Writing about your life means dissecting it into paper thin proverbial slices, peeling the glue to the very bone of your blushing nature. There’s a lot of blooming, of course, a lot of contractual time to think about it all and be amused by nothing, but there’s also the immorality that smells of rotten meat and damp soil. Becoming one with sin means tossing your moral compass mindfuck aside, the one wired to tell you why you should try being a good person before you try doing anything else. But must I prove I’m honorable and bendable in every sentence? Go ahead, convince your laptop screen how good and righteous you’ve been. Imagine we’re in a confessional right now. Imagine no one will know. Imagine your card declines here. I’ll go first so you feel better.
I once met somebody shiny and godlike. I’ve milked this story for prose a million times, I know, my cash cow and my broken record. I even considered buying a custom spell from a TikTok witch or bloodletting to Joni Mitchell’s The Last Time I Saw Richard, because the further I’m chronologically removed from the day we met, the more I’m into the idea of blowing my brains out as pretty much the only sure way out of my longing. But here’s a fresh take: I’ve never told this story from the perspective of a criminal, which is what I am. Dishonesty sells better.
We met up at 7:01 PM for a casual drink on Stable Street. That’s inherently erotic. Everyone in my city knows you only take someone to Stable Street if you’re planning on digging your nails into their back later.
A pregnant lady approached us at the bar. I remember thinking the interaction was so out of place, must’ve been some sort of premonition. My foreshadowing couldn’t be put into practice for two reasons: it wasn’t a date, and I was in a relationship. Not a bad one either, just equivalent to filing tax returns on the excitement scale, you know the kind. Still, what sane woman entertains the idea? When acting on a carnal thing is indisputably immoral, settle for a grey area — dream the summer away with someone shiny on your mind metastasizing into other places. The person next to you looks nothing like him, and maybe it’s for the best. You can be metaphorically pregnant. No one will know.
A couple months later, when my Boring Boyfriend was breaking up with me over a video call, I accused him of leaving me for someone else, which he denied. You’re a pathetic liar, I yelled, snot dripping out of my nose together with my dignity. Convinced he was too much of a coward to admit he’d found a new thing to love, I told all of my friends to change the narrative from Boring Boyfriend to Worst Dude Ever. It was a medium scale smear campaign —we weren’t influencers and no one cared— I had to pacify myself somehow. It took a couple years to see that every soothing story is told through the prism of our sins. Only one of us was a cheater, the other was being framed. But I made both of us cry that day.
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It’s very upsetting to my frail heart when cool people don’t follow me back. Especially on Substack. Especially if they follow the people I dislike, or worse, the people I’m convinced are stealing from me. Is my effervescent autofiction bleeding personality and wit not enough for you? I’ll have you know I’m the BlackRock of pseudointellectual property… In no possession of a lot of money or a lot of brain, but my appetite for greatness generously compensates for both.
I then throw a petty tantrum, fist to wall, fall to the ground, and breathe curses into the floorboards until they’ve coated the cement underneath. Then I calm down and move on with my day. Everyone I find cool should find me cool back instantaneously — and I think that should be legally enforced because you guys won’t listen to me when I ask nicely. Tariffs!