anti gravity
lists and entries from journals, the notes app, etc. from august 12th to august 15th.
Entry titled “Needs (?)”, 8/12/2024, 10:13 p.m. In a notebook.
Motion; going somewhere, being anywhere that’s not here, being alone, watching endless stretches of deserted land move past me.
An ocean, a river, a lake. Alone in the middle of nowhere.
Car & driver’s license— preferably a pre-2000s model.
Money, because I always need money of some sort.
California, Colorado, Wyoming, the Baja Peninsula, Nevada, Southeastern Oregon, Southern Canada… the deserts, the high altitude, the ponderosa pines.
Finishing all the TV shows, movies, books, etc. that I put down and never got around to finishing.
Money again… makes the world go ‘round and all that.
Clean room. Probably would do better wishing for the energy to clean my room instead but I just don’t want to spend time on that right now.
Step my money up, step my pussy up, etcetera etcetera.
Getting on a horse again. Going real fucking fast on a horse. Real, real fast. Barrel racing again. Roping again.
I’d settle for going real, real fast in a car, on a motorcycle, or even an amusement park ride at this point.
Not only no fear, but the existence of a life and a world where that fear isn’t necessary and constantly validated. A place where fear and survival are unrelated.
Clothes I actually like wearing— new underwear (that’s a need for sure), new shirts that don’t have holes in them, new skirts that actually fit me, things in general that actually fit me, why does nothing that I’ve bought actually fit me, I’m good on pants even though none of mine fully fit me. Wretched wretched wretched.
Clear skin forever and ever and ever amen.
My hair to grow out at least 2-3 more inches… I look fine in anything but it’s just getting annoying now. I want to be able to pull it back and out of my face completely. I should stop cutting bangs, too. Not really the vibe any more.
More alone time, more solitude; that or a massive shift in my psychological makeup so I can feel satisfied by the amount of alone I already am instead of craving more.
A rug & bench (with storage, maybe) for under my bedroom window.
More colored pens… ran out, and only writing in black is getting dull.
A website or app where you put your email in and it tells you every account and subscription under that email, and each thing on the list has a button next to it where you can delete the account or unsubscribe or something. I feel encumbered and impossibly bloated by the digital trail I’ve left behind. I want it to all go away— I want to go back and start life from the beginning just so I can not make so many emails and useless accounts.
Money again, but this time for DVDs and CDs and cassettes and vinyl.
A tight knit group of in-person friends that don’t exhaust me and I don’t feel the need to constantly explain myself to. Or a boyfriend, though likely not. It would be sweet to have a friend to tell things to at night, without the terrible sex price to pay. Understanding. Hopefully this will lead to less misanthropy on my part. If nothing else, an exercise of the social muscle.
Entry titled “I’M REAL WHEN I SHOP MY FACE”, 8/13/2024, 4:56 p.m. In a notebook.
Oh, lamentations! God have mercy on my soul! I finally reached the point where I couldn’t go on any longer if I didn’t buy new underwear, because I’m a little pig that squeals when not decorated in pearls and silks. Is there anything as wretched? I asked my parents for money, they gave it to me, and in the days following, I will slowly dispose of the decade-old panties as packages arrive. I could certainly use a new bra, one that actually fits me, but I’m never in the mood to break the bank so I didn’t ask for more money. Today, I went through thousands of faceless asses and thighs, flipping from one page to the next, adding and removing filters, judging everything I see. Those were models with careers and lives and insecurities, and I’m there staring at their hips and trying to guess if some scrap of lace would look good on me. Great.
The language of underwear is simpering and saccharine— everything is “embraceable” or “ultra soft” or “teasing”, implying touch, touch, touch, touch of another person or of yourself or just the fabric touch, touch, touching your body. I’m a modern, modern, modern girl and I don’t want to be touched. What then? I’m looking for underwear, not some high-line bikini invisible lacy seamless cozy stretchy touchable he’ll-fuck-you-in-these ultra-comfort buzzword-buzzword-buzzword panties. Because I’m a no-nonsense sort of modern girl.
All this is to say that I went scouring the internet for something exactly like the children’s underwear I’ve been wearing forever in a size or two larger, but was redirected by the dozens of websites I visited, all which told me that adults no longer have the privilege of buying a generic brand 10 for $10 pack of underwear. There are things that must be taken into consideration now. Showing a panty line wasn’t even a passing thought when I was a child— now, all the brands treat visible panty lines like you’ll be shot and killed for going out in public like that. Of course, only their Super Special Secret Underwear That Nobody Knows Is There Because It Would Be So Embarrassing If Something Showed™ can remedy that problem. Buying more than one pair will practically bankrupt you, but that’s perfectly fine. Praise the brand for saving you from the prison and soul-deep illness that is a visible panty line! Praise them! Exaltations! Exaltations! Exaltations!
