I thought about doing a Halloween party report, but it was a bit of a dud, so I’ll just give you a quick rundown. Ultimately, most people looked bad or dumb or both. On Thursday, my Celine leather jacket was stolen from the DJ booth at Home Sweet Home during Harrison’s set. I spent hours aggressively hitting my airbar combing through security footage to no avail. Come Friday, I went to see Chris Black and Jason do their How Long Gone live show with Alison Roman where I discovered an egg yolk omelette is physically impossible to make. You need an element to bind the protein or something. I love seeing Chris’ biceps in his snug little cashmere sweater and he loves hearing about my woman woes and extra marital affairs. It’s a true match.
Saturday was the night. Or so I thought. I wore my favorite instagram brand dress and a tiara, Chloe Wise used her Chanel lipstick to paint bruises on me, and I was off to the races (Boom Boom Room) as a dead Princess Di. We arrived maybe too early and the DJ was blasting spooky smooth jazz while the ~30 or so guests mingled like it was a coworking event. Enter Mark Ronson and some stolen ketamine and the night started to heat up. Unnamed NYC stylist tripped walking into the VIP section, right at Mark’s feet, losing both shoes in the fall. Anthony from Queer Eye was spotted dressed as a Mar-a-Lago cabana boy??? Felt too on the nose for me. Carly Mark somehow found a temporary face tattoo in the form of an Instagram filter. Timothy Gibbons wore the same pumpkin sweater for the 7th day in a row and two massive welts formed on either side of my head from the children’s tiara. Emma Burke was best dressed as Iris in Taxi Driver. Despite the height, she looked sexy and prepubescent. That’s all I’ve got. I could have done without it.
So now I’m in Florida. I was trying to “reset” or something after everything seemingly fell apart, but it turns out being bored just makes you think about it all more. Even when the boredom is poolside in a bikini. I’m reading books about miserable women and drumming up anger per some friends’ suggestions. In any case, Karmic shit is afoot. Emma read my chart in early September and told me something major would happen around Halloween in my relationship: something fueled by an issue of communication. Ding ding ding.
I tried to drunkenly start a conversation with my mom last night about the ways in which some of my recent romantic behavior reminded me of her relationships. She’s sober (forever) and I was two vespers in, so it didn’t go as well as I would have hoped. The conversation was meant to unpack and perhaps reconcile our inclination to forgive others despite knowing better- to be tolerant to the point of passive punishment. Unfortunately, the vodka spoke louder and my presumption of this shared pathology was insulting instead of understanding.
About a quarter of the way through Tár, which we saw following our failed conversation, Lydia turns to her assistant in the backseat of a car and says, “hope dies last.” She’s referring to a younger woman she was seeing whose efforts to be acknowledged are now lost on her. A woman who doesn’t know when to walk away. Hope dies last.
I’m hopeful to a fault, I think. After letting that phrase rattle between my ears for awhile, I got a text for the first time in years from the first guy I ever slept with. He was the first of many to take interest in me while in a relationship with someone else. I’m not sure he’s to blame for those who followed, but he definitely got the ball rolling. It’s been eleven years and he was asking me questions like, “do you still hate me?” and “why did you put up with me?” I had no idea how to tell him that I don’t think about him at all. I remember the day the switch flipped and I didn’t care about him anymore. I’m waiting for my next switch flip now. Time is on my side, but patience is definitely not. Hope makes me a much happier person and also probably much more naive. I’m not so sure it’s forgiveness that my mom and I toil over. Gretchen says there’s patience as an affect and patience as a self-harming trait. I imagine most women’s experiences place them somewhere in between. Mine more so in the latter. It’s something of a sufferance: the punishment in tolerance. By some stroke of miracle, though, mom and I remain blissful, not haunted in our infinite capacity for hope. Maybe silently or subconsciously haunted by occasional disappointment, but always hopeful nonetheless.
Here’s me writing this and texting gretchen: