Happy Election Day. Hannah Wikforss-Green wrote a wonderful piece on voting, value nihilism, and post-irony that is quite relevant to much of the terrain covered in this Substack. I’m hoping to attend four election night parties tonight – if I am successful in this quest, I will recap what I can in next week's agenda.
WHAT I DID
Monday, October 28
We go to dinner at La Lanterna di Vittorio tonight. It’s right next to Cafe Reggio, and I’ve been wanting to go for a while. I’ve said this a few times, but my boyfriend has disagreed. Looks terrible, he has said, but now we’re at home and he’s scrolling on his phone and he’s showing me photos of a courtyard, glass ceilings, big stained glass lanterns. We should go here, he says, and I tell him that this is what I’ve been saying and I’m not vindicated but I am excited. It’s a nice fall night. Crisp. I spent the weekend trying to sit with solitude because I do think life should have waves of reflection and work and art and I would like to become someone who can make use of extensive quiet. I spent this weekend mostly stagnating, and increasingly aware that too much time breathes lethargy.
At the restaurant, they seat us in a garden where I’ve never been but which I recognize from the pictures. It’s dark inside. Glowy. I can hear the wind rattling over the glass roof. I order duck salad. A passion fruit martini. David gets a flight of mini lasagnas. The people next to us are on a first date, and they’re rapid fire spitting out their own highly specific dating criteria and then countering each other in quick succession. It’s an insane conversation, but they both continue and continue and continue to let it play out.
“I require honesty, but I cannot date anyone with exceptionally high openness,” the girl says
“So we’re both traditional!,” the man says
“We haven’t discussed our desires and potential compatibility in the bedroom yet,” the girl says.
“I had a buddy who used to fly NYU girls out to Berkeley,” the guy is saying. “Half of NYU girls are sugar babies and it’s highly lucrative. Do you get what I mean?”.
The girl is nodding intently.
“You’re like every other girl who likes a guy who’s a little autistic,” the guy says. He seems vaguely pissed.
I don’t want to get drunk, but I do kind of want another drink. I don’t like the dual vulgarity and sterility working in conjunction at that table one over. The restaurant is nice, but the tables are a little close together. The restaurant is very nice. We order bread pudding. I have to make a cognizant effort to eavesdrop. It doesn’t come naturally to me. David keeps whispering that I should get off my phone and keep eavesdropping. The conversation is fun. The conversation is a little sad. You can listen to things like this and diagnose some malaise of the age so easily, but when people become caricatures it all becomes so obvious, and I kind of want to leave our neighbors in peace.
Outside, after dinner, the West Village is alive and lovely. Full and human. I could breathe big sighs of relief.
Tuesday, October 29
I go to a lecture in Brooklyn today with a vibe that freaks me out. After, to purge my soul, I get an uber home. Over the Brooklyn Bridge. Etc etc etc.
For the majority of my life, my physical health was the thing I prioritized most in the world. In New York, I neglect some things. I read a Substack today called How To Feel Good Again, and it calms me down in the simplicity of its advice, except I don’t have a stove to cook my own food and I do have plenty of time but then, well, it’s a matter of using it well. There are some things I do every day now. This wasn’t really true a year ago.
I go for a very long run, floating in and out of mental clarity.
I’ve been writing A Horror Story and I find it difficult not to carry the melancholic inflection into usual thoughts. In actuality, though, everything is fine.
Wednesday, October 30
I order blue ginger tea to drink in class today. It’s very bright blue. I drink it too quickly.
Later, I go to a reading at KGB. The reading is too crowded and I can’t squeeze into the room, and so I order drinks on the main floor instead. It’s crowded here, too. Everyone is talking about the election. I’m a little drunk and so I say that I’m a little sad because I miss things like my parents' 2008 Obama Election Watch Party. Everyone looks confused. I don’t try to explain the purity of the thrill in the air that I feel strangely defensive of. I don’t want everyone to make fun of me for remembering bureaucracy as thrilling and pure. Upstairs, they are telling horror stories. Later, outside Clandestino, some guy in the New York Young Republicans is talking about how he voted four times today, and how tomorrow he’s on his way to Pennsylvania, to vote four more times. I’m pretty sure he’s lying, which makes the whole thing all relatively harmless, and in the-way-of-vibes, makes it kind of more depressing.
Thursday, October 31
I read at The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research tonight. Sophia throws a good party. It’s hard to throw a perfect Halloween party. It’s like throwing the perfect holiday party, but even more precise. An endeavor in pure pleasure. I’ve never been to a Halloween party from corporate hell, for example. The BCTR Halloween Party is very perfectly precise. Good costumes (although mine isn’t) a roof that is warm and clear but the breeze is cool and the breeze is bringing in some mist, the breeze is fogging the Manhattan skyline, people are handing out lollipops, someone is doing tarot readings, the costume contest is fun, the costumes are creative enough to merit critique.
The story I read is called Bathroom Dreams. I wrote it in Ohio. It’s not a horror story. It’s just a story about Having Bad Dreams.