I’m going to fucking kill a marketing executive. I’m going to walk into a Victoria’s Secret or something, I’m going to find their head of marketing, and I’m going to shoot them at close range with a .38. I’ll go to prison, of course, and there they will issue me new underwear, which I’ll have to kill someone about, too. I hate shopping and I hate advertisements and I hate anyone telling me what to do. Give me five minutes and I could hate anything. Long live the modern girl— and you know what, I hate her too.
I wasn’t done there, though. I had a few more websites to visit. Two clicks away were my childhood photos, candid shots and photoshoot products alike, being used as marketing. I always forget I had a brief (unpaid) career as a children’s underwear model, even though the brand preferred we called them under outs because most of their products were more like knickerbockers. My sibling’s ten year old face is the first thing you see when you open their website— the second thing you see is the massive banner declaring a “going out of business” sale. Maybe I’m so unnerved by the faceless underwear models because I’m technically one of them. It takes under a minute of scrolling through their website to locate pictures of my hips, my shoulders, my chest, only identifiable as mine because I’m intimately acquainted with the placement of my freckles. I was seven years old. It was the last professional modeling I ever did.
The other highlights of my career as a child model were children’s leg warmers and baby blankets. The baby blanket brand is still posting photos of my face on their social media— the most recent one was a month ago. I couldn’t have been older than three in that picture. It takes a bit longer to find my child-body on the leg warmer website, but everything lasts forever on the internet, so I became eternal. Who doesn’t want to be eternalized as small and faceless? Not me. Everyone wants to be forever young, and I’m going to live on forever through the internet. Immortality does mean never dying, but they don’t tell you it also means never changing. Some part of me is permanently stuck at seven years old.
Oh, well. Stuck at seven years old makes me a modern girl. My whole life is like a picture of a sunny day.
Untitled entry, 8/15/2024, 3:24 a.m. In the notes app.
I think I’m lonely? I’m not sure. I don’t feel lonely but I think that’s the issue here. My head and my body are in two different realms of existence— head is fine, body is dying, slim slow sliding into nothing, say hallelujah goodnight canned music etcetera. I should write a cheat sheet on body/head relations. What does loneliness feel like to the body? An achy, breaky heart? Heaviness? Whatever it is that compels someone to run their hand down their waist or press their thumb into their hip or push their fingers through their hair? Google searched am I touch starved— test one says a little bit, test two says maybe, test three says not really. This is why multiple opinions are so important. What would I do without multiple sources having told me that the results are inconclusive? And all the questions about feelings, too. I take issue.
Last few days it’s been credit card plastic, painkiller sugar, dehydration, Cassavetes, God Rest Gena’s Soul, excess ink, bleeding mouth, bad skin, two-bit tiredness. I don’t think God or the world or whatever wants me to spend money. Not supposed to rip the skin off my face even though I want to. Have you ever put a real pearl in your mouth? If you gently scrape the surface with your teeth— not hard enough to do damage, just grazing it— it has the faint grittiness of sand. Grit. There’s a word. Damn it all to hell and back and back again; I hope he rots. Me and life are standing across from each other at high noon and I’m wagging my finger at it. Tsk tsk. One of us will not be making it out of here alive.
Entry titled “Kill ‘Em All”, 8/15/2024, 11:56 p.m. In a notebook.
Deleted as many old accounts as I could find. Still can’t track down every single email I made when I was in middle school, but the ones I could got the ax. Spent some time going through word documents, too— removing collaborators (people I haven’t spoken to for years and have no intention of ever seeing again), reading old unfinished stories, deleting a whole bunch of shit. Got rid of the entire Microsoft account that hosts (hosted, now) my first ever multi-chapter story. Narrowing myself down again. Not sure if that’s a good thing, but it feels good. I don’t need any of it. One day I might regret it.
Is it possible to truly escape yourself? No. Not unless, by some freak miracle, you end up in an entirely new place with complete and irreversible amnesia, but even then you’ve got your body. The younger you are, the easier it is. I’m still young. And starting over is different from escaping, because it’s never too late to start over and there’s always time. Whenever I find the guts to rejoin society or talk to more people or something, I’ll practically have a clean slate— I didn’t talk to anyone in school, I wasn’t involved in anything, 97% of the people who knew me aren’t in this city anymore, and the ones who are harbor no ill will towards me besides the residual malaise that teenage dyke drama brings. With enough audacity and good enough painkillers, I could practically do anything.
I’m not even fully trying to escape myself— I like myself, for the most part. My issue is with the past. It’ll be easier to change with new underwear. A new closet too, hopefully, all in due time. I’m always surprised at the impact material objects can have on someone. Maybe I really am lonely. Maybe I just want something out of reach.
One day I’m going to be out in the beautiful world with no issue. I know it because I want it, and I know I want it because I’m scared of it. One day I’ll be out there, though. One day it’ll happen.