick a fight with a fisherman and win. You are two telepathics tracing letters into water with sticks, comparing basketball shorts, deeming each other antagoni. You begin to revolve as a geometric compass; he the graphite and you the needle. When he tells you, “I’d like to follow you down,” show him your crossbow.
5:00 PM - In the backseat, look out the window. Each time you pass a motel, feel violently for Jude. He’s perpetually stuck in there, arching his back. Suppress the nausea by humming Pink Pony Club.
5:44 PM - Take a shower and look down at your wet footprints on the tile. They’re bigger than they used to be. What would your mother say about that?
5:46 PM - Sit on a sunlit patch of the bedroom carpet and listen to Jessica Dean explain how the old president almost got shot. Touch your ear. Touch your temple. Wonder if four inches has ever meant more than that. Lay on your back and let the shower water pool in your belly button. Let YouTube autoplay remind you of all the terrible things he’s ever said. Feel the skin between your hip bones. Imagine being forced to grow something under there.
6:05 PM - Call shotgun.
6:32 PM - On the highway, watch how the road stretches out and remember sitting in twelfth-grade physics when your teacher discussed why, when it's particularly hot out, there appear to be patches of puddles on the distant pavement. You don’t remember the explanation. Just the sound of her accent. Stick your head out the window.
7:06 PM - Arrive at the ballet theatre and sit in seat G1 or G2. Feel the lights dim, hear the music spill in, watch the eight dancers start to thrash and for a moment, wonder why you ever decided to quit.
7:06 PM and a moment - Recall standing before the bathroom mirror, aged fourteen and leotard-clad, contemplating a trim. This was right around the time when you realized that, despite the numerous similarities, you are not in fact, a paper doll. In Hebrew School, Miss Fayer used to make you pray. You and your classmates would touch foreheads and whisper, “Amen.” They would pray for their homeland. You would pray for fragility.
7:10 PM - Poke CeCe and say, “that one’s moving like she’s made of wooden planks.” It should be CeCe dancing instead, the whole G row thinks so too. At the end of the show, give a standing ovation. But only because everyone else is doing it. To you, it really only deserved a squatting one.
8:45 PM - Wander the town. Take off your shoes and run up the sidewalk. Barefeet are a luxury. Bask in them.
8:52 PM - Open the gate to Atkinson Park and sit next to CeCe on matching swings. A chime of bicycle bells rings and three highschool girls ride in circles on the grass behind you. They grew up here. They have never left. They stay up late together and watch When Harry Met Sally, American Psycho, and Home Alone Two, and want you to answer all of their questions. Anticipate their crestfallen faces when you tell them you don’t really know any better than they do. Say, “I’m sorry” and mean it. Swing higher.
10:10 PM - Back at the house, give your confession. You may or may not have killed Shelley Duval. Settle on may not.
10:15 PM - Chexmix.
10:19 PM - Open your computer for the first time in four days. The screen has been fraternizing with the keys. Small square outlines are dusted in the blackness. Google: can salmonella kill you? Google: is semen vegan? Google: why am I making the internet my diary? Make a fresh doc. Title it “They Named This Place After the Boygenius Song.” Start with 7:06PM. When the crippling self-deprecative voice becomes too overbearing to hit one more letter, switch to a new doc and call it “Banana Poetry.” It's your first poem in months. It feels like the first bite of Whittaker Ghana Peppermint after getting back to New Zealand for the third time. Eat too much. Shut your laptop. Rue the day.
12:06 AM - Retire to the television. Before turning it on, take a moment of gratitude that you were not available to write before September 7th, 1927. Contemplate Southern accents. Surrender to swirly eyes and lend a moment to the Honest Man.
2:00 AM - Ascend. Brush each tooth and don’t be gentle about it.
2:05 AM - Lie facedown. Sweat. Think about the mailbox. It should be full by the time you next open it. There will be two declarations of forgiveness, two from the United Kingdom, one from perhaps the love of your life, and three apology letters (two from cousins and the other including an avowal).
2:33 AM - Roll around. You’ve been living in an empty house. Your neighbours call it Erasure. For each time you’ve made them laugh, you’ve made them hold their hands under the faucet two moments longer. Roll over and pickup the phone.
Say: “Tell me you love me or stop using Times New Roman font.”
“Can’t you see?” she says. “I switched to sanitizer. I am waiting for Al Pacino’s last words.”
“And I am also waiting.”
“Listen,” she says.
She hangs up the phone.
2:47 AM -Kiss Star-head Steevie goodnight.
Contributions
Hailey Hwang has the Midas touch of visual art. I am sure you have noticed the two beautiful waterlogged knees that are the new cover art for this publication, and they, along with some of the images above, are a product of her brilliance. She is one of my favourite people on this planet and can be found on Instagram @haileysmfart.
Cecily Parks is my forever muse, you have likely figured this out by now. We have matching bedsheets and a few matching organs. She is a writer and magician and a wonderful friend. She is @cherrywordpie on Instagram and we must collectively pressure her to revive her Substack,
.