Friday, November 1
The sky is gray and orange this morning. It’s raining as I walk to class, big fat globs that only fall occasionally, the type of rain that you might not notice at all until it hits you squarely. I’ve been listening to only one song all week; Life on Mars by David Bowie. They played it in the screening at Rave New World last week and it made me feel dizzy in a kind of nice way. It’s a nice day, but the air is too heavy. I feel combative. I feel overwhelmingly happy.
I cut my finger on glass on my way to The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research. There were forces in the smog, I think. Earlier, my water bottle exploded untouched in a canvas tote bag and I stood unmoving while water and then tiny little glass splinters pooled around my feet. My understanding of inertia rendered me incapable of action. Things don’t just explode untouched, and so the explosion confused me. I didn’t move to stop it, I didn’t even move to pull the leaking bag away from my leather boots. There were people around me. They better understood that the laws of inertia can be faulty.
“Something exploded in your bag,” someone said.
I nodded. “ I can clean it up,” I said.
They called a janitor instead. I went to an empty classroom and emptied the contents of the bag onto the floor, shaking out water and glass into the trash can. I grabbed my glass-filled sweater by the fist full on the way to the play tonight, and so now, there’s little shards of glass in my hand.
It’s my second time in Brooklyn in two days and it’s starting to feel familiar.
There Are No Diving Pools In Hell seizes me for every second. I’m prepared to like the play - a witty drama of childhood trauma and fraught sisterhood through the glossy lens of a cheerleading story - but I’m prepared to like it in a way that is a bit camp, satire, Jennifer's Body, etc. Instead, this play is wrenching, with a tenderness and sorrow that surprises, and then absorbs me. The story follows two half sisters bonded mostly in their mutual hatred of their emotional abusive, cruel, stage mom mother. The younger sister is a bubbly cheerleader, the older sister a more detached former child actress. My sympathies lie with the younger, Thea, more at first, and then the story winds and unravels and while the play is sharp and funny, by the end I feel genuinely mournful for both.
After, walking down the stairs of BCTR in the dark and in a haze because the play left me reeling, I hear what sounds like loud rain on the street. I open the door, bracing myself for the downpour but then it's all clear skies, the wind moving dry leaves around with a rustle and pattering that sounds like a storm.
WHAT YOU SHOULD DO
Tonight, Tuesday November 5
From 6pm till it’s done — EARTH is hosting an election party - “four channels, drinks, refreshments, everyone is welcome”
From 8pm - 1am — Sovereign House is hosting a Milady Election Watch Party. RSVP only.
From 9pm - late at Home Sweet Home — Dirty Mag is hosting an Erection Nite Spectacular with Petit Mort, Neoliberal Hell, Matthew Donovan, and more.
If you prefer a different type of hedonism, Baguette is back at Paul’s Casablanca
Wednesday, November 6
From 7pm at Reena Spaulings — Calla Henkel celebrates the New York launch of her new novel Scrap, with a reading and conversation with Whitney Malllett. When I was 21 and an intern in Berlin who kept getting scammed out of apartments, a nice lady took me in and gave me a copy of Henkel’s last book Other People’s Clothes. This ended up being a slightly ominous gift given the plot of the novel, but my Berlin host was genuinely lovely, and I adored this book and read it many times. Very excited for Scrap!
From 7:30pm — Pretty Garden Club hosts a one act play and post show talk on Women On Their Way to Hollywood with Alex Arthur, Ambre Kelly, and Rémy Bennett.
Thursday, November 7
From 6 - 8pm — O'Flaherty's new location opens at 165 Allen St with The Bitch, Matthew Barney, and Alex Katz.
Friday, November 8
From 7pm at Sovereign House — Christopher Zeischegg makes a rare NYC appearance to celebrate the launch of The Magician with a night of alter egos. I recently read and loved this book - “an incantatory trip into the heart of darkness”. Come as you are (or as you are not). Readings by Tess Manhattan, Reuben Dendinger, and Chris Zeischegg. A short film screening of THE MAGICIAN will follow, inspired by the harrowing story behind the text.
Saturday, November 9
From 2pm - 7pm at Big Ash — Wine, music, and The Convention Of Hot Girls With Closets That Aren’t Big Enough. Archival vintage, deadstock, and Japanese designer on sale from the closets of Lucy Rae McFadin, Sasha Fierce, Ruby Lyn, and more.
From 2pm - 7pm at 66 Greene St — The Kollection presents POETRY GALLERY - an exhibition and performance effort in shifting the form of live poetry presentation. Poetry by Ali Royals, Jo Rosenthal, Meg Yates, and others. Music by Private Browsing and Pascale + Katz.
From 7pm at KGB — The Brutalist Couture by Jonathan Rosado is back for its second screening, accompanied by a performance by The Suede Hello. I saw the first screening and really enjoyed it - hallucinogenic recollections of MKUltra, girls, and gore, etc etc etc.
Sunday, November 10
I’m reading at Confessions at KGB for Cuffing Season, along with Annabel Boardman, Renata Limón, Audrey Snow Matzke, Agnes Enhtamir, Xavi Campbell, Panos Ale, and Cassidy Grady
To Mark Your Calendar… TENSE is coming to Manhattan on November 15 — For Is That All There Is, I will be reading, along with Lucy Sante, Guy Dess, Beckett Rosset, Adeline Swartzendruber, Mairead Kiernan, and Chris Bray.