Please Enjoy #14
Vibe Check
Now that everything in New York has been fully open for a bit, I am once again spending time with dozens of people I haven't seen in over a year who now have a permanent look of terror glued to their face and no idea what volume to speak at. We were promised a summer full of unbridled sex and fun, a veritable bacchanalia. The reality of that happening disappeared rather quickly. People are recoiling from physical touch after being denied intimacy for months on end. There’s been a sharp uptick of making out on the street but it has all seemed odd. Pecking and pushing like birds fighting over seed in a cage.
Every interaction I’ve had lately has felt a little off. Shaky and frustrating like when you’re first trying to steady a screw before you drive it into a wall. You’re standing there thinking “I’ve done this countless times before. Why is it so difficult all of a sudden?” I’ve hung out with a few friends who seemed to have stayed tethered to a vague approximation of normalcy but mostly there has been a mass wave of regression. No one can handle this new world as an adult so they’ve self-imposed the disease from the movie Jack. They’re all small, scared children in hulking, hairy bodies.
All of sudden, every adult you know is buying the brightest and ugliest clothes you’ve ever seen and wearing it all at the same time. They’ve taken a first day of school approach to getting dressed. Each new piece must be worn together so they can tell the story of buying them. The story is always the same. You say “nice shirt” and then you’re trapped in a corner learning about how they bought their entire outfit online but they haven’t left the house in awhile because of you know why hahahah so they want to wear everything but couldn’t decide which one so they said fuck it and wore them all but yeah other than that life has been pretty boring but how are you oh my god wait this person I matched with on Hinge just showed up should I talk to them hahaha its suuuuuuuper weird ok anyway how are you do you want another drink or something?
People in their 30s are getting High School Party drunk on weeknights. I figured I had aged out of the Watching A Drunk Woman Frantically Yell About How She Lost Her Cell Phone portion of my life but I have been dragged back against my will like I’m trying to escape from Freddy Kreuger but I’m just not quick enough. Seeing someone pull apart a couch while everyone else in the room slowly moves away from it shoots my heart rate up like I’m being physically attacked.
The internal life is dead. We are a society that has decided to live externally. There is no more inner monologue. After being stuck inside without real social interactions, the dam has broken. It’s all going to Instagram Stories now. Every drink. Every breakup. Every visit to the fitting room. Every sunset. I have watched entire vacations happen while never leaving my couch in Queens. The Close Friends list has become a minefield of throwaway posts, shit talking and severe mental health breaks. I have had to stop myself from replying “It seems like you need a stronger support system.” to multiple people. I have used my Close Friends list exactly one time and it was to ask where I could find sliding scale therapy in New York City so no one is immune to its soul-bearing siren song.
Everyone’s talking about nature. They were just at the beach. We should go to the beach. You wouldn’t believe how clear the Mediterranean is this time of year oh my god you’ve never been you HAVE to go I swear you’ll love it I’ll email you a list of where you should go. They want to go to the woods for a while to decompress. They just got back from an Airbnb upstate and wow what a beautiful view they had it’s just so tranquil and different from the city you’ve just got to go. All of a sudden, people who won’t go above 14th Street unless they’re getting laid or fucked up think they’re Ponce de León and have discovered the Catskills. No one before them has realized the beauty of nature and its healing properties. They’re leaving their marketing job to build a treehouse outside of Phoenicia and mine Ethereum.
People can’t help but note that it’s hot out. Humid too. The summer in New York is always bad, they tell you, but this one seems worse. Muggier. Heavier. Lots of people at the parks too. Don’t all these people have jobs? Why are they here in the middle of the day while I am also here in the middle of the day? Did everyone in the city call out sick today because they didn’t feel like going to work again? I wish the park had AC. It would make spending time there a much more enjoyable experience.
There’s an odd tension in the air everywhere you go. Everyone seems ready to fight, or yell (which is what most people think is fighting). I’ve walked around with my fists clenched for roughly the last decade, so this isn’t a new feeling for me. My mania around this grew to a fever pitch last summer when I logged onto Wish.com and purchased myself a collapsible baton. There were reports of a man attacking women in and around the Morgan L stop. I figured if he was insane enough to punch random women in the face, he’d have no problem fighting me and if I saw him in the act, I’d have to do something.
My first thought was to purchase a weapon from a website that also sells t-shirts emblazoned with the phrase CUM IN ME BRO!, $2 headphones and jewelry that somehow turns your skin green before you put it on. I ordered a collapsible baton because, in my head, I was the vigilante hero who was going to save the day. I’d get off at the Morgan stop (a stop I do not live at and had no need to be at while the entire city was closed) and when I’d see this man about to pounce, I’d retrieve my baton from my trusty canvas tote bag and clock him once over the head with it. My singular hit would make him realize what he was doing was wrong and he had to turn his life around.
Once the baton arrived in the mail, my entire mindset changed. This wasn’t some simple thing used for self-defense. I ordered a straight up murder weapon and planned to use it on a stranger. The weight of it in my hand immediately sent a message to my brain that said “You're not ready to kill”. It is now merely a prop for Instagram photos that I keep tucked secretly next to my bed.
The world reopening feels a lot like the baton to me. Everyone really wanted it. They couldn’t stop thinking about it. It would be the thing that finally made them feel whole. But once they held it in their hands, they immediately freaked out and knew they weren’t able to handle it.
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