in contact
i lost my phone so srsly if you do need to contact me try instagram
In my dream last night, we were back in college, and you lived in an apartment with sky blue floors with two girl roommates. The place had beds built into the walls like shelves for sleeping people. It felt kind of like a tree house, the way the girls had wavy hair and tan skin and bare feet. I never saw it in person, even in the dream, just in photos. I wanted the best for you and knew you were happy. We always had a penpal type of friendship, even when we lived closer together. You were so mysterious to me and because of that distance I assumed you knew something more about life and art than I did. And I think you still do. Growing older and farther away I have begun to think that you think the same about me. I never realized I could be important to someone.
Despite all the partying and forgetfulness, I’ve never lost my phone or wallet or keys, until last night. I was carrying it in a paper bag around the mall and put my empty water can in it - the remnants slowly dripped through the paper and made a tear. My phone slipped through. I will be sad if I’ve lost the pictures in it. But I’m not sad to be untethered from it, although I still reach for phantom text notifications.
The last text I sent was: “wow, there are a lot of sad dads and boyfriends sitting outside of Brandy Melville.”
This morning as I was leaving I met my neighbors for the first time and found out that I’m blessed. Next door is a sweet girl. On my other side is a storyteller in a hoodie. We lingered in an open hallway and they caught me up on the building lore, and one funny story in particular. One of my neighbors accidentally started a rumor that our landlord died because his name appeared in an obituary. Everyone was distraught. He told the woman downstairs the news, and when she went to his house to drop off her rent check, she brought flowers and other condolences for his wife. It was a surprise then, when the landlord, alive and in the flesh, opened the door. “What are the flowers for?” He asked. She said: “Oh… uh, just something nice, for your wife.”
There’s a man in my courtyard who has a cough I would describe as traumatic. My neighbors brought him up right away. He goes outside to smoke and hack his lungs out about once an hour, and he’s been up to this for about a decade. My guy neighbor told me he’d been living there long enough to go have a chat with the cougher and recommend nicotine patches. It won’t stop anytime soon, it turns out. Sometimes there are just things you have to live with. Some man on the street across from us disagrees, and on occasion comes out on his balcony to scream obscenities at the guy with thunder lungs, and the yelling is worse than the coughing. We all feel bad because he can’t help it. Either of them.
As I was contemplating my lost phone walking down the street this morning, a woman in a pink cardigan and a chipped front tooth stopped me. “Hey angel,” she said. “My car’s parked over on Alexandria and I’m out of gas.” She showed me her phone with a broken screen and that she was unable to tap through her apps. “I went to the gas station and I need to buy a canister and it’s going to be twenty-seven dollars. Do you think you can help me out?” I said sure, I can give you a twenty. She looked like she might have started crying. A part of me knows that this might just be a little story. But if someone needs money I’m interested in helping them retain their dignity too. “Oh thank you, thank you!” she said, and asked if she could do anything for me.
I should have told her to do something kind for someone else, but that was an afterthought. Instead I told her about how I lost my phone at Rick Caruso’s Megalopolis, The Grove, and how I was so bummed out that it made me less bummed out to help someone else. She prayed that I would be “restored,” (her words), and all my information would be restored, and that $2500 would come back to me. It’s Sunday after all.
“You might be looking in all the wrong places, thinking, where is it? Where is it? And you just have to turn to God. Because God will say, look, it’s RIGHT HERE,” she told me. I was really trying to leave.
I know it’s a bit gauche to tell you about my doing good deeds. I don’t really want to. But sometimes you have nothing to write about except for what’s going on in your life. Like, I just got my stove pilot lights turned on, and I’m excited to have warm meals now after a week or so of salads and sandwiches and crackers. I could tell you about that too.
There are quite a few things I’m looking for. Cotton underthings, words for an article about AI I’m writing for work, a boyfriend, a cute vintage bed frame - what’s it to me to add my phone to the list? I’m trying to decide if I should be more or less upset, or what sort of effort is going to be required of me to resurface it. The default in life is that nothing happens unless you make it happen. This is the most apparent once you live on your own. It’s very easy to do nothing, observe nothing, feel nothing.
I’m going to go sit on my rug and think about all that has to be done and know that really, I can always just do nothing. What is the worst that could happen? The answer is nothing. Although that very often is, in my opinion, the worst thing that could happen.
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Generic Cecilia Update
Good books I’ve read/ am reading:
Our Lady of the Flowers, Jean Genet
Rent Boy, Gary Indiana
Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett (does this count?)
Light in August, William Faulkner
Good movies I’ve watched recently:
Velvet Goldmine
Cabaret 1975
The Rules of Attraction
Misery
The Witches of Eastwick
A Quiet Place in the Country 1968
Good music I’m listening to:
Red Light, Bladee
Marquee Moon, Television
Y2K Hole, a playlist by Numero Group
Rocky Top Ballads, Fine - shout out to Meaghan :-)